Maya Moore: The Definition of Personal Sacrifice
Maya is considered “The Goat” to most people who follow women’s basketball. She’s been to the WNBA finals six times where she’s won four championships. She’s won two NCAA championships and won two Gold medals in the Olympics. She has even won a WNBA MVP. In high school, she won three state championships. At the age of 29, Moore was still in the prime of her career, yet like Michael Jordan who took a baseball sabbatical at 29 and Barry Sanders who left at 30, Moore made the decision to leave the sport, but her decision was based on servicing others (Herring and Paine 2020).
Enter Jefferson Correctional facility, a maximum state penitentiary in the heart of Missouri. There you’d find Jonathan Irons, who was 40 years old and had been imprisoned for a crime that took place in 1997. According to the New York Times, the crime took place in, “O’Fallon, Mo., a predominantly white, working-class suburb of St. Louis, on the evening of Jan. 14, 1997. A 38-year-old man, Stanley Stotler, returned to his home and was confronted by a burglar, court records say. Shots were fired, two by the burglar with a .25-caliber handgun, and one by Stotler in self-defense...” (Marchi 2020). Stotler was able to call the police and get help. A few days later, Irons was arrested. He was 16 years old.
According to Irons, he had been in the community and had a gun, but he didn’t commit this crime. When he had his court date in 1998, there were not any tapes from the investigation. The prosecution could not present any tapes with Irons confessing and the detective in the case was unable to be cross-examined because he was sick at the time of the trial. Although Irons did say he had a gun that day, he was adamant that he did not have a .25 caliber, the one that was used at the crime scene. This situation occurred during the Three Strikes, You’re Out legislation and Tough on Crime era. In the prosecutors’ closing arguments, they said, “Don’t be soft on him because he is young.” A prosecutor urged during Irons’ trial, “He is as dangerous as somebody five times that age. We need to send a message to some of these younger people that if you are going to act like somebody old, you are going to be treated like somebody old.” (Marchi 2020). The court did just that, and Irons was sentenced with no irrefutable evidence to substantiate the prosecutions claim to 50 years in prison (Hurd 2020).
Maya Moore’s connection to Irons comes from her godparent, Reggie Williams, who played an instrumental part in Maya’s upbringing. Williams, a man of staunch faith, organized a volunteer prison ministry that Maya had taken interest in. During her senior year in high school, Williams began talking to her about Iron’s case, that he was a child when he was convicted, had little support in terms of defense and that he had been in a white neighborhood when the crime had occurred, which made it more likely that someone was going to have to pay a heavy price for the damage that had been done. Moore was intrigued and in 2007, she met Irons and the two hit-it-off, developing a brother/sister like bond.
When Moore left the WNBA, she did so without a clear purpose, but she quickly found in the realm of prison reform and Irons’ case would be the first initiative she’d set out on. Because Moore was the best female player on the planet, she was able to provide something that Irons, and many African Americans navigating the judicial system, often go without: resources in the form of financial and human capital.
Moreover, by attaching her name and fame to the case, she was able to bring attention to it and Missouri’s judicial system, turning up the pressure in order to garnish the necessary attention by decision makers. In a Change.org petition, she explains, “I’m dedicating my life to freeing Jonathan the same way I dedicated myself to each game in the WNBA. And it’s why I need your help today. I urge you to join me in asking Judge Daniel Green and Missouri Assistant Attorney General Patrick J. Logang, the Office of the Missouri State Attorney General and the Office of the District Attorney of Saint Charles County to take into account the undeniable facts of Jonathan’s case, and provide justice for Jonathan Irons once and for all.”
From that petition, she was able to gather 272,034 signatures from supporters demanding justice for Irons. Moore would go on to tell Time Magazine that she believed in Irons and that she wanted justice because “there were highly unreliable eyewitness testimony practices, eyewitness testimony procedures with no physical evidence, no footprints, DNA, blood. He had alibi witnesses that were never brought to the stand, and there were unidentified fingerprints that didn’t belong to Jonathan or the victim. That was never acknowledged during the trial” (Gregory 2020).
After assembling a strong legal team of professionals and pushing Missouri legislators to take action, Iron’s had a chance through fingerprint evidence and new expert testimony. In May of 2019, Judge Daniel Green agreed to a new hearing of the case. Both the prosecution and defense gave strong arguments and another hearing was granted. In March of 2020, Judge Green threw out the case, citing “found the defense for Irons provided enough evidence to prove he was wrongfully convicted (Feinberg 2020). The Missouri Attorney General’s office appealed but they were not successful (Feinberg 2020). Because of Mya’s selfless sacrifice, Irons was able to walk free an innocent man.
Comments: