Teens can get life sentences, but this Knoxville woman is fighting for their second chances
For years, Knoxville's Imani Mfalme-Shu’la and the Community Defense of East Tennessee have fought for justice for teenagers who get mandatory life sentences.
The nonprofit has helped shave hundreds of years from their clients’ long sentences, which advocates say are inhumane because they forever punish teens who make split-second decisions when their brains aren't fully developed.
After the group's legal work and documentary “Redeemable Son,” the Tennessee Supreme Court agreed with them in a decision handed down last month, ruling that mandatory life sentences for teens violate the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
The sentencing change was a huge relief for Knoxville's Almeer Nance, who has served 26 years since his teen years for being an accomplice in an armed robbery that ended in the murder of Radio Shack store employee Joseph Ridings. Nance didn’t pull the trigger.
He hopes the ruling will translate into freedom.
As a result, he was caught up in the harshest mandatory sentence in the country for minors, which disproportionately is applied to Black men.
Knox News spoke with Mfalme-Shu’la on the work she's done for Nance, how the landmark court decision affects his case and why minors serving life sentences deserve second chances.
How did Community Defense of East Tennessee get involved with Almeer Nance’s case and where does his plea for clemency stand after the court's ruling?
Community Defense of East Tennessee has been working to end juvenile life (sentences) in Tennessee for some years now. That work included a lot of public education. Just making people aware, telling people to support if a bill came up.
One of the main models that we use is participatory defense and that model really puts an emphasis on the individual or their family participating in their own defense. When I connected with Almeer and told him about what we do and he explained to us about his case, I asked him, “Do you have anyone that could be your advocate?” At that time, he did not have anyone that he felt confident enough to support or carry his case, but since this is an issue that I'm personally passionate about, I said “That's fine, I'll be your advocate.”
I got in contact with his mother, his daughter and we started working on his case. Almeer had already drafted a clemency – which I think is very powerful that he did that himself. He mailed it to his mom, she sent it to me, and I edited it for him and then he submitted it. He got a letter back from the Tennessee Board stating that it's in review for a hearing. We don't have any updates as of now as far as his clemency.
He’s asking for his sentences to run concurrently and that he be immediately eligible for parole. With the ruling coming out, we're now reaching out to an attorney to help us figure out what this exactly means for him.
What are you hearing since the ruling from criminal justice advocates and those sentenced as minors?
Everyone is very hopeful. A lot of people are confused, even attorneys. The hope is that there will be automatic recalculation for everyone who was a child and sentenced to life – that (Tennessee Department of Correction) will just go ahead and recalculate the parole eligibility date. There’s some confusion about when children have been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, when children have been sentenced to life (plus additional years). So, there's some confusion around that part of it, which I feel like will be another line of advocacy that we will pick up.
Does the ruling open new paths of advocacy for Community Defense of East Tennessee?
We’re definitely going to be educating everyone that we come in contact with about the new ruling. We have to change the way that we are dealing with children all together in the system. I feel like that's our next step. We want to see more restorative practices when it comes to children, instead of punishment. … Restorative justice needs to be the first option. The very first option.
What can we do to restore the harm that's been done? What can we do to restore every party involved on both sides?
But let me go further, we need to do more preventative work and then restorative work because there's a lot of things that could be put in place that prevent a lot of this. I want our people safe. I want our community safe. I don't want mothers and sisters and brothers crying from a loved one being lost or a loved one being locked up. Let's put billions into prevention and see what that looks like, and we won't have those tears.
People currently serving juvenile life sentences will now receive parole hearings after serving a minimum of 25 years. Is this the appropriate step to get justice for juvenile lifers?
There's a lot of other ways the system can help children, and I want to check that language. Community Defense even uses “juvenile,” but I feel like it takes away the humanity of a child and so I'm gonna start saying children. But we definitely can help children a lot more. This is a great first step, but we cannot stop here. More needs to be done. If we cannot protect children, if we cannot teach them, if we cannot guide them, if they cannot come to us for help and feel like they have to protect themselves, we are failing as a society.
How do you begin to reframe the conversation of how society views people who are incarcerated, especially when talking about those sentenced to life?
What we feel is the most powerful aspect of our work is giving the people directly impacted by this their voice. So, when we did “Redeemable Son” … everyone who saw it, even people who have had children that they lost to violence, they were impacted by it. (We want to show the) entire story of how a child can end up in a situation and put into the system and then forgotten. There's no hope for rehabilitation (with the current system). We know the recidivism rate. And what we try to do is educate people about how this system perpetuates harm in our society, it doesn't decrease it. There are multiple studies that support this, but we personally feel that although what we're saying is (supported), we are we are losing the narrative game.
I think that as society, people are led by fear, and they don't have knowledge of another way. And what we are trying to do is put out documentaries and put out voices and tell stories of people who are impacted to show a different narrative and also introduce people to other ways of accountability justice. We never want people to think that we do not believe in justice, that we do not believe in accountability. We just know that the system in place Is creating more harm.
