Split decision, p.21
Split Decision, page 21
“What’s up, Ice?”
“Shit, good to hear your voice, man! Welcome back to the family.”
“Man, listen, I’ve been trying to talk to you for the longest. But Trome and them were telling me they couldn’t even hand you the phone.”
“Yeah, I got them doing that,” he said. “Don’t even trip. There’s a lot of shit been going on and I’m just not talking to people on the phone like I used to. It has nothing to do with you. Spike, you’ve never crossed me. You’ll always be part of the family.”
“Listen, man,” I said, “I just wanted to let you know I’m in a Level II yard and I’m doing everything I need to do to get ready for that board.”
I told him about working on my college degree, running the Scared Straight program and a bunch of inmate self-help groups. It was a short call but I wanted to convey to Ice personally how intensely I was committed to change.
“That’s what we want to hear, Spike,” Ice said. “Keep pushing, man. Keep doing what you’re doing. Stay in touch with Al P., and we’ll be there to help you when you come before the board.”
Long before my initial parole suitability hearing, I did the legwork and found an attorney in Oakland named Keith Watley. He was considered one of the best in the state at handling parole boards.
I didn’t have the kind of money it was going to cost to retain him, and no one in my family was in a position to help. But Ice was true to his word; he stepped up to help financially. Keith Watley came down from Oakland five times to meet with me at Corcoran. Most guys have a court-appointed attorney who they meet once, briefly, a few days before the hearing.
The most valuable thing you get from a good private attorney is a full understanding of the obstacles you’re facing at the board hearing. The attorney can’t do the hard work for you. You’ve got to bring the board years of proof that you’re working on change: certificates showing that you’ve learned various trades, been going to college, doing self-helps. Your disciplinary record has to speak for itself. You better not any have any 115s—those are administrative write-ups for infractions in prison. Even during the hearing, your lawyer might only talk for fifteen minutes. The rest is on you.
But he can prepare you by helping you understand strategy. One thing I learned is that the parole board is looking for you to tell the story of your life—your personal narrative—in a compelling way.
“Go in there and tell them your story,” Keith Watley said. “Tell them why you committed the crime. And the number one thing is this: keep it one hundred percent real. Don’t lie about anything. Don’t downplay anything. Don’t minimize anything. Minimization is the main issue the board looks for.”
He told me that if they felt I was minimizing even one aspect of the crime, I’d be lucky to walk away with a five-year denial.
“Listen, you’ve got to put your head on the chopping block,” he said. “You’ve got to cut your own head off before they do.”
In other words, I needed to own up to all my mistakes and flaws and bad decisions before the commissioners could even ask me about them.
I needed to describe—in detail—the kind of person I was back then. I had to tear down everything I’d built up over the years: my justifications, rationalizations, all my defense mechanisms. I had to own those bad choices. I couldn’t point the finger at anyone but myself.
In the months I spent preparing for the hearing, I took a moral inventory and accepted that I’d allowed myself to become a twisted, self-centered individual who didn’t stop to think about the ripple effects of any of my actions.
But now I was nearly fifty years old; I was no longer the same selfish, reckless young player I had been in my twenties. I needed to differentiate between the person who committed those crimes and the person who was coming to the board hoping to be granted a second chance at freedom. The commissioners didn’t want to see the Spike who was apprehended in 1992 and convicted at trial of first-degree murder.
They needed to see my mother’s son.
* * *
Keith Watley warned me that this would be one of most intimidating experiences of my life. And that was the truth—my initial hearing lasted ten hours. They came and got me at 8 a.m. We assembled in a small conference room at Corcoran. Right in front of me, I was staring at a panel of three commissioners from Sacramento; on my left side, there was a district attorney from San Diego and Keith Watley; and on my right side, several members of the victim’s family.
These commissioners are former judges and cops—they can read your expressions and your body language. They can tell if you’re being sincere in your responses or bullshitting them and just telling them what they want to hear.
“Mr. Pierce, you were the ringleader. You could have gone in there and just taken the jewelry. Why didn’t you?”
“Mr. Commissioner, I didn’t usually commit robberies this way, using guns. I usually robbed stores using the element of surprise. I’d break the glass using just a hammer. But on that day in May 1992, I made that bad decision to involve a group of people who wanted to use guns, because that was their method of robbery.”
