Jen Angel

Jen Angel is a beloved cupcake baker whose life was taken in a smash and grab gone wrong. Now a young man accused of the crime has his future hanging in the balance. Cries for justice, retribution and reason all collide as everyone tries to figure out “What Would Jen Do?” This episode contains graphic imagery and strong language. Please take care while listening. Thank you to Ocean, Ashanthe, Emily, Moira, Tobias, Sandra, and people from our community, right here in Oakland, who opened up their hearts to share their story with Snap Judgment. Special thanks to Jemila, the Estate of Jen Angel (including Julie, Dana, Megan, Ryan, and Elle) and the entire team at Angel Cakes. Additional field recording by David Exumé. Expert Consultation from Sukey Lewis. Special thanks to KQED Legal. Produced by Regina Bediako, edited by Anna Sussman, original score by Dirk Schwarzhoff. Tribute image is Design Action Collective https://designaction.org/. Season 16 - Episode 54 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:21Speaker 01

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• 1:58Glynn Washington?

  Sampos, today's episode was crafted with a lot of love.

• 2:04Glynn Washington?

  It's a story from right here, from our hometown, our backyard of Oakland, California. And you may have even seen the headlines because they went international. And as I discovered personally, if you live here in the Bay, you're likely only a degree or two removed from the people you're going to hear from today. It might be your neighbors, your friends. And this episode does contain graphic imagery, strong language, descriptions of violence and death. And we want you to take care because two families were thrown into extraordinary circumstances. For months, they wrestled with an impossible question. What do you do when you get the worst news possible?

• 2:48Glynn Washington?

  Our story begins on a foggy August morning in the heart of Oakland. Emily Harris, take it away.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Mostly I feel like lots of anxiety and I feel feelings pulled in a million directions and kind of just want to go home and be in my bed. But, uh, yeah, my chest is really tight. It's like, I feel like I'm just like protecting my heart.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  It's summertime. Emily Harris is speaking to me outside a courthouse in Oakland. A bright gold pendant is looped around her neck. It's hard to miss, especially against the serious tones of her pants and blazer. In a few minutes, Emily will go inside, up to the seventh floor, Department 11.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Today's an important day. People will fill the gallery, awaiting a judge's final decision.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  There's a judge that's hearing a series of cases. At some point, will be called, probably more in the afternoon, maybe? We don't know exactly, like, I think after 11:00, there's a recess.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  There are hundreds of courtrooms across America that look just like Department 11. The same high ceilings and washed-out fluorescent lighting. The same odd collection of attorneys in power suits and defendants in jeans. But what will take place today inside Department 11 is different. It's something Emily has been pouring her heart into for over a year. And the outcome will be unusual. For her, and for a lot of people. The judge will say so herself.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  This all began with what happened 18 months earlier to Emily's dear friend, a woman named Jen Angel.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  I got a text message from her that wasn't from her. It was like from her phone. It was this auto-generated thing that said something like, "The vehicle associated with this phone has registered an accident, and the police have been called," or something like that.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Ocean Motley told me he was working at his office when he got that text. It came from the phone of Jen Angel, his fiancee.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  So I called her, and the phone just rang and rang. It didn't go to voicemail, which was a little bit weird.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  He then got a call from one of Jen's best friends. She told him she heard that Jen had been in some kind of accident.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  I'm gonna go see what the car looks like, because I want to see how bad that is to kind of prepare me for what I'm gonna expect in the hospital. And I got there, and it was the most bizarre thing. Like, there was police tape blocking off the whole block. But even from a half a block away, I could see her car was in the parking lot of the bank, and it looked fine. And that's when I was like, what is going on? The police were still there. The primary witness who saw it was still there. And I was able to talk to them. And that's when I heard that there had been an attempted robbery, and that she tried to chase them and was dragged with the car.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  It was midday. Two guys had tried to rob Jen in the parking lot of a bank just a few blocks from Oakland City Hall. Jen was sitting in her car when someone pulled up, blocking her in. The witness told Ocean that one guy jumped out, broke Jen's passenger window, grabbed her stuff off the front seat, and made a quick dash back to a getaway vehicle. Jen got out and ran after him on foot and somehow got caught in the door of the escaping car. She was dragged 50 feet along the ground, badly injuring her head. Now, the police were searching for the two suspects.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  So Ocean got back on his motorcycle and headed for the hospital. Nurses guided him to the ICU.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  And then I went in and I saw Jen.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  And there she lay, the woman who obsessed over gritty punk music in one breath and expensive Italian wine in the next. The woman who had the chutzpah to rewrite her own name. Why stick with angle with an E when angel was right there? And rewrote it along with every other would-be rule in her life. That woman wasn't moving.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  I was just in so much shock. And all I could think about was whether Jen was gonna live or die.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  The doctors told Ocean that Jen's face and skull were broken. Her hands were swollen, almost obscuring a tattoo on the inside of her wrist. It was of an ampersand, the symbol for the word "and."

