Blind Plea - The Blind Plea

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Episode 7: With her Stand Your Ground claim denied, Deven was stuck in Shelby County Jail awaiting trial. She was up against near impossible odds. From what everyone told her, it was incredibly difficult for a Black woman to get acquitted in Shelby County. So she was faced with an impossible choice: whether or not to gamble with her life and take a blind plea. Resources: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, use a safe computer and contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at www.thehotline.org or call 1-800-799-7233. You can also search for a local domestic violence shelter at www.domesticshelters.org/. If you have experienced sexual assault and need support, visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) at www.rainn.org or call 1-800-656-HOPE Have questions about consent? Take a look at this guide from RAINN at www.rainn.org/articles/what-is-consent  Learn more about criminalized survival https://survivedandpunished.org/  This series is created with Evoke Media, a woman-founded company devoted to harnessing the power of storytelling to drive social change. https://weareevokemedia.com  This series is presented by Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of power in their communities toward working people and families, and who have the vision and capacity for building a truly representative economy. Learn more at caseygrants.org or visit on social media @caseygrants. Follow host Liz Flock on Twitter @lizflock. For more stories of women and self-defense, check out her book “The Furies” from Harper Books, available for pre-order now. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-furies-elizabeth-flock Interested in bonus content and behind the scenes material? Subscribe to Lemonada Premium right now in the Apple Podcasts app by clicking on our podcast logo and the "subscribe” button. Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and all other Lemonada series: lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonada This show contains violent content and scenes of domestic abuse. What I remember from meeting with her the first time was thatshe was nervous. On December 6th, 2019, Marianne Rosenzweig arrived at Shelby County Jail in Columbiana, Alabama. She was there to talk to Devon, who had been housed in the jail for nearly two years. Marianne wasn't just any ordinary visitor. She was at Shelby on official business as a forensic and clinical psychologist hired by Devon's lawyer, Dan Alexander? I'm not certain exactly what he told me about the case, but I do remember that he told

me that she had shot her boyfriend in the back of the head, and that that fact made it was difficult to explain it in terms of a self-defense argument. When Marianne came to visit, it had been almost exactly a year since Devon lost her stand-your-ground hearing back in 2018. Devon wrote that the loss broke her spirit. Since then, she'd been living out each day in this Alabama jail for her future wasn't certain and the conditions were unbearable. There was constant conflict, fist fights and relationship drama. And with her bond set at $75,000, Devon wasn't leaving anytime soon.

In her emails to Aunt Leslie, Devon tried to stay up beat. She gushed over cute pictures of her daughter that Aunt Leslie sent. She wrote about how reading the Bible gave her guidance, and she often repeated variations of the phrase, everything happens for a reason. But other times, she was barely holding on. She wrote to Aunt Leslie, locked down for 10 hours a day, barely enough food to feel full. Sleeping on a mat so paper thin, you can feel the concrete underneath you. Not being able to shower when you want to, can't turn off the lights when you're ready for bed. This isn't living, even if I'm guilty of what I did.

This is suffering. The gears of the criminal legal system turned so slowly, so Devon had to live day after day with the uncertainty of her path forward, whether she'd proceed with trial or get offered some kind of plea bargain, and take it in a bid to get less time. If Devon did decide to go to trial and face a jury, she'd need to have a rock solid defense. That's where Marianne came in. Dan thought a report from her could show Devon was in fear for her life the night she shot John. Marianne had worked hundreds of murder cases in her career, some of which involved abused

women. She usually worked for the defense side, but she was quick to tell me that her evaluations are as unbiased as possible. I'm not what we call in my business a hired gun, which would be someone who is going to draw conclusions that are consistent with what the defense attorney is hoping that the expert will find. In fact, Maryanne told me she had previously been hired on similar cases where she found

women's accounts of abuse to be not credible. Women do lie. I don't think that happens the majority of the time, but there are those cases you don't know by looking at a case on the surface. Research shows false accusations of domestic violence and sexual assault are rare. But like Mary Ann said, she doesn't go into a case automatically believing anyone's story. She's all about getting beyond the surface of a case. So that's the mentality Mary Ann brought when she sat down with Devon for an interview in Shelby County Jail.

