← Snap Judgment
Snap Judgment
Fire Escape
00:46:47
How did Amika Mota go from a midwife and mother of three to a prisoner inside one of the largest women's prisons on Earth?
Loading summary
Transcript122 lines
- [00:03]
Glenn Washington
SNAP Studios, SNAP Nation. I am so humbled and thrilled because what you are about to hear is a project years in the making. Snap Studio's brand new series, Fire Escape explores the story of one woman, Amika Mota, and the aftermath of her biggest mistake, perhaps the biggest mistake it's possible to make. And we also follow her journey to seize back her own humanity in her own eyes and through the eyes of the people she cares about. Made in partnership with wondery, SNAP producer Anna Sussman leads us through this new 10 part series into the world of incarcerated female firefighters. And our real life story includes mentions of a car crash and the aftermath. This is Fire Escape, episode one, the Crash.
- [01:25]
Amika Mota
Okay, let's start with. Tell me everything you remember about your first call.
- [01:35]
Anna Sussman
It was fall during the really foggy, foggy season. And so the fog was really, really heavy. And so, you know, in the fire engine on the way to the call, we could hardly see, the fog was so thick. And we had heard that there was a cotton truck involved. It was like a four lane highway and it was a cotton truck that had been rear ended by somebody else and kind of spun out and the cotton bales fell off onto the freeway. 911, what's your emergency?
- [02:14]
Amika Mota
The call came in to Madeira County Station 5. It sits in the flatlands of California's Central Valley, lined with rows and rows of aging almond trees. The firefighters at Station 5 were the closest to the scene.
- [02:31]
Anna Sussman
You know, the routine is it comes in over the call comes in over dispatch and you get suited and booted real quick. So you get your full turnout gear on, it's your real heavy gear. And then we all jump in the engine. And I was nervous. It was my first car accident. And I know the captains and the chief were a little bit nervous about me coming to the scene too.
- [02:59]
Amika Mota
Driving down the highway, Amika and the other women on the engine were quiet, lined up, four on each side of the truck, knees touching in the middle with their helmets on their laps. The equipment on, the engine was rattling and they strained to hear the information over the radio from what they heard. It was a very fragile scene.
- [03:21]
Anna Sussman
I was just talking to God, like, please let me be able to handle this. Please give me the strength to maintain some composure.
- [03:35]
Amika Mota
And did you have the feeling of like, feeling eyes on you?
- [03:37]
Anna Sussman
Oh, yeah, absolutely. They were definitely like, you know, checking in with me on the way. And I remember Chief looking at me at one point and he's like, honey, you look like a deer in the headlights. You know, we roll on scene And I can see a man's head, and he already had that look of death, which is just that color, the shade of gray to his face. My heart is pounding at this point. It's like, okay, we don't. I don't know what else I'm going to see.
- [04:16]
Amika Mota
The other fire stations around the town were also called, and their fire crews were starting to show up.
- [04:23]
Anna Sussman
There's other engines on scene that have rolled up now and firefighters that have been on the job for 20 years. And this was such a bad scene that there was a couple of the firefighters, the old head experienced firefighters that were sick on the side of the road. Literally sick. And so we're watching them. But our job as the first engine on set and as the girls that do the dirty work is pulling the bodies. That's our job. So I approach with the captains and the other firefighters, and I can see in the back seat two more bodies. I'm praying because I don't know what to do to kind of else. I feel like we have to keep some reverence to this moment, too, because it's so intense. As this whole family that has passed.
- [05:30]
Amika Mota
Amica and the other firefighters cut open the car. Inside was a family of three, all adults. Carefully, they removed their bodies and placed them on the grass and covered them with yellow sheets.
- [05:44]
Anna Sussman
I wasn't prepared for that being the beginning of my experience at the firehouse. And so at that point, it was like, I'm a baby firefighter, and I just. My first car accident was a triple fatality. We don't quite know how to take care of ourselves. We don't quite know how to get home and tell the other crew about what we just saw. It's just kind of a really silent ride home.
