She gave birth in shackles, won an appeal, but still waits for justice

Tresa Baldas
Detroit Free Press

Siwatu-Salama Ra knows what injustice feels like.

It’s cold, she'll tell you, and heartless.                                                           

One year after going through labor while shackled to a bed, forced to give birth during her prison sentence, she can still vividly recall police officers passing time on their cellphones as she cried and screamed through unrelenting pain to push life through her body, with no family at her side.

"No woman should have to sit and bear the pain of giving birth alone while officers laugh and chuckle and play on their phones while you’re trying to bring life into this world," said Ra, who has been in limbo for more than a year following a 2018 conviction that continues to torment her.

The lawful gun owner with no criminal record went to prison for waving an unloaded gun at a three-time felon who, she said, was threatening her family. An appeals court overturned her conviction, but the prosecution isn't letting it go.

On Friday, an emotional Ra appeared in Wayne County Circuit Court, tears dripping down her face as she learned that prosecutors plan to retry her on assault and gun charges.

Ra has long maintained that the incident was an act of self-defense.

An appeals court threw out her conviction in August, concluding that her actions were "reasonable" and that the jury was not properly informed about the self-defense claim. “The trial court’s failure to give the jury instruction regarding the use of non-deadly force in self-defense was erroneous," the appeals court wrote, concluding it was "more probable than not that the lack of proper instruction affected the outcome of the case."

Ra had hoped that prosecutors would drop the charges, which was an option following the appeals court decision. 

But prosecutors have chose to retry the case instead, which has sparked local outrage and national attention in part because Ra is a registered gun owner, living in a "Stand your Ground" state, with no criminal record. She's also a prominent activist in the community: The 28-year-old, married mother of two is co-executive director of an environmental justice group who represented Detroit at the Paris Climate talks. 

Sitting on a bench in the courtroom hallway last week, Ra hung her head and wiped away tears as her 4-year-old daughter patted her leg. She, her kids and her husband, a building engineer, have suffered enough, she said. Friday was one more blow.

"It felt like they just wanted to punish me more," Ra said.

In 2017, Ra pulled an unloaded gun from her glove compartment to scare off a woman who, she said, had rammed her car into a parked vehicle while Ra's toddler played inside, and, drove toward the family on the front lawn.

No one was hurt. No shots were ever fired. 

But the prosecution argued that Ra acted in anger, not self-defense, when she pulled out the gun, and that Ra was the aggressor, not the woman in the car.

Guilty verdicts followed, along with a two-year mandatory sentence on the charge of using a gun to commit a felony — a charge that was added after Ra refused to cut a deal and opted for a jury trial instead. Bond was denied twice.

“I expected that this case would be simple. I thought that I had the right to protect myself and my family. That’s why I thought we had gun laws,” said Ra, whose case has garnered the support of the NRA. “I thought that justice would be served. … I prayed that justice would show itself … and I was wrong.”

Wade Fink represents Siwatu-Salama Ra, 28, who stands next to him in tears, in Judge Donald Knapp's court on Friday, Oct. 18 during a pretrial hearing to argue the removal of a GPS tether at Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019.

Ra's attorney, Birmingham lawyer Wade Fink, has called the case "a parade of errors" that led to a gross miscarriage of justice. He's frustrated that his client was sent to prison at seven months pregnant, that a judge wouldn't let her have her baby first and then start her sentence — a plan that prosecutors agreed to — and that the trial attorney was not allowed to cross-examine the woman in the car about her criminal history.

The jury never knew that the woman in the car had three prior felony convictions, including assault with a shotgun. On the night of the incident in question, she was on probation for felony assault and faced jail time if she got into trouble again.

Fink believes that Ra's lawyer should have been able to argue to the jury that the woman in the car was lying about what really happened that night because she knew she was on probation, and feared going to jail again.

Given all his client has been through — Ra has already served nine months in prison — Fink said he is hopeful that Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy will change her mind and drop the charges.

"That's justice. Just dismiss it," said Fink. “For God’s sake, let this woman get on with her life.” 

The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office declined comment on Fink's request for a dismissal, stating only:

“The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office will re-try this case. The Michigan Court of Appeals remanded the case for a new trial. The court’s ruling was largely based upon the absence of a requested jury instruction," Maria Miller, spokesperson for the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, said in a statement.

Siwatu-Salama Ra holds her son Zakai, who she gave birth to while incarcerated at Huron Valley Women's Correctional Facility, surrounded by family after being released on bond on November 14, 2018. Ra, 26, was convicted on felonious assault and felony firearm charges in 2018 and had the two-year sentence overturned by the Michigan Court of Appeals.

2 police reports, one arrest

At trial, conflicting testimony was presented regarding the sequence of events thatlanded Ra in handcuffs, and, ultimately, prison.

According to court documents,  it was July 16, 2017 when a woman showed up at Ra's mother's house to pick up her high school daughter. The teen was asked to leave, court records show, because she had gotten into a previous fight with Ra's niece, and wasn't welcome at the house. 

Here's what the defense claims happened next:

When the girl's mother arrived at the house, she was angry and yelling from her car.  Ra was on the front lawn, along with her mother, when the woman backed into her parked car as her daughter played inside, and then drove toward her mother on the lawn, almost hitting her.

Ra ran to get her daughter out of the car, handed her over to a niece and ordered them inside the house. She then went back to her car, pulled an unloaded gun from the glove box and pointed it at the woman, who wouldn't leave.

The prosecution paints a different picture:

The woman in the car didn’t hit Ra’s vehicle on purpose, the prosecution argued, but rather struck it after Ra pulled out the gun. She was frightened and trying to leave the scene when she "scraped" the parked car by accident.

