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Link to Jeff’s pastoral support professional listing on Psychology Today here.
Link to Testimonials page here.
Link to Contact Us and Appointments page here.
Our ministry regularly sends books to our White Collar Support Group members who are serving time in prison. We recently sent in the book, Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. This book has special significance to me because it taught me lessons in hope and faith and informed the way I looked at my incarceration, recovery and reentry. In places of limited control, there are still things that we have power over: our bodies, our attitudes, and our ability to help others. Below is a book review we received from one of our group members. Please send your thoughts to me at [email protected] and I will make sure he receives them. Blessings, Jeff
____________________
Dear Jeff,
Thank you for sending me this book because it deals with suffering and the meaning of life. The author (Viktor Frankl) was a doctor before being imprisoned in several Nazi war camps, and he used his view of suffering to survive the experience and then thrive upon his liberation. Frankl does not take a spiritual view but many of the principles and accounts in the book are spiritual and would have significance in any teaching on the meaning of life or the value of suffering. Although this book deals with suffering caused by literal imprisonment, there are absolute parallels to people imprisoned by their sin and past failures. I highly recommend the book. Here’s the book report I owe you :-).
Although Frankl ignores the subject of HOW a person can change their mind about the value of suffering to enhance the meaning of life, he does a great job of explaining the psychology of suffering and appealing strongly to all of us to appreciate the role suffering can play to make our lives more meaningful. A key message in this book is “it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” (I would replace ‘life’ with ‘God’).
This book dovetails very well with my studies in Restorative Justice (especially the top of page 138 and 148-149) relative to people who have confessed to committing crimes.
This book gave me some great insight highlighted in the 21 points below. THANK YOU FOR THE BOOK – IT WAS A GREAT BLESSING AND WILL HELP ME ALONG THIS JOURNEY!
1. There are three phases to a prisoner’s mental reaction to prison life: 1) shock 2) apathy 3) liberation.
2. Suffering is more about the mental and emotion than it is about the act.
3. Even in a Nazi prison camp it is possible for a spiritual life to deepen.
4. Using images and memories from the past – especially of loved ones – are essential to survive suffering. In speaking of his wife Frankl writes “My mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look…A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing, which I have learned well by now – love goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved…Whether or not she is actually present, whether or not she is still alive at all ceases somehow to be of importance.” Bonnie and I have talked about the importance of using our strong memories of vivid events to maintain our strong love. (37-38)
5. “Humor, more than any other emotion, can help us rise above any situation even if only for a moment.” (43)
6. “The majority of prisoners suffered from an inferiority complex. We all had been or fancied ourselves to be “somebody”. Now we were being treated as complete non-entities. The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many men, let alone prisoners, possess it?” This last sentence/question is provoking – I believe I have this awareness through Christ, but time will tell.
7. “There are always choices to make…which determine whether or not you will become a plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of a typical inmate…Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under these circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually…It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.” (66-67) WOW!
8. “The way in which a man accepts his fate, and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified, and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become nothing more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not…Do not think these considerations are unworldly or too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards…Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.” (67-68)
9. “The Latin word FINIS has two meanings: the end or the finish, and the goal to reach. A man who could not see then end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life…Instead of taking camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking into the future. And this is his salvation in the most difficult times although he has to sometimes force his mind to the task.” (70, 72, 73)
10. “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. The prisoner who lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and let himself become subject to mental and spiritual decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis…” (74)
11. “What you have experienced no power on earth can take from you. Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.” (82)
12. It would be an error to think that a liberated prisoner was not in need of spiritual care any more…the man who has been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health.” (89-90)
13. There are two fundamental experiences which can damage the character of a liberated prisoner: bitterness and disillusionment. “Woe to him who found that the person whose memory alone had given him the courage in camp did not exist anymore.” (91-92)
14. “The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more – except his God.” (93)
15. “Those who knew that there was a task waiting from them to fulfill were the most apt to survive.” (104)
16. “Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension – between what one is and what one should become.” (104-105). This reminded me of Romans 7.
17. Boredom is now causing more psychological problems than distress. (107)
18. “There are people, however, who do not interpret their own lives merely in terms of a task being assigned to them but also in terms of the taskmaster who has assigned it to them.” (110) AMEN!!
19. “No one can become fully aware of the essence of another human being unless he loves him.” (111). I thought about the relationship between God and us — we can each understand the essence of the other, and of each other, through love.
20. “Freedom is the negative aspect of of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness…THAT IS WHY I RECOMMEND THAT THE STATURE OF LIBERTY ON THE EAST COAST BE SUPPLEMENTED BY A STATUE OF RESPONSIBILITY ON THE WEST COAST” (132). I love this statement!