So that's the mentality Maryanne brought when she sat down with Devon for an interview in Shelby County jail. Maryanne began with a series of questions, many about the shooting itself, but she also delved into Devon's relationship with her mom, the first time she drank alcohol and her experience dropping out of college, all to better understand the alleged crime. As we were talking she would correct herself if she realized that she had given me some, had made a statement previously that was, was not correct. So compared to other women or people in general that you've interviewed, did you find her to be credible on that first or second interview? Yes, I did. She also came across as being, to me, she seemed to be almost honest to a fault. This is Blind Plei. I'm Liz Block.

If Devon was so credible, if she was telling the truth about acting in self-defense, then why did she take a blind plea? Now if this podcast is the first time you're hearing about blind pleas, I'm with you. I hadn't heard of them either, not until Devon's case, and I've researched a lot of cases. The main difference from a regular plea is this, the defendant agrees to plead guilty without knowing the punishment. They don't find out until after they sign the deal, and that's pretty intimidating. So Devin's decision to take a blind plea instead of going to trial was one of the biggest

one she ever made. She had to consider three factors. One, the realities of her case. How would a jury reckon with the fact that she shot John in the back of his head while he was lying down? Two, the place it all happened, Shelby County. As a black woman, would Devon even stand a chance in such a conservative place, especially considering she could face life behind bars. And three, the judge. How sympathetic would he be to Devon's story?

Because if she didn't go to trial, a blind plea would put her fate entirely in his hands. Wailing these considerations was part of Devon's effort to navigate a system that wasn't set up for her and ultimately the system won. And what other files do you have here because I know it's a thick folder, you don't have to necessarily go through all of it, but just like... Well, some of it, this is not the totality of what I looked at because a lot of that was on my computer, but let me hold this out.

I'm watching Marianne sift through a large stack of papers. We're in her home office in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and it's cozy. The walls are lined with bookshelves, a few house plants sit in front of the large windows, taking in the waning afternoon light. My interview notes, which you will see that a lot of, what, when I'm writing, a lot of it is shorthand, which means that I, when a page of my notes is probably at least two to three pages of someone else's notes. And it looks like I have about,

let's see, I'm over that, I have over a hundred pages of notes that I took from my interviews with with Devon and the other people that I interviewed. It's safe to say Marianne is incredibly thorough. She interviewed Devon three times for a total of 11 hours. In her stack of files, she has notes from those interviews, plus from interviews with many of

the people you've already heard from on this show. John's dad, Henry, his mom Christine, Devon's dad, and stepmom, and her sister Simone. As for Alexis, Maryann relied on the taped interviews Alexis gave to the police right after John was killed. The final report she created and sent to Dan is 26 pages long and divided up into sections, including family history, a personality assessment, a mental health exam, and so much more. As she interviewed the people important to the case, Mary Ann came to the same roadblock I did, that there were two very conflicting accounts of what happened that night in the trailer.

Alexis is saying in her interview that Devon had the gun. Devon was shooting up the trailer. That John was scared that Devon was going to shoot him and that she was also being abusive to him and that John was afraid of Devon and that Devon was the one who was the abuser. So right from the beginning, there's that disparity. It's clear, it wasn't just a difference of sometimes people remember things differently or they interpret things differently. These were two very different presentations about what happened that night. So clearly, somebody's not telling the truth. Somebody's lying. Either it's Devon or Alexis.

This made me think back to the police interviews with Devon and Alexis. It's unsettling how they tell almost the exact same story, but with the roles reversed. I was curious how Mary Ann handled that in her report because it was a major roadblock in Devin's case. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts at all about that extreme disparity in these stories.

At that point, when I have these two very, what I'm trying to do, see, is there anything that will help me to catch anybody in a lot. So sort this out. Is there anything in the terms of the evidence that would show who's telling the truth and who's lying? And there was. And that the key to that lies in the cell phone records.

