Criminal - Ian Manuel

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

"The phone rang and rang and a lady picked up on the other end and I still remember the operator saying, 'You have a collect call from Ian for Debbie. Will you accept the charges?' And I remember Debbie saying, 'Yes, I accept.' And I just remember blurting out, 'Ms. Baigrie, I just called to wish you and your family a merry Christmas and to apologize for shooting you.'" At 14 years old, Ian Manuel was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and spent an estimated 18 years in solitary confinement. Today, he tells his story. His book is My Time Will Come. You can listen to our full conversation with Bryan Stevenson in Episode 45: Just Mercy. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Please use discretion. They kept trying to get me, they gave me the gun and they kept trying to rob people in the open, broad daylight. And I kept saying, no kept saying no no no so after turning like 10 people down we finally all sat down on a on a curve and they they said ian if you're not going to do it give the give the gun to somebody else now we're passing this gun around like a hot potato like who's going to do it and we made a pact we made an agreement at that moment that the next people we came upon, whether it was in the open

or not, that this is the robbery was going to happen and was going to go down. On July 27, 1990, a 28-year-old woman named Debbie Bagrie went out with some friends in downtown Tampa. She'd recently given birth to her second child, and this was her first night out with friends in a while. On her way back to her car, she bumped into a man she knew from the gym, and he offered to walk with her the rest of the way. The same day, a 13-year-old named Ian Manuel was walking around downtown Tampa with three older friends. We were in a parking lot, and we walked and we approached this couple

that was standing by our car and approached them and asked for change for a 20. And I pulled the gun out, and I said, it's a Jack. And the lady screamed, and I just fired. The first shot Ian Manuel fired hit Debbie Bakery in the face, destroying her jaw, tongue, and teeth. The bullet exited through her cheek, and she started running away. Ian fired at her again and missed. She later had 40 surgeries to rebuild her jaw.

Ian had also fired at the man. He wasn't hurt. Ian says that after the shooting, he and his friends ran away. I went back downtown the next day, and I seen blood on the ground. Dang, man, just thinking about it, how close it was to her actually dying, man. You know, the lady got shot in the face and survived, man. I hate that I, you know, I'm the guy responsible for doing that,

but that she survived, I'll be forever thankful for it. But I went back downtown and I seen blood on the ground. I think that's when it hit me that, Ian, you actually shot somebody. Three days after shooting Debbie Bakery, Ian Manuel says that he and some friends stole a car, a white Cadillac Fleetwood. An hour and a half later, they got caught and were brought to the police station. Ian says his friends all got picked up by their parents, but he couldn't get in touch with his mother, and so he waited at the police station for a long time. Eventually, an officer told him that they would have to take him to a juvenile detention facility

to spend the night until they could find his mother. A police officer drove Ian to the facility. During the ride, Ian says the officer asked him what he was doing stealing cars with older boys, and Ian says he answered, I grew up with those guys. We do this all the time. When they reach the juvenile detention center, Ian remembers that the officer said to him, Is there anything else you want to tell me before we get out of the car? It will stay in the car. And I felt like this was my chance to get this off my chest about what I had did three days

earlier. And so I said, you know that lady that got shot downtown? And he said, yeah. I said, well, I'm the guy that did it. Ian says the police officer got out of the car and made some phone calls. And then he got back in the car, put it in reverse, and drove Ian back to the police station. Ian was questioned by a detective. And he says he told the detective everything. You know, as much as I felt good clearing my conscience in my cell years later, it would be like it was one of the biggest regrets of my life.

Ian Manuel was charged as an adult. He was 13 years old. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. I was charged with two counts of first-degree attempted murder. I was charged with armed robbery, and I was charged with attempted armed robbery. The attempted armed robbery was on Debbie, and the armed robbery was on the guy. And the two attempted murders came from shooting Debbie and shooting at the guy. He was held in the juvenile wing of Morgan Street County Jail. He'd gotten in trouble for throwing a cup of water and was placed in solitary confinement.

