tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87776323898934270962024-03-05T13:33:48.192-08:00Doing Life on Death Row"I've been through the dark side of hell and back again; journeyed through life with nary a friend. I've laughed and I've cried; I've lived and I've died, and yet each day I'm condemned to do it again and again." Michael Lambrix (death row ~ Florida)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-42078370930136968292016-05-31T07:35:00.000-07:002016-05-31T07:37:52.287-07:00Scratching at the Scars of a Shattered Soul <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
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<i>Written for <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2016/05/scratching-at-scars-of-shattered-soul.html" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six</a></i></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
By Michael Lambrix</div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I would argue that the transformative power of a simple mirror is the
foundation for the evolution of self. Looking deep into the image
staring back at us, we are compelled to scratch at the scars of our own
shattered souls and confront truths we want to avoid. From the
beginning of time this has been true. I can only imagine a primitive
version of humankind finding himself crouched down at the muddy edge of a
pond looking deep into his own reflection and questioning who he was
and wanted to be. It was that self-examination that brought about
evolutionary change.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I was barely 16 and out on my own, far away from any “home” I might have
had and struggling to survive on the streets while others my age were
still in school. I found work with a traveling carnival and slept at
night in the tents along the midway that housed the games and
concessions. I was not alone, but only one of many “midway misfits”.
After the show shut down each night and silence blanketed the darkened
grounds, we would emerge from the shadows and congregate in our groups,
each chipping in what we could to buy whatever alcohol or drugs might be
available. As we each indulged in our vice, the past each of us had run
away from would be forgotten. We had survived another day.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One particular cold winter night outside of Chicago, as our little band
of midway misfits broke up, each to stagger away each in their own
direction, I sought warmer shelter. I ventured into the “House of
Mirrors.” I was drunk and stoned, but the surreal experience came to
define that time in my life. Although I knew each mirror was
deliberately made to reflect a distorted image, as I stared I found that
it was I who was so damaged and all I wanted to do was run from that
reflection of who I was.<br />
<br />
</div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It would take another 16 years before I found myself in a solitary cell
on Florida´s infamous Death Row, looking deep into a simple plastic
mirror at the man I had become. I could no longer pull away. I had
already been condemned to die years earlier and even come within hours
of being executed (please read: <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-day-god-died.html">“The Day God Died”</a>).
But it was only then that after years of refusing us any form of mirror
under the pretense that mirrors posed a “security threat”, that
suddenly we were allowed to purchase and possess simple plastic mirrors.
For the first time in many years I found myself staring at the image
looked back at me.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
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That was over 20 years ago. The experience motivated me to write a
widely published essay “To See the Soul – a Search for Self” (published
in <a href="http://smile.amazon.com/Welcome-Hell-Letters-Writings-Death/dp/1555536360/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463077298&sr=8-1&keywords=welcome+to+hell+jan+arrien">Welcome to Hell by Jan Arriens</a>
as “A Simple Plastic Mirror”) in which I struggle to confront who I
was and who I want to become after realizing I didn´t like the man
looking back at me and I’d wanted to become something better. That
mirror contributed to changing who I was, giving me direction in my
journey through life. I continue to stagger along the path toward my
still unknown destination, as the uncertainty of my fate remains
undetermined.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But what I didn´t know then, and do now, is that with each step of the
journey we continue to grow. To paraphrase the philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us can only make us stronger.” I
came to embrace the belief that each experience is an opportunity to
grow, and that I alone possess the power to determine how the misery
inflicted upon me might affect me. And being condemned to die at the
hands of man did not deprive me of who I wanted to become.<br />
<br />
</div>
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</div>
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The poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling became my inspiration as I found myself
cast down into an environment of lost souls. Ones consumed by the hate
I would come to know well, because when all else fails, hate finds a
way to prevail. Each day is a struggle to not allow it to possess my
soul, too. And when I do find myself becoming influenced by the
destructive darkness of hate, I again read these words:</div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If you can keep your head when all about you<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> are losing theirs and blaming it on you –<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> but make allowance for their doubting, too –<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> or being lied about, don´t deal in lies –<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>or being hated, don´t give way to hating,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> and yet don´t look too good, nor talk too wise –<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can dream and not make dreams your master,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> If you can think and not make thoughts your aim –<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can meet with triumph and disaster<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> and treat those two imposters just the same –<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can bear to hear the truth you´ve spoken<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> twisted by knives to make a trap for fools;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>or watch the things you gave your life to broken<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> and stoop and build ´em up with worn-out tools;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can make one heap of all your winnings<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And loss and start again at your beginnings<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> and never breath a word about your loss;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> to serve your turn long after they are gone;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And so hold on when there is nothing in you<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> except the will whish says to them “hold on!”<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If neither foes or loving friends can hurt you,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> if all men count with you, but none too much;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you can fill the unforgiving minute<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> with sixty seconds worth of distance run;<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yours is the earth and everything in it,<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> and which is more, you´ll be a man, my son.</blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Even under normal circumstances, few reach the point in their lives at
which they are compelled to confront who they are, not merely accepting
that they can be something better, but taking it to the next step of
making the conscious effort to evolve into an improved self. For most
of us, we are leaves fallen into a stream, our destiny by defined where
the water might take us with little effort spent changing its course.
Each decision along the way is contained within the boundaries of the
stream as if John Calvin´s definition of pre-destiny (a tenet of the
Presbyterian faith) dictates the direction of our life, each option
(“free will”) limited to that small world we live in.<br />
<br />
</div>
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</div>
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If a normal life can be compared to flowing peacefully down a stream,
then prison life would be like being cast over a cliff, upon raging
rapids, violently cutting its way through steep canyon cliffs. Unable to
escape nor float downstream, every second of every day you must
struggle not to sink and even one moment of weakness will be your last.<br />
<br />
</div>
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</div>
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Death Row is no different. Each of us is kept in continuous solitary
confinement, but we are still swept toward our own destruction in those
same white-water rapids. Most become so caught up in keeping their own
head above the water that they no longer search for elusive pods of calm
water hidden in the eddies along the way, and their own survival comes
at the cost of dragging others down in their own attempt to rise above.<br />
<br />
</div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the passing years would patiently teach me, after long ago looking
into that plastic mirror and making the conscious decision to become a
better man than I was, that the image remained incomplete. I couldn´t
have known that by choosing this particular path I would find myself
repeatedly tested. Accepting myself being cast down into an environment
consumed by misery and hate, each day I had to find the strength not to
become part of the very thing I didn´t want to become.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But in this world, I was expected to be a “convict.” Conforming to an
abstract set of values that, while generally written in stone (i.e. –
mind your own business, don´t rat on others, be true to your word,
etc.), were still subjectively defined by those around you meant that
when tested, the choice not to respond as expected would result in a
perverted form of peer pressure. In the eyes of others, you were
reduced to something less than a “convict” and in here, anything less
than a convict makes you a target.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But as long as a man continues to define himself by what others think,
he can never be his own man. This place is its own hell, and I find
myself trapped in a world where doing the right thing is often the wrong
thing to do. I find myself precariously balanced between those two
conflicting worlds, each pulling at me as I hang above an abyss
threatening to consume me. I am not alone. I know of many others who
struggle daily to be better men, yet give into those raging rapids and
become what they perceive to be a “convict.” And for that, their lives
in here become easier, but their inner struggles become harder.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Many years ago I thought in my ignorance that by looking deep down into
theplastic mirror I had discovered my true self. But just as when I
found myself alone in that “house of mirrors,” I know now that what you
think you see in a mirror is not necessarily a true reflection. It
becomes a distortion of what you want to see. People go into the “House
of Mirrors” expecting to see a distorted image.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now I look into a mirror knowing that when I do, the reflection will be
altered as I consciously scratch away at the scars of a shattered soul.
And it took me many years before I scratched away enough to start to
confront the past that formed me into who I was.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When I wrote “To See the Soul – A Search for Self,” I didn´t realize
just how pathetically superficial that self-examination was. I only saw
the reflection I wanted to see at the time. It was enough to know I
didn´t like the man I was and that I wanted to become something better.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For most of my life I never talked about my childhood or family life
beyond the grossly distorted surrogates I created in my own imagination.
I heard it said once that those who didn´t have a life before prison
create one. Crack-heads become self-proclaimed drug lords, pimps become
players and killers become “convicts.” To run with the big dogs you had
to be willing to become one of them. But few dare to scratch beneath
the surface of their own scarred souls and until they do, they can never
hope to evolve into something more than what they are.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The path I choose to journey down is a solitary one. Often it alienates
me from those I live amongst. When confronted by a perceived wrong,
such as someone “disrespecting” me, or another form of transgression in
this world, I am expected to respond with violence. Anything less makes
me appear as a “coward. ”Those who remain determined to be seen as
“convicts” can never understand that for me and others, being labeled a
“coward” is preferable to a “killer.” It takes a conscious decision to
turn the other cheek and not be reduced to the kind of person we’ve
struggled so hard not to become.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I find my own refuge in books. If I could, I would give every prisoner a
copy of my two favorite books…Dante´s “Inferno,” which provokes a lost
soul to contemplate the consequences or our actions, and Victor Frankl´s
“Man´s Search for Meaning,” which through profound truth teaches that
within each of us is the strength to not simply survive even the most
incomprehensible atrocities, but to overcome them.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the
last of the human freedoms – to choose one´s attitude in any given set
of circumstances; to choose one´s own way….. “forces beyond your control
can take away everything you possess except one thing: your freedom to
choose how you will respond to the situation … when we are no longer
able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I no longer keep my mirror taped to my wall. Now I keep it tucked
inside my Bible, so that as I search for strength in the wisdom of the
ages, I have it to look into. And it rests alongside my favorite quotes
from “Man´s Search for Meaning”.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Knowing that I live in a world in which in which hate prevails in the
absence of love and spreads like a cancer, I find my journey defined by
the pursuit of a tangible sense of “love.” It begins with love of self.
One cannot love oneself if he doesn’t like himself, and one cannot
truly love another until they´ve first embraced the love of self. Again,
to quote Victor Frankl:<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by
so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The
truth – that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can
aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret – that human
poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: the salvation of man
is through love and in love.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Few can begin to comprehend the depth of misery inflicted upon those
condemned to death under the pretense of administering “justice.” Day
after day, month after month, year after year we are relentlessly beaten
down by the inescapable reality that society has found us unfit to
live. We are cast down into the bowels of a beast devoid of mercy and
compassion. Each day is a struggle to find the strength to hope.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Our artificial environment has been methodically structured to break
both body and soul, to erode all sense of hope. To alienate any
pretense of love until all that remains is the flesh they seek to kill.
And few possess the strength, much less the motivation, to rise above
it rather than become one with it.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But again, to quote Victor Frankl, “Life is never made unbearable by
circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose,” and “those
who have a “why” can bear with almost any “how,” as in some ways
suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I found my “meaning” in that simple plastic mirror so long ago, and have
tried to stay true to the path I chose to follow. That doesn´t mean I
haven´t stumbled and even fallen along the way. I would be the first to
admit that I am far from perfect. But it’s not about being perfect.
It’s about striving to become something better than I once was. And
that in the many years since I found the strength to look into that
first simple plastic mirror, I´d like to think I have become someone
better.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
My journey is coming to an end. I know I will soon be put to death.
Knowledge of this weighs heavily on my soul and I fight not to be
overcome by the gross injustice of my conviction and
condemnation.(please check out: <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">www.southerninjustice.net</a>)<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But as I look into the mirror, I realize the uncertainty of my fate
remains irrelevant, because in the end, nobody gets out alive. We are
all born condemned to die. And perhaps for the purpose of discovering
who I was, and had the strength to become, it was necessary for me to
follow this particular path. I know that had I not been wrongfully
convicted and condemned to death, I would never have had the opportunity
to find myself in the simple plastic mirror, and subsequently discover
that strength within myself that made me a better man.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I continue to scratch at the scars of my own shattered soul. Scars
remain, but with each scratch I come to understand them better, and
finding strength to grow in spite of an environment intended to
suffocate growth. I have found my meaning. Through the reflection
staring back at me. Even when all else fails, love will prevail.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
(end)</div>
<br />
<i>NOTE: If you would like to read about Mike´s “actual innocence” case, please check out <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">www.southerninjustice.net </a></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>If you would like to sign a petition requesting clemency for Mike, please do so at <a href="http://www.save-innocents.com/">www.save-innocents.com</a></i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Click <a href="http://www.news4jax.com/news/some-death-row-prisoners-would-rather-die-than-continue-living-in-prison">here</a> to read a recent story on Mike and his case</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihTMvcRE5jJwyQ_MmBkneRUcbTvSZa6r4k3OegasKIZrydgzZHZkzzfoUOIyZS5jnsGNEErj0h1YmMT6UQyvV5V-JRXZ94zy351i6mNuphSr8O4EPI1jawMLTwqUi1_IlwSVMP0gk4u6Y/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihTMvcRE5jJwyQ_MmBkneRUcbTvSZa6r4k3OegasKIZrydgzZHZkzzfoUOIyZS5jnsGNEErj0h1YmMT6UQyvV5V-JRXZ94zy351i6mNuphSr8O4EPI1jawMLTwqUi1_IlwSVMP0gk4u6Y/s320/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Lambrix 482053<br />
Florida State Prison<br />
P.O. Box 800 (G1205)<br />
Raiford, FL 32083</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Please make a donation to <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/minutesbeforesix">support Minutes Before Six</a></i>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-65575811535978057542016-01-22T06:29:00.002-08:002016-01-22T06:51:35.825-08:00Execution Day – Involuntary Witness to Murder <br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By Michael Lambrix</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This essay was written by Mike Lambrix for the website <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.nl/2016/01/execution-day-involuntary-witness-to.html" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six </a></div>
<a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.nl/2016/01/execution-day-involuntary-witness-to.html" target="_blank">
</a>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.nl/2016/01/execution-day-involuntary-witness-to.html" target="_blank"></a><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As if a scene straight out of The Twilight Zone, circumstances trapped
me within the cold and calculated process that resulted in the murder by
state sanctioned execution of Oscar Ray Bolin on January 7, 2016. In
all the years I´ve been on Florida´s death row, I´ve never been in such
close proximity to an execution as it unfolded around me, forcing me to
become part of the very process that they intended to then subject me to
in precisely five weeks’ time.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On November 30, 2015, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed my death
warrant and I was immediately transferred from the main death row unit
at Union Correctional (less than a mile away) to the “death watch”
housing area on the bottom floor of Q-Wing at Florida State Prison. I
joined Oscar down there—his own death warrant had been signed about 5
weeks earlier and they intended to murder him on January 7. There are
only three cells in the death watch area, and Oscar was in cell one, and
I was place in cell three, with an empty cell separating us.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Through those five weeks, each day brought him closer—his wife of almost
twenty years solidly by his side, uncompromised in her commitment to
stand by him and prove that he was innocent. And those familiar with the
case knew that recently developed evidence did establish a persuasive
issue of innocence, too.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
His final rounds of appeals focused specifically on evidence supporting
his innocence and the hope that the courts would do the right thing. As
the New Year weekend passed, the Federal District Court summarily denied
review of his innocence claim upon the finding that the lower Federal
Court didn´t have jurisdiction to hear his claim of innocence. But there
was hope, as the District Court granted a “Certificate of
Appealability” (“C.O.A.”) authorizing appellate review before the
Eleventh Circuit, and soon after the Eleventh Circuit issued an order
establishing a “briefing schedule” in March…it seemed all but certain
that Oscar would be granted a stay of execution and his claim of
innocence would be fully briefed and heard by the appellate court.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Monday, January 4 passed as he anxiously awaited word that a stay of
execution would be granted, but there was only silence from the court.
Each day his wife spent every minute she could and it is impossible to
imagine the pain she felt—she too was unquestionably a victim caught up
in this cold process that unfolded around her.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I sat in my solitary cell not more than ten feet away and found myself
impressed with the strength Oscar exhibited, and the concern he held for
his wife and what this process inflicted on her. Society wanted to
label this man a cold-blooded killer, yet if only those only too willing
to throw stones could see the desperate concern he had for his wife,
they could see how wrong they are.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now I struggle to find the words—and with a reluctance to even write
about what I involuntarily witnessed. But if I don´t, then who will? And
is it really fair that the record of what transpired would otherwise be
the state´s own version, leaving no perspective from those that they
kill?<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I must emphasize that even as much as these events impacted me due to my
close proximity to this process, it is not comparable to what they were
forced to endure, and the loss those who loved Oscar Bolin suffered. My
attempt to share what transpired from my own unique perspective is done
in the hope that perhaps by bearing witness, others would see just how
incomprehensibly inhuman this process is, and how truly cold-blooded
this act of murder is…and to know it is carried out in all of our names.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And I apologize for rambling on—it is not easy for me to find the
necessary words. I can only hope that I can convey the true impact of
what unfolded and compel those that read this to ask themselves whether
this truly is what we aspire our society to be? It´s easy to justify the
death penalty by claiming that it is in the interest of justice to kill
those convicted of killing another—to become a killer ourselves.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But how many give a thought at all to just how much contemplation is put
into this process employed to take that life? I am again reminded of
what I once read, written by the philosopher Frederick Nietzsche,
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a
monster.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Think about that. It´s easy to dismiss what I say by blindly insisting
that a jury convicted Oscar Bolin of murder and that justice demands
that society take his life. But really—who is actually investing more
conscious thought into the act of taking a human life?<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is for this reason I´m determined to share my own unique perspective
of what this process is, and how by these very actions it reduces
society itself to that very level of becoming “the monster.” Perhaps in
my attempt to share this, others can see just how wrong this is.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On the early morning of Monday, January 4, the day began with the death
watch staff advising both me and Oscar of our scheduled visits and phone
calls for that day, I had already asked my family and friends not to
visit that week as I didn´t want my visits to interfere in any way with
Oscar´s visits. All I had was a phone call from my son early that
morning and a legal phone call with my lawyer later that day.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Oscar had a visit with his wife and both anxiously awaited any word from
the Eleventh Circuit courts hoping that a full stay of execution would
come and the court would allow full and fair review of his innocence
claim. But the day passed without any word from the court. By that
evening Bolin was down to 72 hours—and I know from personal experience
how difficult that was, as I had come within hours of execution myself
when I was on death watch years earlier—only I was granted a stay.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By Tuesday morning, January 5, Oscar was down to sixty hours, and the
clock continued to tick away and yet still nothing from the courts on
whether they would allow his claim of innocence to be heard. Oscar spent
from late morning until mid-afternoon with his wife in the non-contact
visiting area. Upon his return, his demeanor was more subdued and the
stress and anxiety he felt became all but tangible. And as I sat
silently a few feet away in my own solitary cell, I wondered whether any
of those willing to take his life gave even so much as a moment of
thought into what they were inflicting upon other human beings—and
again, Oscar was not the only one forced to count down those final hours
anxiously hoping that phone would ring with the news that the court
would allow his claim of innocence to be heard…every second of every
moment, every hour that passed inflicted incomprehensible pain upon his
wife and those that cared for him.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That evening passed in an uncomfortable silence as the courts would have
closed their doors for the night and no news would come until at least
that next morning. That psychological trauma of uncertainty weighed
heavily upon them.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I doubt Oscar slept much that Tuesday night—I know I didn´t. His T.V.
remained on into the early morning hours. By that next morning
(Wednesday) he was down to about thirty six hours until his still
scheduled execution and still no word from the court. It would be a long
day. They brought the breakfast trays as they did each morning, but
neither of us had any interest in eating. Down here on death watch, our
meals are kept under direct supervision of security staff to ensure
nobody (other prisoners or staff) has any chance of tampering with the
food or smuggling anything to the condemned prisoner.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This methodical countdown to the intended execution actually starts a
full week before, when they remove all personal property from the
condemned prisoner´s cell, placing him (or her) on “Phase II.” From the
moment they place the condemned prisoner on Phase II (that final week) a
guard is posted directly in front of the cell twenty four hours a day,
his only job to observe the condemned prisoner to ensure he (or she)
doesn´t attempt suicide or harm themselves—and a few have tried. Any
activity is written in a forest green “Death Watch Log.” Throughout this
time, not even for one second are you allowed to forget that they are
counting down your last days—and last hours.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Oscar again had a visit with his wife as she stood faithfully by him
spending every moment she could—even if those visits were restricted to a
few hours of non-contact (through glass) visits.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By early afternoon Oscar returned to his death watch cell—still no word
from the court. The hours dragged by as Oscar talked to the guard
stationed in front of his cell, simply talking about anything at all.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Warden Palmer came down, accompanied by Deputy Secretary Dixon (the
second highest Department of Corrections employee). They talked to Oscar
for a while mostly just to check on how he was holding up. But the
preparations had begun and that final twenty four hours was quickly
approaching. After they talked to Oscar, they stepped that few feet
further down to the front of my cell and spoke to me.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I must admit that I was impressed by their professionalism and their
sincerity that bordered on genuine concern. Perhaps the most heard
expression on death watch is an almost apologetic “we´re just doing our
job” and the truth is that the current staff assigned to work the death
watch area and interact with the condemned prisoners counting down their
final hours do go to great lengths to treat us with a sense of dignity
and respect seldom even seen in the prison system.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The significance of this cannot be understated. I´ve been down here on
death watch before years ago and came within hours of being executed
myself, and there´s always been a deliberate distance between the
condemned and the staff—especially the higher ranking staff. But it´s
different this time. In the five weeks that I´ve been down here almost
daily high ranking staff have come down to the death watch housing area
and made a point of talking to us in an informal manner, abandoning that
implicit wall of separation between them and us.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And now none other than the Deputy Secretary himself personally came
down to talk to us—I´ve never heard of this before. Shortly after they
left, Oscar asked the sergeant for the barber clippers. He wanted to
shave his own chest and legs, rather than have them do it the next day.
It had to be done, as the lethal injection process requires the
attachment of heart monitors and Oscar preferred to shave it himself—as
most would.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Oscar received another legal phone call later that afternoon—now down to
almost twenty four hours until his scheduled execution and still no
decision by the Eleventh Circuit as to whether or not they´d allow
review of his innocence claim. The lawyers would call if any news came,
but it was assumed that the judges deciding his fate already called it a
day and went home. No further phone call came that night. Again Oscar
stayed up late, unable to sleep until sometime in the early morning
hours and he was not alone, as sleep would be hard to come by.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
We reached the day of execution. Typically, they change shifts at 6:00
a.m. working a full twelve hour shift. But on days of scheduled
execution, they change shifts at 4:30 a.m., as with the execution
scheduled at 6:00 p.m. they cannot do a shift change then, as the entire
institution will go on lockdown during that time.<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With that final twenty four hours now counting down, each minute was
managed by strict “Execution Day” protocol, and the day started earlier
than usual. As if an invisible cloud hung in the air, you could all but
feel the weight of this day as it was that tangible, and undoubtedly
more so on Oscar. But he was holding up remarkably well, maintaining his
composure even though the strain was obvious in his voice. How does one
go about the day that they know they are to die? Again, I´ve been there
myself and I know how he felt and it cannot easily be put into words.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Oscar was diabetic and as with each morning, the nurse came to check his
blood sugar level and administer insulin, if necessary. Now within that
final twelve hours, nothing would be left to chance. Around 7:00 a.m.,
they let Oscar take a shower, and then after locking down the entire
institution, they took him up front for a last visit with his wife. They
would be allowed a two hour non-contact visit until 10:00 a.m., then an
additional one hour contact visit—the last visit before the scheduled
execution.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Shortly after 11:00 a.m. they escorted Oscar back to the Q-Wing death
watch cell. A few minutes later “Brother Dale” Recinella was allowed to
come down and spend a few hours with Oscar as his designated spiritual
advisor. Contrary to the Hollywood movies depicting the execution
process, the prison chaplain is rarely, if ever, involved as each of us
are allowed to have our own religious representative—and many choose
“Brother Dale” as he is well-known and respected amongst the death row
population.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Many years ago Brother Dale was a very successful lawyer, making more
money than most can dream of. But then he experienced a life-changing
event and spiritual transformation, as chronicled in his book “And I
Walk on Death Row” (see, <a href="http://www.iwasinprison.com/">www.iwasinprison.com</a>).
Brother Dale and his equally-devoted wife Susan gave up their wealth
and privilege and devoted their lives to their faith and ministering to
death row.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Even as these final hours continued to count down, I remained in that
solitary cell only a few feet away and unable to escape the events as
the continued to unfold around me. There are only three cells on death
watch and I found it odd that they kept me down here as they proceeded
with this final process—when I was on death watch in 1988, they moved me
upstairs to another cell removed from the death watch area as they
didn´t want any other prisoners in the death watch area as these final
events unfolded.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Brother Dale left about 2:00 p.m. and the death watch lieutenant, a
familiar presence on death watch, then made a point of talking to Oscar
and they went over the protocol—shortly before 4:00 p.m. he would shower
again and then be brought around to the west side of the wing where
they had only one cell immediately adjacent to the door that led to the
execution chamber. I listened as this process was explained, knowing
only too well that in precisely five more weeks I would be given the
same talk.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The warden and Asst. warden came down again and talked to Oscar. A few
minutes later the Secretary (director) of the Florida Department of
Corrections, Julie Jones, personally came to Oscar´s cell and sat in a
chair and talked to him—I´ve never heard of that happening before. But
her tone of voice and mannerisms reflected genuine empathy towards
Oscar, and he thanked her for taking that time to talk to him.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As they now closed in on that final two hours before the scheduled
execution, Oscar received another phone call from his lawyer—the
Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals still had not ruled on whether they
would grant a stay of execution and allow a full review of his pled
innocence claim. Oscar´s voice was obviously stressed. Per protocol, the
nurse gave him 5 mg. valium to calm his nerves.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Just before 4:00 p.m., Oscar spoke to me, wanting to talk about a
problem he and I had years ago—a problem that I alone was responsible
for and of which I have often regretted. In the five weeks we had been
on death watch together, it was not spoken of. But now, to my amazement,
even dealing with all that he was dealing with, Oscar wanted me to know
that he forgave me for what I did. And for a few minutes we talked. And
then the warden and his staff removed Oscar from his cell and escorted
him around to the west side of the wing, to the execution chamber
holding cell, where he would remain until the court cleared the way for
execution, or he received a stay of execution and was brought back to
this side.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A single sergeant remained on this side, and for the first time since I
was brought to death watch I was alone as the sergeant remained at the
desk just outside the cell block area—and I didn´t want to be alone. As I
do often, especially when stressed, I paced in my cell anxious to hear
any word on what was going on and checking my watch almost every minute,
and each minute dragged by so slowly it was almost as if time itself
had stopped and I couldn´t begin to imagine what Oscar and his wife were
going through.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At irregular intervals the sergeant would walk down to my cell to check
on me and I asked whether there was any more news. The Eleventh Circuit
had denied his appeal and the case quickly moved on to the U.S. Supreme
Court. The designated time of scheduled execution—6:00 p.m.—came and
went without any word from the Supreme Court.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Oscar would remain in that holding cell until the Supreme Court cleared
the way for execution—but at least both he and his loved ones still had
hope as the minutes continued to tick away.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Most don´t realize just how many people are involved in this execution
process and everybody remained on hold not knowing whether the execution
would proceed or not. Immediately adjacent to my cell was a solid steel
door that led directly into a hallway stretching the entire width of
the wing. Just inside this door was an area with a coffee pot and
chairs, and I could hear a number of unknown people congregated only a
few feet away from me on the other side of the door as they discussed
the continued uncertainty.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A larger crowd of unknown participants congregated on the lower
quarter-deck area between the west side of the wing where the death
watch housing area was and the door that led into the east side where
Oscar remained in the holding cell. I couldn´t make out what they were
saying and wondered, especially when I periodically heard laughter. I
suppose this long wait was stressful on them, too, and a moment of
levity could be forgiven. And yet I found myself wondering what they
could possibly find funny as they awaited that moment of time when they
would each assume their assigned task and take the life of another human
being.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One hour passed, and then another, and another yet. Then at almost 10:00
p.m. it suddenly got quiet—very quiet. All the voices that continuously
hummed both behind that steel door and the quarter-deck area just
suddenly went silent and without anyone around to tell me; I knew that
they all moved to their positions in the execution chamber.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It remained utterly silent—so quiet that I could hear the coffee pot
percolating at the sergeant´s desk on the other side of the gate and I
held my watch as the minutes passed and I strained to hear any sound at
all. But there was nothing and I knew they were now putting Oscar to
death. I cannot explain it, but I just felt it—and I got on my knees and
I prayed, and yet I couldn´t find any words and found myself kneeling
at my bunk in silence for several minutes.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Then I heard what sounded like a door on the other side of that concrete
wall that separated my cell from the execution chamber. Then I once
again heard muffled voices on the other side of that steel door. It was
over and it went quickly…Oscar was dead. A few minutes later I heard the
sound of a number of people going up the stairs leading away from the
execution chamber. Their job was done and in an orderly manner they were
leaving.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For obvious reasons, I didn´t sleep that night. Only a few feet behind
that wall of my cell, Oscar´s body now lay growing cold. There are no
words that can describe how I felt, but that emptiness that consumed me
and left me laying in my bunk in complete silence through the night.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Somewhere in the early morning hours I fell asleep, only to awaken just
after 7:00 a.m. It was a new day. The death watch Lieutenant was already
here and I was now the only one left on death watch. But just that
quickly, I was instructed that I had to immediately pack my property as
they had to move me to cell one—the cell that Oscar only recently
vacated.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I didn´t want to move to that cell, but I didn´t have any choice. That
was the same cell I previously occupied in late 1988 when I myself came
within hours of my own execution (read, <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-day-god-died.html">“The Day God Died”</a>)
and especially knowing that only a few hours again Oscar was in that
cell still alive and holding on to hope, I just didn´t want to be moved
to that cell. Every person who has been executed in the State of Florida
in the past forty years was housed in that cell prior to their
execution.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But it wasn´t a choice and I obediently packed my property and with the
officer´s assistance, I was moved from cell three to cell one. And as I
worked on putting all my property back where it belonged (storing it in
the single steel footlocker bolted firmly to the floor), a long-awaited
phone call from my close friend Jan Arriens came through.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
While on death watch, we are allowed two personal phone calls each week,
and since my warrant was signed five weeks earlier, I had anxiously
awaited the opportunity to talk to Jan, but through the Christmas
holiday he was visiting his family in Australia. Having only recently
returned to his home in England, he arranged this phone call.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was good to hear a friendly voice just at that time when I most
especially needed a friend. But we only had a few minutes to talk and
unlike those eternal moments of the night before, these minutes passed
far too quickly. But just hearing the voice of a friend comforted me.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Shortly after that phone call, I then had a legal visit and was escorted
to the front of the prison to meet with my lawyer´s investigator. We
spent hours going over legal issues and then it was back to the death
watch cell. Not long after I returned, I learned that the governor had
already signed another death warrant. This machinery of death continued
to roll along. By mid-afternoon a familiar face was brought down to join
me…Mark Asay (who we call “Catfish”) had his death warrant signed that
morning, with his execution scheduled for March 17, exactly 5 weeks
after my own scheduled execution.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With the methodical precision of a mechanical machine, Florida has
resumed executions with a vengeance, establishing a predictable pattern
of signing a new death warrant even before the body of the last executed
prisoner has grown cold.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now I remain in the infamous “cell one,” next in line to be executed—and
on February 11, 2016 at 6:00 p.m., the State of Florida plans to kill
me. Until then, I will remain in a cell in which the last twenty three
occupants, without exception, resided until their own execution. I do
not like being in this solitary cell. </div>
<div>
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoq609ciL7y06Bp9toL5kAZ8DNQLN6nIuTr_ZNCUzw9tut6xqtpfR9Jf5daZq1mGOf86hYGCvOvpEip8rvwf5Zdb3tm0lJmxxx2GUWFCUEPiKtixwthER0HzSZbV-u3rPUQ07dMrFLos4/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoq609ciL7y06Bp9toL5kAZ8DNQLN6nIuTr_ZNCUzw9tut6xqtpfR9Jf5daZq1mGOf86hYGCvOvpEip8rvwf5Zdb3tm0lJmxxx2GUWFCUEPiKtixwthER0HzSZbV-u3rPUQ07dMrFLos4/s320/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Lambrix 482053<br />
Florida State Prison<br />
7819 N.W. 228th Street<br />
Raiford, FL 32026</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-72935598176763360172015-12-21T03:03:00.002-08:002015-12-22T02:26:42.883-08:00Message from Mike Lambrix to his friends - from Death Watch <br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;">Read Mike's <b><span style="color: purple;"><a href="http://deathrowjournals.blogspot.gr/2015/12/message-from-mike-lambrix-to-his.html" target="_blank">letter to his friends</a></span></b>, from death watch</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">And read his second message from death watch<span style="background-color: white;"> </span><b><span style="background-color: purple;"><a href="http://deathrowjournals.blogspot.gr/2015/12/message-from-mike-from-death-watch-part.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white;">here</span></a></span></b></span></span></span></span> </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYIDDHzODmNYUBJ2AYzIb-cPsq0kXK3-vtzSnbIsml1J4CpY36CivH-ZfEn7aBmMc9wVT75p0aTNIwTqL5L7ZRy6cBdS1Nleh6aejMilc7iiCMLpm0ma9wEz_NO6T6X2e_ky1PU3Y2wQ/s1600/mike.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaYIDDHzODmNYUBJ2AYzIb-cPsq0kXK3-vtzSnbIsml1J4CpY36CivH-ZfEn7aBmMc9wVT75p0aTNIwTqL5L7ZRy6cBdS1Nleh6aejMilc7iiCMLpm0ma9wEz_NO6T6X2e_ky1PU3Y2wQ/s320/mike.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>Michael Lambrix #482053</b><br />
<b>Florida State Prison Q2301</b><br />
<b>7819 NW 228th street <br />Raiford Florida 32026-1100</b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /><a href="http://deathrowjournals.blogspot.gr/2015/12/message-from-mike-from-death-watch-part.html" target="_blank"></a></span></span> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-32498089249091033132015-12-02T01:31:00.001-08:002015-12-21T10:00:46.093-08:00Clemency denied and execution date set for Mike Lambrix!!<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></b></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></b></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #4c1130;"></span></b></span><br />
<b>Michael Lambrix #482053</b><br />
<b>Florida State Prison Q2301</b><br />
<b>7819 NW 228th street <br />Raiford Florida 32026-1100</b><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /> Gov. Scott has already broken the record for most executions by a Florida governor!</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Contact Gov. Scott and ask him to suspend Mike's and ALL executions.<br /> Phone: (850) 488-7146<br /> Email: Rick.scott@eog.myforida.com</span></b></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-36189755760180443712015-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:002015-12-18T10:47:34.162-08:00Alcatraz of the South Part 7 (Redemption in the Mirror)<div style="text-align: justify;">
By Michael Lambrix</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Written by Michael Lambrix for the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/search/label/Michael%20Lambrix%20%28FL%29" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six</a> website </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To read Part 6, click <a href="http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/2015/05/alcatraz-of-south-part-6-when-dreams.html" target="_blank">here</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Whether it was the almost guttural rumbling of the diesel generator or
that unmistakable sulfuric smell of the exhaust, or the combination of
both as I struggled to sleep through it on that chilly late fall
morning, I don’t know. But there I was at the edge of that abyss between
sleep and consciousness and caught in that moment between time and
eternity. I found myself tangled in the perception of the past, and what
once was new became a prophetic omen of what my life would be, and in
that moment I discovered that redemption is a mirror we all look upon.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Each Wednesday, for as long as I can remember, the same perverse ritual
played itself out as a reminder to all of us here that we are caught in a
perpetual state of limbo between life and death. Each day that passes
brings us one step closer to that judicially imposed fate. We are
condemned to death and if we ever did dare to forget that, the generator
served as a not-so-subtle reminder.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now it seems like a lifetime ago since I was first housed on that north
side of what was then known as “R-Wing” (since then re-lettered as
G-Wing for reasons I suppose most of us will never know). But merely
changing the identifying letter that hangs above that solid steel door
opening on to what was then one of four wings at Florida State Prison
that housed us condemned to die in the years before they built the “new”
unit of Union Correctional won’t change what lies beyond. Upon
entering, one steps into a hell that only the malignant mind of men
could ever manifest into reality.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was late in the summer and I was coming off disciplinary confinement
when I was moved over to an empty cell on R-Wing, placed about half way
down the tier on the second floor. I was told by the guys around me that
it was a quiet floor and a number of the guys made it clear they wanted
it to stay that way. I had no problem with that, as the floor I was on
had gotten wide open with radios and TVs blasting both night and day and
more than a number of the guys yelling to each other so they could be
heard above the noise and it never seemed to stop. Now, a little quiet
would be welcome.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I moved to the floor on a Friday morning and it took the better part of
that weekend to put my property up and arrange my new cell. Only
recently were we given large steel footlockers to store all our personal
property in. Prior to that, we pretty much just piled the numerous
cardboard boxes containing what we called our own in any manner we liked
and they left us alone. But the administration claimed the fire marshal
warned the boxes were a hazard and had to go.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was just as well, as the boxes were magnets to the infinite number of
both cockroaches and rodents that infested the death row wings. At
least with steel locker, it was a little harder for them to get in and
out, although it didn’t take too long before they found their ways.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By early that following week I was getting to know the guys I now lived
amongst. Funny how that is, every wing on the floor you are housed on
seemed to have its own different set of personalities. This particular
floor was known to many as the celebrity floor, as it housed a few of
the more notorious death row prisoners, such as my new neighbor, Ted
Bundy.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
While most of those on this particular floor were there by choice, each
patiently waiting for a cell to open then requesting to be placed in it
as they wanted to be housed on a quiet floor, both me and Ted had no
choice. I was placed there for no reason but luck of the draw—when my
time in lock-up (disciplinary confinement) was up, it was the only cell
open and for Ted, they just liked to keep him on the second floor near
the officers’ quarter deck so that when the occasional “four group” of
politicians or judges would come through, they could be paraded down the
outer catwalk and get their peek at “Bundy.” Most of the time we would
know when a tour group was coming and when we heard that outer catwalk
door open, we would quickly throw on our headphones and pretend to watch
TV as none of us cared to be their entertainment.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At first I didn’t know what to make of it when I realized that I was
suddenly housed next door to Ted. In the few years that I had been on
death row, I was previously always housed on what was then known as
“S-wing,” which was one wing up toward the front of where I now was, but
in many ways a whole other world away.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Like everyone else, I had heard of him. And for a good reason he didn’t
exactly go out of his way to reach out to those he didn’t know, as too
many even in our own little world liked to throw their stones…even those
cast down together into this cesspool of the system. I was already
aware of how doing time was about being part of a micro-community of
various clichés, each of us becoming part of our own little group.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But it didn’t take too long before I found myself standing up at the
front of my new cell talking to Ted around that concrete wall that
separated us. As coincidence would have it, we shared a lot of common
ground, especially when I mentioned that I was born and raised out on
the west coast and that Northern California would always be the only
place I would truly call “home.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the conversation carried on, he had asked if my family still lived
out there, but they didn’t, at least not any relatives that mattered.
