I was recently reviewing entries from Prisoner’s Lament, one of the earliest versions of my prison memoir, when I came across excerpts from the remarks of the federal Judge who sentenced me to eighty-five months in prison.
I’ve referred to his comments many times in my writing, particularly his description of the prison I had created for myself long before my incarceration. But rereading his words now, years later, I was struck by how much of what he said continues to resonate.
The following are excerpts from his sentencing remarks.
A Prison Without Bars
A sentence here is preceded by another sentence, the one that you have given yourself in your mind and perhaps even in your soul. There are no bars visible in that prison, but it is a prison nonetheless.
In this prison, one of the mind, for some reason, I don’t know, you did not believe you could have made better life choices or decisions without making the choices you made…
And then once the mind does not believe a better life is possible, your soul too often follows.
Your soul is that part of you that even when your mind cannot conceive of a better life, your soul says that you may not be able to think of a better life, but your life surely will be worse if you violate the law.
Your soul is that part of you that even when your mind can conceive of a fraud, your soul will not let you go through with it because the pain caused to the people who will be hurt may be more than any of them can bear, or to disappoint, abandon even, those who you love the most, your wife of 46 years, your children, or the many other family members who have looked to you as the family patriarch, particularly after the passing of your own father.
An prisoned soul locked away, and therefore not fully connected to humanity, is the best way to describe someone who can lie directly to people who they have known for years…
Yes, I understand that throughout the course of your life you have done good and even wonderful things for many people, and cared for your family.
[...]
Of course all of these good things said about you can still be true and you can still commit reprehensible acts against others.
Your various good deeds are not for naught because you have family and friends who still love you, one of life’s greatest deeds.
And, indeed, significantly, given her comments here, if you needed someone to help pull you out of a mental and spiritual prison that led you to where you are today, you need not look too much beyond your own daughter, Meredith, whose comments on your behalf today were forthright, resolute and compassionate.
And so sometimes when you spend a life trying to fix things for others, it is worth stopping and letting others fix things for you.
Your daughter, and I suspect all of your children, as well as your wife and friends, would have helped fill that mental and spiritual void you were feeling that placed you in the mental and spiritual prison you were in, and may still be in, that resulted in these crimes.
But all of these deeds are significantly and sufficiently diminished in their overall value because your generosity and caring on the one hand has been coupled with greed and deceit on the other.
So the more you remain in that mental and spiritual prison—and you have been in it for far too long—the more you become disconnected to what makes life meaningful and worthwhile, not just family, but all of those who you have had the chance to come across in your life.
[...]
So today the real question is really not—though it’s significant—what sentence I will give you, but what sentence will you give yourself.
Justice Notes is an ongoing series examining incarceration, rehabilitation, storytelling, institutional power, and the lives that exist behind prison walls.
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John, first, I want to thank you for sharing this piece. I found it deeply moving, particularly the judge’s reflections on the prison we can create within ourselves long before any physical incarceration. There is a great deal of psychological truth in those words, and they certainly gave me much to think about.
But as I read them, I also found myself reflecting on something I believe is essential. You are not your crime, nor are you the sentence that was imposed upon you. You are, first and foremost, a human being, and that is something no judge, courtroom, or prison sentence can ever take away from you.
What you did is part of your history, but it does not define the totality of who you are. Nor do I believe that the good you have done throughout your life is somehow negated by the harm you may have caused. Human beings are far more complicated than that. We are capable of both causing harm and demonstrating extraordinary compassion, and neither cancels out the other.
Perhaps the most important question is not simply what sentence you have given yourself, as the judge suggested, but whether you can ultimately allow yourself to live beyond that sentence. Accountability matters, but so do forgiveness, dignity, and the recognition that you remain worthy of love, connection, and belonging.
You were a human being before your crime, you remained one throughout your incarceration, and you will always be one. Nothing about your past can change that. And I hope you never lose sight of it.