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FREED FROM DEATH ROW, SHAREEF COUSIN HAS REASON TO BE AN OPTIMIST 1996. at the age of 16, Shareef Cousin was convicted and sen tenced to 003th for a murder in New Orleans. In 1998, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned his conviction because of evidence improperly withheld during his original trial. The district attorney decided not to pursue Cousin's case further, and the charges in his death penalty conviction were dropped. He maintained always that at the time of the murder he was playing in a videotaped city recreation department basketball game. He remained in prison until 2005 serving out a sentence for an armed robbery conviction that resulted from a plea in the 1996 murder case. Cousin now lives in Atlanta, where he attends Morehouse College and works with the organization Fairness for Prisoners' Families, a project of the Southern Center for Human Rights that seeks in part to form a support network recognizing the difficulties faced by the families of the incarcerated. Cousin plans to attend law school and to one day represent capital defendants. He will be speaking about his experiences with the capital punishment system in the UGA Chapel this week. Flagpole: So, you grew up in New Orleans... Shareef Cousin: I grew up in New Orleans, in the Ninth Ward, which is, you know, kind of famous because of Katrina. FP: Speaking of Katrina... SC: Actually I was in prison right outside of Slidell when Katrina hit. which, we were affected by some of the wind from Katrina.... We had to evacuate to Angola [prison]. FP: What was it like being in jail during the hurricane? SC: It was terrible: one of the main parts was you didn't know what happened to your family. And then the prison cut off all the telephones, so you couldn't really call out. So you were in limbo, not knowing what happened to your fam ily. That was the most dreadful part of being incarcerated. FP: And how about your family? How did they make out during the hurricane? SC: Well, they were in New Orleans, and one of my sisters, she was at the convention center. So she experienced everything at the conven tion center, but now they're... no one got hurt, everybody's fine, but, you know: still affected. FP: And are they living bock there, or where is your family now? SC: Well, some went to Boston, and some went to Texas, and some went to Alabama. FP: Now that you're working with Fairness for families in Atlanta, that's one question I had obout while you were incarcerated: what was that like for your family? SC: For one, I couldn't talk to my family often because I come from a poor family; we couldn't—my family couldn't—afford the high telephone calls. They couldn't afford those col lect calls. And just, you know, I went to jail when I was 16, so it's like they have this whole stereotype of going into prison young. So it didn't matter what I told my family, that I was okay; they still had their own thoughts. And, not being able to visit my family because I was four or five hours away, so there was no transportation. And it was like, the little money my mom did have, had to keep at home to pay for the attorney. So she moved to Boston before the hurricane, and she was broke! I think one positive effect it had on my family was that before my whole ordeal, they were never aware of legisla tive policies, or voting, they weren't into those types of things. Even community work. And with my incarceration, they got more involved in community service; they got more involved in, you know, not just voting for people because it's a name they might see on the television, but really got involved in the issues and the platforms that people were running on. So I think that was one of the posi tive aspects that my whole incarceration had on my family. Probably the only one. FP: And what’s the rest of your family doing now? SC: Well, my mom, she wasn’t a high school graduate before my incarceration, but once I went to death row. that kind of inspired her to go back to school. So she went on and got her GEO and went on to college, and graduated and got her Masters, and she's a social worker for ju veniles in the system. And my oldest sister, who lives in Cambridge [MA], she had graduated-fTom college already and was an electrical engineer, but once I went to death row, that kind of inspired her to go back and she's at Harvard right now, in Harvard's PhO Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government. So that inspired her to not just want to work in corporate America, but to want to make some type of change. FP: So, 11 years in jail, and you were released when? SC: Oecember of 2005. FP: So it's been just over a year. What is it like? SC: For one, it's hard out here! [laughs] It's hard out here, man. I can tell you, if I didn't have the attorneys in the death penalty com munity—because that's a small, knit community, those attorneys that do death penalty work—if it weren't for that small community, then, you know: I went to jail when I was 16. I didn't have any job skills, so I came home with no job skills.... It's like, life can really be much harder than what it is for me, but one of the adjust ments is having to pay bills!... That was the biggest adjustment, because I didn't have the opportunity to just go through the transition from teenager to young adutthood to adulthood. I went to jail when I was 16, and I came home when I was 27 years old.... I've got to work full-time to pay bills, and I want to go to school full-time because it's something I want to do. And just working full-time and going to school full-time, just trying to balance those two is a hard task. After 11 years, you might want to come home and just relax for a minute, just to get used to being free. I really didn't have that opportunity. FP: I don’t know if you saw that article in the Atlanta paper last month obout Pete Williams, who was just released from prison. One of the m funny things in that article—not to make light of it—was that a reporter asked Williams what things were strange about being out of jail and he said he can't believe everybody's walking around with cell phones. It was kind of like a time warp, and the change in technology was remarkable. Did you have any experiences tike that? Grand Opening Next.to Starbuck s on College Avenue myspace com/athenschapei Athens' Most Extensive Liquor, Beer & Wine Selection Valentine's Day 2007, Wednesday February 14 DJ's Bitch Switch presented by.Young, Foxy & Free 10 FLAGPOLE.COM FEBRUARY 7,2007 NEWS <> FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS