Beyond All Repair - Violation Ep 5: Mass Supervision

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

In 2016, after 30 years behind bars and seven hearings in front of the Arizona parole board, Jacob Wideman was released from prison. Being on parole is a strange hybrid between prison and freedom. You’re still technically serving your sentence, but in the community. When Jake first got out, he was on home arrest, a strict version of parole. He had to wear an ankle monitor so the state could track his whereabouts, and he couldn’t leave his house without permission. Jake also had to follow more than two dozen separate parole conditions, among them: no driving; no contact with minors, no drinking alcohol. Not following any one of the rules could land him back in prison on a moment’s notice. And the vague catchall condition, “I will follow all directives I am given, either verbal or written.” This last one would come back to haunt him. On any given day, a quarter of incarcerated people nationwide are there for breaking the rules of their parole or probation. These behaviors are called technical violations and can include things like moving to a new apartment without permission or failing to attend a drug treatment program. You may have heard the term “mass incarceration” — this idea that the U.S. locks up more people than any country in the world. But lately, scholars and activists have also been talking about “mass supervision.” There are almost two million people in U.S. prisons, but there are almost four million people on probation or parole. In Part 5 of "Violation," we examine what life is like for the millions of people on parole in the U.S., and describe what happened when Jacob Wideman was on parole. Jake didn’t know it when he was first released, but his freedom would only last nine months — and there were people on the outside working to put him back inside.

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Please take care, and here's the show. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Last time on Violation. I was 18. I was about 18 and a half when I finally got to prison, and I didn't know anybody. when I finally got to prison. And I didn't know anybody. Okay, so you're saying, like, we can squabble about what we call it,

but something is going haywire in the temporal lobe of Jake's brain. No question about it. I've had amazing people around me. I've been through a decades-long struggle of healing. I've been in love. Nobody had ever listened to me the way that Jake listens to me. Thirty years after he had gone to prison as a teenager, Jake was finally getting out.

I was stunned. In 2016, Jake Weidman got out of prison. After 30 years behind bars and seven hearings in front of the parole board in Arizona, they sent him out in the world with an ankle monitor and a lot of rules to follow. As I think back on it, I flash back to the movie Vacation with Chevy Chase. And at one point in the, have you ever seen that movie? I don't think I have, no. No, it's a really funny movie.

But anyway, at some point, Chevy Chase gets in trouble. His family doesn't know it. And so he's trying, they're at the Grand Canyon, and they're taking in the view of the Grand Canyon. And Chevy Chase runs up to him. Okay, let's go, come on. And he kind of, he's going, let's go guys, let's go guys, let's go guys, because he wants to get on the run before the authorities catch up with him.

Good, come on kids, get your butts in the car. Don't you want to look at the Grand Canyon? And the kids are like, no, we really like this view. And they're like, hey dad, you know, look, it's so beautiful, so beautiful view. And so he stops and he puts his arms around him just for like three seconds and says, Yeah, beautiful. Okay, let's go. Maybe it's a little too on the nose that Jake thought of that scene. After all, their group from camp had been en route to the Grand Canyon

when Jake killed Eric in Flagstaff in 1986. But that's what he said. There were wonders all around, but there were so many rules, so many potential minefields to navigate. Jake and his wife Marta, who he'd married while he was still in prison, could rarely linger long enough to enjoy the wonders. The first time we went shopping, I think it was either a Fry's or a Walmart, I don't remember. So I'm just fascinated by everything.

You know, I love everything. I love all the selection. I love looking at the fresh fruit and vegetables, which I haven't seen in 30 years. And she's helping me to enjoy it, but she's also trying to rush me along. You know, so she, yeah, yeah, that's great, Jake. Yeah, look at that. Look, look, fresh fruit. Yeah, awesome.

Okay, let's go. We got to go. You know. Look, fresh fruit. Yeah, awesome. Okay, let's go. We gotta go. Jake remembers looking around at teenagers on the bus and thinking, that's how old I was the last time I was free. Some people were really unhappy that he was out at all. And he didn't know it at the time, but Jake's freedom would only last nine months. So there wouldn't be time for the little things to get old.