I told the commissioners, “That was the manner of person I was back then. Today, twenty-one years later, that’s not the same person you see sitting before you.”
For hours they dissected every aspect of the planning and execution of the crime. We went through all the numerous times when I could have stopped it.
One commissioner wanted to know why I’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous:
“Mr. Pierce, you weren’t involved in drugs and alcohol?”
“No, but I realized I was living the life of criminality at a level that was an addiction,” I said. “My life of criminality was my addiction. Not just the robbing, but the womanizing… doing things that wasn’t legal. Any time you rob, you steal, you disrespect someone in any capacity, all that falls, to me, under ‘criminality.’ I needed help in that area. These self-helps like N.A. made me understand why I needed God to change me. I couldn’t do it by myself.”
The panel wanted to know why I’d orchestrated the robberies in La Jolla—besides the allure of “fast money.” They asked me to nail down the “causative factors” that had driven me toward criminality.
“My low self-esteem,” I said. “My impulsive decision-making, greed, laziness, selfishness.”
They asked me about my inherent sense of right and wrong. I told them I always had a sense of right and wrong. But the manner of person I was back then, I was conditioned to being reckless and selfish, and I wasn’t listening to my conscience telling me that what I was doing was wrong.
I apologized to the victim’s family; I admitted that even though I didn’t shoot him, I was truly the person responsible for him losing his life:
“I regret every moment that I didn’t stop this crime from happening. And I know I destroyed his family. I took away his chance to live, his chance to be a father, a parent, a grandfather, watch his unborn kids grow. I know I took away his chance to continue to love his wife—a widow because of me. I know I set all these things in motion.… I took so much from that family, I took a part of everybody that loved him, a piece of everyone that loved him, and that haunts me every day because I’m ashamed of myself and I’m guilty of it. And not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. For the rest of my life, until I die, that’s going to be part of my life.”
However, I stressed that I wasn’t the same person I was when I committed the crime. “I’ve changed,” I said. “I’ve changed my value system, my beliefs. I’ve worked hard, through behavioral rehabilitation and therapy, twelve-steps, and my everyday life. I know I have the confidence to do things that are necessary for me to be a contributor to society in a positive way. That’s the way I would like to be remembered—as someone who made the change under these circumstances that I brought on myself.”
When we adjourned and the commissioners deliberated, the police took me back to a holding cell. My attorney told me he thought I’d handled that ten-hour hearing as well as anyone could have handled it, but he said the most likely outcome was a denial—maybe three years. Maybe five. Maybe seven.
They called us back into the room and told us their decision. They believed that I had changed and my record indicated I’d been a model inmate. They felt I was no longer a safety risk to society and found me suitable for parole.
Almost immediately, the San Diego DA wrote the governor’s office appealing the finding of suitability. The DA argued that I still posed a significant risk to public safety. The victim’s family were also strongly opposed to my being released.
It was eighteen months later before we had a second hearing. The first question the commissioners asked me was how I felt about being at this appeal hearing, how I felt about my release date being taken away. I knew they were judging my body language, trying to see if I would maintain my composure.
“I feel like I’m a changed man,” I said. “But if the board feels like I haven’t changed, then I don’t want to go home. I don’t want you to release me. Because I’ve done everything that I can possibly do to demonstrate the change. If you feel I haven’t changed sufficiently, I’d ask you, ‘What else do you want me to do?’ ”
The main question I had to address was the DA’s assertion that I failed to understand the “natural and probable consequences” of my actions. Murder was not my intent when planning the robberies in La Jolla. But that doesn’t matter in the eyes of the law.
“Because my accomplices were using guns in a crime that I planned,” I said, “I should have recognized that there was a reasonable probability that someone would get shot and killed during the commission of that crime. And, tragically, that was the case.”
They grilled me back and forth for hours and then, after a recess, the commissioners called us back in. “Based on our findings, we feel that Mr. Pierce would no longer pose an unreasonable risk to society, and we do find him suitable for parole.”
I shook Keith Watley’s hand, but I wasn’t about to celebrate. He’d already explained to me that there’s another 120-day waiting period. Even though I’d twice been found suitable and granted parole, if there was enough political pressure, the governor could overrule the board with one stroke of the pen. When it comes to murder cases in California, that’s the law.
