The shared misery of criminal injustice

GWENDOLYN AGUIRRE first met Sandra Bland in April of this year at the Walmart in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago. "I didn't realize she was so young because of how she carried herself," says Aguirre.

After a few minutes chatting about hair, Aguirre and Bland parted ways. They spoke several times over the next two months. Their last conversation was June 24 at an Arby's.

In July, Naperville was in the news as the place that Sandra Bland had left to move to Texas. It was on her way to another Walmart, this time in Waller County, Texas, that she was pulled over by police, threatened and arrested. By the end of the weekend, Sandra Bland was dead in police custody.

"This was not her first rodeo. She had brushes with the law because she told me about them," says Aguirre. Bland even expressed her frustration to Aguirre over not being able to land a job in Naperville because of those brushes. When Aguirre learned that Bland had moved for a job, it made perfect sense to her.

Like many people, Aguirre felt that something didn't add up when hearing about Sandra Bland's death. Beginning in 1973, Aguirre spent years as a social and psychiatric worker, particularly working with adults suffering from "severe maladaptive behaviors." "First, she was a very tall girl, so how did she hang herself with a bag?" Aguirre wonders. "I knew this couldn't be so. Nothing about her indicated that she would commit suicide."

The inconsistencies in Bland's jail forms also hit home. "My son was killed in 1991. I was devastated, but I was so curious I had to read some of the documents. Someone signed my name--Gwendolyn--and released the body to the coroner."

After hearing of Bland's death, Aguirre reached out to Danette Chavis, an activist and founder of National Action Against Police Brutality. Aguirre had known Bland was passionate about social and political issues--"I was going to introduce Sandra to Danette's organization," she says.

Aguirre hoped simply to share with Chavis her skepticism about the official line on Bland's death in custody, but Chavis encouraged her to go public with her own story of knowing Bland, her professional experience with mental health issues and her own tragedies-–not just the son who died, but her other son Aaron's horrible experience with the criminal justice system.

Though Aguirre was initially hesitant, Chavis reminded her of how many others have similar experiences, and the importance of getting these stories out. Aguirre eventually agreed, which is how she and Aaron came to tell me his story.

ACCORDING TO both his account and official records, Aaron Aguirre was admitted into Dixon Correctional Center in DuPage County on December 27, 2007. His charge was one count of aggravated battery of a child.

"The police came to my house on April 23, 2006," says Aaron, another fact confirmed by official records. The details leading up to that night are convoluted, but Aaron is forthcoming.

A month before, the child of Aaron's girlfriend was burned during what "Andrea" (not her real name) claimed was a cooking accident. Aaron wasn't present. At the time, Andrea was also pregnant with Aaron's son. Having apparently had run-ins with Child Protective Services before, she refused to take the child to the hospital.

A month later, says Aaron:

Andrea's grandmother had taken the baby to the Good Samaritan Hospital to see if anything could be done. The child was healed from these wounds. They said the child was supposed to have come to the hospital. Since the child didn't come to the hospital, they said that it was extreme neglect, regardless of the fact that Andrea had taken care of it. She should have taken her to the hospital. I have no control over someone taking their child to the hospital if their child gets hurt. It had nothing to do with me, and she admitted that.

A few days before police arrived, Aaron and Andrea had a fight. Pregnant with Aaron's son, she locked herself in a bathroom. When Aaron was finally able to break in, he says she had a bottle of NyQuil at her mouth "and she was going to drink it."

Aaron admits that he slapped Andrea. "I was at fault for this one," says Aaron, "but I was scared." While Aaron's behavior was not excusable, it was not the only mistake Aaron was making at the time. "I would snort Vicodin, I would eat pills, smoke dope--everything but shoot up," he says.

Aaron figured the arrest was related to this incident. He was taken in and held for hours. What transpired from there is a maze of legal maneuvering that favored appearances and convictions over justice.

The police began questioning Aaron about the burns on the child. Despite his insistence that he wasn't present when they occurred-–and Andrea's corroboration of this-–police repeatedly told him, "This doesn't look good" and "The judge isn't going to like this."

Aaron says the police offered him a deal: sign a confession that he was responsible for burns on the baby and receive a slap on the wrist. "They wanted me to say things that weren't true," says Aaron, "and they basically came up with the story that they wanted. You'll see multiple people's handwriting on the statements. I just put my signature: AA."

Aaron was initially held on $100,000 bond for the incident with his child's mother. When he was brought back into court a couple days later, the amount had multiplied to $500,000, and the charge was now aggravated battery of a child.

Aaron capitulated. "Whatever those people wanted to do, I was with it," he says now. "I felt bad because of what I had done and I didn't want my son...if she goes to jail, my son is going to end up in foster care."

The police and prosecutors supported this. According to Aaron, they pitched his guilty plea as a quick start to getting his life back on track. He says they told him: "Why don't you go in and take the fall for this and, you know, let her take care of her kids, and you guys will get your counseling, and you'll get some probation." Aaron says: "I was with that. It cost me 11 years at 85 percent: nine years, four months and five days."