How many people do you talk to, adults in the world, who say opening a bank account is a lot of fun? But for me it was, you know. Being on parole is like this weird no-man's land between prison and freedom. You're technically serving your sentence, but in the community. The reminders that you're not really free are constant. Because Jake was on home arrest, which is even more strict than regular parole, he had an ankle monitor,

and he couldn't even leave his house without permission. In my years of reporting on this subject, I've spoken to people who chose to finish out their sentence in prison rather than get out on parole because the rules are so stressful and hard to follow. There are so many rules. Jake had 29 separate parole conditions, including no driving, no contact with minors, no drinking alcohol. Not following any one of them could land him back in prison on a moment's notice. Arizona is not alone in this. Long lists of rules, many of which are vague and hard to follow, give officers wide latitude to issue violations. In one case I followed in Massachusetts, a man on parole was found guilty of violating the rule against irresponsible conduct when he attempted suicide.

On any given day, one quarter of people in prison nationwide are there for breaking the rules of their parole or probation. They're behind bars for stuff like moving to a new apartment without permission or failing a drug test. They're called technical violations. Arizona last year locked up more than 4,000 people for things like that. Vinny Chiraldi directs the juvenile justice system in Maryland, but before he took that job this year, he worked as a researcher and ran various big city criminal justice agencies, most recently the New York City jail system.

Both probation and parole in the U.S. started in the 1800s. He said that at one time, parole was a social service, a way to help people adjust to life on the outside. But parole officers, or P.O.s, began to focus more on punishment around the same time that the rest of the system did, with the advent of the war on drugs. Drugs are menacing our society. And the war on crime in the 1970s and 80s.

We need more prisons, more jails, more courts, more prosecutors. The war on drugs, kicked into high gear by the late President Ronald Reagan, and then George H.W. Bush after him, brought an unprecedented rise in the sheer number of people being supervised and policed. This is Vinny talking on a TV show hosted by the nonprofit Fortune Society. So now you got POs with massive caseloads, no money to really help the people who might need housing or education or jobs, no resources for that,

or very few resources for that. So what started happening is that they used the resource they had, prison. That was always available. You couldn't find a drug treatment program or a job program for people, but you can always find a prison cell. Vinny says the whole system shifted its priorities and incentives. Without the resources to provide real help when people struggle, a parole officer has very few options. It's not that most officers are vindictive or petty or mean-spirited, though some surely are. Rather, when the system expects people to fail, then people will meet that expectation, one way or another. I think lots of people, including Jake, would say the system expected Jake to fail.

And his supporters say the system failed him. We'll talk more about that later. For now, just think about the system Vinny's describing, where a prison cell is the go-to solution for almost any problem, and where parole officers have little to gain by helping people succeed. If I take a chance on this person, and they go out and live a happy, healthy, productive life, I actually get nothing for that.

I don't get an attaboy. I don't get a plaque. Nothing. But if they go out and reoffend, I could get demoted. I could get fired. I look stupid in front of my coworkers because I'm a sap because I took a chance on a person. You may have heard the term mass incarceration.

This idea that the U.S. locks up more people than any country in the world. That the prison system is now so large that it becomes its own ecosystem, with enormous economies and communities that profit from it and orbit around it. But scholars and activists have also from it and orbit around it. But scholars and activists have also lately been talking about mass supervision. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner refers to it as, quote, mass supervision, the evil twin of mass incarceration. Today's show is titled A Spotlight on Mass Supervision. If we're serious about ending mass incarceration,

then we need to be equally serious about ending mass supervision. If we're serious about ending mass incarceration, then we need to be equally serious about ending mass supervision. There are almost 2 million people in U.S. prisons, but there are almost 4 million people on probation or parole. It's like a gigantic system of mass surveillance hidden in plain sight. It's like a gigantic system of mass surveillance hidden in plain sight. Jake's list of rules ran several pages and included pay fees, needs assessment, no use of alcohol, random tests for drugs, may not operate, no contact with a family of children, recommend halfway house, no contact with children, unless changed by family, I will charge the GPS electronic monitoring, I will not remove or bypass the outlet assigned to me. For at least two hours each day. And the vague catch-all condition, I will follow all directives I am given, either verbal or written. This one would come back to haunt him. I'm Beth Schwartzapfel.

