‘I no longer dream of the free world’
Bill gives second look at inmates sentenced young
The first time Michael Tracy skipped school, it was to help plan a robbery. He was 17, and reckless.
It did not go well. Wearing masks and looking for a Rolex, the Klein ISD student and two older friends strolled through the front door of a northern Harris County home and held the owner at gunpoint. No one got hurt, and they fled with only a fraction of what they’d expected.
But less than a week later, the long-haired kid found himself facing a very adult charge: aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony. He took the case to trial, and lost.
Two months before his 18th birthday, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison. That was in 1994.
“I’ve been gone so long,” he told the Houston Chronicle recently, “I no longer dream of the free world. I only dream of prison.”
But now, Tracy and a few hundred other aging inmates like him have a new hope for reprieve with proposed legislation known as the Second Look bill. Filed in the Texas House by Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, and in the Texas Senate by Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, the measure would make some prisoners who were sentenced as minors eligible to get out much sooner.
Anyone hit with a first-degree felony before turning 18 would be up for parole after 20 years or half of their sentence — whichever is sooner.
“Basically, it’s parole reform,” said Deanna Luprete, an advocate who’s dedicated herself to helping the measure pass. “This is not resentencing, this is not opening the gate and letting them go. It’s asking that the parole board give this juvenile a second look.”
Dying in prison
First proposed in the last legislative session, the Second Look bill comes amid a broader rethinking of juvenile justice.
Many of the Texas inmates who would stand to benefit from the measure were sent to prison in the 1990s, during a tough-on-crime era of long sentences and soaring incarceration. But times have changed.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court banned death sentences for anyone under 18 at the time of the crime. Then, in 2012, the high court took it a step further by eliminating mandatory life without parole for juveniles. They could still get a life without parole sentence, but it couldn’t be “mandatory” — other sentencing options must be available.
Life with the possibility of parole is also still allowed, and in Texas that means the first chance to get out comes after 40 years behind bars.
But, advocates argue, given the typical life span of a prisoner, that might be effectively the same thing as no parole — and the data seems to back that up, since the vast majority of kids hit with life sentences never get out.
“Only about 4.5 percent of people sentenced to mandatory life have ever been released,” said Elizabeth Henneke, an attorney and executive director of the nonprofit Lone Star Justice Alliance. “If 95 percent of these people are going to die in prison then there is de facto life without parole.”
That’s not how it works in many other states. California, Florida, Louisiana and a handful of other states set the first chance for parole at 25 years or less for minors convicted of serious crimes, according to Lindsay Linder, senior policy attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.
“Texas is a harsh outlier,” she said.
That’s where Second Look comes in. The bill, which supporters say could make roughly 2,000 prisoners eligible for parole in the next two years, doesn’t guarantee release, but it opens up the possibility of parole consideration for anyone with a first-degree offense committed before turning 18.
“We now know so much more about brain science and their capacity for rehabilitation,” Henneke said. “The truth is, people mature.”
‘Too old to cope’
Second chances have been a part of Luprete’s life for as long as she can remember. She grew up in California as the daughter of a parole officer-turned pastor, then spent years selling high-end makeup before moving to Texas for love and joining a prison ministry.
At the time, her son was in prison in California, the unfortunate result of a methamphetamine-fueled crime spree.
“I’m a real spiritual-minded person,” she said, “I was under the assumption that if I helped somebody here, somebody would help him there.”
So in 2014 she started volunteering at the Young Unit in Dickinson.
She started her first session off with a simple question to the disillusioned room of men in prison whites. What do you fear? They went around the circle offering answers.
“It got to this one guy,” Luprete recalled, “and he said, ‘Have you ever seen “Shawshank Redemption”?’ I’m going to end up like Brooks — when I get out I’ll be too old to cope.’ ”
He’d come in at 17 on a murder charge and wasn’t eligible for parole until 57.
Within the year, Luprete threw herself into Second Look. At the end of last year, she picked up and moved to Austin to lobby for the bill this legislative session. At the same time, she nurtured a groundswell of support from inmates and their families, working to turn a measure into a movement.
She began by launching a Facebook page and loosely knit advocacy group called Epicenter, a coalition of impacted families swapping stories in what became an online headquarters for all things Second Look.
“We started with a membership of five and now we’re at 1,200,” she said. “It’s mostly families of Second Lookers.”
Joining forces with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and the Lone Star Justice Alliance, Epicenter helped put out the Second Look Book in 2017, a collection of handwritten accounts from nearly two dozen prisoners hoping for second chances.
One of the them was Michael Tracy.
“I wish you would think about what I’ve written,” he wrote at the end, “I pray that you’ve obtained a better understanding of who we are, after so long behind bars, and realize we were just immature kids that made mistakes.”
Worthy of consideration
For some, the measure raises public safety concerns, since it opens the possibility of releasing hundreds of prisoners with violent pasts. But after a similar measure passed in California, none of the more than 450 inmates released in the first year ended up back in prison, according to a 2018 study in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
“Some people will look at an effort like this and get concerned because we are talking about serious crimes, and I’m certainly not blind to that concern, but if we meet with people and explain what we’re doing and why, I think that would cut through,” Moody said. “There is a growing consensus around good public policy when it comes to criminal justice reform, and that is bipartisan.”
Marc Levin, who heads the Center for Effective Justice and Right on Crime for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, touted the measure as both good justice and good sense.
“From a fiscal standpoint it would certainly result in some cost savings. That’s not the main reason to do this, but it’s certainly one of the benefits,” Levin said. “I think justice requires us to go back and look at these cases and identify those individuals that can be safely released.”
Outspoken victim advocate Andy Kahan didn’t come out against the bill, but pointed out that the measure could make two of the men convicted in the 1993 slayings of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña eligible for parole.
“If such a law was passed,” he said. “it would behoove all parties to make sure victims of the offenders would be properly notified that parole proceedings which they believed would not be happening for a much longer period now potentially could be expedited.”
But he conceded some prisoners could deserve a second chance.
“You can’t put everything into one blanket,” he said. “I’m sure there are cases that are worthy to be considered.”
The measure has also drawn some support from unlikely quarters. Lance Lowry, a Huntsville corrections officer and former union president, pointed out that aging inmates — who are more apt to require hospital trips and medical transports — typically require more time, money and staff to manage. Having fewer of them could ease ongoing staffing problems and offer second chances.
“It would be a good idea because people change over time — you’re talking a decade, two decades, then you’re dealing with a different individual,” he said. “People mature; they outgrow crime.”
Simple dreams
For Tracy, the moment of change came about four years into his bid. At that point, he’d spent almost all of his sentence on the same unit, a violent prison where he flouted the rules and got into fights.
But his family stayed by his side, and it was during a visit from his mother that he had a flash of clarity.
He thought about his chaotic life in the unit, and he thought about the aging woman in front of him. He thought about the big mistakes he’d made, and the daily mistakes he kept making — and the people who’d be let down if they knew.
“After that visit, I just looked at myself in the mirror and realized I needed to do more,” he said. “When you start fixing the small things, you can fix the big things.”
So he did. He took seminary and GED classes, stopped getting into fights. He started doing life recovery classes, and stopped catching disciplinary cases.
Now, he hopes to take the welding trade offered in prison, a skill that could have value in the free world — however far away that may be. But he also has simpler dreams.
“The biggest thing I’d like to do is walk outside,” he said. “I haven’t touched vegetation except grass in 20-some years.”