Emanuel Lutchman (Part 2)
Fragments of a future narrative
Whenever Emanuel calls, we have maybe 12 minutes to talk. If that. It always sounds chaotic in the background, like—to pick a reference from my sheltered life—a high school cafeteria. I get his O.K. to record, and then he goes.
His voice transports me from the Plains to the Northeast, where I grew up: Metro North conductors over the intercom; overhearing impassioned New Yorkers, on a Manhattan street corner, through the carhorn call-and-response.
“They never gave me no consideration in regards to—taking my mental health in the manner in which it was supposed to give me some downward departures,” he told me last September.
His mental health history is well-documented. It makes his case controversial—tragic, for his grandmother. I heard about his hallucinations, bursts of sadness, and paranoia from Jason Ludke, his cellmate. Emanuel once tried committing suicide—there were several attempts—“by stabbing himself in the stomach.”
“We had gotten his medical records from all of his hospitalizations throughout his life,” his attorney, Steven Slawinski, explained at the sentencing hearing. There were some “1400 pages of medical records just for his psychiatric treatments.”
Slawinski challenged the government’s recommended sentence of 20 years. “I don’t think that they’re going to give him the necessary mental health treatment that he needs, or the guidance,” he argued.
The court was unmoved: “240 months of imprisonment,” Judge Frank P. Geraci, Jr. announced. Emanuel laughed.
“What’s funny?” Judge Geraci asked. “You earned it.”
“If I earned it,” Emanuel replied, “then long live Abu al-Baghdadi.”