From the Marshall Project and WBUR, this is Violation, a story about second chances, parole boards, and who pulls the levers of power in the justice system. This is Part 5, Mass Supervision. We will begin the formal hearing at this point, and I will invite Mr. Wyman to come forward. After he was out of prison for six months, Jake went before the parole board again in May of 2017. It was a routine check-in to update the board on how home arrest was going. His parole officer, Daniel Pareda, said it was going very well. The offender has been in compliance with programming. A lot of employers, his former employers,

have been, spoke about him positively. At this time, the offender has been in compliance with his current conditions and directives. That's all I've got to say. I know this tape is hard to hear, but Pareda says that Jake's employers have spoken about him positively and that he has been in compliance with his current conditions and directives. But board chair C.T. Wright seemed skeptical. He asked Pareda, everything is going well? Like, everything? Okay, sir, may I just ask this? I mean, and I know that you've said all.

All is a big word. A-L-L. That's a big word. Have there been, and I'm assuming that you had experience in working with other inmates in the past, have there been any, any violations whatsoever that you are aware of that Mr. Whiteman has committed since being out, sir, being on home arrest? And Parita said no. Jake was doing great. To the best of my knowledge, no, sir. I've been a community corrections officer since 2006, and I have supervised numerous offenders. And Mr. Whiteman has not committed any violations. It's an odd question, right? Why was Wright so skeptical that Jake had been in compliance with all his directives?

Well, Pareta had warned Jake in advance of this hearing that things behind the scenes were more complicated than either of them had realized. But first, let's rewind to November of 2016, when Jake was released from prison to home arrest. He moved into a halfway house in Phoenix. The vibe was sort of like a cross between a drug rehab and a college dorm, designed to ease the transition to the outside world. He had his own room, but there was a curfew and mandatory meetings and a manager who kept an eye on things. I can't believe this, you know, and I'll be spending the

night tonight, not in a cell, but in an actual bedroom. And I'll get to see my wife tonight and give her a hug outside, you know, without being monitored by some visitation officers. Now, home arrest is meant to be like you're incarcerated at your house. Arizona law says it's conditioned on remaining at the inmate's place of residence at all times, except for movement out of the residence according to mandated conditions. But for a long time, the corrections department treated it more like a trial run, letting people earn a little freedom

and watching closely. If they did well, they could move on to general parole, which would mean no ankle monitor and fewer restrictions. Even though he was still technically a prisoner, Jake was as free as he had been in decades. I keep trying to think about how to characterize the wonder and grace he says he felt at all the little things he experienced his first night there. How overwhelmed and awed he was by being able to walk out a door without permission. How he couldn't sleep that first night because he hadn't spent the night in a room that was quiet and dark for 30 years. After writing and discarding half a dozen cheesy metaphors,

I figure I'll just let Jake tell you about it. One of the most, you know, beautiful moments of my life was sitting outside at a little picnic table right in front of the halfway house in the evening, watching the sunset with my wife, eating dinner. You know, eating dinner out of a little cardboard box. Jake looked out at the mountains in the distance and remembered all the times Marta had described her hikes in those mountains to him over the phone, how long he had dreamed of joining her, and how he hoped that soon he'd be able to do that. And tears came to my eyes. I just, like, for a little

while, I couldn't stop crying. And it's funny, because most of the guys at the halfway house, they're former prisoners, and, you know, still kind of caught up in the taboos about showing vulnerability and things like that. So even in that moment, even in that moment of utter freedom and utter emotional freedom, I'm still trying to put my elbow next to my face. Decades of prison culture were so ingrained that he wasn't yet ready to show his tears. Later that night, Marta went home, and Jake went to his room. And suddenly Eric came to mind.

