Sentenced to 50 Years Sheldon Johnson Decided to Turn His Life Around

the jogan experience I caught the gun charge that uh that that that triggered the felony that allowed them to be able to sentence me the way that they did in 1994 um I also caught another case at that time I was G I was I was what you call um giving out consignment on drugs um two people in particular I gave Consignment to and I ended up getting arrested for a case um and when I sent someone to go pick up the money from them they kind of just was like you know n whatever I'm not paying them so when I came home um one guy in particular I ran into him with his girlfriend he did you get that case got dismissed right the gun charge no the one that you were away for you got arrested for something you're in jail yes these guys figure since you're in jail [ __ ] it we're not going to pay him yeah I'm not going to pay and then the case that you were arrested for got to got dismissed I got so then you come home so I come home and you know I need my money I I need my money I'm just just is just me being honest this is Miss being straight you know I gave you something and we had an understanding that you were going to pay me and when I came home when I finally located this particular individual he had his girlfriend with him um and this guy owed me $5,000 for some drugs that I had gave him on consignment I gave him a eighth eighth of a kilo which is 125 gram of cocaine um and when I saw him he had a bunch of jewelry on he was with his girlfriend she had a bunch of jewelry on and I said hey man where's my money at oh y' I was going to pay you as far as I was concerned his jewy was we was even so I robbed him and I took his jewry and his girlfriend had happened to be there and um unfortunately she got caught up in the situation I had a bunch of young guys with me and they robbed her as well and he got hit in the head with the gun right here on the side of his head and he got two stitches and they gave me 25 years for that case did you hit him in the head no one of the guys that I was with hit him in the head um and he identified me in a photo array unbeknownst to me he identified me in a photo array um this guy you know as far as I was concerned he was in the streets just like I was so right I didn't really understand that you know like I said we go back to morals and values and principles and how warped they can be right in my mind at the time this is a guy who I gave something to he's living an illegal life I'm living an illegal life so as far as I was concerned at that time it was fair game and hindsight as I as I moved on and I became more mature and I began to re-evaluate myself I realized how wrong that was but that was later on at this time I committed the crime and I just kept moving another guy that I ran into he also owed me some money he owed me $7,000 and it kind of went along the same ways he was selling drugs out of an auto part store he was a Spanish guy um I got word that this is where he was at and he was selling drugs and I was going to get my money and the same circumstances kind of ensued saw him hey what's going on you know um reading in between the lines and outside the margins without really going into all of the details I robbed him because he owed me $77,000 did he get physically hurt no he didn't get touched got roughed up a little bit but there was no physical there was no physical harm nothing um going back to and morals and values and principles right in my mind he was fair game he's selling drugs I'm selling drugs you owe me money I came to take what you have in that world that was considered as permissible these are one of the rules of something that was permissible in that World um long story short um in December 1997 I get arrested for both cases really for one of them for the uh one with the guy and the girl um and then the other case drops with the auto par store the guy that I said that was selling drugs out of the auto par store um I am in the process of going to court I'm going back and forth to court I'm on Riker Island at the time it's just crazy on Riker Island um that's when The Gangs was involved uh prior to that a year before that I hadn't got involved with the gangs I was I was blood I was a gang member this where the cut come from on my face I have a bunch of stab marks from just being in those environments and being on rer island and just um Waring with other rival gangs U mostly Latin Kings and Nas um my final offer before trial was 23 years which kind of blew me away because my lawyer kept telling me that my maximum sentence was 25 years if I went to trial so on my mind I it just didn't make no sense to me why would I forfeit my rights to an appeal if it's only a two-year difference um I told the judge I would take 15 years right now I acknowledged that I had that I had made some mistakes and I had done some things that that were wrong and I said I'll take 15 years right now he refused to uh accept my plea offer and I went to trial and that I ended up getting 50 years 5 Z and um so they give you 25 for each case is that 25 for each case consecutive um so and I remember um I remember like blowing trial and just not really understanding like what was being there but not like it was like almost surreal and I remember when I went and got sting and the judge said 50 years now mind you I I had a black lawyer a black judge and a white process cutor um and I remember when he said 50 years he said I he went into all of these um reasons why he was sentencing me the way that he was sentencing me um there was never no post uh there was never no uh uh they're supposed to do a report prior to your sentencing and it's called Uh post supervision interview um pre-sentencing inter investigation it's called the PSI pre-sentencing investigation there was never no pre-sentencing investigation there was never no mitigating evidence presented on my behalf to you know highlight why I may have made some of the decisions that I made um and he just called me a minister society and he just he gave me 50 years and I remember when I um when I first got to down state which is a processing facility and they give you what they call is a Time