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No Way Out
Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing
By Waverly Duck The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2015 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-29823-8
CHAPTER 1
Jonathan's World
In 2005 I served as an expert witness in the legal defense of a drug dealer from Bristol Hill whom I call Jonathan Wilson. That project, which began with a limited purpose, turned into a long-term, in-depth ethnographic study as I became immersed in Jonathan's life, his family, and his community. I met Jonathan while he was in prison awaiting a death-penalty hearing after his conviction for being an accessory to the murder of a federal witness and murder of a rival drug dealer. The prosecution's main witness was the triggerman in the federal witness's murder. The murder charge was related to a cold case that had gone unsolved for several years. The defense team sought to show that the environment in which Jonathan had grown up mitigated the seriousness of his alleged crimes.
I started with a series of interviews intended to illuminate the circumstances that had shaped his life. Preliminary exploration led me to Jonathan's church; his elementary, middle, and high schools; the juvenile facility where he had previously been incarcerated; his family and friends; other drug dealers; and residents who either knew him or knew of him. As the research progressed, I talked with many people and became interested and involved in that community. Jonathan's account, supplemented by extensive ethnographic observation, raises serious questions about whether he and others like him are a danger to society — or whether society and its interests might be a danger to them.
My introduction to Lyford Street was organized by Jonathan's lawyer, whom I call Douglas. Douglas and a social worker took me to the neighborhood and pointed out various places of interest, including Jonathan's house. As we drove into the neighborhood from a nearby highway, the drug dealers were the first thing I saw; I found it astonishing that they were so noticeable. Equally amazing was that the drug trade I had heard about from the lawyers was still thriving: the same script with a different cast. The local drug culture was visible and distinctive. It had obviously played a role in Jonathan's life; it would shape the life chances of anyone who lived here. Moreover, the drug dealing that I witnessed was so obviously orderly that it, in effect, provided a template for the social interactions that prevailed in the whole neighborhood. The drug trade operated within a tight-knit community where familial and friendship ties were intact and residents shared a long history. I soon learned that people felt a fierce loyalty to the neighborhood, even if they could afford to move.
What I saw in this community immediately challenged both popular and expert notions of drug dealing as an agent of disorder, and I felt compelled to figure out what was going on. For the next seven years, I volunteered at two day camps, an after-school program, and a publicly funded community outreach program, and I worked as a community organizer at a neighborhood center. At the summer camp, I met the children who led me to Benita, the single mother whose story I tell at the end of this book. Participating in candlelight vigils for slain residents, I met locals who explained the killings in meticulous detail and recounted the interpersonal conflicts that had precipitated such violent acts. In fact, as residents discovered that I was doing this study, they would approach me, wanting to talk. A community-based police officer I met through my volunteer work was an invaluable resource in the early days of the research; through her I learned a great deal about the police perspective on the neighborhood. Over the course of my research, I talked with hundreds of Lyford Street residents both past and present, many of whom invited me into their homes. Some of them keep in contact with me to this day.
I had come to Bristol Hill through my work with Elijah Anderson at the University of Pennsylvania. A team of federal defense attorneys wanted to use Anderson's (2000) work on the "code of the street" to argue for mitigating circumstances in serious criminal cases, and he had asked me to give a talk to the group based on ethnographic data. After visiting the neighborhood, my next task was to meet with Jonathan in prison. Initially, it was supposed to be a onetime interview so Todd, Douglas's co-counsel, and I could tell his story at the conference. It sounded simple enough, but the process was complex. First, I had to wait a month for my background check to return. Then, when I tried to visit, the prison was on lockdown. On the next attempt, my paperwork was missing, which required an additional background check. Finally, once I had again been cleared, I had to wait another month to see Jonathan because I had to coordinate the visit to accommodate his co-counsel.
During this process, I learned the basics of Jonathan's case and discovered that he was severely depressed, knowing there was a real chance he would be put to death. Douglas informed me that Jonathan seemed to have shut down; he had stopped talking and gave primarily yes and no answers to questions asked by his counsel and by expert witnesses. Both attorneys were worried that he was sabotaging his case. Although I had reservations about participating in what seemed like a futile defense, I went ahead with our first meeting.