Authorities that extracted more than 14,000 text messages from Devin's phone that stretched back about a year before John died. Particularly when I looked at the text messages, it was clear to me that I have the voice of the person who's dead, who cannot be interviewed, who's admitting to acknowledging any way that he had been abusive to her, even having fired a shot at her one time. And so it was clear to me from the tax messages that what Devon had said about him being abusive to her in some of the specific ways that she had told me about how he had been abusive to her were there in the tax messages.

And so it did not fit at all with what Alexis was saying. As Marianne says, John acknowledged his abuse in the text, telling Devon that he knew the things he did emotionally and physically hurt her a lot. In those messages, he would check in with Devon about the injuries he inflicted on her, injuries that left her bloody, bruised, and whoon cussed. Devon would often text back that she was not doing well. At different times, she wrote that, it feels like someone is ripping my head in half,

that she needed stitches, that she was trying to get the blood out of her hair. And that quote, I feel like I got hit by a bus. John was sometimes kind in his replies, telling her, let me know if anything gets worse, okay? Or even apologizing. I'm stressed, sorry I take it out on you. But other times he threatened Devon in his messages,

writing, I'ma fuck you the fuck up. Or you need to pull the depression stick out of your ass. He often accused Devon of sleeping with someone else, and once he threatened to hurt her if the accusations were true. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry, he wrote, but if I'm right, it's gonna be a rough week. Many times, their messages were more mundane, even loving. Typical texts partner-, partners sent one another. John asked for grocery lists from Devon

so we could go pick up food for the trailer. And on the night she stayed with Alexis, he wrote messages to Devon like, good night, I love you. I hope you guys are okay. I pray I make some money for y'all ASAP. I miss you guys. Devon would reply that she missed and loved him too. But those

moments of peace never lasted, and John's messages would inevitably become abusive again. It's here in the text that you can see the cycle of abuse play out. The stages of tension, violence, reconciliation, and calm. The evidence is right there. But this conclusion of Mary Ann's, the Devon-Actit and Self-Defense, was remarkably different from where the investigators landed. As you heard in the last episode, investigator Mike Melhoff was fully on board with Alexis' story. He seemed to accept what she was saying as being truthful and that he began to see Devon's motive is being jealousy

about John's sexual relationship with Alexis, rather than that she shot him out of fear that he was going to kill her. Did you ever see any indication when you were interviewing Devon that she was jealous? I did not see that. And I, of course, I questioned Devon about that. And what she told me was that about that. And what she told me was that she knew that they were, she suspected that they were having sexual relations, but the way she looked at it was that that was that much less sex that John was asking her for. So she did not object to his sexual relationship with Alexis. The jealousy angle that the investigators and prosecution had advanced in the stand-in-ground hearing was one thing.

But the more damning reality of the case was the indisputable fact that Devon shot John in the back of his head after he had been laying down for around five minutes. That's often the case that women may wait for a moment when they feel like it may be their only opportunity that they can save themselves. According to Mariano, there's a psychological rationale

for why Devin didn't just grab the gun, her cell phone, and her daughter and run out of the trailer to call the police. She said she had, but wish she had, as that's what she would have done if she thought to do so, as she really didn't want to kill him.

In my opinion, it's possible that her depression and or her level of intoxication interfered with her ability to consider this as an option. In her report, Marianne writes that at the time of the shooting, Devon was dealing with serious mental health challenges. PTSD from John's horrific abuse, major depression from the isolation, violence, and hopelessness she endured, and alcohol abuse as her means of coping.