And, um... Sorry. And, um, sorry. Sorry. The only thing I could think of or imagine in that moment was just to repeat over and over again like a mantra. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You know? Jake says he often thinks of Eric. He says that part of his daily routine when he wakes up each morning

is to bring Eric and his family to mind, to wish them peace, and to recommit to being his best self in honor of the pain he caused them. But although he thinks of Eric every day, Jake says this moment was different. Thinking of Eric after the surpassing joy that I had felt for the last couple of hours that I just described. And I felt like there was a part of me which just felt like he belonged there too. How could I have taken the opportunity from another human being to experience what I just experienced? And I just had that kind of communing with Eric's spirit where I just, you know, said, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. If you're wondering about Jake's authenticity here, I mean, he gets emotional so rarely in our interviews.

You might be asking, does Jake wake up every day thinking about Eric? What does being truly sorry sound like? These are not things I can fact-check. For their part, Eric's family did not appear to believe that Jake was sorry or trust that he had changed. Almost immediately after Jake's release, Eric's father, Sandy Cain, contacted the parole office. Sandy Cain, contacted the parole office. He wanted to ask Pareda a few questions and, quote, provide you with some important information that could be helpful to you in managing this case, the record said. It's because of his status as a victim that Sandy Cain could make a call like this. Arizona is a leader in victims' rights protections. It was only the sixth state to enshrine a victims' rights protections. It was only the sixth state to enshrine a victim's bill of rights into its state constitution, which, among other things, ensures that any time a defendant has a right to

appear and speak, their victim, or in a murder case their victim's family, does too. That includes every appearance from a sentencing hearing all the way to a parole board hearing decades later. The statute doesn't say they can call and talk to any corrections official at any time. It also doesn't say they can't. I've spoken to many people who work in the system in Arizona, and they all say officials tend to err on the side of providing victims access, even when the rules don't specifically require it. So there are situations where because of the victim's concerns and the victim's needs, they will reach out to the parole officers, etc.

Mariam El-Manshowi directs the Victims of Crime Resource Center at the University of the Pacific in California. She said the system's attention to victims was born of the victims' rights movement, which took shape in the 1980s. The innocent victims of crime have frequently been overlooked by our criminal justice system, and their pleas for justice have gone unheeded, and their wounds, personal, emotional, and financial, have gone unattended. That's Ronald Reagan talking about a task force he convened in 1982.

For many decades, with the state and the defendant on opposite sides of a case, the victim was a sort of third wheel. All these people talking about something terrible that happened to them without their voice mattering at all. Reagan's task force called the treatment of victims

a national disgrace and urged states to pass a wide range of new protections. The right to be heard was one of them, Mariam said. If the person's out on parole, they want to make sure that the person doesn't come, you know, close to where they live, close to where they work. So they want to make sure that there's a GPS monitor on that person and that it is being followed. Sometimes victims reach out to parole officers regarding restitution.

So, you know, they can reach out to the probation officer or the parole officer to get to let the probation officer know, hey, this person's not paying. But the Cain's degree of involvement with officials was unusual for a victim's family. Over the course of Jake's time out of prison, the Cains were regularly in touch with the Department of Corrections, calling them, emailing them, with complaints, with information, with their own reports about Jake's whereabouts. The Kanes did their own investigation of Jake and submitted it to Corrections officials. And Jake's experience in the system of mass supervision was about to change. We'll be right back. It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart. And I'm Ash Kelly. And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well-researched. He claimed and confessed to officially killing up to 28 people. With a touch of humor. I'd just like to go ahead and say that if there's no band called Malevolent Deity, that is pretty great. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. This mother****er lied. Like a little bit of cursing. This motherfucker lied. Like a liar. Like a liar.

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Wayback Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Do you find yourself searching for true crime podcasts that are different from what you're always recommended? Do you want to make a real difference in the cases that you're following? Well, you're a crime junkie.

