when I see the pain in my own eyes, I am also able to pity my attacker. It has been and still is my wish that he be rehabilitated.”
Modisett put the letter down. “From the date of his conviction, Tyson still doesn’t get it. The world is watching now to see if there is one system of justice. It is his responsibility to admit his problem. Heal this sick man. Mike Tyson, the rapist, needs to be off the streets.” And then he recommended I do eight to ten years of healing behind bars.
It was Jim Voyles’s turn to speak on my behalf. Voyles was the local attorney hired by Fuller to act as local counsel. He was a great guy, compassionate, smart, and funny. He was the only attorney from my side that I related to. Besides all that, he was a friend of Judge Gifford’s and a down-home guy who could appeal to the Indianapolis jury. “Let’s go with this guy,” I told Don at the beginning of my trial. Voyles would have gotten me some play. But Don and Fuller made a fool out of him. They didn’t let him do anything. They shut him down. Jim was frustrated too. He described his role to one friend as “one of the world’s highest-paid pencil carriers.” But now he was finally arguing in court. He spoke passionately for rehabilitation instead of incarceration but it fell on deaf ears. Judge Gifford was ready to make her decision.
She began by complimenting me on my community work and my treatment of children and my “sharing” of “assets.” But then she went into a rant about “date rape,” saying it was a term she detested. “We have managed to imply that it is all right to proceed to do what you want to do if you know or are dating a woman. The law is very clear in its definition of rape. It never mentions anything about whether the defendant and victim are related. The ‘date,’ in date rape, does not lessen the fact that it is still rape.”
“I feel he is at risk to do it again because of his attitude,” the judge said and stared at me. “You had no prior record. You have been given many gifts. But you have stumbled.” She paused.
“On count one, I sentence you to ten years,” she said.
“Fucking bitch,” I mumbled under my breath. I started to feel numb. That was the rape count. Shit, maybe I should have drank that special voodoo water, I thought.
“On count two, I sentence you to ten years.” Don King and my friends in the courtroom audibly gasped. That count was for using my fingers. Five years for each finger. “On count three, I sentence you to ten years.” That was for using my tongue. For twenty minutes. It was probably a world record, the longest cunnilingus performed during a rape.
“The sentences will run concurrently,” she continued. “I fine you the maximum of thirty thousand dollars. I suspend four of those years and place you on probation for four years. During that time you will enter into a psychoanalytic program with Dr. Jerome Miller and perform one hundred hours of community work involving youth delinquency.”
Now Fuller jumped up and argued that I should be allowed to be free on bail while Alan Dershowitz, the celebrated defense attorney, prepared my appeal. Dershowitz was there in the courtroom, observing the sentencing. After Fuller finished his plea, Garrison, the redneck cowboy, took the floor. A lot of people would later claim that I was a victim of racism. But I think guys like Modisett and Garrison were just in it for the shine more than anything else. They didn’t really care about the ultimate legal outcome; they were just consumed with getting their names in the papers and being big shots.
So Garrison got up and claimed I was a “guilty, violent rapist who may repeat. If you fail to remove the defendant, you depreciate the seriousness of the crime, demean the quality of law enforcement, expose other innocent persons, and allow a guilty man to continue his lifestyle.”
Judge Gifford agreed. No bail. Which meant that I was heading straight to prison. Gifford was about to gavel the proceedings to an end when there was a commotion in the courtroom. Dershowitz had bolted up, gathered his briefcase, and loudly rushed out of the courtroom, muttering, “I’m off to see that justice is done.” There was some confusion but then the judge banged her gavel on her table. That was it. The county sheriff came over to take me into custody. I stood up, removed my watch, took off my belt and handed them, along with my wallet, to Fuller. Two of my female friends in the first row of spectators were crying uncontrollably. “We love you, Mike,” they sobbed. Camille got up and made her way to our defense table. We hugged good-bye. Then Jim Voyles and I were led out of the courtroom through the back door by the sheriff.
They took me downstairs to the booking station. I was searched, fingerprinted, and processed through. There was a mob of reporters waiting outside, surrounding the car that would take me to prison.
“When we leave, remember to keep your coat over your handcuffs,” Voyles advised me. Was he for real? Slowly the numbness was leaving me and my rage was kicking in. I should be ashamed to be shown with handcuffs? That’s my badge of honor. If I hide the cuffs, then I’m a bitch. Jim thought that hiding my cuffs would stop me from experiencing shame, but that would have been the shame. I had to be seen with that steel on me. Fuck everybody else, the people who understand, they have got to see me with that steel on. I was going to warrior school.
We exited the courthouse and made our way to the car, and I proudly held my cuffs up high. And I smirked as if to say, “Do you believe this shit?” That picture of me made the front page of newspapers around the world. I got into the police car and Jim squeezed next to me in the backseat.
“Well, farm boy, it’s just you and me,” I joked.
They took us to a diagnostic center to determine what level prison I would be sent to. They stripped me naked, made me bend down and did a cavity search. Then they gave me some pajama-type shit and some slippers. And they shipped me off to the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield, a facility for level-two and -three offenders. By the time I got to my final destination, I was consumed with rage. I was going to show these motherfuckers how to do time. My way. It’s funny, but it took me a long time to realize that that little white woman judge who sent me to prison just might have saved my life.
We were beefing with these guys called the Puma Boys. It was 1976 and I lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and these guys were from my neighborhood. At that time I was running with a Rutland Road crew called The Cats, a bunch of Caribbean guys from nearby Crown Heights. We were a burglary team and some of our gangster friends had an altercation with the Puma Boys, so we were going to the park to back them up. We normally didn’t deal with guns, but these were our friends so we stole a bunch of shit: some pistols, a .357 Magnum, and a long M1 rifle with a bayonet attached from World War I. You never knew what you’d find when you broke into people’s houses.
So we’re walking through the streets holding our guns and nobody runs up on us, no cops are around to stop us. We didn’t even have a bag to put the big rifle in, so we just took turns carrying it every few blocks.
“Yo, there he goes!” my friend Haitian Ron said. “The guy with the red Pumas and the red mock neck.” Ron had spotted the guy we were after. When we started running, the huge crowd in the park opened up like Moses parting the Red Sea. It was a good thing they did, because, boom, one of my friends opened fire. Everybody scrambled when they heard the gun.
We kept walking, and I realized that some of the Puma Boys had taken cover between the parked cars in the street. I had the M1 rifle and I turned around quickly to see this big guy with his pistol pointed towards me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he said to me. It was my