Maryanne says all of these factors, especially the depression, impaired Devon's cognition so much that it was difficult for her to think of ways to escape her situation. When Maryanne interviewed Devon two years after the shooting, Devon told her she still felt depressed, but it wasn't as bad as it was before. Antidepressants and a few counseling sessions in jail had helped. After considering all of it, Devon's mental state, the 14,000-plus texts, and many interviews and case files,

Maryann had her conclusion. The same one our team came to. In conclusion, it's my opinion that Devon was an imminent fear for her life when she made the decision to kill John. Marianne sent her report off to Dan. At the time, he was building Devon's defense, and truth be told, he was a little apprehensive about taking it to trial. Because even though Marianne's report painted a sympathetic portrait of Devon, he knew the facts were the facts, and that a jury probably wouldn't have the same understanding

of why Devon shot John when she did the way she did. My concern was getting the jury to, without a better way of saying it, to walk a mile in her shoes. And I don't know whether we could have got them all there or not. Because they don't understand domestic violence or because she's black or because all of you love. I mean, I tell all my defendants, anybody, when you walk into a courtroom in Shelby County, eight of the 12 jurors already think you're guilty. Like, they don't need to hear anything, it's not innocent until proven guilty, we can tell them that 100 times,

it's a judge will tell them that, but that's not what they think. I mean, they think if you're sitting in that chair, you've done something wrong. Throughout the reporting process, our team talked to local lawyers, activists, and community leaders about Devon's case. And they had a lot to say about the fact that it all went down in Shelby County, Alabama.

If Devon decided to put her life in the hands of a jury, she needed to understand Shelby County's jury pool. When you're doing business in Shelby County, you better be ready to go to war, because they do not play in Shelby County. The likelihood of conviction it would be pretty high would think. She never would have gotten a fair trial in Shelby County because a jury of her peers, which would have been black women who look like her almost nonexistent in the county. I was told by an attorney that a black person doesn't have a chance and she has to count it.

That last voice is Reverend Kenneth Dukes. He wears many hats in Shelby County. He's a pastor, founder, and president of the Shelby County and WACP chapter, a bus driver for the Shelby County school system, and a bunch of other things too. The community really looks to him for support, so he gets a lot of phone calls. His ringer went off a couple of times during our interview. So you do this, I'm gonna turn this off. When the car rings, this, every day I'm dealing with something.

You know, our calling or encouraging or inspiring, or trying to put someone in contact with someone that can get them legal advice on how to approach a situation. That's kind of my daily thing now. The calls are often about difficult situations. Like in August 2022, when a local police officer was caught sending a racist text to his co-workers, it happened in the town of Vincent about 30 miles from Caliara. Community members called on Duke's for support, and together they organized and packed a city council meeting. And so it kind of pushed the mayor and the council and the council their hand to do something. Ultimately, you know, they voted to disband the police department.

The department, which had been made up of three officers, was no more. After dissolving it, the city council announced they'd recruit and rebuild the police force from scratch. Duke's was interviewed a lot about the incident when it happened. He told the New York Times, this was the quote, type of the iceberg when it came to racism in the community.

He said something similar to our team. My description of Shabby County is a beautiful place to live. It's a wonderful place to raise a family. But it has those demons, so to speak. This is the place where the landmark Supreme Court case shall be county versus holder originated. The one that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a result, it's become more difficult for many people of color and low-income people to vote. So it's not that surprising that a place like this is also lacking representation in its criminal legal system.

In Shelby County, we've never had a person of color to sit on a bench ever in the history of this county. We rarely, if ever, have more than one person sit on a jury of color. The jury selection seems like it just fell off when it comes to African Americans, you know, or just any people of color. And so we've, we want to know why. Of course, the excuse is we'll just go through this random list of voting or whatever, you know, but it's systematic and it's not intentional. We know that for a fact. Duke says you're just about guaranteed to get a majority white older jury in Shelby County.

A jury that might be more prejudiced against an interracial relationship like John and Devins. For context, Alabama was the last state in the country to lift their interracial marriage ban in the year 2000. And even though the ban hadn't been enforceable for decades because of the Supreme Court decision, loving Vs. Virginia, a lot of Alabamaians still voted to keep it. That history speaks to why Dan was concerned. The racial dynamic factors into my decision making and my strategy because when I'm trying

to tell her her chance of winning a trial, I mean, I have to factor in that I'm gonna have probably in all wide jury, and there's still a certain segment of those people who don't approve of an all-racial relationships, even let alone anything else that comes with it. And I mean, it was always a dynamic in the back of our mind. Dan told me part of him really wanted to go to trial

