No Hope for Redemption with Chester Shepard

After connecting with The Adolescent Redemption Project , I realize that these stories need to be heard.  I had the pleasure of hearing from Chester Shepard, who has now been incarcerated 47 years sentenced to life without parole. He practices every day to live a life of God and Grace even when the world says he doesn’t deserve a second chance. At what point can we decide that someone has earned a second chance for redemption?  When the prisoner no longer holds a threat to society and when even the laws that held him there for life have been overturned in 1980, how can we continue to turn our back on this human being?  

I often wonder if we will ever to be able to build systems based on forgiveness and compassion.  How many more lives could we truly save when our world isn’t run by the pursuit of power, politics and greed and more on the spiritual potential that lives within all of us?   Even as I spoke to Shepard, I thought to myself how does a man like still continue to be an inspiration and a mentor to so many others? How does he continue to help others when we’ve told him he isn’t worthy of a second chance?  If this is something that a man with no freedom, locked in a place where hope is a dangerous idea to hold, can find then isn’t it worth us listening to these stories and taking action so more lives don’t get silently sacrificed.  I do not condone the actions that got these men sentenced, but I do believe that they’ve earned the right to redeem themselves in society.  At what point in sentencing can we decide there is a better way forward for rehabilitation for the ones that when given the proper tools and education want to become something better? Don’t we at least need to give these adolescents a 1st chance before taking away their 2nd? 

Unfortunately, there are so many cases like Josh’s & Shepard’s where once sentences they are left forgotten to do nothing, become nothing and to die silently forgotten from society.  I encourage you to ask yourself is this really the best we can do as humans?  Wouldn’t a shot of redemption, rehabilitation and re-education be a better way to go that encourages, inspires and educates others from making the same mistakes?   

Although Chester Shepard and Josh Puckett don’t put the blame on anyone or anything other than their own choices, when do we as a society take responsibility for the fact that our systems, poor education and lack of community and togetherness have created the very things that we are condemning as guilty.  Only together can we truly become the change we want to see.  

If you would like to join the fight for 2nd chances, please visit The Adolescent Redemption Project to see how you can take part in saving lives, but also aiding in the education so adolescents faced with the same choices don’t make the same mistakes.  

What the say about Chester Shepard now: 

“Mr. Shepard is professional, kind and remarkably happy every day. He brings a joy and light to all individuals he is around. He often takes younger inmates under his wing, and does his best to encourage them to live up to their potential. He is a kind and gentle 67-year-old "old timer" who is loved by all who know him.” - MDOC Officers, fellow inmates and his work supervisors

To Support Shepard, Josh and their Mission to stop condemning adolescents to the silent death sentence , please go to: adolescentredemptionproject.org

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One Life. One Love. One Tribe.
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Dustin Wheeler
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