After my parents divorced, when I was still too young to remember, my
father gained sole custody of me and my six siblings and then remarried
and we gained three more. It was anything but an amicable divorce, and
we never were allowed to get to know our mother.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But as I explained the family dynamics, I pulled out a picture of me
with my mother and stepfather taken when I finally did get to know them
when I was 22. I guess the snow outside the window gave it away, but Ted
quickly noticed that detail and commented that he had never seen the
snow like that around San Francisco and I then explained that my mom
didn’t live in California, as she had moved to Utah and I spent the
winter of ’81-’82 with them outside of Salt Lake City.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That caught his attention and after that I couldn’t have shut him up if I
had wanted to. For the rest of the evening and into the night he talked
about his own time outside of Salt Lake City and as we talked we
realized my mom lived only a few blocks from where his mom lived… small
world. As two people will do, when reminiscing about common ground, we
went on and on about various places we both knew, although neither of us
spent more than a few months there. But it brought us together.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the following months we grew closer through our common interest in
the law. At the time I was barely just beginning to learn (Although at
that ripe age of 27 I would have sworn I already knew it all). Now twice
as old, I look back and realize I didn’t know half as much as I thought
I knew and through Ted’s patience I learned what it took to stay alive.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Most of those around here who consider themselves jailhouse lawyers know
only what little they might have read in a few law books and then think
they know it all. But as I would quickly come to know, only because my
new mentor had the patience to teach me, to truly understand the law you
must look beyond what the law says and learn how to creatively apply
the concepts. And that’s what makes all the difference.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
During the time I was next to Ted I was preparing to have my first
“clemency” hearing. It’s one of those things we all go through and back
then they would schedule us for clemency review after our initial
“direct” appeal of the conviction and sentence of death were completed.
Only then, by legal definition, does the capital conviction and sentence
of death become “final,” if only by word alone.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But nobody actually would get clemency and we all know it was nothing
more than a bad joke, a complete pretense. I was still inexcusably
naïve, but Ted’s tutorage enlightened me and I dare say that if not for
that coincidence of being his neighbor at that particular time in my
so-called life, I would have been dead many years ago.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Back at that time, Florida had only recently established a state-funded
agency with the statutory responsibility of representing those sentenced
to death. But like most else in our “justice” system the creation of
this agency was really nothing more than a political pretense never
actually intended to accommodate our ability to meaningfully challenge
our conviction, but instead existed only to facilitate the greater
purpose of expediting executions.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A few years earlier as then Florida Governor “Bloody Bob” Graham
aggressively began to push for executions, at the time heading the
country in the number put to death, the biggest obstacle was the
complete absence of any organized legal agency willing to represent
those who faced imminent execution. Repeatedly, lawyers would be
assigned only at that last moment and then the courts would be forced to
grant a stay of execution until the newly assigned lawyers could
familiarize themselves with the case.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In 1985, Governor Graham and then Florida Attorney General Jim Smith
joined forces to push through legislative action to create a state
agency exclusively responsible for the representation of all
death-sentenced prisoners. They believed by doing so, it would speed up
executions, as lawyers would no longer be assigned at the last minute.
But many others argued that by creating this agency the state would
stack the deck by providing only lawyers connected to the state’s own
interests.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A compromise was reached in which a former ACLU lawyer known for his
advocacy on behalf of death row was hired as the new agency’s first
director, and soon after Larry Spalding then hand-picked his own staff.
This small group of dedicated advocates quickly succeeded in all but
stopping any further executions in Florida and the politicians did not
like that, not at all.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For those of us on the Row, it gave us hope. We knew only too well that
the insidious politics of death manipulated the process from the very
day we were arrested to that final day when we would face execution.
Anybody who thinks our judicial system is “fair” has never looked into
how the law really works. And with the agency exclusively responsible
for representing all those sentenced to death now at the mercy of
politically motivated legislative funding, it didn’t take long before
the conservative, pro-death politicians in Florida realized that by
simply denying the agency adequate funding they would render the work
meaningless while still technically complying with the judicial mandate
of, at least by statutory definition, providing the necessary legal
representation to carry out more executions.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At the time, I had already waited over a year for a lawyer to be
assigned to my case, but because of the inadequate funding of the
agency, none were available. For the entire Death Row population quickly
approached 300, the Florida legislature provided only enough money to
hire 3 staff lawyers. It was an impossible job, but they remain
committed.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Fortunately, with Ted as my neighbor, I received assistance not
available to others, and through his guidance I was able to file the
necessary motions requesting assignment of what is known as
initial-review collateral counsel. Although none were available, it
still built up the record and although like many others who were forced
to pursue their initial post-conviction review through such a
deliberately corrupted process, at least I was able to get my attempts
to have collateral counsel assigned to my case into the permanent
record, and although as intended, I was deprived of my meaningful
opportunity to pursue this crucial collateral review, thanks to Ted’s
assistance, that foundation was laid long ago.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It only took our Supreme Court another 25 years to finally recognize the
same constitutional concept that Ted walked me through so long ago—that
fundamental fairness and “due process” required the states to provide
competent and “effective” assistance of initial-review collateral
counsel and if actions attributable to the states deprived a prisoner of
that meaningful opportunity to pursue the necessary post-conviction
review, then an equitable remedy must be made available. See Martinez v
Ryan, 132 Sect. 1309 (2012).</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I would say that Ted is probably rolling over in his grave and smiling
at all this, but I know he was never buried. It was his choice to be
cremated and have his ashes spread in the Cascade Mountains, where he
called home.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Perhaps this is one of the lessons I had to learn in those early years
when I first came to Death Row. I shared many preconceived opinions that
most in our society would. Because of what I heard of Ted Bundy, I had
expectations that soon proved to be an illusion. Often over the years I
have struggled with the judgments we make of others around us, only too
quickly forgetting that while we go through our lives throwing stones,
we become blissfully oblivious to the stones being thrown at us.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Maybe we will want to call him a monster, and few would deny the evil
that existed within him. But when I look to those who gather outside on
the day of yet another state-sanctioned execution, I now see that same
evil on the face of those who all but foam at their mouth while
screaming for the death of one of us here. That doesn’t make these
people evil, per se, but merely reminds me of a truth I came to know
only by being condemned to death: that both good and evil do
simultaneously co-exist within each of us and only by making that
conscious effort every day to rise above it, can each of us truly hold
any hope of not succumbing to it and becoming that monster ourselves.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Being condemned to death is often ultimately defined by the evolution of
our spiritual consciousness. I know all too well that there will be
many who will want to throw stones at me because I dared to find a
redeeming quality in someone they see as a monster. And as those stones
might fall upon me, I will wear those scars well, knowing that it is
easy to see only the evil within another, but by becoming a stronger man
I can still find the good. And despite being cast down into the bowels
of a hell, that ability, and even more importantly, that willingness to
find good in those around me has made me a better man.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was around that same time that the hands of fate brought me into
contact with another man I knew long before I came to Death Row. The
thing about this micro-community we are cast down into is that it really
is a very segregated world. Unless you get regular visits—which very
few ever do—you’re never around any others but those housed on your
particular floor.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Not long after I came to be housed on R-wing, I went out to the
recreation yard and recognized a familiar face. I knew him as Tony
(Anthony Bertolotti) and back in 1982 we did time together at Baker
Correctional, a state prison up near the Georgia state line. I was the
clerk for the vocational school program at Baker while Tony worked as a
staff barber. Because both of us were assigned “administrative” jobs, we
were both housed in the same dormitory, just a few cells apart.
Although he wasn’t someone I hung out with back then that small measure
of familiarity created a bond and we would talk for hours about those we
once knew.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But Tony wasn’t doing so well. Like me, he had been sentenced to death
in 1984 and in just those few years he had already given up hope. That
was common, but few actually acted upon it. Tony was one of these few,
and at the time he was beginning to push to force the governor to sing
his death warrant, which he did subsequently succeed and became one of
Florida’s first “voluntary” executions. His only perception of reality
around him was cast within a dark cloud, so dark no sunshine could
appear. And his own escape from that reality was to pursue that myth
they call “finality” by bringing about his own death.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So, there I lay that early fall morning. If at that moment I were to get
out of that bunk and stand at the front of my cell, I know that I could
look straight outward a couple hundred feet in the distance and clearly
see that grass-green building we know as the generator plant, which
stood just on the other side of the rows of fencing crowned with even
more rows of glistening razor wire. And then by looking off to my right
of the wing, immediately adjacent to the one in which I was housed, I
could see the windows on the first floor that I knew would be where the
witnesses gathered when they carried out each execution.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although I knew these sights well, as well as the sound and smell of
that generator plant that they cranked up every Wednesday to test the
electric chair (long after that electric chair was banished and replaced
with lethal injection they continued to crank that generator up),
instead I chose to lay there in my bunk with my eyes closed and
manipulate those sounds and smell into a memory that didn’t drag me down
and even bring about a smile.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
There was another time in my life when I would be awoken to the sound
and smell of a diesel generator, and it too was all about how I chose to
perceive it. When I was 15 years old I left home and found the only
kind of job a homeless teen could by working with a traveling carnival,
mostly around the Chicago area.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Most people might find it unimaginable that a “child” of 15 would be out
on his own, but if they knew what life was like at “home” then they
might understand why I can look back at that time and find a measure of
happiness I seldom experienced in my so-called life. Leaving home as a
teenager was not so much a choice, but a means of survival. I wasn’t
alone—all my siblings also dropped out of school and left “home” at
their earliest opportunity and so at least for me, finding work with a
traveling carnival was a blessing, as the alternative was to live on the
streets.<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the spring of 1976, shortly before my 16th birthday, I left Florida
with a carnival that had worked the local county fair, assured I would
find work when they joined another show in the Chicago area. But it
didn’t work out that way as it was still too cold for the carnivals to
set up. For the first few weeks I had no work and no place to stay. I
had no money for food and tried to find a meal at a Salvation Army
kitchen only to be interrogated by the volunteers who insisted they had
to send me “home.” I left without being fed and never again went to a
shelter.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At that time in my life, while most my age were just starting High
School, living on the streets and sleeping on layers of cardboard boxes
was better than being forced to return home and once the weather warmed
up and the carnival could set up, I found work at a game concession
paying twenty dollars a day—and the boss allowed me to sleep at night in
the tent.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Each morning when it was time to start opening the show, that generator
would crank up and first that distinctive machinery rumbling would be
heard followed only a moment later by that sulfuric smell of the diesel
exhaust, and when I closed my eyes that same sound and smell still made
me smile, is just like waking up to that job I found at 15, it brought
me, at least mentally, to a safer place that anything I knew of as
“home” and the freedom of being on my own.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Now when I hear (and smell) that generator just as I did the first time
on that chilly early fall morning of 1985, I am reminded that whether it
be man or machine, it’s all in how we choose to see it, as the evil
within anyone or anything can only exist if one chooses to focus on
that. But just as I learned from coming to actually know the person that
was Ted Bundy, and finding that although evil acts can undoubtedly be
attributed to him, he was not all evil, but also possessed that measure
of a man within that had good, it is also true for the many years that
would follow as if I’ve learned nothing else through this experience, it
is that this evil that exists within the manifestation of the men (and
women) around us exists on both sides of these bars and no matter what
the source of evil might be, it can only touch and tarnish my own soul
if I allow it to.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
My lesson so long ago was that redemption (especially that of self) is a
mirror that we look into and it’s the image that looks back upon us
that ultimately defines who we are and more importantly, who we become. I
consider myself blessed to have been around those that society has
labeled as “monsters” as it has endowed upon me the strength to find
something good within each. And I know that as long as I can find a
redeemable quality in all others, there will still be the hope that
others will find something redeemable within me. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim3xFGkHy3PjMEG8oaYqQSUpTLaDkFojmbLrf2EsqlZyidxlXAKPDru7LxmvMhNFoaoBnKVS3irqEQWKIk7ZL3osi455X7Wx-76ssjxqwGkyShxLJbrLNj-qULDJpZy5-dQ9wS6DkmgP0/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim3xFGkHy3PjMEG8oaYqQSUpTLaDkFojmbLrf2EsqlZyidxlXAKPDru7LxmvMhNFoaoBnKVS3irqEQWKIk7ZL3osi455X7Wx-76ssjxqwGkyShxLJbrLNj-qULDJpZy5-dQ9wS6DkmgP0/s320/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Lambrix 482053<br />
Union Correctional Institution<br />
7819 NW 228th Street<br />
Raiford, FL 32026</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-37281154682868916932015-06-25T02:19:00.002-07:002015-12-18T10:49:39.333-08:00The Other Side of the Coin Written by Michael Lambrix for the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-other-side-of-coin.html" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six</a> website<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On April 28, 2015, the Supreme Court held “oral arguments” on an
Oklahoma case that argues that the drug Midazolam Hydrochloride used in
the lethal injection process fails to adequately render the intended
victim unconscious, resulting in the executing inflicting unnecessary
pain and suffering in violation of the Constitutional prohibition
against “cruel and unusual punishment.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A decision is expected to be rendered by the end of June. Until this
issue is resolved, executions in numerous states (including Florida)
have been put on hold. But the general consensus among legal experts is
that the Supreme Court will find (by a predictably narrow margin of 5 to
4) that despite the overwhelming evidence of numerous prisoners seen to
have remained conscious after this drug (Midazolam) was administered it
fails to establish that measure of “deliberate indifference” necessary
to prove an infliction of “cruel and unusual punishment.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Undoubtedly guiding the Supreme Court’s anticipated decision in June will be the narrow 5 to 4 decision reached in <u>Baze v Rees</u>, 553 <i>U.S.</i>
35 (2008) in which the court rejected a similar argument challenging
the use of sodium thiopental as the initial anesthetizing drug used in
Kentucky’s executions.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It must be emphasized that there is no dispute that if the initial
anesthetizing drug used in the “three drug cocktails” does not render
the person unconscious, upon injection of the following two drugs the
prisoner will suffer incomprehensible physical pain. But as the Supreme
Court has repeatedly held, simply because an execution method may result
in pain, either by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death,
it does not establish the sort of “objectively intolerable risk of harm”
that qualifies as “cruel and unusual.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When it comes down to it, what the Supreme Court has consistently said
is that, as a matter of constitutional law, it is perfectly acceptable
to inflict incomprehensible pain and torture upon the prisoner as long
as it cannot be proven that those acting upon behalf of the state didn’t
actually intend to inflict unnecessary pain.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Rather, physically torturing a person to death under the pretense of
administering justice only arises to an unconstitutional infliction of
cruel and unusual punishment if it can be proven (not merely alleged)
that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to a “substantial…or
objectively intolerable risk of harm.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Historically, the Supreme Court has not recognized any form of “botched
execution” to be in violation of this constitutional prohibition against
inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment,” as in every instance in
which the condemned prisoner suffered incomprehensible pain (i.e.
“botched execution”), during the execution process, prison officials
conveniently attributed this to an unforeseen accident…oops, sorry ‘bout
that.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To be clear, in the case currently before the Supreme Court challenging
the use of Midazolam as the initial anesthetizing drug there is no
dispute that the condemned man clearly was conscious and continued to
physically struggle as the subsequent two lethal drugs were
administered. Whether or not he suffered incomprehensible pain for a
prolonged period of time is not in dispute.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Instead, those challenging this particular lethal injection protocol
bear the burden of convincing a majority of the Supreme Court – the same
pro-death penalty conservatives who consistently remain openly hostile
to any challenge of the death penalty – that prison officials should
have known that this drug Midazolam was not going to render the prisoner
unconscious.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Quite simply, the ends justify the means and in a nation determined to
equate justice with vengeance at every level, as long as the majority of
Americans remain indifferent to the means of inflicting death, our
Courts simply will not take the action necessary to end this inhumane
infliction of torturous death.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But I would like to introduce into this debate an argument that seems to
be completely ignored…the psychological effect on the condemned
prisoner as he (or she) is strapped to that gurney awaiting that
uncertainty of a prolonged and torturous death, and more importantly,
why as a presumably civilized society we should even care whether
condemned prisoners experience physical pain when they are put to death.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I already know from experience that as soon as I (or anyone else) dares
to say that we should empathize with the pain inflicted upon the
condemned, they will see this as somehow negating the tragic suffering
of the victim of the crime. But one is not mutually exclusive of the
other and allowing the pain and suffering inflicted upon the victim to
justify indifference to the pain and suffering we then choose to inflict
upon the condemned only reduces all of us to the same measure of
monster we so quickly condemn.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Before anyone can be sentenced to death, the court must first identify
and find what is called “aggravating circumstances,” specific
circumstances unique to each case that makes that particular case stand
out as something more than the “typical” murder as (at least in theory)
the death penalty can only be imposed upon the “worst of the worst.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By Supreme Court mandate – to conform with that same constitutional
prohibition against the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment –
each state that seeks this ultimate penalty is obligated to prove <i>beyond a reasonable doubt </i>that these special circumstances exist.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One of the most common “aggravators” used to impose death was that the
victim’s death was the product of a depraved mind. In Florida, this is
known as “heinous, atrocious, and cruel.” But regardless of each state’s
particular terminology, the definition remains the same…that the
victim’s death encompassed an intent not to merely kill, but to inflict
unnecessary pain and suffering, often this <i>is not</i> defined by the infliction of physical pain, but instead upon the psychological fear of imminent death.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is but one of the irreconcilable paradoxes that exists in the
contemporary administration of the death penalty…if it can be shown that
the victim suffered the psychological fear of imminent death or
experienced physical pain “beyond that of typical death” then those
circumstances warrant the imposition of death as a punishment.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But when the state imposes that some measure of imminent fear of death
and even unnecessary physical pain resulting from a “botched execution,”
then the courts will excuse this as an unintended consequence.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Imagine for a minute that you are the condemned prisoner. First you will
spend many years in continuous solitary confinement as the appellate
review drags out and the uncertainty of your fate weighs down upon you.
The only people you remain close to through those years are the
condemned men around you and as time passes they will be dragged off to
their death – or, more often than not, they will simply rot away one day
at a time until they die of “natural causes.” Just as many more will
slowly detach from reality and slip into a world of their own making as a
means of escaping reality.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But somehow you maintained the physical and mental strength to survive
that prolonged process intended to break even the strongest men and only
then will you be rewarded with that visit from the warden as they show
up at your cell door and emotionlessly announce that your own execution
has been scheduled and you will immediately be transferred to the “death
watch” cell where you will suddenly find yourself completely isolated
from all those who until that moment provided your support. And then
that clock begins to tick away as you count down those last weeks, then
days, then hours, until they plan to kill you.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
You are utterly helpless as you are forced to confront your own
mortality and with each tick of that clock you take yet another step
towards that fate and not even a moment goes by that you will be allowed
to forget that they intend to kill you.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But that undeniable imminent fear of death is only part of the
psychological process they will impose upon you, as the entire process
is designed to methodically break the condemned prisoner down; to reduce
him (or her) to something less than human, as by breaking us down to
that point in which we are no longer seen as human, then it makes it so
much easier to put us to death.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What few ever take even a moment to consider is that those of us who are
condemned actually live among, even in close proximity to, those who
are then put to death. We are each only too aware of the “botched
executions” and it takes on a personal dimension to each of us.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In my own personal experience I have known a number of those who were
subjected to “botched executions.” As I write this, it has been a
quarter of a century since the May 4, 1990 execution of Jesse Toffero at
Florida Supreme Court. From the time I came to death row in March 1984,
I came to know him well, and his mother who visited him regularly.
Jesse was her only child and losing him was itself traumatic, but her
knowing what he went through in those final moments elevated the trauma
far beyond that few could even comprehend.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At the time the then Florida governor Robert “Bloody Bob” Martinez
adopted a policy and practice of aggressively signing “death warrants”
in an attempt to expedite executions, it was not uncommon for Governor
Martinez to sign at least two death warrants a week and to keep up to
twelve men (and women) under imminent threat of execution.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In September 1988 Gov. Martinez signed my death warrant along with two
others (Robert Teffeteller and Amos King). We were all scheduled to be
executed on November 30, 1988, but both King and Teffeteller received
stays of execution, leaving only me to go down to the wire (please read
my death watch account “<a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-day-god-died.html">The Day God Died</a>”). But I, too, finally received a last minute stay of execution and was returned to the regular death row housing area.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Upon my return to the regular wing, Jesse was one of the first to
welcome me back and send me a few celebratory snacks. Back then the
death-row community was much closer than it is not – as our numbers grew
and the years passed, we’ve become divided amongst ourselves.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A little over a year later Governor Martinez signed another death
warrant on Jesse and there was not room on Q-wing, so the warden
converted the first five cells on 2-north, R-wing to an improvised
“death watch.” As coincidence would have it, it was housed on that floor
at that time. Jesse’s death warrant had him scheduled for execution in
about 4 weeks and he remained on 2-north for the first few weeks, and we
talked every day.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Towards that last week of April they moved Jesse to the formal death
watch cell on the bottom floor of Q-wing, only a few feet away from the
execution chamber. But Jesse was confident that he would quickly win a
stay of execution as substantial new evidence was discovered that
supported his innocence and would subsequently lead to his
co-defendant’s (Sonya Jacobs) exoneration and release from death row.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But his claim of innocence fell on deaf ears and his final round of
appeals was denied. In the early morning hours of Friday, May 4, 1990,
the state of Florida proceeded to carry out the execution of Jesse
Taffero in what by all accounts seemed to be just another “routine”
execution.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Without exception, all those who gathered to witness Taffero’s execution
uniformly agreed that it was anything but routine. As they sat in
silence only a few feet away, separated only by a glass window, they
watched in horror as the masked executioner pulled the switch to begin
that first fatal cycle of electricity – only to have the electric chair
malfunction and as that surge of electricity connected, Jesse quite
literally burst into flames before them, and they could see that Jesse
was still alive and physically struggling against the leather
restraints.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the flames could be visibly seen, smoke and the putrid smell of
burning flesh filled the room. The executioner didn’t know what to do,
so he hit the switch again, but it only caused even more flames, and
again they could still see Jesse struggling despite the two failed
attempts to execute him. Nobody really knew what to do – they never
trained for failure. But after too many minutes passed, they again hit
the switch for a third time and only then did Jesse die, slowly tortured
to death in a scene straight out of the worst nightmare one could
imagine.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Later an investigation would conclude that those responsible for
carrying out the execution failed to properly saturate the sponge in the
saline solution used to ensure conductivity, resulting in what laymen
would say was a “short” in the connection, causing that artificial
sponge to catch fire.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But it would take two more similar “botched executions” in Florida’s
electric chair (Pedro Median and Allen Davis) before Florida only
reluctantly surrendered its three-legged monstrosity and switched to
lethal injection in early 2000.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
However, even though they would argue that lethal injection was more
humane, it too has repeatedly proven to be less than what they would
want us to believe. Shortly after Florida adopted lethal injection they
went to put Bennie Demps to death, but couldn’t find a vein in which to
insert the needle. At the last minute a member of the execution team –
presumably not a doctor as the American Medical Association prohibits
licensed physicians from participating in the execution process – found
some sort of scalpel and sliced Demps inner thigh open, causing
substantial blood loss, to access a vein in his leg and then the needle
was inserted. All the while Bennie Demps remained fully conscious and
strapped tightly to the gurney.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A few years later when Florida proceeded to carry out the execution by
lethal injection on Angel Nieves Diaz on December 13, 2006, the person
responsible for inserting the needles into each of Angel´s arms ignored
obvious signs any trained medical personnel would have immediately
recognized that both needles had actually pierced through his veins and
onto the soft tissue beyond.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Once again a room full of witnesses watched in horror as a man was quite
literally tortured to death a few feet in front of them. For what was
determined to be a full 34 minutes, and not until two separate doses of
lethal drugs were pumped into his veins, Angel Diaz physically struggled
in obvious pain. Later, an autopsy would find chemical burns on both
his arms, and a conclusion that he undoubtedly suffered “excruciating
pain” (see article, “<a href="http://staugustine.com/stories/020607/state_4384595.shtml#.VXC37OvUNUQ">Expert: Key Signs Ignored in Botched Execution of Miami Killer</a>” by Phil Davis, Orlando Sentinel, February 5, 2007).<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Despite indisputable evidence that botched executions are only too
common, repeatedly a narrowly divided Supreme Court has consistently
rejected the notion that inflicting incomprehensible physical pain
during this state-sanctioned ritual of death constitutes the infliction
of “cruel and unusual punishment.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The problem is that proponents of the death penalty have successfully
manipulated the focus of this inquiry exclusively on the relatively
temporal infliction of physical pain at that moment of the botched
execution, ignoring entirely the irrefutable <i>psychological torment</i> the intended victim of such executions endures.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Our legal system has long recognized that the infliction of emotional
duress is a form of injury subject to judicial redress. If a person
slips and falls at the local grocery store, or is hit by a truck causing
considerable physical injury, that person is legally entitled to seek
compensation for the psychological duress inflicted, often to an even
greater extent than the physical injury itself.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Equally so, the infliction of psychological trauma upon the victim of a violent crime – especially <i>the torture</i>
one endures as the result of being aware of their imminent death – is
often the decisive factor in determining whether the perpetrator of that
crime is constitutionally eligible for a sentence of death.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So, why is it that when confronted with this virtual epidemic of
“botched executions” the entire focus is exclusively on that infliction
of physical pain and our courts conveniently ignore altogether the more
obvious infliction of psychological trauma imposed upon the condemned?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To me, it’s not so much about whether the condemned person actually
suffered physically when that execution is carried out, but instead
whether that condemned prisoner suffered the psychological trauma of
knowing that once they did proceed with their practiced ritual, one he
(or she) remained helplessly strapped in that gurney and waited for the
executioner to begin that fatal process, would they yet again screw up?
Instead of simply being put to death, would they “unintentionally” botch
that execution and that condemned prisoner then be subjected to what
nobody denies will be a prolonged and torturous death?<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I do realize that some would argue that those we condemn to death
deserve nothing more than that infliction of physical pain, and that the
more they suffer, the better. Fortunately, those who are consumed by
their own malicious need to inflict a torturous death upon another human
being are few and do not represent the broader consensus.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When it comes down to it, this simple truth remains…whether it is an
individual, or as a collective society, we are ultimately defined not by
what we say, but what we do. It is our actions, not our words, which
paint the true picture of who we are.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If by our actions we so deliberately mimic the actions that we recognize
define “the worst of the worst,” then how can we hope to become
something better than the worst if all we strive to be is nothing more
than the worst?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Even the most staunch proponents of the death penalty (Supreme Court
Justices Thomas and Scalia) recognize that through the years since this
nation came to be, as a society we have grown intolerant of the
imposition of punishments that were once considered humane and
judicially necessary, practices that today would unquestionably “shock
the conscience” of a civilized society and in our more enlightened and
evolved social conscience be seen as a constitutionally intolerable
infliction of cruel and unusual punishment.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In <u>Baze v Rees</u>, 553 U.S. 35, 94-95 (2008) Justices Thomas and
Scalia concurred in the decision that a botched execution is not itself
sufficient to constitute the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment <i>absent evidence of a subjective intent to inflict physical pain</i> by providing an informative summary of the evolution of capital punishment in America.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on the “infliction of cruel and
unusual punishments” must be understood in light of the historical
practices that led the framers (of the Constitution) to include it in
the Bill of Rights.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That the Constitution permits capital punishment in principle does not,
of course, mean that all methods of execution are constitutional. In
English and early colonial practice, the death penalty was not a uniform
punishment but a range of punishments, some of which the framers likely
regarded as cruel and unusual death by hanging was the most common mode
of execution both before and after 1791 (when the U.S. Constitution was
ratified) and there is no doubt that it remained a permissible
punishment after enactment of the Eighth Amendment. “An ordinary death
by hanging was not, however, the harshest penalty of the disposal of the
seventeenth and eighteenth century state”: S Banner; <i>The Death Penalty: An American History</i>
(2002). In addition to hanging, which was intended to, and often did,
result in a quick and painless death, “officials also wielded a set of
tools capable of <i>intensifying</i> a death sentence,” that is, “ways of producing a punishment worse than death” Banner, id at 54.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One such “tool” was burning at the stake. Because burning, unlike
hanging, was always painful and destroyed the body, it was considered a
form of “super capital punishment worse than death itself.” Banner at
71. Reserved for offenders whose crimes were thought to pose an
especially grave threat to the social order – such as slaves who killed
their masters and woman who killed their husbands (contrary to
historical myth, burning at the stake was not reserved exclusively for
alleged “witches”) burning a person alive was so dreadful a punishment
that sheriffs sometimes hanged the offender first “as an act of charity”
Banner at 72.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Other methods of intensifying a death sentence included “gibbeting” or
hanging the condemned in an iron cage so that (only after prolonged
death by starvation) his body would decompose in public view: see Banner
at 72-74, and “public dissection,” a punishment Blackstone associated
with murder, 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries, 376 (W. Lewis ed 1897). But
none of these were the worst fate a criminal could meet. That was
reserved for the most dangerous and reprobate offenders – traitors. “The
punishment of high treason,” Blackstone wrote, was “very solemn and
terrible” and involved “emboweling alive, beheading and quartering.”
Thus, the following death sentence could be pronounced on men convicted
of high treason:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“That you and each of you be taken to the place when you came, and from
thence be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where you shall
be hanged by the necks, not till you are dead, that you be severally
taken down while still alive, and your bowels be taken out and burnt
before your faces – that your heads be then cut off, and your bodies cut
in four quarters, to be at the King’s disposal. And God Almighty have
mercy on your souls” G. Scott, History of Capital Punishment 179
(1950). </blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The principal object of these aggravated forms of capital punishment was to terrorize the <i>criminal</i> and thereby more effectively deter the crime. Their defining characteristic <i>was that they were purposely designed to inflict pain and suffering beyond that necessary to cause death.</i>
As Blackstone put it, “in very atrocious crimes, other circumstances of
terror, pain or disgrace were superadded.” These “superadded”
circumstances “were carefully handed out to apply terror where it was
thought to be frightening to contemplate” Banner, 70.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the Supreme Court’s two most zealous proponents of the death penalty
went on to reluctantly concede, all these forms of capital punishment
were subsequently found to “offend the notions of a civilized society”
sufficient to “shock the conscience” and constitute the infliction of
cruel and unusual punishment, as “embellishments upon the death penalty
designed to inflict pain for pain’s sake also would have fallen
comfortably within the ordinary meaning of the word ‘cruel’ see U. S.
Johnson, <i>A Dictionary of the English Language 459 (1773)</i>
(defining ‘cruel’ to mean “pleased with hurting others; inhuman;
hardhearted; void of pity; wanting compassion; savage; barbarous;
unrelenting”). In Webster, <i>An American Dictionary of the English Language 52</i> (1828) (defining “cruel” as “disposed to give pain to others, <i>in body or mind</i>, willing or pleased to torment, vex or afflict; inhuman; destitute of pity, compassion or kindness”).<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Although our moral compass continues to evolve, since the introduction
of electrocutions as a means of execution, the Supreme Court has
declined to recognize <i>any</i> contemporary means of execution as
“cruel and unusual” despite repeated examples of horrifically botched
executions such as that addressed in <i>Louisiana ex rel. Francis v Resweber</i>
329 U.S. 459 (1947) in which the electric chair famously failed and the
condemned prisoner survived – only to have the Supreme Court conclude
that the failure to kill the condemned prisoner was merely an “accident”
and instructed the State of Louisiana to strap that prisoner in again
and try to do a better job the next time. Virtually no consideration was
given to the obvious psychological trauma inflicted upon this condemned
prisoner.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When it is clear that virtually every member of our Supreme Court
unequivocally recognizes that what constitutes the infliction of cruel
and unusual punishment are not so much the means in which the death
penalty is administered, but whether <i>the process itself</i> was
“designed to inflict torture as a way of enhancing a death sentence;
(and) intended to produce a penalty far worse than death, to accomplish
something more than the mere extinguishment of life. <i>The evil the Eighth Amendment targets is intentional infliction of gratuitous pain</i> which basically has been recognized to give pain to other <i>in body or mind</i>.”<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In good conscience, can anyone deny that the condemned prisoner will
undoubtedly experience incomprehensible psychological trauma not merely
because of his (or her) imminent death, but because of the knowledge
that this imminent ritual may not actually produce a “painless” death,
but instead inflict a prolonged and unquestionably excruciating and
torturous death?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When I consider this issue, I am reminded of the many examples of
classic literature I read through the years and how each reached beyond
simply telling a story to instead illustrate a greater truth. And it was
confronting that inconvenient truth that elevated each to historical
significance.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When Mary Shelley wrote the fictional book “<i>Frankenstein</i>,” it was
not simply a story of man creating a monster, but how the monster then
infected society with a fanatical need to destroy that monster and in
that process, consumed by that need to conquer this beast, they became
the monster. So too did the story go in “<i>Moby Dick</i>.” Ahab’s
obsession with slaying that Great White Whale blinded him and then
destroyed him. In the end, the beast presumably survived.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So too does the story go with this struggle to define whether any
particular method of execution constitutes the infliction of cruel and
unusual punishment – we become consumed with only that physical
infliction and conveniently oblivious to the psychological trauma the
condemned prisoner must endure.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I have no doubt that in time future generations will look back upon our
contemporary society and they will struggle to understand how a society
that prides itself on the humane treatment of all people could at the
same time blind itself to the infliction of such a barbaric ritual of
death. And for what? Nobody can claim that only the worst of the worst
are being put to death. And we know that those we do put to death could
even be innocent as our judicial system is far from perfect. So we
cannot even say that justice is being served.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the end, the one question that needs to be addressed is simply
whether we, as a society, want to define our moral conscience by
mimicking the same measure of depravity that we condemn in the “worst of
the worst.” If the best that we strive to be is nothing more than the
worst of those amongst us, can we ever truly hope to become something
better ourselves?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoq609ciL7y06Bp9toL5kAZ8DNQLN6nIuTr_ZNCUzw9tut6xqtpfR9Jf5daZq1mGOf86hYGCvOvpEip8rvwf5Zdb3tm0lJmxxx2GUWFCUEPiKtixwthER0HzSZbV-u3rPUQ07dMrFLos4/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoq609ciL7y06Bp9toL5kAZ8DNQLN6nIuTr_ZNCUzw9tut6xqtpfR9Jf5daZq1mGOf86hYGCvOvpEip8rvwf5Zdb3tm0lJmxxx2GUWFCUEPiKtixwthER0HzSZbV-u3rPUQ07dMrFLos4/s320/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Lambrix 482053<br />
Union Correctional Institution<br />
7819 N.W. 228th Street<br />
Raiford, FL 32026</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
By
Michael Lambrix written for the Minutes Before Six website - See more
at: http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/#sthash.lc28TbgN.dpuf</div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-29650264243267115882015-05-20T10:33:00.001-07:002015-05-20T10:52:26.931-07:00Alcatraz of the South, Part 6: When the Dreams Began – The Dance With Death <div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By Michael Lambrix written for the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2013/11/alcatraz-of-south-part-4-between-life.html" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six</a> website</span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To read Part 5 click <a href="http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/2014/04/alcatraz-of-south-part-5-when-reality.html" target="_blank">here</a><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It shouldn’t have been this cold when it was barely October, at least
not here in Florida and yet there I was awaken in the dead of the night
soaked in a cold sweat. Instantly wide awake, I had been all but
violently catapulted back into this realm of reality by the first
nightmare that I could recall, and even to this day more than a quarter
of a century later, I still remember it only so well.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was early October 1986, and I had recently been moved to another
cell, one just vacated by the condemned man who had hung himself from
the ventilation duct in his desperate attempt to escape the reality that
was “Death Row”. I’m not the superstitious sort and never put much
stock into “ghosts,” at least not until that night. Over the years I’ve
heard my share of stores that would probably make most shudder and been
awaken many nights by the screams of another prisoner who claimed to
have seen something – some even claimed to have been physically touched.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I suppose that is should be expected, given the violence and inhumanity
that hangs like a wet blanket over any prison. Especially one with the
dark history of Florida State Prison, where far more have died a violent
death than have been put to death by state sanctioned execution on the
infamous “Q-wing.” At the time I could see it from the distant catwalk
window from that particular cell I then occupied.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It was strange, and yet familiar, as most dreams can be. Shadowy shapes
crowned by featureless faces that could not be recognized. But there
was a part of your inner consciousness that knew who they were. Each
detail was branded into my steel bunk, the well-worn mattress soaked in
my own sweat and now stinking of urine and other bodily fluids I don’t
care to contemplate, and I lay as still as a trembling man might,
staring anxiously at the small steel-grated ventilation duct, as if I
perhaps if stared long enough, I would see what something within me
believed to be there.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Time becomes irrelevant when one remains trapped between what we might
dare call “reality” and that world in which our mind plays when we dare
to drift off to sleep. You know what I’m talking about. We have all
been there in our own way. Only, this was my first trip to that abyss
where my own consciousness balanced precariously between those two
worlds.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I could not bring myself to look around for fear that it was not a
dream. I could only lay still, willing them to go away. But they
didn’t leave. They had come for me, the cruel trick of a twisted mind.
