small cages used to hold a prisoner inside a secure prison. I wondered what danger the caged men presented that they couldn’t sit with the other incarcerated men on the benches. Two young men stood in each of the first two cages. In the third cage, which was wedged into the corner, sat a small man in a wheelchair. His wheelchair faced the back of the cage, so he could not look out into the room. I couldn’t see his face, but I was certain it was Joe. A correctional officer was constantly walking into the room and calling out a name, prompting one of the men to get up from his bench and follow the officer down a hallway where he would meet with an assistant warden or whomever they were scheduled to see. Finally, the officer called out, “Joe Sullivan, legal visit.” I walked over to the man and said that I was the attorney for the legal visit. He summoned two officers, who went to Joe’s cage to unlock it. The cage was so small that when they tried to remove Joe’s wheelchair, the spokes on the chair got caught on the cage, and they couldn’t budge it.
I stood there watching for several minutes while more officers got involved in an increasingly elaborate effort to dislodge Joe’s wheelchair from the tight cage. They pulled up on the wheelchair. Then they pushed down on the chair, raising the front off the ground, but this didn’t work, either. They tugged at the chair with loud grunts and tried to force it free, but it was completely stuck.
Two inmate trustees who had been mopping the floor stopped to watch the officers struggle with the wheelchair and the cage. They finally offered to help out, even though no one had asked for their input. The officers silently accepted the assistance of the inmates, but none of them could come up with a solution. As the staff became more frustrated by their inability to get Joe out of the cage, there was talk of using pliers and hacksaws, of putting the cage on its side with Joe in it. Someone suggested trying to lift Joe from his wheelchair to remove him without the chair, but both Joe and the chair were packed so tightly into the cage that no one could get in to move him.
I asked the guards why he was in the cage in the first place, which prompted a brusque response: “Lifer. All lifers have to be moved with higher security protocols.”
I couldn’t see Joe’s face while all of this was going on, but I could hear him crying. He occasionally made a whining sound, and his shoulders jerked up and down. When the staff proposed turning the cage on its side, he moaned audibly. Finally, the prisoner trustees suggested lifting the cage and tilting it slightly, which everyone agreed to try. The two trustees lifted and tilted the heavy cage, while three officers yanked Joe’s chair with a violent pull that finally dislodged it. The guards gave each other high fives, the inmate trustees walked away silently, and Joe sat motionlessly in his chair in the middle of the room, looking down at his feet.
I walked over to him and introduced myself. His face was tear-stained, and his eyes were red, but he looked up at me and began clapping his hands giddily. “Yeah! Yeah! Mr. Bryan.” He smiled and offered me both of his hands, which I took.
I wheeled Joe to a cramped office for our legal visit. He continued cheering quietly and kept clapping his hands in excitement. I had to argue with the attending prison guard for permission to close the door and talk confidentially with Joe. The officer eventually relented. Joe seemed to relax when I closed the door. Despite the terrifying start to the visit, he was extremely cheerful. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was talking to a young child.
I explained to Joe how disappointed we were that the State had destroyed the biological evidence that might have allowed us to prove he was innocent through DNA testing. We had discovered that both the victim and one of his co-defendants had died. The other co-defendant would not say anything about what had really happened, making it extremely difficult for us to challenge Joe’s conviction. I then offered our new idea about challenging his sentence as unconstitutional, which might create another way for him to possibly go home. He smiled throughout my