刑務所で23年間服役した女性が、バーの後ろから娘を育てた方法

10歳のミケル・ウェストは、母親が学校から彼女を迎えに来なかったとき、何かがおかしいことを知っていました。

1993年のさわやかなメーデーに、彼女はデトロイト郊外の予備校の外に立ち、クラスメートが家に帰るのを見ていた。彼女の友達がさようならを振ったので、午後は夕方に出血しました。やがて、彼女は待っていた唯一の子供でした。

最後に、家族の友人が運転しました。「彼女は誰かが亡くなったように見えました」とミケルは私に言った。「何かがおかしいと言えました。」

それはミケルが刑務所の外で母親のミシェル・ウェストを見た最後の日でした。その朝、彼女を学校に降ろした後、ウェストは麻薬の陰謀と殺人罪で逮捕された。彼女は有罪判決を受け、終身刑を宣告され、過去23年間バーの後ろに住んでいました。

現在、ウェストはオバマ大統領からの減刑を申請している。彼女は大統領職に残りわずか5か月で厳しい状況に直面しており、請願がまだ保留されている11,000人の囚人から選ばれることを祈っています。「私の娘は、ボディバッグではなく、ここから母親を連れてくるチャンスに値する」とウェストはブルックリンの刑務所でのインタビューで私に語った。

ウェストは、彼女は無実であり、事件の共同被告である彼女のボーイフレンドとの関係に関係していると言います。彼女は、殺人を自白したトリガーマンは、バーの後ろで一日を過ごしなかったと指摘します。殺人の犠牲者の娘でさえ、ウェストは恩赦に値すると思うと私に言った。

しかし、大統領の減刑はこれまでほとんど非暴力の犯罪者に集中してきました。殺人容疑は西側の緋文字のようなものです。

多くの点で、その料金がなければ、ウェストは恩赦の完璧な候補になるでしょう。彼女が今日判決を受けた場合、判決法の20年間の大きな変更の後、彼女はおそらく麻薬の罪で命を得ることができなかったでしょう。そして、彼女と一緒に働いた元刑務所職員は、彼女はモデルの受刑者であり、彼女が娘の生活の不可欠な部分を維持することができた方法に感銘を受けていると言います。

ミケルの話は悲劇的に一般的です。研究者によると、約270万人の子供が、刑務所または刑務所に少なくとも1人の親を持っており、その数は過去25年間で80％以上増加しています。アフリカ系アメリカ人の子供たちのほぼ9人に1人は、投獄された親を持っています。

バーの反対側では、学校から迎えに来るのを待っていた少女ミケルが今では有名人のスタイリストになり、母親の戦いに注目を集めるために小さなスターパワーをマーシャルしようとしています。あなたが10歳のときにあなたのお母さんが刑務所に行くなら、あなたは彼女と同じように時間を過ごすからです。

ウェストは数週間前、ブルックリン刑務所のほぼ空の訪問室で彼女の話をしてくれました。外は蒸し暑い6月の午後でしたが、工業用ウォーターフロントエリアにある倉庫のような刑務所であるメトロポリタン拘置所の中は、空気が冷たくなりました。「刑務所はあなたに2つのことをするだけです-それはあなたを苦い人にするか、それはあなたをより良い人にします」と強い目と裏地のある顔をしているウェストは言いました。彼女は囚人服を着て、汚れの色と白いスカーフを額にしっかりと結びつけました。「私はより良い人になろうとしました。」

現在55歳のウェストは、GMの自動車労働者の娘としてデトロイトで育ち、都市が産業空洞化と麻薬の初期の苦しみに見舞われるのを見ていた。彼女は結婚し、20代前半に唯一の娘ミケルをもうけました。ウェストは彼女の名前を「私が私のところにできるだけ近い」と選んだ、と彼女は笑いながら言った。「私たちはチームです。」

彼女の刑務所への道は、1987年の夏に彼女と彼女の夫が車を借りに行ったときに始まりました。彼らは黒いフォードトーラスを持って帰宅したが、ウェストはそれを彼らにリースした男にもっと興味を持っていた。カーリース会社を所有していたOleeRobinsonは、ハンサムで、成功し、エレガントでした。ウェストは、彼が着るのが好きだった、パリッとしたモノグラムのスーツを今でも覚えています。

