Ian Manuel - My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption

When I first met Ian Manuel in a Florida prison, he was not allowed to be in the same room with me. As an attorney meeting a client, I could have a contact visit with almost any other prisoner at the facility but that would not be possible with Ian because he was barred from direct contact with other people. He would have to be on the other side of a thick glass wall in a separate room; we would have to talk through a tiny hole. In preparing for the visit, Ian and I had both hoped that prison officials would relent and allow a proper visit but that request was repeatedly denied.

They brought Ian into his glassed room restrained in a chained outfit Id never seen before. He was bound in a jumpsuit made of heavy-duty nylon that opened from the back but was padlocked at the neck and waist. It was a full-body straitjacket that so confined his ability to move that he couldnt walk, he had to waddle from side to side. Id had hundreds of contact visits with death row prisoners before my meeting with Ian but this was new to me. It took me a while to get over the spectacle of such violent restraints on such a young person inside a secure facility.

Ian and I had exchanged several letters and spoken on the phone many times before we met. Our calls were sometimes emotional because Ian was trying to understand what was happening around him or what he was experiencing, I often heard pain and anguish in his voice. I would frequently tell Ian I was proud of him and he told me later that this sometimes confused him.

At our first visit, Ian told me he was nervous about meeting in person. I asked him why and he said he didnt want to disappoint me. I tried to reassure him but he said he was still nervous. Then he told me hed written a poem he wanted to recite, so I, of course, said I would listen. It was at that peculiar moment in our first meeting, in that unforgiving, cold prison, that Ian, constricted and absurdly bound with chains and restraints, spoke his poetic words. His poem spoke about grief and sadness, strength and resolve, and most important, hope and love. His words tried to make sense of things that were overwhelming and complex. His poem was about his existence and what he seemed to provoke in the people around him; it was a lament for freedom and forgiveness. I was very moved by his words. I told Ian that his poem was beautiful and he smiled. Its the smile that I remember most about our first meeting.

It is cruel to say to a child of thirteen that you are so beyond hope or redemption, your life is so irredeemable and without value, that you must die in prison. What weve done to children in this countrycondemning them and throwing them awayis shameful. Ian Manuel is one of thousands of kids who have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for crimes they were accused of when they were children.

Ians conviction was followed by torturous imprisonment. He was too small to be housed in general population at the adult prison where he was sent, so they placed him in solitary confinement for nearly two decades. His abusive isolation was justified by misguided protocols and a devastating lack of understanding about adolescent development, mental health, or behavioral science. What happened to Ian is beyond cruel but sadly not unique. We have traumatized tens of thousands of unaided children who have been incarcerated in adult prisons for decades; we still do it today.

Id read Ians file and it was clear he was being abused and abusing himself and others in response. But, at our first visit, he still managed to recite his poetry. Despite the humiliating and degrading cloak of bondage he was forced to wear, you could still see resolve and compassion in his eyes.

I left the prison with great hope for Ian.

Children are magical. Nothing in the human experience affirms the gift of life, the beauty of our existence more than our children. Infants have an extraordinary ability to make the most hardened of us feel inexplicably joyful when they smile. Small children have a curiosity and capacity for affection and love that can uplift, move, and transform us. So much of what we do in life is organized around protecting, caring for, and loving our children.

But we dont all mean the same thing when we say our children. For some, thats a much more specific and narrow universe. For me, all children are our children, but after representing hundreds of kids in jails and prisons, Ive come to realize thats not everyones view.

Americans have long embraced the priority that children represent which makes the story of Ian Manuel so critically important and simultaneously hard to understand. Weve done something terrible in this country to a generation of our children, something weve yet to fully acknowledge or address. Our poorest and most vulnerable childrenthose born into extreme poverty, violent neighborhoods, or violent families, those in greatest need of assistance have largely been abandoned in many communities.