21. “Human potential at its best always allows for 1) turning suffering into human achievement and accomplishment, 2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better, and 3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsibility for action.” (138). I want to explore this position in greater detail to see if it is fundamental to Restorative Justice.
Our ministry regularly sends books to our White Collar Support Group members who are serving time in prison. We recently sent in the book, Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl. This book has special significance to me because it taught me lessons in hope and faith and informed the way I looked at my incarceration, recovery and reentry. In places of limited control, there are still things that we have power over: our bodies, our attitudes, and our ability to help others. Below is a book review we received from one of our group members. Please send your thoughts to me at [email protected] and I will make sure he receives them. Blessings, Jeff
____________________
Dear Jeff,
Thank you for sending me this book because it deals with suffering and the meaning of life. The author (Viktor Frankl) was a doctor before being imprisoned in several Nazi war camps, and he used his view of suffering to survive the experience and then thrive upon his liberation. Frankl does not take a spiritual view but many of the principles and accounts in the book are spiritual and would have significance in any teaching on the meaning of life or the value of suffering. Although this book deals with suffering caused by literal imprisonment, there are absolute parallels to people imprisoned by their sin and past failures. I highly recommend the book. Here’s the book report I owe you :-).
Although Frankl ignores the subject of HOW a person can change their mind about the value of suffering to enhance the meaning of life, he does a great job of explaining the psychology of suffering and appealing strongly to all of us to appreciate the role suffering can play to make our lives more meaningful. A key message in this book is “it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” (I would replace ‘life’ with ‘God’).
This book dovetails very well with my studies in Restorative Justice (especially the top of page 138 and 148-149) relative to people who have confessed to committing crimes.
This book gave me some great insight highlighted in the 21 points below. THANK YOU FOR THE BOOK – IT WAS A GREAT BLESSING AND WILL HELP ME ALONG THIS JOURNEY!
1. There are three phases to a prisoner’s mental reaction to prison life: 1) shock 2) apathy 3) liberation.
2. Suffering is more about the mental and emotion than it is about the act.
3. Even in a Nazi prison camp it is possible for a spiritual life to deepen.
4. Using images and memories from the past – especially of loved ones – are essential to survive suffering. In speaking of his wife Frankl writes “My mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look…A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing, which I have learned well by now – love goes far beyond the physical person of the beloved…Whether or not she is actually present, whether or not she is still alive at all ceases somehow to be of importance.” Bonnie and I have talked about the importance of using our strong memories of vivid events to maintain our strong love. (37-38)
5. “Humor, more than any other emotion, can help us rise above any situation even if only for a moment.” (43)
6. “The majority of prisoners suffered from an inferiority complex. We all had been or fancied ourselves to be “somebody”. Now we were being treated as complete non-entities. The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many men, let alone prisoners, possess it?” This last sentence/question is provoking – I believe I have this awareness through Christ, but time will tell.
7. “There are always choices to make…which determine whether or not you will become a plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of a typical inmate…Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under these circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually…It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.” (66-67) WOW!
8. “The way in which a man accepts his fate, and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified, and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become nothing more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not…Do not think these considerations are unworldly or too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards…Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.” (67-68)
9. “The Latin word FINIS has two meanings: the end or the finish, and the goal to reach. A man who could not see then end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life…Instead of taking camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking into the future. And this is his salvation in the most difficult times although he has to sometimes force his mind to the task.” (70, 72, 73)
10. “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. The prisoner who lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and let himself become subject to mental and spiritual decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis…” (74)
11. “What you have experienced no power on earth can take from you. Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.” (82)
12. It would be an error to think that a liberated prisoner was not in need of spiritual care any more…the man who has been liberated from mental pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health.” (89-90)
13. There are two fundamental experiences which can damage the character of a liberated prisoner: bitterness and disillusionment. “Woe to him who found that the person whose memory alone had given him the courage in camp did not exist anymore.” (91-92)
14. “The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more – except his God.” (93)
15. “Those who knew that there was a task waiting from them to fulfill were the most apt to survive.” (104)
16. “Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension – between what one is and what one should become.” (104-105). This reminded me of Romans 7.
17. Boredom is now causing more psychological problems than distress. (107)
18. “There are people, however, who do not interpret their own lives merely in terms of a task being assigned to them but also in terms of the taskmaster who has assigned it to them.” (110) AMEN!!