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Otherwise, she looked OK, but there was just this strange sense of something about it. The first thing I said was, you know, I'm not generally a pessimist, but I don't think she's gonna make it.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  On the other side of the door and down several hallways, people who knew Jen began to gather in the waiting room. A few here, a few there, and then a flood.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  One of the emergency contacts in her phone got a notification and so immediately called me.

• 8:22Speaker 06

  A mutual friend and I went to the gym in the morning and I think as we were saying goodbye, she was like, "Oh, did you hear about Jen?"

• 8:32Speaker 02

  I just was like, "I can't go to work. I don't know what happened." So we, we kind of were on standby and then brought food to the hospital.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  These were Jen's people. They'd eaten at her table, marched alongside her at rallies, borrowed her stilettos. They were more than friends. They were part of her family. So as Tobias, Moira, and Emily waited for Jen to wake up, cell phones buzzed and rang nonstop across the Bay Area. Ocean called Jen's mom, who lived in Ohio, and told her to get on the next plane. Moira launched a GoFundMe. Someone even set up a Slack channel.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  I think everyone immediately thought about the bakery.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Jen was the owner of Angel Cakes, a cupcake shop in a whimsical West Oakland building called The Gingerbread House. Her staff and her customers were emailing and calling and she wasn't responding.

• 9:34Speaker 06

  Jen had really put a lot of thought into, into preparing for her, her death.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  For most relatively young, healthy people, death planning doesn't go beyond the 30 seconds it takes to register as an organ donor at the DMV. But Jen had experienced the chaos that followed a friend's unexpected passing, and so she was determined to do something different.

• 10:04Speaker 05

  Every year she would send an email to a group of people and say, "You're some of my closest people and if I pass away, I would like for you all to work together and care for each other as a group." That first stretch of days at the hospital, every day we were meeting in the courtyard there and committed to making decisions in a way that, that would honor Jen's wishes.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  In my mind, she wasn't dead yet. I was like, people come back, like, it's still possible. So it was just this long week of like, waiting and hoping that somehow she would start breathing on her own. But she did not.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  On February 9th, 2023, doctors call the time of death, 5:48. Jen Angel was 48 years old.

• 11:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely still have moments where I'm like, where I think I could call her up or something, you know?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  I had hundreds of emails and text messages. Like, it was like, too much at first, because it was in the news, so everybody knew it.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  I still can't believe it. Still can't believe how much care people showed, how much people wanted, needed to show up.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  But outside the hospital, a narrative about the robbery was already beginning to take shape. A white woman attacked in broad daylight in the middle of the city? It all played into existing stories about race, crime, Oakland, and justice. Reports from local news stations and YouTubers had a lot to say.

• 11:54Speaker 07

  I have never felt so insecure or threatened in this industry, working in Oakland. San Francisco is the same thing. You go out there, you're more than likely going to get murdered or get...

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Oakland PD, go out and chase those [BLEEP]ers down. It's too bad we don't have public hangings anymore. Just a quick plug. Jen's detailed instructions for her passing didn't map out exactly how her loved one should respond in the case of her death from violence. But they did feel sure that Jen would have rejected this narrative.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  On the floor of the hospital waiting room, Moira and a few of Jen's people opened their laptops and began to work through a statement, weighing everything they knew about how Jen had chosen to live her life. She was a proud activist who had been at Occupy Oakland and the Oscar Grant protests against police brutality. She'd created decades of boundary pushing zines. And that ampersand tattoo on her wrist, the symbol for the word "and," pointed to her belief in alternatives, complexity, the idea that there's more than one way. So as I researched Jen and her activism, I would come across little pieces of information

• 13:11Speaker 03

  that filled in this picture of what she cared about. Like this clip from a radio interview Jen did a few years back about DIY culture. It seemed to apply to so much about how she viewed the world.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Russell Radio airs live every Monday from 6 to 7 PM on WRCT 88.3 FM in Pittsburgh,