"She tried to do as much as she could to try to keep this situation from escalating because she also did not want to go inside the house, fearing that there could be more drama amongst the parents and adults," Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Joshua Holman told the jury. 

A cussing match followed, Holman said, telling jurors things escalated to the point where "Ms. Ra decided she had had enough of words ... she said something along the lines of, 'Oh, you think you're bad? I'm going to show you I'm badder.' "

That's when Ra went to her car, retrieved her daughter, handed her off to a relative, and then went and got the gun from the glove box.

"The defendant, Ms. Ra, was the one at fault in this particular case. Who brought out a weapon against one of the people, was not provoked, and was not assaulted in any particular way," Holman said. 

According to court records, after Ra pulled the gun out, the woman in the car took photos of Ra with her cellphone to capture her demeanor. Those photos were used against Ra at trial, where prosecutors convinced the jury that Ra was out of control and angry, and that the woman trying to get away in the car was the victim. 

Both women made police reports.

Only one was charged: the one holding the gun.

But Ra didn't hear from the police until a month later, when they showed up at her house.

It was early morning on Aug. 29 when the officers showed up.

Ra was in her room getting dressed for work —  she had a meeting for a project that involved helping kids at King High School —  when her mother-in-law told her that police were outside.

"I opened the door. They said I had to come with them," Ra recalled.

Ra sat in the front seat as the police drove her to the Mound detention center. "I remember getting out of the car and the officer telling me, 'All right, now that we're here, I have to put the handcuffs on you,' "  she said.

Ra spent six hours in lockup before she was bonded out. Her family got her a lawyer. Eventually, the prosecutors offered her a deal: Plead guilty to two felonies.

Ra said no.

"That would have been me admitting to something that I hadn't done," she said. "They were only interested in a plea deal and a trial. No one asked me what happened that day." 

The prosecution tacked on a stiffer gun charge. It carried a mandatory two-year minimum prison sentence, which she got. The judge gave her probation on the assault charge, but ordered her to immediately begin her prison sentence at seven months pregnant. 

A lonely delivery behind bars 

For nine months, Ra lived in a world of anxiety and fear inside a prison cell.

She delivered her son while incarcerated, her legs shackled during contractions, chained to a bed while a doctor checked her cervix to see how far she was dilated.

"I remember the doctor saying, 'You guys need to take this off.' And the officers said I had to keep them on, but that they would check and try to get permission,' " Ra recalled.

By the time the baby pushed through, the shackles had been taken off.

And after having the baby she stayed awake for 48 hours, trying to get in every minute before leaving the hospital room and going back to her prison cell.

"I did not want to miss a moment with him. I held him in my arms until I was taken back to that prison," recalled Ra, who remembers the nurses being especially kind. 

One nurse left a lasting impression as she ignored a rule that prohibits nurses from hugging expectant inmates.

"She hugged me in front of those officer," Ra recalled. "She cried with me. She held my hand. She rubbed my back and let me hold her as I was contracting." 

The scene in the delivery room still makes Fink's blood boil. It shouldn't have been that way, he argues. Ra should have had her baby with her husband beside her, and loved ones pacing in a nearby waiting room. 

But the judge wouldn't have it, Fink said.

“For two judges to keep this pregnant woman behind bars knowing the facts of the case?” Fink said. “That just encapsulates how the system has been wrong here.”

Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hathaway refused to let Ra have her baby first, and then report to prison — a deal that the prosecutors had agreed to. He no longer has the case.

Judge Donald Knapp, who now has the case, denied Ra bond after she had the baby, when her lawyer asked if she could remain free pending her appeal. 

An arrest, and the activism that followed

Activist Siwatu-Salama Ra, 22, of Detroit leads a rally demanding justice in the shooting death of Renisha McBride at the Dearborn Heights Justice Center on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013.  Ra, was convicted on felonious assault and felony firearm charges in 2018 and recently had the two-year sentence overturned by the Michigan Court of Appeals.

To get through her nights in prison, Ra envisioned herself with her two children, cuddling in her big warm bed at home. Before she was sent to prison, her daughter had never been without her, not even for an overnight at her grandmother's.

For months, Ra felt suffocated. It wasn't until the appeals court agreed to take her case and ordered her released that she could breathe again. Among her bond conditions was that she be tethered. 

"I came home and I laid in my bed, and I had my babies in my arms," she said.

The tether was removed on Monday.

Siwatu-Salama Ra, 27, rolls around in the bed with her two children, Zala, 2, and Zakai, who she had while incarcerated, the day after being released on bond at her home in Macomb Twp., Mich. on Friday, Nov. 16, 2018. Ra said imagining this exact moment of laying in the bed with her two babies, sustained her while laying in her bunk in prison at the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility.

Ra's case is not an isolated incident.  

According to the Michigan Department of Corrections, 35 pregnant women have arrived at Huron Valley this past year, though Ra believes her ordeal may help some of these women, and others like them in the future. 

On the day she was sentenced, Ra organized a prisoner’s rights group called the Siwatu Freedom Team. Lawmakers and several community activists joined to fight for a more compassionate, humane and empathetic criminal justice system.

And, they wanted to make sure that no pregnant inmate would ever have to deliver alone again, with no family or loved ones at their side.

Two weeks ago, their efforts materialized. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed off on a Department of Corrections rule that now allows incarcerated women to have a relative or friend with them when they deliver.

"If I would have taken a plea deal, we would not have gotten this," Ra said. "This was not in vain. ... I would not have done anything differently."

That's what keeps her going. Her commitment to advocating for others, and ending unjust practices.

"That's someone who I've always been," she said. "The system has not hardened my heart."

A new trial date has been set for Feb. 18.  

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com