"The phone rang and rang and a lady picked up on the other end and I still remember the operator saying, 'You have a collect call from Ian for Debbie. Will you accept the charges?' And I remember Debbie saying, 'Yes, I accept.' And I just remember blurting out, 'Ms. Baigrie, I just called to wish you and your family a merry Christmas and to apologize for shooting you.'" At 14 years old, Ian Manuel was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and spent an estimated 18 years in solitary confinement. Today, he tells his story.
His book is My Time Will Come.
You can listen to our full conversation with Bryan Stevenson in Episode 46: Just Mercy.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Get me. They gave me the guy
and they kept trying to rob people now open, broad daylight.
backup say no, no, no so out the tone in like ten people now,
Finally, all set down on all on a curve in they'd they say
you're? Not gonna, do give the give the going to somebody else now would pass. It has gone away.
Hot potato who's got to do it and we made a pact. We made an agreement at that moment that the next people we came upon, whether it was in the open or not that this is the robbery was going to what's going to happen. It was going to go down on July. 27Th one thousand nine hundred and ninety
You're old woman named Debbie Bakery went out with some friends in downtown Tampa treated.
Certainly given birth to her second child, and this was
first night out with friends in a while on our way back to her car
bumped into a man she knew from the Jim and he offered to walk with her the rest of the way. The same day.
a thirteen year old, named in manual, was walking around downtown tamper with three older friends. We
in a parking lot and we walked- and we approach this couple- that we stand by our car and approached them, acts for change for twenty. I pull the gun out and I say,
it's a jack and the lady screen, and I just
fire. The first shot in manual fired hit Debbie Bakery in the face destroying her jaw tongue in teeth, the bullet,
it to her cheek and she started running away. In fact,
it had her again and missed,
she laid her head. Forty surgeries three built her charm in at all
fired at the man he was hurt,
It says that after the shooting, he and his friends ran away our
now tat the next day
And I
blood on the ground,
day. Maddest beggared about how close it was to her. Actually
tiger man. You know lady got shot into faces. The bar man
that I know I'm the guy responsible for doing that, but that she survived I'll, be forever thankful
but I want my dad's odyssey blood on the ground. I think that's what it hit me that you actually shot somebody
It is after shooting, Debbie Bakery
in manual, says that he and some friends stolen car, a white Cadillac Fleetwood an hour and a half later they got caught and were brought to
police Station in says his friends all got picked up by their parents, but he couldn't get in
with his mother, and so he waited
Police station, for a long time, eventually an officer told him that they would have
take him to a juvenile detention facility to spend the night until they could find his mother. A police officer drove into the facility during the ride
inside. The officer asked him what he was doing ceiling cars with older boys and even says he answered. I grew up with those guys. We do this all the time.
When they reached the juvenile detention centre in remembers that the officer said to him is the
anything else. You want to tell me before we get out of the car, it will stay in the car, and I felt like this was my chair said: get this off my chest.
About what I had the three days earlier and saw us that you, Nora Lady and I got shot down town any say yeah, I say one: they got it
It says
police officer got out of the car and made some phone calls, and then he got back in the car,
put it in reverse and drove it back to the police station in
was questioned by a detective and he says he told the detective everything
you know as much as I felt
clear my causes,
it myself years later it will, it would be.
Got. It was one of the biggest regressive my life
A manual was charged as an adult
Thirteen years old, I'm Phoebe Judge
criminal our shores, which Kosovo first degree attempted murder. I was software armed robbery,
and I was jaws with attempted armed Robbery- the attempt at was on Debbie
and of all lobby was on the guy, and I was there to its own about his came from shooting, Debbie and shooting at the guy
He was held in the juvenile win of Morgan.
treat county jail, he'd gotten in trouble for
during a cup of water and was placed himself,
very confinement. There is a window in his cell.