• 13:31Speaker 06

  Pennsylvania. We spoke to Jen Angel, clamor co-founder and publisher, about do it yourself culture. Being exposed to these different ideas and having the opportunity to know that there was a different way of doing things was really important to me.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  So Jen's loved ones, who would soon refer to themselves as the estate of Jen Angel, wrote that statement about what she believed, rewriting the narrative, sort of like how Jen had rewritten her own name. Then they shared it with the press.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Quote, "Jen did not believe in state violence, carceral punishment, or incarceration as an effective or just solution to social violence and inequity," end quote.

• 14:17Speaker 05

  Hours after her tragic death was announced, friends and family of Jen Angel released a plea that if the people responsible for her death were caught, they are not to be locked up but to be off.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Restorative justice. Now certainly, it's a request we don't hear often from the loved ones of crime victims. ABC 7 News.

• 14:34Speaker 06

  If you've caused harm, like, you don't just get off scot-free.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  This is Moira, who set up the GoFundMe.

• 14:41Speaker 06

  There has to be accountability. And that doesn't mean that, like, putting you in a cage is the way to do that. Everyone agreed that that's the kind of approach that Jen would want. And we really tried to stress in those statements that this is an expression of Jen's values as we understood them.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Restorative justice. So in general, it's about trying to find alternatives to the way we traditionally punish people. It's usually rooted in community dialogue. People getting together and talking things through. It gives everyone involved, even the person who committed the harm, a voice. It is also about accountability for the person who committed the harm. So Jen's estate put forth that radical, yet pretty unified, public statement. But among the people in the estate, there were differences of opinions and feelings here and there. It was hard for everyone.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Ocean had lost his fiance.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  I was very angry. And I wanted to hurt the people who were involved. I don't think, you know, beating them up was going to do anything either. I was just angry and I wanted to do something and I had this rage in me. And that was the only thing that I thought of at the time, honestly, that I wanted to have happen.

• 16:07Speaker 07

  Um, dang, I'm getting tongueless. This is so nerve.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Oh, it's OK. We can take our time.

• 16:12Speaker 07

  Relax. Relax. You want to pray? Yeah. Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  This is Ashanti and her mom, Sandra.

• 16:19Speaker 07

  Is it OK if we pray?

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 16:21Speaker 07

  Awesome.

• 16:23Speaker 07

  Father God, we thank you. We thank you for bringing us here today. We thank you for this platform that you have provided us for our voices to be heard in creating an atmosphere that brings change to our community, Father God. We ask that you be in this room, that you lead us in our words, that you lead us in our thoughts, that we speak what is on our hearts and that you give us confidence and integrity and just the will to do your work. In Jesus's name, amen. Amen.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  Ashanti and her boyfriend, Ishmael Birch, had been together for a little while. They first connected when they were 17 and in high school.

• 17:05Speaker 07

  We met through Instagram. I was like, I want to talk to somebody from the city because they put me away from the city. Your face. I mean, that's your guys' way of meeting people.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  They lived on opposite sides of the bay, with Ishmael in San Francisco. In person, Ishmael didn't take up a lot of space. He and Ashanti were close to the same height, and he met Ashanti's bubbly energy with a somewhat taciturn awkwardness. But Ashanti had already fallen for his intelligence, his generosity. He gifted her a pair of sneakers just days after they met, the care he took with things, even down to the punctuation in his frequent texts to her.

• 17:47Speaker 07

  Like, you don't text like everybody else. Like, you use the punctuation, like, you're using the right words for the right meaning. Like, you know, you, you, oh, my God, a little brat, you know? He's very observant. Like, he just pays attention to everything.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  One night, when Jen was still in the hospital, Ashanti waited for Ishmael to pick her up from work. When he arrived...

• 18:11Speaker 07

  He's just quiet. And Ish has always been a person where he really doesn't, like, open up to me because he doesn't want me to worry about a lot. And he's just been like that with everybody. He will keep everything in. But I don't know. I read people very well, so I'm already knowing something's off. I just couldn't, like, really put my finger on it.

• 18:35Glynn Washington?

  When we return, Ashanti finds out what's weighing on her boyfriend's mind. Stay tuned.

