WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — For Sam Calixte, the biggest thrill comes from just sitting outside his Boynton Beach apartment at night, marveling at the great outdoors.
“It’s just nice to be outside,” he said. “To be able to feel the rain, look at the stars, take in the fresh air.”
For nearly 19 years, such simple pleasures were strictly off-limits.
Convicted in 1998 of robbing a Lake Worth pawn shop when he was 15, Calixte’s life was dictated by prison rules. By the time the stars came out each night, Calixte was on lock down.
All that changed this month, when Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Charles Burton suspended 30 years of Calixte's 50-year sentence and ordered him to be released immediately instead of when he was 65 years old.
“I was stunned,” Calixte said. “You ever see those movies where people see something happening as if it’s a dream and they really can’t do anything to affect what’s going on in front of them? That’s what it was like.
“It was surreal. I guess that’s the word for it,” the 34-year-old continued. “It was like I wasn’t there.”
For Christina Monte, Burton’s decision was also other-worldly. How could the man she blames for her husband’s death be shown mercy, she wondered.
“I’m outraged by what happened,” she said. “It was all about him. Not about the victim. I’m disgusted about the whole thing.”
The path that led the two to face off again in a Palm Beach County courtroom was circuitous. It wouldn't have happened without the U.S. Supreme Court, a dogged public defender and a devoutly religious woman who lives west of Delray Beach, who saw the good in Calixte and adopted him as her own before ever laying eyes on him.
“There was a very good person in there who needed to come out,” Diane Cline said of why she stuck by and mentored a stranger she met on the phone through a mutual friend. “You know how you get a feeling in your heart that you’re supposed to do something? Well, I felt in my heart I have to help this kid.”
While Cline’s involvement in Calixte’s life was pivotal to his release, he — like scores of other inmates throughout the state — can trace his new-found freedom to two landmark decisions by the nation’s highest court.
In back-to-back rulings, the Supreme Court said it’s unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life with no chance for parole. Because their brains aren’t fully developed, juveniles act impetuously and are amenable to rehabilitation, it wrote. They must be given a chance to one day prove they can live outside prison walls, justices ordered in separate decisions in 2010 and 2012.
Palm Beach County Assistant Public Defender Jennifer Marshall has spearheaded efforts to track down inmates like Calixte who would benefit from the rulings and from follow up decisions by the Florida Supreme Court. Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings, the state’s high court struck down lengthy prison terms saying they are de facto life sentences.
In Calixte’s case, he wasn’t convicted of attempted murder in the February 1998 shooting of 53-year-old pawn shop owner John Monte. Instead, he was convicted of armed robbery, even though the jury found he didn’t have a gun.
Despite the jury’s decision and state sentencing guidelines that recommended Calixte receive a maximum 13½-year sentence, Circuit Judge Harold Cohen sentenced him to 50 years in prison.
To Burton, who reviewed the transcript of the trial, that was too much. Reports that showed Calixte got his high school diploma, completed life skills classes, participated in Bible study and generally stayed out of trouble in prison convinced Burton that Calixte was a poster child for juveniles who deserve second chances.
Calixte was under the influence of an older man — a family friend — when he went into Electric Pawn Shop on Dixie Highway. That man, Jean Many, now 45, was convicted of attempted murder in the same case and is serving a life sentence.
Widow Christina Monte said knowing that Many will remain behind bars for the rest of his life is some solace. But, she said, Calixte was responsible, too.
“The only way Sam didn’t get life was that my husband couldn’t testify that he had a gun — but he knew that he did because he was wearing a big, heavy coat,” she said.
While her husband survived being shot five times, including two bullets to the head, he was never the same, she said. He was angry and scared and couldn’t work. He lost the pawn shop and their Wellington home. Two years after he was robbed, he killed himself, she said.
Until Monte told the story to Burton, Calixte said he had no idea how John Monte died. Calixte said he assumed he succumbed to the gunshot wounds from the armed robbery.
“After I heard that, a part of me wanted to tell the judge, ‘I’m ready to go back,’” he said. “It’s hard to feel you had nothing to do with it when you find out he died because he killed himself because things were taken away.”
Calixte is no stranger to loss. His father died when he was a youngster but not before giving his mother AIDS, which eventually claimed her life as well. Abused by men and often without work, she was often forced to put Calixte and his three siblings in foster care, said attorney Marshall, who represents Calixte.
At the time of the robbery, Calixte said his mother was out of work again. “She was caught in a rough spot,” he recalled. “I wanted to say, ‘Here mom,’ and give her something to help her out.
“I got involved in something I didn’t know what it would turn into,” he said. “It didn’t turn out the way I expected. I remember hearing that first shot. I froze. I couldn’t move.”
While he said his heart breaks for Monte and her daughters, he said he had no plans to shoot anyone. “Kids always want to be adults and adults always want to be kids. That’s the curse, right?” he said. “I took on a responsibility I shouldn’t have taken on. I was a kid without any male role model. I made a bad decision.”
It’s those kind of observations that Cline said endeared her to Calixte. “It was his character,” she said. “If I asked him a tough question, he would answer it, even if it was difficult.”
They first met when Calixte called her on behalf of a fellow inmate. That inmate, Freddie, was friends with Cline’s son. She talked to him when he was in prison. Freddie asked her to talk to Calixte, too.
“A lot of our conversations were on the spiritual level,” Calixte said. “She was really encouraging as far as my spiritual development and wanted it to be a focal point of my life.”
Through Cline, he said he learned compassion. “This lady really broadened my perspective concerning kindness,” he said. That she is a white middle-class church-going woman and he is a black convict only makes her concern more poignant and authentic, he said.
“I can never get to a point where I can say my kindness has limits,” Calixte said. “She encouraged me to be a better person.”
Cline dismisses her role, insisting others would have done the same. “If he wasn’t worth it, I wouldn’t have bothered. I don’t want that in my life,” she said.
Burton obviously realized her impact. As a condition of probation, Burton ordered Calixte to contact Cline at least three times a week — something Cline said they would have done without Burton’s order.
To Cline, the release of Calixte is nothing short of miraculous. The Lord’s Place agreed to give Calixte a place to live. Her husband, Matthew, found Calixte a job through people he met as a longtime meter technician for the city of Delray Beach. “To me, it was a gift of God,” she said.
Monte said she wishes similar help had been offered to her and their daughter, who was 14 when her father died and has never gotten over it. Her other two daughters, who her late husband helped raise, are equally bereft, she said.
She said she hopes Calixte violates his probation and is sent back to prison.
That will never happen, Calixte said. Holding a job for the first time in his life, he said he is on his way to doing what he wanted to do in 1998 when his poorly-conceived plan went horribly awry: He will be able to help his siblings, who live in the area.
“I consider myself a doer, an accomplisher,” he said. “I believe things are definitely moving in the right direction.”
Palm Beach Post researcher Melanie Mena contributed to this story.