Lafonso Rollins’ Artwork
This is a two-part series about Lafonso Rollins, who has been working with Hennepin Health since early 2015.
Part 1: Childhood and Prison
In 1994, 19-year-old Lafonso Rollins was sentenced to 75 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and was later exonerated for: the rape of a 78-year-old woman. Rollins spent 10 years in prison for the crime, and is still riddled with anxiety from those years behind bars. Yet, today, at 39, at his studio apartment in Elliot Park, Rollins is adamant that prison was not his lowest point.
“The worst thing that ever happened to me was getting taken away from my mother [and placed in foster care],” Rollins said.
Looking pained, Rollins describes the trauma he suffered in foster care, including a “white dude who beat me until I learned my ABC’s.” At age 14, Rollins dropped out of ninth grade, ran away from foster care, and returned to his mother, Dorothy Gurley.
Rollins recalls the moment that mother and son were reunited. It was “raining and dark” the day that Rollins went to the corner of East 63rd Street and South University Avenue — an area which, according to Rollins, was called “the hoe stroll” — to find his mother. A person told him that she was staying at an apartment at 6450 South Kenwood Avenue.
When Rollins arrived at the apartment, he was greeted by his mother’s boyfriend. His mother arrived later. At first, Gurley didn’t recognize her son and mistook Rollins for his sister.
“Mom, it’s me,” Rollins told her.
“Hi Big Jim,” Gurley said, then, addressing Rollins by his nickname. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
Despite those less-than-ideal circumstances, “I look at this [moment] like a palace,” Rollins said.
But the time that the two had together was fleeting. In October 1992, a few months before Rollins’ wrongful arrest, Gurley, then 37, was stabbed to death by her boyfriend. Rollins said that, for years afterward, “a goal of mine was to pass my mother’s age.”
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In 1993, Rollins was arrested on the grounds of Kenneth Campbell Apartments, a Chicago Housing Authority complex, where police were investigating a series of robberies and rapes against elderly residents. Two of the victims had given descriptions of their attacker to an artist, who created a composite sketch. The building manager believed the sketch resembled Rollins, who regularly visited a resident who lived on the eighth floor.
Rollins was taken in for questioning and held for 13 hours at the Chicago Police Department. While there, he confessed in writing to the attack. Rollins immediately retracted the confession and claimed that he was innocent, explaining that he had only “confessed” in order to stop being struck and threatened by the detectives who were questioning him. Nonetheless, the written confession was used as a key piece of evidence in his trial.
Although the Chicago Police Department had collected a sample of the assailant’s semen — found on a pillowcase in the victim’s apartment — as well as samples of Rollins’ blood and saliva, and submitted them to a Chicago crime lab, Rollins’ lawyer failed to obtain the results. Serology testing had excluded Rollins, but the results were not disclosed to the defense.
On March 4, 1994, Rollins was tried as an adult and sentenced to 75 years in prison.
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While in prison, Rollins read the duPont REGISTRY fastidiously. Perusing the magazine’s luxury property listings — and imagining the alternate lives that they represented — was “how I got by,” he said.
Then Rollins heard about The Innocence Project. The New York-based organization is dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and to reforming the criminal justice system. According to the organization’s website, 3,000 people write to the Innocence Project each year asking for help. And at any given time, the staff are evaluating 6,000 to 8,000 potential cases.
Rollins first letter to The Innocence Project was denied.
Afterward, a fellow inmate nicknamed “Bull” helped Rollins draft a post-conviction relief petition and a motion for DNA testing in exchange for a mixtape. A week later, Bull died in his sleep.
Ultimately the Innocence Project agreed to help Rollins, and he was assigned a public defender named Ingrid Gill.
On June 22, 2004, Rollins and Gill finally obtained DNA test results. The results excluded Rollins as the perpetrator of the sexual assault. He was released from prison in July 2004 — 4,193 days after he was wrongly imprisoned.
Unfortunately, Rollins had no one to greet him on the day he got out. Virtually all of his relatives had died shortly before — or while — he was in prison. His older sister, Bertha Gurley, had been robbed, shot, and killed in August 1993, a few minutes after leaving an ATM on Chicago’s South Side with fifty dollars. His grandmother and father had died in 2004, months before his release.
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Part 2: Post-Prison
On July 12, 2004, in an Illinois courtroom, a judge exonerated 28-year-old Lafonso Rollins of raping a 78-year-old woman.
