Sunday, October 20, 2019 How one man went from a life prison sentence to a $100k+ engineering job In 1996, Zachary Moore committed a murder. Today, he’s a computer engineer at a Silicon Valley tech firm. Here’s how he got there. BYZACHARY CROCKETT For 22 years, Zachary Moore sat in a 6x9 foot prison cell. Today, he sits in an open-plan office in San Francisco, surveying code. At 15, he was sentenced to life for murder. Now 38, he has a full-time job as a software engineer, working alongside Stanford-educated colleagues. His six-figure salary places him in the 85th percentile of American workers. Moore’s story is one of perseverance, hard work, and redemption — but it raises a controversial question: Should a convicted killer be given a second chance? A terrible crime Moore grew up middle-class in a quiet neighborhood in Redlands, California. He led the typical life of a suburban Central Valley kid — video games, sports, hanging out with friends. But at home, life was wildly dysfunctional. His parents, both alcoholics, went on frequent drinking binges, sometimes leaving their children without food. Domestic abuse was common, and sharing feelings was discouraged. As Moore entered his teenage years, he had trouble managing his emotions and self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. “I was ignoring the problems in my life, numbing them,” Moore toldThe Hustlein a series of recent interviews. “Alcohol and drugs made my emotions more extreme… and everything compounded.” On the night of November 8, 1996, a distressing argument with family members pushed Moore over the edge. As years of “misplaced anger, jealousy, and pain” rushed through his mind, he made a choice that would upend his life. Shortly after 11:30pm, he picked up a knife, approached the couch where his younger brother slept, and stabbed his sibling to death. California law, Moore was tried as an adult; in September of 1997, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 26 years to life. “The juvenile system is geared toward rehabilitation,” a prosecutor on the case latertoldtheSan Bernardino County Sun. “It would appear highly unlikely that could happen due to the nature of this offense.” Three days before his 17th birthday, Moore was shipped from juvenile hall to a high-security prison. Self-discovery in a cell For the next few years, Moore bounced around from prison to prison, grappling with who he was and what he’d done. “Prison was like high school — it was a bunch of 30-, 40-, 50-year-old men who were emotionally trapped as teenagers,” he says. “People would wear these masks… they wanted to fit in and feel accepted. Nobody wanted to confront who they were.” Moore got into frequent bouts of trouble and, in 2000, landed inAd-Seg, a “cell within a cell” where he was on lockdown 23 hours a day with little human contact. For the first time, he says, he began to “pull away the layers.” His crime had been the result of “extreme emotions” without an outlet. But ultimately, Moore came to accept that the circumstances he grew up with were not what killed his brother. The Last Mile(TLM) and began offering a bi-weekly entrepreneurship program at the prison. But soon, it became clear to the couple that a larger systemic problem needed to be addressed. $10 to $200in cash and sent on their way, often with no job or housing prospects, and few contacts in the outside world. In California, nearly7 out of 10released inmates recommit a crime within 3 years. This perpetual cycle contributes to a growing mass incarceration crisis that imposes an annual$182Bfiscal burden. Redlitz wanted to empower inmates with “hireable skills” they could use to find employment upon release. In California, no skill was more hireable than coding. So, The Last Mile launched a full-scale coding program at San Quentin. With funding from several large foundations, Redlitz converted an on-site printing factory into a technology center equipped with off-line computers. To get around the prison’s strict no-internet policy, the program built a “faux-internet” using video seminars. When The Last Mile expanded its coding program to Ironwood State Prison in June of 2015, Moore was among the first in line to apply. HTML, CSS, JavaScript — and a ticket out At the time, Moore had only used a computer 3 times in his life — all prior to 1996 — and he’d never seen the internet. The year he was incarcerated, AOL and Geocities ruled the web. Yet, coding intrigued him. “I knew nothing about technology, but I had to take a chance on it,” he tells The Hustle. “I felt it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” A state bill, passed in 2014, decreed that youth (under 18 of the time of the crime) who had been tried as adults were entitled to parole hearings to determine eligibility for early release. This was followed by another bill, which entirely banned courts from trying anyone under 16 as an adult. In 2018, Moore was granted a hearing before the parole board. He knew he’d changed as a person; now, he had to convince 12 people appointed by the governor of California. “I walked them through my whole life, from age 3 to 37,” he says. “I laid myself before them... dissecting my entire thought process, and how I’d dealt with emotions.” Moore’s parole was cleared, but the parole board still had 150 days to overturn the decision. For 5 months, he sat in wait, knowing that “at any moment, freedom could be taken away.” In the meantime, he “threw [himself] into code,” completing the final tier of his course work. Through a program offered by The Last Mile, he even helped build a live site forDave’s Killer Bread, an organic bread company founded by an ex-convict. across the aislehave agreed on policies aimed at “mainstreaming” former convicts back into society. Across the country, 25 states and 150 cities have passedlegislationbarring the inclusion of applicants’ criminal history on job applications. The data show that the recidivism rate among the most violent offenders is especially low: In her 2012 book,Life After Murder, Nancy Mullane analyzed the cases of 988 released murderers in California over a 20-year period, finding that only 1% were arrested for new crimes. None were rearrested for recommitting murder. But incarceration — particularly for violent crimes, and especially for murder — comes with longstanding stigmas that many hiring managers simply don’t want to deal with. The victim didn’t get to live a full and productive life, the reasoning often goes; why should his killer enjoy that privilege? Moore broached these stigmas by being upfront about his past, which The Last Mile encourages. “I own my shit,“ he says. “I put my story in my cover letter and used it to explain what I’d learned about myself.” Checkr, a background check technology firm thatThe New York Timeshascalledone of Silicon Valley’s next “potential unicorns.” In September, the company hired him as a full-time engineer — a role that comes with a “mid-six-figure” paycheck. Checkr is one of a growing number of tech companies in Silicon Valley that has embraced the formerly incarcerated: 6% of its employees are “fair chance talent,” or people with prior criminal backgrounds. “A conviction shouldn’t be a life sentence to unemployment,” a Checkr spokesperson toldThe Hustle. “If someone is motivated to make a change in their lives, their past shouldn’t define their future.” The future On a recent Saturday afternoon, Moore boards a commuter train in Oakland, where he currently lives, and heads toward San Francisco to meet up with another graduate of The Last Mile. The two plan to do their regular “check-in” — talking through issues, hardships, and emotions — before watchingZombieland: Double Tap. anti-recidivism efforts— and one that The Last Mile hopes to build on: The program now offers its coding courses at 15 men’s, women’s, and youth facilities spread across 5 states. In some ways, Moore is an atypical graduate. As a middle-class white man, he says, he carries a “privilege that gives [him] an edge.” Mass incarcerationdisproportionatelyaffects minorities, who face additional systemic barriers upon release. The seriousness of his crime also pushes the reform debate to its most extreme limits. Though Moore has since reconnected with his parents, he doesn’t feel it’s his place to ask for forgiveness. He can’t imagine ever fully forgiving himself. “I have incredible remorse that will never go away,” he says. “My brother will never have the life he was supposed to live. He’ll never be there for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or birthdays.” But in the eyes of Chris Redlitz, of The Last Mile, it is these hardships that make Moore a desirable job candidate in a tech space that values resilience. “There’s this idea in Silicon Valley that if you fail, you get up, dust yourself off, and try again,” says Redlitz. “Who embodies that better than a guy like Zach?”
So he basically did "The Shawshank Redemption", but through happenstance legality. A tremendous story, to be sure, and he is very lucky all the chips fell into place. One in a million. Let's hope his violent impulses don't re-surface when things don't go his way again.