• 18:45Speaker 01

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• 19:18Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Jen Angel episode. Last we left, Ashanti's boyfriend Ishmael had just picked her up from work and he was quiet, uncharacteristically so. And yes, this story does contain graphic imagery, strong language, descriptions of violence and death. Ashanti, she couldn't quite figure out what's going on with Ishmael. Snap Judgment.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  She says the strange behavior continued for weeks. Ishmael seemed withdrawn, even for him. On June 2nd, four months after Jen Angel's death, Ishmael was arrested in San Francisco.

• 19:59Speaker 07

  I was at his mom's house and we thought he was getting out. We had the bail money and everything ready. And he just didn't call for hours.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  And then the phone rang.

• 20:08Speaker 07

  And I could tell by the room that he was in a room by himself. And I could hear his voice that something was wrong. And I was like, what? And he was like, they just booked me in for murder.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  According to news reports, police had used cell data and surveillance footage as probable cause to arrest Ishmael for killing Jen. They believed he'd been driving the getaway car.

• 20:34Speaker 07

  My whole heart like crushed. I'm like, Ish, you gotta tell your mom. I can't tell her. She took the phone and he told her and she just dropped to the floor and started screaming and yelling. It was so bad. And he just kept saying that he loved us and it's gonna be okay.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  The Oakland Police Department contacted Ocean and told him that they had taken a suspect into custody.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  I was really processing her death. Like, that was the only thing that mattered to me. She's dead and she's not coming back. Like, that's what I needed to come to terms with. And it, the wound, the emotional wound, like, the scabs had just begun to, like, start covering up. And I was, like, trying to figure out how to function and just get through day to day. And then when I heard that they had arrested somebody, just kind of tore that off. It's like, okay, here we go. Now we got this whole other thing to deal with.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  But Ocean had to deal with it, ready or not. He would have to put his own feelings to the side if he was going to fulfill Jen's wishes. And what's really interesting about this crazy position Ocean ended up in, he's actually a defense attorney. And Jen's close friend Emily had worked for years as an advocate for people in prison. So these two already knew the Oakland justice system.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  I immediately got in touch with people in the DA's office and got a meeting with Ocean and I with some of the, like, I think it was like the head of Victim Services and the head of Restorative Justice.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  To be clear, restorative justice programs usually focus on juvenile court and lower level offenses. What Jen's estate was attempting to pursue in this case went much further and was pretty rare.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  We were like, we want to get ahead of, like, what you're charging. Like, let's start talking now.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  The DA's office told them who they had in custody, a young man named Ishmael Birch. Soon after, Ishmael was due in court for his arraignment. Ashanti and Ishmael's mom walked into the courtroom. It wasn't really, like, full in the courtroom. And they were just doing, like, handling other cases. Other inmates were coming.

• 23:07Speaker 07

  And getting their sentencing or hearing their next court date and things like that.

• 23:13Speaker 07

  I just feel like numb. Like not knowing what to expect, but expecting for the best, but preparing for the worst. That's like the best way to put it, how I felt back then. But when I seen him come out, it broke me like this is real. That's when it hit.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  I went with a few of Jen's friends and community members. It was really hard when I saw Ishmael for the first time because I wanted it to be this like big, mean, angry person, you know, that I could like project my anger onto and feel righteous about wanting to hurt this person. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is, he looks like a child. I mean, he was 19 years old the first time I saw him, like 5'8", maybe like 145 pounds.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  And he just, it was just so hard to be angry, you know, angry at him. It was particularly hard because his family was there.

• 24:09Speaker 07

  Those little three minutes where we were in the courthouse, I just kept crying. I was looking at him and then he did like a little hard to me. And it just broke me down so bad. And I just walked out and I got in, I left my cousin, I left his mom. I walked out and I was just outside, I was just like, why? I just kept asking why, God.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  The DA's office said that Ishmael was driving the getaway car while his partner smashed Jen's window and tried to grab her things. While they might not have intended to kill Jen, there's a special kind of charge in the books for these types of cases. It's called felony murder.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  If you are committing a felony and someone dies, it's the same as first degree murder.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  But to Ocean, it didn't feel like the same thing at all.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  I knew more about the facts than I knew that, you know, he hadn't tried to kill her and was running away from her.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Still, the DA's office went ahead and leveled multiple charges at Ishmael, including two counts of second degree robbery and one count of murder under a felony murder theory. Prosecutors also said that Ishmael had been on probation at the time of Jen's robbery and made a reference to a juvenile criminal history.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Ishmael was looking at the possibility of a life in prison.

