She does it multiple times so an officer enters to tell them that's for medical emergencies only. She calls the intercom to tell the officers. In the first episode, she finds out the phones in "classification," an area before she gets sent to a pod, don't work. "People assumed I was a drug dealer or married to a drug dealer," Monalisa said. (If you watched season one, one of the more arrogant participants slipped up and was quickly ostracized and that appears to be happening again with another participant Ryan season two.) The warden said they have to be consistent with their stories or the inmates will get suspicious. Monalisa's cover story for the show is getting pulled over near the jail and being arrested after cops found a warrant for her arrest in New York from a previous charge of drug and gun possession. Nobody would take her calls or visit her. She was in such a deep state of depression. Some of the things she told me she went through was way more devastating. "At the same time, we had one of the best conversations we ever had.
She said her first visit with her daughter after her time on the show was emotional in a good way. So she returned to monthly visits this past year. She said she cut back her second year to every other month but then watched her daughter degrade emotionally and depressed. Monalisa, who now lives in Queens, travels to Georgia monthly to see her, stretching her budget to afford the $1,000 in airfare, hotel and rental car. She said they took the plea because the alternative could have been worse. She ended up spending $37,000 in savings to defend her daughter. That's not what I raised her to be."Īt first, they used a public defender but she found the person unresponsive. When she found out Sierra was in jail, "I was beyond devastated. She was on the Dean's List at her school when she was arrested, Monalisa said. Sierra graduated high school and attended the Art Institute of Atlanta. Monalisa moved to Atlanta from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. She said her daughter was stuck with a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence, giving the judge no flexibility, even after a plea.