Walter Dean Myers | Monster | 1999

Dear Steve,

Affiliations can be potential, essential, influential, and of course consequential. Steve, you entered an unthinkable, unimaginable situation, a sequence containing mental and emotional carousels. This evidential trial threw your young self into an overwhelming state, where people who did not know the slightest thing about you wanted you in jail for your entire life--the prosecutor, Sandra Petrocelli, and many citizens who accused YOU of killing Mr Nessbit. Your trial highlights the significance of association, how one can be caught up in gang violence, persuasion, on any occasion.

They wanted 25 years to life from you, they wanted to deprive you of your late youth, and take away your whole adulthood. This is beyond capital punishment. This is taking away one man's possibilities to succeed and live. I tell you, Steve, 25 years to life is a lot worse than death, it's taking every one of your breaths and for one affiliation you succumb to your own guilt in a jail cell. I watched your movie, I was entertained, there really is no movie out there that highlights perspective as well as yours did. Sure you are now in your late twenties making millions, but right now you would be owned by the state probably sobbing yourself to sleep, wishing for your own fate. But pertaining to perspective, can I really trust that your role was so minor that you received no money? Can I really trust your innocence? They decided. Affiliation kills youth, and regret is our torment.

Do you ever imagine yourself, young Steve, in the dark orange? But your misery is history and the only reason you are out is the jury, your life could've been gone in a hurry. Is prosecution strict, hard, tough? One could say that. But is affiliation potential, essential, influential possibly consequential? Definitely. You came out lucky Steve, continue with your uncalled for strives for success. But don't plan on just making money because of a published movie based on your past. Write a book. Talk about why teens are prosecuted, I feel realistic fiction is good for you. But your story is more than realistic fiction. It's a historical fiction.

Sincerely,
Alex "A.C." Cardinale