There was a window in his cell, and he remembers that one night he could see the lights of Tampa Stadium. It was the 1991 Super Bowl. Whitney Houston performed. A month later, Ian says he pled guilty on the advice of his public defender. My attorney, I felt like he gave up, And that's when he came to me and approached me with the possibility of pleading guilty, saying that if you go to trial, you're going to make the judge mad and he's going to give you life. So I ask that you plead guilty, an open plea of guilt,

throw yourself at the mercy of the court. As Ian recalls, his lawyer estimated that Ian would be sentenced to, at most, 15 years in prison. And I'm like, sir, I don't want to go to prison, period. Because telling a 13-year-old child that you're going to spend 15 years in prison is, in and of itself, sounds like a life sentence. I haven't even been alive 15 years yet, you know? And then my mother came over there to the side of the jury box and said, Ian, listen, don't think about yourself this time. Think about me. I want you to plead guilty. Do it for me.

Listen to me this one time. And I just sat there, and I thought about all the times that my mother had asked me to do something, and I did the opposite. So I pled guilty with the full expectation that I would be sentenced to 15 years. This was 1991, a period in America where a lot of people, especially politicians, were talking about being, quote, tough on crime. Rates of incarceration were climbing rapidly. People of color were disproportionately affected. At this time, President Joe Biden was a senator and the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

He had given a televised address in 1989 calling for more arrests and harsher sentences in the, quote, War on Drugs. Biden said that President George H.W. Bush's plan, quote, doesn't include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, not enough prosecutors to convict them, not enough judges to sentence them, and not enough prison cells to put them away for a long time.

In a few years, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, speaking about young gang members, said, They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators. No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first was taken to the courthouse for his sentencing hearing. The prosecutor told the judge, The only thing we can do is protect the citizens from the future criminal conduct that Mr. Manuel will engage in if he is released. The prosecutor's language about me at the time was that, you know, this wasn't my first incident, that he's a sociopath, he's a minister of society.

Debbie Bagrie was present in the courtroom. She had not planned to speak. She had had some conversations with Ian's mother, and Ian's mother felt that Debbie Bagrie wanted Ian to be able to go home. She'd been asking for his rehabilitation. But then Ian, who was sitting with other juvenile defendants waiting to be sentenced, laughed during the hearing. He says someone made a joke, and he laughed at it. I laughed, and Debbie seen me laughing in the courtroom, and she took that to mean that I wasn't taking this process serious, that this was a big joke to me.

I messed up. Debbie did end up addressing the court. She said, They said the gun went off by accident. It was aimed in my face. I don't think it went off by accident. She said that she kept wishing he could be rehabilitated. Quote, he's still a child.

But she said, After hearing everything that's been going up his mind before Debbie even spoke. He had to follow certain guidelines and could choose from a range of potential sentences. He chose to give Ian the harshest possible sentence. The judge told Ian, our society, I think, does require incarceration for some period of time, a substantial period of time, if for no other reason than to protect itself from you. I remember the judge looking at me and saying, Mr. Emanuel, you've had too many chances already. So for the crime of attempted murder, I sentence you to life. For the crime of armed robbery,

I sentence you to life. For the crime of attempted armed robbery, I sentence you to 15 years. Those sentences are to run concurrent. And for the second crime of attempted murder, I sentence you to life probation. And that sentence is being imposed in case the Department of Correctionship, for whatever reason, ever decide to release you. How old were you? I had just turned 14. Sentences like Ian's are sometimes referred to as a death in prison sentence. And it was reported in 2014 that every single 13 or 14-year-old child who's been sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime has been a person of color.

Debbie Bagrie said that when the judge handed down Ian's sentence, she couldn't believe it. She said she thought, there's no way this can even be legal. She said, if he was a white boy at 13, there's no way this would have happened. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home.

His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Subtle results, still you, but with fewer lines. Botox Cosmetic, adipotulinum toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks

after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulties swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Don't receive Botox Cosmetic if you have a skin infection. Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow and eyelid drooping, and eyelid swelling. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness.