And he remembers that one night he could see the light.
of temper stadium. It was
ninety ninety one Superbowl Whitney Houston performed a month later in says he put guilty on the advice of his public defender La Tony. I felt like he gave up and that's when it came to me an approach me with, though, with the possibility of pleading guilty sand at. If you go to trial
you're gonna, make the judgment and he's gonna give you life. So I ask that you plead guilty are openly of guilt of yourself at the at the mercy of the court, cause his lawyer estimated that it would be sentenced to at most fifteen years,
the prison and I'm like, sir. I don't wanna go to prison period because tell him a thirteen year old child that you're gonna spent fifty years imprisonment is in and of itself.
like a life sentence. I haven't even been allow fifteen years, yet you know
My mother came over there to the side of the jewelry box and said N. Listen, don't think about yourself this time. Think about me! I want you to plead guilty. Do it for me? Listen to me this one
and I'm just sit there, and I thought about all the times that my mother had asked me to do something, and I did the opposite to I plead guilty with the pool expectation that I will be sentenced to fifteen years.
This was ninety. Ninety one, a period in America where a lot of people
actually politicians we're talking about being quote tough on crime.
Rates of incarceration were climbing rapidly people of color were disproportionately affected.
This time, President Joe Biden was a senator and the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee teed, given a teller,
I used to dress in nineteen eighty nine calling for more rests and hard,
their sentences in the quote war on drugs, bite and said. The President George W Bush is plan
quote: doesn't include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, not enough prosecutors to convict them, not enough judges to sentence them and not enough prison cell
to put them away for a long time. In a few years, then First lady Hillary Clinton
king about young gang members said that
often the kinds of kids that are called super predators, no conscience, no empathy weak
talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to him.
on April
Ninety ninety one,
in manual was taken to the court house for his sentencing. Hearing the prosecutor told the judge,
The only thing we can do as protect the citizens from the future criminal conduct that Mr Manual will engage and if he is released, the prosecutors language about me at the time was there
now this was a map of Amsterdam. There he's a social path he's a minister society, Debbie Bakery was present in the courtroom. She had not planned to speak
she'd had some conversations with the UN's mother and ends mother felt the Debbie Bakery wanted.
And to be able to go home, she'd been asking for his rehabilitation, but then
who was sitting with other juvenile defendants, waiting to be sentenced laughed during the hearing
peace. Is someone made a joke and he laughed at it?
I laughed and Debbie see me laughing in court and she took that to mean that I wasn't taken this process serious, that this was a big job to me. I must stop Debbie didn't addressing court
She said they set. The gun went off by accident. It was aimed at my face. I dont think it went off by accident.
She said that she kept wishing, he could be rehabilitated quote he still the child, but she said
After hearing everything that's been going on, he doesn't even care. He doesn't
air. What he's done to me. He doesn't care that he's going.
then the rest of his life in jail and if he doesn't care, while I don't care.
He remembers that it seem like the judge
Made up his mind before Debbie even spoke Theatre
although certain guidelines and could choose-
from a range of potential sentences. He chose to give in the harshest possible sentence. The judge told in
Our society, I think, does require
conservation for some period of time. A substantial period of time
for no other reason than to protect itself from you. I remember to judge.
look at me, SAM, Mr Mayo. You ve had too many chances already so for the crime of its up the murderous and issued a life for the crime of armed robbery us and issued a life, but a crime of attempted, armed robbery, gas and issued a fifteen years, those cynicism of rank and current efforts for a second crab of its up, their motor ass, an issue to light probation and that citizens being imposed in case the report would have corrections show for whatever reason ever decide to release.
How will treat? Ah, I just heard forty sentences like eons are sometimes referred to as a death in prison sentence and it
reported in two thousand fourteen that every single thirty,
your fourteen year old child who has been sentenced to life without pool for
on homicide. Crime has been a person of Color Debbie Bakery.
Said that, when the judge handed down in sentence, she couldn't believe it. She said she thought.
there's no way they can even be legal. She said if he was a white boy at thirteen
There's no way. This would have happened
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such criminal. That's two hundred dollars all mattress orders and to free eco rested pillars in manual was taken to an adult jail to wait for a transfer to an adult prison.