19. “No one can become fully aware of the essence of another human being unless he loves him.” (111). I thought about the relationship between God and us — we can each understand the essence of the other, and of each other, through love.
20. “Freedom is the negative aspect of of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness…THAT IS WHY I RECOMMEND THAT THE STATURE OF LIBERTY ON THE EAST COAST BE SUPPLEMENTED BY A STATUE OF RESPONSIBILITY ON THE WEST COAST” (132). I love this statement!
21. “Human potential at its best always allows for 1) turning suffering into human achievement and accomplishment, 2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better, and 3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsibility for action.” (138). I want to explore this position in greater detail to see if it is fundamental to Restorative Justice.
By Thomas Breen, Reprinted from New Haven Independent, Jan. 6, 2020
Reginald Dwayne Betts was 17 years old and locked up in solitary confinement in an adult prison when he found his calling to become a poet.
The nationally renowned poet and lawyer told the story of his literary coming of age during an interview on the most recent episode of WNHH Radio’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant.”
Thef Prince George’s County, Maryland native earned a degree from Yale Law School, lives in New Haven, serves on the state’s Criminal Justice Commission, and is the author of the new book Felon. Betts said his career as a poet dates back to 1998.
He was still a teenager at the time. Betts had pleaded guilty to felony armed carjacking charges as a 16-year-old in 1996, was tried and convicted as an adult, and was at the beginning of what would turn out to be nine years bouncing between a handful of adult prisons throughout his late teens and early 20s.
The fateful literary encounter that propelled him on his journey to become a poet took place in the midst of a six-month stint in solitary confinement, he said, his third such isolation during his time behind bars thus far.
Someone slipped under his door a copy of The Black Poets, an anthology of African American poetry edited by the Detroit publisher and poet Dudley Randall.
Included in that collection were several poems by Etheridge Knight, an African American man and Korea War veteran who wrote poetry from behind bars in Indiana in the 1960s.
“I’m like, ‘Wait,’” Betts recalled upon first reading the anthology. “Etheridge Knight did time in prison. Then he became a poet. And he’s in this book. And I just told myself, I’m gonna be a poet. And that’s when I started writing poetry really seriously. That was 1998. And from that point on, I’ve been a poet.”
Thomas Breen photo, Betts (center) with WNHH hosts Jeff Grant and Babz Rawls-Ivy.
Betts said he was a big reader even before he went to prison.
A college-bound honors student who studied computer science and wanted to become an engineer, Betts said he had read and connected with Things Fall Apart, Makes Me Want To Holler, Giovanni’s Room and Go Tell It on the Mountain as a high school sophomore and junior.
After he was sent to prison, he devoured more short stories and essays by James Baldwin and read cover-to-cover Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying.
“I told myself I would be a writer,” he remembered, “and that’s the thing that saved me. I was young enough and fool enough to not even know what that meant.”
“My life was changed by a book,” he continued. The Black Poets proved to him that being black and having a criminal record were not disqualifiers for becoming an accomplished writer, even if they did present roadblock after roadblock in his parallel, equally accomplished career path of becoming a lawyer.
The books he read before and during prison inspired in him a confidence in his literary talent and in his ability to succeed in the world that many teachers in high school missed, he said. He remembered one AP History teacher giving him the nickname “Smoky” after Betts was caught smoking a blunt before class one day. A better teacher would have asked why he was resorting to smoking so much weed as a teenager, he said, and what he was trying to hide from or suppress. This teacher only reinforced that negative sense of self, he said, if even in a small and seemingly trivial way.
Betts said he aspires through his own poetry to encourage readers to reflect critically upon the African American experience, the American criminal justice system, and the challenges formerly incarcerated people have in reintegrating into a society that often denies them work, housing, and rehabilitation.
He said his poetry also helps him come to terms with the very real trauma he likely inflicted on the victim of his crime, who was not injured during the carjacking but nevertheless had a gun waved in his face by a stranger.
“Prison and incarceration so saturate my understanding of the black experience that I haven’t figured out a way to write outside of that,” Betts said.
“You need stories to survive. You need stories that are able to inform where your steps might be, and where your steps shouldn’t be.” These stories, he said, should help point towards a better life.
See below for an excerpt from Felon. Click on the Facebook Live video at the bottom of this article to watch the full interview on “Criminal Justice Insider.”
ESSAY ON REENTRY
At two a.m., without enough spirits
spilling into my liver to know
to keep my mouth shut, my youngest
learned of years I spent inside a box: a spell,
a kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,
but History: I robbed a man. This, months
before he would drop bucket after bucket
on opposing players, the entire bedraggled
bunch fine & six & he leaping as if
every lay-up erases something. That’s how
I saw it, my screaming-coaching-sweating
presence recompense for the pen. My father
has never seen me play ball is part of this.
