Can I be rehabilitated?
During the almost 32 years I spent incarcerated, most prisoner reform programs failed to include violent offenders. The few programs that did allow violent offenders to participate excluded murderers. In the two years since my release, I have found this mindset is a driving force in our “free world” society as well.
Consider the voting restoration laws in Florida. These laws restore the voting rights of most convicted felons who have completed all the conditions of their sentences, including probation and restitution. I say “most” because the laws exclude murderers who have been released from prison. Does this say that legislators believe murderers are incapable of being rehabilitated? If so, how are these felons deemed rehabilitated enough to be released from prison?
Kidnappers, drug dealers, thieves, and con artists — all can have their voting rights restored upon completion of their sentence. Yet murderers are intentionally left out, even after they prove fit to reenter society. Can anyone explain this rationale?
I am a convicted murderer. In 1988, I was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced for first-degree murder. Does this render me forever incapable of casting an informed and mindful vote? Am I a buffoon? Is my opinion presently diminished by this long-ago, terrible mistake? Would allowing me to vote unbalance our electoral process? If I cast a write-in vote for myself or Mickey Mouse, the worst I could do, would that hurl our democracy into the void of chaos?
Obviously not.
Does excluding murderers serve a specific interest? Is there any clinical evidence demonstrating murderers cannot be rehabilitated to the point that their vote matters? Is there an instance in the annals of history where a bunch of reformed murderers fouled up an election?
Again, the answer is no.
Did lawmakers grudgingly draw the line at rehabilitated murderers? Did someone say, “Okay, we will let the rest of them vote, but I refuse to include killers, even if they are rehabilitated”?
Maybe it is simply spite. Or, as usual in Florida, maybe our lawmakers are looking toward the past and have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into present-day decency.
In 2019, I was deemed rehabilitated enough to be resentenced and released from prison. Can the same system that found me suitably reformed and gave me a second chance at freedom still deem me unfit to vote? It seems ridiculous.
Robert Lefleur works as a prison consultant.
