Many people will remember 2020 as the worst year of their lives.
Jamiylah Nelson will remember 2020 as the year she went from life In prison … to a second chance at life.
It’s a tale straight out of Dickens – who actually plays his own small role in this redemption story.
Of all that was lost in 2020 – the lives, the businesses, the jobs and the human connections – a tiny miracle of jurisprudence took place in a Denver District Courtroom last year. Twice.
Back in 2007, Nelson was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for killing her boyfriend. But the jury was never shown evidence that the man had been violently abusing her. She claimed self-defense – to deaf ears.
In February, Judge Kenneth Laff agreed to reconsider the case and chose to commute Nelson’s sentence, with the endorsement of the Denver District Attorney’s office. His ruling made Nelson eligible for parole in 2025.
Then came COVID, which was ripping through several Colorado state prisons. The Denver Women’s Correctional Facility was locked down and ots inmates were quarantined as a precaution, further limiting human contact. “We could only come out to shower every three days,” Nelson said. Then staff members started getting sick. Nelson felt like a sitting duck.
“Once we knew how serious it really was, my first thought was, ‘Wow. My sentence just got overturned … And I am STILL gonna die in here,’ ” she said.
That’s when Nelson’s attorney went back to that same judge and argued for her immediate release. Both the judge and the D.A. were moved by overwhelming evidence that Nelson had been a model prisoner during her time there.
Nelson, a graduate of Montbello High School, created a program to raise money so other incarcerated mothers could buy back-to-school supplies for their kids. That idea grew into fundraising for family Christmas supplies. Maujzi, as she is known to friends, then turned the prison’s Mom and Kids Day into an interactive and fun educational experience. Perhaps most remarkably, Nelson worked from inside the prison to find good homes on the outside for the children of two incarcerated women who had no place to live. “But that’s just me being me,” Nelson said. “I didn’t think anything of it until the judge spoke up in court.”
What Laff was this: “You have strived. You have done so many things that attest to the fact that you are genuinely sorry for your actions. I hear ‘sorry’ a lot in this courtroom, but you are living out that apology, and you don’t often see that in this court.”
Laff also was moved that Nelson had participated in the University of Denver’s Prison Arts Initiative. She played Young Scrooge in a production of “A Christmas Carol” that was presented both at the prison and for the general public on the University of Denver campus.
It’s one thing to hear Old Scrooge beg of his audience, "Show me some tenderness!" in a traditional theater staging of the Dickens classic. It’s profoundly moving to hear it from a character being played by two women sharing the role – both of whom have been convicted of murder.
Nelson was released on July 2 after 14 years in prison. So, she understandably holds a very special place in her heart for this past, very strange year. An actor playing Nelson tells a bit about her story in “CO2020,” a video-documentary look back at the year that was produced by the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company and is available for online viewing through the end of today (May 9). I interviewed Nelson as part of that ambitious, original creative project.
Ashley Hamilton co-founded the DU Prison Arts Initiative in 2017 to give Colorado prisoners both a project and a purpose through the empowering potential of creating art. Hamilton further empowered Nelson by giving her a full-time job when she was released. Nelson acts as an administrative associate for DU PAI and serves as an Advisory Board member.
“I am the first former student to be hired onto the staff as a group leader,” Nelson said. “I never thought of myself as a leader, especially coming into prison as a battered woman. But this program has helped me to pick myself up.”
As an inmate helping to make theatre in a prison, Nelson said, “I was treated like a human and an equal in an environment where such treatment was scarce.”
Making theater has a way of opening up those who are making it – even those hardened by years in prison. “DU PAI pushed me and my peers to embrace one another and to open up and express ourselves in a positive manner,” Nelson said.
Added Hamilton: “Jamilyah leads DU PAI with dignity, grace and passion.”
Nelson went into her February hearing in hard-earned fear of the justice system. “I didn’t expect anything from it,” she said of her attorney’s legal Hail Mary. At best, she thought, maybe she would be released from prison as a very, very old woman with little left to contribute to or enjoy from life.
Her thoughts on American justice system have naturally evolved since then.
“When it comes to the system, there are good apples and there are bad apples,” she said. “That goes for judges and police officers and even the staff at the Colorado Department of Corrections.
“I just believe people are not the worst thing that they ever did – and shouldn’t be seen as their one worst moment.”
Nelson’s story so easily could have effectively ended with her conviction. ”Prison is designed to take people like Maujzi, put them away and have you forget about them,” Hamilton said.
But it was a determined attorney, a benevolent judge and the opportunity to create art that gave her a second chance. And that’s happening, Hamilton said, largely because one man – Dean Williams, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections – believes giving inmates a purpose and a project is an essential tool for larger criminal justice reform in the United States.
“Nothing good comes from making prisons any more harsh and punitive than they already are,” Williams said.
Call Nelson’s experience at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility Exhibit A.
And now she is being afforded what she calls “a simply amazing opportunity” to improve the lives of the very same women she was incarcerated with.
“DU PAI met me at my lowest, accepted me in spite of me, built me up and helped me stand steady,” she said. “I’m beginning to see that this is my purpose in life.”