My oldest knew, told of my crimes by
a stranger. Tell me we aren’t running
towards failure is what I want to ask my sons,
but it is two in the a.m. The oldest has gone off
to dream in the comfort of his room, the youngest
despite him seeming more lucid than me,
just reflects cartoons back from his eyes.
So when he tells me, Daddy it’s okay, I know
what’s happening is some straggling angel,
lost from his pack finding a way to fulfill his
duty, lending words to this kid who crawls
into my arms, wanting, more than stories
of my prison, the sleep that he fought while
I held court at a bar with men who knew
that when the drinking was done,
the drinking wouldn’t make the stories
we brought home any easier to tell.
“Criminal Justice Insider” is sponsored by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
Previous articles based on the program:
• New Play Follows Women’s Post-Prison Lives
• Prison To School Pipeline
• A Second Chance In Washington State
• From Community Health Patient To CEO
• The Problem With Punishment
• Rowland: Criminal Justice Reform “Sands Have Shifted”
• Ex-Inmate Seeks To Raise The Bar
• New Corrections Chief Vows Prison Reform
• 1,000 Books Laid Path For Reentry
• 16 Years For A Crime He Didn’t Commit
• Insider Trader Cases Sexier To Prosecute
• Next Goal: Ban The Box For Housing, Too
• Criminal Justice Crusader Reflects On Mass Incarceration, #MeToo
• Society Needs A “Second Chance,” Too
• Imagining A Less Incarcerated World
• Criminal Justice Reformer Refuses To Give Up
• Criminal Record Controversy Propels Legislative Candidate
• ‘If’ Injects Humanity Into Incarceration
• Carbone Fans The Youth Justice Flame
• Forman: We’re Expelling Our Own, Too
• Lawlor Sees Progress On Reform
• From Mortgage Fraud To Criminal Justice Reform
• Teen Encounter With Cops Spurred Reform Advocate
• From Second Chance To No Chance Connecticut?
• Project Longevity Coordinator Works Off A Debt
• Ex-CEO Serves Justice Reform “Life Sentence”
• Ganim Describes Path Back From Prison
• Transition Time For Teens In Trouble
• Parole Holds A Key To Reentry Puzzle
• Organizer Takes “Sawdust-On-Floor” Tack
• Female Ex-Offenders Band Together
• German-Inspired Reform Calms Prison
• Son’s Arrest Helped Shape Porter’s Politics
____________________
A Testimonial From Richard Lee: “Thank you Jeff for your counsel throughout these past several years. My family and I are grateful to you and Lynn, and are glad to be a part of the important work you are championing in the criminal justice community.” – Richard Lee, Illinois. Link to additional Testimonials here.
Richard is a member of our confidential online White Collar Support Group that meets on Mondays, 7 pm ET, 4 pm PT. Our 185th meeting is on Monday, December 30, 2019.
Richard Lee Photographer: Taylor Glascock/Bloomberg
____________________
Richard Lee doesn’t remember the trades that upended his life.
A former SAC Capital Advisors LP portfolio manager, Lee managed a $1.25 billion fund for his boss Steve Cohen. He had tens of thousands of trades under his belt, so the roughly $10 million in Yahoo Inc. shares he bought on July 10, 2009, didn’t really stand out. But when the FBI approached him in March 2013, saying they had proof the investment was based on an illegal tip, the forgotten trades left him feeling trapped.
Lee wound up pleading guilty to insider trading and became one of eight SAC employees convicted in a sweeping government crackdown. Today, though, Lee is in the clear. After a favorable shift in the law and the emergence of new evidence, a federal judge in June threw out Lee’s guilty plea. Prosecutors last month dropped the case.
“Most people don’t understand,” said Lee, 40. “Why would anyone plead guilty to something that they hadn’t done?”
In his first interview since the case ended, Lee set out to explain why he would admit to insider trading he steadfastly denies took place. According to Lee and his lawyer, the former trader’s ordeal highlights what can happen when a busy investment professional is suddenly called to account for a handful of trades on a single day, years after the fact.
“There’s a misconception that portfolio managers and analysts and trading professionals remember every single trade that they did, regardless of whether it is completely lawful, in the gray area or illegal,” said Greg Morvillo, Lee’s lawyer. “You’re talking about four, four and a half years later. It’s very hard to remember the details of how a day evolved.”
