| Court Stories As Jail
Sentence After Year of Home Confinement Leads
to Dash Out the Door
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell
Book
BBC-Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
NY
Mag
LITERARY SDNY,
June 5 – Lamin Jallow was on
home detention at his
grandmother's house in the
projects in The Bronx when he
met her.
She
delivered food one night,
DoorDash or Uber Eats, he
couldn't remember which one.
It was the end of her shift
and she took him up on his
offer to sit down and watch a
DVD, and get high. That's what
he was awaiting trial on, that
and the gun found his
backpack.
But
now he had a reason to go
straight, or at least tell his
old Irish lawyer that he
would. "Tell Judge Morales I
mean it, I was different then,
just barely here from
Gambia."
The lawyer
started ask if it isn't called
"The" Gambia, but Lamin Jallow
pushed forward. "Tell him I'm
gonna get my G.E.D., that I
need a new chance with my
girl."
If he went
to jail, and not just locked
up here in this apartment in
the projects, what would
happen with them? Would she be
dashing to another door?
Finally the day of sentencing
came, after he pleaded guilty
with the idea he'd get time
served. He'd been locked up
and home for a year and a
half. Wasn't that
enough?
The
courtroom was big and the air
conditioning was blasting. His
girlfriend was in the gallery,
and some guy in the back with
a note pad. His lawyer made
the pitch, and took the blame
for the delay in the case.
Judge Morales nodded but did
not seem convinced. "You know
that doesn't count as time in
detention," he said.
"I'm only telling you about it
for the context," the lawyer
said. "Under the 3553(a)
factors."
Jude Morales
nodded. "Mister Jallow, please
rise. It is the judgment of
this court that you be
remanded to the custody of the
US Bureau of Prisons for a
term of three hundred and
sixty six days, to be followed
by three years of supervised
release."
His
girlfriend was whispering,
what does it mean? Jallow kept
waiting for Judge Morales to
say that all or most of the
sentence could be served in a
halfway house like the one on
Fulton Avenue. But he never
said it. He set a day for self
surrender, in sixty
days.
And by
then, she had left him,
dashing out the door. In anger
he committed another crime,
and a year and a day became a
terms of years,
unending....
***
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