After 34 years in prison, Dennis Wayne Pratt is scheduled to walk out of San Quentin on Feb. 1 – a former drug addict who has turned his life in a completely new direction.
His transformation began on Aug. 28, 1988, when drug-filled balloons broke inside his body.
“I thought I was going to die,” Pratt recalls. “I yelled out to God: ‘If you get me through this, I will never use drugs or drink again!’”
Pratt ended up being taken to the hospital and later was charged with drug possession.
“I’ve been clean and sober ever since, but I’m still involved with drugs. Only this time I’m a state-certified addiction counselor. I went from one extreme to another,” Pratt said.
Pratt also gives credit to the self-help group Victim’s Offender’s Education Group (VOEG), which he says helped him understand the victim’s point of view.
“I had to become truthful and honest with myself and own up to my stuff and walk through the fire,” Pratt said.
“Prior to this hearing, every one of my parole board hearings resembled the Clint Eastwood movie ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’ said Pratt. “I’d go in there, sit down and as soon as the commissioners would begin asking me questions, I’d hear the theme song from that movie in my mind.”
Pratt equates his current success of being found suitable with three things: pursuing his education, taking self-help classes and the connection with his wife.
As a child he was told he was mentally retarded, and for many years believed that.
Now he has an Associate of Arts degree from Patten College Prison University Project, a diploma from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and is three classes away from getting a second seminary diploma.
He and four other prisoners earned drug counseling certificates. “We’re the first in the world to become (CADC) addiction counselors while still incarcerated,” he said.
The CADC exams were the most difficult tests he had ever taken in his life, Pratt said.
“Yet I passed. A mentally challenged individual may not have been able to accomplish that,” said Pratt. “While I attended Patten, I proved to myself that I’m not dumb, I’m not stupid and I am somebody.”
Other programs he completed were Brother’s Keepers and Addiction Counseling Training (ACT), which taught him how to identify his problems.
“Understand, when I first came to prison these self-help groups weren’t available for prisoners, and they should have been,” said Pratt. “Because years after my incarceration I was still getting into serious trouble.”
Pratt, 57, was born in 1957 and convicted of the second-degree murder of Edward Sexton.
“I was burglarizing his home at the time, and Mr. Sexton woke up and confronted me; unfortunately, I made the worst decision ever, and I took his life,” Pratt said. “I was a drug addict and my thought process was so messed up at that time I was thinking I didn’t want to get busted for burglary.”
Pratt said it has taken him years to learn how to think and take responsibility for his crimes. Now is not the time to play games with the board, especially by going in there and spouting law to the board members, he advises.
“Telling them what they can and can’t do — no way. Now is the time to go in there and own your stuff and don’t make excuses, and if it puts you in a worse light, so be it,” he said. “That shows them you’re taking full responsibility.”
Pratt emphasizes answering their questions truthfully and honestly.
“If the truth of your crime is ugly, they want to know how you got to the point in your life where you chose to take another person’s life, because it shows that you’re being honest with yourself and that you’re not trying to hide anything,” said Pratt.
His journey through CDCR has taken him from San Quentin to Old Folsom in 1981, to Soledad Central in 1983, to CMC in 1986 and back to San Quentin in 1993, where he has been ever since.
Even though he has made positive strides with his addiction, Pratt said that he would like to improve his relationship with family members.
“I’ve been disowned by my sister, and she considers me to be dead. She bases her decision on both my crime and my incarceration,” Pratt said.
Pratt also has a daughter who was six months old when he came to prison. She has three sons he has never met.
“I would love to have a relationship with my daughter and my grandsons. But I understand that will take time, too,” said Pratt.
Even without having a relationship with his sister and his daughter, Pratt says he still has found happiness with his wife, who he married in 1997.
“That was one of the most incredible experiences in my life when I saw her the first time, all dressed up and coming toward me. She took my breath away,” said Pratt. “And she still takes my breath away every time I see her, oh yeah.”
Pratt said the first thing that he is going to do is when he gets out is go fishing.
“I want to have barbecue and get my garden started and put a sign on my door that says ‘Gone Fishing,’ oh yeah.”
