“…WITHOUT PROBATION, PAROLE, OR SUSPENSION OF SENTENCE”
My First Year of Incarceration
by
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THE BEGINNING OF THE END “Sherral Kahey, stand to your feet,” I acquiesced, the judge continued, “you have been found guilty by this court of the charge of Principle to Second Degree Murder in the death of one Curtiss Baldwell. It is my duty to sentence you to life in prison at hard labor to be served without the benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of the sentence. You are to begin serving this sentence immediately.” The day was August 2, 1982. It was a cold atmosphere inside that courtroom on a hot, sticky, humid August morning in northern Louisiana. There it ended; there it began. The judge had taken my life from me, in those few seconds; with those harsh words. That day was the end of my freedom, the beginning of life behind bars, without probation, life without a parole date, and life without the benefit of having my sentence suspended. L-I-F-E! I was ending a life I had lived for thirty-three years. I was beginning a life in prison that, according to the judge, would be my final resting place. I was a convicted felon beginning a life inside an unknown, unfriendly and disdainful world that, by all intents and purposes, would be my “home” for the duration of my time on earth. That was a solemn, sobering thought. Standing tall at five feet, eight inches, shoulders squared, chin up, defiantly refusing to show the judge and the audience any signs of emotion, I turned to view my family. My only sister, Robin, stood. She was holding my four-month-old baby, Asia. I had only spent two months of Asia’s life with her. Robin started walking toward me. With each step Robin made in my direction, a single tear dropped from her eyes, she took a step, she dropped a tear, she took another step; she dropped another tear. Time froze for that instant, like in the movies when everything is going in slow motion then suddenly stops. No one moved except for my sister. No one said a word. It appeared as if everyone was holding his or her breath; frozen in time. About five feet from my sister’s destination, a husky, tobacco-mouthed, potbelly, and red-faced bailiff stepped between us. “Please, Mister, let my sister hold her baby one last time,” my sister petitioned. The tears had not stopped even though her procession had. “Can’t do that, Ma’am,” he denied her request, coldly. “Court is still in session, Ma’am and you have to take a seat or you will be held in contempt of court. The Judge is not finished.” That was ironic, what more could he say? He had ended my life, so what was left, I thought to myself. My sister was not giving up so easily. She reiterated her request.
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About the Book
Not everyone has to experience situations in order to later tell about them. Sherral would not wish prison on anyone. Many people wonder what happens to a person when he/she goes to prison. The big screen has never come close to depicting the real horror, humor, and happenings of prison life from a female’s perspective. Sherral has written the ups, downs, and in-betweens of her first year of incarceration. That first year is the most important year of a person’s incarceration. Within that year, she decides whether she will survive the experience or succumb to it. She will decide if she will do the time or if the time will do her. The thin line between sanity and insanity lie within that first year. The pages of Without Parole, Probation, or Suspension of Sentence have captured Sherral’s firsthand account of how that year shaped the remainder of her years of confinement. You may laugh at some parts of her account. You may even cry, but Sherral would like for the reader to experience prison through her eyes, experiences, and encounters.
About the Author
After twenty-seven and one-half years of incarceration, Sherral was released from the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. Walking out of prison was a blessing, but more so, it was a miracle that would not have happened without the mercy of God and the willingness of people that God had assigned for my life to be used of Him. Louisiana law said that Sherral would not walk out of prison, that she would be carried out in a body bag—a grim thought. She left behind five children ranging in age from four months old to thirteen years old. Sherral lived through nearly twenty-eight years of incarceration. She survived the games, the cruelty, the dehumanization, and the mind-controlling tactics of officers and offenders alike. She walked from a world where she was free to think, act, and decide into a world where she was discouraged from thinking, acting, and deciding. She was in a world where her thoughts, her actions, and her decisions could cost her life.