He remembers being led down the hallway and mocked alone into
small cell. He was placed in solitary confinement because prison officials didn't think you'd be safe with the adult
juveniles, and adult prisons are five times more likely to be
victims of sexual assault. In remembers
that everything in the jail was purple. He asked a guard why he was in
solitary confinement and why everything was purple, the guard told him
that he was in solitary because of his age, and things were painted purple.
because someone had determined that purple had a calming effect it was
I was a cultural shop for child, but you know I was it was buried. It was very
If I d equality is the one I begin it till I just you know, I learnt
To my bob, that's one thing: I think that help me Bobby
being so young. You know I was like I was. I was being mode it
it had already been an odour. An adult I don't think I would have been able to bear. Solitary confinement is, is escape it. What my sanity intact, as as much as I did he was transferred.
dapple at correctional institution in June of ninety ninety one. His
other, sent him a radio, and he remembers listening to glory asterophyton. He says he
This lived in his imagination. His lawyer set him a package
containing all the material pertaining to his case and included in a police report was Debbie Bakeries address and phone number on Christmas Eve about eight months into his life sentence and says he decided to call
to apologize, but there we are love operators, I don't even know if we still have lab operators nowadays, but her back. Then all you had to do was pursued.
And went on operating to pick up the car, and so are the operator
stop it. I swear I like the place, a card that has fallen over and she said: ok seller collect all from ie and put Debbie the forward on the farm work in a phone
well as a lady picked up. On the other hand- and I still remember sad- operate affair- you ever collect call from IE and for Debbie. Will you accept the child
I remember Debbie's pausing in say: how can you ask him his last name?
Yeah may will my name is manual, and I remember Debbie say yes, I just remember. Bloke now miss
we? I just called wish you your family, a merry Christmas and to apologise for shoe shoe you in the face.
Just remember her, ask me why? Why did you shoot me- and I just remember tell it all happened-
so fast an arm.
Then you know she asked
Yeah? Maybe the first shot was a mistake, but then you shot at my friend and then you shot at me again and I didn't really have an answer to give her, and so we talked about that time. Fifteen minutes
did I ask her at the phone call was coming to an end. Could I could I call back? She said? Yes, I don't quite remember what we said
The second phone call all I remember with this actually could our wider, and she said yes, you can right
what do you think you're? Looking for? What did you want to do?
poligized, did you want to feel better? Did you want her forgiveness? Did you feel
but what had happened in the courtroom? What what did you want? I think I just wanted to clear. My comments is thought
It made a man's tat, his woman that I shot because out my grandmother Linda did raise me like that. Mom even Mama
Peggy, Google. What all her complications been raised me like that, so I
it wanted to get it off my heart and I wanted to be big.
Say how sorry I was for almost taken our life and taken away taken away from our herder to young children. That time.
What do you think that phone call was like for her when she heard
your name on the other on the other line, most victims, most of Felix. Never how that conversation, because most people need to feel
You hurt me very bad
I want to hurt you very bad. It daddy
he's. I think she wanted to better understand
Am I a situation where let
doing that to her, and they like to be a friend to
so be frightening,
Emmanuel says he got into an incredible amount of trouble in prison. He received many disciplinary reports, D ars. For short, he says
the longer I was in solitary the harder it
for me to meet their behaviour and expectations eventually
He was fifteen years old.
placed into long term solitary confinement. He was alone for twenty two to twenty four hours a day.
Food came to him through a slot
didn't understand why people around him we're doing every
and they were told he says he saw
People around him following the rules, so they wouldn't lose privileges likes me.
In time with family play, basketball,
watching tv. He thought it was giving in the way the system is set up one day off one. Why up want this report for anything for better possession of
a magazine for not making you bear properly for being caught talking just so many different,
Eddie arbitrary rules that they got so there would be. I bore sports while we're not even try to get out of solitary confinement
I'd live my life in a way where I was free within a composite. They sell and I wouldn't bother. I wouldn't try to follow the rules, because I had a farm, our own freedom with their Marcel,
he says that, even as an adult, he still pass the timing
solitary by retreat,
into his imagination pieces.
Lived on childhood fantasies of becoming rich and famous. He read aloud.
links in Hughes and my Angelou. He wrote his own poems.
Showed them to the men in prison.
Those are the worst critics, their worse, they say,
MIKE Owl.
or on american Idol or ex biker or the salmon
a because you gotta think
he's a mere that I have a lot of anger that have a lot of abuse that I've been abandoned and you trying to reach them
and is thought upon me to write your girlfriend's and now ass, Bawtree.
