12 ST THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020Vows
On the day Chelsea Moore got married, it
had been six months since she last saw her
fiancé, Christopher Blackwell.
But now Ms. Moore, wearing a mask as-
signed to her, stood on a designated spot six
feet from her soon-to-be husband. The room
was empty save for a few chairs and tables
and other seemingly storage-bound items
haphazardly strewn about and a backdrop
depicting a walking bridge in the woods in
the early fall.
On Sept. 18, Ms. Moore and Mr. Blackwell
were married in the visitors’ room at the
Washington State Reformatory in the Mon-
roe Correctional Complex, where he is a
prisoner.
The only guests were guards, staff mem-
bers and two witnesses.
It was the furthest thing from the wed-
ding of their dreams. Still, it was a day for
which Ms. Moore and Mr. Blackwell were
grateful.
Mr. Blackwell, 39, is serving two sen-
tences. The first is for a robbery, for which
he was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to
eight years. The second is for the murder of
17-year-old Joshua May during a home in-
vasion in 2003. Mr. Blackwell was convicted
of first-degree murder and received a 38-
year prison sentence in 2007. There is no
parole in Washington State. He will be re-
leased in 2045.
He grew up in the Hilltop neighborhood
of Tacoma, Wash., which was known for its
gang violence in the late 1980s and is now
being gentrified. He was incarcerated for
the first time when he was 12 for stealing a
car and would spend the next six years of
his life in and out of jail.
While incarcerated, Mr. Blackwell has re-
ceived a general associate degree from Se-
attle Central College and is several classes
away from a bachelor’s degree in political
science from Adams State University,
which is in Alamosa, Colo. He writes about
his experiences in prison and his work has
appeared in BuzzFeed, The Marshall
Project and Jewish Currents.
Ms. Moore, 32, who grew up in the
wealthy community of Ojai, Calif., which
she describes as a “hippie town nestled in
the mountains and known for being a geo-
magnetic vortex that attracts eccentrics
and mystics,” is a Ph.D. candidate in politi-
cal science at the University of Washington.
She expects to complete her degree in the
next couple of months. In addition, Ms.
Moore just started law school at the Univer-
sity of Washington, where she is also an in-
structor and teaching assistant.
It is her aim, she said, to use her educa-
tion to “do post-conviction review work for
people with long sentences.”
The pair first crossed paths when Ms.
Moore volunteered to teach a constitutional
law civil liberties class at the prison in sum-
mer 2017. Mr. Blackwell was in the class.
Ms. Moore was still finishing her disser-
tation and interested in criminal justice
work when she met his mother, Connie
Palmersheim, in February 2019 at a com-
munity meeting in Seattle for those inter-
ested in sentence reform and parole legisla-
tion. The random connection seemed like
kismet to Ms. Moore.
“She told me a bit about what Chris was
up to and encouraged me to reach out to see
if I could help at all,” Ms. Moore said in refer-
ence to his writing.
She and Mr. Blackwell began correspond-
ing platonically that February, at a time
they were both separated from and in the
process of divorcing their first spouses.
Their friendship grew through prison
email, but “really it was snail mail where we
first started to fall in love,” she said. “We
have binders and binders full of letters
we’ve written to one another.”
Their connection grew over music, mov-
ies and books, she said. “We’d send each
other songs to listen to that remind us of
each other. We sometimes do a book club.
We can watch movies together over cable
and will write back and forth about them.”
After they had begun corresponding, the
pair were disheartened to learn there was a
Washington Department of Corrections pol-
icy that did not allow former volunteers to
be on a prisoner’s visitation list for three
years after the date they stopped volunteer-
ing.
They set out to change the policy.
“Through a lot of advocacy and persistence
we were able to change the wait to a year
instead of three years,” Ms. Moore said. The
new policy went into effect in November
2019, though it has not been posted on the
Corrections Department website.
Although neither can remember the pre-
cise moment they knew they were in love,
both were sure that’s precisely what it was.
Mr. Blackwell says knowing that Ms. Moore
had read through his 360-plus-page juvenile
record, and still wanted to be with him,
made him sure she was the one.
There was no formal proposal, although
she said he did “kind of” propose after writ-
ing a list of the 50 things he loved about her.
They decided in January 2020 that they
wanted to get married.
Megan Rose Donovan has been a close
friend of Ms. Moore since 2008, when both
were at Occidental College. She said what
Ms. Moore needs now “is a friend to confide
in and someone who won’t pass immediate
judgment.”
“I also understood that Chelsea’s decision
to marry Chris would likely create tension
in some of her other relationships with
friends and family,” she added. “So when
she told me that they would be getting mar-
ried I thought, “OK, pretty much everyone
in this woman’s life is going to have a nega-
tive reaction to their relationship.”
That very same month, the couple began
the long process of applying with the Cor-
rections Department to get married.
But then the coronavirus pandemic
struck, and a difficult process became a
near-impossible one. No prison visitation
was allowed — just three months after she
had begun regularly visiting him — and vir-
tual marriages were not legal in Washing-
ton State at the time.
In May, they received and signed a mar-
riage packet (which was separate from a
marriage license) from the Corrections De-
partment. “The D.O.C. application requires
me to say whether or not I’ve ever been
abused, and also that I restate all of Chris’s
criminal history,” Ms. Moore said.
Because of the coronavirus, she felt it was
urgent to speed the process. Should they fall
ill, they would have no rights in regard to
the other without being married.
“Incarcerated people are 550 percent
more likely to get Covid-19 and 300 percent
more likely to die of it,” she said.
