OPINION | Yes, Mercy Can Coexist With Accountability in Our Justice System

by Marcus Harrison Green

(This article is copublished with The Seattle Times.)

I still recall the humanity in William Tolliver even as he'll soon stand trial accused of the inhumane.

Tolliver, along with Marquise Tolbert, is charged with first-degree murder in a January 2020 downtown Seattle shooting that left Tanya Jackson dead and six others wounded. Some are still healing from the gunshot wounds suffered that day.

Tolbert's trial is underway. Tolliver's will follow shortly after.

Both 24 when arrested, they have pleaded not guilty and no verdict has been reached. But the carnage captured on video, the eyewitness testimony, and the zeal in our city for a crime crackdown has stirred a public zest for punishment.

I've already heard Tolliver called a murderer, a gang member, and a monster. I don't know if he is any of those things, but I do know that he is human.

He is the cousin of my youngest brother.

I previously wrote about my memories of Tolliver, a child at the time my family always thought was more deserving than the environment provided him. I remember his nasally laugh and dreams of basketball stardom against a backdrop of an upbringing unsheltered from violence and drugs.

However, I'm not interested in debating his innocence or guilt. I want to speak of humanity. Ours.

Tolliver's potential incarceration coincides with the ending of Kimonti Carter's.

The 43-year-old Carter was released last month after serving 25 years of what he thought would be a life sentence for aggravated first-degree murder.

At 18 he killed Corey Pittman during a drive-by shooting, mistaking the former Lincoln High homecoming king and aspiring lawyer for a rival gang member.

In the years since, Carter became president of the Black Prisoners' Caucus (BPC); founded T.E.A.C.H., a prisoner-led higher education program at Clallam Bay Corrections Center; and appeared in a documentary examining the toll of our criminal justice system on Black and Brown communities.

On a visit to Clallam Bay in 2018 for a BPC event, I saw firsthand a man who'd been incarcerated alongside Carter return and thank him for the example Carter had set. An example of how to find meaning and purpose in life when neither existed in your life previously.

Carter became a role model for those returning to communities, with the message that you are not defined forever by your worst mistake.

He never once blamed anyone but himself for his predicament.

A predicament he'd still be in if not for last year's 5-to-4 Washington State Supreme Court ruling that sentences of life without parole given to those younger than 21 were unconstitutional.

Carter was released after a resentencing hearing sent him home with time served. His supporters were happy. Others, including Pittman's family, were not.

Pittman's family has every right to their feelings. There is no timetable for victim or survivor forgiveness.

It is not their job to assess the complex web of circumstance, upbringing, social environment, and generational traumas people spin out of.

It is not their job to address cycles of violence that ravage communities — taking away mentors, teachers, fathers, mothers, friends, brothers, and sisters either by death or incarceration.

No, it is not their job to look at a human being and a racist criminal justice system in context.

It is our job.

We should stop pitting their individual pain against the systemic pain doled out by society.

Black prisoners make up more than a quarter of the prison population serving life without the possibility of parole, while making up less than 5% of the total population. In this state, that same population is nearly six times as likely to be imprisoned as white Washingtonians.

Washington effectively got rid of parole in 1984 and was the first state in the nation to enact the three-strikes law, handing a mandatory life sentence to anyone convicted of three felonies. At a time when pundits belligerently wail against the "cancellations" of people, we have a four-decade streak of canceling all possibilities of human growth.

Perhaps it's one of the reasons E2SSB 5036 has been stalled in the legislature the past two sessions. The bill would allow those with long sentences to request parole review from a board consisting of representatives from multiple walks of life, including survivors of violence, after serving 15, 20, and 25 years of time served.

"Life without parole may seem fair on the surface, and there are people who need to remain removed from society. But we cannot be motivated in our search for justice by emotion," said Waldo Waldren-Ramsey of racial-justice advocacy nonprofit Washington CAN, who has advocated for the bill.

Not every incarcerated person will be Carter. Not every person will demonstrate the worthiness of a second chance.

That isn't the point. For the skeptical, I am not asking for the guarantee of a second chance, simply the consideration of it. I look at Tolliver and ask, "Why restrict hope from someone's life, especially if they've rarely experienced it?"

Our state, much like our country, does punishment well. It does redemption quite poorly.

For those embracing punishment, I ask you this:

At what moment does someone stop being worthy of consideration as a human being?

At what moment do we stop factoring in all that has made someone what they are?

At what moment do we allow an act of inhumanity to lead us to enact inhumane policies?

And in enacting and tolerating them, how do we ourselves not erode our humanity?

Whatever your answer, I hope you can live with it.

Others must.

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Featured Image: Illustration by Vladimir Verano.