• 25:28Speaker 07

  I could feel how scared he was. I could feel all of it and I just felt like I was dealing with all of it.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  So it just really like, literally felt like a ton of bricks. And I just saw them weeping for him and just seeing how much they loved him and knew what he was about to experience. Just knowing what it's like to be in a cell day after day.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  I myself am a convicted felon. I've been incarcerated, so I've seen the system from inside and out.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Ocean had been almost the same age as Ishmael when he was locked up for selling drugs.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  You're not a person. You're an animal. I mean, you technically have rights, but you know, the people who are holding you captive, you know, they have guns and if they don't like what you're doing, they can kill you at any moment. They can do anything they want to you. Nobody's going to do anything or say anything or know anything. You're just at the mercy of people who you don't even know and who probably don't like you. As much as I may have wanted to fight him, I certainly didn't want to see him go to prison for this.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  Ocean left the courthouse with a lot on his mind. He later called up Emily to debrief. Just because they were sure they didn't want Ishmael locked up forever didn't mean they were clear on what should happen to him instead.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Where's this kid gonna go? Who's gonna take care of him? Who's gonna prevent him from causing harm? Like, how do we like, put forward a concise plan?

• 27:01Speaker 03

  And even if they did come up with that plan, they would need the buy-in of the DA, the judge, and of course, Ishmael.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  All I know is that it's Ishmael versus the state of California. It's impossible odds.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  And it wasn't up to them. US courts don't allow victims to meet out justice according to their wishes. I mean, that wish often sounds like vengeance. That's why the state always steps in as a neutralizing intermediary. The people versus the defendant instead of the bereaved victim. That's pretty much the way it's gone for hundreds of years. So why would the courts make an exception for them?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  The system is so much bigger than us. It's so much more powerful than us. There was a hopelessness of like, what can we even influence?

• 27:54Speaker 03

  From the Santa Rita Jail, Ishmael had told Ashanti the name of the woman he'd been charged with killing.

• 28:02Speaker 07

  When I did my research about it, I'm like, Ish, this woman believed in restorative justice. Like, this family don't want you to go to jail.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  We have the victim's family that is working with the system to try to keep Ishmael out of jail. Like, this incredible thing. It's also a group of white people who are using their influence to affect what happens to a black person. Did you ever feel like, like, any tension around that?

• 28:38Speaker 07

  Yes. I felt like, at first, it was a feeling like, what are their true intentions? Like, what is this all about, you know?

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Ashanti, Ishmael's mom, Ocean and Emily, were almost always at Ishmael's monthly court appearances. They knew each other's faces. They sat in the same room, often on opposite sides of an aisle.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  They never said a word.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Emily and Ocean didn't quite know how to influence the situation. Then, one day, outside the courtroom, they were talking to Ishmael's lawyer and the DA's lawyer, and suddenly Emily heard the words, "plea deal." She saw a chance.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  And I just kind of, like, inserted myself. And I just was like, would it be helpful if we drafted, like, our recommendations of what happens in the case?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  By recommendations, Emily meant specific examples of accountability for Ishmael. They'd been brainstorming possibilities for months. Ishmael's attorney, Annie Bellis, of course, welcomed the idea. But, the surprising part is, so did the representative from the DA's office.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  There was a new district attorney for Alameda County named Pamela Price, and she wanted to reform the county's approach to criminal justice. Like, listen to this statement she gave. We are looking for alternatives to incarcer-

• 30:12Speaker 07

  When it's appropriate, because we know that we can't solve our problems by locking people up forever. And keeping young people out of the justice system especially benefits us all.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  So Emily went home and immediately began drafting those recommendations in consultation with Ocean and the rest of Jen's estate. On one side was Ocean, who wanted Ishmael to be released immediately with time served. And on the other was Jen's mom, who did not.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  She was not on board with the restorative justice angle, and I can understand that. I mean, Jen is her daughter. You're not supposed to bury your children. She's very close to Jen. She always talked about Jen being her best friend. And I think she's devastated, and I totally get that. That's her right to be against that and to have those feelings, and I certainly understand them. I don't agree with them, and neither did Jen.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Survivor needs are a key part of restorative justice processes. But what should happen when everyone's needs just can't be met? I did reach out to Jen's mom a few times, but I didn't get a response. But in the end, Ocean didn't get what he wanted either. Neither of them signed on to the recommendations that were hammered out in a letter created by almost 20 of Jen's close friends, including Emily. Their list included no felony murder charge and a minimum two-year stay at a residential program. There's one in San Francisco near Ishmael's home.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  It would be structured. It would come with training and all of the like, you know, people like want people to have like real career and job skills.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  And they did want something from Ishmael, too. His voluntary participation in a formal restorative justice program where they and Ishmael would meet and talk.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I want a space to tell Ishmael that I'm pissed at him, that I'm super angry and hurt and...