* * *
It was the afternoon of January 7, 2016, more than three years since my first parole hearing. I wasn’t expecting to go free anytime soon. Actually, I was bracing myself for a denial. I figured I’d get the news in the mail saying that Governor Jerry Brown had overturned my suitability and I would need to come before the board in another five or seven years.
If that was the case, I had to accept it. I had to trust my mother’s words:
God will get you out in His time.
That afternoon the alarms went off and we went into lockdown. The cops were searching all the dorms for contraband—especially cell phones and drugs. They stripped us down to our boxers and took us out of our building. We were all inside of a kitchen, with the police up in the gun tower watching everybody—Blacks, whites, Hispanics—all out there together wearing only our shower shoes and underwear.
In the middle of the search, I heard over the loudspeaker:
“Pierce, report to the counselor’s office.”
I looked at one of the cops. “How can I go to the counselor’s office? I ain’t wearing no pants!”
A couple of the riot-squad police came and took me back to get a shirt and pair of pants, and they accompanied me to the programs office. My counselor was a young Hispanic woman, Ms. Lopez; she was fairly new at Corcoran, and I’d only dealt with her once or twice. When I walked in, she was staring at some paperwork on her desk.
“How are you doing, Mr. Pierce?” she said.
“I’m fine, ma’am.”
“How do you feel about going home?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly so I asked, “How do I feel about what?”
“Mr. Pierce, you’re going home tomorrow.”
“Are you serious?”
She explained that Governor Brown had signed the order officially granting me parole: January 8, 2016, was my release date.
For a long time, I couldn’t even speak. Tears were streaming down my cheeks.
“Mr. Pierce, I’m happy for you,” she said, smiling. “You’ve worked very hard to make this happen.”
The police led me back to the chow hall. Everyone was asking me what was going on, why I was wearing clothes, but I couldn’t tell them the truth—I’m going home tomorrow! First of all, it was hard for me to believe. I was still in shock. I kept feeling the rug might be snatched out from under me. Second of all, some of these guys have been denied two or three times, and I didn’t want them to feel fucked up that I was granted parole at my first suitability hearing. Because from everything I heard, that almost never happens to someone with a life sentence.
It might have been the strangest night I ever spent during all my years in prison. I couldn’t fall asleep for even a minute. I was too excited about the idea of going free. But also, I was still not believing it. I lay on top of my bed, eyes wide open, fully dressed.
In the morning, I looked outside and it was a cold, foggy day. Another announcement came over the loudspeakers.
“Pierce, report to the back gate.”
I gave all my belongings to one of my homies: TV, books, clothes, shoes. I didn’t want to carry anything with me except my daughter’s pictures, my photo albums of the Syndicate, my legal paperwork, and important letters—especially the one my grandmother wrote on her deathbed.
As I was leaving the dorm, there was bounce in my stride. Someone shouted to me:
“You goin’ home, Spike?”
“Hell yeah—I’m going home.”
Now the whole building started clapping.
I got outside and the fog was so thick I couldn’t see ten feet in front of my face. I was sipping from a can of orange soda and walking past the police with a smile.
“Pierce, you’re going home?”
“Yes, I am, sir.”
“Good for you, Pierce. Congratulations.”
There was a prison van waiting to take me to a train station. They had already bought me the tickets on Amtrak going to Bakersfield and then on Greyhound to L.A. They waited with me at the station and physically escorted me to my seat on the train. I’d never been on an Amtrak in my life. Everything was new and modern, and it felt like I was on a spaceship—everybody was staring at their iPads and smartphones and talking to themselves. It took me a while to understand they were on Bluetooth earpieces.
I was glued to my seat like a kid on a field trip, taking it all in. I got off at Bakersfield, transferred to a Greyhound, and got down to Union Station in L.A. It was swarming with people rushing everywhere. I stopped someone to ask for directions to where I was heading in downtown L.A.
“You need to take the blue line to the red line…”
Man, I didn’t know anything about blue lines and red lines! I’d never been on the L.A. subway system. But I managed to find my way down to this transitional housing place called Amity, on Grand and Thirty-Seventh Street. My first meal there, I immediately got really sick. Jail food and what we call “street food”—food out in the free world—aren’t the same. I’d been eating jail food for so many years, my system couldn’t handle the richness of street food.
The staff sent me to a clinic on Skid Row to get some medication. I had to take a bus there, and this older Hispanic dude who’d paroled out a few months earlier came with me; he was kind of like a chaperone, since I was feeling so sick and it was my first day on the street.