Prosecutors in Manhattan declined to comment. They initially vowed to retry Lee, pointing out he pleaded guilty to other illegal trades which altogether netted SAC around $1.5 million. But in court papers in November, prosecutors said they were dismissing the charges because of “the difficulty of securing evidence” in a decade-old case. The judge who tossed out his guilty plea in June had declined to take the additional step of declaring him innocent.
Still, Lee says he’s been vindicated.
“This is a real victory,” said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University and former federal prosecutor. “This doesn’t happen very often.”
The day of the Yahoo trades, Lee was a high-flyer in the alternative investment world. A 2001 Brown University graduate, he had arrived at SAC from Citadel LP, another elite hedge fund group, after stints at McKinsey & Co. and in private equity. At SAC, he was a member of the special situations group.
According to prosecutors, Lee bought Yahoo based on a call the same day with analyst Sandeep Aggarwal, who passed along a tip from a close friend at Microsoft Corp. that a rumored search engine partnership between that company and Yahoo would soon be announced. News reports on July 16, 2009, of a possible deal sent Yahoo shares up. A Microsoft-Yahoo alliance was announced on July 29, 2009.
Aggarwal pleaded guilty to insider trading in November 2013. Lee’s cooperation led to Aggarwal’s plea, and largely ended there, Morvillo said.
Read More: FBI Pulls Off ‘Perfect Hedge’ to Nab New Insider Trading Class
Lee said he moved in and out of Yahoo almost constantly in 2009, both before and after the Microsoft partnership. He said he didn’t remember his July 10 trades when he was approached on the street in Chicago by two FBI agents four years later, and he doesn’t remember them now. But he’s certain no one would have believed that.
“I felt very deeply that I had not committed insider trading,” said Lee, “but I couldn’t assert that to people because I knew I would just come across like somebody who was actually guilty of it but in denial.”
It didn’t help that his prosecution was part of a larger insider-trading probe targeting SAC and Cohen. The case’s high profile increased the pressure on Lee to plead guilty and cooperate, he said.
Lee pleaded guilty on July 23, 2013, and agreed to be a government witness against others. “I was sobbing in front of the judge and reading this thing I didn’t want to read,” said Lee. “Almost immediately after my guilty plea, I looked at and discussed with my then attorneys at the time about whether I could withdraw it.”
Lee said Richard Owens, his lawyer at the time, advised against that, saying the former portfolio manager’s cooperation could help him avoid prison, where many convicted in the crackdown ended up. Owens declined to comment.
Two days after pleading guilty, Lee found himself cited by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in his announcement of his big case against SAC. Bharara said Lee was part of a group that made SAC a “magnet for market cheaters.”
“I was at home watching it on TV,” Lee said. “It was surreal.”
The battle between Bharara and SAC riveted Wall Street at the time. While Cohen himself wasn’t accused of wrongdoing, SAC itself later pleaded guilty and paid a record $1.8 billion fine to resolve insider-trading claims. The firm later changed its name to Point72 Asset Management LP and agreed to manage only Cohen’s money.
But as the SAC case faded from the headlines, it continued to hang over Lee, who was still awaiting sentencing. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in December 2014 threw out the convictions of two fund managers and said prosecutors needed stronger evidence in certain types of insider trading cases.
Read More: What’s Next for Criminalization of Insider Trading?: Matt Levine
After that ruling, Lee decided to get a second opinion on his case. A minister who works with white-collar defendants introduced him to Morvillo, who represented one of the fund managers in the 2014 appeals court case.
But Lee’s new lawyer said there wasn’t an immediate way around the guilty plea. The problem, Morvillo said, was that Lee never got to see most of the government’s evidence against him because he pleaded guilty so quickly. It was only in May 2017, after the government provided documents so that Lee could prepare for sentencing, that they saw an instant message Lee sent Cohen the day of the Yahoo trade.
Contrary to the government’s theory, the message showed Lee had bought virtually all of the Yahoo shares before his call with Aggarwal, not after. In August 2017, more than four years after Lee pleaded guilty, Morvillo asked the court to allow Lee to withdraw his plea under the change of law or find him innocent based on this new evidence. Prosecutors conceded they did not get the instant message themselves until a month after Lee pleaded guilty.
U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe tossed his plea based on the 2014 ruling, saying it was “insufficient” because Lee didn’t say that he knew how the corporate insiders benefited from their leaks, as the law now requires.
Read More: Ex-SAC Trader Lee Wins Insider-Case Dismissal, After Guilty Plea
The case behind him, Lee says he has no plans to return to the financial industry. He spent much of the last several years at home as primary caregiver to his two daughters. He did some work for a relative’s startup and explored switching careers to medicine or dentistry. Lee now works as a consultant to a Chicago software company.