By two thousand and five in manual it was twenty eight years old and had spent half his life in prison
in two thousand and five. The Supreme Court made an important ruling about how people
under the age of eighteen, could be punished. Many people don't really the United States with executing children until two thousand and the? U s
Court came out with a decision,
Roper versus summons, to banning the debt
leave her anyone under the age of eighteen. This is
turning Ben Schaefer. He works at the equal justice initiative, a J Ai for short
either. I have few clients on death row in Alabama who were
under the age of eighteen who, because
The ruling, then were we send to the other second fiddle with
which was life without for all, and I think
We realise that while it was a positive development-
Those children were no longer eligible to be executed, that a death in prison,
was still on Jost Approach
out of any age and around the same time we also received a letter from
the jobs who was a fourteen year old girl in Alabama, and she just wrote in all
I'm fourteen I've been sense, a dime,
Can you tell me the equal,
Justice initiative was founded by
turning Brian Stevenson he's the author of just mercy.
He found it a J Ai to challenge the death penalty, excessive punishment and abuse of prison conditions.
I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they ve ever done. He says theory is speaking with us in two thousand sixteen,
What's ironic, is that we all want we
rotation when we make mistakes. None of us want to be judged by our worse act. When we make me,
dates. We want a chance to show where not just that mistake, and yet we ve created.
A system that is so unforgiving that is so judgmental and its intoxicated?
to imagine all of these evil people that we can all organise and beat up on and go to war against, but its dishonest
and one of the great challenges that I think we have in this country is to revive a conversation about Wade, means to recover. You know we don't give justice
but just because we want to be fair, we then we give justice to people because we want to be just. We dont give mercy to people, because.
Some people need mercy. We give mercy to people because we want and need to be merciful, our strength, our humanity. Our dignity turns on how we treat other people.
putting people who have committed crimes, including people have fallen down
The attorneys at each ay, I began to wonder how often children were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of Pearl
and began travelling around different states asking questions and found that there were thousands of those
children in the United States and one of the youngest children
across the United States who had been sentenced to die in prison while the manual.
What was the whole when you add a J Ai,
took on in manuals case. Many states, including in homes day for
Have no minimum age at which a child can be tried in the dark? So we see a nineteen year old, transferred to it all court and tried as adults we
the children we work with to have an opera
Unity,
two.
Live outside prison yeah. I hesitate there because
Many people will talk about it as a second chance. You know
worked with a lot of voting, for
your clients who were sentenced a dime prison, then he's really harsh sentences that have done.
Ring true to me? I think if you know the
Background and what these children are ex
to an end. The trauma they suffer.
or they receive these satin says it's just that. I don't see why
They have gotten a first chance.
Emmanuel grew up in a verbally and physically
use of household shortly after he was born. His mother was sent to prison for shooting a woman.
in was sent to live with family friends.
He says he barely knew his father and that his grandmother Lyndon Johnson often took care of him. She was at her seventies and she walked out how to burger king and have have levels.
small cheeseburger sandwiches wait for me when I came home from school and she got over time a trick check and our social security check, and she would take me trouble
call and spend all the money on me, and she just made me feel very, very special and I've been, I think, that's something I've been searching for them for the rest of my life.
Sometimes in lived with his grandmother and sometimes with his mother.
older brother, in housing project in Tampa called sent.
Park village. He says they re times when they were homeless. My neighborhood was full of violence for gunshots throughout the day and night. At the time I was in a really afraid of God's fuck us. It was a part of my everyday.
surrounded by death. As I got older realized. That's not a normal child life. You shouldn T go
one up a wire gauze abolish like dad on an everyday basis at one point in this place to the White Foster family for a period of time, he had terrible nightmares and remembers the strange feeling of waking up terrified,
He was arrested for the first time when he was eleven years old. He says the boy he knew had gotten
gun from an older cousin and even in his friends,
decided to try to use it to rob people, and we ended up walking home from school, pulling a gun on different people, taking change out at a pocket, zero dollars and seventy five cents here, a couple dollars there.
and we had about what we ended up being arrested, laid on a day and Jaws would all barbary at eleven. I was eleven years old,
I was in a hurry to grow up. I wanted looking back now,
I remember, a stable mobs. Just tell me she said you can't wait to grow
but when you get older, you gonna wish you at the time to enjoy your job
That was so true, because here I am a forty four, your man
when I was younger. Now I was in such a rush to get Oda like what without work
before. What without working towards
and here I am now-
wish I had took a little more time to enjoy being
without all the responsibilities of an adult
a thirteen year old, not who there,
be a twenty or twenty five there, the brains are developing their very impulsive.
