Antoine Massey, one of two men still on the run after escaping from the jail in New Orleans on May 16, made his case to the public — and to President Donald Trump — in two social media posts over the weekend. Massey’s bold strategy to record a video of himself likely increases the chance that he will soon be caught. But his decision to ask Trump shows just how strongly Trump has become associated with taking up the cause of people who’ve been accused or convicted of crimes.
They say that I broke out. I didn’t break out. I was let out.
A man believed to be new orleans jail escapee antoine massey
Despite having broken out of multiple jails over the years — and reportedly cutting off ankle monitors twice — the man in the videos insisted that his unauthorized midnight exit from the Orleans Justice Center wasn’t technically an escape. “They say that I broke out,” he said. “I didn’t break out. I was let out.” Massey’s mother and pastor confirmed that it is Massey who recorded the social media video.
At any other time, an escapee suspected of violent felonies asking the president of the United States to do him a solid would be chalked up as crazy. But if you set aside the fact that Massey has been accused of state crimes, and not federal ones, his asking this president for help isn’t all that surprising.
Trump is a felon himself, and he’s spent much of this term showing love to his people. Did you participate in a violent insurrection attempt on Jan. 6, 2021? Trump swung open the doors to your cell. Did you get killed by a Capitol Police officer while trying to break into lobby of the House of Representatives chamber? Trump agrees that the United States government owes your family $5 million. Were you found guilty of plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan? Do you stand accused of drugging an intimate partner and forcing her to participate in marathon sessions you call “freak offs” with sex workers? The president hasn’t closed the door to the idea of pardoning you.
We should be far less outraged at an escapee on the lam appealing to the president than we are at the expectation that President Trump has set: that even unrepentant people convicted of the worst crimes can successfully petition his throne for mercy.
Criticizing Trump’s pardons should not be counted as an agreement with the policies of overcriminalization and mass incarceration. Fighting those disastrous policies requires a systematic approach, and that’s not what Trump is doing. Letting a person out of prison because they’re famous or have money or had a famous person plead their case to Trump isn’t reform.
Since last month’s Louisiana jail break and the arrests of people — mostly women — accused of providing assistance to those who escaped, the scandal of Trump’s reckless and indefensible pardons have provided a glaring illustration of our two-tiered criminal justice system. On the one hand, you have people without money or proximity to power trapped in jails for relatively minor crimes. And on the other you have people with money or proximity to power being thrown a lifeline by the Trump administration.
In the New Orleans case, as of last week, women accounted for 10 of the 12 suspects who’d been booked with “accessory after the fact to simple escape.” Five had had bonds set at $1 million, and one at an even more absurd $2.5 million. Also in jail in lieu of a $100,000 bond was a nearly 60-year-old woman suspected of using a phone app to transfer her fugitive grandson $50. (That grandmother finally got out Saturday after spending more than a week locked up.) On the other side of things, you have Trump pardoning a Florida nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes weeks after his mother attended a $1 million-per-person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago. With his guilty plea, Paul Walzak was supposed to pay $4 million in restitution, but Trump’s pardon erases that debt. Similarly, in March, Trump pardoned the founder of an electric vehicle startup, who was sentenced to four years in prison for securities fraud. Trevor Milton, the beneficiary of that pardon, and his wife gave $2 million to Trump’s re-election campaign last year. Paul Walzak was supposed to pay $4 million in restitution, but Trump’s pardon erases that debt. But, to be clear, Trump hasn’t just pardoned those convicted of white-collar crimes. He pardoned Louisiana-born rapper NBA Youngboy, who was serving 23 months for federal gun charges, and he erased the federal charges of Larry Hoover, a leader of the Gangster Disciples in Illinois. Hoover will remain in prison because he was convicted of murder in Illinois court, but the federal life sentence he got for running the Gangster Disciples from prison has been wiped away. Given all this, why wouldn’t Massey, who’s “merely” been charged with domestic abuse and theft of motor vehicle, and suspected of rape and kidnapping, not think that a president with such a soft spot for violent actors would give him a hearing? Antoine Massey, one of two men still on the run after escaping from the jail in New Orleans on May 16, made his case to the public — and to President Donald Trump — in two social media posts over the weekend. Massey’s bold strategy to record a video of himself likely increases the chance that he will soon be caught. But his decision to ask Trump shows just how strongly Trump has become associated with taking up the cause of people who’ve been accused or convicted of crimes.
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune. 