It was tough focusing on a career as the legal fight dragged on. “At times I felt very guilty because I just didn’t feel like I was mentally present,” he said. “I was in my head much of the time.”
But he doesn’t think he deserves anyone’s pity. “I have a family, fine friends. Everyone has a hard life. This is mine,” Lee said.
Meredith Atwood reached out to me after watching my interview on the Rich Roll Podcast. We connected on a lot of levels – recovering addicts, depression, suicide attempt survivors, lawyers (well, I’m a former lawyer), and dedication to a second life of health and purpose. Soon after, she asked me to be a guest on her podcast, The Same 24 Hours. When I read about the publishing of her new book, The Year of No Nonsense, I asked her to write a blog post for prisonist.org.
____________________
For a really long time I carried the burden of self-hatred.
From a young age, I was always made to feel that I was shameful—in a myriad of ways—none of which were on purpose from my family. It was a sign of the times and an oppressive church at a very young age. By the time we found a decent church, the “damage” had been done, and I found myself in my teen years feeling ashamed of everything—from my body to my own shadow, my thoughts and my desire to kiss boys.
By the time I was in my late twenties, I had developed a full-on drinking problem. From that point forward, the self-hate ran deep and dark. I had identified none of my trauma(s) to date.
When I tried to take my own life at twenty-one, everyone brushed it under the table as a “one off.” I was tired. That wasn’t like me to try something like that. It was because I was drunk. I didn’t really want to die.
Even my psychologist didn’t make a follow-up, and I was out in the world—off to law school, then being a lawyer and raising children.
But now, I know that I did—in fact—want to die back then. I was that low. I was suffering that deeply. Much of it was at my own hand, my own “fault,” and my own “choices.”
In my mid-thirties, I began to fantasize about driving myself into a tree. Over and over again. The same tree. I thought, I could just detour this car and… I would think this as I drove home to my nice house in the suburbs, in my nice car, with my Louis Vuitton seated next to me, from my lucrative job as a lawyer in Atlanta.
I wanted to slam my SUV into a tree. Just to make it all stop.
On the day I had the kids in the car and I had this same thought, I was shaken. It shook me deep. I was suddenly wide awake. I heard a voice inside of me say, “Meredith, you will not be alive in one year if this continues. You will die by alcohol. Or, you will die by this tree.”
I believed that voice.
That voice, I wouldn’t say was God.
That voice—was me. It was the certainty that came from a knowing exactly what was happening, deep inside of myself. I realized that I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to end it all.
I simply wanted my suffering to end.
Little by little, I changed some things that I could see were causing some suffering. Drinking, for one. I got sober. I changed jobs—also a place of suffering for me, because I wasn’t living my perceived Purpose. I worked on a lot of things.
During the writing of my second book, The Year of No Nonsense, everything cracked wide open for me.
Because I uncovered the darkness that started all of the pain, the suffering, and potentially the addiction cycle. I learned that I wasn’t shameful. I believed (truly) that I was no longer shameful. I realized that some things were my fault, but some things were not. I learned that I had to forgive myself in order to move forward.
Through all the cracks in myself, I could see the light. The light was self-compassion, forgiveness and desire to learn to live—to truly live—through my faults and fears.
In this precious light of forgiving myself, I found a way to move forward.
——–
Meredith Atwood is an author, speaker, former attorney, founder of Swim Bike Mom, 4x IRONMAN triathlete. Host of the Top 50 iTunes (fitness) podcast “The Same 24 Hours” and author of Triathlon for the Every Woman, and upcoming, TheYear of No Nonsense: How to Get Out of Your Way and On with Your Life (Hachette Books, December 2019), You can pre-order the book through December 17, and then find it in Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble and your favorite bookstores and online. She is a writer for Psychology Today, Triathlete Magazine, Women’s Running and the founder of Grateful Sobriety—an online sobriety community. She is a certified USA Triathlon, IRONMAN, and USA Weightlifting coach.
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Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. is the world’s first ministry supporting the white collar criminal justice/economy exiled community. Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. is nonsectarian, serving those of all faiths, or no faith whatsoever. To date we have helped over three hundred (300) individuals, and their families, to accept responsibility for their actions and to acknowledge the pain they have caused to others. In accordance with our commitment to restorative justice, we counsel our members to make amends as a first step in changing their lives and moving towards a new spiritual way of living centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance, empathy and service to others.