And I'm Ashley Flowers, the creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. There are hundreds of episodes already available, and each Monday we dive into the details of cases spanning from some of the most infamous to those that you have never heard covered before. Listen to Crime Junkie podcast now, wherever you're listening. Around the same time that Sandy Cain was expressing his outrage that Jake was out of prison, the director of the department personally began holding meetings to ensure that the parole office was properly supervising Jake, even though his own employees said Jake was following all the rules. This is a man who was, at the time, overseeing 10 state prison complexes, six private prisons, and thousands of employees. I talked to many experts who work in and around the corrections department, and they all said this is not what usually happens.

This is John Fabricius. I'm the executive director of Arizona's for Transparency and Accountability in Corrections, ATEC, here locally in Arizona. He was incarcerated for 15 years in Arizona prisons and later went on to found a Department of Corrections watchdog group in the state. He said this about victims' usual involvement in parole cases he's observed. You're going to go through victim services and you're going to go through the normal bureaucracy and they're going to be responsive to you, but you're certainly not going to get the director of the Department of Corrections setting meetings,

following up and bringing in people and, you know, doing all the things that... Since I started telling you Jake's story and reporting it out, there's always been this question of whether the Canes have been too involved in Jake's parole case, pushing the boundaries of how parole works.

Because there are ways in which Jake's case feels very unusual in the way it has played out. We'll talk more about that later. But you can't really blame the Canes for being persistent and as involved as possible with the effort to keep Jake in prison. They were shocked that Jake was released and wanted to make sure the state was keeping a very close eye on the person who murdered their son.

And that was their right. What we know for sure is that the state treated Jake differently than most people on parole. Very differently. The question is, did the state treat Jake differently from other people on parole because of pressure from the Keynes? I had a lot of questions for the corrections department about this. I made many requests to the Department of Corrections media office for a phone call or a sit-down interview with department officials.

But multiple emails and phone calls went unanswered. WBUR producer Quincy Walters and I even showed up at the Department of Corrections offices in Phoenix. Hi there. I'm looking to connect with somebody from the media office or the communications team. Do you have an appointment with them? No, I've just been emailing and emailing and calling and calling. They're actually all up in a, they're having a big to-do up in the third floor today. Oh.

Without their seeing anybody today? Uh. I'll try it. Let me see if I can. You don't have a contact information for anybody? I do, but nobody's getting back to me. So all our official avenues exhausted, Quincy and I tried other tacks.

We tried reaching the various parole staffers who had worked on Jake's case. I texted. I emailed. I sent letters. I got hung up on. Hello? Hi, is this P.O. Pogue? Well, that didn't go well. Jake had said he and Pareda had a good rapport,

so I thought perhaps Pareda might have some insight he was willing to share into what went wrong. But after voicemails and snail mails, there was no reply. So during a visit to Phoenix, Quincy and I went to the house listed under Parada's name in public records databases. Okay. Hi there. We're looking for Daniel. Are we in the right place? What's that? We're looking for Daniel. Who are you? Turns out it was a rental property, and the woman at the door was his tenant. But after that, Parada finally called me back and told me in no uncertain terms that he would not be speaking to me and to stop trying to contact him. And if I had any questions, to contact the media office.

You know, the same media office that wasn't replying to my phone calls or emails and that wouldn't send anyone down to talk to us even when we were standing in their lobby. Yeah, that media office. I should contact them. To be fair, employees of any corrections department I've ever spoken to are routinely told that they'll be fired or reprimanded for speaking to the media without permission. So I don't blame Pareta or anyone else for declining to speak with me. But the media office? They could have provided someone to answer my questions. It's literally their job. But I couldn't get a single state official who worked in the department at the time to talk to me on the record. So I've had to cobble together Jake's account, court documents, and public records to figure out what really happened in the weeks and months before he was sent back to prison. And according to those records, one of the first things Jake asked Pareda after he was released