彼女は仕事を探していました、そしてロビンソンは彼女が彼のディーラーでセールスウーマンとしての仕事を見つけました。やがて、その仕事は関係に花を咲かせ、彼女は過去に彼女をだましていたと彼女が言った彼女の夫と離婚した。「それは私が今までに犯した最大の間違いだったと思います。その車を購入しました」と彼女は言いました。

検察官によると、ロビンソンとウェストはすぐにデトロイト地域で広大なドラッグリングを指揮しました。彼らは、情報源のネットワークや小さなセスナ飛行機を使用して、州の境界を越えて数千キロのコカインを精霊で処理したとして非難されました。

しかしウェストは、ロビンソンとの関係のために彼女が標的にされたと言います。彼らが一緒にいた3年間、ロビンソンは麻薬の販売について何も言わなかったと彼女は言った。彼女は彼が麻薬の陰謀の端にいることを知っていました：ディーラーは部分的にマネーロンダリングのために彼から車をリースするでしょう。信用不良者は誰でも彼のところに行ってリースを得ることができた。しかし、彼は「大きなローラー」ではなかったと彼女は言った。

最も深刻な容疑は「麻薬関連の殺人」でした。1989年6月23日の朝、シャーマン・クリスチャンという麻薬の売人がデトロイト南部の郊外の高速道路を運転していたとき、3人の男性が車の窓から彼を撃ちました。検察官は、ロビンソンとウェストが数ヶ月前に彼らを奪ったクリスチャンへの復讐をするようにヒットを命じたと言った。

その殺人で3人の銃撃者は誰も逮捕されなかった。しかし、そのうちの1人、エドワードオズボーンは、3年後に別の容疑で逮捕されました。完全な免責と引き換えに、彼はロビンソンの命令でクリスチャンを撃ち殺したと捜査官に語った。これは「息をのむような」容認であり、検察官は後に裁判官にこの事件で語った。

しかし、ウェストは、ヒットが起こるとは思っていなかったと私に言った。実際、彼女はクリスチャンと友達であり、彼の子供の名付け親でした。

彼女が殺人から4年後とロビンソンとの別れから2年半後の1993年5月に逮捕されたとき、ウェストにはいかなる前科もありませんでした。彼女はロビンソンに対する証言と引き換えに20年の刑の司法取引を提供されました。当時、娘から20年間離れるという考えは考えられなかったので、彼女はそれを断りました。

裁判は、その年の11月と12月に、ミシガン州フリントの小さな法廷で6週間にわたって行われました。検察官は、西側に対して押収された麻薬やその他の物理的証拠を紹介しませんでした。彼女に対する訴訟のほとんどは、認められた殺し屋であるオズボーンと、かつて車のトランクにコカインを見せたことがあると言ったロビンソンの別の仲間の証言に基づいていた。裁判所の文書によると、ウェストとロビンソンの間の録音された電話での会話のカップルも、彼らが「キロ」について話し合っているのを見つけました。

オズボーンは、ロビンソンが強盗された後、クリスチャンへのヒットを組織したと言った。ウェストを殺人に結びつけた唯一の事実は、ウェストがクリスチャンを探すために車を借りるために彼に250ドルを与えたというオズボーンの証言でした。「彼女はそれが何のためにあるのかを知っていた」と彼は陪審員に語った。

ウェストは、オズボーンにお金を渡したかどうかは覚えていないと私に言ったが、もしそうなら、ロビンソンはそれが何のためにあるのかを彼女に決して言わなかった。オズボーン氏は、連邦捜査官との最初の報告で、250ドルはウェストではなくロビンソンからのものであると述べた、と彼女の弁護士は裁判中に述べた。

ウェスト氏によると、裁判中に刑務所にいる間、ロビンソン氏は、自分が立ち上がって陪審員にドラッグリングや殺人に関与していないことを告げると繰り返し約束した。しかし、彼は、彼女の気持ちを裏切られ、操作されたままにして、悔い改めました。（ロビンソンの裁判弁護士であるクリストファー・アンドレオフは、弁護士と依頼人の特権を損なうため、依頼人が証言を検討したかどうかについてコメントできないと言った。終身刑も務めている刑務所でロビンソンに到達する試みは失敗した。 ）