I would be deprived of those last few days and hours I had mentally
come to count on. They would rob me of those moments in which I could
convince myself I had cheated death, reminding me of that truth we all
try to deny: that when it comes down to it, nobody really cheats death.
In the end, nobody gets out alive – nobody.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In this nightmare, my time had come and now all that remained was stolen
time that would soon expire. But it was only a dream – a nightmare, or
was it? In that moment, it seemed so real that it had to be real.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I felt myself reading upwards until my hand touched the top of my head
in a desperate attempt to reassure myself, as we all know only too well
that they will shave the condemned man’s head before that final hour.
Something within me involuntarily screamed as my sweaty palm ran its
way across my head, realizing to my horror that it was shaven and so it
had to be real, and my fear rose to a new level. Like a trapped and
cornered animal, I felt that panic within me and turned to face that
voice of that angel-of-death that now stood before me, dressed in black
as if it was the Grim Reaper himself. It was the prison warden and he
looked back at me with an emotionless stare, while all but chanting
those few words no condemned man wants to hear… “It’s time to go!” He
had been through this many times and had long ago become enslaved by the
strict routine – or as they call it, “protocol.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Behind the warden stood the prison chaplain. Desperately, our eyes
momentary locked as I stared into his soul, hoping to find even the
slightest hint of mercy and compassion, and yet my stare was met only by
the graven gleam of a man only too willing to deliver my soul into the
very pits of hell himself, and that ever so slight smile that ripped
apart his cracked lips confirmed that I would find no measure and mercy
from the man of “God”…and I should have known better than to expect
such. I have never known a prison chaplain that had anything but
uncompromised malice towards all condemned prisoners.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nowhere to run, no on to turn to, I felt myself rising from that bunk,
moving in a crab-like crawl towards the black wall and unable to go any
further, unable to escape….and they stepped forward towards me. I could
not get away. I was hopelessly trapped and apparently the only one who
didn’t know it. With nothing more than a nod of his head, two faceless
guards came towards me. I felt that need to struggle, to fight, but I
didn’t…I couldn’t. They knew what to do and without hesitation, they
grabbed me by my upper arms from both sides, all but immobilizing my
body with their seemingly superhuman grip. Within me, I screamed, I
struggled, but my own fear had paralyzed me into complete submission.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Almost dragging me from within that relative sanctuary that was my
solitary cell, I pled with my captors as they pulled me into that
brightly lit hallway. If only I had a few more minutes, just a little
bit more time, I would win a reprieve. They didn’t have to do this, I
argued. But my pleas fell upon calloused ears and again all became
silent as I was physically pulled towards the open solid steel door that
led beyond and into the fate that awaited me.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In that silence that can only scream from within, my mind continued to
struggle and beg with my captors and yet those words within me wouldn’t
come out. My body numbly continued forward as I felt so utterly
helpless, so completely alienated from all that was being played out.
It was not really happening – it could not be happening, and yet, it
was.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As a group, with my body still firmly gripped at each side by the
muscular guards, we stepped into that death chamber and there only a few
feet in front of me, I came face to face with that seemingly surreal
chariot of death they proudly proclaimed to be “ole Sparky,” Florida’s
infamous inmate-built electric chair. There it sat in a state of
inanimate, deathly patience as it awaited its next victim and in that
distorted reality of which the worst of dreams are made, I could feel
that tangible presence of pure evil that this heavy oak, three-legged
wooden beast was. It was alive as only the monster of beasts could be,
its unquenchable thirst for the soul of the next condemned man felt by
all within its presence.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The entourage continued to step forward into this unnaturally cold
chamber of death, delivering my body on to that perverse altar of
state-sanctioned sacrifice. Consumed by an overwhelming fear that only a
condemned man about to be executed could understand, I could only stare
ahead in wide-eyed terror as every minute detail became forever branded
upon my brain and yet in a surreal sort of way, I could see nothing at
all and felt trapped within a freeze frame picture show as if I was
somehow separated from my body and looking upon the events, yet another
witness to my own imminent execution.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I could see my own body as the guards brought me up to the very presence
of this man-made monster and only then ordered me to turn around so
that I could be seated and as my body obediently complied. I then felt
that first touch of that cold wooden oak chair as the unyielding hands
of the only too eager guards guided me down upon it and without further
hesitation commences to firmly secure my limbs to that chair. I could
feel the cold, clammy leather straps as they were deliberately pulled
tight around each of my wrists. I briefly dared to look into the eyes of
one of the guards as he lowered himself down almost as if kneeling
before me to then secure each of my lower leg about where my calf was to
this solid wooden beast, and I was taken aback by that empty,
emotionless absence of a soul of a man and just as quickly turned away.
It was like looking into the very eyes of evil itself, and I only felt
again that distinctive tightening of another leather strap as that wide
black leather restraint was pulled tight around my waist and I then
became all but one with that chair, helplessly immobilized and unable to
resist any further even if I could have found the strength within me to
do so and in that moment in time, I knew that my fate was sealed.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr_V4LtD68gv-B8Ou91in7QlrVRLvT-k6CIIsfOasVY1UqnM2SPOz1osEOumBr9otv_oib_cgU_Gbrz3Y6O-cetpd2msi6exmVoPEHSCUlOe7LOlFZIsa-6x5kCKe5qosGBr9MbTVRhIo/s1600/a4s_sparky052414_13177647_8col.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr_V4LtD68gv-B8Ou91in7QlrVRLvT-k6CIIsfOasVY1UqnM2SPOz1osEOumBr9otv_oib_cgU_Gbrz3Y6O-cetpd2msi6exmVoPEHSCUlOe7LOlFZIsa-6x5kCKe5qosGBr9MbTVRhIo/s320/a4s_sparky052414_13177647_8col.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Behind me not more than a few feet away, I could hear whispered voices
instructing an unseen executioner, each word thunderously echoing within
and yet strangely muffled so that I could not make out the actual words
– and yet although not comprehended audibly. I knew what each word
said. Lost in that momentary struggle to focus on the voice, I
unexpectedly felt the cold steel of the heavy electrode as it was pushed
almost violently against my inner ankle as yet another belt-like
leather strap was pulled tight to keep it in place. I could feel the
weight of that heavy black wire now firmly attached to my leg and as I
looked down, I could see how it snaked its way along the beige
faux-marble tile floor only to disappear somewhere behind me.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Without warning, my head was forcibly pulled upward and back by these
same strong and determined hands and as it was, I felt the two parallel
blocks of wood which would immobilize my head between them, and yet
another clammy leather strap was pulled across my forehead and secured
tightly behind the chair and just that quickly I could no longer move my
head at all. I still felt myself struggle to do so, but it could not be
done.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Frantically, with only my eyes free to move, I looked directly forward
only to see what appeared to be my own reflection looking back at me
from the glass window panes that separated that chamber of death from
the spectators that had voluntarily gathered to watch me die this day.
At first, for what seemed to be an eternity, I remained transfixed to
that reflection of myself and could now see the fear within my own eyes
as if I had myself become one of those spectators and waited now to
watch myself die a deliberate and violent death. As these fragmented
thoughts raced through my head, I could feel my own hear thumping louder
and louder with each thump-thump reverberating through my entire body
and then violently echoing in my head like powerful waves continuously,
yet methodically, crashing upon a rocky shore.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Beyond my own reflection, I could see the shadowy shapes of the
statuesque figures of the witnesses that sat silently in the gallery
beyond. That glass panel that separated their space from the death
chamber was a world away and the dim light beyond played tricks with my
perception. It seemed as if perhaps it was nothing but carefully
arranged mannequins. I could detect no movement and try as I might to
look into their eyes, desperately darting my own eyes from one to the
next, not one made any movement at all, but simply stared at me with a
blank, stare reminding me of a sinister oil painting I had once seen.
The perception of time passed seemed to cease for me. It could not had
been more than a minute that passed.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I felt a hand as it touched my shoulder and the warmth of another’s
breath near my ear. It was the prison chaplain, asking if I had any
last words. I had many words and wanted so much to say what I felt in
my heart, and yet, I could not say a word. I became imprisoned in that
prolonged silence as I mentally struggled to utter a sound, any sound.
And I know that I didn’t want that prison chaplain anywhere around me,
most especially at the time of my death. It felt like an unforgiveable
act of betrayal that at the very moment I so desperately needed to know
that God had not abandoned me, the only representation by anyone acting
as a man of God would be a man that I knew held nothing by contempt for
true spiritual faith.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But I was nothing more than a state-sanctioned circus and each of the
clowns had their own part to play. My part was to die and it was
expected that I would not stray from the script. If I played my part
well, then once I was gone, the group of guards and prison
administrators would congratulate themselves on what a fine and
outstanding job they did.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I struggled to speak a few incoherent words. Even I could not make out
what I had said. In that ghostly reflection of the glass I could see the
chaplain almost smiling as I felt his hand gently pat my shoulder, and
just as he did, the guard standing behind the chair suddenly pulled down
a leather mask over my face. Although serving its purpose of hiding my
face from those who would be horrified if compelled to watch the
involuntary muscular contortions as they would soon rip through my
facial tissue, I could still see light coming from both sides of that
leather mask, and was by no means blinded myself.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Continuing the ritual with the precision of a properly trained drill
team, I felt a heavy weight at the top of my head as unseen guards moved
quickly to now attach that metal colander atop the leather scull cap
and then the heavy wire to that single brass screw. I felt water
running down my face and the smell of salt – and the unmistakable scent
of previously burnt flesh – and found myself wondering why they didn’t
at least use a new sponge, as we all knew that they would attach that
piece of natural sponge soaked in a saline solution so as to serve as
the conductor between the electrode and my shaven head.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That apparatus affixed to the top of my head was secured by yet another
leather strip with a crudely fashioned small cup brought down to my chin
and pulled unnecessarily tight, so tight that it forced my teeth
together in physical pain. I knew that my last moments were now all but
exhausted and in a moment of sudden calmness, that blanket of fear that
had hung over me as I played my own part in this twisted ritual of
death was suddenly lifted. In that moment of clarity of thought and
consciousness, I felt as if time had suddenly frozen altogether, even
the whispered voices echoing in an otherwise unnatural silence seemed to
cease and all was quiet, even too quiet.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But just as quickly that overwhelming fear returned with a forceful
vengeance and somehow I knew that within those next few seconds my
nightmare would take its final twist. I continued to stare straight
ahead, eyes wide open looking forward into that darkness of that black
leather mask. I was stricken by a violent physical force that ripped
through my body with an unimaginable pain as if ever molecule of my
being was simultaneously being ripped apart, and I could feel that
warmth of my own urine running down my thighs and puddling in the
recesses of that chair, and my body violently strained against the
straps that held me and swithin the very depths of my soul I felt myself
scream as only a man being electrocuted could and it wouldn’t stop. I
remained fully aware of each pulse of electricity that was shoot through
my head down into my back and through my left foot and out that
electrode attached to my ankle.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As my body arched in unnatural contortion, I felt my fingertips
desperately dig into each of the arms of that heavy oak chair, molding
themselves into the slight recesses previously imprinted by past patrons
of this infamous chariot of death and forever continued to slip slowly
by one eternal second after another, and that unspeakable pain wouldn’t
stop, cutting through me like a dull knife, ripping my organs apart with
its shear force and all the while I could hear the distinctive sound of
a phone ringing and found myself wondering why nobody would answer the
phone….</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And then I awoke. It was so cold, as if death itself, and yet my body
was soaked from head to toe in sweat, and I lay there motionless,
trembling uncontrollably and yet willing myself not to move lest they
realize that I am still alive and proceed to put me through this again.
I could still hear that phone ringing in the distance, and as I slowly
awoke I realized that it was coming through the window out on the
catwalk, where just a few feet away a phone hung on the wall for the
recreation yard crew. But why would anyone call that number in the
middle of the night when nobody would be out on the rec yard at that
hour?<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
That was but my first dance with death, and although as the years
dragged by I would have many, too many other similar dreams of my own
death, not one remained branded within my very being like that first one
was. And when I would awaken on other sleepless nights vaguely aware
that I must have been dreaming again, I found that the dream I
remembered would always be that first nightmare that I had back in the
early fall of 1986 and it would continue to haunt me with a
determination that only the angel of death could possess.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As the years passed, Florida did away with the electric chair and banish
that three-legged monstruosity to an undisclosed warehouse where it
would remain as a piece of history that would come to be looked upon
just as today we look with morbid fascination upon the relics of that
dark history of humanity’s past.<br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
For as many years as Florida continued to use that electric chair, at
least in those years that I have been here now, they have adopted use of
a gurney upon which the condemned man would be strapped and rendered
physically immobilized in that same chamber of death as a lethal dose of
drugs would be pumped into his (or her) veins until death was
inflicted.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And yet in all those years since the use of lethal injection replaced
the use of that chair, not even once have I ever dreamed of my own death
by lethal injection, and to this day when I do awake knowing that I yet
again was visited by that nightmare of so long ago, it is still always a
death by electrocution in that chair and no other.<br />
<br />
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That was October 1986 and although a lifetime ago and in a cell at
another prison, (in December 1992, Florida opened the then newly
constructed “northeast unit” at nearby Union Correctional Institution to
house the majority of death-sentenced prisoners), that nightmare is
never far from my consciousness and I know without doubt that others
around me have had similar nightmares of their own death and yet we do
not dare talk about it. And no matter how many more years might yet
pass, I know only too well that that one night in October 1986 will
always be part of who I am, and that I can never escape the trauma
inflicted upon my very soul and know that if the day does come when I am
to be put to death, I will not find the real experience as frightening
as that first nightmare.</div>
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</div>
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<i>To be continued....</i></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMMHoVr6CgZuOOzRH2YOBPvHFaOqVcs9JQYUoOQU59ZdZ9hETP_8Xn3ExFL1_cy-VIpZApPCmHCLoMYl3durKIgn8zyTEeDyqv7VRGKlsisM0PW2JFBOp820rLYgsb7dSJwvZqOhifBA0/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMMHoVr6CgZuOOzRH2YOBPvHFaOqVcs9JQYUoOQU59ZdZ9hETP_8Xn3ExFL1_cy-VIpZApPCmHCLoMYl3durKIgn8zyTEeDyqv7VRGKlsisM0PW2JFBOp820rLYgsb7dSJwvZqOhifBA0/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Lambrix 482053<br />
Union Correctional Institution<br />
7819 NW 228th Street<br />
Raiford, FL 32026</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-64268162144542252692014-12-10T23:58:00.000-08:002014-12-11T00:02:01.562-08:00Please Spare Michael Lambrix's Life - sign the petition!<span style="color: #0066cc;"><div class="ellipsis" data-ellipsis="" data-height="100" data-read_more="<div class="mask-text mask-text-brighter js-read-more"><div class="text-bar text-bar-right man"><a class="link-stealth text">Read more <div class="symbol symbol-bracket-down mrn mtxxxs"></div></a></div></div>" data-text="Joined by a strong commitment to justice, the undersigned respectfully request that the clemency authorities of Florida allow a full Clemency Review for Michael Lambrix DC#482053, born March 29, 1960, who faces execution for a double murder for which he was convicted in 1984. Among our reasons for requesting this are as follows:<br /><br /><br />1. The initial trial in 1983 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial was held in 1984. The jury’s recommendation of the death sentence was not unanimous. Michael Lambrix has consistently stated that he acted in self-defense and has protested his innocence of capital murder. <br /><br />2. There has been a failure of the judicial process, allowing the case to fall through the cracks. A range of new evidence has come to light since Mr. Lambrix’s last clemency review in 1987, which itself was perfunctory. This includes exculpatory evidence which was never presented to the jury, such as the fact that a key witness has retracted her trial testimony and the State’s main witness admitted under oath in an evidentiary hearing that she had been sexually involved with the Chief Investigator for the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation. Another key witness later (post-trial) withdrew her testimony, leaving no witnesses who still contend that the homicides were committed in the way that they were presented to the jury. A full and fair review of all the evidence has never been conducted. <br /><br />3. Executing Michael Lambrix after he has already spent 30 years under sentence of death for a crime which is surrounded by such serious doubts would be inappropriate and inhumane, if not immoral. Where the ultimate punishment is handed down, there must also be the ultimate certainty. By any measure, this certainty is not present in this case.<br /><br />4. Michael Lambrix has repeatedly made it clear how the events continue to haunt him and how not a day goes by that he doesn’t feel remorse.<br /><br />5. The life of Michael Lambrix has demonstrable value. He has, against the odds, attempted to make the most of his time on death row. Having come from a deeply troubled background and having been regarded at school as developmentally disabled, he has managed to educate himself in the most difficult of circumstances and is clearly a man of considerable intellect and inner resources. Among other things he spends his time helping other prisoners with their legal work.<br /><br />6. His writings and his correspondence with people in the US and in other countries around the world have earned him high respect and have been an inspiration to many people.<br /><br />Given the doubts surrounding the conviction and the sentence handed down, we respectfully ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review to ensure that a full clemency review be granted for Cary Michael Lambrix and failing that to grant commutation to life imprisonment." data-tolerance="20" data-view-attached="true" data-view="components/ellipsis">
<span class="dotdotdot"></span> </div>
<div class="ellipsis" data-ellipsis="" data-height="100" data-read_more="<div class="mask-text mask-text-brighter js-read-more"><div class="text-bar text-bar-right man"><a class="link-stealth text">Read more <div class="symbol symbol-bracket-down mrn mtxxxs"></div></a></div></div>" data-text="Joined by a strong commitment to justice, the undersigned respectfully request that the clemency authorities of Florida allow a full Clemency Review for Michael Lambrix DC#482053, born March 29, 1960, who faces execution for a double murder for which he was convicted in 1984. Among our reasons for requesting this are as follows:<br /><br /><br />1. The initial trial in 1983 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial was held in 1984. The jury’s recommendation of the death sentence was not unanimous. Michael Lambrix has consistently stated that he acted in self-defense and has protested his innocence of capital murder. <br /><br />2. There has been a failure of the judicial process, allowing the case to fall through the cracks. A range of new evidence has come to light since Mr. Lambrix’s last clemency review in 1987, which itself was perfunctory. This includes exculpatory evidence which was never presented to the jury, such as the fact that a key witness has retracted her trial testimony and the State’s main witness admitted under oath in an evidentiary hearing that she had been sexually involved with the Chief Investigator for the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation. Another key witness later (post-trial) withdrew her testimony, leaving no witnesses who still contend that the homicides were committed in the way that they were presented to the jury. A full and fair review of all the evidence has never been conducted. <br /><br />3. Executing Michael Lambrix after he has already spent 30 years under sentence of death for a crime which is surrounded by such serious doubts would be inappropriate and inhumane, if not immoral. Where the ultimate punishment is handed down, there must also be the ultimate certainty. By any measure, this certainty is not present in this case.<br /><br />4. Michael Lambrix has repeatedly made it clear how the events continue to haunt him and how not a day goes by that he doesn’t feel remorse.<br /><br />5. The life of Michael Lambrix has demonstrable value. He has, against the odds, attempted to make the most of his time on death row. Having come from a deeply troubled background and having been regarded at school as developmentally disabled, he has managed to educate himself in the most difficult of circumstances and is clearly a man of considerable intellect and inner resources. Among other things he spends his time helping other prisoners with their legal work.<br /><br />6. His writings and his correspondence with people in the US and in other countries around the world have earned him high respect and have been an inspiration to many people.<br /><br />Given the doubts surrounding the conviction and the sentence handed down, we respectfully ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review to ensure that a full clemency review be granted for Cary Michael Lambrix and failing that to grant commutation to life imprisonment." data-tolerance="20" data-view-attached="true" data-view="components/ellipsis">
<span class="dotdotdot"><span style="color: red;">SIGN THE PETITION </span><a href="https://www.change.org/p/governor-rick-scott-please-spare-michael-lambrix-s-life" target="_blank">HERE</a></span></div>
</span><br />
<strong><em><u><span style="color: #0066cc;">Michael Lambrix has been on death row for nearly 31 years.</span></u></em></strong><strong><em> </em></strong><br />
<strong><em></em></strong><br />
<strong><em>He has always maintained that he acted in self-defence and there are grave doubts about the safeness of both the conviction and the death sentence. His family and pen friends around the world would be deeply affected by the loss of a friend they have learned to know, admire and respect.<br />A clemency submission was filed on 5 December. This calls for a full clemency review, at which witnesses could be called, rather than the limited review on paper that has so far been allowed.</em></strong><br />
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Letter to</div>
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<strong>Office of Executive Clemency</strong> <span>Governor Rick Scott</span></div>
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<strong>Commission on Offender Review</strong> <span>Florida</span></div>
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<span></span> </div>
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<div class="ellipsis" data-ellipsis="" data-height="100" data-read_more="<div class="mask-text mask-text-brighter js-read-more"><div class="text-bar text-bar-right man"><a class="link-stealth text">Read more <div class="symbol symbol-bracket-down mrn mtxxxs"></div></a></div></div>" data-text="Joined by a strong commitment to justice, the undersigned respectfully request that the clemency authorities of Florida allow a full Clemency Review for Michael Lambrix DC#482053, born March 29, 1960, who faces execution for a double murder for which he was convicted in 1984. Among our reasons for requesting this are as follows:<br /><br /><br />1. The initial trial in 1983 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial was held in 1984. The jury’s recommendation of the death sentence was not unanimous. Michael Lambrix has consistently stated that he acted in self-defense and has protested his innocence of capital murder. <br /><br />2. There has been a failure of the judicial process, allowing the case to fall through the cracks. A range of new evidence has come to light since Mr. Lambrix’s last clemency review in 1987, which itself was perfunctory. This includes exculpatory evidence which was never presented to the jury, such as the fact that a key witness has retracted her trial testimony and the State’s main witness admitted under oath in an evidentiary hearing that she had been sexually involved with the Chief Investigator for the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation. Another key witness later (post-trial) withdrew her testimony, leaving no witnesses who still contend that the homicides were committed in the way that they were presented to the jury. A full and fair review of all the evidence has never been conducted. <br /><br />3. Executing Michael Lambrix after he has already spent 30 years under sentence of death for a crime which is surrounded by such serious doubts would be inappropriate and inhumane, if not immoral. Where the ultimate punishment is handed down, there must also be the ultimate certainty. By any measure, this certainty is not present in this case.<br /><br />4. Michael Lambrix has repeatedly made it clear how the events continue to haunt him and how not a day goes by that he doesn’t feel remorse.<br /><br />5. The life of Michael Lambrix has demonstrable value. He has, against the odds, attempted to make the most of his time on death row. Having come from a deeply troubled background and having been regarded at school as developmentally disabled, he has managed to educate himself in the most difficult of circumstances and is clearly a man of considerable intellect and inner resources. Among other things he spends his time helping other prisoners with their legal work.<br /><br />6. His writings and his correspondence with people in the US and in other countries around the world have earned him high respect and have been an inspiration to many people.<br /><br />Given the doubts surrounding the conviction and the sentence handed down, we respectfully ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review to ensure that a full clemency review be granted for Cary Michael Lambrix and failing that to grant commutation to life imprisonment." data-tolerance="20" data-view-attached="true" data-view="components/ellipsis">
<span class="dotdotdot">Joined by a strong commitment to justice, the undersigned respectfully request that the clemency authorities of Florida allow a full Clemency Review for Michael Lambrix DC#482053, born March 29, 1960, who faces execution for a double murder for which he was convicted in 1984. Among our reasons for requesting this are as follows:<br /><br /><br />1. The initial trial in 1983 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial was held in 1984. The jury’s recommendation of the death sentence was not unanimous. Michael Lambrix has consistently stated that he acted in self-defense and has protested his innocence of capital murder. <br /><br />2. There has been a failure of the judicial process, allowing the case to fall through the cracks. A range of new evidence has come to light since Mr. Lambrix’s last clemency review in 1987, which itself was perfunctory. This includes exculpatory evidence which was never presented to the jury, such as the fact that a key witness has retracted her trial testimony and the State’s main witness admitted under oath in an evidentiary hearing that she had been sexually involved with the Chief Investigator for the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation. Another key witness later (post-trial) withdrew her testimony, leaving no witnesses who still contend that the homicides were committed in the way that they were presented to the jury. A full and fair review of all the evidence has never been conducted. <br /><br />3. Executing Michael Lambrix after he has already spent 30 years under sentence of death for a crime which is surrounded by such serious doubts would be inappropriate and inhumane, if not immoral. Where the ultimate punishment is handed down, there must also be the ultimate certainty. By any measure, this certainty is not present in this case.<br /><br />4. Michael Lambrix has repeatedly made it clear how the events continue to haunt him and how not a day goes by that he doesn’t feel remorse.<br /><br />5. The life of Michael Lambrix has demonstrable value. He has, against the odds, attempted to make the most of his time on death row. Having come from a deeply troubled background and having been regarded at school as developmentally disabled, he has managed to educate himself in the most difficult of circumstances and is clearly a man of considerable intellect and inner resources. Among other things he spends his time helping other prisoners with their legal work.<br /><br />6. His writings and his correspondence with people in the US and in other countries around the world have earned him high respect and have been an inspiration to many people.<br /><br />Given the doubts surrounding the conviction and the sentence handed down, we respectfully ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review to ensure that a full clemency review be granted for Cary Michael Lambrix and failing that to grant commutation to life imprisonment.</span></div>
<div class="ellipsis" data-ellipsis="" data-height="100" data-read_more="<div class="mask-text mask-text-brighter js-read-more"><div class="text-bar text-bar-right man"><a class="link-stealth text">Read more <div class="symbol symbol-bracket-down mrn mtxxxs"></div></a></div></div>" data-text="Joined by a strong commitment to justice, the undersigned respectfully request that the clemency authorities of Florida allow a full Clemency Review for Michael Lambrix DC#482053, born March 29, 1960, who faces execution for a double murder for which he was convicted in 1984. Among our reasons for requesting this are as follows:<br /><br /><br />1. The initial trial in 1983 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial was held in 1984. The jury’s recommendation of the death sentence was not unanimous. Michael Lambrix has consistently stated that he acted in self-defense and has protested his innocence of capital murder. <br /><br />2. There has been a failure of the judicial process, allowing the case to fall through the cracks. A range of new evidence has come to light since Mr. Lambrix’s last clemency review in 1987, which itself was perfunctory. This includes exculpatory evidence which was never presented to the jury, such as the fact that a key witness has retracted her trial testimony and the State’s main witness admitted under oath in an evidentiary hearing that she had been sexually involved with the Chief Investigator for the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation. Another key witness later (post-trial) withdrew her testimony, leaving no witnesses who still contend that the homicides were committed in the way that they were presented to the jury. A full and fair review of all the evidence has never been conducted. <br /><br />3. Executing Michael Lambrix after he has already spent 30 years under sentence of death for a crime which is surrounded by such serious doubts would be inappropriate and inhumane, if not immoral. Where the ultimate punishment is handed down, there must also be the ultimate certainty. By any measure, this certainty is not present in this case.<br /><br />4. Michael Lambrix has repeatedly made it clear how the events continue to haunt him and how not a day goes by that he doesn’t feel remorse.<br /><br />5. The life of Michael Lambrix has demonstrable value. He has, against the odds, attempted to make the most of his time on death row. Having come from a deeply troubled background and having been regarded at school as developmentally disabled, he has managed to educate himself in the most difficult of circumstances and is clearly a man of considerable intellect and inner resources. Among other things he spends his time helping other prisoners with their legal work.<br /><br />6. His writings and his correspondence with people in the US and in other countries around the world have earned him high respect and have been an inspiration to many people.<br /><br />Given the doubts surrounding the conviction and the sentence handed down, we respectfully ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review to ensure that a full clemency review be granted for Cary Michael Lambrix and failing that to grant commutation to life imprisonment." data-tolerance="20" data-view-attached="true" data-view="components/ellipsis">
<span class="dotdotdot"></span> </div>
<div class="ellipsis" data-ellipsis="" data-height="100" data-read_more="<div class="mask-text mask-text-brighter js-read-more"><div class="text-bar text-bar-right man"><a class="link-stealth text">Read more <div class="symbol symbol-bracket-down mrn mtxxxs"></div></a></div></div>" data-text="Joined by a strong commitment to justice, the undersigned respectfully request that the clemency authorities of Florida allow a full Clemency Review for Michael Lambrix DC#482053, born March 29, 1960, who faces execution for a double murder for which he was convicted in 1984. Among our reasons for requesting this are as follows:<br /><br /><br />1. The initial trial in 1983 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial was held in 1984. The jury’s recommendation of the death sentence was not unanimous. Michael Lambrix has consistently stated that he acted in self-defense and has protested his innocence of capital murder. <br /><br />2. There has been a failure of the judicial process, allowing the case to fall through the cracks. A range of new evidence has come to light since Mr. Lambrix’s last clemency review in 1987, which itself was perfunctory. This includes exculpatory evidence which was never presented to the jury, such as the fact that a key witness has retracted her trial testimony and the State’s main witness admitted under oath in an evidentiary hearing that she had been sexually involved with the Chief Investigator for the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation. Another key witness later (post-trial) withdrew her testimony, leaving no witnesses who still contend that the homicides were committed in the way that they were presented to the jury. A full and fair review of all the evidence has never been conducted. <br /><br />3. Executing Michael Lambrix after he has already spent 30 years under sentence of death for a crime which is surrounded by such serious doubts would be inappropriate and inhumane, if not immoral. Where the ultimate punishment is handed down, there must also be the ultimate certainty. By any measure, this certainty is not present in this case.<br /><br />4. Michael Lambrix has repeatedly made it clear how the events continue to haunt him and how not a day goes by that he doesn’t feel remorse.<br /><br />5. The life of Michael Lambrix has demonstrable value. He has, against the odds, attempted to make the most of his time on death row. Having come from a deeply troubled background and having been regarded at school as developmentally disabled, he has managed to educate himself in the most difficult of circumstances and is clearly a man of considerable intellect and inner resources. Among other things he spends his time helping other prisoners with their legal work.<br /><br />6. His writings and his correspondence with people in the US and in other countries around the world have earned him high respect and have been an inspiration to many people.<br /><br />Given the doubts surrounding the conviction and the sentence handed down, we respectfully ask the Florida Commission on Offender Review to ensure that a full clemency review be granted for Cary Michael Lambrix and failing that to grant commutation to life imprisonment." data-tolerance="20" data-view-attached="true" data-view="components/ellipsis">
<span class="dotdotdot"><span style="color: red;">SIGN THE PETITION </span><a href="https://www.change.org/p/governor-rick-scott-please-spare-michael-lambrix-s-life" target="_blank">HERE</a></span></div>
</div>
</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-43540623711675508722014-09-01T23:44:00.002-07:002014-09-01T23:58:58.393-07:00When Death Hits Close to Home<span style="color: #45818e;">Through the too many years that I've been on Florida's death Row I've become only too familiar with death itself. Since I came in early 1984 over 80 men (and a few women) have been led away and killed by state sanctioned execution. Most of them i knew personally from living in close proximity for years on end, and a good number of those were friends. Just as many, if not even more, slowly rotted away in these solitary cages until old age and illness took its toll and they each died of what is officially called "natural causes', although i doubt whether there's anything "natural" about forcing another human being to "live" in a six foot concrete cage for not merely a few years, but decade after decade.<br /><br />Then there's those who had enough of this incomprehensible hell society so zealously imposes upon us under the pretence of administering justice and they bring an end to their own misery by suicide. And a handful of others died at the hands of other condemned prisoners getting stabbed to death on the recreation yard. Bottom line, death comes in many forms, but the one consistent element in our environment is that death is always hanging heavy in the air around us, only too quickly dropping down to claim its next victim. That's just the reality of the world in which we live - and die - in. ( Check out my book "<a href="http://deathrowjournals.blogspot.gr/2010/06/mikes-book-published-to-live-and-die-on.html" target="_blank">To Live and Die on Death Row</a>" by C Michael Lambrix)<br /><br />Somewhere along this journey I sometimes wonder whether I've grown just as apathetic towards death as our society seems to have. In the early years each execution cut deep within me and for days, even weeks, to follow I would feel that loss as if it was itself a part of me. Back then few of those I lived around died of "natural causes" as that particular fate has only began in the past 10 years or so. as the micro-community that we are grows older and older, just as I am.<br /><br />I was only 22 when I caught this capital case (be sure to check my case out at <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/" target="_blank">www.southerninjustice.net </a>) and at 23 I was cast down into the bowels of the beast we call "death row". When When I look in my mirror today I see an older man going bald and grey looking back at me, and am reminded that I am now 54 years old and a grandfather seven times over. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzcRdQtcTIyKStiu0aXoQERsCxkKxj9-WO6X8uHO48dXc4ViRSmk82auZQhUDClHOutrfAIM5EFtYim2Q5XZZ9qor6u7ijSMzQ_25q6FPdJt0th8Wl_JPUXTO-36cBTRn6PN8v653FzSw/s1600/youngmike3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzcRdQtcTIyKStiu0aXoQERsCxkKxj9-WO6X8uHO48dXc4ViRSmk82auZQhUDClHOutrfAIM5EFtYim2Q5XZZ9qor6u7ijSMzQ_25q6FPdJt0th8Wl_JPUXTO-36cBTRn6PN8v653FzSw/s1600/youngmike3.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Mike, age 22</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br />Time passes for all of us and that includes those family and friends outside who inevitably drift away until we are all but forgotten. That's just part of doing time and each day we are drifting further away from that real world we so long ago left behind. Like the majority of prisoners, most of those who are in my life today are friends I met since coming here.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br />Pretty much every prisoner knows of that bitterness that coils within our gut as we try to come to terms with that sense of abandonment we feel when we think of family and friends that long ago turned their backs on us. It's not the kind of thing anyone can truly get over.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br />But its for that reason that the few who do stay strong and stand by us mean all that much more. Myself, I have a rather large family with 9 brothers and sisters and countless others in my extended family. Through the past 30 years most of my siblings have married and are now grandparents themselves. But of all of them, I have only actually met one of my in-laws since I've been here, and my brother-in-law Billy visited many times, became more of a brother to me than any of my flesh and blood brothers ever even tried to be.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br />Some would say that Billy was the best thing that ever happened to my oldest sister Debbie. They've been together many years and it was meant to be as they made a great pair. Long before I claimed the crown of being the "black sheep" of the family, my oldest sister lived up to that distinction. When i was still a kid in grade school, she had ran away from home at 14 and found her refuge in among the "hippies" of the San Francisco area in the late 60's and 70's. By 15, she was pregnant and institutionalised in a mental hospital due to drug abuse.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br />But for all her early problems, Debbie is an incredible person whose strength and resilience I can only stand in awe of. She's never had an easy life and yet for all the misery and hardship that life has thrown at her, it has never broken her. Although as strong as the mightiest of oaks, she's long mastered the amazing ability to bend with the winds that blow her way.<br /><br /><br />Through the years, she comes and goes like the free spirit that she is and yet each time she comes back around its like she's never left at all. That communion we share binds us together, as of all of my family she is the only one who can empathise with the journey that my life has itself become, as although the rest of our many siblings have each stumbled along their own path, each landed on their feet and lived a relatively good life.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br />Many years ago Debbie met Billy and they became inseparable, fitting together so perfectly that all who knew them knew they were always meant to be, and perhaps for the first time in her life, Debbie found true happiness and a sense of completeness that could only be found by becoming one with your soul mate - and they became each others soul mate, always there for each other as they continued to struggle through life's hardships.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><br />Having found each other didn't make their lives that much easier in any material way as both shared a similar past of becoming lost in that underworld of substance abuse and being alienated from those around them. Like too many others, they struggled month by month to get by and when they could afford it, they would come visit me. Sometimes months, and even years, would pass between visits, but they would come back around when they could.<br /><br /><br />This past week Billy passed away. As a "disabled veteran" from the Vietnam war, his life was plagued by medical problems, but he got by and never let it drag him down. A few months ago he was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer and then went quickly. They first put him on life support at a local hospital, but Billy wanted to be home with his beloved wife, and in that last week they moved the hospital bed and medial equipment to their house, and there he remained until his last breath with my sister by his side.<br /><br /><br />Such is the diabolical nature of death - up until recently I found myself becoming almost immune to that pain that comes from the loss of someone close to you as in my own world those closest to me are dying all the time . Although I try to pay tribute to each that passes, I know that I unconsciously detach more and more as death claims its next victim, and then the next one after that.<br /><br /><br />But just when I thought I had finally found a way to roll with its punches, death took a different path and for the first time has hit close to home, or as close to what could be described as home since I really have no home to go home to. And once again, I find myself now struggling with that pain that I thought I had long ago became immune to.<br /><br /><br />Those who know me well - what I call my "inner circle" - know that in recent months I've had a pretty hard time. Just a few months ago I was planning to be married, which was something I'd never thought I'd do again as at 18 I had married my high school sweetheart and that didn't exactly turn out that well. By 21,I was divorced and my life went to hell, and I told myself I'd never again open myself up to that kind of pain again, and I didn't.<br /><br /><br />But then I met Karen and it didn't take long before we knew that we wanted to spend our lives together. She moved to Florida and visited me every weekend and holiday and I cannot even begin to put into words how it made me feel to have someone unconditionally commit to a relationship, to be there to share our hopes and dreams of what our future together might yet be and in those few hours each week when we were together I miraculously became free. Although the cold steel and stone of this prison continued to confine my body, that communion with Karen set me emotionally and spiritually free.<br /><br /><br />Just before Christmas last year, prison officials abruptly terminated our visitation privileges. As I fought to have our visits reinstated, Karen returned home to California and went to see her doctor about unexplained pains she was experiencing and in late January was diagnosed with cancer that had already spread to most of her vital organs. The reality of that news hit hard. Although realising that I would never see Karen again was itself painful, the greater pain was knowing what she would go through and the unfairness of it all as Karen was so full of life, so energetic and adventurous that her vibrant nature was contagious, and it just wasn't right. And all those hopes and dreams of a future we planned to share together were suddenly gone.<br /><br /><br />Like most others here, I don't get many visits and when you lose one of the very few who might visit, it hits hard. And no matter how often I must confront death as those around me are claimed one by one, and no matter how much I might emotionally detach myself from that sting of death, just when I think I might even becoming immune to that pain, I find myself again struggling to find a way to deal with this as those I hold close to me now are gone.<br /><br /><br />But even as much as I may find myself in pain over the loss of those so close, I realise that the loss of Billy will especially hit my sister hard. Although I may suffer this loss of someone who has become my brother, I can only hope that my sister will once again find the strength to overcome this loss as I know too well that in many ways Billy was her source of strength. As for me, death has found its way of hitting close to home and once again its sting sinks deep down into my soul.<br /><br /><br /><br />Michael Lambrix #482053<br />Union Correctional Institution<br />7819 NW 228th street<br />Raiford, Florida 32026</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;"><a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">www.southerninjustice.net</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /><br /> <br /> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-69661106295368526092014-08-30T22:20:00.003-07:002014-08-30T22:20:37.460-07:00When a Weeble Wobbles <div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">By Michael Lambrix</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Written for the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/when-weeble-wobbles.html" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six website</a> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall
down... oh so innocently ignorant of what this thing called life could
still bring, I can recall a particular child’s toy called a “Weeble,”
and that television commercial that always ran during Saturday morning
cartoons and it still makes me smile. It’s not so much the toy itself
that brings back these memories, but that catchy little jingle they used
to promote these Weebles… <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq0OQBdIhsc">“Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.”</a> It’s one of those tunes that has a way of getting caught in your head that can’t seem to shake.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I’m probably only one of a very few who
would even still remember Weebles, as in this age of techno-toys
designed to shock and awe each new generation of kids, such a simple and
unsophisticated toy would hold no interest. So, for those who haven’t a
clue of what I’m referring to, allow me to enlighten you. Weebles were
small, plastic toys with a rounded bottom and an upper body formed in
the image of a family. There was the mother and father and all the
children, and an entire assortment of colorful accessories such as
plastic cars they could ride in, if you were willing to push.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">With a little imagination and the
innocence of a child, they could be fun to play with in a time when toys
didn’t require batteries. But it wasn’t really the toys that remain a
memory – it was and is the incessant jingle and the way it rattles
around in what’s left of my arguably still functional brain cells. That
simple sentence has become a metaphor for my life, and I can’t get it
out of my head.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes when the walls close in around
me, I retreat into that world of my own and compel myself to conjure up
a chant. Like the Muppets’ rendition of the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY">“Bohemian Rhapsody,”</a> a
chorus of comical voices will join in a monotonic chant “Weebles
wooble, but they don’t fall down… Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall
down…” On and on, and still, I smile. It’s not necessarily a bad thing;
instead it’s become almost a source of inspiration. I’ve come to
accept – and even embrace – the truth that I am a Weeble, and like a
Weeble, I wobble, but I don’t fall down.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Funny how easy it is to tell ourselves
those little lies that help us make it through the day. Again, that
song that every death row prisoner knows the words of only so well comes
to mind (Bohemian Rhapsody) “is this the real life, is this just
fantasy, caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.” And reality
really does suck so thank God for Weebles; and more importantly, that
magical power within our own imagination that allows us to escape
reality and retreat into a world in which we can, even if only for a
moment, believe those little lies we like to tell ourselves and wobble
through the hell that is reality and still believe that we’re strong
enough not to fall down.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I look around me and what I see is a
world of steel and stone deliberately designed to break the strongest of
men so that through this methodical degradation of not merely the body,
but the mind itself, each of us will abandon any desire to resist, and
instead surrender to that fate that has stalked us through the years.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">As each of us is cast down into this
metaphoric abyss of lost humanity each day that passes is like that
proverbial drop of water eroding even the strongest of stones. I know
like so many other around me, I like to tell myself that I am stronger
than those drops of water and remain intact and year after year, decade
after decade, I struggle to see that stone I thought I once was. I
wonder what will become of me as each of those persistent drops of water
keep coming and coming.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Whether we want to call it erosion or
evolution, the result remains the same. Recently, circumstances
brought about my transfer from the main death row unit at Union
Correctional, (where the majority of Florida´s death-sentenced inmates
are warehoused while awaiting the uncertainty of their fate), to the
nearby Florida State Prison, which once housed all of death row before
they built and opened that “new” unit at Union Correctional. Very few
come back to this cesspool and of those that do, it is almost always
only under a newly signed “death warrant” to await their then scheduled
imminent execution on the infamous adjacent “Q-Wing.” <i>(Admin note: since this essay was written, Mike has been transferred back to UCI)</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Although I am not under a death warrant – at least, not quite yet, [please read <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-list.html">“The List”</a> ],
being thrown back into this beast brought back many memories. I'm
certainly not a stranger to this place that many of us have come to call
the Alcatraz of the South - and for a good reason. Over 30 years ago I
entered this soul-stealing succubus for the first time when I was once
still a young man [please read “Alcatraz of the South, <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/alcatraz-of-south-part-1.html">Part I</a>" and <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2013/05/alcatraz-of-south-part-ii-descending.html">"Part II"</a>] never thought for even a moment that I would grow old within these walls as I awaited my own still uncertain fate.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">When I first came to death row now well
over 30 years ago, my only fear was of the unknown. I never felt any
fear of death itself. I never expected that day would come when I would
be walked those final few steps and be put to death.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I certainly was no stranger to death.