Rollins had been charged with the rape in January 1993 — and he served 4,193 days of a 75-year prison sentence. He might have been in prison even longer had it not been for “Bull,” a fellow inmate who helped Rollins draft a post-conviction relief petition and a motion for DNA testing.
Ultimately Rollins was assigned a public defender and obtained DNA test results — which were not made available during his original trial. The results excluded Rollins as the perpetrator of the sexual assault. He was released from prison in July 2004.
John Gorman, a spokesman for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office told the Chicago Tribune that after the judge read the not guilty verdict, “It was one of the only times I have seen a public defender and prosecutor hug each other.”
Minutes after that hug, Rollins left the courtroom. But the moment was bittersweet. Rollins had nowhere to go and no one to greet him, because most of his relatives had died shortly before, or while, he was in prison.
In early 2006, Rollins filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago. The suit alleged that Rollins falsely confessed to the rape because city police detectives used “excessive force, intimidation, threats and misrepresentations.”
Rollins eventually agreed to a settlement after his defense discovered documents that revealed the Chicago Police Crime Laboratory had improperly handled his case.
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After the settlement, Rollins purchased a condo near West Madison Street and North Oakley Boulevard. But he soon encountered other “prisons.”
One of these prisons, said Rollins, was his “institutionalized mentality.” He wishes he’d used his settlement money to “travel the world”; instead he holed up inside his condo. It took him a year after he was released to feel comfortable outdoors.
Rollins’ family was another thing he had to contend with. Shortly after his release, Rollins went to visit his younger sister. He was horrified when he saw her neck. She’d been stabbed with glass, and had over 150 stitches. “These are the impacts of my life,” he said of that image, which won’t go away. “These are my demons.”
Ironically, Rollins’ newfound wealth was the biggest prison. Many “friends” wanted his settlement money, and he was hounded incessantly. People even “stormed” his condo.
When Rollins’ mentor advised him to leave Chicago, he moved to Georgia. And, according to him, “From there, I got lost.”
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“I regret losing myself,” Rollins says now, of the next eight years, during which time he lived in Georgia, Florida, Illinois, and Minnesota. “I learned that money can’t solve everything.”
While Rollins made charitable donations to the Innocence Project (an organization that helps exonerate wrongfully convicted individuals) and to Chicago’s Pilgrim Baptist Church (which had been devastated by a 2006 fire) other money was squandered. It went to things that ultimately made him anxious and alienated.
In Georgia, “I spent my time in a Best Buy parking lot,” Rollins recalled, “because it was a place where no one would expect me to be. Everything was negative.”
Recently, Rollins relocated to Minnesota, where he’s struggled with substance abuse and anxiety. A few months ago, he joined Hennepin Health.
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In 2015, Hennepin Health strengthened its relationship with chemical dependency and mental health treatment facilities like Park Avenue Center, RS Eden, NuWay, and Anchor House.
Some of these facilities are now — with member permission — sending Hennepin Health the names of people who are in the facilities and due to transition out. After receiving these referrals, Hennepin Health social service navigators reach out to the members in advance of their transition.
DeAnna Hayden, a Hennepin Health social service navigator, explains the goal: “If we can catch people before they’re actually discharged we can try to meet some of their social service needs so that when they get discharged they don’t end up, say, back in the shelter — or get out and don’t have anything lined up in terms of follow-up care.”
Hayden connected to Rollins through this transition process. She helped him obtain a chemical dependency assessment and get into an outpatient treatment program. She also helped place Rollins in a studio apartment that Hennepin Health leases from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority.
Today, Rollins participates in Hennepin Health’s ED In Reach program, a collaboration with RESOURCE Chemical and Mental Health. Holly Sandefer, the RESOURCE social worker who facilitates the program, provides targeted case management to Hennepin Health members who are frequent users of the emergency room and other crisis care.
Rollins visited the emergency department four times in the two months before he started working with Sandefer. Since joining ED In Reach, he’s only been to the emergency department once; since being housed he has not visited the emergency department at all.
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On May 20, Hayden and Sandefer visited Rollins at his apartment.
That day, Rollins told Hayden and Sandefer that he desires more social connections and would like to be a motivational speaker. He wants to “get involved,” “to be part of something,” but he isn’t sure how to take the next step. He shared stories from his life, revealing a penchant for spoken word poetry, and questioned whether his past experiences can take him from Point A to Point B.
“You’ve learned phenomenal life lessons that some people never get in their whole life,” Sandefer assured him. “You have a voice that’s really important for other people to hear.”
Added Hayden, “The person you are and the attitude you have is astounding.”