- [06:17]
Amika Mota
The place Amica and the other firefighters call home is actually inside a prison. It's called Madeira County Station 5 CCWF. And it's a little brick firehouse with two engines and a handful of rolled hoses, a bunk room with 12 neatly made cots, a little open kitchen, and a captain's office. And there, 12 incarcerated women train and work out, wash fire trucks, and go to sleep all inside the barbed wire fence of one of the largest women's prisons in the world, the Central California Women's Facility. Ccwf.
- [06:52]
Anna Sussman
We're firefighters, but we're incarcerated, you know, and we lived with correctional officers still. We were not free. And our view into the prison gates reminded us of that, like, every day, you know what I mean? We couldn't look outside without seeing the Towers and the barbed wire.
- [07:19]
Amika Mota
Is there a moment when they kind of lock you in?
- [07:23]
Anna Sussman
Yeah. So count time. We get counted the same as everybody else on the inside. And so count time is when the sargent comes through and everybody needs to be on their bunk and accounted for, basically.
- [07:38]
Amika Mota
What Was your number?
- [07:39]
Anna Sussman
X32168.
- [07:51]
Amika Mota
From Wondry and Snap Studios at KQED, I'm Anna Sussman, and this is Fire Escape, the story of a woman whose world burned down, and then she learned to fight fire from behind bars. This is episode one, the crash. There were nearly 2,000 women locked inside the Central California women's facility at the time Amica entered. Women at all custody levels, Women serving sentences for crimes ranging from embezzlement to homicide to possession of drugs. And when I first began interviewing women here about 20 years ago, they would each always tell me the same thing about the shame they endured as women prisoners. They had let down their families, their parents, their children. They felt they had failed as women. It's something corrections officers taunt them about, something their kids, friends, parents make comments about. I remember interviewing a woman under the shadow of the high prison wall and her saying casually, we're women. We're not supposed to commit crimes. We're not supposed to be. And that comment meant so many things about women who are convicted of crimes and imprisoned and what everyone thinks of them forever. When I first met Amika, it was clear she was very aware of this narrative.
- [09:40]
Anna Sussman
You broke the social contract with the whole world when you went to prison and left your kids. Like, that is the most real thing ever. Like, once you break this social contract, that's it. Like, that's just how it's perceived right from the world and by us when we internalize this. And regardless of all of the ways they feel about me, it's like, there's no going back. There's none. I can only move forward.
- [10:10]
Amika Mota
When Amika talked about the calls she responded to as an incarcerated first responder, it seemed hers was a story of defying a system intent on burying her under the weight of her worst moment. Out on the fire trucks, Amika and the other women are basically heroes, pulling children out of crumpled cars, climbing into burning homes with a hose and an axe, picking up elderly folks who had fallen in their kitchens, saving the lives of their jailers and their families. When they ride past schoolyards with firetruck lights spinning, kids cheer, and then they drive into the prison gates. Before Amika was inmate X32168, she lived in the mountains of Kern County, California, in a three bedroom house.
- [11:02]
Anna Sussman
The front thing was a whole porch all the way around the front, like a wraparound porch. Yeah, it was really beautiful. I loved that house. It was kind of a dream house.
- [11:13]
Amika Mota
Amiko was 29 years old and she had three kids. And she had just moved to the countryside to try to slow down and focus on her kids and focus on being a mom.
- [11:23]
Anna Sussman
Yeah. So Tehachapi is just these high desert mountains, a lot of rolling hills. Really beautiful. You can see the shadows on the hills from the clouds.
- [11:37]
Amika Mota
She'd walk her older kids to the school bus every morning, and on weekends they'd go hunt for snakes or go to her son's football games.
- [11:46]
Anna Sussman
I had big dreams of, like, taking care of the home and having a garden and having nice meals. And I tried. I liked the idea of it. I did. I had idealized the idea of living in a small town, taking care of my kids, taking care of my house.
