Angels with Dirty Faces. Walidah Imarisha
right after Bobby pleaded guilty.
“This isn’t good,” his lawyer told him. “In fact, it’s very bad.”
“Yeah, I figured that,” Kakamia spit back sarcastically. “Look, can’t you just tell them I didn’t do it?”
“The problem is you already told them you did. I tried to tell them that it should be disregarded, but it’s on record. Now we have Bobby saying you pulled the trigger. And quite honestly, a jury is going to be inclined to believe a nice young white boy from a stable family, than a newly arrived Puerto Rican from a broken home with a disciplinary record.”
Wasn’t that the story of his life?
“Well, what can I do?” Kakamia said, an edge of pleading in his voice. “I don’t wanna die in prison, I’m only nineteen years old.”
“You could always cop a plea, make a deal. But you gotta have something to trade for a deal. If you could give them the other guy involved, I am sure I could get you fifteen to life. I’ve already talked to the prosecutor about it, and he assures me the deal will hold. That means you’d definitely be out in fifteen, maybe sooner if you’re on good behavior. You’d have seven years probation after that and have to pay some restitution, but you’d be out in fifteen at the most.”
Little did Kakamia know that his lawyer’s word wouldn’t mean much of anything soon. His lawyer himself would be arrested a few years later, for torturing and killing his wife. There would be no deals for him. Life in prison, sitting alongside people he had both prosecuted and defended.
Kakamia balked at the idea of snitching; he hated squealers. It was ingrained in him almost from birth, passed down genetically from his parents. It went against the gangster code—he knew that from every movie he saw. He knew it from the gang. He knew snitches get stitches.
But on the other hand, this was all Eric’s fault; he got Kakamia involved. He should have stepped forward to take some of the heat off of Kakamia. It wasn’t fair he carry this on his own.
Fifteen years did sound like a long time. But life was even longer. And like the lawyer said, he could be out in less time. All he had to do was act right; he could do that. Maybe he’d even be out in five.
“You promise I’ll be out in fifteen?” he asked Hamlin.
The lawyer nodded his head decisively. “It’s a done deal.”
Kakamia sighed. “Then I’m ready to play.”
* * *
The judge had given Kakamia murder in the second degree, which carried a sentence of fifteen to life, and was now setting the sentence for his second count, attempted murder in the second degree. The judge set it at the highest possible time, nine years.
“I don’t necessarily know at this point, since the jury never got to the point of resolving who is the person that pulled the trigger on that gun,” the judge admitted. “But it doesn’t matter in terms of the sentence, because at least these three individuals who have been convicted, now, joined together in agreement to carry out the sophisticated plan of attack on a very vulnerable victim and those very aggravating circumstances far outweigh the only mitigating circumstances of a youthful Defendant without…”
Kakamia’s mother shot out of her seat, and said in a tearful but still strong voice, “Excuse me, Judge, I don’t mean to interrupt the court but you have to take into account the circumstances around this…”
“I’m sorry, Judge, could we have a moment,” the lawyer interjected.
“You just can’t call this justice in any form, though, you just can’t,” his mother wailed.
Kakamia’s lawyer pulled her closer to the defendant’s table. “You are not helping your son with these outbursts,” he said sternly.
Kakamia held out his hands to her. “C’mon, mom, it’s going to be okay, just calm down.”
“Okay? What about fifteen to life and nine years is going to be okay?” Her tone escalated. “I just don’t know how we got here. I just don’t know how this happened.”
“I know, mom, I know,” was the only thing he could get past the lump growing in his throat.
His mother slumped back to her seat. The judge looked down at the defense table sternly, waited a moment and then continued with sentencing.
When he was done, Kakamia got what he expected: fifteen to life for murder in the second degree and nine years for attempted murder in the second degree. Luckily, the sentences would run concurrently. He would get seven years probation once he was paroled, and he would have to pay restitution to the victim, $7,469, and a $10,000 restitution fine to the state of California.
Damn, Kakamia thought. Ain’t that fucked up? The state gets more money than the people who actually lost something. You’d think he’d injured the state or something.
The judge raised his gavel. “If there’s nothing further, then I remand the prisoner to the custody of the Department of Corrections.” The gavel sounded louder in his ears than the three shots Bobby fired that December night three years before.
And may God have mercy on my soul, Kakamia intoned mentally as the prison guards walked toward him. He felt that tight feeling in his throat again. He couldn’t breathe. He thought of his cell, of twisted sheets. Maybe this time it would be quick. The drop, the snap, and then silence.
What I Know About My Brother
Kakamia created a piece of art, a bio/prose/poem hybrid, “Frayed Subconscious.” A handkerchief, stained in paint, kisses and rips of ink. He told me it was part of the evidence against him, and it was. Perhaps it was not evidence from his legal trial, but it was evidence by the state, brought against him at the time of his birth, and at the time of his indictment. The poetic vulnerable masculinity of the piece was part of the mounting case that would eventually sentence him to life in poverty: a life in racism, a life spent more behind prison walls than outside of them.
“This handkerchief was the last piece of freedom,” the art piece reads. “It held the forensics to convict and heard the whispers of innocence to acquit a sixteen-year-old accused hit man. It traveled through county jails, courthouses, and state prisons. It consoled the fears of California’s most infamous criminals and masterminds, and has soaked up the blood of prison riot victims.”
Poetry can exquisitely change lives. It can sustain life in the worst of circumstances. And all poetry is a lie. Facts are not poetic enough to reveal the rhythm of a human heart. We thank poetry for its inaccuracies—imperfect cracks on the face of beauty through which the light is able to shine through—word to poet Leonard Cohen.
So when Kakamia told me he met Mac—whom he called his godfather— in New York, through his uncle who had connections to the Westies and numbers rackets, I understood the need to create ties and community. When Kakamia said he would leave his Crown Heights, Brooklyn neighborhood to run errands for his uncle, I understood the desire in him to be tied to something more powerful, more terrifying, than his own thin brown body.
I asked Mac about my brother the first time I met him.
“Great kid,” he replied, beaming. “He’s got a good heart, Kakamia does.”
Kakamia was a man of a thousand names as well. Names are a precious and powerful part of your identity. Knowing a name means you have a piece of that person. He had his birth name, signifying the child who continued getting up, mouth tasting like dirt and metal, when life knocked him to the ground. A prison ID number, an absence of self so a system can get on with its business of making commodities out of human beings without guilt. He was known as “New York” to people a continent away, where a Puerto Rican was a novelty item. “New York” shared in the cool of power, tinged with danger, that the city embodied. He was Kakamia Jahad Imarisha to those who wanted to see the man he so desperately tried to be, the man that, most of the time, he succeeded in being.
“Have