Tell your doctor about medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eden syndrome and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. For full safety information, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. See for yourself at BotoxCosmetic.com. Ian Manuel was taken to an adult jail to wait for his transfer to an adult prison. He remembers being led down a hallway and locked alone into a small cell. He was placed in solitary confinement because prison officials didn't think he'd be safe with the adults. Juveniles in adult prisons are five times more likely to be victims of sexual assault. Ian remembers that everything

in the jail was purple. He asked a guard why he was in solitary confinement and why everything was purple. The guard told him that he was in solitary because of his age and things were painted purple because someone had determined that purple had a calming effect. It was a cultural shock for a child, but you know, it was very very tough i did cry a lot of tears during that beginning until i adjusted you know i learned to adapt to my environment that's one thing uh i think that helped me by me being so young you know i was like i was i was being molded and had i already been an older an adult i don't think I would have been able to bear solitary confinement

escaping with my sanity intact as much as I did. He was transferred to Apalachee Correctional Institution in June of 1991. His mother sent him a radio and he remembers listening to Gloria Estefan. He says he just lived in his imagination. His lawyer sent him a package containing all the material pertaining to his case,

and included in a police report was Debbie Bakery's address and phone number. On Christmas Eve, about eight months into his life sentence, Ian says he decided to call her to apologize. Back then we had live operators. I don't even know if we still have live operators nowadays, but back then all you had to do was press zero and wait on the operator to pick up the call. And so the operator picked up and I said, I'd like to place a call to this phone number. And she said, okay, tell her collect call from ian for debbie and the phone rung the phone rung and the phone rung and a lady picked up on the other end and

i still remember her saying the operator saying you have a collect call from ian for debbie will you accept the charges and i I remember Debbie pausing and saying, can you ask him his last name? And I said, yeah, Manuel. My name is Manuel. And I remember Debbie saying, yes. And I just remember blurting out, Ms. Bagrie, I just called to wish you and your family

a Merry Christmas and to apologize for shooting you in the face. I just remember her asking me, Ian, why did you shoot me? And I just remember telling her, it all happened so fast. And then, you know, she said, said yeah maybe the first shot was a mistake but then you shot at my friend and then you shot at me again and i didn't really have the answers to give her and so we talked for about you know at that time 15 minutes and then i asked her as the phone call was coming to an end could i could i call back And she said, yes. I don't quite remember what we said during the second phone call.

All I remember was this. I asked her, could I write her? And she said, yes, you could write. What do you think you were looking for? What, did you want to apologize? Did you want to feel better? Did you want her forgiveness? Did you feel guilty about what had happened in the courtroom what what did you want I think I just wanted to clear

my conscience I thought I hadn't made amends to this woman that I had shot because I my grandmother Linda didn't raise me like that my even my mother Peggy with all her complications didn't raise me like that. Even my mother, Peggy, with all her complications, didn't raise me like that. So I wanted to get it off of my heart and I wanted to be able to say how sorry I was for almost taking her life and taking her away from her two young children at that time. What do you think that phone call was like for her when she heard your name on the other on the other line most victims and most assailants never have that conversation because most people you know feel like you hurt me very bad I want to hurt you very bad in Debbie's mind I think she wanted to better understand my situation, what led me to doing that to her, and then to, like, to be a friend, to befriend me. Ian Manuel says he got into an incredible amount of trouble in prison. He received many disciplinary reports, DRs for short.

He says, the longer I was in solitary, the harder it was for me to meet their behavioral expectations. Eventually, when he was 15 years old, he was placed into long-term solitary confinement. He was alone for 22 to 24 hours a day. Food came to him through a slot. He didn't understand why people around him were doing everything they were told. He says he saw people around him following the rules so they wouldn't lose privileges, like spending time with family, playing basketball,

or watching TV. He thought it was giving in. The way the system is set up, one DR, one write-up, one disciplinary report for anything, for being in possession of a magazine, for not making your bed up properly, for being caught talking, just so many different petty arbitrary rules that they got. So there would be, I'd go on spurts where I would not even try to get out of solitary confinement. I'd live my life in a way where I was free within the confines of this cell and I wouldn't follow, I wouldn't try to follow the rules because I had to find my own freedom within myself.

He says that even as an adult, he still passed the time in solitary by retreating into his imagination. He says he lived on childhood fantasies of becoming rich and famous. He read a lot, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. He wrote his own poems and showed them to the men in prison. Prisoners are the worst critics. They're worse than Simon Cowell on American Idol or X Factor or the Sandman on Apollo, because you got to think, these are men that have a lot of anger, that have a lot of abuse, that have been abandoned, and you're trying to reach them. And they started paying me to write their girlfriends and their wives poetry.

