My name is Travis May, and if possible would you please allow me a few moments of your time to share with you my situation?  On Feb. 15, 1994 I turned 17 years old, and in the months that followed I committed 5 armed robberies of  franchise restaurants, two attempted robberies, one of which my co-defendant maliciously wounded a person.  On Feb 27, 1995 after being transferred to adult court and given a plea-bargain (an alpha plea) – not to be sentenced to life but to a term of years if I plead guilty to: 5 armed robberies; 2 attempted robberies, 1 malicious wounding; and 7 uses of a firearm in commission of a felony.  I accepted the plea-bargain.  My lawyer said we would ask for 33 years which was the least I could receive because of mandatory gun laws.  My pre-sentence report recommended 47 years and 9 months.  The prosecutor asked that I be sentenced to 75 years.  Due to the fact that if I was convicted of 3 or more robberies in Virginia I would fall under the common scheme act.  Not allowing parole because my crimes were not part of a common scheme.  After all sides presented their ideas of the time I should receive, I signed the alpha-plea.  The judge then sentenced me to 153 years in prison.  After that – I was sent to Norfolk Circuit Court where the judge stated: Virginia Beach Circuit Judge K. Moore gave you so much time for your 4 armed robberies I don’t even have to sentence you for the one you are pleading guilty to in my court - but because you committed a crime, I have to sentence you.  So I’m giving you 7 years for the armed robbery and 3 years for the gun. To be ran consecutive to the 153 years, which left me with a total of 163 years in prison without parole.

I was completely out of control at the age of 17 spiraling even more out of control when my best friend was shot and killed.  I started to believe that I had nothing to live for.  My father was incarcerated from my birth until I turned eleven.  I resided with my mother who was strung out on crack and heroin.

By the time my father was released from prison I had grown closer to desiring what I thought was the freedom of the streets.  Yet when he came home I was excited.  I thought everything would change for the good.The structure was good and very strict, and that I never experienced.  So of course we had problems and at the age of 14 I ran away to my grandmother and begged her to take custody of me , which she did, and I loved it because I knew I could get away with a lot as long as I stayed respectful.

This allowed me to spend plenty of time to hangout in the streets and become friends with guys older than me, and from my understanding guys who had it all figured out and lived care free lives.

I started skipping school once I got to high school, and started smoking marijuana.  This led to contact with even greater street life mentality.  What dramatically changed my behavior is when my best friend was killed.  Up until that day I never seriously thought about life or death.  But instead of using his death as a wake-up call and reality check – I used it as an opportunity to care less about life.  I started to see it as simple as here today, gone tomorrow!  After his death, I found myself in conversations and thoughts of how easy it would be to do one robbery and how this would some how change and solve my problems of stress, helplessness and hopelessness.  The more we talked about it, the more it seemed to be the right move to make.

One robbery turned to two and two turned into a spree.  That’s all we thought about, and before long we ended up in jail.  And I in juvenile detention center.  Never once did I seriously think I could be locked –up for the rest of my life.  I thought the likely-hood of me being shot & killed was far greater than going to prison for even a few years.

Once I became incarcerated, of course I started thinking then, how did I let this happen.  At the time I wasn’t sorry or regretful for my crimes.  On the surface I thought I was.  I was more sorry for myself and the fact that I may spend the rest of my life in prison.  And I pushed that reality to the back of my mind and told myself my lawyer will get me out.  And for my first six years of prison – I ran around prison as if everything would take care of itself.  So I continued to surround myself with the same type of individuals I did when I was in the streets.  Then I got transferred to Southampton Correctional Center and I started working on my case once my original lawyer said he would need more money to continue my case.  This was not possible.  So I learned all I could about my case and the law – and the realization came that this is real – I could truly spend the rest of my life in prison.

The more I read and learned the more my attitude started to change, the more I started to surround myself with more positive individuals and the less appealing my original attitudes and beliefs became.  Yet I still felt as if I was the victim because of the amount of time I received compared to my 4 co-defendants.

Overall I started to grow a little – but my main focus was still regaining what I thought was freedom.  I studied and received my G.E.D. and I felt proud.  Yet I was still a bum.  Only on the surface had I changed.  Even I believed it.  

Then what seemed like my prayers were answered – the Virginia Supreme Court granted my Habeas Corpus in part – on the “Baker Claim”. I was excited and knew that I was finally going home.  My lawyer tells me and my family that the worst case scenario would be time served.  My family, especially my father stayed on me to come up with plans and back up plans for the jobs, education and avenues that I could take and follow upon my release.

I did that and fully embraced the idea that all of this if fastly becoming a reality.  As my case was sent back to the Virginia Beach Circuit Court ordered by the Virginia Supreme Court and placed on the court docket to be heard, months past by.  Then I’m called to pick up my legal mail and when I excitingly opened the envelope – I began to read the letter my lawyer sent, which stated: Travis, I’m sorry to inform you and your family that the Virginia Supreme Court has re-ruled their previous ruling regarding the “Baker Claim”.  Your claim was denied and now deemed a procedural error cured by time, and no longer considered a subject-matter jurisdictional error.  I’m sorry, this is not right, but there is nothing that can be done in your case.  Please take care.

After reading that letter, a whole year of hope, excitement and joy left me instantly – and what replaced it was what was always there from my teenage years; feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.  Once again I allowed myself to fully embrace that deep seeded feeling of having nothing to live or hope for.  Why not try to escape was my next thought.  My thoughts became, If I die trying to get free … I win & if I do achieve a successful escape … I win.  Either way I felt that to hope again to one day be freed from doing all of the right things became unbearable.  It would be far easier to give up, and I did!