From even those earliest of days all around me men were dying. The
reality that being condemned to death really did mean that they would
put you to death hit home even in those first few months when my first
cell-neighbor was put to death. Although a few others were executed
shortly after I joined the ranks of the Row, J.D. Raulerson was the
first one I knew personally. But by no means was he the last and as I
think back on this today I find myself unable to even remember many of
the faces of those men I once knew, and I now wonder how many will
remember me once I am gone.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I too have danced with death. Many
years ago I found myself under a death warrant and on Death Watch with
only hours before my own scheduled date with death. As my thoughts dare
to go back to that time, the memories remain as strong today as they
were a quarter of a century ago. It’s not the kind of experience anyone
would ever forget. Few of us ever look into the face of death and still
live to tell about it, but I did, and although I was forced to confront
my own mortality and even accept that I would die, in that moment in
which the fear of death would have itself overwhelmed me, instead by
seemingly divine intervention I found myself at peace [Please read of my
death-watch experience: <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-day-god-died.html">“The Day God Died.”</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In the years that followed my near-death
experience I found myself almost euphorically searching for that
ever-evasive meaning of life, intoxicated by that belief that it wasn’t
about heaven or hell, but that no matter what the end might encompass,
it would be “alright”. Somewhere deep within my own spiritual
consciousness I transcended beyond the darkness of this mortal life and
embraced that light within and it gave me the strength to wobble no
matter what would come along trying to knock me down.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps somewhere along that path I
became arrogant, subconsciously coming to believe that I was somehow
immune from these laws of nature that mandated that every man, no matter
who he might be, had that breaking point within, and once reached,
those drops of water would undoubtedly erode that stone and the
substance upon which he once stood would crumble beneath him. How dare
that I believe that I might had been immune when men much stronger than I
could ever hope to be have long crumbled and fallen into that abyss of
hopelessness that patiently awaits us all.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">For a condemned man, what is hope but
the sweet and seductive siren call of an illusory mistress that exists
only to lure you onto the rocky shores of your own destruction? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I laugh when I recall that as a much
younger man I once was when I survived that death-watch experience, I
dared to believe that I had defeated death. But nobody defeats death
and in the end, no matter whether you’re on this side of the bars or the
other side out there, nobody comes out alive.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But now know that this evolution of who I
am continues just as methodically as those drops of water that erode
the stone. And for that reason alone, I should not be that surprised
when I awake each day questioning the “why” of it all just as I did so
long ago when I first dared to think that I had defeated death.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The truth of the matter is that through
that near-death experience so long ago, I did die. I suppose some will
never understand that, as most will never see that as each day passes,
we all continue to evolve into the person we will yet become. Who I was
way back when I first came here is not who I am today. Although with
each drop of water peeling away the softer layers of that shell of a man
I once was, the stronger attributes of the substance of who I am
continued to resist that erosion until it could resist no more and gave
way to that evolution of that spiritual consciousness within With that
event the man that I am was born, but even he continued to erode until
yet another new man would crawl out of the embryonic slime</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">How dare I think I had defeated death
when death had become so much a part of who I am? I found myself
struggling with the wish that I had died that day so long ago. If I have
learned nothing else through these past decades as a condemned man, it
is that there truly are far worse than merely succumbing to a mortal
death.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But that doesn’t mean that I am ready to
die, and I certainly am not the suicidal type. Rather, knowing that at
any time the governor can sign a death warrant on me and again schedule
my state-sanctioned execution, I can’t help but wonder whether I should
fight it this time, or embrace the opportunity to end this perpetual
nightmare.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">There will be those that will say that
by even entertaining these thoughts I am expressing weakness or perhaps
pathetically screaming for attention – people truly do love to throw
stones. But given my familiarity with the world I am condemned within, I
know only too well that at some point all of us here find ourselves
having the same thoughts. It’s a product of the erosion and an inherent
part of that undeniable evolutionary process. Just as with each appeal
our hopes of defeating death are elevated, with each denial of judicial
relief those hopes are crushed. We wobble our way through these cycles
of despair, but at some point we just want to fall. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Disillusioned with the hypocrisy of
organized religion, and yet paradoxically affixed to an unshakable
belief in the importance of nurturing my spiritual self within, my life
has become a journey in search of greater truth that might give meaning
to it all, a truth that continues to evade me.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I am reminded of what I once read in
Victor Fankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning”. After spending years in
a concentration camp during the dark days of World War Two, trained
psychiatrist Victor Frankl tried to make sense of the incomprehensible
atrocities deliberately inflicted upon his fellow man by others who
embraced the belief that what they were doing was not simply justified,
but necessary in the interest of bringing about a better society, not at
all unlike the contemporary justifications our society today continues
to make in defense of the pursuit of the death penalty. One profound
truth he spoke of stands out amongst all others – (to respectfully
paraphrase) when a man can still find the will and the reason to live,
he can find the strength to survive and the means to do so.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The will to live…think about that for a
moment. How many of us have ever taken even a moment to ask ourselves
why it is that we want to live? There are many prisons in life and as
tangible as the steel and stone might be around me, it is by no means
the worst prison of all. I am certain that there are many out there in
the real world that go through their everyday lives in a form of prison
far worse than that I am in, whether it might be a bad relationship, or a
broken heart, or enslaved by alcoholism or drugs, or any other form
that strips us of our hope and that will to live. Each day becomes its
own struggle to survive and all the while we ask ourselves, why?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In the end, we are all condemned to die,
and nobody is going to get out alive. And when I dare think about it,
as a condemned man cast down into this abyss of solitary confinement,
deprived of all that which ultimately defines the very essence of this
thing we dare call life, at the end of the day I believe all share more
common ground than we dare to admit.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">When it comes down to it, we search for
meaning that defines our will to live. And most are blessed with
whatever it is that makes their life worth getting up for each day. Yet
from time to time some will be struck by that unexpected blow that tries
to knock them to the ground, but because they have that reason to live,
they merely wobble until the wobbling stops and their lives go on, and
even when they think they’ve fallen, they never really hit the ground.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But when blow after relentless blow
descends upon any man, at what point will even the strongest of men pray
for the wobbling to stop and just be allowed to fall? Where once I was
able to identify that reason that kept me pushing forward, I now look
out on the landscape of what my so-called life has become, and am no
longer able to see that proverbial rainbow on the distant horizon.
Instead all around me I see only those darkening clouds gathering with
the promise of that many more storms yet to come.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Without reason, where does one find that
will? At this point in my journey that inevitable fate that I found
the strength to deny through the many years now hangs over me like a
dark cloud descending down. I’ve fought the good fight, standing my
ground as the battle raged on around me. As so many others grew weak and
gave up, I remained standing. And for that my only reward was to
prolong my misery and suffering. In the end it seems that justice will
never prevail and it remains my fate to die, and that death inflicted
each day.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Where I once dreamed of the day freedom
would come, but like the faded photographs of a life that once was,
those dreams have themselves eroded away. Not so long ago I had even
dared to believe that at long last I would be joined in communion with a
hundred souls with whom I would share the rest of my days, but that too
was not meant to be and again I find myself alone. And it’s loneliness
that hurts the most of all.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I also struggle with my own conflicting
thoughts. Relatively speaking, there are many around me far worse off
than I. For a condemned man, some would even argue that I am blessed,
as I have that small circle of friends who catch me when I fall. When
my own strength fails, they are there to support me until I can once
again stand on my own feet, and few around me that have that. And yet I
still find myself feeling so alone and even abandoned by that world
beyond.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In recent months, through several court
rulings (denial of appeals arguing evidence of my consistently pled
claim of innocence. See: <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">www.southerninjustice.net</a>)
and other issues that have negatively impacted the fragility of my
existence here. I have endured blow after blow and like a Weeble, I have
wobbled my way through each blow. But in the past few months I found
myself increasingly obsessed with that one simple question, “why?”
Without hope or reason, there can be no will, and without the will to
live, life itself becomes a fate worse than death.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">No matter how deliberately monotonous as
life or death might be with the same routine playing itself out each
day with little variation to that routine for an infinite number of
days, each of us await the uncertainty of our own fate. I’m sure some
might argue that it is that unyielding monotony itself is enough to
drive any man insane. The truth of the matter is that monotonous routine
becomes a sort of security blanket in which we find a perverse measure
of comfort within. And as someone who is only too familiar with the
dynamics of Death Row can attest, what only too often breaks the psyche
of the condemned man is that unexpected event, or series of events, that
disrupts what has become an only too predictable routine.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Each of us can only see the world in our
own unique way and when we do find ourselves unexpectedly overwhelmed
by the circumstances, we each deal with it in our own way. Those very
few who do know me are already aware that the past months have been
difficult for me at many levels .I dealt with the anxiety of not knowing
whether my death warrant might be signed scheduling my execution and
various courts denying review of my appeals arguing my innocence. <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2014/07/elusive-butterfly-of-love.html">I was suddenly blindsided by loss of my former fiancée</a>.
Every element of my life that extended and sustained my hope and faith
was suddenly gone and although I remain blessed to have the few friends
who stand by me, I still felt overwhelmed and alone. And as I
struggled to find that strength to wobble my way through it, I found
myself increasingly all but obsessed with but one wish – to simply fall
and not have to get back up.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">When my spiritual strength fails me and I
must confess that more and more, it does and it becomes difficult to
believe in a God of love, mercy, and compassion when all I ever see is
hate, misery and suffering. Then I find myself searching for answers in
the philosophical foundations of men far greater than I could ever hope
to be. For as long as humanity has struggled along this journey we dare
call life, each of us in our own way has been haunted by the same
fundamental questions that once again confront in my desperate attempt
to make sense of it. And I know that just as I do now battle this demon
that has bruised and broken men far stronger than me, my struggle to
find that strength within is a battle that I share with all those
imprisoned no matter what form their particular prison might take.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">What I find is the unshakable truth that
even under the most tragic circumstances, what makes a Weeble wobble
without falling down is a Weeble’s willingness to confront the question
of “why” and try to make some sense out of the chaos. The simple truth
is that as long as we ask why and search for those answers, we will
continue to wobble. Only when we no longer possess that measure of
strength within ourselves and resign ourselves to that overwhelming
hopelessness does the wobbling fail us and we then fall.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">As I wobble my way through these darkest
of days I suddenly find myself smiling at the unexpected truth I yet
again discovered…being a Weeble really isn’t such a bad thing. As just
as long as I still have the strength to wobble, I won’t fall down.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgggjc4Ms0gbj88xYtxfJf06Tv70sOjQJVuZho6DPidgelhooieJUd37lmk4pmoFHCJiyzSIdiGpW6K09rJPTnvJHoF-NI6VQKm_Yv8NVeFXGQFjHS1P92fWTWKGcCW-fCFVUSdy-qBFUU/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgggjc4Ms0gbj88xYtxfJf06Tv70sOjQJVuZho6DPidgelhooieJUd37lmk4pmoFHCJiyzSIdiGpW6K09rJPTnvJHoF-NI6VQKm_Yv8NVeFXGQFjHS1P92fWTWKGcCW-fCFVUSdy-qBFUU/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Michael Lambrix 482053</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Union Correctional Institution (P2102)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>7819 NW 228th Street</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Raiford, FL 32026-4400</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-64895675729958645932014-06-21T23:35:00.005-07:002014-06-21T23:35:57.270-07:00Hello Darkness – My Old Friend <div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Written for <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/hello-darkness-my-old-friend.html" target="_blank">MinutesBeforeSix</a></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It is there in the dimly lit shadows of
the darkness that I find my comfort within this concrete crypt I am
condemned to not merely live, but ever so very slowly, die within. I
could simply reach up above my steel bunk and pull the long string that
dangles down from the fixture above and flood the confines with that
artificial light, but I choose not to. The darkness is my sanctuary,
where despite all the misery and chaos around me, I can retreat and sit
silently and find my solitude in this cell on Florida’s infamous Death
Row. The brightness of that light would be unnecessarily intrusive, an
unwelcome invasion that would serve to deprive me of those stolen
moments in time, in which I am able to momentarily detach from the
reality around me and retreat back into my own little corner, in my own
little world.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I already know too well what the light
world would reveal, as all day of every day now, for not merely months,
or a few years, but for decade after seemingly endless decade, and yet
another decade still, I have sat in this cold, concrete cage and I know
it as only a condemned man can, so intimately well that even when I
close my eyes, I can count the number of concrete blocks on each wall, I
can still see that plain and deliberately featureless, faded soft
pastel beige walls, accented by the dark, heavy wool horse blanket that I
am required to cover my bunk with each morning, as God forbid I might
be tempted to sleep a few hours during the day and then there’s the
black bars at the front of the cell, each bar spaced precisely four
inches apart, which allow me to look outward a few short feet upon yet
another wall of heavy steel bars, separating the outer catwalk and not
too far beyond that, the fortified narrow windows, long ago covered with
dust and debris, and yet in defiance, still barely allowing just enough
light through to know when it is day and when it becomes night.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">During the warmer months, these narrow
windows are opened just enough to allow a bit of air to flow through.
From time to time small birds will venture in and awaken me from my
early morning sleep with their chirping, which at first I found
inviting, as if they brought life itself to this culture of cold death.
But at some point along the path of time, this incessant chirping
became unbearable, as if their only intent was to tease and taunt me, to
so cruelly mock the man in the gilded cage before they fly away. I
began to find myself being driven by an overwhelming anger within me to
yell and scream at these demonic winged monsters and even throw small
items at the window screen to chase them away. After a while, birds no
longer came to visit as much and I find myself missing my little friends
now.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Once upon a time this relentlessly
monotonous micro-environment I am entombed within could be brought to
life with a few photos, faded reflections of a life that once was, but
the powers that be decreed that any sign of life hung from the walls was
somehow a security threat and not even one photo would be allowed. To
violate this draconian rule would result in the loss of the photo, an
immediate transfer to “lock-up” and the loss of the very few
“privileges” we might be afforded. Given that few privileges are even
allowed, this “punishment” would almost be ironically meaningless, if
not for the disruption to this methodical routine we come to almost
religiously cling to.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I’m told that long term solitary
confinement under such objectively oppressive physical conditions and
the deliberate deprivation of any meaningful interaction with others
will inevitably drive even the strongest of men insane and I’m sure
there are many who believe this to be true. Some might even argue
convincingly that this inevitable insanity is the objective, as when the
monsters of my fate cannot break the body, they become that much more
determined to break the spirit. But nobody yet has told me exactly where
that elusive line is that separates sanity from the slippery slide down
the proverbial rabbit hole leading into that bottomless abyss of
madness, in which seems that each of us is expected to descend is?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Each week the prison psychologist will
make his rounds of the death row unit and always without even so much as
stopping, do the required welfare check on each of us, as the state has
a vested interest in proving we have not become insane. We all know
that our psychological state is irrelevant. Even those who have long
ago slipped beneath the murky surface of insanity will be automatically
assigned a normal rating each week; any other conclusion that might dare
to call our sanity into question might later serve to obstruct the
state’s objective of putting us to death. Becoming insane and being
recognised as insane are two totally different things and prison staff
who conduct these psychological drive-bys are part of the machine.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I struggle to understand who these
people are who so pretentiously proclaim themselves to be normal and
insist that insanity is such a bad thing. If I have learned nothing
else in all the years that I have been entombed in my solitary crypt
awaiting the uncertainty of my fate, it is that my self-structured
psychosis provides my mental escape from this thing they want to claim
to be reality and that it is this reality that sucks, not insanity.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">When I sit silently in the comforting
darkness of my solitary crypt, I can often listen to the many others
around me in this monolithic warehouse of tormented souls, or on the
increasingly rare occasion when I might reluctantly venture out for a
few hours of “outdoor” recreation on the razor-wired concrete pad they
call our recreation yard and am able to see and even look into the
windows of the lost souls of condemned men around me, I find that I envy
those who now have that empty look in their eyes, those who have
already been blessed by the detachment from that burden of reality that
still weighs down heavily upon those of us not so fortunate.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">For them, they are the lucky ones, no
longer imprisoned by this cruel world around them. For them, the past,
the present and even the future and with it the uncertainty of their
judicially imposed fate have lost all meaning and although their
physical body may remain condemned to that solitary cage, their spirit
is free to fly away and soar high above the stormy clouds and into that
picture perfect blue sky beyond and as I witness their existence in a
world of their own making, I come to appreciate that insanity is
something any sane man in my predicament can only envy and I as again
retreat back into the recesses of my voluntary darkness do I find myself
praying to a long deaf god that I too one day soon might be blessed by
this gift of insanity, so that I too might find my own reprieve from the
harsh truth of reality.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Then there’s that whimsical wisp of hope
that keeps me pushing forward and I am reminded of a particular scene
in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption” in which the seasoned convict
(played by Morgan Freeman) is sitting at the table in the prison chow
hall, looking up at the fresh meat fate cast down upon them, and offers
this profound truth, that every convict will inevitably learn in their
own way, ”Hope will drive you insane.” Perhaps that is why in Dante’s
“Inferno,” as the desperate soul slowly stepped through that passageway
leading down to into the very depths of hell itself, he took a moment to
absorb those words inscribed above that portal into hell – “Abandon
Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.” Despite that paradox of clinging to hope
as a means of sustaining the strength to survive, yet knowing that each
time that hope is crushed, insanity steps another step toward you, so
many still so desperately cling to their hope.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But can hope drive a man insane if what
he truly hopes for is insanity? Only the helplessly naïve would think
that life and death were black and white, as only by being condemned to
living within the very shadows of death, while hopelessly bearing
witness as one by one around you are put to death in such an arbitrary
and utterly unpredictable manner, can you come to understand that death
itself comes in an infinite array of shades of grey – and even long
before they might come to drag the next man away do we know that
physical death too often follows long after the man within that fleshy
vessel has already died a slow and tortuous death of the spirit within.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">To understand the therapeutic value of
my voluntary darkness, one must first appreciate that death too often is
not a singular event, but a prolonged journey towards that finality
that is marked by the degradation of the inner-will with each stumbling
step. In my voluntary darkness, I have come to know that a man’s worst
fate is not to be condemned to death, but as if peeling away the layers
of a onion, each day is another step in which that will to live is
maliciously stripped away until only the inner core itself remains, a
mere fragment of the man that once was. With each layer, that light of
life within the windows of the soul dims just a bit more and the world
within takes on a darker shade of grey and only in our arrogance do we
attempt to define the precise moment of a physical death. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Only by attempting to understand why a
condemned man might be relentlessly haunted by such thoughts might
another understand why the darkness has become my friend and why as I so
willingly surrender to that darkness, I place such value in the power
to be able to choose whether to pull that string or not. Each day I
alone decide whether in that moment I will live or die as in that
voluntary darkness I inflict death upon the reality that imprisons me
and in the shadows of my refuge, I find a fleeting sense of peace,
knowing only too well that in the coming days, or weeks, or months they
will soon enough come to lead me away and as they place me in that
solitary cell, just outside that solid steel door that leads into the
execution chamber, I will no longer be blessed with the power to retreat
into that comforting refuge of my voluntary darkness, but will instead
be dragged into a brightly lit room, then strapped upon a gurney, as
just a few feet away, on the other side of a glass wall, a small crowd
of witnesses will have willingly gathered to silently witness my state
sanctioned execution.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">As I then lay physically restrained and
powerless upon that gurney, as those who have so methodically stalked my
death for so many years nod to the masked executioner standing but a
few feet away, as he pushes down on the plunger that will send that
lethal cocktail of chemicals into my veins, and as I draw that final
breath, I will once again find comfort and peace as the light fades away
and as that darkness of death descends down upon me, the temptation of
pulling that string will be no more. Just as in my solitary cell I have
been condemned to live alone, I too will now die alone and in the end,
darkness will be my only remaining friend.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwprJ-BG6XnOyXdtwav6kts_a8q6jxg5FhqekBu1d1A-_XDjdGWD1OxC_xyLR_BxT_THJ-B5NhdIsm13Y2YLmbjGo1DjS5_YNQPymb9TJ4m-mDPWbj85ed1fGP8y1V3FBwMhqAnUAHw6Y/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwprJ-BG6XnOyXdtwav6kts_a8q6jxg5FhqekBu1d1A-_XDjdGWD1OxC_xyLR_BxT_THJ-B5NhdIsm13Y2YLmbjGo1DjS5_YNQPymb9TJ4m-mDPWbj85ed1fGP8y1V3FBwMhqAnUAHw6Y/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Michael Lambrix 482053</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Florida State Prison</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>7819 NW 228th Street</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Raiford, FL 32026</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-34090253206664420312014-04-16T06:43:00.000-07:002015-05-20T10:48:25.324-07:00Alcatraz of the South, Part 5: When Reality Becomes Irrelevant <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
</h3>
<div class="post-header">
</div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By Michael Lambrix written for the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2013/11/alcatraz-of-south-part-4-between-life.html" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six</a> website</span> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Part 4 can be read <a href="http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/2013/11/alcatraz-of-south-part-4-between-life.html" target="_blank">here</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Some of the guys had already warned me
about Nollie – that he wasn’t quite right in the head so I shouldn’t pay
him any mind. By then, I had already been on the Row the better part
of a couple years and had pretty much settled in. It had been a rough
time, but I got by and when it came down to it, you sink or swim so I
learned to tread water and kept my head above that murky surface and
fought that always present undertow incessantly pulling at each one of
us. I was lucky. All around me I could see those like Nollie who had
been broken mentally and retreated into a world of their own where the
reality of the hell we were condemned to could no longer touch their
inner souls. They had been broken, and I wondered whether I too would
suffer that same fate, arguably a fate even worse than death itself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But all of those earlier warnings could
not have prepared me for the conversation I then had with Nollie out on
the yard. It wasn’t the first time I had spoken with him, and he seemed
like a nice enough guy, never once showing any obvious outwardly sign
of psychotically induced inclination towards violence like some of the
other “bugs” would show, signaling you’d best keep your distance.
Nollie stayed mostly to himself, and didn’t talk too much. While most
of us would play volleyball, or basketball, or work out on the weights,
during those two hours of time we were allowed on the yard twice a week,
Nollie and a few others would generally stay to themselves in one of
the corners and remain seemingly oblivious to the world around them.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In prison, we call them “bugs.” And
prisons had become the new mental institutions after the Supreme Court
decided that people could not be involuntarily institutionalized in
horrific insane asylums without “due process,” an adversarial process
that placed the burden on the state to prove the person actually was a
substantial threat to themselves or others. When they could no longer
just throw those not quite in touch with reality as most might see it
into institutions and pump massive quantities of psychotropic drugs
until they become the equivalent of zombies, or as we say, did the
“thorazine shuffle,” it didn’t take long before those mentally
imbalanced found themselves in prisons instead. It was a lot easier to
throw people in prison, and nobody really cared.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">So, there I was, resting against the
wall of the Death Row wing between a game of volleyball, and Nollie just
casually walked up to me as if we had been the best of friends.
Dispensing with the rhetorical informalities – I mean, really, what’s
the point of asking each other on the Row how we’re doing when we all
know we’re not doing too good, as they’re keeping us in a concrete box
and trying to freaking kill us! But it’s that social pretense of
civility we all go through no matter what side of the bars you’re on.
And, as I was socially obligated to do so, I spontaneously responded
with the only acceptable answer: “Fine. How are you doing?” and he said
“alright.” We both knew it was total crap. Neither of us was doing
alright.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Then without further pretense, Nollie
looked up at me and told me that he needed a really sharp knife and
wanted me to make him one out of the cheap disposable razors they pass
out each shower night three times a week. I didn’t really know what to
say. Why would he think that I would hook him up with a blade? For all I
knew, he might want to use it on me, or go nuts and try to chop up
everyone on the yard. But he peaked my curiosity and I played along,
asking him just what the hell he needed a knife for – and that was my
mistake. In that moment of time, I forgot all the earlier warnings
others gave me not to pay Nollie any mind.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Like a kid in a candy store, Nollie
perked right up, almost shining like a bright light, and with
uncompromised sincerity, he gleefully announce that he had to chop his
penis off, as it was evil. That unexpected joyous outburst left me
speechless, and I stood in stunned silence. Before I knew it, Nollie
quickly dropped his pants down to his knees and grabbed his dick, and
declared that it was Satan, and he had to cut it off before it
completely possessed him. I’m not often at a loss of words, but I didn’t
have any response. I shook my head, and walked away.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Only later I found out that Nollie had
pulled this same routine on others, not always without consequences.
Apparently some responded with violence and would beat Nollie down when
he pulled his routine on them. But that wasn’t my style and I didn’t
see any point in responding violently towards someone I know isn’t quite
right in the head. I guess we all see the world in our own way, and in
my world violence should be avoided unless necessary.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I also knew that I had been cast down
into a world where violence was a way of life. The distorted values of
those around you creats an expectation of violence, and if you don’t
respond violently, you would be seen as weak, and preyed upon like an
injured lamb surrounded by a pack of starving wolves. But a more
accurate analogy would be a pack of hyenas, as wolves are both more
honorable and intelligent that hyenas – and just like hyenas, in this
world once you’re cut from the pack, the pack itself will too quickly
turn on you.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">That’s what prison is and Death Row is
no exception. Sooner or later someone will try you, test you, to see
what you’re really made of. That’s the nature of the beast and it was
for that reason that I held sympathy for those like Nollie, who for no
reason other than their mental incapacity, would be targeted by others
and exploited in the most extreme ways.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Back then, the first cell on every floor
of the Death Row wings was occupied by an “inmate runner” who would be
responsible for passing out each meal, and coming around with cleaning
supplies, such as the broom and mop each day. While all Death Row
prisoners were continuously “locked down” in our solitary cells all day,
every day, except for twice weekly two hour recreation time outside on
the fully enclosed concrete pad and any social or legal visits you might
get (which were generally uncommon) we never left our cells. But the
runners were not sentenced to death, and each morning before breakfast
their cell door would be mechanically rolled open and then left open all
day and into the evening until “lights out” at 11:00 p.m.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">What relatively little work the runners
were required to do was accomplished in just a few hours, so most
runners would spend the rest of their days sitting on a butt can in
front of a Death Row cell, watching T.V., playing cards, or just
talking. For those who don’t know what a “butt can” is, it’s simply an
empty one gallon tin can retrieved from the kitchen – most often
previously containing the generic vegetables or ketchup commonly used in
our meals - and used as a depository for cigarette butts, but just as
commonly used when turned upside down as a improvised stool to park
one’s butt on, as it wasn’t like they would allow us to have chairs.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Most of these runners were alright,
almost always assigned to the Death Row wing as a transitory step
towards earning their way back to “general population” (gen pop) after
being placed in “closed confinement” which is Florida’s version of the
infamous SHU (Special Housing Unit). Every prison system has its own
version of long term punitive confinement imposed upon those who had
allegedly committed a major infraction, such as assault, or attempted
escape, or just pissed off the wrong person. Although each system might
attach its own title to it, all these forms of punitive confinement are
similar – and often the prisoner is thrown into this confinement status
for years at a time, and must earn his way out through good behavior.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Often the last step of this transitory
process is to be assigned the prison jobs nobody else wants, such as
cleaning bathrooms, or washing dishes. Those assigned to be runners on
the Death Row wings knew they were lucky, as Death Row was an easy place
to work and the only job where you could sit on your butt most of the
time and just watch TV, or play cards, or whatever.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It was not uncommon for former Death Row
prisoners to be assigned to be runners on Death Row. Roughly speaking,
about half of those initially sentenced to death have their sentences
subsequently reduced to life on appeal. For many years, it was prison
policy to allow former Death Row prisoners to become runners as a way of
allowing them to transition from total lock-down, to that sense of
relative freedom allowed by having your cell door open each day and able
to move around on your own will.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But then some of those assigned as
runners who would be problems no matter where they were placed because
that was their nature. And from time to time, one of these would wind
up on a Death Row floor, where they didn’t often last long. But they
could still disrupt the entire balance we tried to maintain.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Although not as common as it was in
general pop, homosexuality – both voluntary and involuntary – was still a
part of the Death Row environment. When I first came, I was as naïve
as those outside who would had just assumed that since all condemned
prisoners were continuously confined to their single-man cells, physical
relationships would be impossible. But nothing is really impossible
and as they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">From the time I first came, we had a
couple good runners who lasted on that floor the better part of two
years. But runners come and go and it’s all about the luck of the draw
as to who that next one might be. And sooner or later, you will draw a
bad hand. Sometime late into my second year a black runner came on the
floor, but his reputation had preceeded him – a history of preying upon
weaker inmates, often raping them. That’s what had him thrown into c/m
(close management) for a few years but no length of punitive confinement
would have changed who he was, and he was a sexual predator.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">When word got around that he arrived,
most of us on the floor wouldn’t even talk to him and he knew better
than to push his luck as it was not uncommon for runners to be “beaten
down” with a food tray or broom/mop if they got out of line. But
predators know how to spot their prey and it was only a matter of days
before an early morning commotion woke some of us up. Verbal arguments
were not uncommon, no matter what the hour. But this was more of a
deliberately suppressed one-sided confrontation as the runner had
reached through the bars of the cell housing Terry, a young kid out of
Pinellas County who was still relatively new to the Row.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You learn to mind your own business in
prison and despite the sense of camaraderie that long ago was common
among the condemned. There’s an unwritten rule that you don’t get into
someone else’s problem, especially when it’s between two prisoners.
