UNION CITY — David and Lindsay Burnett’s boys made the signs in December, hopeful and eager to see Jesil Wilson home before Christmas: “We (heart) U Jesil! God is good!”
Christmas came and went. Wilson remained in prison. The signs got shelved until a chilly February morning, when Boston, 5, and Baylor, 3, sloshed tiny shoes in the ice-coated parking lot of the Union City Correctional Center and cheered for their “Uncle” Jesil’s parole day.
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Jesil Wilson laughed at the balloon bouquet greeting him as he left prison Wednesday in a T-shirt, jeans and pristine white sneakers.
“Let them free,” he said.
“God is good” were the exact words Sirmodia Wilson uttered when she found out her husband was recommended for parole in September 2013, but getting him to take his first free steps outside prison walls took longer than she or the Burnetts expected.
Jesil Wilson’s case was detailed in a 2012 Tulsa World article, “Murder was the case.”
Now 32, he has spent more than half his life behind bars. He was convicted of first-degree murder for a 1997 Tulsa killing in which he was not the shooter.
His 18-year-old cousin, Zachary Ferguson, shot and killed Tulsa teen Mitchell Knighten in a dispute over a gun. Wilson, then 13 years old, accompanied Ferguson, knocked on the door and asked for Knighten to come downstairs.
Wilson was charged nearly two years later as an adult with first-degree murder, convicted and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Just getting that chance took 15 years.
Attorney Scott Graham said the legal system failed Wilson, who could have instead been sentenced under the state’s youthful offender law, had his conviction occurred a few months later.
Jesil Wilson went from middle school to maximum-security prison.
But it was Sirmodia Wilson who seemed to never lose faith that her husband’s day of freedom would arrive. The middle school sweethearts married in 2011, when Jesil Wilson was incarcerated at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
“Oh, I’m so nervous!” she said, laughing as she headed toward the doors of the Union City Correctional Center with Graham to greet her husband.
The Burnetts’ minivan pulled into the parking lot just as Jesil Wilson loaded his cardboard box of possessions into Graham’s car.
David Burnett and Jesil Wilson met by chance in 2013 during Burnett’s first trip inside prison with a group of ministers performing outreach to inmates at the Davis Correctional Facility in Holdenville.
The self-described “guy from a side of town who never even saw the tracks” and a tattooed former member of Tulsa’s Neighborhood crips struck up a unique friendship that has grown especially close over the past two years.
He began researching Wilson’s story after meeting him and reading the World article.
“The story was so insane, I thought he was messing with me,” Burnett said.
He helped advocate for Wilson’s parole, offering to line up a job and assist Sirmodia Wilson in moving to Oklahoma City, away from the crew Jesil Wilson grew up with.
Now, “Uncle Jesil” and “Aunt Modi” took turns arguing over who got to hold baby Beckham Burnett during a lunch at Cattleman’s Steakhouse on Wednesday to celebrate Wilson’s freedom.
They’d gotten their hopes up before Christmas, only to find out the Department of Corrections wouldn’t count 60 days he spent at an Atoka prison toward his 180-day mandatory work-release requirement. Wilson also completed electrician training while in prison.
Again, they grew optimistic right before Valentine’s Day, only to be disappointed. Paperwork would delay it two more weeks.
But Wednesday, Jesil Wilson sat eating steak, hearing his wife laugh and taking in his surroundings, from the bright blue sky outside to baby Beckham’s chubby cheeks.
Ree Drummond, of Pioneer Woman cookbook, blog and TV show fame, dined at a nearby table inside Cattleman’s with her husband but Wilson hadn’t a clue why his wife and Lindsay Burnett were so excited about that.
“I don’t know who she is!” he said.
“Babe, I have her cookbook,” Sirmodia Wilson explained. “You’ll like it.”
Graham planned to take Wilson straight from lunch to check in with his parole officer, and then take the couple home. Wilson confessed he had barely slept the night before.
Burnett beamed as he asked his friend: “Did you think today was for sure going to happen?”
No, Wilson confessed.
In addition to “God is good,” there was another phrase Sirmodia Wilson had said for months, no matter what news of delays came from the parole board, DOC officials, or the Governor’s Office:
“I don’t care, as long as he’s home.”