The process between arrest and conviction itself took over 18 months. During this time, Aaron's son was born and taken from Andrea. Aaron also faced an initial offer from the prosecutors of 20 years. As the judge became impatient, prosecutors relented to decreasing numbers, eventually settling on the 11-year sentence that Aaron received.

IF HAVING a child taken by the state while incarcerated wasn't troubling enough–not to mention a probation promise turning into the better part of a decade in prison–Aaron's experience in the Dixon Correctional Center was even worse. As Aaron recalls the story:

There was a guy, and he had a problem with me being in jail. He ended up attacking me one day, and things didn't end up going his way. When the police came to break it up, they used so much force that they broke my leg in three places. I have a plate in my leg. I have eight screws in my leg.

When they got done roughing me up, I laid on the ground, and they told me to get up. I was hollering. I said, "I can't get up, you broke my leg." So they started kicking me. And they told me to get the fuck up. They called the health care unit, and they brought a stretcher for me. The nurse examined me and initially said it was just a sprain. She gave me an Ace bandage and 200 milligrams of ibuprofen. And they said crutches were not allowed in segregation. So I had to walk to segregation.

Aaron was left like this for over a week until the warden saw his leg and requested an X-ray. When the breaks were found-–including his foot being completely separated from his leg--prison administrators fought over the cost of the surgery, debating with medical professionals over the need for it.

"I need you to remember this name," Aaron tells me. "His name is Steven Young. He is an orthopedic surgeon in Herrin, Illinois. I don't remember the name of the hospital." (Note: Dr. Young is still practicing in Herrin at Southern Illinois University and Herrin Hospital).

Aaron says that Young told the correctional facilities and the doctors there that Aaron would lose his leg if he didn't receive surgery. "He was like, 'Aaron, I don't know what's going to happen. They don't want you to have the surgery,'" Aaron tells me. "Finally, they approved my surgery. They broke my leg August 29, 2008. I didn't have surgery until September 17, 2008."

Even then, Aaron's ordeal wasn't over. The surgery was done as an outpatient procedure, with Aaron placed in a van and returned to prison almost immediately upon regaining consciousness. He was refused medication by staff, who only relented after numerous letters written by Aaron and his mother, including to then-Sen. Barack Obama.

(While it is unclear to what extent Obama's office got involved with the case, the family did receive a response asking for permission to contact the prison and access Aaron's records.)

Aaron went on to receive three degrees while he was incarcerated, starting with his GED. But even that came with abuses. "[School staff] would antagonize us because they knew we couldn't say anything, or we'd get kicked out of school," Aaron says. "They'd leave us stand in the rain or the snow for five, 10, 15 minutes until they decided to open the door."

AARON WAS released on parole on August 28 of this year. He has been struggling to readjust, a common experience for those returning from a caged life back to, as he says, "the world."

"You sit in that jail cell," Aaron says. "You feel like a rock or some dirt on the ground. Everybody outside is living, while you're just existing. I want to live. I don't want to just exist."

Aaron is large--6-foot-6-inches tall and muscular. Still, loud noises and people standing or walking too close scare him. Treatment options are available, but all cost money that Aaron doesn't have. Despite his degrees, he is still considered a felon and is having a hard time getting a job. He explains:

I'm afraid of the police. I tried going to the mall to buy some shoes, and it was early in the morning. The mall was just opened, and there were security guards walking everywhere. I was so anxious, I called my mother to come pick me up because I couldn't stay there.

Despite that, Aaron feels ready to live. He is clean now. Fortunately, Aaron has finally been able to connect with his son. "I went to college in prison," he says. "I went to college three times and graduated. I'm proud of myself, man. I'm ready to move on."

SINCE SANDRA Bland's death, numerous details have emerged. There was the "official" video, heavily edited but still showing Officer Brian Encinia threatening Bland with a Taser for not putting out her cigarette. The same officers involved in Bland's arrest have since been implicated in Tasering Jonathan, an African American member of the Prairie View Council.

Color of Change has launched an investigation with Huffington Post, exposing numerous conflicts of interest among the board tasked with overseeing the disciplinary process. A judge called Waller County "the most racist county in the state of Texas."

Everywhere, people like Gwendolyn Aguirre watch and wait. The news displays pictures of people they know, though not always directly.

They grew up in neighborhoods with a dozen Freddie Grays, raised their children with 20 Tamir Rices. They watched the graduation of Jonathan Farrells. Their children could be Aiyana Stanley-Jones or Akai Gurley or Rekia Boyd.

The loss is on the news, but they also sang in the choir; they played football and got birthday gifts. They liked to draw.

People like Gwendolyn understand from personal experience that their loved ones can enter the criminal justice system for making mistakes. But they also know that the police, prosecutors, judges and correctional officers will not be subject to the same laws for what they do. And that the political leaders who slash school funding, push down wages, move jobs from struggling towns and limit access to mental health resources won't be either.

While Aaron served his time, the debt of the state to him and the millions of others it has brutalized and incarcerated is, as yet, unpaid. As these stories mount, they should send a clear message that the prison walls must fall.