Terry was too young, but he still had to stand his own ground and
giving in to threats and showing weakness would only make it worse. The
runner knew this and after grabbing Terry through the bars and
threatening him, Terry broke down. The runner knew he had Terry, and the
commotions soon died down, and in the silence of that early predawn
hours, we all knew that Terry was down there on his knees performing
oral sex on the runner, and after that he would again at least a few
times a day until the runner made the mistake of trying someone else on
the floor who would not so quickly give in and found himself leaving on a
gurney after being beaten down by another.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Before that particular incident, had
anyone told me someone in a cage could be forced to perform sex acts
through the bars, I would had laughed and said, “No way!” But in time, I
learned just how incredible naïve I was. Truth be told, I was lucky, as
I had gotten a cell on a floor where that kind of behavior didn’t
happen that much. Or maybe I just wasn’t aware of it, as I soon enough
discovered that there were others around me who only too willingly
invited such sexual encounters and more than a few engaged regularly; it
was just something we didn’t talk about.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But it was the guys like Nollie I really
felt for. The bugs were easy targets and no one seemed to care,
especially the guards. If anything, many of the guards considered this a
form of entertainment, and a few would even use the threat of allowing
certain runners access to them as a retaliatory tool for those who might
have stepped on their toes.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I really didn’t know how to handle
Nollie’s fixation with wanting to cut his own dick off to purge that
evil within him any more than I knew how to handle others who had their
own way of manifesting their psychosis. After I realized just how alone
and isolated Nollie was, even though surrounded by others, I made a
point of reaching out to him from time to time, often at the risk of
other Death Row prisoners ridiculing me for having contact with one of
the bugs. But Nollie had no one, and at least there were a few of us
who would cross that invisible line that “convicts” were not to cross,
and reach out to those ostracized within our own small world.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Nollie was moved to another floor not
long after that but no matter where he went in the unit, from time to
time a guard, or laundryman, or one of the inmate maintenance workers
would stop by my cell and tell me that Nollie sends his regards, as he
never forgot those small gestures of kindness. A few years later,
Nollie would be executed despite his obvious mental incompetency, as
would too many others who also suffered from insanity. No matter how
undeniably brain damaged they were, the Courts never wanted to recognize
the evidence supporting their claim of insanity.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">One of the regular events on the Row
back then was the Saturday morning ritual that played itself out every
weekend. Most of the guys on the Row rarely received any mail and would
never get a visit from family or friends. Too many, like Nollie,
simply couldn’t communicate with those outside even if there was someone
who might still care.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But each Saturday morning everyone got a
visit if they wanted it. In the years before politicians started to
micromanage the prisons, back in the good ole days when we were allowed
to do our time our own way, and the guards generally left us alone, it
was common for church groups to send members up to prisons to save our
souls. Almost every Saturday mostly middle-aged to elderly men carrying
their Bibles would flood on to the Death Row wing, and break off into
smaller groups and spread themselves out on the individual floors, going
cell to cell to minister to the condemned. Most of these men were just
average working class without any formal training in Theology,
motivated to come by a belief of Christian obligation to minister to
those who are imprisoned, and they came with their heart in the right
place, meaning well.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I was blessed to come to know a number
of the regulars, and had great respect for those such as Abe Brown, the
founder of “Prison Crusade.” Abe was an elderly black man who served as
the pastor for a church in Tampa. Although struggling financially,
each Saturday without fail, Brother Abe would load up his old blue and
silver bus and drive the three hours up to Florida State Prison, and
those who had joined him that particular week would visit with those
isolated and abandoned by society in the purest form of true “Christian”
charity I have known, giving of themselves without asking or expecting
anything in return.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I had learned early on that being
condemned to death meant that most of our so-called civilized society
held nothing but uncompromised hate towards us, and more often than not
it was those out there who called themselves Christians would invoke the
name of God to demand our death under the pretense of justice. “An eye
for an eye,” they would say as they gathered around in their modern day
lynch mobs, abandoning any pretense of the Christian values of
compassion and mercy.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">For this reason, I was not alone in
becoming conflicted when it came to the traditional Christian values I
grew up with. More and more, I found myself leaning towards an
intellectual knowledge of what God was supposed to be, but still my
spiritual faith within was eroding away as those I had once associated
with what Christians were supposed to be would do nothing but throw
stones.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But by coming to know some of these
volunteers and the sacrifices they willingly made to come to the prison
on the weekends, my own spirituality evolved, and as I increasingly
became disillusioned with the hypocrisy of organized religion, I also
came to the acceptance that true spiritual faith cannot be defined by
what I might see in others, or the example (or absence) of their faith,
but must be instead found within the individual, especially within
myself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Like Jacob wrestling the devil, my
struggle to define my sense of spirituality in this new world I was cast
down into was perhaps one of the hardest parts of my own evolution, and
there were times when I found myself so completely overwhelmed by my
environment that I literally prayed for death – and when I awoke that
next morning I would question the very existence of God, because if
there were a God, He would have heard my prayers and in His mercy,
allowed me to die. As I descended farther into the depths of my
despair, wanting only for my misery to end, it became increasingly
difficult to cling to my Christian faith. And I would find that
although I fought this battle by relentlessly studying the Word of God,
no matter how much my intellectual knowledge of God would grow, I still
felt alone and empty.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But the church volunteers I came to know
kept me hanging on by that thread, and in them, I knew what true faith
was. And soon enough a few of the regulars would come directly to my
cell each Saturday and simply visit, talking about anything but never
trying to force feed religion, and by doing that, I came to know that no
matter how alone and abandoned I might feel, I was never really alone.
If not for those volunteers, and their weekly visits on the wings, I
don’t know if I would have made it, as they were the only ones that
reached out even when our family and friends didn’t.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Not all of the guys welcomed this
outreach, and some didn’t want these volunteers anywhere around them.
When all else has failed you, sometimes hate and anger are the only
things left to stand on. Everybody has to do their time in their own
way, and while most would look forward to these weekend visits on the
wings, others would respond with hostility, as if these volunteers
represented something they themselves were at war with. But even then,
they would only tell the volunteer they didn’t want to talk, and the
volunteer would move on to the next cell.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Others, so desperate for that human
contact, would welcome the volunteers like they were God themselves, and
go through the ritual of being “saved’ every Saturday, almost always
making a point of latching on to volunteers who were new and wouldn’t
recognize them. And this was often a source of entertainment for the
rest of us, who already knew that this particular prisoner already had
“found God,” and did so each week. But even as much as the prisoner
might be playing out – or perfectly sincere – it was almost the
volunteer who got the greatest joy out of saving the lost soul of that
condemned man, and more than a few went home with a sense of
accomplishment that only escalated their own faith, and so even if that
particular prisoner might be simply going through the routine just to
experience that momentary sense of communion with another person, it
gave just as much to the volunteer who needed it too. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">After a few hours, the volunteers would
be rounded up and escorted off the wing, and then once again that small
world we lived and died in would close in around us. Slowly, the volume
of the radios and T.V.s would rise, and the voices of others talking,
or playing chess by calling their moves out would go back to what had
become the new normal.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Each of us retreated into our own little
world in our own way. Back then we were allowed to receive packages of
clothing and hobby-craft materials, if we had family or friends willing
to send them. I was able to get my first radio when my oldest brother
sent me one from Germany, where he was stationed in the Army. It was a
small stereo radio, and the only way to pick up any reception was to run
a web of thin wires salvaged from an old radio across the ceiling of my
cell. But without headphones, it was hard to hear because there were
so many other radios playing all around me.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I needed a pair of headphones but didn’t
have the money to buy them. But when doing time, you learn to hustle,
and soon enough I got my first pair of headphones by trading a month’s
worth of milk from breakfast that I could do without. So for what added
up to the equivalent of less than two gallons of milk, I got a pair of
almost new Sony headphones and soon would spend more and more time under
them, retreating further away. I needed this escape from the methodical
oppression of both body and soul that was Death Row.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">As the days passed into months, and the
months into years, I came to see my solitary cell as more of a means of
voluntary isolation, finding that there in my own little cell, I could
maintain my own little world. I slowly evolved into understanding that
although they can imprison my body, only I could imprison my mind, and
in many ways, my cell became my sanctuary, where I would put on my
headphones and tune in a music station, then retreat into my own space
and time, often wondering whether, like Nollie,, I would wake up one day
to find myself succumbing to a form of psychosis that made reality
irrelevant – and if I did, would it be a blessing, or a curse? To this
day, I do not know.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD31tLa2e-KD4EfifpkGHt3ZPiGtcluSL1K2vHptAYsftIA6hK1mod2AHzsTtPFjAfLhba5CHY7ToNMuj9RTrRT-nKWiLOrRRRJKkj4XRVrYMjz7FaO20RQkTldmNx5i860O9T1hwmY10/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD31tLa2e-KD4EfifpkGHt3ZPiGtcluSL1K2vHptAYsftIA6hK1mod2AHzsTtPFjAfLhba5CHY7ToNMuj9RTrRT-nKWiLOrRRRJKkj4XRVrYMjz7FaO20RQkTldmNx5i860O9T1hwmY10/s1600/SCN_0042.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Michael Lambrix 482053</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Florida State Prison</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
7819 NW 228th Street (G1202)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Raiford, FL 32026-1000</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-64518641928867723722013-11-15T22:45:00.001-08:002014-04-16T06:45:56.432-07:00Alcatraz of the South Part 4: Between Life and Death <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
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<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></h3>
<div class="post-header">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">By Michael Lambrix written for the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2013/11/alcatraz-of-south-part-4-between-life.html" target="_blank">Minutes Before Six</a> website</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In the classic novel <u>A Tale of Two Cities</u>,
Charles Dickens begins his fictional story with the words: “It was the
best of times and the worst of times,” and those words could apply as
equally to that first year I spent on Florida’s Death Row. I suppose it
would be a bit of a stretch to suggest that my first year as a
condemned man was the best of times by any measure. But everything is
relative and what I soon discovered after coming to The Row is that even
in the worst of times it is the importance of holding on to hope not
only when you have reason to, but even more importantly, when that
reason is taken from you.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Charles Dickens wrote his story around
the French Revolution, which I doubt many would have thought of as the
best of times. It was a dark day in history, when death came to many,
and yet for those who survived, it brought hope. And it wasn’t that
much different on The Row. That first year the stench of death was
always around us, yet in the very midst of the darkness and despair,
there was hope and it was that hope that gave each of us the strength to
survive another day.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I came to The Row in early 1984, at a
time in which Florida only too proudly claimed the record not only for
the largest number of people condemned to death, but, the most executed.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">This is the dark side of the Sunshine
State. Its zeal to kill is only exceeded by its indifference towards
sending the innocent to Death Row. When the U.S. Supreme Court
overturned the death penalty in the 1972 landmark decision of <u>Furman vs. Georgia</u>
by a marginal vote, the Court allowed the states to rewrite their death
penalty statutes with the misplaced presumption that if the states
would establish statutory provisions that “genuinely narrowed” the class
of individuals eligible for the death penalty through the adoption of
aggravating and mitigating circumstances applicable to each case, then
the imposition of the death penalty would not be unconstitutionally
arbitrary.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Florida was the first state to quickly
adopt new laws that complied with the Supreme Court’s criteria before
most other death penalty states could adopt new laws of their own. By
1973, Florida was already sending men to their new Death Row – as I
write this today (February 2013) one man a few cells down from me (Gary
Alvord) has now been here on Florida’s death row for 40 years as of this
year. (Admin note: Gary Alvord died of natural causes after this essay
was submitted).</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But adopting new death penalty statutes
was not enough. In the years before I came, Florida quickly became the
poster child for state-sanctioned death, with its Death Row growing by
dozens every year. And the politicians running for elected office
shamelessly exploited the public’s unquenchable thirst for vengeance,
fanatically promising to put those condemned to a quick death.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">By the time I came along, Florida was
intoxicated by its politically driven blood lust and as I joined the
ranks of the condemned, the cold machinery of death had already been
cranked up and killing the condemned became a statewide obsession.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">John Spenkelink was the first one to be
involuntarily executed after the new death penalty was re-instated.
Although some might argue that Gary Gilmore (in Utah), upon which the
book and then movie The Executioner’s Song was the first one after
Furman v Georgia, Gilmore was a “voluntary” execution – he effectively
used the death penalty to commit suicide and made no meaningful attempt
to challenge his death sentence.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Florida was determined to be the first
state to carry out an execution upon someone who was not willing to
voluntarily die, and in May 1979 they succeeded in putting John
Spenkelink to death. Texas wouldn’t carry out its first post-Furman
execution for a number of years after that, and by the early 1980’s a
diabolically perverse competition arose between the states to see who
could kill the most condemned prisoners – and at least in those early
years, Florida easily won.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Florida carried out its next execution
in November 1983 when they put Robert Sullivan to death. Within just a
few more months, Florida killed Anthony Antone in January 1984, ignoring
the fact that Antone did not commit any act of murder himself, and
evidence that he did not participate in the act of murder – the
co-defendant who was convicted of that killing actually was sentenced to
life.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I came to The Row that last week of
March 1984 and quickly learned of the ritual of death. In the first
year following my arrival, Florida executed nine men. Florida was
perversely proud of “Ole Sparky,” its handmade electric chair, and each
execution brought on a spectacle not unlike that of a circus – a
contemporary lynching in the old town square, with the crowds gathered
outside the prison, openly cheering, drowning out the smaller segregated
group of those who opposed the state taking a life. And the media
would come from around the state to cover the event.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Inside the prison, this ritual brought
on another layer of despair, as the prison officials seemed to go to
great lengths to make sure that each of us knew they were killing one of
us.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">For reasons I cannot be sure of, the
State of Florida was not allowed to use the public power source to
electrocute its condemned. I have been told that the electric company
would not allow it, but I’ve also been told that it was a “security
precaution. The state didn’t want to risk not being able to carry out
an intended execution if someone simply cut the power off. Where the
truth actually lies, only they know. But what I do know is that each
time Florida carried out an execution, they would crank up the huge
generator just outside the prison office near the wing of the prison
where executions took place, and the whole prison would be taken off the
public electrical source, and temporarily switched over to generator
power.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Within a few weeks of my arrival to
Death Row, Florida focused its attention on Arthur Goode, scheduled to
be executed on April 5, 1984. I didn’t know Goode, as he had already
been moved to Q-Wing Death Watch a few weeks before I came to The Row,
but this was the first execution actually carried out since I arrived,
so that first experience remains branded upon me.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Back then the executions were carried
out around sunrise of the scheduled day, but the ritual would begin long
before they got around to actually killing the condemned man. Although
we typically would be fed breakfast (in our cells) early every day, on
execution days it would come at least an hour earlier, often as early as
5:00 a.m. as they had to first feed us then collect the food trays and
get them back to the kitchen up front before they locked down the whole
prison during the execution itself.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Feeding us before they carried out the
execution also made sure we didn’t try to sleep through it. Because it
would still be dark outside, each of us would have our own cell light on
at the time, which back then was a crude single incandescent light bulb
hanging down by two wired from the ceiling of the cell.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">At some point between passing out the
breakfast trays and picking them back up, all the lights would
momentarily go off, leaving us in darkness. In the distance we could
hear that generator come to life and then the cell lights would flicker
just a bit before coming back on. We knew what this meant as other than
the periodical test of the generator during the afternoon a few times a
month, when they switched over to generator power in the early morning
hours we knew that it meant whoever was on death watch did not get a
last minute’s stay of execution and they were now preparing to put him
to death.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">We would not be allowed to escape our
own involuntary participation in this ritual of death, and most of us on
The Row would turn on our small black and white TV’s, tuning in the
Jacksonville stations to watch the live coverage from outside the
prison, each hoping that a last minute stay of execution would come and
each of us would continue to watch in collective silence until the TV
would show someone emerging from the rear of Q-Wing and waving a white
towel, which meant that they had carried out the execution. That was the
pre-arranged signal.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Barely a month after Arthur Goode was
put to death, Florida killed Aubrey Adams and it was this second
execution since my arrival that had an even greater impact, not only on
me, but on others around me. The execution of Adams was a reality check
for many of us who held on to the hope that our own wrongful
convictions would be corrected, and truth and justice would be allowed
to prevail.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It’s one thing to execute someone who
has confessed to a heinous murder, but it’s another thing entirely to
put someone to death who may very well be innocent. Out there in the
real world this is a never-ending source of intellectual debate, but in
here it really hits home as for those of us who have maintained our
innocence and have only our hope to cling to. The execution of someone
who has substantial evidence of actual innocence undermines our own
ability to keep that hope alive, and it drives home a truth that each of
us try desperately to avoid…the politics of death that drive each
execution do not care whether you’re innocent or not, and only the
hopelessly naïve would think that each man put to death was guilty. Our
judicial process is not that perfect and inherently lacks the moral
character or professional integrity to admit to its own mistakes.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The execution of Aubrey Adams
illustrated this truth and for the first time it caused me to question
“the system.” Until that time, I remained blinded by my own disillusion,
telling myself that our legal system would correct its own mistakes,
and as a society we would never allow an innocent person to be put to
death for a crime they didn’t commit. Looking back, I can now only
smile at just how incredibly green I was, as the execution of Aubrey
Adams and others that followed forced me to accept the reality that they
will put the innocent to death, and even worse, as a society we really
don’t even care.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">A month after Aubrey Adams, Florida put
Carl Shriner to death, and the month following that they killed David
Washington. It seemed that each month since I came to The Row they
killed another one, and that dark cloud of death hung heavy over us
condemned. But then that cycle was broken – no executions were carried
out in August of 1984 and it seemed that the Courts were becoming
increasingly concerned about the lack of adequate legal representation
made available to those facing imminent execution.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But such an inconvenience as the lack of
qualified lawyers to represent the condemned would not be enough to
deter Florida’s ritualistic lynchings, and although nobody died in
August 1984, Florida made up for this lapse by killing both Earnest
Dobbert and James Dupree Henry in September of 1984.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">That dark blanket of death hung heavy
and it seemed that if they were not actually killing one of us on the
next wing over, they were counting down to that next execution. But
this pace of executions could not be sustained as Florida continued to
refuse to establish any meaningful process for the timely appointment of
qualified lawyers, instead relying upon a small group of committed
volunteers who labored continuously to find lawyers willing to represent
the condemned – and few, very few, were willing.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">By the latter half of 1984 the Florida
Supreme Court finally began to take a stand against the arbitrary and
dysfunctional system of recruiting volunteer lawyers only at the last
minute and began to issue stays of execution to send a long overdue
message that unless Florida established a means in which to provide
competent legal representation to the condemned before their death
warrant was signed, the Court would not allow executions to proceed and
this unconscionable machinery of death would grind to a halt. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Almost immediately, the pace of
executions dropped by at least half. In early November of 1984 Florida
put Timothy Palmes (who we knew as “Milkman”) to death, then it wasn’t
until the end of January of 1985 that the next was killed.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">That execution of James Raulerson hit
especially close to home for me, as from the time I came to The Row.
J.D., as I knew him, was my cell neighbor. He was the first person I
actually knew on The Row that had been killed. J.D. had been convicted
of robbery and the murder of a police officer in Jacksonville, although
there was no intent to kill anyone. Like the majority of cases in which
the death penalty is imposed, J.D. was convicted under Florida’s felony
murder law, which allowed a person to be convicted of capital murder
for the death of anyone if it was the result of the commission of
another crime…no intent to kill is necessary.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In J.D. Raulerson’s case, he and his
cousin had decided to rob a restaurant and were still inside when the
police came and surrounded the place. A gunfight ensued and a police
officer was killed. J.D. consistently insisted that he never shot at
the police, and that the officer died by “friendly fire” – another cop’s
bullet hit him in the heat of combat.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But it didn’t matter. Under Florida law
someone died during the robbery – and J.D.’s own cousin was shot and
killed during that gunfight, and that made J.D. legally culpable for
both the death of the police officer and his own cousin’s death – even
though there was no question that the police had shot his cousin. When
it came time for the State of Florida to execute J.D. on that cold
winter morning of January 30, 1985, hundreds of police officers gathered
outside the prison gleefully cheering on his death while wearing custom
made t-shirts that said “burn, baby, burn.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">That was the first time that I saw just
how low we can go as a society, and why, despite pretense, we really
have not evolved beyond that image of the old west lynch mobs. That’s
just what it was that day, only it wasn’t ignorant villagers intoxicated
by their blood-lust and joyfully cheering on the death of another human
being; it was those representing law enforcement that created this
circus atmosphere.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Within that first year that I was on The
Row, Florida put nine men to death. But for each one they executed, at
least two more men came to The Row, and the ranks of the condemned
continued to grow. It didn’t take long before I was no longer one of
the new guys and became part of the greater whole.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">By 1985 the pace of executions dropped
dramatically as politicians struggled to find a solution to the problem
of the condemned having no reliable means of securing legal
representation. Florida was determined to lead the country in
executions, and soon it was the politicians themselves advocating for
the first-ever state funded agency established exclusively to provide
post-conviction legal representation to the condemned. The argument in
favor of establishing this proposed agency was simple; by providing
state-funded lawyers, the Courts would allow executions to continue.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">With this cloud of death hanging over
all of us, it was only too easy to abandon all hope and accept our fate.
But even there in that shadow of death, there was reason to hold on.
The particular tier I was housed on that first year housed a total of
16 condemned prisoners, as although each tier had 17 cells at that time,
an “inmate runner” occupied the first cell on each death row tier. It
was his job to pass out meals, then collect the food trays, and
distribute cleaning supplies each day.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Of the nine men put to death that first
year, I only personally know one, and during that same period of time on
my floor alone there were five men who would walk off death row and
back into the real world.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">That’s what hope is all about: finding
reason to sustain the strength within. Although each execution brought
home the reality that I was condemned to die and death was a very real
possibility, I found my own strength sustained by the hope that came
when another man won his freedom.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It’s easy to assume that every person
sentenced to death has to be guilty, but our legal system is plagued
with the imperfections inherent to all men. In Florida’s over-zealous
push to lead the country in bringing back the death penalty, the legal
system itself became corrupted by prosecutors who openly competed with
each other to convict and condemn as many as they could, and by any
means necessary. It didn’t take long before Florida lead the country
(at times) in both the number of men and women sentenced to death, and
in number of executions. And with this political corruption of the
process came another distinction. To this day Florida continues to lead
the country in the number of wrongfully convicted (innocent) men and
women sentenced to death.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Not long after I came to Death Row, the
Courts began to vacate a number of these wrongful convictions. Although
it would still take a few more years before they would walk free, on
that tier I was housed on that first year, one out of every three men I
housed among would be exonerated and released from prison. My neighbor,
Louie Virango won a new trial and pled out to a lesser charge that
resulted in him being set free. Joseph Green Brown was exonerated by
new evidence after coming within hours of execution, and Juan Ramos
walked out of a courtroom in Miami after it was revealed that the bite
mark evidence used to convict and condemn him for a crime he
consistently pled innocence of was not what the state had led the jury
to believe it was.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">A few cells down the other way towards
the back of that tier were Larry Troy and Bama Brown, convicted and
condemned to death for allegedly killing another prisoner at The Rock
(Union Correctional Institution). Their convictions were based
primarily upon the testimony of another inmate, and there was evidence
to suggest that inmate actually committed the murder. Years after
sending them to The Row, this inmate tried to extort money from the
girlfriend of one of the condemned men – if she would pay him thousands
of dollars, he would tell the truth.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Instead of being manipulated, she went
to the state police and told them of the attempt to extort her. They
worked with her to secretly take communications between her and the
prisoner, then arrested him for perjury in a capital case and attempted
extortion. Soon after, both Larry Troy and Bama Brown were exonerated
of the murder they were wrongfully convicted of and condemned to death
for.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Many more would be put to death, and
many more would walk free, and I struggled constantly to find that
balance between the reality that was Death Row and that hope that
sustained my strength. It was more than just a tug-o’-war between
opposing sides. No matter which way I might be pulled at a particular
moment, even when I clung desperately to that elusive wisp of hope
brought about by relief another man won, I still awoke each morning in
my own concrete cage and each night I struggled to sleep through the
never-ending nightmare that was my own condemnation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Michael Lambrix 482053</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Union Correctional Institute</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>7819 NW 228th Street (P3226)</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Raiford, FL 32026-4400</i><br />
<br />
<i>Please check out my website <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">http://www.southerninjustice.net</a> </i></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-57929299130898130702013-08-09T21:01:00.003-07:002013-12-17T05:31:23.599-08:00Alcatraz of the South Part III: Shaking the Bush, Boss<br />
By Michael Lambrix (written for <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2013/08/alcatraz-of-south-part-iii-shaking-bush.html">Minutes Before Six</a> )<br />
<br />
Alcatraz of the South Part I can be read <a href="http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/2013/05/alcatraz-of-south-part-1.html">HERE</a><br />
<br />
Alcatraz of the South Part II can be read <a href="http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/2013/05/alcatraz-of-south-part-ii-descending.html">HERE</a><br />
<br />
<br />
There should be a book on how to do time, maybe something entitled “Death Row for Dummies.” But there isn’t. Instead, each of us thrown down this Rabbit and survive by learning the ropes from those who were already there. By the time I came to Florida’s Death Row in March 1984 there were already well over 150 men there, housed on the two designated “Death Row” wings known as “R wing” and “S wing.”<br />
<br />
Learning how to do time is something they never teach you in school although considering that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with at least every one out of ten Americans destined to do time at some time in their lives, perhaps our public schools should be required to teach our children how to do time…and perhaps if our children learned that the chances of them growing up to become a convicted felon is substantially higher than many other fates, then many would not cross that line and commit a crime.<br />
<br />
Looking back now, I can see that doing time is a lot like learning to swim. I can remember how I first learned to swim…my cousin Jim simply threw me into the pool while yelling “swim!” and although I momentarily struggled to keep my head above water, it took but a moment to began to dog paddle towards the edge of the pool, and no sooner did I climb out of the pool, when Jim threw me right back in. Before the day was over, I had all but mastered the art of swimming and have loved water sports ever since.<br />
<br />
Once we are thrown into prison, it’s sink or swim time. Most adapt to this new environment even if it means dog paddling towards the edge at first only to be thrown right back in. And then there are those who slowly sink to the bottom.<br />
<br />
I’d like to think I was one of those who quickly learned to adapt to this hell few could even begin to imagine; that from the moment I was thrown in, I kept my head above the water line. But I know that the reality of it is that I had help from those around me, those also already condemned to death.<br />
<br />
I can still remember how my first cell neighbor, J.D., explained how things really work on Death Row. He was a naturally gifted story teller who often put things into context by borrowing from popular movies such as the one all prisoners are familiar with – “Cool Hard Luke” starring Paul Newman (1967).<br />
<br />
If ever there was a classic prison movie, that was it. Some would argue that the brutality of “Shawshank Redemption” or the inevitable reality of “The Green Mile” might illustrate life on Death Row, but for those actually familiar with life in prison, “Cool Hard Luke” provides the best metaphor… “Shaking the Bush Boss.”<br />
<br />
In the movie, the convict (Cool Hard Luke) is a stereotypical loser determined to be free by any means necessary. It is set at a prison work camp in the 1930’s, and Luke has a reputation for trouble, which the hard core warden is only too aware of.<br />
<br />
At one point, Luke is sent out on a road crew and assigned to the “chain gang.” He tells the guard that he has to use the bathroom and the guard points to a bush a hundred feet or so off the road, but makes it clear to Luke that when he does his business behind the bush, he’d better keep shaking that bush as if the bush stops shaking the guard will assume Luke is trying to escape again and will start shooting.<br />
<br />
Luke walks over to the bush and out of the sight of the trigger-happy guard, Luke quickly ties one end of a long string to the lower branch of that bush, then slowly unravels that string while backing up away, all the while periodically yelling out, “Shaking the bush, boss.” As far as the guard can see, the bush is still shaking and by the time he realizes Luke has tied a string to the bush and is already on the run, Luke is out of range of the guard’s gun and makes his escape.<br />
<br />
That’s the quintessential rule in doing time – whether it’s the other convicts or the guards, it’s about making them see what you want them to see, and it’s an art form that quickly separates those who sink or swim, especially in the micro-community of Death Row.<br />
<br />
Doing time is mostly about your own ability to mentally adapt to the new environment. It’s all about learning to “shake the bush” by learning the infinite number of little things that allow you to do your time in a relatively uneventful way. As a general rule, in just about any prison, you can get anything you want or need if you learn how to shake the bush.<br />
<br />
One thing you learn to appreciate quickly is just how incredibly resourceful prisoners can be. Although prison officials make it their business to limit what we can have and control what we get, for every rule or means they use to prevent its introduction, any self-respecting “convict” can thing of countless ways to get around the guards and no matter how many times they might come in to do cell searches, before they’re even off the wing we will already have back what they thought they took.<br />
<br />
Before I came to Death Row I had already done time both in several county jails as well as state prison. I already know the fundamental rules of doing time such as the Golden Rules of always minding your own business, never make a bet (or go into debt) you cannot cover, and never snitch out another convict.<br />
<br />
But it’s the little things that make the biggest difference, such as making a simple cup of coffee, or trying to beat the relentless heat of a Florida summer.<br />
<br />
Through the years a number of people have asked me why I wear my watch on my right arm when I’m obviously right handed. To those in the real world, there’s that unwritten rule that watches are to be worn on your left wrist, so when they see someone wearing their watch on their right arm, there’s a presumption that maybe I just don’t know. It’s at that moment I just partially smile and then explain that all watches have their stems (used to set the watch time, etc.) on the right side, so if you wear it on your left wrist, that stem is facing towards your hand. That’s pretty convenient in the real world if you’ve got to adjust the time – but in my world, that will quickly destroy a good watch.<br />
<br />
Anytime those on Death Row are removed from our cells, even if only to go to the shower cell or the rec yard, we are always handcuffed before the cell door is opened. The handcuffs are obviously always placed on our wrists, just below where we wear our watch. If we wear our watch on our left arm, then the watch stem will be right where the handcuffs are, and the handcuffs will inevitably catch on and rip the stem right out of the watch. For that reason, you quickly learn to only wear your watch on your right arm so that the stem faces upwards away from the handcuffs. That’s something nobody will teach you in school!<br />
<br />
I cannot imagine starting my day without a good cup of coffee, although I supposed calling a cup of coffee “good” is a relative term, as the best I can hope for is a cup of cheap instant coffee. But a cup of Joe is a cup of Joe. For as long as I’ve been on the Row, we have always been able to purchase coffee from the “canteen” (prison store). On the Row we are allowed to buy our basics and snacks once a week, and they are then delivered to us, providing we have the money in our account.<br />
<br />
Some might say that prisoners don’t deserve to be able to purchase coffee, food and snacks, and if they had it their way we would have nothing. But canteen sales are important to the prison system itself as they provide a cheap incentive to all prisoners to follow the rules – if you get caught breaking the rules you lose your privileges (canteen, visits, T.V., radio, etc.) for a period of time. Additionally, the prison system makes millions of dollars each year in profits from the sales of these items, which reduces the overall cost of incarceration otherwise place upon the taxpayers.<br />
<br />
For me, coffee is pretty much my only “vice,” as I don’t drink, or smoke or gamble, or do drugs and they won’t let me run around with wild women, so that pretty much leaves only my coffee. But although I can purchase all the coffee I might care to drink, being able to actually make it is a whole other story.<br />
<br />
At least in Florida’s prisons, there are no coffee pots or access to hot water. If we are lucky, the water available in the sinks in our cells might be warm, but not at all hot enough to make a good cup of instant coffee.<br />
<br />
Officially, prison officials claim that Death Row cannot have access to hot water as it may be used as a weapon. In the too many years I have been on the row, I have never, not even once, seen a Death Row inmate throw hot water on a guard. But prison rules don’t always make sense. All too often, some administrator in a distant office who has never actually worked inside a prison (much less on Death Row) makes up these rules and then force-feeds them down the line. But although hot water is not available on Death Row, I still manage to have my hot cup of coffee at least five times a day.<br />
<br />
Shaking the Bush – from the outside, looking in, it might appear that I’m just drinking my cup of coffee, as I’m doing even as I’m writing this today and for those unfamiliar with how things really work they may even assume I’m enjoying a cup of at best “warm” coffee. But that’s just what we want them to see. If they don’t already know, they don’t need to know.<br />
<br />
What I’m saying is not a revelation or in any way betraying some sort of secret. Many of us have been “caught” making hot water many times. Most of the guards couldn’t care less and even if you do slip-up and get caught at best they’d only confiscate our “bugs” and then we get another.<br />
<br />
Anyone on the row quickly learns how to make a “bug” which is simply a homemade immersion heater used around the world to boil water. As long as there’s a source of electricity available, there’s a way to heat hot water. All it takes is a piece of electrical cord salvaged from an old radio or whatever, then attach each wire to some form of thin steel plate-separated by a space between the two plates will boil the water.<br />
<br />
But as simple as this might be, we all have our horror stories on “bugs gone bad” and some carry the scars to prove it, too. One of the more endearing experiences is still shared with newcomers today. Many years ago one of the guys made a small “bug” to boil water and it wasn’t working. Assuming it was a corroded wire he quickly broke it down, taking the two plates apart, rushing to get it done before the next guard made his round. For reasons no one can explain, this guy then quickly took the wire and bit down on the end to strip the plastic – and his immediate screams were probably heard over the next county…he had forgot to unplug his “bug” before he tried to strip the electrical wire with his teeth! (Talk about a bad hair day!)<br />
<br />
Even as much as we all felt for “Dez,” we enjoyed kicking him about that for many years to come. He obviously survived that ordeal with nothing more than a burnt mouth (and maybe even a melted filling or two!), but it was a lesson learned and I never heard of another sticking a bug in his mouth without first making sure it was unplugged.<br />
<br />
Hot water is also essential to cooking and many of us on the row learn how to cook our own meals. If there’s one truth that will never change, it’s that the food they serve us is by any definition, not meant for human consumption. But with a little work, some hot water and the imagination and resourcefulness of the prisoners, many of the meals made in our cells would rival that of most free-world restaurants.<br />
<br />
Myself, I’m not such a good cook but I’ve known many on the Row who are. I doubt too many can imagine a group of “cold-blooded killers” on death row gathered around on the rec yard sharing recipes and cooking tips, but that’s how it is. And it’s amazing how we can salvage what can be salvaged from what they feed us, such as beans and potatoes, then using the spices that come with the ramen-type soups they sell, make something they can brag about.<br />
<br />
Some of the best meals I have ever eaten have been here on the Row, and many of the guys take great pride in their perfected recipes. One of the guys who taught me how to make burritos refused to tell me for many years what his secret ingredient was. Rather, he taught me how to make the burritos, but would then give me a small amount of his “secret” spice mix from time to time, just enough each time to make a batch of burritos.<br />
<br />
Many of us familiar with this particular spice mix wanted the recipe and spent too much time trying to figure out what it could be. We knew that some spices could be bought from kitchen workers, but this spice mix was more than just the chili powder, or black pepper, or garlic salt often smuggled out of the kitchen and sold to us. We all tried mixing the various spice packs from the ramen-type soups they sold, but just couldn’t quite make our own like he did.<br />
<br />
Through the years this particular spice mix became almost legendary – it’s secret ingredient almost mythical. But then the secret was out and word quickly spread that it was something none of us thought of mixing with the other commonly used spices – it was simply crushed pork rinds mixed with both the “ramen”-type soup spice packs and a generous amount of chili pepper. Soon, everyone was using it to spice his food and within months we all grew tired of it. Like the mythical unicorn, it’s true magic was in the myth itself, the magic of the unknown and once the secret was out somehow that spice mix wasn’t quite as good as we moved on to another way of creating our favorite foods.<br />
<br />
Making a good cup of coffee, or a meal that is actually edible are only a few of the many things you must learn when doing time. Many of these well-known-“secrets” cannot be written about for fear of losing them forever. But what it all comes down to is learning how to do the time without the time doing you. Although something as simple as a good cup of coffee or a hot meal you can actually enjoy may seem trivial, it’s these little things that get you through the day.<br />
<br />
But whether it’s being able to make a cup of hot coffee or a good meal, or whatever else one might do in that concrete cage to get through the day, what remains the common denominator is the one thing that will always separate the convicts from the inmates – learning how to project the image you want others to see so that you can do your own thing without drawing attention to yourself, or stepping on someone else’s toes.<br />
