Column 4: Conversations between Mohamed and Dina

November 19, 2024

In 2022 Dina was asked by a friend who is a leader in the Somali community to get to know Mohamed and help him in any way she could. This is the third in a series of columns Mohamed and Dina are writing about his life and story. Almost every word attributed here to Mohamed is a quote from Dina’s notes of conversations with him. Mohamed has served nine years of a forty year sentence in the WA State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. He was convicted of three counts of first degree assault and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm during an altercation in which one person was shot in the hand and sustained minor injuries.

This is the fourth column about Mohamed, based on conversations between Mohamed and Dina since 2022. Their first column was shared in the JCIJ newsletter in 2023 and originally published in The Retiree Advocate. The second column was published in August 2024, and the third installment came out earlier this month.

Mohamed is sentenced to 40 years in prison for an altercation in which one person sustained minor injury to the hand. He has unsuccessfully appealed his sentence to the WA State Supreme Court. In 2021 his family hired an attorney to ask the King County Prosecutor to petition for resentencing through the WA State 6164 resentencing program. It has been three years since his resentencing request was submitted to the Prosecutor and he has not even heard from the King County Prosecutor whether they have received it. 

WA State does not have a parole program, but Mohamed can apply for clemency once it is ten years past his conviction, in October 2024. He has heard from the wonderful Seattle Clemency Project that they may be able to represent him in October in an application for clemency, and protection from deportation to Somalia if he does win clemency. But the State Clemency board is tiny and understaffed, and has a huge backlog of cases. And we don’t know if Mohamed will be one of the extraordinarily few applicants for clemency who receives it.

But wait! Maybe we can get the sentencing laws of WA State changed, so that his criminal counts and gun enhancement would be served concurrently and not consecutively, which are the reason for his long sentence. Legislation which would help Mohamed toward his goal of resentencing has been introduced in the WA State Legislature, but has not been passed yet. This legislation would significantly shorten sentence length by cutting the standard ranges, increasing the amount of “good time” back to historical norms, eliminate consecutive sentences for serious violent crimes, and more, and to make these changes retroactive.

Even I am not super hopeful that this will succeed. 

Since I have met Mohamed in 2022 I have been a friend on the outside. I suggested we write these columns together with the hope that if we introduce readers to Mohamed right where he is now in his life’s journey, that readers might be moved to join in a campaign of community support for his clemency case later this year. I recently told Mohamed that I thought any of the remaining legal options could succeed for him. I said let’s try again to get action on his 6164 Petition. He said he was open to that. Then he laughed and said I was looking at his life through the Eyes of Freedom. 

This is Mohamed’s perspective on his legal options after two years in county jail and almost ten years in prison:

I have gone through a lot of despair after losing the appeals. When we began the appeals, I had 100% hope that we would win. That’s when my hope died, after the appeals. Every morning I get up, I understand what life is. We live, we die, we live every moment so you leave nothing negative behind. Live for that moment. All else is out of your hands, out of your reach.

I saw (a lot of) other people win their appeals using the same legal arguments as we used in my case. I lost a lot of hope in the system.  I don’t know if I’m gonna get out or not. I got more time than many inmates I know in here got for murder! I don’t know, man, that’s what it is. I get 40. (I would add that Mohamed knows he is one of many in this situation, even if it sometimes seems like he is alone.)

When the 6164 process was passed into law, many people were very hopeful about it. But the law put all the power into the hands of the prosecutors, the same people who put me here for forty years. If they gave you excessive time (in your sentence), they are the ones who have to reconsider it. But it (6164 process) is no good for me. Everyone else I know got a response to their requests. I got nothing!  (Mohamed knows that this is probably true for many other people.)

When I think about the clemency case, I don’t have much faith in clemency. The Clemency Board might look at me, a Somali refugee. The majority of my life in America I have been in prison. I got a second chance already; that was to come to America as a refugee. Now I’m in this place. Why would they let me out? I don’t know. I’m gonna do it (appeal for clemency), if it’s there it’s there, if it’s not it’s not. If it comes true, a blessing. If not, still a blessing. But a different blessing.

Do I have any hope that I can win clemency? I want to explain to the clemency board that in Somalia, where I grew up, there were no laws, no consequences, no government, a war zone. Then in Seattle, I learned from the influences around me. Like all the kids I was around in low income housing and at John Marshall High School, we were all influenced to adopt the kind of lifestyle that leads to prison. We didn’t want to go that way; it was the situation we were living in. I didn’t know any better. Now that I have grown up in the prison system, I see the world different. I can see you need  a good education to succeed, so I am about to get my AA degree. I understand a lot now that I didn’t understand then.

Maybe a new law will come out. Then I will get out some time after ten years in prison.

It’s good to have hope. But when you live in the system, it’s different. I’m still trying to have hope. Always. But I’m living in the system. I can see it, I can feel it. In here 24/7, you think about it every way. You have hope, then it’s gone, you wait for the next hope.

I had to switch my energy to prepare for the next life. I put my life in God’s hands. I can’t control this life. That’s reality. 

I need to prepare myself for the worst. I have seen people go crazy if they think something great is going to happen then they get disappointed.

I am here for a reason. That’s how life is. Even though I went THAT way, not doing good. Religion teaches me: we are in this world for a test. Please, God, help me follow the Prophet’s way. Much in this world will take you away from that. I failed that test. Now I have a chance to get myself right on the right path. 

I am learning from my ongoing friendship with Mohamed that his legal options are tortuously difficult to navigate. Mohamed is one example of the many prisoners in this country stuck in a system that has neither the resources nor the commitment to justice necessary to deal with the obvious racial inequity inherent in the criminal “justice” system. And that living every day in prison is an act of extraordinary courage.