- [12:07]
Amika Mota
And then on a warm night in October 2008, driving down Lincoln Avenue in Cypress, California, everything changed.
- [12:18]
Anna Sussman
I do remember approaching the light that I ran and like, seeing the light, I don't remember if I saw it red, but I just, I. Like I was going to burn through it and I didn't see any other vehicles. And then that was when I hit Mr. Car. It's like glimpses. I remember glimpses of coming into the hospital and, like, waking up in between the surgery and like, seeing. I remember the families I would see in the hallway. And I remember waking up and that's like handcuffed to the bed. So there was sheriff deputies on, you know, one side of the bed and outside the door. So you could see two outside the door and one right next to me. And he let me know that I was. That I was under arrest and that I had killed somebody in this accident. And I didn't believe him. Like, I remember just not. It just didn't register. None of it felt real. It didn't feel true. It didn't. Like, what do you mean, I killed somebody? Like, that just sounded so crazy to me. And that was when it starts unfolding.
- [13:36]
Amika Mota
Amica had a broken pelvis, a lacerated liver and a punctured lung from the hospital. After multiple surgeries, she was led into a sheriff's van and taken to the Orange county jail.
- [13:49]
Anna Sussman
And, you know, the deputies just kind of tossed me around. I was pushed into the shower and so fell to my knees because I couldn't stand. I remember the shower coming on. I had chunks of glass still Stuck in my scalp. And as I was showering, those chunks were coming out of my hand. So that moment of showering was also this, like, intense. I just, I was realizing all of it moment by moment.
- [14:36]
Amika Mota
She was put into an isolation cell, and isolation.
- [14:41]
Anna Sussman
It was room 13. I won't forget that. The wing I was in, I could hear people screaming through the vents. My body was just in so much pain that it was, you know, on a thin mat, curled up with my wool blanket and just shivering.
- [15:08]
Amika Mota
Over the next days and weeks in the Orange County Jail, she was moved into a medical unit to recover from the accident and the surgeries. And from there she was moved to a two person cell. She was allowed into a day room for two hours where she could read the newspaper and shower. And then she was returned to her small cell. Eventually, she was given a public defender and told more details about the case against her. She could be convicted of second degree murder. She waited in the county jail month after month. The only way she could have seen her kids would have been in a visiting room separated by a thick glass window.
- [15:45]
Anna Sussman
You know, like, I couldn't imagine looking at my little 6 year old that was already like, could not make sense of where I was or why her mom was sitting in a box like that. And then like, I mean, I would like envision her like trying to touch me or, you know, like, no, that was not going to happen. Like, it felt, it felt more harmful, like I would be harming them more.
- [16:12]
Amika Mota
Than not seeing them.
- [16:13]
Anna Sussman
Than not seeing them.
- [16:15]
Amika Mota
She wrote letters home to her kids. This one was after she'd been locked up for six months waiting for her trial.
- [16:21]
Anna Sussman
There was one. This one was like when I got sentenced. That was intense to read. Yeah, it's. This is to all three of them. So as far as I go, I pled guilty to the charges against me last Friday. I could have kept fighting them, but it felt like it was the right choice. Now there's what's called an open sentence. The judge gets to decide how much time to give me. The most time that I would do is 13 years and eight months with good time credit. It's actually just over 10 years. And that's the worst case scenario. He could choose to give me less time. He chooses that on May 8th. That's the day I'm sentenced. It's a big day and it won't be a lot clearer after that, what the future holds for us. But either way, I'll be going to state prison, which is a whole different ballpark than county jail. And then at the end of the summer, you guys should be able to come and visit for a weekend trip. I can't wait to hug all three of you. That sounds like heaven to me. So for that reason alone, I'm excited that I get to go to prison. Anyway, that's the scoop. May 8th is the big day. I love you so much.
- [17:54]
Amika Mota
On May 8, she was led to the courthouse one final time for her sentencing.
