Lost for Life Page #4

affixed to your name.

And so it's really hard.

He wants to please his parents,

he wants to go home,

and his kind of behavior is

really common and it's ordinary,

I think. I think what...

makes somebody extraordinary is

when they face everything and

just kinda...

accept it.

It's a hard thing to admit I

killed Cassie Stoddart.

I stabbed a 16-year-old

girl to death,

that's pretty hard to say.

Life never gets so serious

until something like that

happens. I was a 17-year-old

kid; I didn't take anything

serious. I hardly ever went

to school. I was always

skipping class, smoking

weed, getting drunk,

that's all I ever did, sell

drugs. Life wasn't serious.

Nothing was serious...

until I took someone's life.

Man, I wanted to get out of the gang

right then and there, you know?

When I first got

here, I tried to blame others.

And I met this individual in here

and he asked me what happened

in my crime, and I told him,

"Oh, I'm not exactly

sure what happened.

They said I killed her,

I'm not even sure if

I did or not." And he sat me

down and he's like...

"Stop giving me a whole

bunch of bullshit, okay? If you

want my help you have to

completely be honest with me."

And he taught me about how

I owe a tremendous

debt to Cassie Stoddart, and

the only way that I could even

start paying that is

to first of all tell exactly

what happened to her and...

do not dishonor her

in anything that

you do in your life. And I've

tried that; it's very hard,

it's very hard, but I think that...

that's all I can do and

I have the obligation.

I have to do that

or I'm...

a monster, I guess.

When I got to prison, I

still got myself involved in

certain situations that were gang

related. Still, even then, I

felt like they were... it was

like clothes that didn't

fit. It just wasn't me, and

it only took one incident in

prison for me to say,

"I'm living the same

ridiculous way I was living

before I got locked up.

Man, I got to stop this."

A friend of mine got into a

fight with a Crip and

I went to retaliate, after it

was over with I just lined all

of my friends up in the gym and

I told them, "I'm out."

I'd been studying Islam

anyway, and I told them that

I'm going to take this way of

life called Islam; I'm going to

take it serious. And in order to

take it serious, I can't live

two lives because Allah didn't

make two hearts in one breast.

So I chose to live

the life of a Muslim and I left

the life of a Blood behind me.

When I first went to

solitary confinement I was 17.

I was stuck in a cell and I

couldn't run away from who I

was. In solitary, that's where

all the worst of the worst are

which, at the time, I thought

the greatest convicts, the tough

guys are, the real guys are.

But eventually,

I had to decide whether

I wanted to be like

those around me or if I want

to be the type of man

I idealized in my brain.

And then I started looking at

myself more in depth and said,

"I don't want to be who I am

right now either. I don't like

who I am right now."

So I started just going layer by

layer through who I was,

through how I thought,

what my outlooks on life were,

characteristics.

And if I didn't like it I'd work

on it, work on that one thing

until I got rid of it,

move to the next item.

And as I learn new lessons from

my studies, I've learned to

apply it into my life.

Forgiveness is one of them,

be a more forgiving person.

To try and have empathy

with others, and to empathize

with where they're coming from

and from their situation

rather than solely

from my own, from judging from

my own experience,

which is definitely a radical

change in thinking for most

people. It really changed how I

looked at the world and how I

viewed human interactions and

dealt with people and to me it's

one of the most important

lessons I've learned

so far in prison.

One of the reasons

why life without parole is

given as a sentence is because

courts find that certain

offenders are so dangerous that

they can never be allowed to

walk among us again, and that's

a hard calculation to make.

Life without parole is a very

rare sentence across the

country; it's very rarely

given and the standards are

really high for any age

offender to ever receive it,

as it should.

But one of the reasons they do

it is because they have found

time and time again that if you

release certain kinds of

offenders they will re-offend

and very violently.

And that's what recidivism is,

is the violent re-offense

that happens when you let an

offender out who is just not

safe to be released.

I started teenkillers.org as a

blog where people have come in

from the outside and posted

their comments, and

there's a posting by an

attorney in California,

Daniel Horowitz, whose wife was

murdered by a juvenile lifer.

If you are willing kill

before you're even 18,

you are so broken inside

that unless you

have some miraculous healing,

unless something

almost extraordinary happens,

all you're going to do is gain

control mechanisms. You're going

to learn how to walk and talk

like a regular person, as

do many serial killers,

but ultimately sieving

underneath is that same sickness

that erupted at least one time

as a juvenile, incapable of

feeling genuine compassion.

For me, one of the

biggest aspects of life without

parole for a juvenile is

that it automatically negates

any chance for rehabilitation,

automatically says,

"What you've done at this early age

completely makes

anything you can do from that

point on immaterial. You've

thrown away your life, you're

worthless, you're trash, we

don't want you."

I want to have a

chance at a life. I understand

that Cassie can't, and...

I never ignore that.

She's dead and not anything

is going to change that.

I did something terrible

and there has to be

consequences for that.

Everything we do in life,

there are always consequences.

Oh, man, my consequence

hurt my dad, my grandma,

my aunts, even my friends

and neighbors at school,

I had no concept that what I was

doing was going to hurt so many

people. I was completely

clueless about it and that's

it's hard for me to build

up much sympathy for my

mom and stepdad, though I did

originally right off the bat.

But for all the innocent people

that were hurt,

like my brother,

and like my family,

it's almost unforgivable.

And it's a weight that I

tried to avoid, tried

to keep off my shoulders for years.

Now...

that I have embraced

it, my driving factor is I have

to make it up to them.

They're the only thing in this

world I give a damn about

anymore, and they're the reason

I want to be the best person

I can be and make

something of myself

is to make it up for them.

I don't know. I have

a lot of ambitions,

and if I were to get out

I'd know exactly

what I do with my life. But

being in here, if that's all I

have is just these... it feels

like all I have is

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