Visiting Jonathan
Getting in to see Jonathan meant going through three checkpoints: the lobby metal detector; a secure waiting room with portraits of the president, the warden, and the attorney general; and a hand scanner and another long inspection. The first meeting was largely a preliminary strategy session to determine whether Jonathan's life story would fit into the framework Anderson had projected. Given that the prosecution was seeking the death penalty, the question was whether Anderson's (2000) analysis of the code of the street could be used to explain Jonathan's choices as the product of his social situation.
I was initially struck by Jonathan's youth. Even though he was twenty-four at the time, six feet two and wearing a military green jumpsuit, he looked like a teenager. He made it clear that he was not interested in having visitors. When introduced, he said hello, but when I attempted to shake his hand, he acted as if he didn't see the gesture and sat down. Douglas's co-counsel, Todd, told Jonathan that I was there to get a few facts about his life so that I could present his story to a group of federal defense attorneys, who might serve as a kind of testing ground for the defense strategy.
After that introduction there were a few comedic moments. To break the ice, Todd began to draw on pieces of information from his initial meeting with me. He awkwardly pointed out the rather stereotypical similarities between Jonathan and me: "You guys have a lot in common. Waverly grew up in a poor neighborhood; you grew up in a poor neighborhood. He's a young black man; you're a young black man. He has tattoos; you have tattoos. He's a college professor; you want to be a lawyer." I couldn't help but laugh, which made Jonathan laugh, too. Picking up on this, I began to use humor to pave the way toward conversation. First, I told him that it had taken three months of trying before I was finally able to talk to him. I made light of the bureaucracy in prisons, from the lost paperwork and multiple checkpoints to the series of lockdowns.
When Jonathan started to relax, I asked him whether he was OK and told him I had heard that he was depressed. He responded by telling me that he was going through a lot and hadn't seen his mother in more than four months. I had met his mother in the parking lot a few weeks previously, after a failed attempt to see Jonathan. She had been admitted, but he had refused to see her. Jonathan even told his mother to stop visiting him altogether after she became upset when he told her that she was partially to blame for his troubles because she had moved out and left him behind when he was young. Jonathan also informed me that he had turned himself in to the police after they threatened to charge his mother with drug possession when they found a bag of cocaine that he had hidden in the house years before. In other words, he had sacrificed himself for her, but she was still unwilling to accept any responsibility for his situation.
Even more stressful was his wife's accusation that he was cheating on her with a former girlfriend, with whom he had a child. "Given that they're seeking the death penalty and your parents aren't cooperating, and you're in a maximum-security prison," I said sarcastically, "it doesn't make any sense that you would be cheating. Why does your wife think that? Where is this place where you're supposed to have this alone time with this other woman? So what's your secret? Because unless you're a magician, how is it possible for you to cheat with another woman in a maximum-security federal prison?" At that point his face relaxed and he said, "Thank you," as I was acknowledging if not completely understanding his chaotic life and current predicament.
Jonathan gave me basic information and later provided additional details about his neighborhood and how he became involved in drug dealing, at least enough for my presentation to the lawyers. He also began to trust me. In some ways, we did have a lot in common. We both got tattoos at fifteen to piss off our parents. We even had similar designs, including crosses to memorialize lost relatives and friends. Todd's awkward but well-intentioned attempt to get us talking worked, and eventually we became friends. When the first meeting was over, Jonathan not only shook my hand but also gave me a hug. In my mind, this was to be my one and only visit. Strangely enough, Douglas had other plans for me.
Presenting Jonathan's Life
Believing that my presentation to the attorneys was going to be my only involvement in Jonathan's case, I was extremely relaxed. I started with a PowerPoint presentation on The Code of the Street and then told Jonathan's story of getting involved in the drug trade, showing how his life was representative of the dichotomy between street and decent behavior portrayed in Anderson's book. I described Jonathan's family. Although his parents had separated and he was currently estranged from his mother, he grew up in a two-parent home, and both of his parents had been employed and owned their own home throughout his childhood. His family background almost seemed middle class, yet the drug trade embedded in his neighborhood snared him. I pointed out that sociologists have used frameworks such as human ecology and interactions with the lived environment to contextualize Jonathan's situation: his choices were only as good as his options.