- [18:12]
Glenn Washington
Right after the break. Fire Escape continued. Stay tuned. Snap Judgment is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Welcome back to Snap Judgment. You're listening to episode one of Fire Escape, produced in partnership with Wondery. And when last we left, Amica was sitting in the courthouse about to receive her sentence.
- [19:20]
Anna Sussman
During the sentencing in Orange county, they, you know, I was shackled and sitting in a cage off to the side of the judge. And so I could see his family. I could see my family and but it was through a glass panel and bars.
- [19:38]
Amika Mota
We won't be using the victim's name in the story to protect his identity.
- [19:42]
Anna Sussman
His wife was in the courtroom and I remember them talking about, you know, who he was. He was a pilot and flew in the Air Force here. So he'd done all this amazing stuff in his life. And. Sorry, I remember his wife, you know, saying that he was just about to retire and that they were going to have that. She was so excited to have some time with her husband because he worked so hard his whole life. It was like a grandfather, a father. And I could relate to that, you know, like he had done his life. He put in his dues, he daily grind, day in, day out, taking care of his family, and he was just about to reap those rewards. You know, I had taken their whole life from them, basically. And so that, I mean, that sitting in the courtroom, it was like I took their life and my, you know, and I did the same to my family. It was like I wiped out two families completely. So it was a really f ed up feeling. I knew that sentencing was about what I was going to walk away with, but I knew that that was their opportunity to address me. And so that was the most important piece of that, was allowing them to address me and make sure I looked them in the eye because I didn't want them to feel like I wasn't hearing them or taking what they were saying. I don't think they wanted to look at me much. You know, they shook their head and discussed often. Like, didn't really want to look at me, but I felt like I owed it to them, maybe. I don't know if that was the right thing to do. Yeah, I think I addressed the chord at some point, too. And then that is like, what do you even say? What do you say? Because it feels like at that point, it's some performance. Like, you're supposed to say something that sounds like this and like none of it is even. It's like, I don't even know. So I don't remember what I said.
- [22:26]
Amika Mota
Amika's words to the court that day were this. I've never had the chance to express how sorry I am to Mr. Family. No words will heal your hurt and bring back your father and your grandfather. But from the deepest part of my soul, I am so very sorry.
- [22:46]
Anna Sussman
At that point, I was hated, and they were disgusted by me, and so that there was no room for me to think about that either.
- [22:54]
Amika Mota
To think about what?
- [22:56]
Anna Sussman
To think about any making of amends that I could do with the family or reaching. I mean, actually, I remember, like, asking my attorney at one point, like, can I reach out to them, or. And he was like, absolutely not.
- [23:15]
Amika Mota
Amica waited for her sentence in the Orange County Jail. She'd talk to her God. She'd talk to her kids on the phone, tell them she didn't know when she'd be home. She'd talk to her victim. So what would you say?
- [23:31]
Anna Sussman
I would thank him, you know, for a chance, another shot. I still haven't talked about this. I mean, I felt very grateful to be alive. And I feel like. I don't know, I felt like I was allowed to live. At the sake of his life.
- [23:59]
Amika Mota
Amica was convicted of vehicular manslaughter. She was sentenced to nine years and eight months in California State Prison.
- [24:12]
Anna Sussman
The thing that I. That always will stick with me is the judge just talking about, you know, letting me know that this was not about rehabilitation. This was about punishment. It wasn't like there was no hope, but kind of like that. Like, it felt like there was a message in there that I was not redeemable. Coming back from sentencing. I was walked through the jail, and when I was brought into my unit, you know, there was about 32 other women that I'd been with for that last year. So I walked in, everybody was waiting to see what had happened. And I fell to my knees and I screamed and, you know, 10 years. Just 10 years. 10 years. 10 years. This one. I have so much to say to each of you, but I can't put it all on paper now. I'm waiting for the prison bus. They come every Sunday to pick up the girls that are waiting to go to prison. So any Sunday now I could go. I'll have a new address and a new prisoner number. Every day now is a day closer to seeing you all. That's what keeps me going. Every day I feel strong and I know we will all be okay.
