Nicholas Dawidoff - The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City

THE OTHER SIDE OF
PROSPECT

A STORY OF VIOLENCE,
INJUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN CITY

NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF

W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

Independent Publishers Since 1923

For Larry Harris, Greg Lyss, and Jamie Wright, old times

and for Dwayne Betts, new haven

these too are your children this too is your child

Lucille Clifton, the times

Every crime, as soon as it actually occurs, turns at once into a completely particular case, sir; and sometimes, just think, really completely unlike all the previous ones.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected.

James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

S ome men went into prison young as boys, came out later, and believed they had to speed up their lives. Wanting a legacy and feeling fated, they got the first woman they met pregnant. Then they landed in shelters or became addicted or made terrible decisions and were sent back to prison. Others didnt do those things, found it within themselves to persevere. Bobbys reentry mistakes were many, but they happened on a scale, and afterward he did not repeat them. He sensed a satisfying future, even if he could not yet define it. To others he gave what he could, and he remained close to those who valued his kindness. He avoided annihilation and existed, always, for those who knew him, as a decent, upstanding man, or as kids he grew up with would say, a citizen.

Bobbys life changed out in the shoreline suburbs and it didnt. Racism in the North is subliminal, he said one day. A lot of subliminals. I walk into a restaurant, everybody gets quiet. In the first months after he purchased the BMW, Bobby was pulled over seven times by police cruisers. Patrol would spot him, reverse course, and hed hear a siren. Once, cars with flashing cherry tops came at him from two directions, four officers, their hands on their guns, ordering him and Shays little church boy boyfriend, Corey, out of the cars front seats, patting them down. Bobbys provocation was that his car windows were tinted. Since the Jim Crow South, window tinting became a practice among Black drivers who wished to deflect attention from white police who might be offended by Black car ownership. Now it was like an illegal turn, a gateway means for some police to trawl for criminal behavior. The police asked Bobby how he could afford the coupe. He told them, google me. After they did, he received apologies and I cant believe that happened to you, Mr. Bobby!

Soon, Bobby bought another Honda. Now he blended better. Nobody can see me, he said. Im a ghost. The Honda also felt truer to the unobtrusive person he was. I feel good in that Honda, he said. The other goes too fast and gas costs too much. Bobby used the money that he had been paid in legal compensation to buy these cars but did not consider that money a source of fulfillment. This was redress, reparation, something owed. The money also brought with it constant reminders of where he came from. Some days, Bobby said, I set the phone down on the dresser, it rings all day. Family, friends, people from prison, people I just met. Everybody wants money, money, money. Im hearing the needs of a community. But its not my fault. I didnt put people in this position.

Bobby visited his old cellmate and mentor Troy Westberry at Big Cheshire, and even toured the prisons new True Unit for young offenders of promise, an experiment he applauded because it would help them to do better upon release. But for Bobby, returning to Big Cheshire came at a personal cost. Going back, he said after one visit, ugh. Bittersweet. You instantly cant forget the trauma it caused you. And thinking about the people there still struggling. Brought back a lot. He tried hard to stifle those feelings, to go for Westberry and for Jerome, but he had to admit, Sometimes I get near there and turn around. Brings up stuff. And the [corrections] people, when I get there, they say things to me. Oh, he was here. Gets to me. In Convicting the Innocent, a seminal study of wrongful conviction, Edwin M. Borchard found that an essentially irreparable injury was done to an innocent person by convicting him.

Westberry urged Bobby to move far away. Start fresh. And Bobby had the old desire to be elsewhere. So, in 2019, thirteen years after going to prison for a crime he didnt commit, the former traveler whod come to know New Haven by bicycle got into his fast car and drove back South where the flag of slavery times had recently been removed from the South Carolina state house. He looked at the land in South Carolina, which he found to have a depressing vibe. So big and lonely. Just horses standing out there. Takes forever to get through and parts of it are so dark. Bobby out there was a deep-sea fisherman in Dakota. Not a match; wouldnt do.

Instead, Bobby came back and bought a house in an old New England town. To visiting family, he was generous on his terms. Hed treat younger cousins to outings for bowling, skating, go-kart riding, take them to the movies and to dinner, host all comers for Thanksgiving and Christmas. From afar, he thought sympathetically about his mother, worried that her struggles might be rooted in experiences from growing up that shell never tell anybody about. He became closer to older relatives, like Aunt Faith, who never asked anybody for anything, worked and walked through the day with a personal consistency Bobby admired.

For some family elders, like his uncle June, Bobby was a cautionary tale. I told my son about this, Uncle June said. He was hanging out with some other young boys, smoking weed, going to parties, places he shouldnt be. I told him, You cant do this. You got to go to college or get a job. Keep yourself motivated. It only takes one thing. Look what happened to Bobby. Then Uncle June said, Im dying to see Bobby. I havent seen him in years.

Bobby was never going to be too. His own struggles had given him the clarity of mind to want opportunity for others. I would love to see people prosper. When Stefon Morant became the first person in Connecticut pardoned on grounds of actual innocence, members of the pardon board cried, but nobody was happier for Morant than Bobby.

People dear to Bobby were Shay and her now-fianc, Corey. They could tease him, lighten him, make Bobby laugh and laugh. After Shays grandmother died, Bobby invited Shay and Corey to come stay with him for a while. Shay found, Bobby is still the same Bobby, still wears Crocs and sweats every day. When Corey and Shay married, Bobby was the best man.

Bobby also gave a cousin from South Carolina a bedroom. There were no jobs for the cousin to find in the rural area outside Florence, and when the cousin spoke of how generous Bobby was to reprise the old tradition of those in the North hosting Southern migrants, Bobby didnt say anything, but he glowed.

They all liked to watch movies together, sometimes sharing a bowl of banana pudding Shay made using her grandmothers recipe. They took in When They See Us, Ava DuVernays miniseries based on the experiences of the Central Park Five. Everybody had seemed to be talking about it, and Bobby was curious. But as the boys were coerced on the screen, Bobby became as upset as anybody had ever seen him, even more than at the Henry Green film. You watched his face and you saw the pain resurfacing, said Corey. You saw what he went through. Yelling, Cut this off! Bobby burst into tears, as hed never done in prison, and bolted from the room. But later he forced himself to get through it. Bobby was a kid, Shay said afterward.