FATEFUL REDEMPTION “I chose to isolate myself my whole life and I chose to carry a lot of prejudice because of fear. But I realized a lot of my assumptions about life and about people were wrong.” By Bec Doyle
One of the first things I noticed as I began what would be an hour long conversation with Nhut Vo, was how articulate, self aware and well spoken he was. Only months after his early release from prison, through the help of The Innocence Program, Vo’s sentence of life without the possibility of parole had been successfully overturned. And despite being released during a worldwide pandemic Vo is full of positivity and determination. Moving from Vietnam to Westminster, California when he was 9 years old, he was shy and didn’t speak much English. “I lived in a rural area of Vietnam at that time so when I came here it was just like heaven with all the technology and all the people. It was a bit overwhelming.” Vo says he spent a lot of time in his own thoughts making a lot of assumptions. With his parents both working full time to support the family, and his older brothers starting their own families, Vo had a lot of free time, which he accounts as one of the catalysts in gravitating toward the gang lifestyle, “they were struggling with the same problems I had, like they didn’t belong anywhere.”After his parents divorced he found himself with even more freedom and time by himself, which further ingrained him into the gang lifestyle. “At some point all the moral values that I was taught growing up kind of shifted.” He says the culture shift, with children having so much freedom, was difficult for his traditional Asian parents, and he took advantage of that. “Looking back now I understand how much my parents actually struggled, they were in the process of adjusting themselves.” At the age of 16, while attending a party, they ran into a rival gang and an argument ensued, which escalated, resulting in 2 young men losing their lives that day. “In my mind, at that time, I thought I had everything figured out, my world was so small, I just lived in that little city and I thought 6 M. CITIZEN MAGAZINE | ISSUE 02
that was the world.” Vo explains that no charges were filed on that day due to numerous accounts of him trying to stop the fight, although he attributes that as self serving behavior, wanting to appear as the good guy. Almost 3 years later charges were filed against Vo for the crimes committed at that fateful gathering. “I was arrested, and I was tried, and I was given life without the possibility of parole.” Already in a dark, negative space Vo says “I felt like I was drowning already and that was like the last blow. I felt like I didn’t have any hope after that.” At 19 years old, still not even considered an adult, his outlook felt very bleak “That sentence is essentially saying you’re going to die in prison,” he says. Vo describes the unfortunate need to live up to the stigma of his charges when he started his sentence. “Going into prison with a double homicide, it places a certain status on you, an expectation, for me I felt the need to live up to that status, I felt like it was the only way I could survive.” This further perpetuated the cycle of negativity in Vo’s life, getting into fights and living in fear, “I continued the same destructive belief system that I had.” Vo would spend 15 years in a maximum security prison “because of my fear and because of my behavior, there wasn’t any real incentive for people with my sentence”. Vo explains programs like the GED were reserved for inmates with parole dates. So Vo taught himself how to draw “at first I started out with tracing”. After discovering a market within the prison population for drawings of ‘Precious Moments’ cartoon images, Vo, with his natural ability, began to make drawings on request for fellow inmates, as gifts for their families and partners. “I started out just drawing, I only learned how to paint recently,” he adds. In 2014 Vo was contacted by The Human Rights Watch organization who were advocating to end the sentence of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles. “There’s a lot of scientific