was whether he could see Dr. McCain, the psychologist he'd met while he was in prison. But Parededa said no. Holly Dorman was one of the supervisors in the Phoenix parole office where Pereda worked. Just there, she said that, quote, when inmate Weidman was released, it was found that he had inquired about Dr. McCain. This is her testifying at another board hearing later. Dorman goes on to say that they referred Jake to counseling at correctional health care companies. Everyone just calls it CHC. Instead, because the corrections department contracts with them,

the counseling appointments are free. Quote, the issue with seeing Dr. McCain was placed on hold, she said. His counselor at CHC first seemed wary of Jake, records show. I have a sense that he will attempt to manipulate his attendance based on his work schedule, she wrote in an email to Pareta. But in future correspondence, she had only praise. He had good attendance and a good attitude and actively participated in therapy. In June, she discharged Jake from the program.

By then, family members and friends had begun making visits out to Phoenix. Jake's sister, Jamila, now in her 40s, came out with his brother, Daniel, and his mother, Judy. Jamila hadn't seen Jake outside of prison since she was 10 years old. I think probably about an hour and a half that first day, the way in which we spent a ton of time together that day was actually throwing a football around and peppering the the that back and forth with with conversation and you know you talk about what it means just to just to be Jamila had spent almost her entire life making trips out to Arizona, first to visit Jake and then to speak on his behalf at parole board hearings. Jamila told a story at a board hearing once about a research paper

she wrote in elementary school about the planet Jupiter. Jake was already locked up, but she told him about it over the phone, and he asked her to send him a copy, she said. And when I next spoke to him on the phone, he would have thought that I had in fact discovered Jupiter, if he could have heard the excitement and the encouragement in his voice. In subsequent conversations, he would talk to her about astronomy and the night sky, and she later realized he had made a point to read some books about it so they could continue their conversations.

After she played for the WNBA, Jamila had gone on to become an attorney, even working for a time at a prisoner civil rights nonprofit. So Jamila is both a realist about the challenges Jake faced and also a devoted sister who wants so much to see him free. I think that's what I remember most was the freedom to just be in one another's presence. And all of the richness that were in the moments of silence, that were in the moments of conversation, that were in the moments of banter,

that were in the moments of laughter, that were in the moments of conversation, that were in the moments of banter, that were in the moments of laughter, that were in the moments of physical touch. It was extraordinary. Reconnecting with family was extraordinary, but finding a job was proving extraordinarily hard. His first job through a temp agency was at a recycling center, sorting garbage. But working amid all the trash was causing him health problems. So he applied for a clerical job in the office at the company, and he got hired.

He was transparent about his criminal history, he said. His parole officer required this, and it is reflected in Parada's notes. But a few days before he was set to start, he got a call to say the offer had been rescinded. Jake says he later reached a contact in the HR department. And he said, off the record, there were phone calls that were received by our main office, by whom I'm not at liberty to speak to you about. A similar thing happened at his next job, at a steel manufacturing company. Excellent interview, transparency about his background, great rapport with his boss during his first day on the job, then a call. Don't come back. She calls me back like 15 minutes later. She says, I don't know what happened. She said, but they don't want you here anymore. I don't know

who you pissed off. It would be hard to verify any of these stories after all this time, but we were able to confirm that Jake's parole paperwork included a letter of support from the temp agency that hired him to work in the recycling plant. A board member at one point even comments, that's kind of different. They write a support letter for him at the same time they didn't want to give him a job.

And on the steel company, here's P of different. They write a support letter for him at the same time they didn't want to give him a job. And on the steel company, here's Pareta. They enjoyed him, liked him. They turned around, contacted the staff agency and stated, that position that Mr. Whiteman was at, they're going to do a background on him. Well, they did a background at. They no longer needed services at that facility. They enjoyed him, liked him, Parita says there. They turned around, contacted the staffing agency,

and said they were going to do a background check. And then all of a sudden, after that background check, they no longer needed Jake's services. Jake's record also includes a glowing letter from another employer he worked for briefly as a laborer, a mom-and-pop construction company. But he didn't much enjoy the work, so he was pleased when he got a new job for a company that provided customer service outsourcing to other companies. He liked this job. He says he loved the constant activity, the meetings, the bustle of answering phones and chatting with colleagues. And once Paredes saw that Jake was following all the rules, he started allowing him out on hikes

and out for occasional meals records show, baby steps toward normalcy. After three months at the halfway house, he got permission to move into his own apartment, a tiny one-bedroom in a complex not too far from Marta's home. He wasn't allowed to live with Marta because of an ongoing custody dispute between Marta and her ex-husband. Their two kids were 14 and 12 at the time, and their father did not want them having any contact with Jake. So whenever the kids were at school or at their father's house,

