Judge David Parrish had no choice.

Adam Drake's fate was certain the moment he was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Eric Harris. Unless he wins an appeal or the governor commutes his sentence, Drake, who was 17 when he killed, will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

That's Colorado law.

"For now the law is clear," Parrish, an El Paso district judge, told Drake in 1999.

"The sentence is life, a life for a life. And that means in our system, right now, there's no escaping it unless you physically escape. There's no parole. It's life."

But Parrish obviously was conflicted.

Drake had been offered two plea agreements multiple times: one for 25 to 48 years and the other, 35 to 48 years, Drake said. From the bench, Parrish wondered if he should have made more of an effort to guide the teen toward a plea deal.

"My opinion, your chances at trial were not going to be good, and that's why I wonder whether or not I did enough to try to convey to you the difference between life without parole and 30 to 45 years or whatever your plea bargain would have been," Parrish said.

"But it's too late now, unless, of course, you can succeed in an appeal. And there are some issues that you have certainly some possibility of prevailing on appeal and getting a new trial."

Parrish, now retired, declined to talk about his comments because Drake's case is still making its way through the appeals process.

But those words stuck with Drake, a lanky, articulate 24-year-old imprisoned in the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility near Ordway.

He says he clings to the hope that Parrish was right and he'll have a chance to win an appeal.

"It's all I dream about," Drake said. "Every other wish is secondary."

In 1998, Drake was living in a boys home as a result of chronic running away and truancy.

One night, he said, he and a handful of friends met Eric Harris at a Denny's. Harris offered them a place to stay.

The killing happened a few visits later.

Drake claimed self-defense, saying that he was trying to help his friends escape Harris, 30, a man he characterized in court as a sexual predator.

He confessed to police that he shot Harris five times with a stolen gun but said he fired only after Harris came at him.

He also told police that Harris had tried to strangle him once.

"By the time that I stopped (shooting), he was at my feet and the last shot went into the back of his head," Drake said.

"And that's still what I can vividly remember.

"I understand being punished for what I did. I just don't think the crime fits the punishment in the case of my crime."

Drake passes the days by reading magazines such as GQ and Harper's Bazaar and books from a list of the top 100 greatest novels.

While he flips through the pages, he sets a television in his cell to closed captioning and listens to the radio.

"You start living vicariously through reading and television," he said.

On the outside, Drake's mother, Sook, managed to keep her son's crime from extended family members, even relatives in Colorado Springs, for nearly two years because the case received little media coverage.

Finally, at a gathering when family starting asking about her son and where he'd been, Sook Drake confessed her secret.

"I was so ashamed," she said. "I kept thinking, 'What did I do wrong in my past?' I thought I wanted to kill myself."

She attended her son's trial by herself, all the while fearing she'd run into someone she knew at the courthouse and not know what to say.

Sook Drake speaks to her son once or twice a week and usually visits him twice a month.

It's hard for her to see him dressed in green prison clothing, but, she added, "I'm very proud of the young man he's become."

Adam Drake insists he's become a better person behind bars but he doesn't know if he'll ever get to prove that on the outside.

"The thought that I might never have children, the thought of what I'm going to do when my parents die, the insanity of all of this," he said.

"I don't want to live like this forever."

Back to Top