because he wanted to win this case with Devon. At the same time, there's a substantial risk there, and you know she's the one that bears that risk. That risk was weighing on Devon as she sat in jail. If Devon went to trial, she could walk free, or she could face a hefty sentence. In Alabama, the range for murder with a gun is 20 years to life imprisonment. Reading through her emails from jail, you can tell Devin felt in the dark about the legal process. Her trial date was delayed over and over again. Then in April 2019, the prosecutor, Daniel McBrayer,

finally made an offer for a plea bargain, a 20-year sentence for murder. But Devon said, no deal. Even though she was afraid of trial, she and Dan thought they could do better. But the longer Devon spent in jail, the harder it was for her to stick to her convictions. In May 2020, Devon wrote the following to Aunt Leslie. I'm so tired and I feel really lonely in here. No one understands what I'm going through.

I'm tired of waking up every day to this place. I'm tired of slamming doors and rude officers. I'm tired of being fed food that even a dog would turn their nose up at. I'm tired of feeling like I want to cry almost every day. In the summer of 2020, McBrayer approached Dan with a new option. Rather than offer a better plea bargain, McBrayer asked Dan if Devon would entertain a blind plea. I haven't been able to confirm with McBrayer why he suggested that, but it could be because

he didn't want a risk looking soft on crime by offering Devon a more lenient plea deal. Whatever the case, he suggested a blind plea. Let the judge decide the sentence. Dan was reluctant to consider it for Devon's case because of the obvious risk. She and Dan would learn a range of potential years ahead of time, but not the exact sentence. As the name suggested, they'd go in blind. But there was one reason to seriously consider a blind plea. They usually come with reduced charge, and in Devin's case, taking one would mean she'd get manslaughter instead of murder.

I discussed, you know, our options with Devin, and basically what it boils down to is, our options with Devon and basically what it boils down to is she's charged with murder or she was charged with murder. So she's looking at a potential life sentence on her murder charge. When he offered us a plea of manslaughter, that immediately capped the sentence at 20 years. And it made the basic range 10 to 20. Um, said no matter what happened, she, the most she could get was 20 years. So she didn't know exactly what she'd get, but she knew the cap.

And 20 years at most, sounded a lot better than 20 to life. But we kind of went to pros and cons and just the fact that I could have been tried for murder and murder is heavy no matter like how you put it or what you say or whatever it's heavy. I am guilty of something but what they are going to convict me of is not what I'm guilty of. So I accept the fact that I took his life, but I'm not going to accept the fact that you think it was intentional or out of malice or anything like that.

So in my heart, I was like, I think that it would be best for me to take the wrong plea because really no matter what it was, it was going to be manslaughter. And that's just less of a... the time bracket is not as scary. So at last Dan agreed, and he and McBrayer went to speak to the judge to get his approval. The judge signed off on it. And then in August 2020, Devon signed the blind plea,

pleading guilty to manslaughter. She said she felt at peace as she signed the blind plea, pleading guilty to manslaughter. She said she felt at peace as she signed the document because she figured at this point she was going to prison, so she just wanted to start her sentence and get it over with. I was just tired and I seen how my standard ground was so easily dismissed. So I guess my standard ground kind of gave me an idea of how they were going to treat me. And I did not want to be found guilty of murder and have a sentence that I just couldn't come home with, you know, because there's women in here who believed in the justice system and got 40-50 life in 99 years and just crazy,

crazy sentences. And I looked back on that now and I'm like, well, I'm glad that I took the blinds leave because I felt like I wasn't going to get my fair chance in trial. I just feel like the jury would have been more lines of how the judges mentality was and I would have been stuck and we had guilty of murder. I mean, that could have been my whole life. We looked into blind pleas over the last year. Initial Google search brought up mostly news articles about people taking blind pleas

and some explainers from regional defense attorneys. What is a blind plea? You're plea guilty. So you're really throwing yourself at the mercy of the court on that. I believe it. So it's completely up to the judge how you're gonna be sentenced. Plus a soundcloud track from Alabama rapper,

Ryleau Redriguez. We're gonna try to copy bleak. Can't believe our two the blam, three, I hope it's that trip. Made a Santa Cajun for G.K. Not exactly what we were looking for. Looking deeper, we found that people often take blind pleas when their initial charges are serious crimes, like Devon's charge of murder, or when their charges especially unappealing to a jury, like a DUI where someone got hurt or died.