Like in Nance’s case, how can Tennessee address the issue of minors being interrogated without legal representation or an advocate?
This is one of the things that going forward for next year that we want to add to our campaigns. In the first case we had the mother took her child in to be questioned (by the police), they separated her from the child, but she told them, "Do not talk to my child alone, we have an attorney." They still talked to her child. To me, it's just it's an abuse of power. To put a child in isolation, surrounded by trained professional interrogators and think that that process has any type of justice in it – I don't know. It's a tragedy. It's one of the tragedies in the system. If you put them in the wrong and right situation, you're threatening their freedom, their family, their life, you can get a child to say anything.
Does Community Defense of East Tennessee offer guidance when kids are questioned by police?
Yes, we have gotten material from the ACLU. We talked to them about the situations that children and families that we know have have been in, even so far as to when there is a parent there and the parent doesn't know their rights. We have material that we give out to the community. We try to do public awareness and education. Going forward, we would like to see legislation that changes that you cannot talk to a child without a parent or legal representation there.
Should circumstance and environment be considered in sentencing of minors, and who should that fall on - the prosecutor, judge, jury?
I think the entire system. And this is why we told the story of “Redeemable Son” the way we told it.
You have people who will never know what it's like to be a child and grow up in the neighborhood where you’re dodging bullets at least once or twice a week. You have people in society who will never, never know that, never know what that fear feels like, never know that you have to sleep on the floor so you're not on the level of the windows just in case the bullet comes in. And a lot of these people are the ones that are making decisions that will never know what that is. And so, we absolutely have to consider all the mitigating circumstances of a child, of the incident before we just throw them in the system that is not going to rehabilitate or change anything. And this is why I'm so passionate because how we treat our children says a lot about who we are. If we're okay with putting children in cages until they die, if we're okay with children being killed by police officers, who are we?
How do you respond to those who hold a perspective that some people are just “born bad” and believe minors should be tried as adults in certain felony cases?
To say someone is “born bad,” you're saying that person is condemned. That means that when they came out of the womb, you gave up on them. To me that's hurtful. The word I want to say, I can't say, but it gives me an image of a world without hope. What do you do when you don't have hope? Again, these are children that are put in situations and circumstances that not everyone has to face. There (must be) some kind of moral standard that we all live by.
People deserve a second chance. People deserve a way to correct their wrongs.
Tennessee had one of the harshest punishments for children in the country. Why has it taken this long for movement on this issue and what can citizens do to help?
I think one of the reasons that it’s stalled is because there's a lot of profit in the criminal justice system. A lot of revenue, a lot of jobs, a lot of money to be made. And when you're fighting against not only immoral practices, but against profit, that's a bigger, heavier fight.
What we can do as citizens is to get informed. Support the organizations that are doing the work on the ground. You don't have to agree with them, but you can also ask for those conversations. And once you become informed, I feel like you will be able to then make a decision and take that decision to the voting box.
In East Tennessee, we have a lot more work to do. We have a lot more people to educate. But it impacts us all. We have a lot of rural areas that are impacted. But they just need the education. They need the opportunity to advocate for themselves.
Based on your work, how have people sentenced to life as children processed remorse or accountability in their adulthood?
Almeer is so affected by it that if they told him he could get out tomorrow, I don't even know if he would want to live in Knoxville. Some (of the people I’ve worked with) have said if they could give their life for the life that was taken, they would. Everyone that I've come across and talk to has been more than remorseful. And with the mind they have now, they’re like if I had this mind, I would have never been in that situation.
But again, they were children and it’s scientifically proven that they cannot think about long-term consequences because that part of the brain is not developed. They cannot even process beyond the moment, but yet we will give them a permanent consequence.
Do you have any final thoughts on the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision or CDET’s work?
We are very thankful that they came to this decision. We enjoyed traveling and talking to people across the state of Tennessee. People were activated in the fight. People wrote their opinions to the actual Supreme Court about how they feel about children having to do life and it was just good to see people across the state of Tennessee come together to stand behind children. And I feel like Community Defense of East Tennessee gives the families hope that, as a state, we can come together and we can make a difference.
And I especially want to thank (Knox County Assistant Public Defender Jonathan Harwel, who argued the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court). He's one of the most brilliant people I know. He just seems so meek and mild, but he's so powerful. And we just want to thank him for his fight and his passion for this cause. An East Tennessee public defender did this. I really think it's important to put the emphasis on where we are and who's fighting this fight.
Devarrick Turner is a trending news reporter for Knox News. He can be reached by email at devarrick.turner@knoxnews.com. Follow Devarrick on Twitter @dturner1208. Enjoy exclusive content and premium perks while supporting strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knoxville advocate fights Tennessee's sentencing laws for minors
