Kimonti’s Story
Kimonti Carter is the founder of T.E.A.C.H. (Taking Education and Creating History), a prisoner-led higher-education program now at three Washington prisons, a leader in the Black Prisoners’ Caucus, and the subject of the award-winning documentary film Since I Been Down.
Kimonti is 43 years old and has been incarcerated in the State of Washington since he was 18 for killing Corey Pittman and injuring two others in a drive-by shooting in Tacoma.
Kimonti has spent the last 25 years atoning for Corey’s death and the impact on his survivors and the community. Kimonti has transformed himself into a leader, mentor, and teacher and dedicated his life to preventing kids and young adults like he once was from making the same mistakes he made.
Kimonti was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Now he has the opportunity to be resentenced to 25 years, the time he has already served, and released into the community.
Whether inside or outside of prison, Kimonti plans to continue his work as an educator, youth liaison, advocate for criminal justice reform, and spokesperson on the power of transformative justice.
Childhood
Kimonti was born in 1979 in Detroit to teenage parents. When Kimonti was 11, his father left and his mother continued to raise him on her own in the Hilltop Neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington. At that time, the Hilltop was known for drugs, gang-violence, and poverty. Kimonti ran away from home and got caught up in the cycle of gang activity himself.
May 29, 1997
In 1997, shortly after his 18th birthday, Kimonti was riding in the passenger seat of a car with fellow gang members in the Hilltop area. Another passenger instructed him to shoot at a car in the next lane, mistakenly thinking it belonged to members of a rival Hilltop gang. Kimonti fired several shots, killing Corey Pittman and injuring two other passengers.
“Tough on Crime” Laws
In Washington, as across the United States in the 1990s, prosecutors and the legislature had been enacting so-called “tough on crime” policies meant to target Black “superpredators,” including three-strikes laws that sent mostly Black and brown youth to prison for life.
Kimonti was tried as an adult, convicted of aggravated first-degree murder, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His sentencing judgment specifically sentences him to 777 years, 77 months, and 77 days in prison.
There is no parole system in the State of Washington.
Accountability
Kimonti’s remorse for the harm he has caused drives everything he does. Despite being sentenced to die in prison, Kimonti dedicated his life to rehabilitation and transformation from the early years of his sentence.
In 2006, Kimonti spoke at the Black Prisoners’ Caucus (BPC) Justice Reform Summit, apologizing to the family of Corey Pittman and taking full responsibility for his crime. He used his story to illustrate how youth can get caught up in the turmoil of gang violence and the havoc that wreaks on the community.
Kimonti apologizes to Corey Pittman and his family at a 2006 Youth Justice Summit.
Teaching
In 2013, Kimonti and the BPC at Clallam Bay founded T.E.A.C.H., which began with prisoners teaching math, reading, writing, and language courses to one another and is now a for-credit associate’s degree program through Seattle Central College at three Washington prisons.
Kimonti continues to serve as board president and teaches algebra, financial literacy, interpersonal communication, and African studies.
Film Panels
Since the 2020 release of the award-winning documentary Since I Been Down featuring Kimonti and T.E.A.C.H., Kimonti has spoken on numerous film panels about transformative justice and prisoner liberation through education.