EX-FELON FITTING IN JUST FINE
“Once you learn the formula, anything can be simple,” he says
Sentenced to serve 98 years, Rene Lima-marin was released by mistake. He married and had a family before being returned to prison, got a pardon, spent time in an ICE facility and is adjusting to his new “normal.”
Rubik’s cubes are everywhere in Rene Lima-marin’s life.
The six-sided puzzles sit in his car. In his kitchen. On the couch in his Aurora home.
Lima-marin, 42, whose odyssey in and out of the criminal justice system garnered national attention, can rearrange the cube in just a minute.
“He loves to use his mind,” said Jasmine Lima-marin, Rene’s wife. “He’s super smart. Anything challenging, and he’s gonna try it and master it until he has it down.
That’s how he is with everything.”
The shape-shifting nature of Rene Lima-marin’s life is unlike any other in the United States: Sent to prison for 98 years for armed robbery and then mistakenly released decades early because of a clerical error. Married and had two sons during the six years he was free before the courts figured out the mistake. Sent back to prison. Pardoned by Gov. John Hickenlooper, and then shipped to an immigration detention center.
It’s been nearly two years since he walked as a free man out of Aurora’s ICE detention facility after winning his case in immigration court, and Lima-marin is unscrambling his life, the patterns of family, work and undying faith aligning neatly on every side.
“The stuff that seems like it’s difficult really isn’t difficult,” Lima-marin said. “It’s just about learning the formula — once you learn the formula, anything can be simple.”
Return to normalcy
When he reunited with his wife and children for a second time on March 28, 2018, Lima-marin and his family once again had to figure out what “normal life” really means.
His two boys, now 13 and 10, had grown, and Jasmine Lima-marin was accustomed to handling both parental duties in addition to a job and a role as her husband’s permanent legal advocate. After five years without her husband, she became the do-it-all mother.
“You almost have to relearn everything,” Jasmine Lima-marin
said. “How to coexist with your husband again.”
It took a year to restore their family’s rhythm.
Jobs for former felons aren’t easy to come by. But Rene Limamarin’s work ethic was not forgotten by his former employer, a glazing business that installs windows.
Doug Gleaton was in charge of Lima-marin’s apprenticeship program when he was released from prison the first time. He was stunned when the Cuba native didn’t show up to class one day in 2014.
“I told the contractors, ‘Let me know when he’s out and we’ll put him right back to work,’ ” Gleaton said.
On a frigid Thursday morning, the sky a bold Colorado blue, Lima-marin took a break next to his team’s latest construction project: a series of metal bars and foundation pieces that will become a new research facility on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.
“I used to be afraid of heights when I first started,” Lima-marin said, looking up at the massive structure underneath his blue hard hat.
Faithandfocus
Lima-marin’s hands don’t often rest — and neither does his mouth.
He considered himself a Christian as a child, but by his own admission did not follow the Gospel.
“I said I believed in God and Jesus and all those things, but I did not follow, nor did I live the lifestyle whatsoever,” he said. “So I wasn’t really a Christian; I just called myself a Christian because it was the traditional thing to do.”
Prison changed that. When he got out, Lima-marin started ministering, attending Bible study and Sunday worship.
“I certainly saw he was passionate and enthusiastic,” said Lewis Brown Sr., a retired pastor at the New Beginnings Cathedral of Worship in Aurora. “He’s very sincere about his Christian faith, and he certainly utilized his time incarcerated to read and to really grow in his faith.”
Faith tethers Lima-marin to the present, keeps his eyes on the future. He doesn’t play the what-if game and tries not to question why he got a break and his friend Michael Clifton did not.
Clifton was with Lima-marin in 1998 when they robbed a pair of video stores. He received the same 98-year sentence, but his clerical error was fixed by the courts after he appealed his conviction. Clifton remains in prison, his latest appeal denied a year ago.
“One thousand percent he should be out,” Lima-marin said.
He is in touch with Clifton’s family, ready to show up to any hearing, sign any petition, share any Facebook post or participate in any fundraiser.
The father of two, the husband, the glazier with his whole life ahead of him easily could be in the neighboring cell.
“I try and walk forward,” Limamarin said, his breath visible in the icy morning air. “When you look behind you, you might run into stuff. I’m not trying to do that, because you’ll never get where you want to go.”
Forging a new life
A future once confined to the Colorado Department of Corrections is flush with possibilities.
Lima-marin speaks excitedly about learning how to flip houses for extra cash, his interest piqued while watching the DIY Network in prison. He signed up for a course next month to learn from professionals.
He also maintained a host of hobbies he picked up in prison, where the circumstances necessitated finding activities to fill the long days.
Lima-marin plays basketball at the gym, schooling kids half his age with a smooth jumper. He coaches his 13-year-old’s team. If he hadn’t gone to prison, Limamarin said, he might have been involved with the sport in some fashion.
The man especially loves chess, driven by the same strategic thinking that led him to own scores of Rubik’s cubes.
“You have to think ahead of time,” he said, boasting of several chess championships he won in prison. “Not just one or two moves, you have to think five moves ahead for you and your opponent.”
Count crocheting and Braille as other skills Lima-marin picked up in prison. Sitting at a coffee shop across the street from the Anschutz Medical Campus, he pulled up a picture on his phone of the Broncos blanket he’s finishing.
“Before, when I was a kid, all of this stuff I’m talking about would have been gibberish,” he said. “‘Look at this fool, he’s tripping. Crocheting? Braille? This dude’s an idiot.’ That’s what my younger self would have been saying.”
Lima-marin says he’s been honest with his two boys, Justus and Josiah, about the mistakes he made as a youth. They’re old enough to know right from wrong — they know their father stole, that he brandished a gun. But that’s not him anymore.
“I don’t try to hide that from them,” he said, “simply because I want them to be able to learn from it.”
“I try and walk forward. When you look behind you, you might run into stuff. I’m not trying to do that, because you’ll never get where you want to go.” Rene Lima-marin