computation sheet and on the time computation she gives you all of the numbers like the beginning of your bid how much jail time you have um and I just remember 2049 that's all I kept looking at and I was like 2049 are they [ __ ] serious this is 1998 1999 and I'm trying to do the math and I'm just like 20 49 I'm like that's 50 years from now and I remember going to the L library and um I forget how I get the world armac and something just says look up the life expectancy and I look up my life expectancy and as an African-American man my life expectancy at that time was 67 years old and I did the math and I said I'm going to die in prison man I just really believed that I was going to die in prison um one thing I learned really really quickly when I got to prison was that prison does two things to you it brings out the best or it brings out the worst and what I saw was I saw individuals who were at their worst and I saw guys who were at their best um the guys who were at their best were guys who were involved in education postsecondary education programs they were running the pro they was running the violence groups they was running the substance abuse groups um and I remember saying to myself myself I want that and I remember just being involved in so much [ __ ] because I was in a gang and um I was I was I was top of the food chain I had my own Nation I wasn't just like the random gang member I had a whole nation under me um and I was just in and out the box in and out the box solitary confinement which has been considered as unconstitutional now um um and I remember just having these moments of reflection and just asking myself like what are you going to do can you spend the next 48 years living like this I said I couldn't do it and I um I had lost all my privileges they took everything from me I was in Southport at the time which is closed now uh it's a solitary confinement facility in New York state and and um I was on a loaf which is also unconstitutional now so the loaf is uh a dietary restriction that they give you it's a chunk of bread and it has cabbage and carrots in it and they give you like a quarter of a cabbage and they give you a cup of milk when they can't take any more of your privileges this is what they would give you six days out the week on the seventh day you would get a hot meal breakfast lunch and dinner and then it would go back for 21 days they would do this six and one six and one six and one and it was at that moment where I I really said I have to change my life I have to change my life I I just can't do this um I had a wife I had family still my son was growing up um he was hearing stories about my so-call uh notoriety and um I just didn't want to I just didn't want to be that dad like I really was looking at myself and really evaluating asking myself like yo what the [ __ ] are you doing I was still I was smoking a lot of weed at the time I was drinking um jail house Hooch um and I was at my worst and I and I had to real I had to figure out how to get to my best so I decided to when I got out of salitary confinement um I did 42 days on a loaf I I went from two being 210 pounds to like 168 in like a matter of 7 months deflated me um and when I got out I made a decision that I was going to walk away and I didn't care about what the consequences was and I said to myself I've been doing bad for so long I'm going to try to do something good if all else fails I could always go back to doing bad but let me try let me give it a shot um and I ended up getting to school program I got my GED um I left the gangs alone which was a benefit for them because you know I was what you call an authoritarian I was a rule guy I'm I'm still a rule guy I like rules you know I like rules I like structure I like things to be a certain way um and it was to their advantage to get rid of me anyway plus I knew a lot of the guys who were at the top why was it to their advantage to get rid of you because I was the type of person who would say you doing that for what reason n you can't do that the rule says that you can't do this you can't do this this is what the rules say and I was the rules of the prison or the rules of the street gang the rules of the streets yeah there was rules give us a for instance okay so for instance uh I could be in a whole another facility let's say I'm in Green Haven and a guy's in Attica and they want to do something to him because they feel like he's not sharing his proceeds of drugs that he's bringing into the facility the rule say you can't do that that's his property that's his belongings so I was a rule guy and they just you know it was to their advantage to get me out of the way so when I decided to take a step back they were like yes and it was to my advantage as well um and this was in 2005 so there was no resistance none and at that time this is where lot of the uh what they call set tripping began uh the the the organization began to implode on itself the gang organization the gang organization there was a lot of infighting sets against sets and I was just always against that um and it was time for me to go and I I didn't care whatever the consequences was I was fortunate that there weren't any consequences um but I didn't care what the consequences was I just walked away and then that begins your journey this begins my journey I got into school I got my GED um from there I got involved in um correspondence courses I started interacting with guys who were teaching art aggression replacement training and I started to begin to understand how these Concepts Works what's positive visualization is um deep breathing how to remove yourself conflict resolution all of these ideas of of change began to take place with me um substance abuse I stopped smoking weed I stopped smoking cigarettes I was smoking like 30 cigarettes a day I I mean I'm literally having chest pains from smoking cigarettes and I realized that I wanted to live and the only way that I was going to be able to live and walk out of prison was to remove myself from these substances

Channel: PowerfulJRE

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Id: 4qrwmwfkWKo

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2024