He was a pretty cool dude and he had a little cell phone, which he let me use once we were in the waiting room at the clinic. My first call was to Trome. I didn’t even let him know I was back on the streets.
“Who’s this?” He didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID.
“Hey, Trome, it’s Spike. What’s going on?”
“Hey, Spike, what’s happening up there?” He was talking real nonchalant, since he thinks I’m still on the prison yard.
“Listen, man, I’m staying at this place downtown but my stomach’s all fucked up and I’m trying to get me some medicine—”
“Wait, what? Downtown? You’re out?”
“Yeah, nigga, I’m out!”
“You bullshittin’, Spike!”
“Nigga, I’m out. I’m down here on Skid Row at a clinic that these people sent me to.”
Straightaway he says, “Give me the motherfucking address, I’ll put it in the GPS. Don’t leave that clinic, Spike.”
He dropped everything he was doing. I was sitting there in the middle of a waiting room and thirty minutes later, Trome pulled up in his white Mercedes-AMG, going the wrong way on a one-way street. Just left his car there in the street, rushed inside with a few other dudes. We had all gotten so much older, I didn’t even realize that it was two of my homies from the 30s, Michael Cansler and Terry Cansler.
They all ran in and hugged me at the same time—it almost felt like I was being tackled. We just stood there in the clinic, a bunch of grown-ass men with gray hair—huddled together, crying together. Then Cousin Rich and his son showed up and started hugging me and crying, too. I hadn’t seen Rich in more than twenty years, and it was my first time meeting his son.
You see, that’s Trome’s get-down; in less than thirty minutes he had let all these dudes know the news, and it was a mob scene in that clinic. There was so much emotion because none of them could believe I was really free.
The security guard was a middle-aged Black lady and I heard her saying under her breath, “Whoever this dude is, they love him.”
We were making so much commotion that we needed to take it out into the street. The clinic was on a rough block—we had to sidestep a bunch of homeless dudes lying there. I was just trying to get my bearings, trying to believe all this was actually happening.
“Hold on, hold on,” Trome said, and next thing you know he was making a video call to somebody. At first, I didn’t even realize that he was talking to Ice in New York.
“Shit, good to hear your voice, man! Welcome back to the family.”
“Man, listen, I’ve been trying to talk to you for the longest. But Trome and them were telling me they couldn’t even hand you the phone.”
“Yeah, I got them doing that,” he said. “Don’t even trip. There’s a lot of shit been going on and I’m just not talking to people on the phone like I used to. It has nothing to do with you. Spike, you’ve never crossed me. You’ll always be part of the family.”
“Listen, man,” I said, “I just wanted to let you know I’m in a Level II yard and I’m doing everything I need to do to get ready for that board.”
I told him about working on my college degree, running the Scared Straight program and a bunch of inmate self-help groups. It was a short call but I wanted to convey to Ice personally how intensely I was committed to change.
“That’s what we want to hear, Spike,” Ice said. “Keep pushing, man. Keep doing what you’re doing. Stay in touch with Al P., and we’ll be there to help you when you come before the board.”
Long before my initial parole suitability hearing, I did the legwork and found an attorney in Oakland named Keith Watley. He was considered one of the best in the state at handling parole boards.
I didn’t have the kind of money it was going to cost to retain him, and no one in my family was in a position to help. But Ice was true to his word; he stepped up to help financially. Keith Watley came down from Oakland five times to meet with me at Corcoran. Most guys have a court-appointed attorney who they meet once, briefly, a few days before the hearing.
The most valuable thing you get from a good private attorney is a full understanding of the obstacles you’re facing at the board hearing. The attorney can’t do the hard work for you. You’ve got to bring the board years of proof that you’re working on change: certificates showing that you’ve learned various trades, been going to college, doing self-helps. Your disciplinary record has to speak for itself. You better not any have any 115s—those are administrative write-ups for infractions in prison. Even during the hearing, your lawyer might only talk for fifteen minutes. The rest is on you.
But he can prepare you by helping you understand strategy. One thing I learned is that the parole board is looking for you to tell the story of your life—your personal narrative—in a compelling way.
“Go in there and tell them your story,” Keith Watley said. “Tell them why you committed the crime. And the number one thing is this: keep it one hundred percent real. Don’t lie about anything. Don’t downplay anything. Don’t minimize anything. Minimization is the main issue the board looks for.”