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's vulnerable. But also, there's maybe

• 32:27Speaker 02

  something liberating in it. And I think that's what I want for myself and for other people. Something honest that doesn't feel like, isn't coerced. I think like for a while I struggled with, do I fight for this kid who his, his actions like killed my friend? Over and over again, I feel like I've leaned on the strength of who I know Jen is. And also just like what Jen would say to me about doing it. You know, I can like see her, I've had a lot of conversations with her in my head.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  At the end of February, the letter was signed and sealed. Emily sent it to Bellis and the DA's office, crossing her fingers for as little prison time as possible and the opportunity to talk to Ishmael herself.

• 33:21Glynn Washington?

  Will Emily's efforts actually move the needle in Ishmael's case? Find out after the break.

• 33:33Glynn Washington?

  When last we left, the loved ones of Jen Angel had just poured their energy into a letter they hoped could save Ishmael from a lifetime prison sentence. Would it make any difference at all?

• 33:45Glynn Washington?

  Snap judgment.

• 33:46Speaker 07

  I started to open up my heart to the situation like, this is real Shawnee. Why people are able to do this without even know ill intentions? Like, it's okay. Like, let's take color out of it right now. Let's just look at people for who they are in their heart and the humanity that they carry.

• 34:03Speaker 07

  As time went on, I realized, oh, they're pure.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  But not everyone thought so.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  One day Emily went to the store. She'd wanted to buy plates for her kitchen.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  And they're like wrapping it. They like open up the newspaper to Jen's face.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  It was a story that Emily was quoted in.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  It was like just a random stack of newspapers, like months and months old. And I was like, that's my friend and I'm in that story. And then she was like, do you want the maids? It was like, yes. And then she wrapped it in something else. And I just was like, I think everyone was just feeling really exposed.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  Emily left with the plates and the newspaper. When she was inside her car, she opened up the newspaper and reread the article. It was about the thing she and Jen's estate were trying to do, restorative justice. A lot of people were really in their feelings.

• 35:00Speaker 05

  She obviously didn't care about her friend very much. Just obviously not. She cares about her own narcissistic self-presentation more than she does about her friend's murder. We're gonna sit out and talk to you. We're gonna come to agreement so that you don't do this again. These people live in la la world, man. Today, ideology trumps safety and creates a parade of victims, but also a parade of idiots.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  After I came across some particularly harsh comments on an Oakland online forum, I called up Emily to get her take. Ocean had told me, don't make the mistake of looking at comments on these stories. And, you know, of course, I have to. People are just so angry about what you all have tried to do with this case, with Ishmael. What are they angry about? I see a lot of comments of people saying things like, you know, he doesn't deserve this. A lot of people throwing out the word monster. And, you know, Jen ran after them to get her stuff back.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Like, maybe she didn't want this. I know deeply that nothing about how they're responding, how the state and the system responds, actually gets at that prevention. You might temporarily prevent this one person from being able to do these kinds of robberies in the future, but you're actually not changing any of your underlying conditions. And I think that's the stuff I want to talk about. Not just like, how do we punish them? But I want to be like, how do we actually stop this from happening to somebody else's friend? In the early days of summer, almost a year and a half after Jen's death, Ocean was at home on his computer, checked his email.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  And there it was. A message from Bellis. Ishmael and the DA's office had agreed to a plea deal.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  I'd take a moment and kind of breathe and like, we're not looking at 25 to life. We're not looking at decades. I knew I wasn't going to get what I wanted and it was the best possible deal or outcome that could have happened.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Ishmael had been facing the possibility of life in prison. He could now plead no contest to one count of second degree robbery, one count of voluntary manslaughter, and if the judge agreed, receive seven years in state prison. He could come home before he was 25.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  Now the issue is, will the judge sign off on it?