Although some attorneys told us they only do blind pleas for smaller crimes, so it's kind of all over the map. We also found that blind pleas happen in about half of all states, mostly in the Midwest and the South. They sometimes go by other names, like open plea, cold plea, or pleading straight up. They always mean pleading guilty in exchange for an uncertain sense. The more we dug, the more we realized how little information exists about blind please. And even experts on the criminal legal system, like activists, reporters, and researchers, didn't have a ton of knowledge to share.

I don't know anything about blind please. I just know about general plea, you know, plea deals. Why would someone take a blind plea? What is usually the reason someone is doing that? You know, to be honest with you, I really, I really just don't know because I feel like they are pretty rare and I just haven't seen them a lot. I was not aware until quite recently that there was such a thing as blind pleas

where there's even less information given to the defendant. And I think that they're not allowed in all states to have this kind of procedure. Thanks. So when I asked you about blind pleas that you found out about it? Yeah. With the help of the Set and Sing project, I put out a call about Blind Please to a list

serve of lawyers and legal scholars across the country and got only a few responses. And of those, the vibe was basically, this isn't a well studied area. If you learn anything more, let us know. The more I reviewed Devin's case, the more I wondered whether she should have ended up with a plea deal at all. Whether Dan had pushed hard enough in the standard ground hearing to include John's history of violence, and whether she should have gone to trial instead. To get more perspective, I turned to Richard Rice, an Alabama attorney who specializes in

stand-or-ground cases. He's actually one-three. All of them involve domestic violence, which makes his track record especially impressive, because I've seen how hard those cases are to win. Richard acknowledged that hindsight was 2020, but he questioned Dan's use of a blind plea. What's the essence of a form can send? How is that even ethical? It's a good idea if you want to try to put people in jail

because that's your goal as to put people in jail, you know, and sentence them. And you want to do so with as little risk as possible. And then when you plead guilty, you waive so many of your rights to appeal. It's almost impossible to have a successful appeal in those situations. Let me just hit pause on that thought for a moment. It's a good idea if you want to try to put people in jail. Blind pleas and plea deals in general both usually involve pleading guilty to a lesser crime. But they also put people in prison who might have received a lesser sentence, or been found

not guilty if they went to trial. The vast majority of cases end in plea bargains. With this understanding, it's difficult not to see pleas as a major force packing prisons. And like Richard said, taking a blind plea means a defendant waves their rights to an appeal, which makes it impossible to challenge a final judgment. So you wouldn't have advised Devin to take a blind plea. Oh no, I definitely wouldn't have.

So what should Devin have done instead? Richard tells me he would have handled Devin's case differently from the start. For one thing, he would have worked to get John's history of abuse allowed in as evidence in the standard ground hearing. We would have certainly wanted to get that type of information and for sure, because these are things that she's witnessed. And so when he says, no matter what, I'm going to kill you. And if you try to leave me, if she knows that she can't take

anymore, she's about to have to leave, then that goes to leave me, if she knows that she can't take anymore, she's about to have to leave, then, you know, that goes to whether the threat is imminent, you know, it's believable for sure, right? Because of these previous experiences she has, it's all, I think you do need to be creative and persistent about how you work to get that type of information in. But even if the judge didn't allow John's abuse in, Richard told me there's still a benefit to trying. Because those efforts from the defense would be on the record, making it easier to appeal

the case. Richard says that if Devon was his client and they had lost the standard ground hearing, he would have taken it to trial. For Devon, I think her lawyer was calculating that it was going to be a majority white jury. She killed a white man and she was going to get 20 years or more. So with the blind play it would be less. Boy, I guess if you had an all-white jury, then that within a cell could potentially give you a basis for an appeal in that situation. You know, and I don't know what they may say or what may come out in the the the veneerity process, but you know, you may even have some direct evidence of

