Lost for Life Page #5

just to sit here and rot and

there are no redeeming

qualities. There's nothing I can

do really to alleviate

any...

I don't know. It's like

just watching yourself

decompose. It's just horrible.

He's been in prison six

years, and he's still on his

first day. He hasn't progressed

at all and it's going to hurt

him in the end, either

psychologically, if he has a

conscience, or in courts.

They don't want to

hear that you're completely

innocent. He's not innocent,

he's not, I'm not innocent,

I'm guilty and he's guilty, and

that's where we all

should start at.

Twenty years. I would say

about 20 years after that

incident I began to try to put

a plan in motion to

instead of feeling bad, feeling

down, feeling depressed about

what I did, to try to help people,

starting with the people

that I was around. I didn't have

to reach out to the free world.

There is a bunch of gangbangers

in prison. So I reached out to

them, let them know,

"Hey, there is a better life

to live for you. There's a

life that makes more sense."

I had a lot of good, positive

mentors in prison, and they

would always hand me a book.

They would always say,

"What have you read

today?" "Well, I haven't read

anything today. " " Well, good

because I have something for

you, here." And I came up like

that in prison.

I grew up like that in prison.

I began to educate others and I

began to pass on those same

things that those men taught me.

I started feeling

like, "This is what I'm supposed

to do." And I wrote

Governor Ritter, I didn't write

and beg him to let me out

of prison; I wrote him and asked

him would it be okay with him if

I were put in a position where I

could try to keep young people

from doing the same stupid thing

that I did.

My wife's son was convicted

of first-degree murder

when he had just turned 17.

Brian just wasn't mature enough.

I thank God that I'm

not judged permanently on how

I acted when I was 16.

We need to fairly

assess mitigating factors in

some of these juvenile cases

and we need to fairly assess

who that person is today.

If I could say something,

all of this makes it sound as if

we're making excuses.

A life was taken.

We cannot mitigate

that, and we cannot say,

"Somehow it's okay because

whether this kid was 15 or

they're 35, somebody was

killed." But I think we have to

look beyond that, and that's

where Sharletta comes in.

Sharletta Evans lost her

3-year-old son, Casson,

to two juvenile lifers in a

drive-by shooting.

Let Sharletta tell her story.

Hello. Thank you,

Mary Ellen.

Seventeen years ago, my

three-year-old son,

Casson Evans, was killed in a

drive-by shooting.

Twenty-one bullets were fired.

One bullet entered the back

window, entered into his temple,

and shattered his brain stem.

So the paramedics showed

up. Right when they came

into the house where

we were standing,

Casson took

his last breath in my arms.

I was overwhelmed with grief and

sorrow, not knowing what to

feel, not knowing to sit down,

stand up, go to sleep, or stay

up. You're just consumed with

sorrow. I knew they were

teenagers but I wanted justice.

Years are going by, one

of the shooters, his mother came

to me after 11 years

and asked me would I beg her

pardon. Would I pardon her son

and her for these deeds that

they've done?

And I'm like, "Wow, are you kidding?

You know? No."

And I just walked away. I began

to argue with God,

I began to cry and

argue with God like,

"What is wrong with these people?

They still don't get it."

I would not forgive anybody and

I'm angry about this.

Right there,

I recognize the presence

of the Lord, the

spirit of God, saying,

"Would you forgive?" My heart

began to soften and

have compassion where I

found myself crying

and praying and literally weeping

for who they really were and

what has happened to them in

their lives that caused this act

of violence, this emptiness within

themselves. This could

actually be my very own son.

My surviving son was at

this time 16 and 17, and this

could very well have been

him. So, I pretty much put

myself in the place of the offender

and the offender's family.

The guilt and the shame is there

for the offender's family.

My whole family, we won't ever

be able to understand what

the victim's families

go through but our whole family...

hurts.

Are we as a society,

are we grown up enough and

spiritual enough to say,

"Okay, there is

redemption and rehabilitation

for some of them?"

And does this person

deserve a second chance at life?

Has he shown a remorse?

What does that look like?

I made terrible decisions then.

They're the worst I've ever made

and I've had to live with those

ever since. There are so many

things that

I should have done differently.

I'm so sorry about what happened

to them.

I don't know.

What if you're wrong?

What if Josiah shot

the two victims?

Wouldn't change how I

love him. It would inevitably

change some things

on how I feel about him but it

wouldn't change how I love him.

I...

I can't...

I can't...

stomach the thought of

him dying in prison.

After the crime had

happened, I had horrific dreams,

bad dreams,

where she was there and just

graphic, gruesome dreams about

her dying.

I would wake up in the night and

I would be scared, terrified.

Now I have dreams of her at

school and everything is good.

She is always smiling but I

always know in the

dream that I killed her, and

those dreams are...

even worse.

And now it's like the

only thing I can do is hurt

myself.

It takes away the pain of...

just knowing what I did.

Remorse equals pain.

You're feeling pain for what

you've done to someone else. And

it's very easy to deny pain and

run away from pain, and I did it

for a long time.

And then I started

becoming aware of

everyone else who was

hurt and feeling remorse for

that and then running away from

that pain as soon as I realized

it. I said, "Whoa, whoa, I don't

want to feel pain. So, no, it's

not my fault that all those

people are hurt. I'm going to

still put it back on my parents.

If they didn't do all that to me

well then these people wouldn't

have been hurt either."

And it took...

probably close

to a decade before I could

have the strength to stop

and say, "No. My fault."

What makes

so much of it worse now,

thinking back at my

childhood, is now that

I'm a grown man, I've

seen kids. I've seen how the

relationship is supposed to be

with your parents.

Obviously, they had to

have been mentally ill.

They're passing

down garbage from their past.

It's a cycle.

They had their own issues that

led into it that lessened their

culpability. And when you

start thinking about that

it's like, "Wait a minute, they

didn't deserve what happened to

them that caused them that way."

And it starts feeding into

itself and it's like, "Wow."

If I'm going to say, "I deserve

another shot because I was

screwed up and I didn't...

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