By 2005, Ian Manuel was 28 years old and had spent half his life in prison. Thank you. The average U.S. company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS.

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So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. In 2005, the Supreme Court made an important ruling about how people under the age of 18 could be punished. Many people don't realize the United States was executing children until 2005, and the U.S. Supreme Court came out with a decision in Roper v. Simmons banning the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18. This is attorney Ben Schaefer. He works at the Equal Justice Initiative, EJI for short. EJI had a few clients on death row in Alabama who were under the age of 18 who, because of that ruling, then were resentenced to the other sentence that

was available, which was life without parole. And I think we realized that while it was a positive development that those children were no longer eligible to be executed, that a death in prison sentence was still unjust for a child of any age. And then around the same time, we also received a letter from Ashley Jones, who was a 14-year-old girl in Alabama. And she just wrote, you know, I'm 14. I've been sentenced to die in prison. Can you help me? The Equal Justice Initiative was founded by attorney Brian Stevenson.

He's the author of Just Mercy. He founded EJI to challenge the death penalty, excessive punishment, and abuse of prison conditions. I believe that each person is more than the worst thing they've ever done, he says. Here he is, speaking with us in 2016. What's ironic is that we all want rehabilitation when we make mistakes. None of us want to be judged by our worst act. When we make mistakes, we want a chance to show we're not just that mistake. And yet we've created a system that is so unforgiving, that is so judgmental. And it's intoxicating to imagine all of these evil people that we can all

organize and beat up on and go to war against. But it's dishonest. And one of the great challenges that I think we have in this country is to revive a conversation about what it means to recover. You know, we don't give justice to people just because we want to be fair. Then we give justice to people because we want to be just. We don't give mercy to people because some people need mercy. We give mercy to people because we want and need to be merciful. Our strength, our humanity, our dignity turns on how we treat other people, including people who have committed crimes, including people who have fallen down. The attorneys at EJI began to wonder how often children were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and began traveling around to different states asking questions. And found that there were thousands of those children in the United States.

And one of the youngest children across the United States who had been sentenced to die in prison was Ian Manuel. What was the hope when you, at EJI, took on Ian Manuel's case? Many states, including Ian's home state, Florida, have no minimum age at which a child can be tried as an adult. So we've seen 8, 9, 10-year-olds transferred to adult court and tried as adults. We wanted the children we work with to have an opportunity to live outside prison. You know, I hesitate there because many people will talk about it as a second chance. You know, having worked with a lot of 13 and 14-year-old clients who were sentenced to die in prison, sent these really harsh sentences, that just doesn't ring true to me.

I think if you know the background and what these children are exposed to and the trauma they suffer before they receive these sentences, it just does—I don't see where they've gotten a first chance. Ian Manuel grew up in a verbally and physically abusive household. Shortly after he was born, his mother was sent to prison for shooting a woman. Ian was sent to live with family friends. He says he barely knew his father, and that his grandmother, Linda Johnson, often took care of him. She was in her 70s, and she'd walk downtown to Burger King and have little small cheeseburger sandwiches waiting for me when I came home from school.

And she got her retirement check and her Social Security check, and she would take me to the mall and spend all the money on me. And she just made me feel very, very special. And I think that's something I've been searching for the rest of my life. Sometimes Ian lived with his grandmother, and sometimes with his mother, an older brother in a housing project in Tampa called Central Park Village. He says there were times when they were homeless. My neighborhood was full of violence, gunshots throughout the day and night. At the time, I wasn't really afraid of guns because it was a part of my everyday surrounding. But as I got older, I realized that's not a normal childhood life. You shouldn't be

growing up around guns and violence like that on an everyday basis. At one point, Ian was placed with a white foster family for a period of time. He had terrible nightmares and remembers the strange feeling of waking up terrified. He was arrested for the first time when he was 11 years old. He says a boy he knew had gotten a gun from an older cousin, and Ian and his friends decided to try to use it to rob people. And we ended up walking home from school, pulling the gun on different people,

taking change out of their pocket, 75 cents here, a couple dollars there, and we ended up being arrested later on that day and charged with armed robbery at 11. I was 11 years old. I was in a hurry to grow up. Looking back now, I remember a statement my mom used to tell me. She said, you can't wait to grow up, but when you get older, you're going to wish you had took the time to enjoy your childhood. And that is so true because here I am, a 44-year-old man, and I wish I was younger now. I was in such a rush to get older.