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A Testimonial from Richard Lee: “Thank you Jeff for your counsel throughout these past several years. My family and I are grateful to you and Lynn, and are glad to be a part of the important work you are championing in the criminal justice community.” – Richard Lee, Illinois. Link to additional Testimonials here.
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Reprinted from Bloomberg, Nov. 7, 2019, 12:02 PM
A former trader at SAC Capital Advisors LP who admitted to making illegal insider trades, cooperated with the government, and later sought to withdraw his guilty plea has prevailed in his years-long fight to clear his name.
Federal prosecutors on Thursday dismissed their case against Richard S. Lee, who was the center of a prosecution the U.S. brought against the hedge fund in 2013, according to court records.
Lee pleaded guilty in July 2013, days before then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara unveiled unveiled a sweeping indictment claiming SAC orchestrated a massive insider-trading scheme. He was one of at least eight SAC fund managers or analysts who were charged in the government’s attack on illicit trading. SAC, which changed its name to Point72 Asset Management LP, eventually pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a record $1.8 billion penalty.
But after a series of court rulings changed the landscape of insider-trading law, Lee challenged his plea as insufficient. In June, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan granted Lee’s request to withdraw the plea but refused to declare him “innocent.” Prosecutors had said they would retry Lee on Dec. 9, but now have dismissed the case.
“Mr. Lee and his family recognize how rare it is for the U.S. Attorney’s office to dismiss a case after a criminal charge is filed,” his lawyer, Gregory Morvillo, said in a statement. ”We obviously agree that dismissing the case is the right result in this situation. Mr. Lee is grateful for the support from his family and friends throughout this long journey.”
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan didn’t have an immediate comment. In a court filing, prosecutors said they’re dropping the case because a decade has passed since the trades at issue and there would be “difficulty in securing evidence” to prove such an old case.
SAC Portfolio
Lee, who managed a $1.25 billion portfolio at SAC, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud, admitting he got advance information from a research analyst about Yahoo Inc. and 3Com Corp. in 2009. The Securities and Exchange Commission said in a related lawsuit that Lee generated more than $1.5 million in profits.
In seeking to set aside the guilty plea, Morvillo argued that records showed he had made his trades before receiving information from the analyst. Morvillo also said the case no longer holds up under an appeals court ruling requiring the recipient of a tip to know the tipper acted for a personal benefit in disclosing the information.
On Wednesday, Lee settled the SEC’s suit and agreed to pay more than $130,000 in penalties. Lee, who once worked as a portfolio manager at Citadel, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.
The case is United States v. Lee , S.D.N.Y., No. 13-cr-00539, order 11/7/19 .
Reprinted from Law 360, By Jody Godoy
Law360 (November 7, 2019, 12:41 PM EST) — Manhattan federal prosecutors have dropped insider trading charges against a former portfolio manager at SAC Capital who was headed to trial after getting his 2013 guilty plea vacated for falling short of the legal bar set out in the Second Circuit’s Newman decision.
In a request filed Thursday, prosecutors dropped their case against Richard Lee, citing the fact that the evidence is now 10 years old and that he has paid penalties to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The government has determined that it is in the public interest to dismiss the charges pending against Lee,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
One of the asset managers swept up in the federal investigation of insider trading at hedge funds, Lee was accused of multiple insider trades, including purchases of Yahoo Inc. stock he made after a call with an analyst, Sandeep Aggarwal, who had learned from a Microsoft insider about an impending collaboration between the two tech companies.
Lee had initially pled guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of fraud and cooperated with the government, but sought to withdraw his plea in 2017. He argued that the facts he admitted to in his plea were not enough to support a conviction under the Second Circuit’s 2014 decision in U.S. v. Newman .
In that decision, the appeals court said that to prosecute tippees under the Securities Exchange Act, the government must show that they knew an insider was receiving a personal benefit for leaking stock tips.
In June, U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe found that Lee’s plea allocution didn’t tick that box and as such had to be vacated, despite the difficulties prosecutors would face trying the case now. Lee had been scheduled to go to trial on Dec. 9.
Lee’s attorney, Gregory Morvillo, said in a statement that while its rare for prosecutors to drop a case, it was “the right result” in this scenario.
“Mr. Lee is grateful for the support from his family and friends throughout this long journey, and he looks forward to closing this chapter of his life, and beginning the next one,” Morvillo said.
The government is represented by Drew Skinner and Daniel Tracer of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Lee is represented by Gregory Morvillo of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
The case is U.S. v. Lee, case number 1:13-cr-00539, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
–Editing by Rebecca Flanagan and Breda Lund.
by Tom Green. Reprinted from New Haven Independent, Oct. 14, 2019.
