Gambling on a Would-Be Cop Killer

My last client of the day hadn’t killed anyone.

I was doing pre-hearing meetings with my clients who were trying to get paroled from their life sentences. The other clients that I met that day had killed . But this client had fired 9mm rounds at a police sergeant without hitting him.

Because he had not killed but only tried to kill, he stands a fair chance some day of getting his freedom. Parole comes easier without blood crying out from the ground.

But his chance of getting parole at this time are nil. In the last two years, he has been convicted of three serious prison-rules violations. Two were weapon possession, one was battery on another prisoner. No parole commissioner will gamble on this client in the free community.

He signed the waiver of hearing, putting off his next hearing for three years. That was a good move. If he had gone to hearing, the commissioners would have denied him parole. And they could have put off his next hearing for up to 15 years. Waiving for three years gives him time to prove he can stay out of trouble. In three years, even if he doesn’t get parole, he’s less likely to get buried under long years until his next hearing after that. As long as he stays out of trouble.  I told him that waiving three years might not be enough time.

It would have been easy to take the signed waiver, turn it in, and head home. I was tired of listening, tired of talking. And clients don’t call forth my best effort when they themselves seem to make no effort. Looking in this client’s eyes, hearing him talk, I had no sense that he had left his old ways behind. His prison record condemned him, too.

But you never know. You never know when the scales will fall from a prisoner’s eyes. You never know when he’ll tire of doing wrong and start doing right. You never know when his heart will tell him that his present ways will keep him in prison until his face is toothless, his body is in tatters, and the state releases him to a bleak old age and an unmourned death.

So I spent time with him after he signed the waiver. I told him what I could think of that would make him more likely some day to get parole. I gave him the basis to turn things around, if he wants to, and to show the parole commissioners that he is a new man, if he becomes one.

No commissioner would gamble with this client in the free community.  But I was not gambling with community safety, only with my time.