Like, what was I rushing for? What was I rushing towards? And here I am now and wish I had took a little more time to enjoy being a child without all the responsibilities of an adult. A 13 year old is not who they're going to be at 20 or 25. Their brains are developing, they're very impulsive, and that's particularly true of children that have suffered really severe trauma. And we recognize that people who are victimized will often victimize others. And many of our clients have committed violent offenses. But, you know, a lot of courts in this country at the time we started this work, these sentences were mandatory. So it was life without parole if you were convicted of the crime.

There was no even chance to consider the background of the child or their upbringing or the circumstances of the offense. So yes, we're arguing that no child, no matter the offense they commit, should be sentenced to die in prison. EJI worked on Ian's case for 10 years, along with others like it. They launched a litigation campaign in 2006 to challenge life without parole sentences for children. Four years later, the Supreme Court recognized that the ways in which children are different from adults had to be considered during sentencing and banned life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses.

And then, EJI went back to court to argue that sentencing children to life without parole is unconstitutional regardless of the offense. And a 2012 Supreme Court decision struck down mandatory life without parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. On January 25, 2016, the court held that the decision applied retroactively

and that people who were serving a mandatory life without parole sentence for a crime they committed when they were under 18 should be resentenced. In November of 2016, Ben Schaefer and Ian Manuel appeared in court in Tampa. The judge said, as you know, the law has changed dramatically since the early 90s. And then Ian Manuel was resentenced. He was granted time for the years he had already served and released from prison. Oh my God, man. I don't know if you how improbable my release was.

Like, I was sentenced to die in prison. And I literally felt like I had died and came back to life. Debbie Bagrie was in the courtroom that day. She and Ian hadn't been in touch in about 10 years, but she had been working with EJI to try to help. She is a remarkable woman. You know, it's rare for someone who's the victim of a violent crime not to oppose, not to actively oppose resentencing and for her to actively support a new sentence for Ian,

it's just, it's remarkable. Ben Schaefer took Ian and Debbie out to dinner right after Ian was released. They had pizza. Debbie posted a photo of herself and Ian on Facebook. They're both smiling. She wrote, Here we sit, Ian and I, 27 years after he shot me when he was 13.

He was released today after 26 years, and I was so happy to share his first meal. We reached out to her, and she told us she wasn't interested in speaking. She said, I spent over 20 years doing that, and Ian now has his own voice. Ian Manuel was in prison for almost 27 years, an estimated 18 of which were in some form of solitary confinement. He says that when he got out, he didn't know what size clothes to buy. He enrolled in a re-entry program that EJI runs. There are far too few re-entry services for anyone who gets out,

but there really weren't any designed to meet the needs of our clients coming out of prison who went in when they were 13, 14, 15 years old. Ben says that people who entered prison as children didn't have a chance to learn to live in the outside world as adults. They haven't learned to drive a car, open a bank account, find work.

Ian Manuel also entered into an intensive therapy program. Today, he lives in Brooklyn. He says he feels like he got a second lease on life, and he's doing all he can to enjoy it. He's written a memoir. It's called My Time Will Come. It begins, My story has been told many times.

You can read it in police files and court records. But today, I would like to try to tell it to you myself. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me, Thank you. a Final Final V2. Special thanks to Lily Clark. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com or on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,

a collection of the best podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia from PRX. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Don't receive Botox cosmetic if you have a skin infection.

Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow and eyelid drooping, and eyelid swelling. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Tell your doctor about medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome in medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. For full safety information, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. See for yourself at BotoxCosmetic.com. Hello, I'm Esther Perel, psychotherapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin, which delves into the multiple layers of relationships, mostly romantic. But in this special series, I focus on our relationships with our colleagues, business partners and managers. Listen in as I talk to co-workers facing their own challenges with one another and get the real work done.

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