当初、ウェストは彼女が無罪になると楽観的だった。彼女はシャツのポケットに聖書の一節を入れた付箋を保管しました。「私はあなたに何かを言います、私はこのようなことが起こり得るとは決して感じませんでした」と彼女は言いました。「私は、システムが機能することを信頼した人の1人でした。私が裁判にかけている間ずっと…私は考えています、これは起こらないでしょう、私はすぐに私の娘に家に帰るつもりです。」

しかし、裁判が進むにつれて、彼女はますます欲求不満になりました。ある時点で、裁判所の記録によると、彼女はオズボーンの証言の途中で叫び始めました。「彼は嘘をついているので覚えていません！」オズボーンが質問に答えるのに苦労したので、彼女は叫んだ。陪審員の口が開いたままになると、法廷は混乱に陥った。裁判官は、ガベルでドキドキしながら、彼女が再び声を上げたら「縛られて猿轡かませた」と彼女に言いました。

On Dec. 22, 1993, the Wednesday before Christmas weekend, the jury convicted West and Robinson after less than a day of deliberation. The judge sentenced her to two life sentences the following June, one for the drug conspiracy and the other for the murder, as well as 50 more years for lower charges like money laundering. Meanwhile, Osborne—the triggerman who admitted to the murder—went free.

A s West’s trial went on, little Miquelle was kept in the dark. From that first evening, when she was picked up from school by a family friend, her family was evasive about what had happened. West thought she’d be acquitted and back home in a couple months, so she tried to shelter Miquelle from the news. Her mother’s disappearance became the 800-pound gorilla in the room—impossible to forget but never discussed. According to a 1991 study, a quarter of female prisoners’ children do not know their mother is in prison.

But Miquelle quickly realized her mother had been arrested, a word she came to understand through MTV music videos. She saw how her grandmother’s home had been trashed by a police search. She would get brief, tinny phone calls from her mom, who would tell her that she was in trouble but couldn’t talk about it. She’d catch her relatives breaking into tears.

“I had to be strong for the whole family because they couldn’t deal with it,” Miquelle told me over coffee in Washington, D.C. a few months ago, wiping away a tear with her index finger. She’s now 33 but looks younger, with two long braids and big earrings. “No one said anything. We were all just acting like my mom was in college or something.”

After bouncing around between family members—her father was also in and out of prison—Miquelle lived with her grandmother and aunt. Finally, after the sentencing, a family friend sat her down and told her the whole story about what had happened. At age 13, three years after her mom was arrested, she piled in a car with another family friend and her two daughters to drive to Danbury prison in Connecticut (the inspiration for Orange is the New Black) and see her mother for the first time.

Miquelle and her mother were both jittery with nerves about that first meeting. But when they walked into the prison’s busy visiting room through separate doors, Miquelle ran to her mother and embraced her. They talked for hours, more about Miquelle’s life than about what it was like in prison. West remembered how different she looked from her memory: “When I left her she was a little girl,” she said. “When I saw her she was a teenager with braces.”

At one point, West started to cry. “I stopped her,” Miquelle told me. “I said, 'We haven’t seen each other in so long, let’s not do this type of visit. Let’s sit down and catch up and get to it.”

For many kids, having a parent in prison derails their lives. That’s especially true for those with moms behind bars. Only about 2% of kids with incarcerated mothers graduate from college, a 2013 study by the American Bar Association found. Other reports have found elevated rates of attention deficit disorder, behavioral problems, speech and language delays, asthma, obesity, depression, and anxiety among kids with parents in prison.

But West was determined not to let that happen to Miquelle. In the early years, she recorded cassette tapes of herself reading books and then sent the book and tape to Miquelle, so she could read to her daughter from 500 miles away. She always taped a dog-eared photo of herself on the inside cover of the book.

When Miquelle started looking for a job in high school, West wrote her resumé for her, typing away on the prison typewriter to make it as polished and professional as possible and sending the final version to her. Since then, she’s written every one of Miquelle’s resumés. Sometimes, Miquelle told me with a laugh, employers will comment on how well they’re made.

