The enduring bond

The e-mail was to the point: Mr. Banyard, Judge Letts would like to see you in his chambers. Michael Banyard’s stomach churned with fear.

He was living at his sister’s ranch house in Rialto -- free after eight years in prison -- and he was keeping the vow he had made to stay away from crack cocaine, which had put him behind bars. Now, when he opened his e-mail on this morning in early 2005, his mind raced.

Just what, he wondered, did Judge Spencer Letts want?

Banyard, then 38, an ex-Compton Santana Crip recovering from a terrible drug addiction, owed the judge everything. Convicted of a felony in 1996 for possessing a small amount of crack cocaine, he’d been serving a minimum sentence of 25 years to life under California’s three-strikes law.

After state courts and a federal magistrate rejected Banyard’s appeals, Letts, who had been appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Reagan, was his last hope. In October 2004, the judge issued a precedent-setting order: Banyard must be released immediately on grounds his lengthy sentence violated the ban in the U.S. Constitution against cruel and unusual punishment.

Now the judge was asking for a meeting.

Banyard was terrified. Had the ruling been reversed? Would his freedom be taken away?

A few days later, he walked through the doors of the judge’s large, well appointed chambers in downtown Los Angeles. He’d never been in a room like that, with its mahogany paneling, antique furniture and heavy shelves stacked with old law books.

“Judge Letts,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m Michael Banyard.”

“Michael,” the judge said, “it’s such a complete pleasure to meet you.”

They would remember their meeting this way:

For a while, they made small talk, sizing each other up. Two men could not have been more different.

Letts wore a gray suit, button-down shirt and a tie. Banyard wore a long, flowing, yellow and black African dashiki, hoping it would signal how much he’d changed.

Letts, then 70, was thin and moved carefully. Banyard was barrel-chested from lifting weights in prison. He had the look of a retired football player.

The judge spoke quietly, rambling in a way that was sometimes hard to follow: He asked about Banyard’s family, opined that truth can’t really be pinned down, probed for Banyard’s thoughts on welfare, then circled back to questions about Banyard’s family.

When Banyard spoke, he was so nervous he practically bellowed. His words bounced off the law books and through the room. “Was there some mistake?” he asked. “Is your ruling being challenged? Am I going back?”

“No,” the judge said. “No mistakes. That’s not why I wanted you to come. I wanted to meet you because I want to tell you in person how proud you should be. Your perseverance won the day, Michael. You’ve just had a miracle, and I wanted to tell you that when something like this happens in life, don’t kick that in the face. You have another chance. You might never get one again.”

“I know,” Banyard said, “And I promise you I am going to do some good things in life. What I don’t know is why you did what you did. Why did you take so much time to consider my case?”

“To think you were going to be in prison for 25 years, at minimum, for what you’d done, that simply was not justice,” the judge said. With that, both men relaxed. The judge leaned back in his chair and asked Banyard about his plans.

The two men were tied together: The case was enshrined in law journals. But this was about more than that. The judge was impressed by Banyard’s humility and eagerness and thought he clearly wanted to change. He just needed a guide. Banyard’s smiling face looked so different from the hardened, scowling faces he often saw in court.

They talked for three hours.

“Michael,” Letts said at the end, “from now on I want you to check in with me, tell me how you are doing, and come to me for advice. Know that if you call me, I will return your calls. If you show up at my courtroom, even unannounced, I will do everything I can to see you. I am behind you now. I want you to know that and not doubt it. You have a friend in me.”

There were stumbles during his first few years of freedom, but Banyard mostly did well. Before prison, he’d been a high school dropout. Now, based on the work he had done on his appeals, he got an internship at a law firm. He enrolled in community college.

The judge admired how bent on redemption Banyard was. Letts would tell strangers about his new friend and how quickly he learned. “Better than a lot of lawyers,” he said.

Banyard called the courthouse almost every day. When Letts wasn’t there, he talked to the judge’s longtime assistant, Nancy Webb, who became another counselor, almost a second mother. Sometimes he’d go to the courtroom and sit quietly in the gallery, watching the proceedings. Other times, he and Letts would sit in chambers, eating turkey sandwiches, talking. Webb could see how important the meetings were to both men, the bond growing between them. “Almost,” she said, “like a father and a son.”

But as close as they became, Banyard had a hard time talking freely about his guilt and shame, his shaky sense of self-worth, the trouble he was having getting through each day without the discipline of prison. He was too embarrassed.

One night in 2007, a woman he dated surprised him by pulling out a vial of cocaine. Just one snort, he thought, figuring he could handle it.

He did not return to his sister’s house that night. He trolled the streets of Los Angeles for crack, tearing himself up inside because he was wasting his miracle -- and risking a return to prison for life. He could die.

Unable to reach him, Letts realized how deeply he was invested in Banyard’s future. Depression hit. He couldn’t sleep. He stopped laughing. Sometimes, he sat in his chambers, face buried in his right hand, wondering about Banyard. “I was frozen,” he recalled. “Sometimes for an hour.”

So one summer afternoon, the judge placed his watch and wallet on his desk, changed into a T-shirt and old pair of khakis, picked up a photograph of Banyard and headed off to the only place he thought he might be.

“I have to find him, Nancy,” he said as he left. “I just have to.”

Alone, the judge walked every block of skid row, showing the photo and asking one question: “Have you seen my friend?”

It was always “no.” Sometimes the answers were threatening.

“Old man,” someone barked. “Who the hell do you think you are coming down here? This is no place for you. Get out of here.”

But Letts kept going. “If someone is going to shoot me,” he thought, “then just shoot me. . . . Have to find him, have to bring him back.”

One hour passed. Two, three.

Months went by.

One day, Banyard left the judge a voice-mail message. He was at the Cider House drug treatment center in Norwalk.

Banyard said he had been walking for miles in search of a high. The soles of his shoes had worn through.

He had been arrested for stealing a pair of sneakers to replace them. Because petty theft was no longer prosecuted as a third strike in Los Angeles County, a court had ordered him to rehab.

Letts and Webb went there immediately. When the door opened at the treatment center and they walked in, Banyard’s knees buckled and he wept.

“I messed up again,” Banyard said, as he and the judge hugged. “I fell off the wagon. I’m so ashamed. What’s wrong with me?”

Letts stepped back and looked at Banyard. He saw the same eagerness, the same hope he had seen before.

“Michael,” he said, “there’s only one thing left for you to do: Get back on your feet again. Get back on your feet, and know that I am behind you. I will always be.”

Nothing will ever be certain in Banyard’s life. He completed treatment and seemed to be getting better. But last June, after succumbing to crack again and being convicted of stealing vitamins from a Rite-Aid, he was sentenced to another treatment house. He lives there now.

Through Letts, he met Le’Chein Taylor, a former gang member who works with at-risk kids. Banyard volunteers with Taylor three days a week, warning kids not to follow his path. He also spends hours at a San Fernando Valley library, trying to educate himself.

Whenever he can, he takes the subway to the federal courthouse and sits in the mahogany paneled chambers with Letts.

They talk about troubles and fears. They laugh, eat turkey sandwiches and discuss hope and the future.

kurt.streeter@latimes.com