‘Redemption is possible for everybody’

Keith Nunes was 18 when he got into an argument and fired a handgun into a crowd on South Water Street in Providence. The shooting, committed during the early hours of June 13, 1999, killed 36-year-old Mark D. Pierce.

Nunes was convicted on June 29, 2000, and was sentenced to serve life in prison plus 10 years.

In 2022, Superior Court Judge Stephen Nugent ordered the release of Nunes and two other men under the Youthful Offenders Act, also known as “Mario’s Law.” The legislation was passed in 2021 by the Rhode Island Legislature. It allowed offenders serving long sentences for crimes committed under the age of 22 to seek release from prison after 20 years served — except for those serving life without parole.

In the segment below, Nunes talks about his bad choices as youth and the second chance he has been given.

My name is Keith Nunes and I’m here to tell you about a second chance that I received that changed my life.

When I was a young man, I came up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the height of the crack epidemic and violence epidemic, inner city poverty, which is a story that’s pretty common.

There’s plenty of other individuals that came up in them circumstances, but when I was in them circumstances, you know, I didn’t necessarily make the right decisions.

And I started down the road of, you know, selling drugs to try to get money and to try to get out of the poverty I was in.

And when you’re in that world, one thing leads to another.

You know, it’s a lot of physical toughness that’s portrayed in that world, and you feel like you have to defend yourself in that type of environment.

So, it was those circumstances that led me to being out at a nightclub and getting into an altercation with some older, bigger gentleman.

One thing led to another and it ended with me wrongly and unnecessarily taking the life of another man.

So, at 18 years old, I was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and another attempted murder where I received a mandatory life sentence for a first-degree murder and an additional 10 years to run consecutively with a life sentence.

I knew that I deserved to be held accountable for my actions, and prison should definitely be a part of that, with that serious of a crime.

Now, the length of time one should receive for that ultimate act, it’s debatable.

I know some people believe that, if you take a life wrongly, you should forfeit your life, whether that’s with life imprisonment or with (the) death penalty.

And I would be hard-pressed to argue against that logic, you know, on the one hand.

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But on the other hand, having lived it, I know that people come from tough circumstances and at young ages are forced to make tough decisions on what they think will keep them alive or keep them maintaining in a rough environment.

And I think people should be given a second chance in many of those circumstances. Education for me, both informal and formal, was one of the major components of my story of redemption.

I believe my story is a redemption story above all else. It’s a cliche, but when you know better, you do better.

And a lot of decisions are made out of ignorance.

So, when you learn certain things about yourself, about society, about, you know, moral or ethical matters, you start making different decisions.

If receiving a life sentence at 18 years old is difficult to describe, being released from that situation when you didn’t necessarily expect to is equally, if not more difficult to describe.

There’s just a flux of different emotions hitting you at once.

You’re happy, you’re overjoyed, of course, you’re excited.

There’s a little bit of survivor’s guilt there.

There’s other individuals that you grew up with in that situation that, you know, they come from the same circumstances as you made the same decisions for the same reasons, in the same type of situation.

And they’re not coming home, they’re not getting the opportunity.

You also feel, you know, you’re trying to make up for some lost time.

You know, I was 41 when I was released.

As a 40-year-old man, I knew I had to come out here and try to rebuild my life and that was gonna be challenging.

You’re a little bit fearful because of that.

You wonder if you’re gonna make good or if you’re gonna fail, and you just feel the seriousness.

You feel the gravity of it knowing that, you know, you’ve been given this second chance at life, literally.

And it’s on you to make the best of it, and to show everybody involved.

You know, people that might’ve been hurt by your bad decisions, and people that were faithful enough to support you through 23 years of incarceration.

You wanna prove to everybody that it wasn’t for naught.

Something occurred and you’re here to make good.

And it could be a little bit of pressure, you know?

If someone such as myself can be redeemed, if someone such as myself could go from serving a life sentence that began at 18 years old to applying for a master’s degree and helping others, it could be done for anybody, anybody could do it.

First and foremost, it takes a look at self. It takes some serious introspection.

It takes a willingness and a desire to change.

It’s definitely gonna take good people to help you along the way, ‘cause no one could do it themselves.

But the change is possible, and it’s a very powerful thing when it occurs.

I personally believe that the tougher circumstances that a person comes from, the stronger they are when they make the change.

The better position they’re in to help others when the change occurs. And it’s a very powerful thing.

I want everybody to know that redemption is possible for everybody.

There is a chance that Keith Nunes could return to prison, as the state of Rhode Island has appealed the Superior Court judge’s ruling.