• 37:44Speaker 03

  But even if the judge agreed, the plea deal completely ignored all the other requests in the letter. People involved with the case explained to me that for a judge to put things like conversations and reentry programs in an actual sentencing for a murder felt boring, a bridge too far, outside the known language of years in prison.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Nothing about the deal addressed any of our asks about doing something restorative. It felt just like it was about how much time he gets as opposed to how do we stop this from happening in the future?

• 38:29Speaker 03

  And there was nothing in the deal about their one big ask, the conversation they wanted to have with Ishmael, to tell him about the person Jen had been.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  They talk about forgiveness isn't about the other person, it's for myself, you know, and that's a lot of it. It's just wanting to understand, wanting to be able to see the humanity in this other person for my own sake.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  I mean, is this forgiveness? Do you forgive him?

• 38:55Speaker 04

  That's a good question.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  I don't know. Um, I empathize with him and I recognize that he had no intent to hurt Jen. Um, that's the place that I'm at right now.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  He could say, you know, no, I don't really wanna take part in the restored the justice process. And that would be okay with you.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would be hard. It would hurt and I think I could be able to be like, I hope you circle back and I hope you think about this. We're in this long journey with each other.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  If he doesn't want to meet, he doesn't want to meet, you know, uh, maybe I build a relationship with his mother or other people in his community and, or maybe we don't, maybe we don't ever get to speak again, but all I can do is show up and see what happens.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  The day before Ishmael's sentencing hearing, Ashanti was having a hard time.

• 39:55Speaker 07

  It was too much to hold. So I, I was at a point where I just was like, at the sentencing, I didn't want anything to do with him.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Were you thinking of not going to the sentencing?

• 40:06Speaker 07

  Yeah. I was like, I'm not going. I have work. Like, I'm not going. But the day of the sentencing, it was like, Shawnee, like you didn't go through all of this for no reason. So it was just like, I can't hold this grudge to him. Like, it's okay. God is teaching you patient. Be patient with him.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  How are you? Okay, how are you? Good, thanks. Just some tea.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Lemon ginger. Okay, that'll be better for my anxiety.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  So here we are. It's summertime. I'm standing with Emily outside the courthouse about an hour before the hearing. A bright gold pendant is looped around her neck. It's hard to miss, especially against the serious tones of her pants and blazer.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Emily talks about what could happen today. She has no idea if the judge will accept Ishmael's plea deal.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  I think some of my fears are that it just feels mechanical. That there's this, you know, Ishmael's family on one side and the rest of us on the other side and we're not even supposed to like make eye contact.

• 41:16Speaker 03

  Okay, I am gonna hang back and let you guys walk in.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Great.

• 41:29Speaker 06

  Seventh floor.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  The court denied my request to record the hearing. But I was able to sit in the gallery, and I can tell you what I saw. What I know. A judge wearing glasses and black robes sits on an elevated platform in front of a massive American flag that stretches to the ceiling. She eyes a calendar on a wall and calls out name after name after name. A woman who says her daughter's father has been murdered sits in the wooden seat next to me. Two minutes later, someone else takes her place. At one point, every person in the gallery—the accused, the families, the friends, every

• 42:19Speaker 03

  single one of us—is either black or brown. And then, it gets quiet. Fifteen people from Jen's community, including Ocean, Emily, and Tobias, and six people from Ishmael's family, including Ashanti and Ishmael's mom, shuffle into the gallery and sit down. A few of Jen's people are wearing the gifts they gave out at her celebration of life: bright gold pendants, same as the one around Emily's neck; ampersands, like Jen's tattoo. Ishmael stands in a yellow jumpsuit on the far side of the room, almost out of sight.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  Someone passes around a green box of tissues. And it begins. The People versus Birch. Emily gets to speak. Later, she'll tell me she was shaking as she held the microphone and said this: "Jen would have wanted this case to set an example for how Oakland can respond to violence beyond punishment and imprisonment." A woman reads a statement on behalf of Jen's mom, Pat Engel. It's the only time I hear her thoughts on the case.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  I want to make my stance perfectly clear. I am vehemently against any form of restorative justice, early parole, or any reduction in sentencing. Jen was robbed of her future. Ishmael, if you had stopped the car so Jen could have been untangled, this nightmare would be over. Jen could have continued on with her life of service to others. The world would have been a better place. Ishmael looks at the judge and his lawyer, Annie Bellis. He's not allowed to look at us. But we can see him wiping his face with the front of his jumpsuit.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  The judge lets more of Jen's friends stand and speak. They ask her to support the plea deal. Bellis addresses the judge and the gallery, saying she's never seen this level of compassion and love for humanity in her 25 years of practice. Then she passes the microphone to Ishmael. And for the first time ever, a judge allows Ishmael to make eye contact with Jen's family and friends. He reads his statement in a steady voice. Words can't explain how sorry I am for putting us all through this.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  And truth be told, I don't want words to be able to explain my remorse. I want my actions after incarceration to explain my remorse. The judge calls the plea deal unusual. She says she had to bring both lawyers into her chambers before the hearing to have them explain why she was looking at such a light sentence. Bellis, Ishmael's lawyer, asked her to read all of the statements that Jen's family and friends had submitted. "It's overwhelming," the judge says, "the compassion and generosity of spirit she's witnessing in this courtroom."