An FBI community outreach worker and a local youth worker have teamed up to write, direct, and produce a play about the challenges women face after leaving prison.
That new play, Her Time, is the brainchild of Charles Grady, a specialist for the Connecticut FBI Community Outreach Program, and Steve Driffin, the youth and community programs manager for New Haven’s Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT).
Her Time is scheduled to have a three-show run at the Klein Memorial Auditorium in Bridgeport on Nov. 16 and Nov. 17.
The subject of the play, Grady and Driffin explained on a recent episode of WNHH’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant,” is Kim Williams, a woman who has spent 25 years in federal prison for transporting a gun and drugs for a boyfriend suspected of murder.
Grady and Driffin co-wrote the script, with Driffin serving as the director and Grady as the executive producer.
This character last appeared in The 5K Motion, a 2012 movie that Grady, who spent 21 years as a Hamden police officer and continues to work as a professional television and movie actor, made with the FBI.
That movie was filmed in parts of Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven, including at the former Church Street South housing complex .
Contributed photo. Charles Grady.
In that movie, Williams received a 40-year sentence at just 18 years old for actions done in allegiance to her boyfriend, Grady said. Once the police caught up with her, though, her “boo” abandoned her to stay out of legal trouble himself.
The play picks up with Williams over two decades later. She has gotten out of prison on appeal, and returns home to find that her mom has died, her children are now adults, and everything and everyone in her pre-incarceration life have changed beyond recognition.
While Williams herself is a fictional character, “it was all based on reality,” Grady said about the stories of post-incarceration hardship featured in this play. “This is the real deal.”
“We want to tell the real story of post-incarceration,” Driffin said. “Your neighborhood has changed. Everything has changed. You’re in this time vacuum, and you have to try to catch up—and real quick.”
Over 70 percent of women prisoners in this country are incarcerated for something they’ve done for a man, Grady said. He said he hears former female prisoners’ stories all the time through a program he founded in Bridgeport called Her Time, which is geared specifically towards providing a place for such women to meet, talk, share, and break bread with other former prisoners trying to re-acclimate to life outside the bars.
Thomas Breen file photo. Steve Driffin (left) with Gov. Ned Lamont at ConnCAT.
That program is an outgrowth of another venture Grady founded, called Hang Time Real Talk, which has chapters in New Haven, Bridgeport, Hartford, and Waterbury.
“It’s all about tapping into the after effects,” Grady said about the reentry group sessions, “and emotion, and how do you move forward with that level of pain?” Members of Her Time and Hang Time talk about both history and current events, he said, go on field trips together to everywhere from Washington D.C. to Newport, Rhode Island, and learn how to talk about the difficulties of life in and after prison.
“When you treat people like human beings and fairly,” he said, “great things happen.”
Click here to learn more about the play Her Time at the Klein Memorial Auditorium in Bridgeport.
“Criminal Justice Insider” is sponsored by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.
Previous articles based on the program:
• Prison To School Pipeline
• A Second Chance In Washington State
• From Community Health Patient To CEO
• The Problem With Punishment
• Rowland: Criminal Justice Reform “Sands Have Shifted”
• Ex-Inmate Seeks To Raise The Bar
• New Corrections Chief Vows Prison Reform
• 1,000 Books Laid Path For Reentry
• 16 Years For A Crime He Didn’t Commit
• Insider Trader Cases Sexier To Prosecute
• Next Goal: Ban The Box For Housing, Too
• Criminal Justice Crusader Reflects On Mass Incarceration, #MeToo
• Society Needs A “Second Chance,” Too
• Imagining A Less Incarcerated World
• Criminal Justice Reformer Refuses To Give Up
• Criminal Record Controversy Propels Legislative Candidate
• ‘If’ Injects Humanity Into Incarceration
• Carbone Fans The Youth Justice Flame
• Forman: We’re Expelling Our Own, Too
• Lawlor Sees Progress On Reform
• From Mortgage Fraud To Criminal Justice Reform
• Teen Encounter With Cops Spurred Reform Advocate
• From Second Chance To No Chance Connecticut?
• Project Longevity Coordinator Works Off A Debt
• Ex-CEO Serves Justice Reform “Life Sentence”
• Ganim Describes Path Back From Prison
• Transition Time For Teens In Trouble
• Parole Holds A Key To Reentry Puzzle
• Organizer Takes “Sawdust-On-Floor” Tack
• Female Ex-Offenders Band Together
• German-Inspired Reform Calms Prison
• Son’s Arrest Helped Shape Porter’s Politics