By Tom Loewy
Moline Dispatch and Rock Island Argus, Ill.
ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — Finis Leonard has helped 13 men die.
That’s not why the 48-year-old Rock Island native has been in Illinois prisons since 2007. Handed concurrent sentences of 30 years for being an armed habitual criminal and 10 years for the unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, Leonard made a decision in 2016 that he says changed his life.
He decided to study palliative care and started a hospice care program at Danville Correctional Center.
Leonard said working with dying men and helping others learn palliative care has made him a better person. He has petitioned Rock Island County State’s Attorney Dora Villarreal for early release from his prison sentence, which is expected to last another six years.
“Helping people transition from life to death with some kind of dignity and comfort has made me a better person,” he said in a recent telephone interview with the Quad-City Times /Dispatch-Argus.
“People can change. And I’ve learned how to change and worked hard to make myself a better person than when I was sentenced to prison.”
Getting hard time
In April 2006, Leonard was charged with being an armed habitual criminal and unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon.
Prosecutors in Rock Island alleged Leonard possessed a firearm and had been convicted of three qualifying offenses between 1998 and 2004, including unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon, aggravated discharge of a firearm, and unlawful possession with intent to deliver a look-alike substance.
Leonard was charged with weapons possession and being a habitual criminal based on an AR-15 recovered from the home of a woman, who was Leonard’s girlfriend at the time. Leonard was arrested and charged with the crimes after another man told police Leonard was in possession of the AR-15.
Leonard was found guilty and sentenced. After intake at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill , he did a six-year bit at Menard , then three at Mount Sterling. By 2016, he was in the midst of a two-year stretch at Big Muddy River in Ina when he enrolled in the palliative care program.
Helping Mr. Cole
While Leonard served his years, he noticed men in medical wards dying of illnesses like cancer.
“My mom died of cancer in 2003 while I was in prison the first time,” he explained. “I wasn’t with her, but it got me thinking about the people who were, the people who helped her.”
Leonard said he started to think about the men he saw.
“Big Muddy, it’s a place that specializes in the incarceration of sex offenders,” he said. “There isn’t a lot of pity for the men in the Big Muddy. But I saw these men, alone, suffering, and I thought about my mom and what I could do.”
Leonard started in the palliative care program, learning to care for fellow inmates as they died. He earned his certification on Jan. 6, 2017.
The man he calls Mr. Cole was an inmate he served during that process. He is a man Leonard will never forget.
“It was pretty early on after I started, and I was assigned to Mr. Cole ,” Leonard said. “He was dying of esophageal cancer and he was alone. But he took one look at me and said ‘Keep that (n-word) away from me.’
“He was scared and he was dying and he was in the Big Muddy because sometime, in the before, he molested somebody. But I kept doing what I could.”
Leonard said Mr. Cole changed. And so did his own outlook.
“Things changed. It got to where he would call for me. I was there for him and I learned he had worked in the mines and I learned how he was embarrassed because he needed help,” he said. “Working with him opened my eyes, too. Palliative care is intimate. You are with someone who knows they are dying.
“It opened my eyes to how helping someone feel better for just one day is helping yourself, too. I learned a lot.”
Mr. Cole was the first of 13 men Leonard helped transition from life to death.
Rehabilitation and hope
In 2017, Leonard was transferred to Pinckneyville. In 2019, he was moved to Danville. It was there he made a permanent mark on the institution.
He became a mentor in the Building Block Program, a peer-driven program built on the core principles of respect, responsibility, community, ownership and empathy.
Leonard has gone on to teach classes in trauma and loss, communication and effective interviewing. And he rose to the level of facilitator and trainer in the Building Block Program.
“I started working with (Danville Warden) Kim Larson to form a hospice and palliative care program at Danville ,” Leonard said. “That program has been approved.”
Leonard, who is now at Stateville minimum security prison, said rehabilitation is possible in prisons.
“I have a 3.87 GPA here,” he said. “But it is so much more than that.
“I have learned how to care for others, how to care for myself. There is a possibility for people like me to be rehabilitated and be a productive member of society. I just want the chance to show my community who I have become.”
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