West even helped Miquelle get a job. When Miquelle moved from Detroit to New York to study fashion at Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology, her boss at Saks Fifth Avenue wouldn’t let her transfer her position to the New York branch. So West gave him a call from prison and told him he had to transfer her. He was so shocked that he did it.

From that job in New York, Miquelle went on to intern as a stylist for Patricia Field, the Emmy-award winning costume designer for Sex and the City. Now she’s living in Los Angeles and hopes to start her own clothing line. She has worked on shoots with Madonna and Beyoncé and she's styled Stevie Wonder.

Miquelle credits her grandmother Charlie and the other members of her family for her upbringing. (When Charlie died of cancer in 2010, West wasn’t allowed to leave prison to attend the funeral or see her in the days before she died.) But she also says she doesn’t think she would be as successful if her mother hadn’t worked so hard to stay connected with her.

Maud MacArthur, a psychologist who worked at Danbury prison as a family counselor, said West was a model inmate. In her 15 years at the prison, MacArthur said, she never saw a parent-child bond as strong as West and Miquelle’s. “I have done a lot of family reunification between inmates and their children, and I have to say that Michelle’s bond with her daughter is one for the books,” MacArthur told me. “She took that job as a mother very, very seriously, even though she was behind bars.”

Now, West works as a counselor to her fellow inmates, teaching a class about how to be a good mom. “I tell them to write even if their child doesn't write back,” she said. “Prisoners need to have a constant presence in their children's lives.”

Inmates will show her cards they drew for their sons, or ask her questions about how to deal with a teenager acting out. “I’ve been doing this since Miquelle was 10 years old, so I know how to do it by now,” she added.

The two still talk on the phone every day, connected over a crackling line, timing their conversations in 15-minute intervals before the prison system cuts them off. West sends Miquelle torn-out pages of magazines with outfits she likes, and Miquelle tells her about the latest shoots she’s working on.

West is also studying social media, even though she’s never touched a smartphone or even made a Google search. She’s read books like Twitter for Dummies in order to help her daughter make the best use of social media in her career. Sometimes, she writes up tweets for Miquelle, sending them over the federal prison’s strictly regimented Corrlinks email system. Then Miquelle will tweet them out from her account. “I say, ‘Tweet this, Instagram this, this would be a good post,’” West said. “She’ll say, ‘I got a lot of likes on this one, mom.’”

Studying social media is also a way for West to prepare for what she hopes will someday be a release. “I can tell you more about Instagram than the average person out there can,” she said. “I can’t go out there after 23 years in prison and not know what Snapchat, Twitter, and all these are.”

Over the course of a three-hour interview, West slipped a few times into dark, depressed silences. But when she talked about Miquelle, her face lit up. It was a little easier for her to smile, to laugh her slow, powerful laugh.

“Some people get sucked into the abyss in here,” she said, her eyes focusing on something beyond the prison walls. “But I don’t feel trapped. This is not my reality. I care more about what’s happening outside, with my daughter—I live vicariously through her.”

I n her cubicle in her old prison in Connecticut, West had an inspiration board with postcards from where Miquelle traveled. In the middle, she pinned a photo of President Obama, looking down with a smile. The day Obama was elected, “I said, this is the man who is gonna get me out of here,” West told me. “I believed in him.”

Over the last seven and a half years, Obama has spoken forcefully about how our mass incarceration system is breaking up families like West’s. He's commuted the sentences of 562 inmates, more than any president since Gerald Ford. Most were people without substantial criminal records who were convicted of long sentences for drug crimes, and 198 were serving life sentences.

But in his clemency grants and advocacy for reduced prison sentences, Obama has focused on nonviolent offenders. “We are going to be a little more hesitant about how we’re thinking about sentencing reform for violent crime,” he said at a White House event last year. Under a program sponsored by legal aid groups and encouraged by Obama, federal inmates who have served at least 10 years on nonviolent charges can get a pro bono attorney to help them prepare a clemency petition.

West applied for an attorney through the program last year and was denied because of her murder conviction. So she wrote her clemency petition herself, with some help from Amy Povah, an activist who advocates for female inmates and a clemency recipient herself. West submitted her petition in May, and peppered it with quotes from Obama, like "in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

I asked her what she would want to tell the President if she got a chance to meet him. “I wouldn’t be one of the ones who disappoints him,” she said. “And if he doesn’t feel like I deserve a second chance, at least give my daughter a second chance.”