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One of the lessons I had to learn the hard way in those early years was to keep my mouth shut, and it’s something that most prisoners go through. In this weird world that we live in, there’s always going to be somebody around you who will want to push your buttons, whether it’s a guard or another inmate. They thrive off of your response and they count on their ability to force you to respond.<br />
<br />
In fairness, most of the guards working on Death Row are just doing their jobs and they don’t make it personal. Many go by a common saying – “eight and the gate!” They do their eight-hour shift then hit the gate.<br />
<br />
But there will always be those who have no business having that power over others, as it’s their nature to abuse. All the convicts know which guards are alright and which ones are trouble. When a new guy comes to the Row, he’s quickly told which ones to steer clear of.<br />
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Yet no matter how many times we may be told to avoid a particular guard, that guard will always find someone to provoke – and on my early years, too often that was me, as I simply did not have the ability to keep my mouth shut. And I wasn’t alone. But now I can laugh at myself when a new guy comes to the Row and we tell him to avoid certain guards only to then see that some guard plays him out of the pocket (prison slang for provoking someone) as no matter how often any of us might be told that someone will try to provoke him just for their own amusement, perhaps one of the hardest lessons to learn when doing time is to keep your mouth shut when someone is looking for trouble.<br />
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It’s all part of shaking the bush. Learning to survive in this manmade hell is largely dependent upon your own ability to do your time your way and not become a puppet for others. No matter what each day may bring, it’s all still only one day at a time and those that master the ability to take it one day at a time without letting yesterday drag you down or worry about what tomorrow may yet bring will find the strength to overcome.<br />
<br />
Learning how to “shake the bush” is not simply about how to enjoy a good cup of coffee, or make a meal that is edible. Rather, it’s about learning that no matter what the physical deprivations might be, it’s still your own mental state of mind that will decide whether you sink or swim. Like myself, most of us were thrown into the world we call Death Row without knowing what to expect, or how to cope with the never-ending nightmare of being condemned to death. But the steel and stone are only just that and in the long run, it’s the psychological elements that will break you down inside. Learn how to cope with those elements and each of us will find the strength to survive.<br />
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When I look back, I know I was blessed to be around those such as J.D.,who took the time to teach me how to get through each day without letting it all drag me down. I was taught how to do my time without letting that time take its toll on me. Because of that, I developed the ability to deal with what the many years yet to come would hold, and my journey through the Bowels of this Beast known as Death Row would be one I could survive.<br />
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Written by Michael Lambrix for MinutesBeforeSix: http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2013/08/alcatraz-of-south-part-iii-shaking-bush.html?spref=fb<br />
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Please check out my website <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">http://www.southerninjustice.net</a> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-37940563215957182752013-06-19T22:52:00.000-07:002014-01-14T10:06:26.172-08:00Billy<br />
By Michael Lambrix (<a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/">written for Minutes Before Six</a> )<br />
<br />
The first thing you’ve got to understand is that Billy’s biggest fault was that he just couldn’t turn a friend down when asked no matter what the consequences might be and for that, Billy had to die. It’s just that simple and such naïve concepts as truth or fairness have nothing to do with it, as if they did, Billy’s life would be spared. But in this cold and cruel world we have so deliberately created, only death could purge this intolerable fault from our midst…Billy had to die.<br />
<br />
The real irony in all of this is that in taking Billy’s life, the State of Florida will have done something Billy never did; the State of Florida will have made a conscious decision to kill, which, for those of us who actually knew Billy, knew that perhaps Billy’s most admirable trait was that despite the tragic history of his tortured life, that’s one line Billy chose not to cross, period.<br />
<br />
When the State of Florida carried out the state-sanctioned “execution” of William (Billy) Van Poyck, it killed a man who has never killed. But under the rule of law, Billy was convicted and condemned to death for the murder of Florida prison guard Fred Griffis in a botched escape attempt in 1987. Billy participated in the event and that made him criminally culpable under Florida’s “felony murder” rule of law that demands that anyone who knowingly participated in a criminal act that results in the death of another is guilty of capital murder even if they do not commit the act resulting in death themselves.<br />
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In Billy’s case, the crime was an attempt to break a friend free from a prison transport van. Billy and another friend, Frank Valdes, had both been released from prison months earlier, but their friend (James O’Brien) remained inside and was scheduled for medical transport when Billy and Frank jumped the van as it parked at the doctor’s office. Things quickly got crazy and within that eternal microsecond of chaos, Frank Valdes shot and killed FDOC officer Fred Griffis. They then quickly fled the scene leaving O’Brien in the van.<br />
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Both Billy and Frank Valdes stood trial in the southeast Florida rural community of Martin County, and the guards from the local maximum security prison (Martin Correctional) showed up in force so the jury – many of whom knew or were related to prison employees – would know with absolute certainty what was expected of them. The jury found both Billy and Frank guilty of capital murder of a law enforcement officer and had no problem recommending both be put to death.<br />
<br />
When Billy’s case received its required review on “direct appeal,” the Florida Supreme Court recognized that Billy did not kill officer Griffis, nor was there any evidence of a preformed intent to kill, nor prior knowledge that anyone would be killed, and the Florida Supreme Court vacated Billy’s conviction of “premeditated” murder. But in a twist that could only come from the distorted “ends justify the means” logic our politically corrupted courts have now become infamous for, the Florida Supreme Court turned around and said, “kill him anyways” as under Florida’s “felony murder” law, it doesn’t matter whether Billy intended anyone die as all that really mattered is that he participated in attempting to free O’Brien from the prison van with Frank Valdes, and although it was clear that Frank shot and killed Officer Griffis, Billy had to pay too.<br />
<br />
<br />
Even in subsequent appeals, it’s almost certain that Billy would have had his death sentence reduced to life, if not for another event involving Frank Valdes. In July 1999 a rabid pack of prison guards at Florida State Prison went into Frank Valdes’ cell on the infamous “X-wing” and brutally beat Frank to death. I was a couple cells down from Frank and we all know it was just a matter of time, as the courts later recognized in Valdes v Crosby, 450 f.3d.1276 (11th cir. 2006), in the months proceeding the murder of Frank, these pack of prison guards were given free rein to target and brutally assault any prisoner they pleased with the blessing of Warden James Crosby – who himself would subsequently be sent to Federal prison.<br />
<br />
As one of the few death-sentenced prisoners who had spent a considerable amount of time on “X-wing” and as a result became personally acquainted with both Billy and Frank Valdes, I knew that it was only too common for the guards to invent reasons to enter their solitary cells and under the pretense of doing a cell search, they would physically assault Billy and Frank, and openly promise both that they would not live long enough to be put to death by the state and that was a promise we all knew they would keep.<br />
<br />
Months after beating Frank Valdes to death a guard jury indicted two of the guards for murder, and they eventually stood trial in Bradford County, which has only one industry…the seven local prisons that provide the backbone of this rural northeast Florida community centered around Starke. Every juror admitted to knowing or being related to prison employees and it didn’t surprise anyone that after hearing all the evidence, including other prison employees on testimony detailing the murder of Frank Valdes, the jury still turned around and found all the guards “not guilty.” When asked later how they could acquit the prison guards given the overwhelming evidence, members of the jury could only stutter an implausible explanation, that they had no doubt the guards killed Frank – but they just didn’t know which one of the guards inflicted the fatal blow actually resulting in death and so they found all of them “not guilty”…who says justice has to make any sense?<br />
<br />
All of that left Billy in a really bad way. After the guards murdered his co-defendant Frank, the governor’s office ordered Billy transferred to a Virginia prison for his own safety and from there Billy continued to pursue his appeals. Having come to know Billy pretty well through the years prior to his transfer, I never expected to see him again as it seemed certain that Billy’s death sentence would be reduced to life given both the Florida Supreme Court’s own recognition that Billy did not kill anyone, and the evidence that showed Billy did not intend anyone to be killed, as well as the overwhelming evidence of Billy’s tragic life history that his sentencing jury was never allowed to hear.<br />
<br />
But that’s not how justice works here in American – someone has to pay and with Frank Valdes now already dead, that only left Billy. To hell with the evidence as only the hopelessly disillusioned would still believe that the inconvenience of truth had anything to do with the administration of “justice,” especially down here in the deep South, where the genetically predisposition towards a good old fashioned lynching is the only way to respond to a crime that upsets the community and so his fate was sealed – Billy had to die, as “justice” demanded no less, especially when Governor Rick Scott is preparing to run for re-election and desperately needs the political support of the prison guards in the upcoming election and although Governor Scott has spent the last three years screwing prison guards out of all he could, by throwing Billy to the wolves, they would now gladly line up to vote for his re-election next November, and he knew it.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the greater tragedy in the sacrificial murder of William Van Poyck is that few actually came to know Billy for the person he is and as too many all but openly celebrate his state-sanctioned lynching, they will only know the grossly distorted “facts” of his crime. As with all those condemned to death, our society does not want to know anything about the person they have decided to kill – the less they know, the better, as God forbid “we, the people” should recognize any measure of humanity within those condemned by our own hand.<br />
<br />
But I did know Billy as the person and not the perception of the alleged crime and so I am not at all surprised to see that ultimately Billy must die because he could not and would not turn his back on a friend. And when his close friend James O’Brien remained in prison with little hope of ever seeing the real world again, and the opportunity presented itself to give his friend that chance, Billy went along as only a true friend would.<br />
<br />
Those of us who actually knew Billy came to realize that Billy just wasn’t cut from the same cloth as most prisoners. Only a few years older than me, Billy was already doing seriously hard time before I even made it into my first year of high school. Back then, doing time meant surviving in the jungle that most maximum security prisons were before this new generation of politically ambitious prison administrators invented the concept of mass confinement of any and all inmates who dared to show any inclination of violence or anything less than absolute submission.<br />
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<br />
<br />
Billy came of age doing hard time in some of the worst prisons our society created, back when violence and death were served as cold and predictable as the cockroach infested grits each morning in the prison chow hall. It wasn’t enough to be physically strong to survive, as strength meant nothing when another crept up behind you and drove the blade of a homemade knife deep down into your flesh. It didn’t matter how big you were, and physically, Billy wasn’t that big of a guy and some might have described him as even small in stature. But as they say down here in the South, it’s not the size of the dog but the size of the heart in the dog and Billy had a lot of heart and even against the odds, would stand his ground against anyone if he knew he was right, and all too often Billy would put his own life on the line to stand up for those who couldn’t. That’s just the kind of person he was.<br />
<br />
I’ve know a lot of convicts through the too many years I’ve spent in prison – and a lot more who only too quickly will call themselves “convicts” even though they are not worthy. Billy was old school, and he earned his stripes the hard way. In this world we live in, prison can break the best of them and anyone who tries to tell you it can’t is full of – well, you know. It takes someone with incredible inner-strength, and courage to rise above this cesspool of humanity and remain their own man despite the forces perpetually pushing at you from all sides.<br />
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I doubt there would be any words to describe that intangible essence of the inner self that provides that measure of strength within that allows the very few to maintain their own sense of self when others all around them slowly become part of that environment. But anyone who has done hard time will recognize that unique quality and respect of the man who can master it.<br />
<br />
It is that measure of the man within that best describes just who Billy was as a person. Billy was a truly gifted writer who often found his means of detaching and compartmentalizing the trauma of his life experience by writing stories about his experiences. One of Billy’s stories, “Death by Dominoes” was posted here on Minutes Before Six. This particular story is a reflection of not only the horrific experiences Billy endured while doing time, but also how he found the strength to rise above it, and despite the probable consequences of intervening in behalf of another prisoner who Billy felt might not be able to stand up for himself, Billy put his own life on the line to do the right thing while the vast majority of inmates around him crawled up under their bunks and did nothing.<br />
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But “Death By Dominoes” is only one of countless stories that collectively create the colorful tapestry that is Billy, and there are many of us in prison today who could share similar stories of Billy’s character.<br />
<br />
I first came to know Billy not long after he was sentenced to death. Back then, any prisoner who assaulted or killed a prison guard would automatically be kept in a concrete box of a cell on Florida State Prison’s infamous “Q-wing” (later relabeled as “X-wing”). Nobody has really done hard time until you’ve done time on Q-wing and even a short stay on one of those 24 crypts often broke the prisoner forever.<br />
<br />
I had been sent to Q-wing after being charged with the infraction of “other assault” for beating a “runner” down with a food tray after the runner got it in his head that I might be his new romantic interest. I wasn’t proud of what I did, but it had to be done, as I had to live in this cesspool and any sign of weakness would result in a fate even for worse than death.<br />
<br />
They moved me up to 3 West, with Billy two crypts away – and I deliberately call these cages “crypts” as that is exactly what they are. Unlike regular confinement cells that are “open” (a wall of steel bars) at the front so you can see outside the cell and communicate with your neighbors, each crypt on Q-wing was fully enclosed by thick concrete walls and a solid steel door that when shut – and often it stayed shut – closed out all light, isolating the prisoner just as if he was cast down into a crypt.<br />
<br />
Within each crypt was a concrete slab that was the “bunk” and it was not uncommon at all for them to refuse to provide even one of the rodent-infested, generously urinated prison “mattresses,” leaving the prisoner within to sleep on the cold concrete, with the water deliberately shut off and the only means to urinate was to all but blindly feel for that hole in the center of the floor, then remove whatever you stuffed down into it to keep the rats and roaches from coming into the crypt, and remembering to again stuff that newspaper or whatever back in when done.<br />
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Few people could possibly imagine the uncompromised hell that Q-wing was, by deliberate design and intent. Its purpose was to unofficially retaliate against those who had dared to assault or kill a prison guard, and the physical conditions was only a small part of it, as it was unwritten policy that the guards assigned to Q-wing, each handpicked by the warden, were all but strongly encouraged to physically abuse the prisoners housed on Q-wing, and they only too often gleefully obliged the warden’s wishes.<br />
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I had already known who Billy was, as there aren’t too many secrets in this small world we live in, and we had mutual friends. Billy was easy to get along with and it wasn’t long before we were “talking” for hours – and I mean that’s only in the most abnormal way as it wasn’t easy to talk to anyone on Q-wing. But once you adjusted, it was possible, and we did.<br />
<br />
The first thing that caught my attention was Billy’s completely unexpected sense of humor, which was second only to never-ending drive to fight the fight. Where most who find themselves cast down into the depths of hell that Q-wing truly is, would either lay down on their slab of concrete and roll up into a ball in a futile attempt to shut reality out, or simple go mad until the guards get the psych shirts to tranquilize them into a state of mortal numbness, Billy did neither, instead finding his strength in standing his ground by using his knowledge of law to challenge his confinement. But for Billy, being who he was, it wasn’t enough for him to only fight his own fight, but to take on that fight for those around him regardless of the all but certain consequences of his actions.<br />
<br />
That was one of the bonds that created a sense of communion between me and Billy that lasted the better part of 20 years – our mutual unquenchable thirst to use our knowledge of law to fight the fight not only for ourselves, but to help those around us and with all respect, I must bow down to Billy’s obviously superior ability and uncompromised tenacity.<br />
<br />
It wasn’t long after my relatively short stay on Q-wing when Billy won the law suit he filed on behalf of all those on Q-wing and it forced the prison to finally release these prisoners from their long term Q-wing confinement, and Billy, Frank Valdes, and Thomas Knight were transferred to the regular death-row confinement wings, where they would be in open-front cells and be allowed the privileges extended to death row, such as use of a T.V., radio, buying “canteen” each week, receiving regular “contact” visits and going to rec yard. It was a big victory, but not without consequence, and as the years passed it would become common for Billy, Frank and Knight to be targeted for fabricated disciplinary actions and returned to Q-wing for shorter stays under the pretense of imposing discipline.<br />
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Within a few years of Billy’s victory in that lawsuit, our paths once again crossed as both me and Billy began contributing to and became instrumental in the growth of what eventually evolved into Florida’s top prisoner newsletter, known as “Florida Prison Legal Perspectives,” which provided prisoners throughout Florida the means with which to stay informed on changes in prison rules, changes in law relevant to both challenging convictions and parole, and a general information platform on what was going on around the State’s prisons. For years both me and Billy served on the Board of Advisors for FPLP and it thrived, despite prison officials deliberate targeting of the handful of prisoners whose names were associated with FPLP, and even as a number of prisoners who were willing to contribute to FPLP died under suspicious circumstances, such as Enrique Diaz, Billy never backed down from the greater cause and stood his ground to fight the fight on behalf of all prisoners.<br />
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During the same period of time a small handful of us on Florida’s Death Row decided it was time to challenge the “totality of conditions,” and despite receiving no assistance from lawyers, we initiated a comprehensive federal lawsuit with Billy contributing countless hours handwriting legal memorandums, and many sleepless nights spent talking about what had to be done, and thanks to the relentless work, we got that case to the Federal Court.<br />
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The thing is, we already knew we couldn’t win. We already knew that none of the typical legal organizations such as the ACLU, NAACP, or others were willing to help Florida’s Death Row prisoners as they often did in the other states because they knew the politically corrupted courts in Florida would be hostile to any such action. We went into this project knowing that we were passing into a gale force wind, and there would be hell to pay. But with Billy at the helm, we pushed forward.<br />
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We put every ounce of our strength into that lawsuit and the state threw their best lawyers at us. Each of us willing to put our names to it were targeted by both the guards and other Death Row inmates who would do as the guards asked of them (all the while calling themselves “convicts”), but we didn’t sacrifice a single inch of ground and slowly that iceberg itself gave way.<br />
<br />
Because of our excellent legal work, our small group of determined souls forced the Federal Court to deny the State’s motion to dismiss/motion for summary judgment (Lambrix/Teffeteller v Duggar, Case No. 89-840-J-as, US Dist Ct and the Federal Court ordered the case into pretrial discovery and suddenly there we were (me, Billy, Robert Teffeteller and Amos King) celebrating the David over Goliath victory. We had won and it was good.<br />
<br />
As a result of the Florida prison system now facing a very real threat of being found in violation of laws governing basic living conditions on Florida’s Death Row, and possibly even having Florida State Prison itself condemned and forced to close due to the deplorable conditions, suddenly they took us seriously and began not only re-constructing the Death Row wings at Florida State Prison, but announcing they would build a brand new “modern” Death Row unit at the cost of almost 20 million dollars!<br />
<br />
By December 1992 Florida opened its new “modern” Death Row unit at nearby Union Correctional, which had 336 single man confinement cells exclusively for Death Row and the majority of Florida’s Death Row were then transferred to the new unit where we actually had a clean environment to live in that was not infested by rodents and cockroaches, and although still unbearably hot in the summer, it had a heating system that kept us from freezing.<br />
<br />
But Billy would not be transferred – he would never set foot in this new unit, and was kept at Florida State Prison until late 1999 when he was transferred to Virginia after guards killed Frank Valdes. Billy would be returned to Florida in 2008 and again at Florida State Prison. Not long after that I was moved back to Florida State Prison under the pretense of “security” reasons, and was able to get a cell next to Billy up until the summer of 2012, when because of my physical disability (disabled veteran) I was moved back to the main death row unit of Union Correctional.<br />
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Billy knew his days were numbered as both the State and Federal Courts summarily denied his last appeals, and yet true to his character, Billy was not broken or gave into despair. Instead, he stood his ground and took the punches, never giving an inch.<br />
<br />
Perhaps ultimately that is what really angered those who wanted Billy dead the most – no matter how much hell they put Billy through, they could never break him, not even once. Many of the guards came to hold great respect for Billy and would come to his cell to ask legal advice or just talk and Billy never showed any anger or bitterness towards them, not even when one sergeant who previously worked Q-wing and took part in a particularly violent assault upon Billy was temporarily assigned to the Death Row wing. Billy treated him as if it never happened.<br />
<br />
It is the nature of the beast that prison will inevitably break the majority of those who are caught in its grasp. But then there are those few who possess supernatural inner-strength and will never be broken, instead remaining who they are consistently and standing their ground unconditionally. Billy was by no means a perfect man, and by society’s standards, Billy probably was an “outlaw” as it’s the only life he ever knew. But for those of us who actually knew Billy for the person he was, by his strength and sense of character, he inspired us. For the even fewer who could call Billy a friend, we were truly blessed by his generous spirit that touched each of our lives. The world that I continue to live in is a small, small world, but it is a better world because of Billy’s willingness to put himself in the line of fire to make it a better place.<br />
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In closing, I dedicate a song to Billy that I know will make him smile, as well as all those who have been blessed by knowing Billy…Billy the Kid by Billy Dean.<br />
<br />
Michael Lambrix #482053<br />
Union Correctional Institution<br />
7819 NW 228th Street (P3226)<br />
Raiford, FL 32026-4400<br />
USA<br />
<br />
http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2013/06/billy.html<br />
<br />
Please check out my website <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">http://www.southerninjustice.net</a> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-28014176039114845712013-05-11T01:26:00.000-07:002013-05-11T01:26:23.054-07:00Alcatraz of the South Part II: Descending Down into the Bowels of the Beast Second Part of Michael's Series <b>Alcatraz of the South</b> that he writes for the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/">Minutes Before Six website</a><br />
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ADMIN NOTE One of our regular writers Bill Van Poyck has had a death warrant signed with a scheduled execution date of 12 June 2013. Many avenues are being worked on and his attorneys are filing briefs for a stay of execution. We are not giving up hope that Bill's sentence can be commuted to a life sentence where he could be released for time served (26 years), getting him off death row. Please sign the petition on Bill's website <a href="http://www.thepetitionsite.com/628/191/633/save-billys-life/?cid=FB_TAF">HERE</a> and spread the word. Thank You<br />
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By Michael Lambrix<br />
<br />
Part 1 can be read <a href="http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.gr/2013/05/alcatraz-of-south-part-1.html">HERE</a><br />
<br />
The solid steel door was now all that separated me from that one single step that would lead me down into another world few could even imagine in their own worst nightmare. I couldn’t help but think of Alice in Wonderland, and how with just one unfortunate step, she fell down that rabbit hole into a surreal world where nothing was as it might seem to be. But my rabbit hole would cast me down into the very bowels of the greater beast that is our prison system, a hell that even the most hardened convicts feared.<br />
<br />
This door heading on to the wing that houses Florida’s Death Row was all but identical to the others I passed as I was escorted down that seemingly never-ending main corridor of Florida State Prison. By the looks of that plain door, nothing gave so much as a hint of the misery and deprivation of the lost souls housed therein. And yet there was that intangible feeling, that presence that hung into the air that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise and as I stood silently awaiting the guard within to open the door, a sense of fear overcame me. Had I looked in a mirror at that moment, I have no doubt I would have seen the fear upon my face.<br />
<br />
Anyone who stood in my shoes at that very moment and said they were not scared was either a fool or a liar. But I also knew that in this prison world the only thing worse than showing fear would be to admit being scared.<br />
<br />
I didn’t know what to expect and from all the stories I had already heard, I knew it wasn’t good. Finally, the face of a guard appeared at that small window and the sound of the big brass key being inserted into the lock was quickly followed by that door now swinging outward. As the door was opened, a gust of cold air blew outward. It was late March of 1984 and not especially cold, but that single unexpected gust made me shiver.<br />
<br />
Obediently I stepped across that threshold on to the Death Row wing, almost expecting to be sucked down into the depths of hell as I did, but the concrete floor beneath my feet remained solid even if the strength of my own legs beneath me didn’t. Just as quickly that door now behind me crashed shut with what seemed to be a thunderous sound, and the lock turned and I was trapped within, with nowhere to run even if I might had wanted to.<br />
<br />
As with all the wings at Florida State Prison, when entering from the main corridor, one finds himself standing on the “quarter-deck” of the second floor. The quarter-decks are the officer’s station, its walls lined with bulletin boards, including a large one with the names, prison inmate number and race of each inmate housed on the wing. To the left of where I stood, just inside that door, was the sergeant’s desk and to the far side of that were three small rooms – a small storage closet, a small bathroom, and then another smaller closet used to store cleaning supplies.<br />
<br />
To my immediate right there were concrete steps leading to the third floor cell blocks and down to the first floor cell blocks. On the wall next to the door I had just walked through was a “fire escape plan”- a diagram of each floor that showed the layout of the wing. Since I was left standing there while the sergeant and two officers were doing something else at the desk, I took a few minutes to examine the layout.<br />
<br />
All three floors were laid out the same, with a quarterdeck area from which the cellblocks extended. In the very middle of each floor, running in length from the quarterdeck all the way back to the very end of the wing was what was called a “pipe alley” where all the plumbing and electrical outlets ran. This pipe alley also served to separate the north side from the south side, with each tier of six by nine foot solitary cells backed up against that pipe alley facing outward.<br />
<br />
Each tier had both an inner and outer catwalk, with the very narrow inner catwalk providing access to each of the cells, and the much wider outer catwalk used by the guards when they made their periodical cell checks. Each tier had 17 cells, each virtually identical, measuring six foot by nine foot with a steel bunk securely affixed to one side and a combination of stainless steel sink/toilet affixed to the back wall. Towards the ceiling on the back wall was a single vent measuring not more than a cubic foot, although wider than it was tall.<br />
<br />
Each of these 102 cells on the wing was a concrete crypt, with three sides and the floor and ceiling solid concrete. Only the front of each cell open by way of a wall of steel bars spaced precisely four inches apart, as was the sliding cell door itself, with the exception of a “bean flap” on each door, which is a cutaway section with a steel plate about six inches wide where the food trays were passed in (which is why it is traditionally called a “bean flap”).<br />
<br />
As I stood there examining the wing layout, I couldn’t help but notice the loud noises coming from each side of the quarterdeck, obviously coming from the cellblock area. It wasn’t just prisoners taking but I could hear their T.V.s and radios, many radios.<br />
<br />
The sergeant stood up from the desk and walked across the quarterdeck, motioning at me to follow. Along the one wall next to the center door leading into the pipe alley was a single, long wooden bench and the sergeant sat down and instructed me to sit, too. I remained in the handcuffs and leg shackles and I shuffled over to the bench and sat as instructed.<br />
<br />
Without any malice or animosity in his voice, the sergeant began by telling me I needed to know how things work. He began by looking at me and telling me point blank that he’s not there to judge me and as long as I don’t give them a problem, they won’t give me a problem. That seemed fair enough – but as time went by I would learn that although this philosophy was generally true, there were still other guards who thought it was part of their job to antagonize Death Row prisoners and go out of their way to make us as miserable as possible. But fortunately, these few were the exception to the general rule.<br />
<br />
It quickly became clear that the sergeant had given this same introductory speech only too many times before. I was told that I was the fourth condemned prisoner that week alone. The class of 1984 would prove to be one of the busiest years for the Florida courts in sentencing prisoners to death.<br />
<br />
Much of what the sergeant told me I already knew – Death Row was not a regular prison and we would not be allowed to move around like those in the general inmate population (“gen-pop”) do. In gen-pop, each prisoner is required to work at an assigned job whether it is in the kitchen, mowing the lawns, or maintaining the facility. When not working, most gen-pop inmates could play sports, or go to the prison chapel, or just hang out with their chosen group of other inmates.<br />
<br />
But not Death Row, as we were special. Under the politically motivated pretense of “security,” all death-sentenced prisoners in Florida are kept in continuous solitary confinement for as long as they might remain under that sentence of death. Incredibly, they say that this confinement status is for our own protection, as if allowing us to mingle and move around other prisoners might get us killed, which is kind of ironic, considering that the state sent us to death row to kill us.<br />
<br />
But logic has nothing to do with this, and it becomes only too clear that the continuous solitary confinement of all Death Row prisoners has nothing to do with any legitimate “security” concerns. Rather, it is intended to serve the State’s greater purpose of breaking the condemned man both physically and psychologically in a methodical process towards what they hope will be our execution.<br />
<br />
The sergeant continued in an almost monotone, instructing me on what was expected of me. Once assigned to a cell, it was my responsibility to keep it clean. If a guard told me to “cuff up,” I was to immediately comply, without question. I already knew that the common prison term “cuff up” meant that the guard intended to place me in handcuffs, but until then I did not know that anytime any death-sentenced prisoner left his assigned cell, he must be first handcuffed, unless he had medical problems verified by the prison doctor. This meant that we had to be handcuffed behind the back whenever we left our cells.<br />
<br />
But then again, we didn’t leave our cells that much. In Florida, all death-sentenced prisoners are prohibited from eating meals in the prison chow hall, or going to the prison gym or chapel. All meals were brought to the individual cells and the only regular departures from your cell would be to shower three times a week and go to the recreation yard built just for death row – a relatively small concrete pad enclosed on all sides by twelve foot high security fencing topped by razor wire. A few hundred feet away was a guard tower where the watchful eye of a trained marksman waited ready to shoot anyone stupid enough to try to scale that fence.<br />
<br />
Otherwise, the only time I would leave my assigned cell would be if I had a medical appointment at the clinic up front, or if I had either a legal or a family visit.<br />
<br />
I was surprised to learn that even on Death Row, I would be allowed visits with family or friends each weekend for up to six hours at a time, per day. And that although death-sentenced prisoners were kept in restraints (even when walking the few feet from the assigned cell to the shower cell, the only two exceptions were when we went to the recreation yard and when we had social visits.<br />
<br />
For all the negatives I could speak of regarding Florida’s Death Row, the one positive was social visits from family and friends. Unlike many other Death Rows, (such as Texas) that permit only non-contact visits through a thick plate of glass, Florida allows its condemned prisoners to have regular contact visits with family members or other friends as long as they are approved to visit, a relatively easy process that requires a criminal background check by prison officials to make sure the visitor is not a wanted outlaw.<br />
<br />
I would come to learn that the Death Row visiting park is seen as “sacred ground” by prisoners. No matter what problem you might have with another death-sentenced prisoner, you do not make it an issue during a visit. We all knew only too well that there were many politicians and prison officials who did not want death-sentenced prisoners to have visits at all, much less regular contact visits and if given any excuse, they would quickly push to take these visits away. For that reason, there was an understanding among all death-sentenced prisoners that the visiting park was holy and God help the idiot who might get stupid and give them a reason to take our visits.<br />
<br />
But even as the sergeant explained how I would be allowed to have visits with family and friends each weekend, I already knew that I would have few, if any, visits. In those first few years I had no visits at all, and the vast majority of death-sentenced prisoners had just as few, if any, as a big part of being condemned to die is being removed from that world out there.<br />
<br />
The sergeant then explained that the laundry workers came to wing once a week to change out the state clothing each inmate was provided. At the time, the designated uniform for all Death Row inmates was a pair of dark blue denim-type pants with nothing but an apricot colored t-shirt. The state would not provide death-sentenced prisoners any type of shoes, but at that time we could have family and friends send us shoes and clothing as well as various basic hygiene products (soap, toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, etc.), but of course, that was dependent upon each prisoner having someone willing to send a care package. If not, many did without.<br />
<br />
With the introductory speech complete, the sergeant told me to follow him and we were joined by the other two officers as we went to the nearby concrete staircase, and then descended down into the bowels of that beast. Upon reaching that lower level quarterdeck, I noticed that, unlike that second floor quarterdeck that also served as the officers’ station, the lower level had nothing but an enclosed area that appeared to be an office at the one end, which I later learned was for the classification officer assigned to the Death Row wing.<br />
<br />
As with that second floor, to each far side of this quarterdeck were steel bar gates leading into the catwalks. The sergeant said that I would be housed in “1-south-6”, which meant that my assigned Death Row cell was on the first floor, south side, cell six, and I was led toward that south side gate that led into the cellblock area.<br />
<br />
The closer I got towards the actual cells, the louder the sound of various radios and T.V.’s became, and above those electronic noises were the voices of unseen prisoners conversing with each other, often yelling to be heard above others.<br />
<br />
We entered that gate and took the first few steps only to have the sergeant stop at two side-by-side empty cells, which he explained were the shower cells where three times a week on the evening shift I would be escorted, then locked within, to take a 5 minutes shower. He then proceeded further down the tier and came to the first cell housing another inmate. Still wearing both the handcuffs and leg shackles, I slowly shuffled by that first cell, then another and another, each housing an inmate. The first five inmates paid me no mind at all, with only the Columbian in cell five looking up at me to inspect his neighbor.<br />
<br />
There were no loud screams of “fresh meat” or the derogatory calls that Hollywood movies typically exaggerate as a new guy enters into a prison cellblock that first time. Just that quickly, we reached cell number six, and the cell door was already open and I entered into my new home. Almost immediately the cell door rolled shut with a loud metallic clang and the sergeant first told me to back up to the cell door, then he reached through the open bean flap and removed the handcuffs, then reached down to my legs and removed the leg shackles and without another word, they walked away.<br />
<br />
Although the noise continued all around me, I felt an overwhelming silence within as I stood there those first few moments in that cold concrete crypt that was my new cage. It had been a long day, a very, very long day and I was both physically and mentally exhausted. For more than ten continuous hours I had been kept restrained and both my hands and feet tingled almost painfully as the blood finally was able to circulate in each. I looked around and my new cell was nothing more than an empty concrete box with the exception of a steel bunk along the one wall, and a rolled-up prison “mattress” (if it can be called that) with a bedroll consisting of a rough wool “horse blanket” and two bed sheets – all of which had seen better days.<br />
<br />
There was not table or chair and the height of the bunk made it uncomfortable to sit upon as a metal rail ran its length that cut into my thigh, so I sat on the toilet. I learned quickly that the toilet was the only seat in the house.<br />
<br />
I was just sitting down to untie my shoelaces so I could pull off my shoes and try to rub some life back into my too-long shackled feet, I heard a voice nearby calling out, “Hey, new guy – cell six,” then, “Hey, what’s your name?” It took me a long moment to realize that the voice was calling me – I was “cell six,” I was the “new guy,” and I responded, “I’m Mike. Who are you?”<br />
<br />
With those simple words, a long conversation began. Although I was exhausted, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep right away, anyway. It was already late afternoon and I assumed they would be bringing dinner soon. I stood up and took the few steps to the front of my cell so I could try to see who was calling me, and as I did, I noticed an arm reaching around that concrete wall from the adjacent cell and didn’t know what to make of that.<br />
<br />
At the time, each cell had only a single incandescent light bulb that hung down from the ceiling in the upper front corner of the cell, and it was barely enough light to see by. But in that dim light, I noticed that the arm extending outward towards my cell held what appeared to be a Popsicle stick, and at the very end of that stick was a small fragment of a mirror. My new neighbor was “spooking” me, prison slang for checking me out, but not necessarily in a bad way…just curious.<br />
<br />
“Hey,” the voice called out. “My name is J.D.” I would learn that his full name was James D. Raulerson, and he would soon become my new friend and mentor, making my transition to the life under a sentence of death somewhat tolerable.<br />
<br />
With introductions quickly behind us, J.D. offered me a cup of coffee and as I accepted, a few minutes later he again reached around the wall towards my side, and I reached out and took that steaming cup of coffee from him, expressing my gratitude as it had been at least a year since I had a good cup of coffee. No sooner did I take that cup of coffee, there was J.D.’s hand reaching out again, this time with a pack of cookies, which he insisted I take and I really didn’t offer much opposition as I hadn’t eaten all day.<br />
<br />
That night was not shower night and once the guards brought our dinner then returned to collect the empty trays, I found that other than the once-nightly “master count,” we didn’t see a lot of the guards other than an occasional cell check as one walked by in the outer catwalk, essentially paying no mind to any of us.<br />
<br />
I would spend the next hours leaning up against that concrete wall that divided my cell from J.D.’s and we talked around the wall. Others also hollered out, wanting to know who the new guy was, but each time even before I could answer, J.D. would yell back, “His name is Mike”. As the evening progressed, guys I didn’t even know were passing various items from cell to cell towards me. I quickly learned that Death Row really was different from the gen-pop. When I first came to the row, there was camaraderie among the guys and for the most part, we looked out for each other.<br />
<br />
None of these guys knew me and only J.D. was close enough to actually have a conversation with me over all the other noise. But that first evening I received “care packages” from others around me with food and snacks and basics that we all used, such as toothpaste and deodorant and someone even sent me a state coat and an extra blanket, which I soon learned was most important as once it got dark outside, the temperature quickly dropped and that extra blanket kept me warm that first night and many nights after.<br />
<br />
Most of the snacks and other items sent to me came without any note or means of identifying who sent it. Nobody asked for anything in return – back then, we all called it “looking out.” My first night on Death Row was nothing like I had expected it to be, although my expectations themselves had been vague. I really hadn’t known what to expect. I only knew that what I found was not at all what I had thought it might be.<br />
<br />
Sometime after midnight the T.V.s and radios on the wing slowly faded out and even the guys talking to others died down and the wing went to sleep. I bid J.D. a good night and threw the sheets and blankets on the already worn-out mattress, and lay back, and as I lay there thinking about my new environment, I too drifted off into a deep sleep and my first day came to its end.<br />
<br />
Next: Part III Shaking the Bush, Boss,<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Michael Lambrix<br />
<br />
Michael Lambrix #482053<br />
Union Correctional Institution<br />
7819 NW 228th Street (P3226)<br />
Raiford, FL 32026-4400<br />
USA Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-33511096429173079982013-05-06T10:53:00.002-07:002013-12-17T05:32:08.906-08:00Alcatraz of the South Part 1Alcatraz of the South Part 1<br />
<br />
By Michael Lambrix, written for Minutes Before Six website<br />
<br />
The funny thing about not having a future is that you tend to spend way too much time thinking about the past and all those distorted memories of the life you might have once had. It doesn’t take too much to think back to those better days and when you’ve spent as much time in a solitary cell as I have over the past three decades, your attempt to hold on to those past memories too often begin to blend into the world you’re now trapped in and the present becomes one with that past in the strongest of ways.<br />
<br />
Most recently, it was a simple question posed by a friend, asking me what it was like when I first came to Florida’s death row so long ago. She wanted me to tell her how I felt that first day and what my initial impressions were. I suppose that was a simple enough question but how does one look back through the many years and describe that first moment when the world he once knew ceased to exist and as if awakening to a nightmare, he steps into a virtual man-made hell that few could even begin to imagine?<br />
<br />