- [25:47]
Amika Mota
Amika began serving her 10 year sentence in the polka dot moo moo women are dressed in when they go over the wall.
- [25:54]
Anna Sussman
Over the wall is what they call it. And it's just going over the wall to the main yard.
- [25:59]
Amika Mota
In prison, the prison was over capacity. Some women were pregnant, some were living with hiv, some were in need of psych care or methadone. And people were triple bunked, some even housed in boiler rooms. Amika was walked to her dorm shackled at the legs and the wrist and the waist and handed a blanket and some clothes. One of the first things she did when she got there was she took a little paper envelope of pictures of her kids. Milo, Soleil, Blossom. And she took a tube of toothpaste and put a little dot of toothpaste on the back of each picture and hung them up in her locker where she could see them all the time.
- [26:39]
Anna Sussman
I could see their face. I'd see their faces. I could smell them. I could like feel their skin and their hair. That's what I would miss, you know.
- [26:50]
Amika Mota
Sometimes she would take the pictures out of her locker and lie on her bunk and just hold them.
- [26:55]
Anna Sussman
On my bunk, headphoned up. There was a picture of my youngest. It was like a close up shot of her face and just all her little freckles on her nose. And I would just kiss that picture and stare at her little freckles.
- [27:16]
Amika Mota
She could finally have a contact visit. She'd been locked up for almost a year and now that she was out of county jail and in state prison, she could visit them without a pane of glass in between them.
- [27:29]
Anna Sussman
I knew I was really close to being able to see my kids and hold them and hug them and, you know, in person.
- [27:39]
Amika Mota
Amica's papa was going to bring the kids for a visit, all three of them. They'd been living with him at the time. And he booked a flight and packed their bags and Amika thought she could hold on just a little bit longer and wait it out until she got that visit. But waiting it out was harder than she realized. What Amika didn't yet understand was that inside prison there's an invisible and changing set of rules predicated often on the whims of the guards.
- [28:08]
Anna Sussman
Like in a month period of time, I managed to get three write ups. And I didn't feel like I, you know, like I was acting out in the yard or acting crazy. Like I just really. It didn't feel that way.
- [28:23]
Amika Mota
A write up is a punishment for breaking a rule. She said it was as if the COs were everywhere.
- [28:29]
Anna Sussman
Like, you can't just go be. You can't just be. It's always they want something like, no, you can't get your wash slot today because you looked at me funny. Or no, you can't get your phone call today because you didn't flirt back. You know, it's like every green suit wasn't a human. He was part of this prison machine.
- [28:55]
Amika Mota
She calls them green cops because they wore green uniforms. She says there were a few in particular she knew to avoid.
- [29:02]
Anna Sussman
There was one guy on the yard that was, you know, one of those ones that he was, he was not horrible, but he was just really kind of a by the book.
- [29:12]
Amika Mota
She knew him as the stickler. He had this graying hair and he was older, like in his mid-60s.
- [29:17]
Anna Sussman
Uh, don't engage at all. Just kinda look at you. Like a piece of. Wouldn't make eye contact when you walked by.
- [29:25]
Amika Mota
Amika tried to navigate around him, keeping her head low. She'd go to the mess hall and the law library. Her work assignment, the yard and back to her cell. But she kept getting in trouble everywhere. And every time she'd get written up, the punishments would escalate. And then one time a few weeks in, she saw this thing happening in front of her and she felt she had no choice but to get involved.
- [29:52]
Anna Sussman
I was getting ready to go in the shower, so I had my shower shoes on and a moo moo. There was this old woman that was a porter.
- [30:05]
Amika Mota
Porter is one of the jobs for incarcerated women. A porter would clean up after people.
- [30:11]
Anna Sussman
And she was very old, like probably 70 something years. Just very like old and frail. And it's like hard to even watch her work in prison. So she had taken my sidecar's towel from the shared showers.
