I Made Felons

A Poem

I thought it was justice, at the time A cog in the wheel, ungreased Navigating the system fluently with terminological reverie because I could argue, and win But what was I winning?

I was protecting the streets from dangers and horrors but the word felon was ubiquitous cocaine to carjacking bad checks to car wrecks piles of drugs, felons as thugs I never took the time to separate the participating participles of this broken system of justice

I was told to rid the streets but was never given enough background to properly interpret how the streets got this way or why the streets they wanted me to rid weren’t in my neighborhood and that my job was to prosecute even though it felt like persecute as philanthropy flew out the window with another case file, name irrelevant

I made felons, not from my hands but from a collage of written words, circumstantial and direct evidence, and sworn testimony from those involved but I never stopped to evaluate the power dynamic and inadequacy inherent in a system that says you are innocent until proven guilty, when someone has already sworn that you are, in fact, guilty (of a crime)

I weighed the files on a scale and they felt like dead weight a line of sworn complaints dedicated to making felons Some justified, some left to die and me, with the weight of justice climbing up my back and slipping a blindfold over my eyes as if I couldn’t tell that it was unequal

My past nonchalance about making a felon lines my insides with darkness as I think back on how easily I made those offers How probation was used as a lure that no fish could resist because it meant getting out of the water instead of being drowned in a cell with the rest of the chum But that lure was just a roundabout way of putting that person into that cell, after a short delay, because the streets were the same as they were when they left

Who was I to wield that power or to dangle the possibility of a better life when I knew every single element of the system was stacked against that same possibility? I was just doing my job, or at least that’s what I tell myself now, fifteen years later, with it all in the past, because if I wasn’t just doing my job, what was I really doing?

In retrospect, if you boil it down, I made felons

I sat down to write this poem after finishing Felon by Reginald Dwyane Betts. The redacted poems in that book brought me back to memories of the motions I filed and the arguments I made without a full understanding of what the entire criminal system justice looked like from above. I wish I knew then what I know now.

I was a state prosecutor for almost seven years and then spent two years in my own criminal defense practice. I left law more than fifteen years ago and never wanted to go back, except for a brief, unsuccessful attempt to work for The Innocence Project. I am slowly running through my memories of justice and letting them pour out onto the page in this publication. If for no one else, for me.

*The link to the book, Felon, is an affiliate link to Bookshop, an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores.

© Jonathan Greene 2020

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