He told me that if they felt I was minimizing even one aspect of the crime, I’d be lucky to walk away with a five-year denial.
“Listen, you’ve got to put your head on the chopping block,” he said. “You’ve got to cut your own head off before they do.”
In other words, I needed to own up to all my mistakes and flaws and bad decisions before the commissioners could even ask me about them.
I needed to describe—in detail—the kind of person I was back then. I had to tear down everything I’d built up over the years: my justifications, rationalizations, all my defense mechanisms. I had to own those bad choices. I couldn’t point the finger at anyone but myself.
In the months I spent preparing for the hearing, I took a moral inventory and accepted that I’d allowed myself to become a twisted, self-centered individual who didn’t stop to think about the ripple effects of any of my actions.
But now I was nearly fifty years old; I was no longer the same selfish, reckless young player I had been in my twenties. I needed to differentiate between the person who committed those crimes and the person who was coming to the board hoping to be granted a second chance at freedom. The commissioners didn’t want to see the Spike who was apprehended in 1992 and convicted at trial of first-degree murder.
They needed to see my mother’s son.
* * *
Keith Watley warned me that this would be one of most intimidating experiences of my life. And that was the truth—my initial hearing lasted ten hours. They came and got me at 8 a.m. We assembled in a small conference room at Corcoran. Right in front of me, I was staring at a panel of three commissioners from Sacramento; on my left side, there was a district attorney from San Diego and Keith Watley; and on my right side, several members of the victim’s family.
These commissioners are former judges and cops—they can read your expressions and your body language. They can tell if you’re being sincere in your responses or bullshitting them and just telling them what they want to hear.
“Mr. Pierce, you were the ringleader. You could have gone in there and just taken the jewelry. Why didn’t you?”
“Mr. Commissioner, I didn’t usually commit robberies this way, using guns. I usually robbed stores using the element of surprise. I’d break the glass using just a hammer. But on that day in May 1992, I made that bad decision to involve a group of people who wanted to use guns, because that was their method of robbery.”
I told the commissioners, “That was the manner of person I was back then. Today, twenty-one years later, that’s not the same person you see sitting before you.”
For hours they dissected every aspect of the planning and execution of the crime. We went through all the numerous times when I could have stopped it.
One commissioner wanted to know why I’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous:
“Mr. Pierce, you weren’t involved in drugs and alcohol?”
“No, but I realized I was living the life of criminality at a level that was an addiction,” I said. “My life of criminality was my addiction. Not just the robbing, but the womanizing… doing things that wasn’t legal. Any time you rob, you steal, you disrespect someone in any capacity, all that falls, to me, under ‘criminality.’ I needed help in that area. These self-helps like N.A. made me understand why I needed God to change me. I couldn’t do it by myself.”
The panel wanted to know why I’d orchestrated the robberies in La Jolla—besides the allure of “fast money.” They asked me to nail down the “causative factors” that had driven me toward criminality.
“My low self-esteem,” I said. “My impulsive decision-making, greed, laziness, selfishness.”
They asked me about my inherent sense of right and wrong. I told them I always had a sense of right and wrong. But the manner of person I was back then, I was conditioned to being reckless and selfish, and I wasn’t listening to my conscience telling me that what I was doing was wrong.
I apologized to the victim’s family; I admitted that even though I didn’t shoot him, I was truly the person responsible for him losing his life:
“I regret every moment that I didn’t stop this crime from happening. And I know I destroyed his family. I took away his chance to live, his chance to be a father, a parent, a grandfather, watch his unborn kids grow. I know I took away his chance to continue to love his wife—a widow because of me. I know I set all these things in motion.… I took so much from that family, I took a part of everybody that loved him, a piece of everyone that loved him, and that haunts me every day because I’m ashamed of myself and I’m guilty of it. And not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. For the rest of my life, until I die, that’s going to be part of my life.”
However, I stressed that I wasn’t the same person I was when I committed the crime. “I’ve changed,” I said. “I’ve changed my value system, my beliefs. I’ve worked hard, through behavioral rehabilitation and therapy, twelve-steps, and my everyday life. I know I have the confidence to do things that are necessary for me to be a contributor to society in a positive way. That’s the way I would like to be remembered—as someone who made the change under these circumstances that I brought on myself.”