- [30:29]
Amika Mota
And your sidecar is the person who sleeps in the bunk next to you.
- [30:33]
Anna Sussman
And so, yeah, my sidecar flipped out and started cussing out this old woman and I was like, what?
- [30:44]
Amika Mota
And that's when Amika and her sidecar got into a fight, a big fight.
- [30:51]
Anna Sussman
Throwing punches in the day room was like the worst place you could fight because you're basically in front of a cop shop.
- [31:02]
Amika Mota
And it was after the fight died down in her cell that a cop, a prison guard, came to take Amica away.
- [31:08]
Anna Sussman
Some cop came to the door and basically was like, roll it up. I was classified as a failure to program, and I ended up being, you know, put in isolation.
- [31:19]
Amika Mota
She was given 40 days in solitary confinement. And as the green cop marched her across the yard towards the isolation unit, he casually mentioned, there goes your contact visit with your kids. They can still come down to the prison, but no contact. He said she'd have to look at them through a glass window.
- [31:42]
Anna Sussman
We had a date. We had a date on the calendar when they were coming. And it was. It was like, you know, every call, I get to see you, mama. You know, I get to see you in a few weeks. Oh, it's. We're all counting down. I asked the sergeant to please let me call my kids or my papa. I had to call papa and tell him that I couldn't visit.
- [32:12]
Amika Mota
Amica still felt it would do more harm than good to have her kids visit through a pane of glass. It had been a year and a half. There would be no in person visit. She wouldn't get to see her kids. They wouldn't be able to touch her or hug her.
- [32:31]
Anna Sussman
I mean, there became a point when I realized that being the type of mom I wanted to be to my kids from the inside was impossible. So it was very much like this reckoning for me of who I was as a human being. I had gone inside as a mama, someone that had integrity. And now I had taken someone's life. And it was a new version of me that I had to figure out who I was. Now.
- [33:29]
Amika Mota
If she was ever going to be able to figure that out, she'd need to find some way over that wall.
- [33:34]
Anna Sussman
I always wondered what it was like on that side because we knew they lived right outside the gate. And so it's kind of this other world. It just is a mag. It's like, where are they? What are they doing? It just gave me this picture of what it would look like and I wanted it.
- [33:57]
Amika Mota
Fire Escape is a production of Snap Studios and Wondry. This series was created, written and produced by me, Anna Sussman. And I want to thank Amika Moda for her help and generosity in sharing her story with us for Snap Studios. Our senior story editors are Mark Ristich and Nancy Lopez. Marissa Dodge is our director of production, original music by Renzo Gorio and Doug Stewart. Doug Stewart also created our theme song. Sound design and engineering by Miles Lassie for Wondry. Our senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Our development producer is Eliza Mills. Claire Chambers, Lauren Dee and Mandy Gorenstein are our senior producers and Sarah Mathis is our Managing producer. Our Executive producers for Snap Studios are Glenn Washington and Mark Risich. Executive producers for Wondry are Marshall Louie, Morgan Jones, George Lavender and Jen Sargent.
- [34:49]
Glenn Washington
Thank you, thank you. Thank you Amiko Mota for sharing your story and thank you Anna Sussman for bringing it to us. You can follow Fire Escape on the Wondery app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondery plus and the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify or on Amazon Music with your prime membership. Now after the break, I sit down with Anna for a behind the story deep dive into Fire Escape. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Stamp Judgment, the Fire except episode. We're celebrating the release of Fire Escape, a brand new 10 part storytelling series from KQED Snap Studios and Wonder it that we cannot wait for you to hear. Anna Sussman, the producer of the series is in the studio with me right now. Thank you so much for checking us into this story.
- [36:07]
Amika Mota
Thanks Glenn. I can't believe that I'm here talking to you about this. Thank you so much for having this conversation.