As I struggle with a way to answer that simple question, my thoughts drift back to a time in my early teens when living in the San Francisco Bay area where I was born and raised. A friend’s father had just bought a new boat and we all begged to go along as he took that cabin cruiser out that very first time.<br />
<br />
We began our trip early that morning at a marina in San Rafael, not too far from where San Quentin State Prison looked out over the bay, just a short distance from the Richmond Bridge that joined Marin and Alameda countries. Side by side with my friend, I stood proudly at the bow of the boat, our knuckles clenched tightly to that stainless steel rail as the water broke beneath us. We skirted southward around the bay towards that narrow passage between the sparsely populated hills of Tiburon and Larkspur, and the infamous and ironically named Angel Island where Japanese Americans were involuntarily interned during the World War II, and then towards the mouth of Richardson Bay where the funky houseboats around Sausalito then lay anchor and our captain, oh captain, proudly leaned down on his horns.<br />
<br />
We then swung southward again, crossing the bay in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge with those twin engines gunned as we fought the current that had swept many a lesser boat out to the sea and back up into the bay along the bunks of what was once Crissy Field at the Presidio, past the stuffy St. Francis Yacht Club, on towards Fisherman’s Wharf and the Ferry Terminal.<br />
<br />
By then it was approaching mid-morning and, as is so common on those early days, thick banks of drifting fog rolled in across the bay just as we turned in towards Alcatraz Island. At that time I had heard many stories about that island, but had never seen it up close before. The boat had slowed to barely a crawl, inching its way towards that bellowing foghorn and we remained on point, straining to see through those drifting bunks of seemingly impenetrable fog and then suddenly, there it was directly in front of us, the towering castle-like monstrosity that is Alcatraz, rising from the depths of the sea.<br />
<br />
As we slowly flanked the island, everyone on the boat was silent, each of us looking up towards that abandoned monument of human misery and with the sun still rising over the distant hills behind the island, that late morning light cast strange shadows from the broken windows of that fortress-like cellblock that topped the island so as that one could almost see the faceless figures of those long forgotten convicts who once made that infamous Rock what it was. Now, I imagines, their tortured souls stood a silent vigil perhaps also looking out towards a life they once had.<br />
<br />
We had all heard the stories of the depravation and the desperation of the men condemned to that island hell and how the federal government had closed and all but abandoned the island after a daring and fateful midnight escape that proved the seemingly inescapable prison had its weaknesses after all.<br />
<br />
The stories told around our scout campfires hinted that those desperate convicts may had made it off the island, but they didn’t leave the water alive, and there in the dead of the night out on the bay, the tortured souls of these ghosts still cry out as they were forever condemned to drift in endless circles around Alcatraz, never to set foot on dry land again.<br />
<br />
But for all the stories that I might had heard, and even when I think back to that morning when I first saw for myself that soulless steel and stone miscreation floating in the bay between those thick banks of ghostly fog, never once, not even in my worst childhood nightmare could I have imagined how my own destiny would one day closely parallel that of those lost souls, and I too would go on to become one of those faceless figures standing in the shadows of the shattered windows of an only too similar cold concrete and steel monstrosity maliciously designed to methodically break the will of even the strongest of men.<br />
<br />
It had been about ten years, almost to the day, since that prophetic boat trip when that plain windowless white van pulled up to the heavy steel gates at the backside of Florida State Prison to deliver its human cargo. I sat alone, shackled and chained in a cage in the back, as I was the cargo. Only the day before I had been sentenced to death. That was March 22, 1984, and although seemingly so long ago, I can still remember it as if that was yesterday.<br />
<br />
My journey into this man-made hell had begun many hours before we finally approached the gates leading into this beast known as Florida State Prison and I already knew only too well that FSP wasn’t just any prison – it was the end of the line and it was here that I had been delivered to die. Only those condemned to death come straight to FSP as all others commonly graduate to this prison after screwing up at other institutions and proving they cannot be housed anywhere else. For that reason, FSP had come to be known as the Alcatraz of the South, where convicts only came when they couldn’t be sent anywhere else. There wasn’t a prisoner in the south who didn’t fear the place or know its reputation for violence and death was by no means an exaggeration.<br />
<br />
There I sat in that van, in the heart of what was known as the “Iron Triangle,” that area of northwest Florida around the town of Starke, where at least six state prisons formed the backbone of an industry imprisoning society’s outcasts. Just across the way and yet in another county altogether stood “The Rock of Raiford,” made famous in a few Humphrey Bogart movies.<br />
<br />
As I now know, the local industry dates back to 1913 when Florida built a few temporary stockades on 18,000 acres of land they had purchased at $5.00 an acre. At that time, it was called the State Prison Farm and was intended to accommodate only those prisoners the state could not sell to private businesses, which was the practice even after slavery was abolished.<br />
<br />
By 1919 hundreds of both male and female convicts worked together to farm about 4,000 acres of crops and run a shoe factory that put out about 10 pairs of shoes a day. The state hired a superintendent and about 40 guards who were paid $35.00 a month plus room and board.<br />
<br />
But in 1923 then-Governor Hardee put a stop to the time honored practice of selling state prisoners for labor. For the first time, all convicted felons in Florida had to be sent to a state prison. By 1928, the infamous “Rock” known as Raiford State Prison was built near the original stockades, and a license tag factory put them to work. Once the construction of state prisons began, it never stopped. Soon more buildings were constructed to house even more prisoners and on and on it grew. By the 1950’s Florida decided it was time to have their own maximum-security prison, where convicts who couldn’t be housed anywhere else could be warehoused and a death house could be built.<br />
<br />
Florida State Prison was born the same year I was – 1960. Originally considered an extension of “The Rock,” it was commonly called “The East Unit.” But the unlucky convicts who called it home knew it for what it was – “The Alcatraz of the South.” By the time I arrived, FSP had already earned its reputation as a hell beyond comprehension.<br />
<br />
As I now look back to that early Spring day of March 1984, I can’t help but think of the classic Dante’s “Inferno” and how the imaginary friend journeyed down with the condemned man through those nine rings of hell. As much as I might wish I had my own imaginary guide to accompany me down and down, I already knew that it would be my fate to make this journey alone, even though I too was about to descend into an “inferno” beyond the comprehension. To be able to now merge the man I am today with that much younger man that first entered the man-made hell is all that I might hope for as I now tell my tale.<br />
<br />
I can imagine myself sitting in that van so long ago, waiting for those gates to swing open and suck me inside. As I strained to see over the guards’ shoulders and out that front window into that great beyond, all I can see was a barren and seemingly lifeless landscape enclosed by first one and then another tall steel fence topped off with rows of ribboned razor wire and between this gauntlet of impenetrable fences were stacked rows of this same razor wire.<br />
<br />
The heavy gate slowly slid open allowing the van to finally enter. Above us was a concrete gun tower and below us, a pit where a guard would walk beneath the vehicle to be sure nothing or no one was attached to the undercarriage. They called this the Sally port. The driver got out, and only then could I finally see that to my far right there were blue clad prisoners walking around a grass field and playing softball or working out on weights. That didn’t look too bad. Only later was I informed that those guys were “general population” prisoners and that inviting rec yard was only for them, not for the Death Row.<br />
<br />
FSP was a virtual warehouse of solitary cells where most were intended to first psychologically, and then physically, slowly rot away. Only a small group of FSP were “population” inmates, and only because they were needed to cook, and clean and whatever else actual work had to be done.<br />
<br />
I stretched forward as far as I could to get a better look, towards a small concrete area enclosed by yet another tall fence topped off with razor wire; Death Row. An even shorter wing sticking out the end of the building next to the Death Row wing was Q-wing. The bottom floor, right through the second window, was home to Old Sparky.<br />
<br />
A few minutes later the van cleared the security check and we drove into the compound, straight down a narrow ribbon of asphalt toward the far end. As we did so, I made a mental note that the prison lay as straight as a ruler, with six almost virtually identical “wings,” each three stories high, extending outward from that backbone somewhat like a centipede lying on its back with its legs stretched straight outward. Only as the van approached the far end did the building structure change as a loading dock area, that I later knew to be the kitchen, break the uniformity.<br />
<br />
Just beyond that was a circular drive at the base of a long concrete ramp that ascends up into the building itself, which was the only means into or out of this building that I could see. But every prisoner who has ever had the misfortune of doing time at FSP knows this ramp. Although the prison is stacked three stories high, it is actually the second floor that is the main floor of the entire prison. For that reason, unlike Dante’s “Inferno,” one does not descend into the depths of this hell, but must actually climb up this mini-mountain of a ramp, slowly shuffling along in chains and shackles that make the climb all that much more difficult, and then, and only then, do you enter the prison through a polished tile hallway that leads towards what has always been known as “Times Square,” where the four corners of this world cross within.<br />
<br />
Slowly I shuffled, and following the directions of my keeper, we moved up this hall towards a wall of steel bars with electric gates to each side.<br />
<br />
Upon reaching that first set of gates, I arrived at Times Square and stood patiently as we awaited the control room on the far side to open the gate so we could enter. As I would learn, all new inmates arriving at FSP are first placed in a steel “holding cage” in front of the control room there at Times Square, and so too was I.<br />
<br />
There I was to wait to be processed in and brought down to the Medical Infirmary for a cursory check-up before being brought to the wing where I would be housed. Whether it was callous indifference, or the product of malicious intent, inmates first arriving, including myself, would wait in that small cage often for hours, all the while remaining handcuffed behind the back with both waist chains and leg irons (shackled). Even as those hours slowly passed, I knew better than to complain. FSP had a long history of instantaneous “hands-on” discipline and not even someone as new and naïve as I was then would be stupid enough to provoke the guards.<br />
<br />
Finally towards the late afternoon my time came, and I was pulled from the Times Square cage and thrown a bedroll that I was expected to pick up and carry even though I remained handcuffed and chained behind the back. I obediently crouched down and grabbed the bedroll and then with a guard at each side. I was led to yet another wall of steel bars, awaiting the gate leading into the main hall that runs from one end of the building to the other to open. And then it did, and I again entered, metaphorically descending into another ring of this hell. <br />
<br />
Conveniently, I would get the full tour, as Death Row was housed only on the wings at the farthest end of the hall, through a series of more gates, for all practical purposes, an isolated area that was itself a prison within a prison.<br />
<br />
Stepping through those Time Square gates and into that long hall to my immediate right was a double set of steel doors with a small square window into the prison chapel. I quickly looked through that little window and was surprised to find a cavernous space that actually did look very much like a free-world church, complete with polished pews of stained wood divided neatly by a path of red carpet leading up to an altar accented by a wood cross and illuminated by the soft light of what appeared to be candles. Unfortunately, in the three decades I have spent on Florida’s Death Row, not even once has a death-sentenced prisoner ever been allowed to attend a church service.<br />
<br />
Walking farther, just a short way up the hall we come to yet another wall of bars with an electronic gate to each side. To my right is the prison gym, enclosed and securely separated by two steel doors and another small glass window, deliberately too small for anyone to get through if a riot broke out. As I looked through that window, I could see the vast space within, open all the way from the first floor below us to the ceiling far above, with a full wood floored basketball court, and what appeared to be a stage where the notorious “boxing ring” once was, now replaced by sets of steel weights and benches. But again that gym is off limits to Death Row. <br />
<br />
Directly opposite the gym was first what to be an open dining room, one of two identical dining rooms, but this one had been converted into the “Administrative Confinement Visiting Park” (ACVP), which is prison label for the Death Row visiting area, where if family and friends are willing, they could come each weekend for up to a 6 hour “contact” visit in a relatively relaxed environment. But few death-sentenced prisoners actually get regular visits and for the most part, it remained empty.<br />
<br />
Immediately adjacent to the ACVP was the “population” dining hall that at that time remained in use. As I would quickly come to know, Death Row were never allowed to eat in the prison dining hall – Death Row was a continuous confinement status, and all meals are served and eaten in the cell. I would learn I was lucky, in a way, not to have access to these areas. This prison has more killings that the rest of Florida’s prisons combined and most of these killings happen in either the dining hall or the gym. As the years passed, I would come to know many condemned prisoners who caught their cases by killing other inmates either in the dining hall or gym, although a few took place on the wings.<br />
<br />
Again, we waited momentarily for the gate to open and then walked through. Each of the 13 housing wings along this main hall are sealed off by the solid steel doors and locked from both sides. That way, even if something happened on one wing, it is isolated from the other wings.<br />
<br />
Walking up that hall, the first solid steel door to my left had a large “W” painted above the door. Back then, “W-wing” was a “max psyche” wing where prisoners who could not be broken anywhere else were sent there, and once you went in, you either came out broken or dead. It would be years later, after too many died under the pretense of being administered “psychiatric care,” that the State would close that wing down and today W-wing is not even acknowledged by the FDOC. But for those who did time at FSP up until the eighties, each has many stories of the horrors that took place on W-wing.<br />
<br />
In relatively quick succession we silently passed the three housing wings on the right side known as “J”, “K” and “L” wings, which at that time I first came to Florida State Prison were where the population prisoners were housed three tiers high with 17 single man cells to each side of each floor, all the way up to the roof of the third floor, giving the impression of a large open space surrounded by the cells housing over a hundred population prisoners on each of the three wings. Unlike the wings housing Death Row, each of the cells on these wings was built on the outside wall so that within each cell the inmate had his very own window. (Too often over the many, too many, years that followed, I wished that I had access to a window so that I could feel the air coming in from outside.)<br />
<br />
To my left where three wings used to house those in “closed custody” – a common confinement status similar to other states’ “segregated confinement,” where those who committed serious disciplinary infractions would be kept for what could be long periods of time, isolated in single man cells with very few privileges and under conditions that arguably made even Death Row seem like a good place to be. See, “The Harsh Prison Treatment at Starke”, Miami Herald, May 26, 1991, by Human Rights Watch prison project director Joanna Weschler (Admin note - Michael refers to this article and we have been unable to locate it online however we have found the report it appears this article is based on - Prison Conditions in the United States by Human Rights Watch. The director of this report was Joanna Weschler.)<br />
<br />
Finally, we came to the last of these steel bar walls and its set of electric gates and the end of that long main hall could now be seen. This time we didn’t wait too long and I was quickly guided into this area known as “Corridor E,” which segregated the last five wings.<br />
<br />
To my right was “N” and “P” wing, which were used to house even more “closed management” inmates when I first arrived to FSP in 1984, but by 1992 the growing number of Florida’s Death Row would be expanded to both of these wings. To my left was “S” and “R” wing, which in 1984 were both exclusively Death Row.<br />
<br />
The segregated confinement wings behind the gate in “Corridor E” are all designed so that the cells are inside the middle of the wing, facing out so that these prisoners cannot have any direct access to a window. Each of the three floors has 2 sides, each side with 17 cells of about 6’ x 9’ and subtracting the area for the bunk and sink/toilet combo, each cell had an open area of, at best, 24 square feet – and in that small space the condemned would be warehoused for not only years, but decades.<br />
<br />
The guard motioned me to the nearest wing, labeled with the letter “S” above the solid steel door. As we waited for the guards within to open the lock on their side, I realized there was another wing beyond these last four: Q-wing. That single steel door at the very end of this hall leads to where prisoners are executed. I couldn’t help but look. It appeared to be just another door not at all unlike the 12 other doors leading into housing areas along the main hall. There appeared to be nothing that indicated what might lie beyond that plain door.<br />
<br />
But as the years would pass, I would find out that appearances could be quite deceiving. Through that otherwise normal looking door was where the Florida death house was. When walking through that door, one could be forgiven for thinking it was just another wing. And unless you really knew, it would appear to be just another wing. But through that door, if you take a quick right turn you’ll see a set of stairs that lead down to the first level, just as the stairs do on each of the wings. Only when you actually reach that lower level do you realize that it’s not at all like all the other wings. <br />
<br />
Thank you for allowing me to share my introductory tour with you and I hope that you will join me in future segments of this series. In the following segment I will walk through that “S” wing door and on to Death Row.<br />
<br />
Please check out my website <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">http://www.southerninjustice.net</a><br />
<br />
<br />
Michael Lambrix #482053<br />
Union Correctional Institution<br />
7819 NW 228th Street (P3226)<br />
Raiford, FL 32026-4400<br />
USA Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-28251677277377878572012-12-16T23:11:00.000-08:002013-12-16T02:47:16.275-08:00The Christmas CardArticle written bij Mike on the <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/the-christmas-card.html">Minutes Before Six website </a><br />
<br />
The Christmas Card<br />
By C. Michael Lambrix<br />
<br />
At this time of year I find myself wondering what Christmas has become. For almost 30 years now, I have been in continuous solitary confinement, condemned to death. Here on Florida’s Death Row there are no shopping malls or shiny decorations that have come to define the holidays in the real world. I can watch it all on my TV, and if what I’m watching is what Christmas out there in the real world is, then maybe I’m more fortunate that those who have been consumed by commercialism, and have lost sight of what it should mean.<br />
<br />
What are we really celebrating at this time of year? Don’t get me wrong – I would give almost anything to spend Christmas with my children and grandchildren, and see that magic sparkle in their eyes as they rip open brightly colored packages stacked beneath a beautifully decorated Christmas tree.<br />
<br />
And what very little I might still have left afterwards, I would willingly surrender too, if only I could spend Christmas Day gathered around Mom’s table with long-lost family as we share a traditional meal while basking in the glow of each other’s company, as those are the moments that memories are made of.<br />
<br />
But for me, Christmas will be spent in a cage and there won’t be any warm hearth, or gifts beneath a tree. I will spend my holiday alone just as I have done for too many Christmas’s past and although it may be difficult for others to understand, I still feel blessed to celebrate Christmas in my own way.<br />
<br />
I came to Florida’s Death Row in March of 1984 and it’s that first Christmas on “The Row” that I look back upon and remember. That was a very hard year. In that first year, there were eight men here on The Row put to death, one almost every month, and at a time when there was barely 100 of us here. That number now has increased to almost 400, with executions averaging two yearly.<br />
<br />
With so many facing imminent executions, the stench of death practically hung over all of us like a toxic cloud, threatening to suffocate us. My cell neighbor had been on The Row for about eight years at the time, and throughout that first year James (J.D.) Raulerson looked out for me and, as only condemned men living in close proximity can, we became as close as family. He took me under his wing and generously and kindly showed me the ropes.<br />
<br />
But just before the holidays, the Florida governor signed a “death warrant” on J.D., and he was taken away to the death watch area to await execution. His Christmas would be spent alone on the bottom floor of Florida State Prison’s infamous “Q-wing,” a few feet away from the door that leads into the execution chamber, and the following month, J.D. was executed.<br />
<br />
Although I had sat in my death row cell as eight others were each put to death, and executions were not unfamiliar to me, by the time that first Christmas on The Row rolled around and J.D. was moved to death watch, it hit especially close to home. He was the first one that I was actually close to, though far too many others I came to later know as both friends and brothers would follow through the years.<br />
<br />
That first Christmas on The Row was especially hard in part because I still held on to the more traditional way in which most celebrate this holiday. I missed being able to be with my loved ones and I could only wonder how my children might be spending their Christmas that year as I had no way to communicate with them, and hadn’t heard from them since my arrest in early 1983.<br />
<br />
But that doesn’t mean that my family and friends were not in thought, and each night I anxiously waited for the mail to come in, hoping upon hope that maybe, just maybe, I might get a card or letter, but those cards and letters didn’t come.<br />
<br />
Even as alone a condemned man might feel in that solitary cage, that physical isolation becomes a distant second to the overwhelming sense of abandonment one feels as each day ever-so-very-slowly drags by and that mail you so anxiously hope will come doesn’t, and each day without a word pushes you down further into an abyss of hopelessness and despair that slowly kills you from within – one small cut at a time.<br />
<br />
Today I can look back and understand what I could not back then; that what I felt was not at all unique amongst those I lived around. It is part of the experience we all feel on The Row. When it comes down to it, those who love and care about us in the world don’t know how to handle our death sentences. When that sentence is imposed, there’s a presumption of finality not unlike what families experience when they learn a loved one has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Even those who truly do love us often become uncomfortable and distant, unable to cope with the impending loss of someone they love.<br />
<br />
For them, there is the added stigma of having a loved one convicted of a heinous crime in the very community they, our families, must continue to live in. It took me many years to see beyond the misery of my own circumstance and come to understand that even as hard as it might be on me, my conviction and condemnation was at least just as hard on those I left behind.<br />
<br />
For the many months of that first year, J.D. was my mentor and source of support and then he was gone. Many mornings I would awake, still expecting to see his arm reaching around that concrete wall that separated our cells, extending a cup of coffee or perhaps some kind of snack – his way of inviting me to get up and talk a while. Although we couldn’t physically see each other, as each solitary cell was only open at the front, facing outward, being able to stand there at the front of the cell and talk around that wall was a very real sense of communion that we shared.<br />
<br />
Just that quickly, it was no more and in that month leading up to that first Christmas, that cell remained empty, leaving me all but isolated (as the man on my other side chose to keep to himself and would rarely talk at all.)<br />
<br />
Perhaps I have always struggled with depression, although I can’t help but wonder who wouldn’t if thrown into a solitary cell facing the reality of death all around you. But that first Christmas had me feeling especially abandoned and overwhelmed and I became almost obsessed with questioning the “why” of it all. Finding few answers, I contemplated whether I should take the easy way out, and if I could find the strength to commit suicide. I did think about the many ways that might be accomplished and, as those thoughts too often invaded my overwhelming isolation, the person that I was back then would have welcomed an end to what has become an ongoing nightmare.<br />
<br />
That Christmas of 1984 was on a Tuesday, just as it will be this year (2012) and when the cards and letters I hoped to receive didn’t come by that last weekend before Christmas, like too many others around me, I clung on to the hope that they would come that Monday, Christmas Eve.<br />
<br />
Then that Monday came and I was not the only one on the wing who silently stood at his cell door hoping upon whatever measure of hope remained that this night before Christmas would miraculously bring that one card or letter from a loved one. It was almost a collective ritual, as each of us anxiously watched that clock in anticipation for “mail call.” We strained to hear the sound of those heavy brass keys as the guard came down to open the inner catwalk gate that led into the cellblock area, where he would slowly work his way down the wing, one cell at a time, passing out the mail. The whole floor went quiet as each of us anxiously waited for what we might receive.<br />
<br />
As the guard approached my cell that night, he stopped and I’m sure in that moment my heart skipped a beat as I held my breath like a child would if confronted by Santa Claus. I watched as the guard looked down on his small stack of mail and silently picked up the top one, then unceremoniously laid that one plain white envelope on my door and without a word, walked away towards the next cell.<br />
<br />
I picked that envelope up from my door and looked to see from who it might be, but there was no name or return address. I then looked at the postmark and could see that it was mailed from Key Largo, Florida a few days earlier, but I didn’t know anyone down in Key Largo.<br />
<br />
A small piece of scotch tape had been used to seal the envelope, and I pulled it apart, then carefully reached in to pull the card out. It was just a plain card sporting a modestly decorative pattern on the front, with gold print letters that read, “Happy Holidays,” and inside, a generic wish that the season would be joyful and not much more.<br />
<br />
But then I read what was written inside – just three simple words, and that was all… “I forgive you,” signed E. Banner. There was a moment of confusion before that sank in, and then I realized what I was holding, and I involuntarily sunk down upon my bunk. Sitting in silence, I stared at that simple card for what may very well have been hours as the passage of time became irrelevant…. “I forgive you.”<br />
<br />
That simple card was from the mother of the victim in the case for which I now sat on death row. I recognized the name from court documents, and as I understood it, “Chip” was her only child. Throughout my trial, she never came to court and unlike the family of the young woman who also died that night Ms. Banner never campaigned for or demanded my death as the only acceptable measure of justice.<br />
<br />
I didn’t sleep that Christmas Eve and carefully laid that simple card up on my small bookshelf and that night I laid there alone and in the darkness and solitude that surrounded me, I cried for the first time in too many years and then I got down on my knees and prayed to a God that I had given up on. That night I found the words and in my own incoherent way, I thanked Him for that card, and asked Him to touch Ms. Banner in a special way.<br />
<br />
Not much is ever written about the personal persecution of condemned men, but I’d like to think that I am not the only one who has often struggled with an overwhelming sense of remorse for the tragedy that has touched too many lives.<br />
<br />
But we live in a world in which the qualities that define what is good in humanity are only too rare, and a condemned man reaching out to ask for forgiveness is met with the heavy hand of scorn and impassioned vengeance. How dare we ask, much less expect such. But that card was sent on her own - from something within her – a quality that I can only stand in awe and respect of, as in my entire life I have known so very few people who had the strength and moral character to rise above their own personal loss and suffering to reach out with such compassion and forgiveness.<br />
<br />
What made this act of unsolicited compassion especially remarkable is that she did not know what had actually happened that night that tragically resulted in her son’s death. She knew only what the prosecutor had told her, which now, many years later has been revealed as fabrication (see www.southerninjustice.net .) When she wrote out that simple card, she had every reason to believe that I had deliberately take the life of her child. In the years since, it has been revealed that the prosecutor deliberately manipulated and concealed crucial evidence while coercing false testimony that would have substantiated my consistently pled claim of being involuntarily compelled to act in self defense.<br />
<br />
For this reason, that simple card meant so much and as I sat in that solitary cell that night before Christmas, I received a gift that I could not have imagined, beyond even that measure of mercy and compassion we all wish to receive from our fellow man, especially when we find ourselves alone and overwhelmed and feeling like the whole world is against us. There is no greater gauge of our humanity than summoning the strength to forgive another, and it’s a quality that is tragically too rare.<br />
<br />
As that Christmas came and went, that card remained on my bookshelf, and countless times every day I would pick it up and read it again, and I thought about how incredibly hard it had to be for her to write those three words… “I forgive you.”<br />
<br />
That Christmas card was, for me, the very definition of Christmas. So many get lost in the materialism of this spiritual holiday. But then there are these moments when the magic of Christmas shines through and in these moments we are blessed with the gift of being reminded of what Christmas is really about and our faith in humanity can be renewed even under the darkest circumstances.<br />
<br />
Few of us seem to find that measure of strength within ourselves to forgive another, but I do believe that strength is within each of us, and knowing only too well how that simple Christmas card touched me on that Christmas so many years ago, it is my wish today that each of us can find that strength within ourselves.<br />
<br />
Merry Christmas,<br />
<br />
Michael Lambrix<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-55843494386634747282012-08-28T23:41:00.000-07:002012-08-28T23:43:05.284-07:00The Day God DiedThe Day God Died<br />
By C. Michael Lambrix<br />
<br />
<br />
Never thought a common barnyard turkey would cause me to question my faith but there I was that last week of November 1988 watching a small T.V. through the bars of my cage as President Reagan proudly performed his time honored traditional ceremony of formally “pardoning” a big, white turkey there on the meticulously manicured front lawn of the White House, and yet all the while that big dumb bird just stood there completely oblivious to how the hands of fate had spared him an almost certain fate and he would be whisked away to live happily ever after on a farm in upstate New York. Ignorance truly is bliss and that was one blissful turkey.<br />
<br />
Read the rest here at the MinutesBeforeSix website <a href="http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2012/08/the-day-god-died.html">http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.gr/2012/08/the-day-god-died.html</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-78052756357330550752012-06-26T01:49:00.000-07:002012-06-26T01:51:12.724-07:00Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent ManBy Andrew Cohen<br />
<br />
Carlos DeLuna was put to death in December 1989 for a murder in Corpus Christi. But he didn't commit the crime. Today, his case reminds us of the glaring flaws of capital punishment.<br />
<br />
<br />
THE JUDGE<br />
<br />
Even for Justice Antonin Scalia, the crassest of the current United States Supreme Court justices, it was a particularly callous piece of writing. In 2006, in a case styled Kansas v. Marsh, the Court's five conservatives had just upheld a portion of Kansas' capital punishment law. The statute was interpreted to direct a sentence of death even if a jury found the "aggravating" and "mitigating" sentencing factors in equilibrium -- "equipoise," the Court lyrically called it. A tie, in other words, would mean death, not life.<br />
<br />
For the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas had bent over backward to overturn a ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that had declared the law unconstitutional. The High Court's four liberal justices had voted to uphold the Kansas ruling. Justice John Paul Stevens, the Ford appointee, chastised Thomas for reaching out so aggressively to overturn a state court on a matter of state law. And Justice David Souter, the Bush I appointee, wrote about how such "equipoise" necessarily precluded a death sentence.<br />
<br />
Mocking the rationale of both, and unsatisfied with the scope of Justice Thomas' majority opinion, Justice Scalia wrote a concurrence he will have to live with the rest of his life. As he sought to destroy Justice Souter's argument about the doubts reasonable people have about the accuracy and reliability of America's death penalty regime, Justice Scalia described a criminal justice system unfamiliar to anyone who has ever covered a murder case, read a book about one, or watched television news. Justice Scalia wrote:<br />
<br />
It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case -- not one -- in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby.<br />
<br />
And then...<br />
<br />
Capital cases are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence is executed. And of course capital cases receive special attention in the application of executive clemency. Indeed, one of the arguments made by abolitionists is that the process of finally completing all the appeals and reexaminations of capital sentences is so lengthy, and thus so expensive for the State, that the game is not worth the candle.<br />
<br />
The proof of the pudding, of course, is that as far as anyone can determine (and many are looking), none of cases included in the .027% error rate for American verdicts involved a capital defendant erroneously executed.<br />
<br />
There are two obvious and basic explanations for Justice Scalia's strident concurrence. Either he truly believed that capital cases are "given especially close scrutiny at every level," in which case he hadn't been paying attention to his work all those years. Or he did not truly believe that "capital cases receive special attention in the application of executive clemency," in which case his concurrence was just a thoughtless, reflexive reaction to Justice Souter's compelling case. Either way, he was wrong. Terribly wrong.<br />
<br />
THE ARTICLE<br />
<br />
The DeLuna case was flawed at virtually every level.<br />
<br />
At 11 p.m Monday, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review (at Columbia University) published and posted its Spring 2012 issue -- devoted entirely to a single piece of work about the life and death of two troubled and troublesome South Texas men. In explaining to their readers why an entire issue would be devoted to just one story, the editors of the Review said straightly that the "gravity of the subject matter of the Article and the possible far-reaching policy ramifications of its publication necessitated this decision."<br />
<br />
The article is titled "Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution" and it was written by James S. Liebman, Shawn Crowley, Andrew Markquart, Lauren Rosenberg, Lauren Gallo White, Lauren Rosenberg and Daniel Zharkovsky. Los Tacayos can be translated from Spanish as "namesakes" and the two men at the heart of the story were, indeed, named Carlos DeLuna and Carlos Hernandez.. On December 7, 1989, this intense piece establishes beyond any reasonable doubt, Texas executed the former for a murder the latter had committed.<br />
<br />
The Review article is an astonishing blend of narrative journalism, legal research, and gumshoe detective work. And it ought to end all reasonable debate in this country about whether an innocent man or woman has yet been executed in America since the modern capital punishment regime was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1976. The article is also a clear and powerful retort to Justice Scalia in Kansas v. Marsh: Our capital cases don't have nearly the procedural safeguards he wants to pretend they do.<br />
<br />
Soon to be published as a book, Los Tacayos Carlos is a seminal piece of online advocacy as well. Not only is the article itself now available on the web in its entirety (at www.thewrongcarlos.net) but so are all of its supporting materials. "The web version of the Article contains approximately 3,469 footnotes," the Review editors tell us, which in turn "provide hyperlinks to view the cited sources," including a great deal of the evidence relevant to the case. Now, everyone in the world who is interested can learn how bad it all can go when human beings try to administer what's supposed to be a fair, just and accurate death penalty.<br />
<br />
THE HISTORY<br />
<br />
Kansas v. Marsh was decided on June 26, 2006. The very next day, on June 27, 2006, two decorated Chicago Tribune reporters, Steve Mills and Maurice Possley, published the last of a three-part, groundbreaking series about the legal and factual problems with the DeLuna case. The headline that day was: "The Secret That Wasn't" and here was their lede:<br />
<br />
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- It was a secret they all shared. Some kept it out of fear. Some because no one ever asked. Whatever their reasons, it was a secret that might have saved Carlos De Luna from the execution chamber. Twenty-three years after Wanda Lopez was murdered in the gas station where she worked, family members and acquaintances of another man, Carlos Hernandez, have broken their silence to support what De Luna had long asserted: Hernandez, a violent felon, killed Lopez in 1983. <br />
<br />
A Tribune investigation has identified five people who say Hernandez told them that he stabbed Lopez and that De Luna, whom he called his "stupid tocayo," or namesake, went to Death Row in his place. They also say he admitted killing another woman, in 1979, a crime for which he was indicted but never tried. Although some aspects of De Luna's actions on the night of Lopez's killing remain suspicious, the Tribune uncovered substantial evidence that undermines his conviction.<br />
<br />
I met Possley while we were both covering the McVeigh bombing trial. That was before his groundbreaking work a decade ago exposing the arbitrary and capricious nature of the death penalty in Illinois. Last year, when Illinois ended its experiment with capital punishment, it was in large part because of the Tribune and the work of Mills, Possley and fellow reporter Ken Armstrong. So why had he chosen back in 2005 to focus upon the DeLuna case? What had struck him? Last week, Possley told me via email:<br />
<br />
When I reflect back on the series, what I think about most is how this case was a sensational case in a small arena. It didn't play out on a national stage and it happened so quickly -- so little time between arrest, conviction and execution. I remember that what really got me interested in the case was seeing the crime scene photos with all of the blood and then learning that there was no blood on DeLuna. It just didn't seem possible that he committed such a crime and was caught so quickly and had no blood on his clothing.That fact was so startling to me.<br />
<br />
I really haven't changed my view of the case from back then. I thought it was a colossal, global failure of every corner of the criminal justice system. The media failed to question the case (not unusual in smaller markets where police and prosecutors are the best sources) as well.<br />
<br />
Possley says the new piece "takes a giant step beyond our reporting because it's such a comprehensive and detailed account" of the DeLuna case. And why wouldn't it be? It was Liebman who first came to Possley and Mills, in November 2005, to see if the two veteran journalists couldn't independently investigate what his own team had discovered about the two Carloses. The resultant series became a finalist that year for a Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. Someone was shouting from the rooftops, Justice Scalia.<br />
<br />
Like a Karmic game of leapfrog, the two investigations have enabled one another. For their 2006 series, Possley and Mills got new information that Liebman initially had not uncovered. And now, today, Liebman has uncovered new information that in 2006 was unavailable to Possley and Mills. And what is the point of all? Why spend the inordinate time and energy writing about the guilt or innocence of a man dead now more than 20 years? In the Epilogue, Liebman makes it clear:<br />
<br />
With the publication of this book, we make our voices heard. At the same time, we have attempted to present the case so that our readers can consider the evidence for themselves, reach their own conclusions about what happened, and let their own consciences dictate how much tolerance for doubt is allowable when human life is on the line. Whatever else is true, we owe it to the Carlos DeLunas of our nation, as well as the Wanda Lopezes, to ask these questions and to shout out the answers.<br />
<br />
THE STORY<br />
<br />
<br />
Like Possley and Mills in 2006, I don't have the space here to do justice to the facts of the DeLuna case. But I will try. Carlos DeLuna was executed in December 1989 for murdering Wanda Lopez in a February 1983 robbery in Corpus Christi. A jury convicted him in an afternoon of deliberation and sentenced him to death shortly thereafter. No appellate courts came to his rescue. And the six years it took from crime to execution was surprisingly -- suspiciously -- fast; nationwide, it's usually twice that long.<br />
<br />
Texas convicted and executed DeLuna, all right, despite the fact that there was no blood or DNA evidence linking him to the scene of the crime. The state executed him despite the fact that the only eyewitness to the crime identified DeLuna while the suspect was sitting in the back of a police car parked in a dimly lit lot in front of the crime scene. Texas executed him despite the lack of DeLuna's fingerprints at the crime scene and the lack of the victim's hair and fibers on DeLuna. From a bloody scene, there was nothing.<br />
<br />
No one can ever say again with a straight face that America doesn't execute innocent men. No one. <br />
<br />
Texas convicted and executed DeLuna despite the fact that the police and prosecutors knew or should have known that Lopez's real murderer was a man named Carlos Hernandez, a violent criminal who looked almost exactly like DeLuna. Why? Because Hernandez was known to use the sort of knife used as the murder weapon. Because he matched initial descriptions of the suspect. Because he was known to be violent toward women. Oh, and because he evidently couldn't stop bragging about how he had murdered Lopez and gotten someone else to take the fall for him.<br />
<br />
"... [It] is no overstatement to call it 'common knowledge' in 1980s Corpus Christi that Carlos Gonzalez Hernandez killed Wanda Lopez," Liebman and Co. conclude. Yet Texas executed DeLuna despite the fact that key evidence in the case went missing both before and after trial; that DeLuna initially was appointed a lawyer without criminal law experience; and that law enforcement failed to provide the defense with exculpatory evidence. Any one of these factors might warrant a new trial. Taken together they portray appalling injustice.<br />
<br />
THE BACKSTORY<br />
<br />
Reading through the manuscript last weekend, jarred by what I was seeing, I began to jot down a list of things that went terribly wrong in the DeLuna case -- issues of fact, of evidence, of testimony, of motives, of incompetence, of indifference, of fraud, of morality, of integrity, of constitutionality -- that should have been raised and answered long before DeLuna was convicted, much less executed, back in the 1980s. I stopped when I got to 10. Here's the list.<br />
<br />
1. There was no DNA or blood evidence on DeLuna despite bloody murder scene. There were no fingerprints. There was only one eyewitness and he was sketchy about what he had seen.<br />
<br />
2. Police/prosecutors knew the whereabouts of another, more likely, suspect. But they didn't tell the defense this before or after the trial.<br />
<br />
3. When the defendant identified the likely killer shortly before trial, the police and prosecutors did not reasonably follow up even though they knew that the man identified was capable of committing the crime.<br />
<br />
4. Based upon early witness reports, the police at first sought another suspect. They did not share this information with the defense even though the two men (the two Carloses) looked eerily like one another.<br />
<br />
5. The police officer collecting witness accounts relayed inaccurate and incomplete descriptions of suspects to the police dispatcher, who radioed them to officers in manhunt.<br />
<br />
6. Police investigators botched the crime scene by turning it back to the store manager just two hours after the murder to be washed down and reopened immediately.<br />
<br />
7. Evidence from the initial investigation was checked out by a prosecutor the day after the trial and was never returned. Any usuable DNA thus was lost.<br />
<br />
8. The trial judge appointed a solo civil practitioner without any criminal trial experience much less any capital trial experience. The defense did not call a single "mitigating" witness in the sentencing phase of trial.<br />
<br />
9. Police investigators did not measure a bloody footprint they photographed at the scene of the crime or test a cigarette butt they found on the floor of the store where the victim died.<br />