racial bias. I don't know, but it can't we can't be in a position where we have so much, you know, you're overwhelmed or something and you know that shouldn't that shouldn't necessarily be the reason why if somebody takes a blind plea or takes a plea deal in that type of situation because she had a viable self-defense argument and a standard ground argument. For Richard, the only reason to even consider taking a blind plea is in the most extreme cases. Like if the defendant is likely to be convicted at trial and get the death penalty. Now that Devon

had signed the plea she would find out her fate at a sentencing hearing. As the hearing approached Dan told her that he was optimistic the judge would be sympathetic to her case. And what I explained to Devon all along was, I had the sense that the judge wasn't going to max her out. The reason Dan trusted the judge was because he knew him. William Bostic was the same judge from Devon's standard ground hearing. The same guy Dan used to work for at the District Attorney's Office. As a defense lawyer, I mean, if you've been in that courtroom before you generally have a pretty good idea of what that judge's MO is normally going to be in these cases,

are they usually open to certain arguments, are they closed off to certain arguments, are they? Randy Horton is a defense attorney in Alabama, and he told our team that knowing the judge in a blind plea is crucial. He said that defense attorneys will often talk with the judge before taking a blind plea to get an idea of how many years the final sentence would be. If the judge indicates they'd be lenient toward the defendant, the defense is more likely to go for a blind plea. Randy told me these conversations are often informal and off the record. And if I'm being honest, it sounds a lot like a good old boys club to me.

Who, in this case, were collectively deciding the fate of a young black woman. Generally, if a judge isn't fluid enough to kind of give me feedback on that, I'm not generally a fan of it. And that's just me saying, if you're not cool enough to give me a response, are you cool enough to lead to go with me down the path I want to take you down at synancing? If I wondered before whether blind pleas were unjust, now there was no doubt in my mind. I kept imagining Devon as a participant in some kind of demented game show, being asked to spend the wheel to decide her fate. Instead of playing for money, she was gambling for time, for her life, to see how many years

she'd lose in the end. And the game was rigged, tilted toward powerful white men in the system, against a black woman who had no connections at all. While Devon and Dan prepared for the sentencing hearing, Devon's family and friends found out that she had signed a blind plea. Her dad, Jean, wasn't sure what to make of it. What do you think of this whole blind plea thing? Because I had never heard of a blind plea before. I never heard of it either, so I just, I never thought much about it. She's agreeing that she's guilty, but she doesn't know what she's going to get.

Right, that's how it works. But she basically put her life in the hands of the judge. The day after signing her blind plea, Devon wrote a message from Jail to her best friend, Kira, to tell her what happened. All right. This is from August 27th of 2020. This was like in the thick of the pandemic. I asked Kira to read Devon's words aloud. I signed a plea deal to manslaughter.

This is how I found out she did this. I know what you're thinking, what the fuck Devin? Trust me, I've thought about this long and hard. It was not an easy decision, but it was the best one for me. If I went to trial, I know they would have found me guilty and the only charge that was on the table was murder. I could have been sentenced to life if the judge shelf fit. This way, if I plead guilty to manslaughter, the limit is capital 20 years." In her letter, Devin goes on to say that even though the cap is 20 years, she might get as little

as 10, the minimum sentence. And anything fewer than 16 years would make her eligible for good time. A system where prisoners can reduce their sentences by behaving well. For Devon, every 30 days of good behavior would equal 75 days of credit toward her sentence. After spending years in jail already, the promise of a shorter sentence proved powerful for Devon. I know you want to meet a fight, but Kay, I just can't do it anymore. I'm tired. This place has finally broken me in Crush My Spirit. I have nothing left for these people, the officers or the inmates. The way they put me through such dumb ass shit, it's enough to make me book." Devon also tells Kira that she feels the corrections officers at Shelby are picking on her on purpose.

