RICHARDSON: Another dead man walking
I don't know why I was so saddened. I don't know why I'm shocked and hurt. I don't know Jordan Keaugh Maxwell. Never met him, never will. I was caught by Amy Leigh Womack's lead line in her story that was headlined "Judge to gang member: 'Was it worth it?'" — "If Jordan Keaugh Maxwell lives to be an old man, he'll have few memories of life outside prison walls." Jordan Keaugh Maxwell is 20.
Maxwell is a killer already serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole for the killings of Russell Jacobs and James Pittman Woods in 2013. Last week he was standing before Superior Court Judge Howard Simms for sentencing after pleading guilty on 20 counts of mayhem during a crime spree. Armed robbery? Yep. Aggravated Assault? Yep, that, too. Kidnapping, smash and grab burglary, theft, hijacking a motor vehicle and violating the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act? Yep to all those, too. Maxwell represented himself — and in this case, while the old saw "He who represents himself has a fool for a client" is still true, it didn't matter. Johnny Cochran's ghost couldn't have helped him.
I'm not a bleeding heart. He did the crimes as founder of the Money Over Everything street gang, and now he has to lie on that thin mattress, if you can call it a mattress, in Hancock State Prison and think about his life. All the money in the world won't help him. There's no relief. He has five life sentences (actually seven, but two will run concurrently) plus 255 years. No parole board will ever hear his case. Whatever family he has will soon forget about him.
Judge Simms asked him an obvious question, "Was it worth it?" All Maxwell could say is, "It's done." To get a clear understanding, Simms asked again, "Was it worth it?" Simms wanted him to understand the gravity of his situation that he was a dead man walking. All Maxwell could do was shake his head from left to right. Simms knew Maxwell's life was "done," just not over.
Life is no video game. What a person does has real consequences and Maxwell's victims will never know justice was served. None of it had to happen. What they stole and the damage they did was petty. But the people they killed and injured was just cruel. Maxwell and the other teens who followed him on this crime spree could have listened to that voice that I hope is inside everyone. It's a voice that speaks to us when we are about to do something really stupid. They didn't listen.
One of the teens, Shacor Nyon Brinson-Lamptey, was sentenced in the smash and grab burglary and for violating the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act. He was looking at spending the next 35 years in prison, getting out in his 50s. But he finally made a smart decision. He'll testify against some of the other gang members, and serve four years in prison and 11 on probation. But since he's a first offender, his felony record, if he stays straight, will disappear. If he doesn't, Judge Simms told him, he'd spend "the whole 35 years ... next door to Mr. Maxwell." Brinson-Lamptey also did something else. He apologized and said, "I've learned my lesson."
Unfortunately, this story has no happy ending. It's a sad state of affairs all around. For judges, they know the next time they sit on the bench, they will see more of the same. More young men, predominantly black, paraded before them on their way to prison. Is the legal system to blame? Certainly, the scales of justice are skewed, but that's no excuse for most of the people the judges see. Poverty doesn't turn a person into a criminal. If that were true, most of us would be in jail today. I think it comes down to a lack of home training, downright greed and wanting something for nothing.
There are only three components to success in life, and over two of them we have control: Our belief in a higher power (God) and education. There is a third component, but children have no control over whether they are raised in a two-parent household or not. They have to play with the cards they're dealt.
Maxwell played his cards and hurt a lot of people in the process. Money Over Everything? What a joke. Nobody's laughing.
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.
This story was originally published October 17, 2015 at 4:54 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Another dead man walking ."