“My attorney told me to plead not guilty,” Owen says and then stops himself. “No, I was pleading not guilty. And I lied.”
“Do you often lie to get what you want, Mr. Kernes?” one of them asks. It takes actual effort to not run over there and smack that smug look off his face.
“No, I don’t, but in that situation I did,” Owen says, keeping his composure. “I was a kid. I was scared. I was facing a lot of time.”
“It says here that the prosecutor did offer you a deal.”
“It would’ve required me to testify against my friends and put them in jail for a very long time. I couldn’t do that.”
“What about now?”
“The trial is over. They are serving their time. This is a parole hearing and I want to be as honest as possible. I want to apologize to the Kim family for causing them all of this distress. I know that Mr. Kim must’ve suffered severe PTSD from going through what we put him through and I am very sorry for that. My apology doesn’t come with any qualifications or explanations. I did a bad thing and that’s what I have realized after all of this time in prison."
I put my hand over my racing heartbeat but it doesn’t slow it down one bit.
Why is he saying all of these things? After all of this time, why is he lying like this?
Then I answer my own question.
Of course. How could I be so stupid?
He’s telling them what they want to hear.
If he comes up there and makes excuses for what he did or minimizes his role in the robbery then they will think that he hasn’t learned his lesson.
It’s a chess game and he’s finally playing to win.
I can still remember how much my tears burned while I begged him to testify for the prosecution.
They were offering one year in jail and three years probation. I pleaded for him to take their deal. They had everything on video and the law on their side. He had waited for them in the car while they committed the robbery. That meant that he was as guilty of whatever they did as they were.
But Owen refused. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe that he would be convicted. It was more that he couldn’t turn on his friends. But now that everything is said and done, now that he’s at his first parole board hearing, he can speak as freely as he wishes. Or rather, he can tell them whatever they want to hear.
After Owen finishes his statement with another impassioned plea, it’s my turn. I came here thinking that I would stand behind his old story one hundred percent and plead for them to let him go because he wasn’t really part of what transpired.
But now, as I walk up to the front, I have no idea what I’m going to say.
My hands shake along with the rest of my body. I am thankful for the blazer that I wore over my button-down shirt.
With every step I take, I can feel the wetness under my arms spreading.
I have always been terrified of public speaking. Whenever I would see a podium set up in the classroom, my body would shut down and I would often pretend that I had some sort of illness. If I knew a speech was coming up, I would skip that class or school altogether. But right now, I wish to God I had a podium to lean on.
I stop in the middle of two tables. Owen and his attorney sit to my left and the prosecutor to my right. There are chairs set up behind the prosecutor for the Kim family but they are all empty.
I clear my throat and take a deep breath.
“I’m Owen’s younger sister. He asked me to be here as a character witness,” I start. That’s all that I can use from my previous speech.
Shit!
Okay, focus. Just speak from the heart. But don’t say too much that’s contradictory with what he has just said.
Shit! Shit!
“I came here with everything that I was going to say memorized, but now I just want to tell you about my brother. We did not have the best childhood. Our eldest brother died in a car crash sending our mother, who wasn’t much of a mother, into a downward spiral. Then our father went out to the store for milk and never came back. This crushed her even more and she stopped getting out of bed. She never really had a job or did any of the cooking or the shopping or cleaning so it was just us doing everything. I am not telling you this as an excuse for what Owen did, but I just want you to know what kind of world we were living in at the time. When Owen got older, he started hanging out with the wrong kind of people. There aren’t very many good types of people running around the streets of Boston late at night. He was young and didn’t think that anything could happen. Well, it did. I am very sorry to Mr. Kim and the rest of the Kim family for what happened. I know that he has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and I can imagine how hard it must’ve been for him to return to his job. My only consolation is that he was not physically hurt.”
29
When we listen to him…
When I speak to them, I focus on their eyes so that they know that I am being genuine but I’m not really looking at them. More like through them.
It’s a trick Nicholas told me about on the flight here. Looking into people’s eyes while speaking terrifies me but avoiding eye contact will make me appear deceitful.
So, he told me to just look behind them. Through them and at some inanimate object right over their shoulder.
“As you can see, Owen is not here pleading his case,” I continue. “He’s not saying that he’s not guilty. He’s not trying to make you believe something that the jury didn’t. He is telling you that he is guilty and that he is sorry for what happened. Very, very sorry. And that means that prison has taught him exactly what it was supposed to. It rehabilitated him.”
My speech doesn’t come to a close the way it goes in movies. It doesn’t finish on an uplifting piece of music that tells the audience that the right side will prevail at the end. But I sit down with a quiet feeling of satisfaction nevertheless.
It’s over. I have made my case.
I have pleaded for leniency and I did it off the cuff and from my heart.
The parole board continues to shuffle their papers and then it’s the prosecutor’s turn. Instead of focusing on who Owen is, his speech is more about the purpose of doing time.
“Prison has four purposes: retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation,” he says. “Owen Kernes sits before you, telling you everything that you want to hear. You don’t want to hear excuses. You want him to give you a categorical apology. But the Kim family are not the only people who Mr. Kernes has hurt. He has committed a crime against society. He is a criminal, and depriving him of his freedom is the way to make him pay a debt to society for his crime.”
What fucking crime? Sitting in the car while his idiot friend waves a gun around until it goes off? What exactly did he do that gives you permission to take his twenties away from him? And now you want even more?
“Incapacitation is the removal of criminals from society so that they can no longer harm innocent people. We did that with Owen, it is up to you to decide if we did it for long enough. Deterrence refers to preventing future crimes. Given Owen’s upbringing and his past,” the prosecutor says, “it is unclear whether prison will deter him to not commit crimes in the future. But if he remains incarcerated, you will be able to rest soundly at night.”