When we adjourned and the commissioners deliberated, the police took me back to a holding cell. My attorney told me he thought I’d handled that ten-hour hearing as well as anyone could have handled it, but he said the most likely outcome was a denial—maybe three years. Maybe five. Maybe seven.
They called us back into the room and told us their decision. They believed that I had changed and my record indicated I’d been a model inmate. They felt I was no longer a safety risk to society and found me suitable for parole.
Almost immediately, the San Diego DA wrote the governor’s office appealing the finding of suitability. The DA argued that I still posed a significant risk to public safety. The victim’s family were also strongly opposed to my being released.
It was eighteen months later before we had a second hearing. The first question the commissioners asked me was how I felt about being at this appeal hearing, how I felt about my release date being taken away. I knew they were judging my body language, trying to see if I would maintain my composure.
“I feel like I’m a changed man,” I said. “But if the board feels like I haven’t changed, then I don’t want to go home. I don’t want you to release me. Because I’ve done everything that I can possibly do to demonstrate the change. If you feel I haven’t changed sufficiently, I’d ask you, ‘What else do you want me to do?’ ”
The main question I had to address was the DA’s assertion that I failed to understand the “natural and probable consequences” of my actions. Murder was not my intent when planning the robberies in La Jolla. But that doesn’t matter in the eyes of the law.
“Because my accomplices were using guns in a crime that I planned,” I said, “I should have recognized that there was a reasonable probability that someone would get shot and killed during the commission of that crime. And, tragically, that was the case.”
They grilled me back and forth for hours and then, after a recess, the commissioners called us back in. “Based on our findings, we feel that Mr. Pierce would no longer pose an unreasonable risk to society, and we do find him suitable for parole.”
I shook Keith Watley’s hand, but I wasn’t about to celebrate. He’d already explained to me that there’s another 120-day waiting period. Even though I’d twice been found suitable and granted parole, if there was enough political pressure, the governor could overrule the board with one stroke of the pen. When it comes to murder cases in California, that’s the law.
* * *
It was the afternoon of January 7, 2016, more than three years since my first parole hearing. I wasn’t expecting to go free anytime soon. Actually, I was bracing myself for a denial. I figured I’d get the news in the mail saying that Governor Jerry Brown had overturned my suitability and I would need to come before the board in another five or seven years.
If that was the case, I had to accept it. I had to trust my mother’s words:
God will get you out in His time.
That afternoon the alarms went off and we went into lockdown. The cops were searching all the dorms for contraband—especially cell phones and drugs. They stripped us down to our boxers and took us out of our building. We were all inside of a kitchen, with the police up in the gun tower watching everybody—Blacks, whites, Hispanics—all out there together wearing only our shower shoes and underwear.
In the middle of the search, I heard over the loudspeaker:
“Pierce, report to the counselor’s office.”
I looked at one of the cops. “How can I go to the counselor’s office? I ain’t wearing no pants!”
A couple of the riot-squad police came and took me back to get a shirt and pair of pants, and they accompanied me to the programs office. My counselor was a young Hispanic woman, Ms. Lopez; she was fairly new at Corcoran, and I’d only dealt with her once or twice. When I walked in, she was staring at some paperwork on her desk.
“How are you doing, Mr. Pierce?” she said.
“I’m fine, ma’am.”
“How do you feel about going home?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly so I asked, “How do I feel about what?”
“Mr. Pierce, you’re going home tomorrow.”
“Are you serious?”
She explained that Governor Brown had signed the order officially granting me parole: January 8, 2016, was my release date.
For a long time, I couldn’t even speak. Tears were streaming down my cheeks.
“Mr. Pierce, I’m happy for you,” she said, smiling. “You’ve worked very hard to make this happen.”
The police led me back to the chow hall. Everyone was asking me what was going on, why I was wearing clothes, but I couldn’t tell them the truth—I’m going home tomorrow! First of all, it was hard for me to believe. I was still in shock. I kept feeling the rug might be snatched out from under me. Second of all, some of these guys have been denied two or three times, and I didn’t want them to feel fucked up that I was granted parole at my first suitability hearing. Because from everything I heard, that almost never happens to someone with a life sentence.
It might have been the strangest night I ever spent during all my years in prison. I couldn’t fall asleep for even a minute. I was too excited about the idea of going free. But also, I was still not believing it. I lay on top of my bed, eyes wide open, fully dressed.