Recently, they'd confiscated her pens because she had wrapped them in paper. The pens in prison are soft and bendy, so that they can't be used as lethal weapons, but it also makes writing with them incredibly annoying, which is why Devon used paper to stabilize them. It was things like this, day after day, that stacked up and demoralized her. Okay, so listen, I will call you as soon as I can. I did not want you worrying about me. And my set and seen date is November 2nd of this year. Dan's going to help me set up some testimonies for the date and whatnot, but I'll let you in on the details when we talk on the phone. I miss your face. I love you. Stay up. My beautiful darling. Love, Dev. Everything's going to be all right.

I love you, stay up, my beautiful darling. Love, Dev, everything's gonna be all right. I wanted to know what Kira made of this letter because this was how she found out about Devon's decision to take a blind plea. I was frustrated with Dan, first of all, because I'm not even a lawyer and I think I could have gotten her off. After a while, I think Dan just got

kind of tired of the situation as the Devon, so they just said the hell would they guilty. In November 2020, Devon and Dan arrived at the Courthouse in Columbia, Anna, for the sentencing hearing. This is when all the stakeholders, the defense, the prosecution, even family members, come together to make their final statements about how many years a person should get behind bars. It was the height of the pandemic so the courtroom was sparsely filled.

Devon and Dan on the defense side, McBrayer on the prosecution, and Judge Bostick presiding. A few key witnesses were seated as well. John San Chila, lead investigator Mike Melhoff, and the forensic psychologist Maryanne Rosenzweig. Everyone else joined the court proceedings via Zoom. Among them were Devon Stadgene, her sister Simone, and John's mom Christine. In a victim impact statement, Christine described her grief as a black cloud, and said John was well well known in the community for his kindness. After all the witnesses, Judge Bostic told Devon he could tell she was, quote,

genuinely remorseful and sorrowful for killing John. And then came the sentence, without much deliberation, a term of 15 years in the Alabama Department of Corrections. In some ways, this was the judge showing leniency. Because had he given her 16 years, she wouldn't be eligible for good time. I think that he gave me the 15, because it's like, I've seen where you were beat up. I've seen that you had broken bones in your face.

I've seen that they had to take you to the hospital, but you could have bones in your face. I've seen that they had to take you to the hospital, but you could have done something else. In July 2021, Devon was moved to Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wattamka, Alabama to serve out the remainder of her sentence. It's a maximum security prison. With her spirit already crushed from years of abuse, Devon's future looked dark.

She had served some of her sentence and jail already, but the years stretching out ahead were overwhelming. One glimmer of hope for Devon was getting out early somehow, with good time or on parole, until then she was trapped. Next week on Blind Plei, our team visits Devon at Tiltweiler. Hey, hi! We tried to get in, but it was not possible. Yeah, Kristina, they called the task talk you.

I thought that was crazy. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, use a safe computer and contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at thehotline.org or call 1-800-799-7233. There's more blind plea with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like an interview with Veronica Johnson from the Alabama Justice Initiative about race and mass incarceration in the South. Subscribe now in Apple Podcasts. Blind Plei is a production of Lemonada Media.

I'm your host, Liz Flock. This episode was produced by Hannah Wumershine. Rachel Pilgrim is also our producer. Kristen Lapor is our senior producer. Tony Williams is our associate producer. Story editing by Martina Abraham's Alunga. Mixed music and sound design by Andrea Christen Statter with additional mixing and engineering from Ivan Kurayev.

Naomi Bar is our fact checker. Jaila Everett is our production intern, reporting help from Priscilla Alibi. Jackie Danziger is our vice president of narrative content. Executive producers are Stephanie Widdle's wax, Jessica Cordova Kramer, evoke media and Sabrina Mirage Naeene, and myself Liz Flock. This series was co-created with evoke media and presented by Margaret Casey Foundation. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review.

Follow me, Atlas Fck, and for more stories of women and self-defense, check out my book, The Furies, from Harper Books, Available for pre-ordered now. Find Lamanada at Lamanada Media across all social platforms. And follow BlindPlee, wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad-free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.

Thanks so much for listening.