Now, as the clock is ticking on the Obama administration, West’s clemency petition is one of more than 11,000 currently pending. She hopes that her 23 years in prison, her clean disciplinary record, the lack of hard evidence in the case, and the fact that the shooter went free without serving time will outweigh the violent conviction.

Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who wasn’t involved in West’s case, said that the prosecution not including drugs as evidence in a drug case was “unusual.”

“We usually had some drugs that had been seized—they were tested and analyzed and presented to the jury,” he said. Osler, who’s now a criminal justice professor at the University of St. Thomas, said that building prosecutions solely on the testimony of cooperators and co-defendants can lead to concerns about the validity of a conviction. “We’re talking about people who have an incentive for the case to go forward, so someone else can take a fall,” he said. “We see again and again that that dynamic, even though it works sometimes, leads to some travesties.”

Kemba Smith, a friend of West who served alongside her in Danbury prison for nine years before she received clemency from Bill Clinton in 2000, said Obama shouldn’t only grant clemency to prisoners with nonviolent charges. “When it comes to prison and incarceration, to focus just on nonviolent offenders isn’t enough,” she said. She remembered how West helped counsel her on keeping in touch with her own infant son. “I feel guilty because I’m home and she doesn’t have a release date,” Smith said.

If she gets a clemency, West plans to move to Los Angeles to live with Miquelle, at least at first, helping her grow her personal brand on social media: “I’m gonna take her career to the next level,” she said with a laugh. She’d complete her associate degree in business—she got within three credits of finishing while in prison before the program she was completing was discontinued. Eventually, she’d want to get a job working to help fix issues in the prison system, “for the people I’d be leaving behind.”

Even the daughter of the murder victim in West’s case, Candace Christian, believes Obama should show West mercy. “I definitely think that she deserves clemency,” she told me in a phone interview. Christian, now 30, was three years old when her dad died, and doesn’t remember much from that time. But she’s close friends with Miquelle, and has seen the impact of her mom’s absence.

“She’s been in there a long time and I really do think that she deserves to come home and spend as much time as she can with her daughter,” Christian said. “I just know that Miquelle has really suffered the most, just being out there by herself.”

On a sunny morning late this past March, as vibrant cherry trees bloomed on the National Mall, Miquelle stood in line to enter the White House. Dressed in a navy blue suit designed by a friend specifically for her, she was nervous, but she tried not to let it show.

Miquelle was attending a White House event where formerly incarcerated people met with Obama administration officials to talk about criminal justice policy and clemency. She was invited by an advocacy group that wanted to help her raise awareness for her mom’s case.

Over the course of a whirlwind day, she met activists like former Obama advisor and CNN commentator Van Jones, listened to clemency recipients’ stories, and handed out cards with the hashtag #FREEMICHELLEWEST. More than a few former inmates who had served time alongside West gave her big bear hugs. While Miquelle wasn’t allowed to plead her mom’s case directly to Obama or senior officials, she gave an emotional speech to a group of criminal justice reformers. “She’s the strongest woman I know,” she said of her mom.

After her speech, three lawyers came up to Miquelle and promised to help her mother with her clemency petition. But in the next few months, one bowed out because of a “personal emergency,” and the other two stopped responding to emails. West thinks they got cold feet after seeing the murder conviction.

Miquelle isn’t letting herself be deterred. Talking about her mom’s case—she also spoke at events at Columbia and American Universities this year—is “a form of therapy” for her, she told me. Even though she finds herself starting to cry, she likes the chance to tell her mom’s story and explain how the criminal justice system affects families. “I want to become a ‘fashion activist’—spreading a message and dressing to the nines all at the same time,” she said. She’s vowed not to get married until her mother is out of prison.

West is torn. She loves her daughter and her support. But she also wants to protect her, and she wants her to live her life. “Even today, I still see my little girl that I left back in 1993,” she said.

“If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have no fight in me,” West said. “I call her—just hearing her voice, it brings me to a better place. Sometimes it’s hard… But Miquelle is what motivates me, she’s what keeps me going.”

Casey Tolan is a National News Reporter for Fusion based in New York City.