Jurrell Casey never bought the guilty verdict that sent his older brother to prison for first-degree murder in 2007.
There seemed to be too many holes in the prosecution’s argument.
Sure, Jurray Casey had been driving three of his friends through Culver City, Calif., in the early morning hours of Jan. 8, 2006, when someone in the car fired shots that killed Rashad Ali — a passenger in another vehicle.
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But where was the definitive proof Jurray had done the shooting?
How was it that none of Jurray’s three companions was sentenced to a single day in prison?
Jurrell Casey believed — as did many others — that his brother took the rap for a friend, winding up with a prison sentence of 25 years to life.
Hard as it was to look ahead at the time, Casey realized that — one day — his brother would return to society from Calipatria State Prison in California.
That started Casey thinking: How difficult is the challenge of resuming one’s life after spending decades behind bars? How do ex-cons start again, when they have virtually nothing from which to draw?
Those were the seeds that led Casey, the Titans’ three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle, to invest so much time, effort and money in a nonprofit organization called Project Return. It’s dedicated to the successful new beginnings of individuals returning to the community after incarceration — and to lowering a recidivism rate that sees so many wind up back in jail.
Project Return’s current focus is developing housing for those who’ve left prison.
“It’s just something that was needed,” Casey said. “It’s for felons because sometime they can’t go into certain neighborhoods. They can’t transition back into certain places because landlords don’t want them in their buildings. So Project Return is trying to find housing, and trying to buy up projects as much as they can to provide housing.”
(Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)Investing himself in Project Return is merely one example of Casey’s ongoing altruistic work in the community, which — combined with his ferocious play on the Titans’ defensive line — makes him The Athletic Nashville’s 2018 Person of the Year.
Casey and his wife, Ryann — a deputy public defender in Nashville — also run The Casey Fund, which addresses the needs of at-risk youth and the formerly incarcerated. Project Return serves as one of the organization’s cornerstones.
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Since its inception, The Casey Fund has funded and hosted dozens of events such as free football skills camps, Thanksgiving food drives and giveaways, back-to-school shopping events, career fairs and more.
This year, Casey has steered The Casey Fund into partnering with Starlight Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to comforting hospitalized children by designing custom hospital gowns. In addition, Casey, who wears No. 99 on the football field, is donating $999 to Starlight for each sack that he records during the 2018 season.
“It was something I wanted to do and something that touched my heart a lot,” Casey said. “This way, those kids in the hospital don’t have to wake up to a little dingy gown every day — it’s something to put more of a smile on their face. I thought it was something I could do, and that a sack could help thousands of kids get new gowns, so why not?”
The Casey Fund also is partnering with Free Hearts, an organization that offers support, education and advocacy for families affected by incarceration.
Once again aiding a cause that’s become especially important to him, Casey soon will be throwing a Christmas party for kids who have parents in jail.
“He took that situation with his brother, and he turned it around into a positive thing, to help people when they come out of prison,” said Casey’s mother, Collette Burns, who still lives in Long Beach, Calif.
“Because they do need help. (People) always want to turn them down because they’ve been in prison or whatever the issue may be. But still, they are human and they do need some kind of foundation when they come home. So I’m really proud of him and his wife both on that.”
(Courtesy of the Tennessee Titans)Casey, 29, stays in touch with his older brother on a regular basis, more than happy to accept Jurray Casey’s collect calls, his only form of electronic communication with the outside world.
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They talk football and they talk life, with Jurray, 30, offering snippets of advice from Titans games he happens to see and Casey sharing updates on his new baby boy — 2-month-old Nolan.
At least a few times a year, Casey visits Jurray at the prison in Calipatria, a 300-acre complex in south-central California near the Mexican border. One of Casey’s more recent visits, in March, was especially interesting. Jurray got married at the prison to an old high school friend.
“She’d been starting to visit him, coming to see him with my mom from week to week,” Casey said.
“Sure enough, maybe a year later, they decided they wanted to get married. It was amazing how family and friends were able to come and show support. To see my brother happy was definitely a blast.”
Separated by just two years, the two brothers had been close growing up, with Jurray serving as a protector for Casey, steering him clear of the kind of trouble that would follow Jurray.
Only weeks after then 17-year-old Jurray had accepted a football scholarship to Oregon, the lives of the brothers were changed forever on that January night in 2006.
It’s unclear what exactly happened between two groups of teens driving in Culver City that night.
But for some reason — there were reports gang signs were exchanged between the two vehicles — Jurray’s car made a U-turn and caught up to a pickup truck it had passed.
Someone in the Thunderbird opened fire with a 9 mm handgun, hitting Ali, also 17, who died later that day.
The Casey family acknowledges Jurray was driving the car that night but insists he was not the shooter.
“It was his (cousin’s) car and he was driving, but I know that my son did not kill that person,” Burns said in a 2015 interview with this reporter. “My son is in jail because he took a rap for someone else’s crime that he didn’t do. My son has had his name slandered and his career destroyed because nobody would step up in that car and tell what really happened.”
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The Casey brothers’ high school football coach, Raul Lara, also expressed skepticism over the verdict when interviewed in 2015.
“I’ll tell you this right now — myself and a whole bunch of people in the community know (Jurray) didn’t do it,” Lara said. “A lot of people in the community know who did it, and he’s out there having fun while (Jurray) is still locked up. It’s amazing to me that loyalty code — don’t snitch and all that.”
(Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)Jurray is scheduled to go in front of the parole board in 2020.
His mother and younger brother have been working on letters of support for Jurray, the kind he’ll need when the board listens to his request for an early release. She’s hopeful Jurray, who’s served more than a decade of his sentence, will return to the family in a matter of years.
“I have no doubt in my mind that when he goes in front of the board that they’re going to give him a release day,” Burns said. “Because he’s doing good up in there. He’s staying out of the way and staying positive, doing what he’s supposed to do. He’s going to school, taking classes, all that. A lot of good things.”
In the meantime, Casey is helping pave the way for not only his brother but also for hundreds like him who eventually will face a transition back to the outside world.
He’s ably assisted in all his endeavors by Ryann, perhaps fitting since the two first met at the University of Southern California in a class called Adolescent Gang Prevention.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Ryann said. “The situation with Jurrell’s brother is definitely a really sad and negative situation from all accounts. But sometimes you kind of gain your influence through negative situations. So I’m super impressed by what Jurrell has done.
“If anything, this is going to come full circle. If Jurrell is able to help his brother to transition … Since he’s helped a lot of other people, how awesome would it be to help your own family?”
(Top photo: Mark Humphrey / AP)
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