Not particularly
the child of children that have suffered. Really.
Severe trauma and we recognise that
people who are their demise, will often their demise. Others. Many
you have. Our client have committed violent offences, but
you know well a lot of
in this country. At the time we started this work. These sentences,
Mandatory saw is life,
now brought. You are connected to the crime. There was no,
the chance to consider the background of the child or their upbringing or the circumstance city of hands. So, yes,
arguing that then
no child, no matter the offence vacant met should be sentenced, diaspora
gee. I worked onions case for ten years, along with others like it.
They launched a litigation campaign in two thousand and six to challenge life without parole sentences for children. Four years later, the Supreme Court wreck
Nice that the ways in which children are different from adults had to be considered
during sentencing and banned life sentences without the possibility of parole for juvenile.
Convicted of non homicide offences and then each day I went back to court to argue,
the sentencing. Children to life without pool is unconstitutional, regardless of the offence and the two thousand twelve Supreme Court decision struck down. Mandatory life without pool sentence
for all children, seventeen or younger on January, twenty fifth, two thousand sixteen the court held.
But the decision applied retroactively and that people
who are serving a mandatory life without parole sentence for crimes committed
when they were under eighteen, should be re, sentenced in November of two thousand sixteen
Then Schaefer and in manual appeared important temper. The judge said, as you know, the law has
changed dramatically since the early ninetys and then
in manual was sentenced him
grant a time for the years he had already served and released from prison
Yeah,
oh, my god, I don't know.
You have got out of the box,
experience.
big how people know how improbable my release was like. I was,
our citizens die of prison. I literally felt
I had died and came back to life.
baby. I agree with the court from that day she and in hadn't, been in touch.
about ten years, but she had been working with each day. I try to help
She is remarkable woman, you tonight,
It's rare for
I thought I on crime.
all was not actively oppose.
recent and sang, and for her to actively support,
a new satins hurry and adjust its remarkable benches.
took the Inn and Debbie out to dinner right after Ian was released. They had pizza, Debbie, Post
a photo of herself and even on Facebook they're both smiling she wrote here we set
an eye twenty seven years after he shot me when he was thirteen. He was released today after twenty six years, and I was so happy to share his first meal.
We reached out to her and she told him
She wasn't interested in speaking. She said:
I spent over twenty years doing mad and Ian
now ass, his own voice
Emmanuel was in prison for almost twenty seven years, an estimated eighteen of which
where in some form of solitary confinement, he said
but when he got out, he didn't know its eyes closed to buy.
He ruled and a re entry program that each iron's there are far too few re entry
services for anyone who gets out, but there really weren't any desire
to meet the needs of our clients coming out of prison,
when in when they were thirteen. Fourteen fifteen years all being says that people who entered prison, his children, didn
have a chance to learn to live in the outside world as adults they have.
learn to drive a car open. A bank account find work in manual also entered
into an intensive therapy programme.
he lives in Brooklyn. He says he feels
you got a second lease on life and he's doing all
can to enjoy it these written a memoir, it's called my time will come. It begin
My story has been told many times. You can
and police files and court records. But today I would like to try to tell it to myself
criminal
created. My lord spore and me
He wasn't as our senior producer Susanna robbers
is our producer and
Virus Henry Audio Mix by Rob buyers, Michael
feel and John Events Evans, a final finally to special thanks to Lily Clark,
Julian Alexander, makes original illustrations, preacher sort of criminal- you can see them at this is criminal dot com or on Facebook, and twitter at criminal show.
Eminem is recorded in the studio of North Carolina public radio debate you and see were proud. Member of Radio Tokyo from Pierre Racks, a collection of the best part CAS round. I'm Phoebe Judge
this criminal radio do.
Transcript generated on 2021-07-31.