“Hmmm, if you think I’m guilty, if your mind is made up, I challenge you to ask yourself. When did you make your mind up about my innocence? At what point exactly? I want you to pinpoint the moment when you heard enough, the moment you were pushed beyond any reasonable doubt that I was guilty. Or was it in fact when you walked in this room and saw me looking upset, as some kind of falsely perceived admission of guilt? Or maybe it was my rather aggressive tone that actually started building your case. Surely, it wasn’t the color of my skin, I’m confident each and every one of you understand the biases, prejudice’s, and cultural conditioning that allows innocent people like me to be found in such predicaments as these based solely on the color of my skin.

If your wrong about me having committed this heinous crime, ask yourself will you be able to sleep at night. Go ahead and ask yourself, ‘self, will I sleep comfortably knowing I wrongfully convicted an innocent person to this lengthy sentence?’ If your answer is yes, people make mistakes, well then me and justice never stood a chance, and you have wasted all of our time, and exponentially much more of mine.

I want you to know I maintain my innocence one hundred percent. I did not steal that $50 bill out of mommies purse.

Brothers and sisters, as your youngest sibling, are you really willing to drive a wedge this deep between us? Or are you willing to consider other alternatives to recovering mommies money. She said you all get to decide my fate, or we are to recover her money, did she not? So I say family, let us come together with our finances and put this misunderstanding to rest. I will be in my room while you make up your minds.”

Knock. Knock. Knock. “Hey Paul, open up.” My oldest brother waited patiently as I cracked the door open slightly. Then he said very calmly, “Guilty bro. And for the record, I was for you, but they were like nah he did it, so we agreed you doing all of our chores for the next 6 months.”