Brandon Jackson spent 25 years in a prison following a split-jury conviction. Now Jackson is on parole and wants to help others who were convicted in the same way.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We're going to follow up now on a story of a man who served 25 years in prison. Brandon Jackson served that time for armed robbery, even though some members of the jury found him not guilty.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We reported a few months ago on an Al-Jazeera documentary which told Jackson's story, as well as the story of the law under which he was convicted. For generations, Louisiana did not require juries to reach a unanimous decision. After the Civil War, white leaders allowed non-unanimous jury verdicts in order to dismiss the opinions of the occasional Black juror. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that non-unanimous jury laws were unconstitutional. But that decision was not retroactive, so a lot of people, like Brandon Jackson, remained in prison.

MARTIN: Jackson was finally released last month on parole. I got a chance to talk with him recently. Even before we got going, it was clear when we were getting him on the line that he is navigating a world that has changed.

BRANDON JACKSON: Hello? Hello?

MARTIN: Brandon, there you are.

JACKSON: Yeah, thank you. I just had a hard time connecting. You know, I'm not caught up on a lot of the technology right now - you know, cellphones.

MARTIN: So how are you doing?

JACKSON: I'm fine. You know, I'm adjusting. And I just feel a lot of joy right now, you know, just being able to be here and be with my mom. You know, that was probably the only thing that I was just really fearful about - you know, her passing away while I was incarcerated because, you know, she rode with me for the whole 25 1/2 years.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JACKSON: And it's just a blessing to be here.

MARTIN: You mentioned that - I mean, obviously, stuff has changed. You've been in prison for 25 years. The cellphone stuff is new to you, you mentioned. What else is different about the world?

JACKSON: I'ma tell you, I stood - we went to a store and I didn't know - I stood there for, like, maybe 30, 45 minutes waiting on the lady to come check the items out. I didn't know that we are able now to check our own items out.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JACKSON: So when she walked up, you know, when she showed me, I was, like, blown away from that. It's just amazing just to even be here and, you know, just see how the world has changed in over 25 years of just seeing brick and fences and barbed wires.

MARTIN: Jackson has maintained his innocence since his conviction. The Al-Jazeera documentary revealed that nobody was able to identify him at the robbery. The state relied on the testimony of a man named Joseph Young, who ended up changing his story a couple times and ultimately testified against Brandon Jackson in exchange for a lighter sentence.

JACKSON: I'm not even mad about it. I'm not angry about it. I think God allowed that thing that happened to me because he got something that he wants me to do. And I'm going to fulfill it, because all I can think about is the men that I left behind that's incarcerated under the same racist law that I was incarcerated on.

MARTIN: He was incarcerated at the Angola prison, notorious for violence and inhumane treatment of prisoners. An altercation with correctional officers landed him in solitary confinement for five years.

JACKSON: I had no TV. I had no radio. I had no reading material. And I stayed in that cell 23 hours a day. They only let me out a hour to shower and use the phone and do whatever exercise that I can do in that hour - for five years straight.

MARTIN: Brandon Jackson is home now living with his mom. They start every day with coffee at the kitchen table, and she reads a Bible verse and they pray. But patterns are hard to break.

JACKSON: I just find myself waking up every time that it's count time in prison. I find myself waking up because you can't miss count. If you miss count, that's a rule infraction. I know eventually it'll stop. But as far as my mental health, you know, I'm fine because my past has not defined me. It ain't destroyed me. It hasn't deterred me.

MARTIN: There are about 1,500 other prisoners in the state who were convicted by split juries and are still in prison, despite the Supreme Court ruling those verdicts unconstitutional. About 80% of them are Black.

JACKSON: That's my fight, and that's - I think about that every day.

MARTIN: Jackson is also thinking about how to build up the community that he's been away from for so long. He wants to start a nonprofit to help young people in his hometown of Shreveport, La. Meanwhile, he is learning to savor small things. Earlier in our conversation, he mentioned to me that there's a difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is fleeting. Joy fills a different, deeper space.

What has brought you joy, besides the simplicity of sitting with your mom and having coffee?

JACKSON: Right. Just the small things has brought me joy. Just being able to just go outside. Like, yesterday, we had a little rain, so I just walked in the backyard and just stood in the middle of the backyard. And I just wanted to get wet. I wanted to feel, you know, God's tears just pour on me. So I just stayed there.

(SOUNDBITE OF PASCAL ROGE'S "GYMNOPEDIES (3), FOR PIANO (ALSO ORCHESTRATED BY DEBUSSY) [GYMNOPEDIE NO 01]")

MARTIN: That was Brandon Jackson speaking to us after he was released from Angola prison in Louisiana. He spent 25 years there, the result of a split jury decision, the likes of which the Supreme Court has now ruled unconstitutional.

(SOUNDBITE OF PASCAL ROGE'S "GYMNOPEDIES (3), FOR PIANO (ALSO ORCHESTRATED BY DEBUSSY) [GYMNOPEDIE NO 01]") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.