- [36:13]
Glenn Washington
We are so thrilled to have you. Anna, this is a story you've been working on forever, for years. A story of the heart. Why did you want to dive into this particular narrative?
- [36:26]
Amika Mota
I have been reporting on this firehouse at the Central California Women's facility for about 20 years and I think that the work that they do is unlike any other story in the world. Honestly, to be an incarcerated person and going into the community as a hero, as a first responder and interfacing with folks as their lives are on the line and then coming back into prison I think is a story I could live in forever. And it's also a little personal to me. I have incarceration in my family and I'm always interested in stories about what incarceration does to people.
- [37:02]
Glenn Washington
The story is through the eyes of Amika Mota who takes us with her over 10 episodes into a lot of different places. They're self reflective in a way that most people recoil from. Why did she want to tell you this story? Why did she want to Take away the veil.
- [37:19]
Amika Mota
Well, I think she's somebody who's been labeled a lot of things throughout her life, and I think she really knew the value of breaking out of those boxes, both for herself and for folks listening to her story. And that, you know, that she knows she's never all one thing, and none of us are ever all one thing. But that's what makes a story compelling, and that's what makes our lives compelling, is that we are complicated and dimensioned and not what you think we are. And she knows that. Yeah. And I think she trusts that. And that the listener can hold multiple things about a person in their mind at once, which is a scary thing to trust. Cause that is a lot of trust.
- [38:00]
Glenn Washington
She is trusting you. And I appreciate how Amika allows us to see her at her very worst moment. She allows us to see her warts. She allows us to hear her laugh. Do you think that the world that we live in does not accept witnessing joy from someone who's made a mistake of this magnitude?
- [38:27]
Amika Mota
Yes. Myself included. I did have to catch within myself some beliefs I had about how much joy she was entitled to. Absolutely.
- [38:39]
Glenn Washington
Wow. Say more.
- [38:41]
Amika Mota
I mean, if somebody took the life of someone in your family.
- [38:44]
Glenn Washington
Yeah.
- [38:44]
Amika Mota
And you saw them, you know, if you saw them experiencing joy too soon, you could relate to that as being not okay. Right. Hey. Too soon. It feels like you're not taking it seriously enough. It feels like you're not in your pain enough. I think that's a very normal reaction. But at what point do we allow people to reemerge as humans and the full spectrum of humans, including joy and giggling and being silly and making more mistakes and all of the things that humans are allowed to be. And I think the thing that really clicked for me was when she says, I'm no good to my victim's family. If I have to stay in my pain forever, I'm no good to anybody. Right. Like, what good is that human who just has to stay in a place of shame forever? Right. So if I want people who have hurt people to stop doing that, which I do, then I have to allow them to be full.
- [39:42]
Glenn Washington
What's your North Star? What are you looking for when you're. When you're building this narrative?
- [39:48]
Amika Mota
The point to me that I had to keep in mind was not how does Amika reconcile herself with her crime? It's how do we as listeners reconcile ourselves to the idea that she. That she is fallible like us? And we had to just confront that all the way through the making of the story. You know, there's a thing about likable characters, right? You need your characters to be likable, otherwise people tune out. Right? They turn against the story. But she's a human, and humans aren't always likable. Right? We're terribly unlikable a lot of the time. And she's a human who's taken a life. So then does that mean that we have to treat her differently in the details that we give and the choices that she makes and what we show and what we don't show?
- [40:34]
Glenn Washington
What changed you while making this series? What changed about you while making this series?
- [40:41]
Amika Mota
Did you see me change at all?
- [40:44]
Glenn Washington
Um, yeah, I think so. You became more deliberate. It made you focus on the joy of having your daughters and being able to parent your daughters in a way that, you know, that Amika couldn't. Is that fair?
