Haunted by a face, mother of slain toddler finds peace 21 years later
That smirk. There was something disturbing about the way Paul Littlejohn, just a teenager, wore it at his sentencing, the way it radiated an attitude impervious to his circumstance: He shuffled through the courthouse corridors in shackles on his way to prison, possibly for the rest of his life, for his role in the shooting death of a 3-year-old boy.
Sharletta Evans, the toddler’s mother, could not forget his expression — a mask of carelessness that, in her eyes, trivialized the loss of her precious Casson in the 1995 drive-by shooting that marked another in a litany of tragedies with roots in Denver’s “summer of violence” two years earlier.
“I could not shake that smirk,” Evans recalls now. “Only he could change that image for me.”
For more than two decades, Littlejohn’s face remained a jagged memory for Evans. And then came contact, a response to her request for a dialogue.
The now-37-year-old accomplice in the drive-by that killed her son had agreed to engage in restorative justice — a face-to-face atonement based on an offender’s remorse, accountability and willingness to repair harm that Evans helped the Colorado Department of Corrections pilot in 2012.
Then, she had met with Raymond Johnson, who also had been a juvenile when he got life without parole for firing the shot that killed Casson. Months of preparation for the encounter, requested by Evans and ultimately accepted by the inmate, culminated in an eight-hour meeting at the Limon Correctional Facility.
She long since had forgiven him, after a spiritual epiphany that settled over her within hours of the shooting. The meeting four years ago added momentum to Evans’ work that has spanned gang alternatives to criminal justice advocacy, addressing both victims and offenders, and continues to mold her personal and professional life.
But Littlejohn was another matter — a harder case who remained under gang influence for years after he started doing time.
“I forgave Paul,” Evans says, “but with that act of forgiveness, it’s not to the point you have to embrace someone or even be in their company. I chose not to embrace him as I did Raymond Johnson, because I did not know Paul. I didn’t know what his goals were, if he ever would come to a place of accountability.”
Littlejohn’s mother, Joanne Williams, had reached out to Evans nine years ago to accept blame for her son’s actions and seek forgiveness. The women became good friends, and have appeared together at speaking engagements to demonstrate the healing power of forgiveness. Out of respect, Evans says, her friend never brought up her son in casual conversation, except to say, “I hope he’s learning.”
Three years ago, Littlejohn began, in Evans’ words, to “self-rehabilitate, veer away from gangs and stay focused on really becoming a man.” Once they agreed to a dialogue, the preparation process began anew. Earlier this month, they met behind the walls of historic Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City.
“I went in with the minimal amount of expectations I could muster up,” Evans says. “I didn’t know if I would be let down, if it would be a total disaster.”
Lynn Lee, a facilitator for the victim-offender dialogues, works as a safeguard to keep that from happening. She explains that the intense preparation for the meeting, which takes three to four months, helps both the victim and offender think about what they hope to achieve through the process — and what they have to offer the other.
Sometimes, victims can get stuck on one particular aspect of the criminal case, “maybe something that happened in the courtroom,” Lee says. During early discussions with facilitators, Evans mentioned her lingering memory of Littlejohn’s courthouse smirk. That concern found its way to the inmate, who understood and tried to be mindful of his facial expressions, which would figure significantly in their meeting.
Evans’ 2012 dialogue with her child’s killer grew out of 2011 legislation creating the pilot program in the DOC, says Monica Chambers, the department’s victim services coordinator. After three pilot cases, restorative justice became an official program in 2014. The dialogue with Littlejohn marked the 10th in a strictly victim-initiated process that addresses violent crimes — each one so far has involved a death, whether by murder, vehicular homicide or manslaughter.
Chambers is researching another dozen possibilities, which require not only a victim request but also a willing offender. So far, every offender asked has embraced the opportunity.
“It has to match up,” Chambers says, “or a dialogue doesn’t happen. It’s not for everybody — it’s a head-scratcher to a lot of people, really. But when victims are looking for answers no one else can give them, it’s invaluable to the healing process.”
When they agree to participate, offenders sign an agreement acknowledging that the process will have no impact on the status of their incarceration. Nonetheless, Chambers adds, offenders report feeling healed as well “because they’re able to bring some sort of restoration to the victim, which makes them feel they’ve done what they can.” Prison officials also have noticed that when offenders share their restorative justice experience with other inmates, the interaction tends to exert a positive influence on their niche of prison culture.
“The warden at Limon told me he could see a difference in the dynamics of the pod,” Chambers says. “They really did stop and think of the impacts they had, and worked together to make a better environment in the small world they live in.”
On all sides, feedback from the dialogues has been encouraging. Although Chambers allows that personal feelings are difficult to convert to data, followup to the interactions has, in every case, shown that the experience exceeded expectations for both the victim and the offender.
For Evans, there was no need to revisit with Littlejohn the details and motivation behind the crime that killed Casson, the little boy she called “Biscuit,” and only by sheer chance avoided injuring her 6-year-old son Calvin. She had covered that ground in her dialogue with Johnson, whose bullet was identified as the fatal shot even though Littlejohn also unleashed gunfire.
As Littlejohn entered the room at the prison where Evans sat waiting for him, the questions that raced through her mind had less to do with her loss than with the arc of his life behind walls. Why had he finally decided to change? What did he plan to do with his life?
In some ways, Evans found herself looking for professional validation as well as completeness of her own identity as someone outside of the trauma. It all seemed intertwined with the men whose actions had brought her pain, triggering a sadness that also encompassed the societal consequences of criminal justice that have informed her advocacy work.
“Here I am again,” she remembers thinking as she began to cry, “sitting across from someone responsible for killing my son. And here’s another black male sitting in prison for who knows how long.”
She explained her tears to him, and then listened as he explained his understanding of how short an apology fell, and that the only way to prove his sincerity was to lead a better life. He told her about his misplaced gang allegiance, how he had reached a decision to restore integrity to his life. He described how his work as a personal care provider at the prison — something like a nurse’s assistant, his mother’s vocation — had shifted his loyalty to those he cared for.
Most important to Evans, he told her how years of denial about his role in Casson’s death finally segued into an understanding of his responsibility, even though the fatal bullet had not been his.
“That was huge for me,” Evans says. “All I had to reflect on was his smirk in the courthouse hallway. But we were getting somewhere now.”
Throughout their exchange, she noticed an odd, pained look on his face, as if he were fighting something back. Then, Littlejohn offered an explanation: He apologized for the smirk Evans had seen on his face that day in the courthouse and explained that it was a lifelong, involuntary reaction to anxiety. He was struggling with it at that very moment, not wanting to inflict any further harm, and assured her it did not reflect indifference.
She told him: “Paul, you smile as much as you need to.” He broke into a grin, took a deep breath and thanked her for understanding. She saw a breakthrough as he opened up and “showed me his authenticity, and let me know he’s a better man.”
After four hours, when they stood up to part ways, he stepped forward and hugged Evans. The move surprised her, but she could feel his body relax.
“He didn’t ask permission — and that was OK with me,” she says. “It was a show of courage I admired. And it showed me I gave him what I went there for.”
Littlejohn declined an interview request.
Evans came away with something important as well — affirmation that her devotion to criminal justice work, most recently through her nonprofit Victim Offender Mitigation Initiative, has pointed her in the right direction, that Casson’s death was not in vain. And unexpectedly, she found another piece of herself beyond the crime.
“It helped me understand that I can make it through the grief,” she says. “It gave me more courage. I’m feeling more of my identity coming back. I found out who Sharletta is, even more.”