<br />
10. A 9-11 dispatcher failed to quickly dispatch police to the scene of the crime, despite the fact that the victim had called for help. Later, the "manhunt tape" made by dispatchers was taped over and not turned over to the defense by the police.<br />
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Surely this epic malfeasance and misfeasance cannot be what Justice Scalia had in mind when he wrote in Marsh about capital cases getting "especially close scrutiny at every level." Indeed, as here, the opposite was true. The DeLuna case was flawed at virtually every level. And all it would have taken to do justice would have been for one prosecutor or cop, one judge or witness, to step up and tell the truth. That didn't happen. And when it did, thanks to Liebman, Mills and Possley, it was too late for Carlos DeLuna.<br />
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What do I think happened? All of the things that go wrong every day in capital cases in this country, all of the human failings and official, institutional biases and prejudices and self-justifications and self-delusions that turn Justice Scalia's Marsh concurrence into a farce. The bottom line? The criminal justice system decided, combustibly, that Carlos DeLuna was bad enough to be executed without a remotely fair process. The community was fine with the result. The media didn't care. And the rule of law "covered" it all.<br />
<br />
THE EXPERTS<br />
<br />
MORE ON THE DEATH PENALTY<br />
Racial Bias in Death Penalty Cases: A North Carolina Test<br />
The Looming Death of the Death Penalty<br />
Why Lawyers and Judges Should Watch Executions<br />
Why America's Death Penalty Just Got Us Sanctioned by Europe<br />
The Appeal of Death Row<br />
<br />
The answer to Los Tocayos Carlos, if there can be one, is that the case is so old its failings are now outdated and irrelevant. The district attorney lobbyists will argue that capital cases, in Texas and elsewhere, are handled much more professionally today than they were 30 years ago. And because both of the Carloses are now long dead, there isn't much of a media hook here, either. Posthumous exonerations don't give the cameras the just-out-of-prison "walk shot" television producers love.<br />
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But it would be a shame if we were to view the DeLuna case through the prism of legal history. There is nothing ancient about the lessons it teaches. DeLuna may be gone. But the problems his case represents still are here, in virtually every jurisdiction that still imposes capital punishment. So last week I asked some of the most prominent death penalty experts in the country to look at my DeLuna "list" and then identify pending cases that were similarly marked with such obvious reasonable doubts.<br />
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I asked Richard Dieter, at the Death Penalty Information Center, and Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project. I reached out to professors like Eric Freedman, Sean O'Brien and Bennett Gershman, to practitioners like George Kendall, and to earnest other lawyers who handle capital cases from more of a ground-level view. They all agreed that today in America there are plenty of more recent cases where these sorts of issues have arisen or could arise. Here are links to just a few of the cases they cited (again, I stopped at the count of 10)<br />
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D'Ambrosio v. Bagley (Ohio- faulty crime scene analysis, information withheld by law enforcement, other known viable suspects.)<br />
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Elmore v. Ozmint (South Carolina--ineffective counsel, no eyewitnesses, evidence fabricated)<br />
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Keith v. Bobby (Ohio-- no DNA, blood or fingerprint evidence, other known viable suspects)<br />
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Noling v. Bradshaw (Ohio--unreliable eyewitness identification, other known viable suspects)<br />
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Arkansas v. Howard (Arkansas -- DNA withheld)<br />
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Skinner v. Switzer (Texas -- DNA withheld following Supreme Court intervention.)<br />
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In Georgia, Troy Davis was executed last year despite a dearth of physical evidence and only a single eyewitness linking him to the crime. In Texas, Claude Jones was executed in 2000 because of DNA evidence we now know did not belong to him. In North Carolina, it took officials ten years to release Darryl Hunt after DNA tests exonerated him of murder. Justice Scalia is either kidding himself, or being disingenuous, when he proclaims the justice system goes out of its way to protect these people.<br />
<br />
THE LESSON<br />
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On the day, sooner than you think, when the United States Supreme Court again outlaws the death penalty, the justices will almost certainly cited the DeLuna case as one of the prime reasons why. It is not the first recent instance where smart, reasonable people have compellingly proven that an innocent man was executed in Texas. And it's certainly not the first time we've read the details of a capital case where the work of government officials -- police, prosecutors, judges -- was so profoundly and consistently shoddy.<br />
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But there is something especially compelling about the DeLuna case. It's what drew Possley to it. It's what haunted the lone eyewitness for all these years. A legendary case of injustice deserved -- it needed -- a legendary treatment. And it got one. No one can ever say again with a straight face that America doesn't execute innocent men. No one. Barry Scheck told me Friday: "If Carlos DeLuna were still alive, [the Article] would form the basis of a habeas petition that would have exonerated him."<br />
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Anyone who cares about the integrity of our justice system, and the constitutional values it is supposed to reflect, should expect Justice Scalia to read the Review article this summer -- and certainly before he writes another word for the Court about the death penalty. We'll see. I also especially recommend Los Tocayos Carlos to anyone and everyone -- judge, prosecutor, police official, witness, medical expert, etc -- who had anything at all to do with making the DeLuna case the symbol it will now become.<br />
<br />
DeLuna was reportedly slow as a child and tested as mildly mentally retarded as a juvenile. Later, he was in and out of trouble with the law until he was found (and was perhaps beaten) by the police on the night of the Lopez murder. There is great doubt even today that he fully understood the magnitude of the trouble he was in, even as he was nearing the end in 1989, which is why he made such a perfect patsy for Carlos Hernandez.<br />
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The ultimate villain of this awful story, Hernandez died in prison, in 1999, boasting to the end that he had killed Wanda Lopez and allowed another man to take the fall for it. The cops knew this. The prosecutors knew or should have known it. Witnesses knew it. And yet no one did anything to stop the state executioners from carrying out their job. Why no one listened to Hernandez for all those years, and why no one hears the cries of others today, is a question Justice Scalia and many others have to answer for themselves.<br />
<br />
This article available online at:<br />
<br />
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/yes-america-we-have-executed-an-innocent-man/257106/<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-3231478942863379422012-05-21T08:11:00.004-07:002012-05-21T08:34:47.653-07:00Rethinking Solitary ConfinementNew York Times March 10, 2012<br />
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Prisons Rethink Isolation, Saving Money, Lives and Sanity<br />
By ERICA GOODE<br />
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PARCHMAN, Miss. — The heat was suffocating, and the inmates locked alone in cells in Unit 32, the state’s super-maximum-security prison, wiped away sweat as they lay on concrete slab beds.<br />
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Kept in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours each day, allowed out only in shackles and escorted by guards, they were restless and angry — made more so by the excrement-smeared walls, the insects, the filthy food trays and the mentally ill inmates who screamed in the night, conditions that a judge had already ruled unacceptable.<br />
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So it was not really surprising when violence erupted in 2007: an inmate stabbed to death with a homemade spear that May; in June, a suicide; in July, another stabbing; in August, a prisoner killed by a member of a rival gang.<br />
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What was surprising was what happened next. Instead of tightening restrictions further, prison officials loosened them.<br />
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They allowed most inmates out of their cells for hours each day. They built a basketball court and a group dining area. They put rehabilitation programs in place and let prisoners work their way to greater privileges.<br />
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In response, the inmates became better behaved. Violence went down. The number of prisoners in isolation dropped to about 300 from more than 1,000. So many inmates were moved into the general population of other prisons that Unit 32 was closed in 2010, saving the state more than $5 million.<br />
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The transformation of the Mississippi prison has become a focal point for a growing number of states that are rethinking the use of long-term isolation and re-evaluating how many inmates really require it, how long they should be kept there and how best to move them out. Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Ohio and Washington State have been taking steps to reduce the number of prisoners in long-term isolation; others have plans to do so. On Friday, officials in California announced a plan for policy changes that could result in fewer prisoners being sent to the state’s three super-maximum-security units.<br />
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The efforts represent an about-face to an approach that began three decades ago, when corrections departments — responding to increasing problems with prison gangs, stiffer sentencing policies that led to overcrowding and the “get tough on crime” demands of legislators — began removing ever larger numbers of inmates from the general population. They placed them in special prisons designed to house inmates in long-term isolation or in other types of segregation.<br />
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At least 25,000 prisoners — and probably tens of thousands more, criminal justice experts say — are still in solitary confinement in the United States. Some remain there for weeks or months; others for years or even decades. More inmates are held in solitary confinement here than in any other democratic nation, a fact highlighted in a United Nations report last week.<br />
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Humanitarian groups have long argued that solitary confinement has devastating psychological effects, but a central driver in the recent shift is economics. Segregation units can be two to three times as costly to build and, because of their extensive staffing requirements, to operate as conventional prisons are. They are an expense that many recession-plagued states can ill afford; Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois announced plans late last month to close the state’s supermax prison for budgetary reasons.<br />
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Some officials have also been persuaded by research suggesting that isolation is vastly overused and that it does little to reduce overall prison violence. Inmates kept in such conditions, most of whom will eventually be released, may be more dangerous when they emerge, studies suggest.<br />
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Christopher B. Epps, Mississippi’s commissioner of corrections, said he found his own views changing as he fought an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit over conditions in the prison, which one former inmate described as “hell, an insane asylum.”<br />
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Mr. Epps said he started out believing that difficult inmates should be locked down as tightly as possible, for as long as possible.<br />
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“That was the culture, and I was part of it,” he said.<br />
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By the end of the process, he saw things differently and ordered the changes.<br />
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“If you treat people like animals, that’s exactly the way they’ll behave,” he now says.<br />
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A Very Costly Experiment<br />
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<br />
James F. Austin held up the file of an inmate in Unit 32 and posed a question to the staff members gathered in a conference room at the Mississippi Department of Corrections headquarters in Jackson.<br />
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“O.K., does this guy really need to be there?” he asked.<br />
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It was June 2007, and the department was under pressure to make court-ordered improvements to conditions at Unit 32, where violence was brewing. Dr. Austin, a prison consultant, had been called in by the state. As the discussion proceeded, the staff members were startled to discover that many inmates in Unit 32 had been sent there not because they were highly dangerous, but because they were a nuisance — they had disobeyed orders, had walked away from a minimum-security program or were low-level gang members with no history of causing trouble while incarcerated.<br />
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“He started saying, ‘You tell me what kind of person needs to be locked up,’ and it wasn’t near the numbers that we had,” said Emmitt L. Sparkman, deputy commissioner of corrections. By the time they were done, the group had determined that up to 80 percent of the 1,000 or more inmates at Unit 32 could probably be safely moved to less restrictive settings.<br />
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Like many such prisons, Mississippi’s supermax, opened in 1990, owed its existence to the fervor for tougher punishment that swept through the country in the 1980s and 1990s.<br />
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“There was an incredible explosion in the prison population coupled with a big infusion of gangs,” Dr. Austin said. “Riots were occurring. Prison officials were literally losing control.”<br />
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Some states built special units to isolate difficult prisoners — “the worst of the worst,” prison officials said — from the general prison population. Others retrofitted existing prisons or established smaller units within larger facilities. The federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill., was locked down in 1983 after the murder of two prison guards, its inmates confined to cells 23 hours a day and then kept that way permanently. In 1989, California opened Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, a remote town near the Oregon border, specially designed to control inmates in conditions that minimize human interaction.<br />
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By 2005, 44 states had supermax prisons or their equivalents. In most, inmates were let out of their cells for only a few hours a week. They were fed through slots in their cell doors and were denied access to work programs or other rehabilitation efforts. If visitors were allowed, the interactions were conducted with no physical contact.<br />
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And while prisoners had previously been sent to isolation for 10 or perhaps 30 days as a temporary disciplinary measure, they were now often placed there indefinitely.<br />
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Asked to explain the purpose of such confinement, prison wardens surveyed in 2006 by Dan Mears, a professor of criminology at Florida State University, cited “increasing safety, order and control throughout prison systems and incapacitating violent or disruptive inmates.”<br />
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But beyond that, said Dr. Mears, who called the rise of supermax prisons “a big, very costly experiment,” the goals seemed murky. Who exactly were “the worst of the worst”? How many people really needed such harsh control, and for how long? And how should the effectiveness of the prisons be judged, especially when measured against the costs of building and operating them?<br />
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Dr. Mears said there were no clear answers; indeed, he said, it is virtually impossible to determine how many inmates are in supermax prisons in the United States because there is no national tracking system and because states differ widely in what they call segregation units. “I don’t know of any business that would do this, not something that costs this much, with so little evidence or clarity about what you’re getting,” Dr. Mears said.<br />
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With no precise definition of who belonged there, prison systems began to send people to segregation units who bore little resemblance to the serial killers or terrorists the public imagined filled such prisons.<br />
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“Certainly there are a small number of people who for a variety of reasons have to be maintained in a way that they don’t have access to other inmates,” said Chase Riveland, a former head of corrections in Colorado and Washington State who now serves as an expert witness in prison cases. “But those in most systems are pretty small numbers of people.”<br />
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Mr. Epps, who is president-elect of the American Correctional Association, likes to say prison officials started out isolating inmates they were scared of but ended up adding many they were simply “mad at.”<br />
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‘The Real Damage’<br />
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In 1831, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville visited the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where prison officials were pioneering a novel rehabilitation method based on Quaker principles of reflection and penitence. They called it solitary confinement.<br />
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“Placed alone in view of his crime,” de Tocqueville wrote in a report to the French government, the prisoner “learns to hate it, and if his soul be not yet surfeited with crime, and thus have lost all taste for any thing better, it is in solitude, where remorse will come to assail him.”<br />
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But for many prisoners, isolation was as likely to produce mental illness as remorse, and by the late 19th century, enthusiasm for the approach had flagged. In 1890, deciding the case of a death row inmate held in solitary confinement, Justice Samuel Freeman Miller of the Supreme Court wrote that many prisoners fell, “after even a short confinement, into a semifatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still committed suicide.”<br />
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It was the last time the nation’s highest court would address the psychological effects of solitary confinement directly. But lower courts in some states have acknowledged the stress that isolation puts on inmates who are already mentally ill, prohibiting their being placed in solitary except in urgent circumstances.<br />
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When Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist and expert on the effects of solitary confinement, toured Unit 32 for the plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, he found that about 100 of the more than 1,000 inmates there had serious mental illness, in many cases improperly diagnosed. Some were actively hallucinating. Others threw feces or urine at guards or howled in the night.<br />
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In turn, the mentally ill inmates were mistreated by corrections officers, who had little understanding of their condition, Dr. Kupers said.<br />
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In a report filed to the court, he described the case of James Coffield, a mentally ill prisoner who had demonstrated “a long history in Unit 32 of bizarre and disruptive behaviors” that prison psychiatrists “characterized as merely ‘manipulative’ and which security staff punished with increasingly harsh force, including repeated gassing with chemicals.”<br />
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Mr. Coffield eventually tried to hang himself but failed and ended up in a vegetative state.<br />
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Many states continue to house inmates with mental illness in isolation. Some inmates appear to function adequately in solitary confinement or even say they prefer it. But studies suggest that the rigid control, absence of normal human interaction and lack of stimulation imposed by prolonged isolation can cause a wide range of psychological symptoms including insomnia, withdrawal, rage and aggression, depression, hallucinations and thoughts of suicide, even in prisoners who are mentally healthy to begin with.<br />
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A study of prisoners in the Pelican Bay supermax, for example, found that almost all reported nervousness, anxiety, lethargy or other psychological complaints. Seventy percent said they felt themselves to be at risk of “impending nervous breakdown.”<br />
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“Worse still is the fact that for many of these men, the real damage only becomes apparent when they get out of this environment,” said Craig W. Haney, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an expert on the effects of solitary confinement, who led the study.<br />
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In fact, some research has found that inmates released from supermax units are more likely to reoffend than comparable prisoners released from conventional maximum-security prisons, and that those crimes are more likely to be violent. In Colorado, said Tom Clements, executive director of corrections, it turned out that about 40 percent of inmates held in long-term isolation were being released directly to the community with no transition period.<br />
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The psychological research has drawn attention, not least from the international community. In a report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, Juan E. Méndez, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture and other abuse, called for a ban on solitary confinement except in limited situations and singled out the United States for its reliance on the method.<br />
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In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights blocked the extradition of four terrorism suspects from Britain, saying it wanted to study whether imprisonment at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., violated a ban on inhuman or degrading treatment.<br />
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Yet for states, economic and practical arguments may prove more persuasive than humanitarian concerns.<br />
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“It’s just exceedingly expensive to hold someone in a segregation bed,” said Angela Browne, a senior fellow at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit policy and research group, and head of the institute’s segregation reduction project, which works with states to find alternatives to segregation.<br />
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Several states, citing economic reasons, have converted supermax units to more conventional prisons, and a few have closed the prisons altogether. Unit 32 was closed in 2010. The increased costs are largely a result of the staffing required to deliver food and other services to cells and escort prisoners when they are let out.<br />
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In 2010, for example, Virginia reported that it cost $89.59 per day to keep a prisoner at Red Onion State Prison, a supermax unit with 399 employees, compared with $60.04 per day at Sussex II State Prison, a maximum-security facility that houses almost 500 more inmates but has a staff of 353.<br />
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<br />
Gambling on Change<br />
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<br />
Roy Harper, serving time for armed robbery, kidnapping and other charges, used to wake in his cell at Unit 32 seized with anxiety every morning. “You never know what the day is going to bring,” he said recently.<br />
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Sometimes it was flooding from malfunctioning toilets. Sometimes it was inmates setting fires or cutting themselves — two prisoners cut off their own testicles in the time he spent there, he said — and sometimes it was just the sense of isolation he felt, “like being alone in the world.”<br />
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Mr. Harper was a prisoner in Unit 32 from the day it opened to the day it closed, 20 years later. But the summer of 2007, he recalled, was worse than most. When the killings began, prison officials first cracked down, taking away the inmates’ fans — the only relief from summer temperatures that approached 100 degrees and, according to an environmental expert who filed a report on the conditions, could feel like 120 or more. They kept prisoners in their cells around the clock, not even allowing them out for exercise, he said.<br />
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Mr. Sparkman, the deputy corrections commissioner, viewed the situation as so critical that in July he moved from his home in Jackson to Parchman, where Unit 32 sits on the grounds of the state penitentiary. It was clear that a different approach was needed, he said: “What we were doing, the 23-hour lockdown, was not working.”<br />
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But the shift had to be made carefully.<br />
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“It was gradual, and it was very controlled,” Mr. Sparkman said. “We started out with one building, identifying those groups that we could let out, and we let some of them out. Some of them we were able to transfer completely out.”<br />
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A few guards rebelled at the new orders and resigned in protest. A few others were fired. But by the end of six months, most prisoners were spending hours a day outside their cells or had been moved to the general population of other prisons. A clothing warehouse was turned into a group dining hall, and a maintenance room was converted to an activities center. The basketball court filled with players.<br />
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Mr. Harper did not benefit immediately from the changes. He remained in 23-hour lockdown until he worked his way to greater privileges. But he was elated at what he saw, he said, with inmates “working again, walking without chains, going to the yard, going to the chow hall.”<br />
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The A.C.L.U. continues to monitor conditions in other prisons in the state. But Margaret Winter, the lead lawyer for the A.C.L.U. in its lawsuit over Unit 32, said she watched the transformation there in wonder, especially as two men who at the beginning of the process seemed deeply entrenched in their views shifted direction. The change, she said, was “stunning.”<br />
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Mr. Sparkman said the new approach went against everything he had been trained to do. “If you’d come to me in 2002 and told me I was going to do something like that, I’d say, ‘You don’t know me,’ ” he said. “I’d have probably locked them down for anything that squeaked.”<br />
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Mr. Epps looks back at the decision as a nerve-racking gamble.<br />
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<br />
“Was it scary? Absolutely,” he said. “But it worked out just fine. We didn’t have a single incident.”<br />
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<br />
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-88248144382787061872011-11-28T02:29:00.001-08:002013-12-17T05:33:14.924-08:00Execution Day November 15, 2011Days like today really suck. Few people can even begin to understand what all of us here on death row go through when they put one of us to death. A few hours ago the State of Florida put Oba Chandler to death by lethal injection. For those who even knew of this event, at best it amounted to nothing more than a few seconds on the sic o’ clock news, summarily reporting that at 4:00 PM this afternoon Oba Chandler was put to death at Florida State Prison. As the story was told on the news, they may have seen the white hears pulling out of the prison gate carrying his body back out to the real world, but that’s it.<br />
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For those of us here, it was an all day ritual that cumulated in the death of someone who lived among us for 17 years. Myself, I did not personally know Oba Chandler, as |I was never housed on the same tier as him. We live in a small world, but it is a methodically segregated world where each of us are continiously kept in individual solitary cages until they are ready to put us to death.<br />
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Unless you’re actually housed on the same floor in proximity of others, you may never cross paths with many others as the only other time you might meet others is in the death row yard or in the “visiting park” And in the 17 years Chandler spent on Florida’s death row he never once had a visit. Many of the guys back here never get a visit – nobody cares to come see them, not even when the state prepares to kill them. Prisons are full of tragic stories. Nobody should have to face death without someone there to reach out in compassion. In the weeks leading up to the death of Oba Chandler we heard many on the local news zealously arguing why simply putting a 65 year old man, who allegedly killed 3 people over 20 years ago, by lethal injection was too humane. These people wanted him to suffer, as in their opinion taking his life was not enough.<br />
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I honestly don’t know what to say about those who are compelled to advocate torturing a condemned man to death. For over a quarter century I have lived among those that society has labeled to be the worst of the worst, but when I hear these people talk I have to wonder who the real monsters are? Even if I am to assume that these condemned are actually guilty of whatever heinous crimes they were convicted of, I know that inflicting that same measure of death upon another would only make me just as much as a monster. <br />
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What I know is that Oba Chandler’s last days and hours were not easy. I cannot imagine how anyone of moral conscience could say that forcing a person to quite literally count down the final hours, then minutes until they are deliberately put to death is humane. I have been there myself comig within hours of being executed and although tat was now almost 22 years ago this month, I still have nightmares about my own death watch experience. ( see <a href="http://mikelambrix.blogspot.com/2009/01/facing-my-own-execution.html">http://mikelambrix.blogspot.gr/2009/01/facing-my-own-execution.html</a> )<br />
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I personally know a lot of the staff who work here and I was troubled by what I heard. Up until recently, when executions are scheduled the warden would do all he could to make it appear to be just another day. But not warden Singer. He apparently thrives on the whole ritual, making it an all day event that every prisoner here cannot ignore. Warden Singer wants us to know that it is a special day, that it will be a day that one of us will die. From early morning hours he has ordered the staff to wear their “dess uniform” (class A), which is only done on execution days. From breakfast through dinner the meal schedule is deliberately thrown off, breaking te normal routine and causing stress and anxiety among all prisoners. <br />
Up until warden Singer took ver, previous wardens would at least try to show compassion to the condemned - but humanity comes from being humane, and just because you’re a man doesn’t make you humane. I was troubled when I was told that contrary to long standing tradition warden Singer did not allow Oba Chandler to have a last meal. Instead, all he got was a brown bag with a state peanut butter sandwich. If we can not find that measure of compassion and basic humanity when taking the life of another person then we really have to wonder who the real monsters are.<br />
<br />
Michael Lambrix<br />
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Please check out my website <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">http://www.southerninjustice.net</a> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-59455812605989983492011-10-31T03:59:00.000-07:002013-12-17T05:34:29.447-08:00In my nightmares I can see their facesI wanted to share the following article that was recently published in Newsweek magazine (October 3, 2011) Most of the time what I post reflects my own perspective of life on death row. But there's always more to the story than just one side. The following tells a story few of us ever gave any thought to - what it's like for the guards and wardens who are ordered by their superiors to put someone to death.<br />
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In the many years that I have been on Florida's death row - since March 1989 - I have come to know many of the prison guards who interact with us daily. I've also gotten to know a few of the wardens. i know many have expressed their own personal and moral reservations with the whole issue of capital punishment. But equally so, I've known many more who openly advocate expediting executions, even if it means putting innocent people to death.<br />
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The below article made me take a look at the issue from the perspective of those few who despite the environment still possess that measure of moral conscience that ultimately defines our humanity. And as long as there are a few within the system willing to speak out, there's hopw for all of us.<br />
<br />
Michael Lambrix <br />
October, 2011<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Ordering death in Georgia</span><br />
'<span style="font-weight: bold;">In my nightmares I can see their faces</span>'<br />
September 29, 2011|By Allen Ault<br />
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I can't always remember their names, but in my nightmares I can see their faces. As the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 until 1995, I oversaw five executions. The first two were Thomas Dean Stevens and Christopher Burger, accomplices in a monstrous crime: as teenagers in 1977, they robbed and raped a cabdriver, put him in the trunk of a car, and pushed the vehicle into a pond. I had no doubt that they were guilty: They admitted it to me. But now it was 1993, and they were in their 30s. All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people.<br />
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On execution days, I always drove from Atlanta to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. I knew death row well: 20 years earlier, I had built it. The state had hired me as the warden of Georgia Diagnostic in 1971, where I renovated a special cell block for especially violent offenders. After I left Georgia in 1977, the state reinstated the death penalty and turned the cell block I had developed into death row.<br />
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The state executed Stevens first, in June 1993, and then Burger in December. In both instances, I visited them in a cell next to the electric-chair chamber, where they counted down the hours until they died.<br />
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They were calm, mature, and remorseful. When the time came, I went to a small room directly behind the death chamber where the attorney general worked the phones, checking with the courts to make sure that the executions were not stayed. Then we asked the prisoners for their final words. Stevens said nothing, and Burger apologized, saying, "Please forgive me." I looked to the prison electrician and ordered him to pull the switch.<br />
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Last Wednesday, as the state of Georgia prepared to execute Troy Davis despite concerns about his guilt, I wrote a letter with five former death-row wardens and directors urging Georgia prison officials to commute his sentence. I feared not only the risk of Georgia killing an innocent man, but also the psychological toll it would exact on the prison workers who performed his execution. "No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt," we wrote in our letter.<br />
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The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists.<br />
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They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like post-traumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren't sleepless were plagued by nightmares. My mother and wife worried about me. I tried not to share with them that I was struggling, but they knew I was.<br />
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I didn't grow up saying, "I want to work in prisons." I had never even been in a prison or a jail before I became warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. The commissioner at the time hired me to revamp the system, to implement case management, and work with inmates to make them safer. I had always worked in helping professions, and my main goal in corrections was always to reduce recidivism, so that inmates would leave prison better than they arrived. Over this course of time, the death penalty figured larger and larger into my work. I never supported it, but I also did not want to let it distract me from improving overall prison conditions. Death-row inmates are, after all, only a tiny fraction of the prison population.<br />
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When I was required to supervise an execution, I tried to rationalize my work by thinking, if I just save one future victim, maybe it is worth it.<br />
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But I was very aware of the research showing that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent. I left my job as corrections commissioner in Georgia in 1995 partially because I had had enough: I didn't want to supervise the executions anymore. My focus changed to national crime policy and then to academia, where I could work to improve the criminal-justice system without participating in its worst parts. Today, I am the dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.<br />
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Having witnessed executions firsthand, I have no doubts: Capital punishment is a very scripted and rehearsed murder. It's the most premeditated murder possible. As Troy Davis' execution approached — and then passed its set hour, as the Supreme Court considered a stay — I thought of the terrible tension we all experienced as executions dragged into the late hours of the night. No one wanted to go ahead with the execution, but then a court stay offered little relief: You knew you were going to repeat the whole process and execute him sometime in the future.<br />
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I will always live with these images — with "nagging doubt," even though I do not believe that any of the executions carried out under my watch were mistaken. I hope that, in the future, men and women will not die for their crimes, and other men and women will not have to kill them. The United States should be like every other civilized country in the Western world and abolish the death penalty.<br />
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Newsweek/Daily Beast Company<br />
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Allen Ault is the dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.<br />
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Please check out my website <a href="http://www.southerninjustice.net/">http://www.southerninjustice.net</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-27775231126271562062010-11-08T09:54:00.000-08:002010-11-08T09:55:59.264-08:00When Death Hits HomeIn all the years that I’ve been on death row, I’ve never had what I would call a positive experience with a prison chaplain. Like most others here, I have come to see the State employed prison chaplains as an extension of the corrupt bureaucracy itself and not as a religious representative or spiritual advisor. I have never seen a prison chaplain come to the death row wing and talk to a death-sentenced prisoner out of concern or genuine spiritual communion. That just doesn’t happen. <br /><br />So, when the wing sergeant cam to my cell last Thursday (October 7) and told me that I had to go to the Chaplain’s office, I already knew it was not good news. Without exception there is only one reason a death row prisoner is brought to the chaplain’s office – somebody in the family died.<br /><br />As with all other “call-outs”, before I could leave my cell, I had to first be strip-searched and then chained and shackled like Hannibal Lector in the Silence of the Lambs. Only then was I escorted off the wing and slowly shuffled down the long main hallway towards the front, where the chaplain’s office is located. Although I have been on death row now almost 27 years, I have never actually been to the prison chapel as death row prisoners are not allowed to participate in worship services. Still I know where the prison chapel is as I’ve passed it countless times, the solid steel double door always securely locked. As I approached the doors the Sgt escorting me instructed me to stop. Then we waited a moment and the chaplain came out, like the wizard of Oz revealing himself from behind the curtain, and then I was led through the doors and into the part of the prison I’ve never been allowed before.<br /><br />As I was ushered into a small office the chaplain was already dialing a phone number. The chains and shackles that bound me were never removed. I was instructed to sit in a chair and a moment later I heard my older sister’s voice come over the speakerphone. I was not surprised to be told that my father (Donald Lambrix) had passed away earlier that morning. <br /><br />Although we knew it was coming, it still is news that leaves you empty and unresponsive. My father’s health has been declining for years. After several heart attacks and strokes at 80 years old he has spent the past four or five years in a nursing home. Last month I was told that he had taken a turn for the worse and was placed on a breathing tube. We all knew that he wouldn’t hold out much longer.<br /><br />Mentally I knew that this news would come. As soon as the Sgt came to my cell and told me I had a chaplain call-out, I knew that it would be the news of my father’s death. Yet in the moment of hearing the words actually spoken I felt the emptiness of its reality. Dad was gone and I never had the chance to say goodbye.<br /><br />Like most others, through the years my contact and communication with family members slowly eroded until for all practical purposes I no longer had any meaningful communication with my family – even my own children have now grown and no longer communicate. That’s just how it is for most prisoners. Although I remain close to my mother and stepfather (who recently celebrated their own 40th anniversary), they are the exception. But through the years dad tried to write and we would talk about going fishing or maybe take in a football game. He always believed that I would walk out one day and we would catch up on the years lost. Even when my own hope wavered, his faith never failed. When I would get one of his letters, I would read and reread it often, thinking about where we might go fishing and what we’d talk about. Personally I never cared much for fishing – but he did and it wasn’t really about the fishing anyways. That was just his way of saying that he looked forward to seeing me get out and spend some time together. Going fishing was just a metaphor.<br /><br />The phone call lasted only a few minutes and most of it was just words. All too often I’ve heard people talk about how families need “closure” to deal with the death of a loved one. Most often, it’s coming from politicians who define closure by expediting the execution of those condemned to death as if yet another death somehow ends all the suffering. But how do you come to terms with that “closure” when you’re not even able to say goodbye, or participate in the funeral? That’s just how we are wired – funerals, or memorial services, are not about those who passed, but are really about the necessary opportunity to deal with the reality that someone we love is now gone. It’s our way of saying goodbye, and the first step of moving on beyond that loss.<br /><br />But for prisoners, we never have that opportunity. The most we can hope for is that someone will at least let us know when someone close to us has passed away. Beyond that, we can only retreat into our solitary cage and find a way to deal with the emptiness that flows. No matter how alone and isolated we might feel in this solitary existence of death row life, it becomes a heavy burden we return to our cell and sit alone thinking of the loved one that is now gone forever. Even if I walked out of here tomorrow, I would never again see my father.<br /><br />In my world death is a frequent visitor. A few days before my father passed, another death row prisoner on my wing suddenly died of a heart attack. David Johnston was my age (50 years old) and had been here on “the row” almost as long as I have. His death was unexpected and sudden, but the death of one of us is all too common and accepted. <br /><br />I can’t help but wonder about that paradox, I can accept the death of someone I’ve lived with in close proximity to for over a quarter of a century, and in the past year a number of close friends here have died (<a href="http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com/2009/12/thanksgiving-with-henry.html">Henry Garcia</a>, Jim Chandler, Martin “Big Eddie” Grossman) and with each I never was at a loss of words to express the pain of a brother passing. Yet now I feel an unfamiliar emptiness and an inability to define that depth of loss.<br /><br />Even as much as I deal with the reality of death only too often, it’s when death hits home that it’s felt most of all. Even now, a week later, I still feel an emptiness I’ve seldom felt. And I’m sure I’m not alone, as most of us here have had to make that trip to the chaplain’s office at one time or another. And each time it brings the reality of death we so often must confront to a whole different level. So, here’s to hoping that my father has now found peace and is in a better place.<br /><br />Michael Lambrix #482053<br />Death Row FloridaUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8777632389893427096.post-15208991678940270622010-06-10T00:00:00.000-07:002013-12-16T02:49:14.504-08:00Mike's book published!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja7tf_K0_EO-ZTD8X3SivxiGDp1vbbCM7SjKbbqiWH__FjIsLtbJaR7QQWxuw8fR2LIY0DUcwecCNVBaGN0A1O3TZQ2Jsj-QaFHXV_L3fgANyXWmC3pBzSwzi14N7qn2lo1lv-oPoSEYc/s1600/mike-book.bmp"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481036494711149794" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja7tf_K0_EO-ZTD8X3SivxiGDp1vbbCM7SjKbbqiWH__FjIsLtbJaR7QQWxuw8fR2LIY0DUcwecCNVBaGN0A1O3TZQ2Jsj-QaFHXV_L3fgANyXWmC3pBzSwzi14N7qn2lo1lv-oPoSEYc/s320/mike-book.bmp" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 212px;" /></a><br />
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To Live and Die on Death Row by Michael Lambrix, Mike's experiences, thoughs, hopes, opinions, despair and injustice during the 27 years he has been locked up on Florida's death row.<br />
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"The autobiography of C.Michael Lambrix, an innocent man who has spent 27 years under sentence of death on Florida's infamous death row."<br />
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The book can be ordered <a href="http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/to-live-and-die-on-death-row/11169765?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1">here</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1