- [41:06]
Amika Mota
Yeah, that's totally fair. You know, there's lots of ways in which her story terrified me. A lot of the women I interviewed her were in for dui. Those that weren't were all eventually in for things that, you know, could happen to anybody given the wrong circumstances. And so, yeah, the idea of being taken away from my children, it terrified me. And the idea of my children, you know, making a terrible mistake later in their life terrifies me. And so, yeah, I think that the fragility of life is a huge part of this series, and it was something I lived with very intimately during the whole making of it.
- [41:48]
Glenn Washington
We kind of got out a little bit. But how did. How do you feel altered after having devoted this much of your life to telling a story?
- [41:58]
Amika Mota
One of the kind of concerns we had about the story was the fact that her crime was a dui. And so it had this kind of pall of accident instead of intentionality over it, and that people might think, well, she's not like other people who committed more premeditated or more overtly violent crimes. And she says, no, I am the same. I'm exactly the same, because I know that all of those crimes happened in a moment of weakness. And I had to ask myself, do I ever lose my temper? Yes, I lose my temper. I lose my temper, right? And I tell myself, I'm never going to do that again. I'm never going to lose my temper again. So I think when she said that, that she's not any different and that she understands that all of those crimes happened in a moment when people lost it. That made me rethink my mercy for all the crimes.
- [42:57]
Glenn Washington
Okay, very interesting. And what Amika said In the story we just heard was that this was not about rehabilitation, this was about punishment. That's what she heard. And I think that that's where a lot of people are. I think immediately after something like that, that's where I would be.
- [43:18]
Amika Mota
But that's fair. That's why we have a system of justice and not a system of vigilantism. Right. Of course you want to go out and punch somebody out, like, of course you do. But this is why this is in place instead, because it's supposed to be more measured.
- [43:34]
Glenn Washington
Do you think that justice was served?
- [43:40]
Amika Mota
I think that because of the person she is, including the amazing mother that she had and the community that she had, Amika was able to come through her experience of incarceration as a fuller human being than she was before she committed her crime. But I don't think that our system of justice generally does that to folks. I think it does more harm to everybody.
- [44:11]
Glenn Washington
What was the best part? What's your favorite part of the series?
- [44:15]
Amika Mota
Hmm. When I was in high school, I used to watch this reality TV show called Rescue 911.
- [44:23]
Glenn Washington
Yeah.
- [44:23]
Amika Mota
Do you remember that show?
- [44:24]
Glenn Washington
I totally remember Rescue 911. Yes.
- [44:27]
Amika Mota
I loved that show because I think there's something about being in someone in their moment of real need, real vulnerability. Right. Like somebody even if they've fallen on their dining room floor and they can't get up for two days and anyone else comes to get them, or their house has burned down and everything in it, there's something that. And it just. Those moments make people so raw and so human and so vulnerable and so all the things that to be with them in those moments I find really alive too.
- [45:02]
Glenn Washington
It's revelatory.
- [45:03]
Amika Mota
You see the real person.
- [45:04]
Glenn Washington
Yes.
- [45:06]
Amika Mota
Yeah. And so I like being in those moments.
- [45:10]
Glenn Washington
Anna Sussman, thank you so much. You can hear the rest of Amica Borra's journey through the California incarceration system on fire Escape, the 10 part series from Wondery and KQED Snap Studios. Anna, we appreciate you, Glenn.
- [45:28]
Amika Mota
I appreciate you believing in this project and everybody at Snap Judgment for all of the work that they put into it. It's really been an amazing team effort. Thanks so much for having me.
- [45:47]
Glenn Washington
Thank you, Anna Sussman. Thank you. Amika Mota. You can follow Fire Escape on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcast now, if you missed even a moment, know that the Snap Judgment storytelling podcast awaits your ears each and every week. Or walk the shadow with our evil twin podcast Spooked or Dive into amazing tales from the African continent with mind your own with Lupita Nyong'o. Storytelling with hearts, storytelling with soul. All available wherever you get your podcast. KQED in San Francisco is Snaps orbiting hall of Justice. And this is not the news. No way isis the news. In fact, you could spend the rest of your days counting the ways this is even better than the news and you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.