Marta and Jake tried to make the little apartment feel like their home. Jake's dad treated him to some furniture, a bed, a couch, a coffee table, a TV. It was small, but it was beautiful to me. You know, I wanted a little outside area where I could put a chair and, you know, gaze at the sky when I wanted to gaze at the sky. And this had a perfect little balcony for that. So I spent a lot of time up there. Now that he had his own place, Jake began inviting a few people for dinner.

One of those was Mike Kimmerer, a Phoenix defense attorney who had worked with Jake's other longtime attorney, Patty Guerin, to represent him from the time he was 16. Mike came to Jake's house with concerns about the parole department. Really, it was a warning. As a matter of fact, that time I had dinner with Jake at his house. I said, they're going to try to set you up. I said, the slightest little thing could be a problem.

Defense attorney Mike Kimmerer was right. The slightest little thing was going to be a problem. By the time Jake was released from prison, he and Marta had been married for three years, and they'd been in a relationship at least twice that long. But they'd never gone out for a meal together, never hugged or kissed without a correctional officer looking on, never gone to a movie together or gone for a hike together or driven in a car together.

Never spent the night together. We had both talked in the weeks leading up to my release and anticipated there would be awkwardness. And, you know, actually being physically together, excuse me, for the first time without the restraints that were in visitation. And there just wasn't that awkwardness. It just felt natural. Jake said this at that routine check-in before the parole board six months after he got out. Remember that hearing?

How skeptical the board chair was that Jake was actually doing well? How he kept pressing Pareta on whether Jake was following all the rules. About a week before that hearing, someone notified parole officials about all kinds of rules Jake had supposedly been breaking. Drinking, spending time with kids, accusations which Jake, of course, denied. Pareta had sat Jake down to ask him about it. During that conversation, Pareda had also told him something else. About a week before my first status hearing, my parole officer actually made me aware that there was a private investigator following me. And so he went so far as to warn me that I should be prepared just in case something came up that would cause them to arrest me right at the status hearing, right in the hearing room, which was a pretty big shock to me.

For their part, the Keynes did not want Jake out of prison, ever. Though they declined our multiple requests for interviews over many years, they made that very clear in public appearances and documents. I would do anything to keep him out of society, Sandy Cain told a local newspaper. But behind the scenes, things were getting weird. The Cains had found an unexpected ally who did not want Jake out either. They decided to team up to make sure his freedom didn't last long. Together, they took advantage of GPS coordinates, the definition of a victim under the law, and just how easy it is to violate a condition of parole and get thrown back in prison.

They pretty much knew once they could get him back in prison, it was going to get him hard to get him out again. They pretty much knew once they could get him back in prison, it was going to be hard to get him out again. They pretty much knew once they could get him back in prison, it was going to be hard to get him out again. That's next time on Violation. If you want more information about Jake's case, additional documents, photos, and related stories, head over to themarshallproject.org slash violation and wbur.org slash violation. Violation is a production of WBUR in Boston and The Marshall Project. Editing of the show comes from Geraldine Seeley, who is also a managing editor of The Marshall Project, and Ben Brock-Johnson, executive producer of WBUR Podcasts.

Additional editing, project management, and web production from Amy Gorel. Quincy Walters is our producer. Mix, sound design, and original music composition by Matt Reed and Paul Vycus. Special thanks this week to the Fortune Society for sharing a clip of their TV show. I'm Beth Schwartzapfel, your reporter and host. I'll talk to you next week.