In the morning, I looked outside and it was a cold, foggy day. Another announcement came over the loudspeakers.
“Pierce, report to the back gate.”
I gave all my belongings to one of my homies: TV, books, clothes, shoes. I didn’t want to carry anything with me except my daughter’s pictures, my photo albums of the Syndicate, my legal paperwork, and important letters—especially the one my grandmother wrote on her deathbed.
As I was leaving the dorm, there was bounce in my stride. Someone shouted to me:
“You goin’ home, Spike?”
“Hell yeah—I’m going home.”
Now the whole building started clapping.
I got outside and the fog was so thick I couldn’t see ten feet in front of my face. I was sipping from a can of orange soda and walking past the police with a smile.
“Pierce, you’re going home?”
“Yes, I am, sir.”
“Good for you, Pierce. Congratulations.”
There was a prison van waiting to take me to a train station. They had already bought me the tickets on Amtrak going to Bakersfield and then on Greyhound to L.A. They waited with me at the station and physically escorted me to my seat on the train. I’d never been on an Amtrak in my life. Everything was new and modern, and it felt like I was on a spaceship—everybody was staring at their iPads and smartphones and talking to themselves. It took me a while to understand they were on Bluetooth earpieces.
I was glued to my seat like a kid on a field trip, taking it all in. I got off at Bakersfield, transferred to a Greyhound, and got down to Union Station in L.A. It was swarming with people rushing everywhere. I stopped someone to ask for directions to where I was heading in downtown L.A.
“You need to take the blue line to the red line…”
Man, I didn’t know anything about blue lines and red lines! I’d never been on the L.A. subway system. But I managed to find my way down to this transitional housing place called Amity, on Grand and Thirty-Seventh Street. My first meal there, I immediately got really sick. Jail food and what we call “street food”—food out in the free world—aren’t the same. I’d been eating jail food for so many years, my system couldn’t handle the richness of street food.
The staff sent me to a clinic on Skid Row to get some medication. I had to take a bus there, and this older Hispanic dude who’d paroled out a few months earlier came with me; he was kind of like a chaperone, since I was feeling so sick and it was my first day on the street.
He was a pretty cool dude and he had a little cell phone, which he let me use once we were in the waiting room at the clinic. My first call was to Trome. I didn’t even let him know I was back on the streets.
“Who’s this?” He didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID.
“Hey, Trome, it’s Spike. What’s going on?”
“Hey, Spike, what’s happening up there?” He was talking real nonchalant, since he thinks I’m still on the prison yard.
“Listen, man, I’m staying at this place downtown but my stomach’s all fucked up and I’m trying to get me some medicine—”
“Wait, what? Downtown? You’re out?”
“Yeah, nigga, I’m out!”
“You bullshittin’, Spike!”
“Nigga, I’m out. I’m down here on Skid Row at a clinic that these people sent me to.”
Straightaway he says, “Give me the motherfucking address, I’ll put it in the GPS. Don’t leave that clinic, Spike.”
He dropped everything he was doing. I was sitting there in the middle of a waiting room and thirty minutes later, Trome pulled up in his white Mercedes-AMG, going the wrong way on a one-way street. Just left his car there in the street, rushed inside with a few other dudes. We had all gotten so much older, I didn’t even realize that it was two of my homies from the 30s, Michael Cansler and Terry Cansler.
They all ran in and hugged me at the same time—it almost felt like I was being tackled. We just stood there in the clinic, a bunch of grown-ass men with gray hair—huddled together, crying together. Then Cousin Rich and his son showed up and started hugging me and crying, too. I hadn’t seen Rich in more than twenty years, and it was my first time meeting his son.
You see, that’s Trome’s get-down; in less than thirty minutes he had let all these dudes know the news, and it was a mob scene in that clinic. There was so much emotion because none of them could believe I was really free.
The security guard was a middle-aged Black lady and I heard her saying under her breath, “Whoever this dude is, they love him.”
We were making so much commotion that we needed to take it out into the street. The clinic was on a rough block—we had to sidestep a bunch of homeless dudes lying there. I was just trying to get my bearings, trying to believe all this was actually happening.
“Hold on, hold on,” Trome said, and next thing you know he was making a video call to somebody. At first, I didn’t even realize that he was talking to Ice in New York.
