By Mark Brown
Chicago Sun-Times
EVANSTON, Ill. — Cynthia Jefferson, 44, of Evanston, picked out a cream-colored satin party dress for her wedding day in hopes of being color-coordinated with the groom, Jake Smith.
It was a tough color match. He was wearing the standard-issue tan jail uniform with 3XL printed in bold lettering on the front and DOC on the back.
The tall, imposing Smith could barely be heard as he said his vows, apparently something to do with having his mouth wired from injuries suffered last month during a fight at the jail.
When it came her turn to say, “I do,” Jefferson first joked, “I don’t know about that,” then added: “Yes, I do.”
The newlywed Mrs. Smith said later she’d considered tan scrubs before settling on the low-cut dress, which better displayed a tattoo with Jake’s name above her left breast.
“After all, I’m a lady,” she told me.
Welcome to wedding season at Cook County Jail, an annual three-day stretch when inmates are allowed to get hitched.
I watched Tuesday as 15 inmates from the jail’s maximum security division were married in short, individual ceremonies in the presiding judge’s chambers at the Cook County Criminal Courts Building. Eight others were scheduled to be wed but their brides-to-be never showed.
An additional 40 male inmates are scheduled for weddings over today and Thursday. No inmates sought to take advantage of the new Illinois law legalizing civil unions.
Court personnel still talk about the time two brides showed up to marry the same inmate. They had to call that one off.
As you might expect, Darnisha Ivory, 23, didn’t grow up planning such a wedding.
“I wanted to be on ‘Bridezillas’ with my mom yelling at the bridesmaids. I never imagined myself getting married here,” Ivory told me as she waited several tense hours while her fiance was temporarily misplaced during the shuffle to get him to the altar. Not getting married this day could have meant waiting another entire year.
Still, she was all smiles upon completing her marriage to Deangelo Bridges, 24, who is awaiting trial on charges that he sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl.
“I’ve been with Deangelo since I was 12 years old,” Darnisha said, adding that the couple have three children and had already been planning to get married before his arrest a year and a half ago.
Bridges held a job building playgrounds at Chicago Public Schools before his arrest, which was his first time in trouble with the law, she said. She fears he could be facing seven years in prison.
“It does scare me a lot because I’m worried about his well-being and because it’s a struggle for me and the kids,” the newlywed Mrs. Bridges said.
The new Mrs. Smith knows the question everybody wants answered because all her friends and family have asked her: “Why would you marry somebody in jail?”
She said that hurt her feelings.
“We knew we loved each other,” she said of Smith, who was dubbed the “polite bandit” by police last September after he was charged with home invasion in connection with three Skokie residential burglaries. In one of the cases, police said Smith repeatedly apologized to the victim as he stole her cash and jewelry, saying he needed the money to support his children.
I realize the whole notion of jail weddings sounds terribly sad and bleak, but there were many tender moments - if you didn’t know the defendants’ backgrounds.
Thadieus Goods, a 300-pound hulk, received special attention as a high-security risk when he was led into court with a belly chain and shock restraint on his ankle, then meekly pulled a slip of paper from his pocket after the formal vows and asked to read something he’d written for the occasion.
“You are everything a man could ever dream of,” Goods told the former Pearlissa Stevenson. “Your beauty is unrivaled, and your heart is bigger than the world.”
Later, I learned Goods was among four people accused of putting 18 bullets in a Chicago man in 2007 in the parking lot of a Lansing apartment complex.
Given an invitation to kiss the bride, most of the inmates and their new wives exchanged only quick smooches, then pulled each other tight for longer, more heartfelt hugs - possibly their last touch for years for those headed to prison.
Criminal Court Judge Neera Walsh, who performed many of the ceremonies along with Judges Domenica Stephenson and Timothy Joyce, enjoyed the assignment.
“It’s one of the few times people walk out of this building and both sides are happy,” Walsh said.
This also may be the only wedding setting where the groom is required to return his ring to the bride — a security precaution before being returned to his cell.
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