On May 18, Ms. Moore reached out to the
department, including Robert Herzog, the
assistant secretary of the Washington State
Department of Corrections Prisons Divi-
sion, and the associate superintendent of
the Monroe complex, John Padilla, to in-
quire about getting married. They were de-
nied at every turn.
Emails were exchanged until mid-June.
Her knowledge of the law and the systemwas invaluable during what she called a
stressful process.
Ms. Moore soon learned that the State Su-
preme Court had already proclaimed video
marriages were legal on May 29 but had not
issued a public statement about it.
Finally, on Aug. 18, after more calls and
emails, Mr. Herzog, who had been con-
tacted by State Senator Joe Nguyen at Ms.
Moore’s request, responded to Ms. Moore.
He told her that the prison would allow a
virtual ceremony.
The next day, much to her surprise, she
was notified that the ceremony could be
done in person after all.
The couple received a document that laid
out the rules for the in-person ceremony in-
cluding: “There will be no physical contact
at any time between any parties, to include
the bride and groom. Failure to follow this
expectation will result in immediate termi-
nation of the marriage ceremony, an infrac-
tion for the incarcerated individual, and
suspension/termination of the visitor’s vis-
iting privileges.”
On the day of their wedding, Mr. Black-well was taken to the visitation room, wear-
ing his assigned prison uniform and a mask
that he had beaded himself with the letters
BLM. (Mr. Blackwell is a bead artist, and
sold some of the works he has made while in
prison to buy Ms. Moore’s engagement
ring. “Chris worked hard to sell his bead-
work and make enough money to buy me a
ring, a yellow diamond ring that has two
crescent moons and one full moon in it,” she
said.)
Ms. Moore’s arrival to her wedding was
delayed 40 minutes because of the prison’s
entry process, which she described as hu-
miliating. Ms. Moore wore a long, sheer
white dress that had a knee-length slip be-
neath it. After prison officials measured the
hem length, and the height of her heels, she
was then told the dress showed too much
cleavage. “So I had to zip up my jacket,” she
said. “These are just some of the small in-
dignities that someone who visits an incar-
cerated person has to suffer.”
When she did finally walk into the room,
the bride and groom had tears in their eyes.
They were relieved.
“We were in constant fear of retribution,”
Mr. Blackwell said, “of me being put in the
hole, of the ceremony being stopped, of
Chelsea losing her visitation rights.”
Ms. Donovan, who served as the one wit-
ness Ms. Moore was allowed to have in at-
tendance, said the ceremony “was surreal.”
She stood more than six feet away from
the couple as the bride read her vows.
“I know our life together will not be easy,
but loving you is,” Ms. Moore said through
her mask. “And I promise to love you with-
out regards to convenience or circum-
stance. This marriage is not the first moun-
tain we have had to move to be together, and
it will not be the last.”
Both said the ceremony, led by a prison
chaplain, Brian Henry, passed in what felt
like an instant. “We signed the papers, took
a few photos, and then we were told the cer-
emony was over,” Mr. Blackwell said. “It
makes me tear up now because I have no
idea when we’ll see each other again.”
Mr. Blackwell’s mother said the years her
son has spent behind bars have changed
him.
“Despite being surrounded by negativity
every day, somehow he manages to keep a
positive attitude,” she said. “It’s a blessing
Chris found the woman of his dreams.”
Mr. Herzog of the Corrections Depart-
ment said he was appreciative of the couple
for working within the system.
“We are grateful to Ms. Moore and Mr.
Blackwell for helping us work through the
challenges to find a safe way to facilitate
their marriage, and we thank them for help-
ing us define clear protocols to ensure all in-
volved would be safe and secure,” he said
via email. “We wish them a long and happy
marriage.”
The couple are in the early stages of form-
ing a nonprofit group, Look2Justice, which
will work for comprehensive sentencing re-
form in Washington, especially for people
who committed crimes as young adults.
“We have a clear passion for the same
things,” Mr. Blackwell said by phone. “We
care about people. We care about equality.”
In an email, Ms. Moore cites current
brain science, which, she said, “tells us that
an individual’s brain is not fully developed
until around their 25th birthday. In Wash-
ington, people can’t even buy tobacco until
they’re 21, yet in sentencing we treat any-
one above the age of 18 the same. This legis-
lation would provide people who received
long sentences before the age of 25 to even-
tually be considered for parole.”
Mr. Blackwell has said that he believes
his juvenile convictions prejudiced his sen-
tencing.
Ms. Moore spoke to her family after the
ceremony.
“They’re not excited, but they’re support-
ive, which is what I expected,” she said. “I’m
so happy. I love him so immensely. I can’t
picture a life without him and I don’t want
to. Any life can turn difficult at any moment.
I just followed my heart on this one.”
Above all else, Ms. Moore said she and
Mr. Blackwell are grateful. Not only to be
married but also because now other couples
with an imprisoned partner will also have
the opportunity to marry as well.
“Marriage is a human right,” Mr. Black-
well said. “To say someone can’t love is sim-
ply inhumane.”Grateful for a Wedding Inside Prison Walls
A law student marries an
inmate convicted of murder
in Washington State.
By JENNY BLOCKMARK MILLERChelsea Moore and Christopher
Blackwell were married
Sept. 18 in the visitors’ room
at the Washington State
Reformatory in the Monroe
Correctional Complex. The
groom beaded the lettering on
his mask himself.Crossing paths at
a class taught at a
correctional complex.MEGAN ROSE DONOVANMARK MILLERSign up for the newsletter
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