• 45:53Speaker 03

  She'll agree to the plea deal. She turns to Ishmael. "You're going to serve some time. When you get out, don't let these people down. Don't let them down."

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Ocean and Ishmael's mom cried throughout the hearing. They know each other's faces. They sit shoulder to shoulder. They barely say a word. They just hold hands.

• 46:44Speaker 07

  Being exposed to these different ideas and having the opportunity to know that there was a different way of doing things was really important to me.

• 46:59Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, thank you, thank you to Ocean, to Shanti, Emily, Moira, Tobias, Sandra, people from our community right here in Oakland who opened their hearts and shared their story with SNAP. This is real life, so the aftermath is not a tiny story. District Attorney Pamela Price, she was recalled. Supporters of the recall say she was too soft on crime. Ishmael and Ocean have been in touch, but have yet to sit down with each other. We're working with an organization to facilitate that meeting. We also reached out to Ishmael. He said he's willing to talk to us but wants to do so in person.

• 47:39Glynn Washington?

  If that happens, we'll update you. Meanwhile, Ten Angels Cupcake Shop lives on as a worker-owned cooperative. And to celebrate, they threw an All You Can Eat Cupcake-a-palooza for the community.

• 47:58Speaker 07

  You eating cupcakes? We have so many. Yes. We have more than this. Get that sugar rush going.

• 48:08Glynn Washington?

  And lastly, on a sunny day just a few weeks ago, Ocean, Moira, and Julie, another member of Jen's estate, decided to do something special to honor Jen. Spread some of her ashes in the surprisingly scenic waters right next to San Quentin Prison.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  Feels good to be out here in the water, so close to the prison. Feeling so much life, inside and outside. Just come out here and jump in the water, felt right. I'm excited for the possibility of him getting out pretty soon, 2028. I mean, I know that soon doesn't seem like a lot in three years, but he's a young man, so it feels like he's still got a chance to have a life ahead of him.

• 48:49Speaker 06

  There was a hummingbird that was really just hanging out with us. It kept kind of like flying around and perching on the barbed wire and on the fence, and I really felt like that was Jen with us. Jen was a hummingbird with us.

• 49:15Glynn Washington?

  Special thanks to Jamila, the estate of Jen Angel, including Julie, Dana, Megan, Ryan, and Elle, and the entire team at Angel Kicks. Additional field recording for this was done by David Exame, expert consultation by Sukey Lewis. Special thanks to KQD Legal. The original score was by Dirk Schwartzoff. This piece was edited by Anna Sussman and was produced by Regina Berriaco.

• 49:50Glynn Washington?

  Now, if you missed even a moment, go back. Go back to the beginning. We really want you to hear this. And super easy, just type Snap Judgment into any podcast platform. Look for the Jen Angel episode. KQUD in San Francisco is Snap Judgment's Orbiting Hall of Justice. And no, Snap Judgment Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Snap. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIL Local 51.

• 50:30Glynn Washington?

  Snap is brought to you by the team that gives hugs, lots of them. Even the over producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, others Nancy Lopez, Pat McEvee Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goryo, John Facio, Shayna Shealy, Taylor Tocot, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge, David Exame, Regina Berriaco. My name is Glenn Washington, and this is not the news. No way this is news. In fact, if you ever need a reason to justify enjoying eating cupcakes, stop. Stop. Just enjoy eating cupcakes.

• 51:10Glynn Washington?

  And you'd still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.