By Anne C. Woodlen

When Stephen was a teenager, he and another youth stole a car in California. After a time in prison, he was removed to a halfway house. He walked away from the halfway house before his sentence was finished because his father was sick. Stephen went to Syracuse, New York, to be with his father.

His father ran an after-hours club, that is, after the bars closed people could come to his apartment, buy booze and continue to drink. One night there was too much liquor in a too-small apartment and a fight started. A drunken woman was cut in the hand and identified Stephen as the cutter. He was arrested and jailed on felony charges of assault and possession of a deadly weapon.

Within hours, two things happened that resulted in his release. First, the victim of the cutting sobered up and changed her story. Another man who was dressed like Stephen had knifed her. Second, Stephen’s name was put into the system and the outstanding claim from California surfaced. California decided that it was not worth their time and money to bring Stephen back from New York to finish serving his sentence on the previous conviction.

The next day, an inexperienced newspaper reporter, only working on his third story, wrote about Stephen’s arrest and release. He interviewed authorities in the judicial systems of New York and California. He did not interview Stephen. He reported half the story, then someone else put a headline on it. The import of the headline was that a convicted felon had found a way to escape justice. Stephen was now working with a public bias against himself.

All of this happened in 1991. In the years that followed, Stephen got married, had kids, got separated and was imprisoned. This time, according to a friend, he was sent to prison because the wife from whom he was separated lied, and brought charges against him of possessing $20 worth of cocaine. It was her cocaine, but Stephen did not say so because she was carrying his child. Stephen served about four years in prison. By the time he was released, he had met a new woman.

Wishing to do her honor, but having no money, he bought her what is arguably the smallest diamond engagement ring in the world. She and Stephen rented a three-bedroom apartment (she was raising three other children) next door to his mother. Because of his prison record, it took him months of aggressive searching to find a job in waste management, that is, he worked as a trash collector.

Stephen supported his own children financially and emotionally, and his fiancée’s children physically and emotionally. He changed diapers. He and his fiancée visited his children at a home near where the children lived with their mother. One day Stephen’s fiancée was doing his sister’s hair, so she didn’t go with him to visit the children.

During the course of the visit, Stephen went to his ex-wife’s home to get something for the children. He walked in and found her and her boyfriend in the living room smoking crack. Stephen’s 11-year-old son told him that usually his mother and her boyfriend went into the bedroom and locked the door when they smoked crack.

The next day, authorities came to Stephen’s apartment. He was arrested and jailed on a complaint from his ex-wife. She claimed that by coming to her home he had violated an order of protection. He claimed no knowledge of such an order. A record check showed that, in fact, he had been served with such an order years earlier when he was in prison and it was neither meaningful nor memorable.

Stephen’s defense against this charge was that his wife had come hunting for him. Stephen’s landlord went to court and testified that on two occasions the ex-wife had come to him, trying to find Stephen. You cannot hold someone to an order that you already have violated, nevertheless, the ex-wife tried to until she realized that Stephen could file a complaint against her for cocaine use.

Stephen, having no money for a lawyer, lingered in jail while the wheels of justice ground slowly. He missed Thanksgiving, then Christmas, New Year’s, the Super Bowl, and his children. He was moved from jail to a prison so far away that his fiancée could not visit him.

His name went into the system and the outstanding claim from California surfaced again. The law said California had ten days to ask for Stephen if they wanted him back; the judge said California could have thirty days. It was a matter of hope and despair as Stephen and his fiancée waited out the days. Would he be home in a week? A month? Would he be sent back to California? For four years? Seven years? Would he be home in a week?

On the twenty-eighth day, California said they wanted him. A boy who had walked away from a halfway house twelve years ago to be with his sick father was now a man with a job, children and creditors. He was to be returned to California, which already had renounced their claim on him once.

California filed charges against Stephen as a fugitive from justice. The New York judge threw out the charges, stating that Stephen had his name on a rental lease, and accounts with the electric and telephone companies. Stephen had not attempted to hide; California simply had not looked for him.

In July, California fronted the money to fly two men to New York to bring one man back to serve four months in prison. With time off for good behavior and being in the work program, Stephen will be released in September. He will be given a bus ticket back to New York.

Upon arrival, he will have 24 hours to report to his parole officer. He will have to enter a drug rehabilitation program. Stephen has never used drugs; all ex-convicts take up the resources of the system by being forced into rehab programs. A parole officer will search Stephen’s apartment before he can live there. He can neither live nor visit in a home where a dog resides; if the authorities came to arrest him, he could sic the dog on them.

Stephen will have to apply for Public Assistance. Welfare will pay him $139 a month for food, and $275 for rent. The man who helped Stephen find a job the last time is eager to begin helping him again. It took Stephen five months to find a job then. He has no current news of the well being of his children. The power company has turned off his fiancée’s electricity; in his continued absence, she has fallen behind in paying the bill. Stephen called her on Sunday evening. She listened by candlelight as he told her of having been to worship service that morning.

So here’s the question: If Stephen had been white instead of black, how would his journey through the justice system have been different?