Miami-Dade attorney helps turn around life of ex-convict

They met four years ago in a classroom at the Women’s Detention Center in Miami-Dade, the girl silent and suspicious of the lawyer in fancy shoes who was taking over her case.

Bianca Matthews was 16, facing 15 years for attempted murder.

Lorna Owens believed Bianca could be saved. She might be right.

Owens is hosting a fund raising brunch at the Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove on Saturday; one of the beneficiaries will be Bianca, now out of jail with her sights set on nursing school.

But Bianca is finding out that life doesn’t get easier with a second chance. It never gets easy.

She’s a grown woman now. But in that classroom in February 2005, Owens remembers, “She looked like she was 10 years old. She wouldn’t look at me. She kept holding her head down.”

Bianca had been jailed since the night of the crime in December 2003. She lured a man into an alley off 79th Street, where her boyfriend and two friends Tasered him, squeezed his throat until he was unconscious, robbed him of cash and his watch and stuffed him into his trunk. Later, he tried to run and the boyfriend shot him. Bianca was collared an hour after the crime, crying and spilling to the detectives.

Bianca’s mother, who did not raise her and had only recently come into her life, called Owens for help, on the advice of a bail bondsman.

Owens was 50, originally from Jamaica, a former midwife, nurse and assistant state attorney now in private practice. She was also a life coach and motivational speaker. ”I am forever pushing the boundaries of possibilities. You can too,” her website said.

For a case like this, Owens normally would have charged $25,000. Bianca’s mother, who asked not to be named in this article, said she could only pay $5,000. Owens took the case.

NO CRIMINAL RECORD

The facts were ugly, but they weren’t the whole story. Bianca was the youngest of the group, had no criminal record, never touched the victim, never touched a weapon. The shooter was her 19-year-old boyfriend, James Fullard, whom Bianca claimed had abused her. On the witness stand — 100 pounds, barely five feet tall — this girl would tug heartstrings, Owens reasoned.

Bianca kept her head down in the cell block, didn’t talk much, didn’t trust most people she met. She watched television, made collect calls on the shared phone. She read romance novels and mysteries and looked out the window a lot. The window wouldn’t open. ”I’m going to be in here for the rest of my life,” she said to herself. “They gonna hang me.”

The jail had a school for girls being tried as adults. It had one room and one teacher, Thonda Ollis-Bellamy.

For reasons Bianca could not fathom, Ms. Bellamy seemed interested in her. ”All our decisions have consequences,” Ms. Bellamy liked to say. They talked about Bianca’s by then ex-boyfriend. ”You need to think about putting yourself in a predicament,” Ms. Bellamy told her, “giving people control over your decisions, your body, your thinking.”

Bianca was taking the FCATs, and Ms. Bellamy spent a lot of time coaching her. She passed — did well enough, in fact, to arouse the suspicions of test administrators. ”I guess they didn’t think I could be smart,” Bianca said.

”I got a letter saying, basically, that she had cheated,” Ms. Bellamy said. “I was so shocked — how dare they! — because she had worked hard, I had worked hard, and she had earned everything she got. . . . Well, she takes them again, and she passes again! ”

”She’s one of my success stories,” she said. “I don’t get to hear a lot of success stories.”

Later that year, Bianca wrote a letter to the man she and her friends robbed. ”I think that I am partially responsible for what happened to you,” she wrote. “I tried everything in my power to try and deter my co-defendants from their brutal acts.”

She said she was getting As and Bs. He never wrote back.

PLEA BARGAIN

Owens pushed hard for a plea bargain and found Assistant District Attorney John Priovolos receptive. ”I think Bianca was basically in a position where she was afraid of all of them,” he said. ”She was love-struck by the shooter, left with no choice but to follow along because he had a gun.” He called Bianca “impressionable.”

But he was pleased that she offered to testify against her co-defendants. He offered a very sweet deal. ”I stuck my neck out for her,” Priovolos said.

Following the prosecutor’s recommendation, Judge Julio Jimenez withheld adjudication. ”She needs to use better judgment than what she has in the past,” he said in court in February 2006, ”because now she is looking at life.” Bianca was lucky; Fullard got 20 years and the other two defendants drew 15 each.

When she graduated from high school, her parents weren’t there. Owens took her to lunch at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach. Bianca told her she wanted to be a pediatrician.

Now Bianca is 20, living with her boyfriend in his mother’s North Miami Beach house. She’s on welfare.

JOB-HUNT WOES

She dropped out of Miami Dade College because she couldn’t afford books and tuition. She has trouble getting and keeping jobs.

KFC, Family Dollar, a handful of call centers: She said managers don’t want somebody with a record. ‘You try and explain, and they say, `Well, you need a letter from the court,’ or something,” she said. “I cry. I get so frustrated I feel like giving up.”

She gave birth to her second child in December, infuriating her mother and reducing Owens to tears. ”She was expecting so much from me,” Bianca said. “It probably broke her heart. She wanted me to go to university.”

Her plan now is to go to Miami Dade College School of Nursing. Because of her record, the Florida Board of Nursing may ask for a hearing before it grants her a license; Owens promised she’ll be there.

Bianca has to finish some basic courses before she can be considered for the nursing program. Financial aid is available, but she still owes the college around $900 from the first time she attended. Nursing school costs money she doesn’t have.

So this Saturday, Owens will host the brunch, a fancy affair with jazz musicians and book authors. Some money will go straight to Miami Dade College to pay Bianca’s bills; some will go toward a salon that will employ women parolees.

Bianca will be in that ballroom. Black dress with a bow and little sequins, she’s thinking. Owens just wants people to hear her voice, see her face. ”I’m trying to do what [Owens] tells me,” Bianca said.

Maybe this was as close as she comes, right now, to taking control. Right now, life is not something she leads; it is something that keeps happening to her, a welter of pushes and pulls and blows.

Owens is always hopeful. ”She’s not getting arrested,” she said. “She’s asking for help.”

But Owens’ faith wasn’t blind. ”You want to put things in a tight package — bad ending, happy ending — but people are living their lives,” she said. “You just hold your breath and wait.”

For all your legal needs contact: Lorna Owens Esq 305-604-9777  

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