“Asked in one word to describe myself I would simply say I am a human.”
Brandon Harrington is quick to point out that he is one among many young people that have been sentenced to a “torturous, slow death” in prison. A permanent, unchanging sentence for a young person who has not yet reached the point in life where they mature and change.
“There are a lot of people you leave behind. You don’t see the difference between you and them. You just see them still stuck with that life without parole sentence without an opportunity to at least show rehabilitation over a period of 25 or 30 years.”
Brandon was born in Detroit to two parents that provided stability and “set a good example” for him. A studious child that loved books and astronomy, Brandon had trouble socially.
“I had an issue – I had a complex, a low self-esteem issue with my darker complexion. Most kids can deal with it and move on. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t deal with it properly; I couldn’t process it.”
His social troubles led him to move high schools and find a new group of friends. Fed up with being “picked on, talked about, and laughed at,” Brandon joined a group he saw as well-respected and well-liked, his cousin’s gang.
Brandon quickly learned that in order to gain respect with his new peer group, his behavior had to become more and more anti-social. Brandon recalls, speaking of the night where at 17 he took the life of another young man:
“I thought that I was being exposed as a fraud for pretending to be somebody that I was not. It angered me – and to be blunt – it frightened me. I thought that I would lose my position, I would lose my association with this group, and I would go back to being just Brandon.”
It took Brandon years to understand the severity of his actions and the permanence of his sentence. Returning to his studious roots, Brandon took every educational, vocational, and behavioral course he could while incarcerated. Spending all his time in the law library, Brandon quickly cites all cases, codes, dates, and decisions affecting juvenile life without parole from memory.
“I don’t ever want anyone to hear me speak and not hear that from me.”
It is important to Brandon that whenever someone hears him speak on the injustice of sentencing children to permanent incarceration, that he acknowledges the hurt and pain they’ve caused.
“I took another young man’s life – an African American young man – who, to my knowledge, has both a daughter and granddaughter and they never had the chance to grow up with him. I took that away and that always has to be acknowledged.”
Since his release, Brandon has reconnected with his daughter, Brandy, the “light of [his] life,” and works as a commercial truck driver for a large distribution company, a future he could only dream of while taking reading-only CDL courses in prison.
Brandon has served as a peer-reentry leader for the Michigan State Appellate Defenders Office and continues to use his experience and legal knowledge to advocate for those left behind.