After the presentation was over, the lead attorney, Douglas, invited me to dinner and asked a personal favor: Would I work on this case with him? Would I collect ethnographic information and ultimately testify on behalf of Jonathan? My first response was to say no, because I had no particular interest in crime or deviance and I barely knew Jonathan. Douglas did not take no for an answer, however. He explained that while he would value my research and input, he wanted me to testify because I was charming, likable, young, black, and well educated. He felt the jury needed to see me; they would respond positively, as had the audience at the conference. I was what Jonathan could have been had his circumstances been different.
When pressed, Douglas said: "Todd told me that Jonathan opened up to you during your meeting. He's been unresponsive with most of his visitors. But it's not only him; I think his family would talk to you as well. You have a way about you that makes people feel at ease. I barely know you, and I feel comfortable around you. You seem like a nice, likable, happy guy. You're good on paper and in person. The jury needs to know that not all young black men are drug dealers. If you tell his story the way you told it today, they may feel compelled to spare his life."
I agreed to testify on a voluntary basis. In fact, I spent a year and a half preparing for trial. Before I could testify, however, I had to be qualified as an expert witness. Having earned a Ph.D. in a relevant field was not good enough. When the case finally came to trial, the prosecutor argued that I didn't "deserve to be a witness" because I had "no courtroom experience" and "being a sociologist" did not "qualify" me as an expert. I pointed out that those statements were untrue; I had previously testified in family court as a social worker. Embarrassed, the prosecutor said, "Well, you never know these days, because he looks so young." The atmosphere in the courtroom was unpleasant, but I was determined to testify on Jonathan's behalf.
Divergent Paths
Jonathan's story resonated with me deeply because I had grown up on Detroit's East Side. My family had migrated to Detroit for better job opportunities in the auto industry. I was the first of my seven siblings born in Detroit. My family included a network of friends and relatives from rural Mississippi. As a child I had a tendency to get lost, often a few blocks away from home. On numerous occasions, our neighbors were able to study my face, figure out who my parents and siblings were, and take me home.
In the summer of 1983, the son of a neighbor and family friend, Percy, became the first crack dealer in my neighborhood. Percy's rise as a neighborhood folk hero was helped by the economic downturn the previous year, which led to layoffs for my father and many other men employed in manufacturing. Percy was among the new crop of black men in their late twenties and early thirties who were finding out just how lucrative the drug trade was. He had the money, the clothes, and a Mercedes — quite different from the older generation who preferred Cadillacs and Lincolns. Percy hosted a Fourth of July block party, financing most of the food and fireworks for the kids and creating a much-needed celebration in our economically depressed neighborhood. Although I was not aware of it at the time, the party signaled the transformation of my neighborhood. By October, a new phenomenon had made its appearance: crack addiction. Not one family was immune to the epidemic. I witnessed this problem firsthand with several relatives. Close friends and family members became almost unrecognizable. Formerly respectable men and women, now out of work, succumbed to the enticement of drugs, abandoned their children, stole to supply their habit, and were caught up in waves of violence because of competition among dealers and raids from the police. My family moved to the outskirts of the city when I was eight. But in less than five years, these problems had found their way into our new community as well.
My early teen years were shaped by the decline, death, and destruction of urban neighborhoods. In third grade when we relocated, I found myself in a diverse working-class space; Polish, Italian, Yemini, Saudi Arabian, and Hmong families surrounded us. We were the first of four black families on our block. By the time I got to middle school, however, the nonblack population had plummeted. Soon working-class and lower-middle-class blacks joined the exodus. When we relocated, the local high school had the second-largest student body in the city, with more than two thousand freshmen. Just 236 students graduated. But I left home during the eleventh grade because of the violence and economic deprivation that surrounded me.
At the age of seventeen, I moved to a small efficiency apartment in the Indian Village section of Detroit and worked two jobs, one as a box-office attendant at a local movie theater and the other as a janitor at an office building on the weekends. My stepfather, although separated from my mother, cosigned for the apartment, which helped to persuade a landlord who, despite his sympathy with my desire to escape a dead-end situation, was initially hesitant to rent to me. Those two years were the best of my teen life. Not only did I graduate from high school, but I saved enough money to pay for my first year of college ($5,000). But when I received a full scholarship to Connecticut College, I gave the money to my mother for the down payment on a new house, where she still lives to this day.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from No Way Out by Waverly Duck. Copyright © 2015 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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