'Forgiveness Can Set You Free'

AFTER HIS BROTHER WAS FATALLY STABBED. DARRYL GREEN BEFRIENDED THE KILLER

- CAITLIN KEATING

He remembers the "before" as clearly as if it were yesterday. Darryl Green was a junior at Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, N.C., counting down the days until his little brother, 17-year-old Ruben Cotton, was to arrive for a planned visit in the winter of 1988. "I wanted him to see what college life was like," recalls Green, "so I was excited to show him around." But just days before Ruben, a track and basketball star at his Baltimore high school, was due to arrive, Green was pulled out of his criminal justice class by the dean of students, who told him that his little brother was at a Baltimore hospital in critical condition. He had been stabbed by an acquaintance, 15-year-old Kimyon Marshall, during an argument over a pair of sneakers outside a bowling alley.

Then came the "after." Green drove eight hours home to Baltimore-with "a lot of anger," he says-to sit at his little brother's side. Ruben succumbed to his injuries and died four days later. Pain and grief overcame Green, and he was determined to get revenge. "Where I'm from, it's an eye for an eye," he says.

Green returned to college, and Marshall was tried for murder as an adult and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The sentence did little to bring Green peacerage toward his brother's killer gnawed at him. He started fights and was on the verge of being kicked out of college. "Although Kimyon was the one behind bars, I was in my own prison," says Green. "A prison of hatred."