"You're 16 years old! You can't take on a judge! You can't fight the whole system!"
"Watch me."
Jasmine stared at him for a long moment. Isaiah expected her to argue, to try to talk him out of it, to call him crazy. Instead, she sat down next to him.
"What do you need?"
Isaiah blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. What do you need? I'm good with computers, social media, research. If you're going to do this stupid, impossible, suicidal thing..." She smiled. "...then you're going to need help."
That night, they sat in Jasmine's basement, laptops open, scouring social media for footage from the night of the protest. They found three videos: three different angles, all showing the same thing. Darnell kneeling beside an injured woman, Morrison approaching from behind, Morrison falling with no contact whatsoever, Morrison screaming assault. The videos were timestamped, geolocated, authentic.
"This proves Darnell didn't touch him," Jasmine said, excitement creeping into her voice. "This is amazing."
"It's a start," Isaiah said. "But it's not enough. Caldwell already rejected video evidence once. I need to understand why. I need to know what's really going on."
"What do you mean?"
"Why does Caldwell keep convicting people? Why does Morrison keep making these arrests? There has to be a pattern, a reason."
He was right. In the fifth week of his research, digging through public financial records late one night, Isaiah found it: CoreCivic.
The name appeared in an SEC filing, a routine corporate disclosure that most people would never read. But Isaiah read everything. CoreCivic was one of the largest private prison companies in America. They operated detention facilities across the country, including several in Illinois. Their business model was simple: the state paid them a fixed rate per prisoner per day. More prisoners meant more profit.
Isaiah kept digging. He found CoreCivic's board of directors, and there, listed clearly in their public filings, was a name that made his blood freeze: Melissa Caldwell.
Judge Richard Caldwell's wife.
She had joined the board in 2018. Her stock holdings in the company were worth $2.3 million.
Isaiah cross-referenced Caldwell's conviction statistics. The judge had a 94% conviction rate, the highest in Cook County, higher than any other judge in the state. And 78% of the people he convicted of violent crimes were sent to CoreCivic facilities.
Isaiah sat back in his chair, mind racing. This wasn't justice; this was a business. Caldwell was sending people to prison to make his wife rich. Morrison was the supplier, manufacturing criminals out of innocent black men. CoreCivic was the customer, paying for each body that filled their cells. And at the center of it all was a man in a black robe who thought no one would ever figure it out.
Isaiah had figured it out. Now he had to prove it.
The night before the appeal hearing, Isaiah sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by 200 pages of documentation, color-coded tabs, handwritten notes, and a timeline of events stretching back 25 years.
Gloria came out of her bedroom in her nightgown, holding a cup of tea. "You're still awake."
"Couldn't sleep."
She sat down across from him, her arthritic hands wrapped around the warm cup. "Are you scared?"
Isaiah nodded. "Terrified."
"Then why are you doing this?"
Isaiah looked at her. This woman who had lost so much: her son imprisoned for a decade, her daughter-in-law dead of grief, her grandson convicted of a crime he didn't commit. And through it all, she had kept going, kept praying, kept believing.
"Because I'm more scared of losing Darnell than I am of anything Caldwell can do to me. Dad's been gone for 10 years. I won't let them take anyone else."
Gloria reached across the table and took his hand. Her grip was weak, but warm. "The Lord gave you that brain for a reason, child. It wasn't so you could keep quiet." She stood up slowly, her joints creaking with age. "I'll be in church tomorrow, praying the whole time. Every second."
"I know, Grandma."
She paused at the doorway. "Your mama would be so proud of you, Isaiah. And your daddy, too. Whatever happens tomorrow, they would be so proud."
She left.
Isaiah looked down at his notes. At the top of the first page, circled in red, were 12 words: CoreCivic. $2.3 million dollars. Melissa Caldwell.
Tomorrow, he would say those words out loud in a courtroom. And nothing would ever be the same.
The moment Caldwell told him to go home, Isaiah felt every eye in the courtroom waiting for him to crumble: the laughter, the phones recording, the absolute certainty on their faces that this black kid from the ghetto would tuck his tail and run.
He didn't move.
"Your Honor." His voice was calm, clear, no tremor. "Under Section 8.1 of the Illinois Code of Criminal Procedure, any citizen has the right to self-representation if approved in advance. I filed my motion 14 days ago. It was approved by the court clerk. Page 3, Section B of your file."
Caldwell's smirk flickered. He glanced at his clerk, who nodded reluctantly. The smirk faded.
"Fine. You can cite a statute. Impressive for a teenager, but knowing how to read doesn't mean—"