One day last winter, a hulking, shaven-headed prisoner named Darrell Massey sits at one of the small square tables that fill the visiting room, a fairly pleasant space decorated with inmate art. He is playing chess and other games with his 11-year-old daughter, Reneeka, a reserved girl who eventually erupts into lively chatter, and his bouncy, 7-year-old son, Darrell. Their mother, whom Massey had married in prison, died a couple of years ago due to a toxic combination of pain pills she took following a car accident, and the children live with different relatives. Massey's sister has brought them here today.
Darrell Massey, 37, is Barry's uncle. In 1989, he came to Tacoma for an extended family visit and got into trouble. He was cruising with some gang members when a 17-year-old girl in another car waved, thinking she recognized a friend. Occupants of Darrell's car (he says he wasn't one of them) thought it was a gang sign and opened fire. The young girl died.
Barry Massey, in a photo from 20 years ago, was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he committed at age 13. Gov. Gregoire recently rejected a clemency board recommendation that he be set free
Details
Click hereto watch a video of Barry Massey's 2006 clemency hearing.
Related Content
More About
The judge who presided over the trial announced he was sending a message to gang members. He sentenced Massey and a co-defendant to 41 years, more than either state sentencing guidelines or the prosecutor had called for. With time off for good behavior, Massey would serve 27 years.
His first years in prison were rocky as he continued his gang allegiance behind bars and got into fights.
Having children, conceived during trailer visits, "changed my life," he says. "For the first time since coming to prison, I was scared—that they'd end up following me to prison, that I wasn't going to be a good parent."
But it also seems that simple time in prison, the accumulation of years spent with a lot of time to think, had a big effect. "I really do believe that coming to prison saved my life," he says. "You get to know yourself real well. First, I realized I made a big mistake. Second, I learned to love myself."
He says it took him almost 10 years to transform. That's about typical for the minority of inmates who turn themselves around, he and other prisoners say. Short-termers, they say, don't have time to reform. "I don't know why it takes that long, but it does," Massey says.
Once someone has rehabilitated, though, he contends that continued punishment is no longer useful. "You're just wasting another life," he says. "For that person, he says, "you should let him get out and honor the victim's memory. I feel that's where I'm at."
Following his nephew, he intends to ask for clemency in a couple of years. At that point, he will have served 20 years, which, it has been suggested to him, is the minimum time someone with a murder conviction should have behind him before making a plea for mercy.
In late May, some 15 high-school kids sit in the Monroe reformatory's visiting room listening to Darrell Massey and three other inmates talk to them about "choices and consequences," the name of the program that has brought them here. It's the same program that Barry Massey once participated in, but no longer does. (Several days after his September clemency hearing, he wrote an affectionate letter to a guard that suggested mutual feelings. He was transferred to the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla pending an investigation into a possible inappropriate relationship.)
The kids are eager to hear about the details of the men's crimes, and when Darrell Massey talks about his, he names his victim— Brenda J. Harris—something he says he tries to do often to remember her. He and the others then proceed to grill the kids. "Why you smokin' pot?" Massey asks one boy. "How are your grades?" he asks another.
Would Brenda J. Harris, or her family, feel that such activity in her honor merits clemency? Another inmate there that day, Tony Wheat, spoke about an experience that reveals the complex nature of forgiveness. Now a bespectacled, quiet-spoken man in his 60s, Wheat killed three people and spent seven years on death row before a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling commuted his death sentence and hundreds more across the country. About a decade ago, he met with the mother of one of his victims, at her request. "The woman said something I was not ready for. She looked across the table and told me she forgave me."
"I asked myself if I could do the same," Wheat says. "Not long after, my oldest son was killed. They found him [lying] on the sidewalk shot 17 times." Wheat says a note later came to his son's wife that read, "Sorry, wrong person."
"Then I heard the guy who killed my son was being transferred here from Walla Walla." It never happened, and Wheat escaped the test of whether forgiveness was in his reach.
Clemency board member Turner considered the feelings of the Wang family and their supporters as he cast the lone "no" vote on Barry Massey's petition. "There hasn't been enough healing in the Taiwanese community," he said. "There hasn't been enough healing by members of the family. I want Mr. Massey to have some hope in his future. But I can't at this time vote for clemency."
