Chief Concern of Inmate Is Another Person’s Innocence

Most of the mail I get from inmates has a central theme: “Get me outta here.” It was surprising, then, to read the two-page letter from John Miller, currently in the Orange County Jail awaiting trial on shoplifting charges. Because he has a prison record, he may be looking at a sentence of nearly three years.

Miller didn’t write to protest his innocence, however. Or the unfairness of the system.

“My request is for some help for the mother of my child,” Miller wrote. “I realize my circumstances are far from one of a kind. It’s just that she is so very innocent. She doesn’t smoke, drink or do any drugs. She never has. My request is please help us find her some help with the baby.”

He concluded by saying: “If anyone deserves help in this world of ours, she does.”

Jaime Wilson is 23 years old and 8 1/2 months pregnant. A fan cooled us as we talked on the sofa in her one-bedroom Anaheim apartment. She’ll deliver the baby, her second child, by Caesarean section in less than two weeks. She has a 3-year-old daughter who lives with her father, from whom Jaime is divorced. Jaime met Miller, 15 years her senior, about a year ago.

In an odd way, I told her, Miller’s letter sounded like a love letter. Not a Shakespearean sonnet, perhaps, but maybe born of the same inspiration. Given her situation--that she is about to begin raising a child alone and that Miller is largely responsible for her financial plight--I wanted to hear how it sounded to Jaime.

We talked for an hour, during which she was soft-spoken, articulate and philosophical about her life. Yes, money is tight but, while being somewhat touched and amused by Miller’s plea, she made no similar request.

“To make a long story short, he was paying $375 a month for rent and I was paying $180,” she said. From her job at Target and his as a painter, they paid bills and “everything was fine, financially.

Then, he got put away and I’m stuck with having to pay $555 for rent plus all my bills.”

She said all this rather matter-of-factly. People gauge love in all kinds of ways and Jaime has one to apply to this situation: “He’s put me in a bind, but he also gave me the first month’s rent [after he was arrested]. He didn’t ask for someone to give him bail money and leave me hanging.”

Even so, I asked if she thought his letter spoke to his guilt feelings about leaving her high and dry. Beyond that, I asked if she were mad at him.

“My first instinct was to be mad,” she said. “But I’m not now. I don’t know why. I had every right to be mad at him before he went in, but he was there for me. He was paying bills, doing more than he should. Now he’s there in jail with nobody. I don’t feel obligated or anything, I just feel in my heart a need to be there for him.”

She had no idea in advance that Miller had written to me. “It shocked the heck out of me,” she said, laughing. “When I saw him today [at the jail], I said, ‘What made you write to the L.A. Times?’ ”

He wasn’t very good at explaining, Jaime said, but she thinks she knows why. “I don’t know what it is about him, but he loves me like you wouldn’t believe. It’s kind of scary when you think about it--that’s how much he loves me.”

She was mildly amused by Miller’s depiction of her as innocent. “If I’m so innocent, why am I pregnant and have a daughter too?” she said wryly.

Alluding to Miller’s request for help for her, I said, “You don’t really expect people to feel sorry for you, do you?”

She shook her head no, but not in a resigned way. “I’ll find a way,” she said. The apartment manager has given her a break in paying rent and in another couple weeks she’ll begin drawing some compensation while on maternity leave from Target.

As Miller alluded to in his letter, Jaime said his main problem is with drugs. He’s on a methadone program and is progressing, she said.

I got back to the question of love. As I read Miller’s letter, it was less about drumming up support for her as it was about him expressing affection.

For better or worse, that’s how Jaime sees it, too.

Can you imagine a future with him, I asked.

“Before, I thought, ‘No, how could I be with this person?’ Everybody was saying I should dump him, but I can’t do that. I have to listen to my heart, listen to what I believe.”

Her heart is telling her that Miller is redeemable, that even if he goes to prison he’ll be out someday and that their child might help turn his life around.

Someone once said that love don’t pay no bills. On this hot August day, two weeks shy of delivering her second child, Jaime didn’t need a reminder.

“I’m trying not to worry about it,” she said. “I keep telling John in all my letters that I don’t know why, but I think it’s going to be OK. I don’t know why, but a peace is over me, telling me it’s going to be OK. If it isn’t, then I’m wrong, but I just feel that way. Maybe God is watching over me, I don’t know.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.