What I didn’t count on was being severely cut up and caught before I could achieve my plan.  At that very moment I experienced the lowest I have ever felt in my life, because I knew that not only have I truly blown my chances to ever go home, I knew that my family would leave me alone because I gave up.  That all the talk of me becoming strong and mature was all a lie & front.  I believed that they would believe that no growth had taken place for those eight years – I was still the same as when I left them!  I knew that I had nothing left.  I believed that I’d tried everything & I was on my own.

Yet instead of my family disowning me or judging me, they embraced me even more, loved me even more.  And from that moment I realized that I had a lot of love and support, and they are feeling the stress and loss of me being incarcerated.  I know that for all my years until then, that I was a young, selfish, and fearful boy – despite my age.  This brought on a realization that I have a choice, either I can continue to be a selfish boy or I could become a man and take responsibility for all of my actions of the past and any action that I took from that moment on.  

And that is what I did.  I was sent from a medium, security correctional center to a SuperMax State Prison – where punishment, segregation and isolation was the goal!  I spent five years there.  I was stripped of everything I had or ever thought I knew, and for the first time I let it all go willingly and with great expectation to rebuild myself and all ideas from scratch.

All I had to build on was my families love & support and my realization that if I have to be incarcerated for the rest of my life do I want to do it in madness surrounded by madness in places like a SuperMax, feeling sorry for myself, helpless, and hopeless as I had identified with most of my life, or do I really want to become a man and take responsibility for all the love and support that I was blessed to have.  To make myself and family finally proud and not sad or concerned as I had for so long.  Most of all I desired to live with strength and purpose.

From those realizations, questions and years in segregation I realized that I do have the choice to grow in strength, intelligence, love, faith, and hope – regardless of and in spite of my surrounding, and one of my simplest lessons yet most powerful, was the realization that no matter one’s situation things could always be and get worse! So appreciate what and who you have now!

As I started to embrace those perspectives and applying them to my daily experiences and encounters, each time it became easier until it became a reality.  So much so I thought for a moment that I may be tricking myself again.  Only this time my feelings were in alignment with my thoughts and my final actions supported both.  I didn’t have to try as hard each time that I was tested with a situation or disappointment.  Openness, strength, love and the expectation of life became the norm, opposed to the fear, helplessness, and hopelessness that I held onto for so long.

This transition also allowed for a very deep and expanded relationship to take place with my family and friends – most of all myself.  My view of self was no longer one as a victim of natural life in prison, but one of being fortunate to not have died on the street of my ignorance and distorted feelings of helplessness and hopelessness as was the fate of my best friend.  Instead 16 years later I have true love of myself, life, family and friends.  I give instead of take, take and win.  As I have seen so many around me lose the light in their eyes as fear and helplessness take place.

My continued success and good behavior allowed me to be transferred to a less secure prison.  Which allowed me to get a tutor job helping others achieve their G.E.D.  This put me in contact with many individuals who were ready to come home and some that weren’t and what I could see was my previous fear and ignorance within them.  And this brought on an desired need to want to help and give what I was capable of giving to those who were open and sincere, or just do my job with those who weren’t.

I found joy and strength in that to my surprise.  It created humility within me and an even greater desire to grow.  And this is how I’ve continued for the past eight years of my life.  I’ve completed programs that have further enlightened me to greater growth, and responsibility of my self, life and relationships to family and everyday encounters.  The only thing is that because of my sentence with no parole, whenever I sign up for educational classes my name is put on the waiting list but continually pushed back.  When I inquired into it, I was informed that prisoners with release dates shorter than mine had first opportunity to fill the classes.  I didn’t allow this to discourage or limit me.

Yet one day I was watching the news and what I saw made me write this letter.  The Supreme Court of the United States ruled on May 17, 2010 that to sentence a juvenile to life in prison without parole for crimes less than murder would be deemed cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of their 8th amendment right.  I had my family send me a copy of the case ‘Graham vs. Florida.  As I read the case file what I saw was my situation on every level.  The principle that the justices ruled on 6 to 3 was that; “Terrance Graham’s sentence guarantees he will die in prison without any meaningful opportunity to obtain release, no matter what he might do to demonstrate that the bad acts he committed as a teenager are not representative of his true character, even if he spends the next half century attempting to atone for his crimes and learn from his mistakes.  The State has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a non homicidal crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law.  This the Eighth amendment does not permit.”

I was given 163 years without parole for non homicidal crimes, that I committed 2 months after turning 17 years old!  There is no question I needed to be taken off the street and punished – but for the rest of my life to die in prison is the same situation as Graham.  Even though I don’t have a life sentence in term – I have in reality.  I would have to live past 100 years old.  Our life expectancy is 75 yrs. Old.  The earliest I could get out with good behavior is 101 years old.  The courts tend not to see them as the same.  Yet they are, in reality and principle of the U.S. Supreme Courts Ruling.

This has sprouted new levels of hope for me, because my sentence was just as cruel and unusual.  The only difference now is that I have a foundation of love and support that I stand on, and I have grown and continue to grow to be a true man despite my circumstances, and all I ask for, all I pray for, is just to receive the chance to earn my way back into society!  Any help or guidance you can give to me and my family would and will be eternally appreciated!  I thank you for your time, and allowing me the chance to share my situation!  Thank you!  Please have a good, blessed and productive day!

 

With sincere mind and heart,

 

Travis May