Death Watch Journal (part 19)

What I really want to do is use my limited forum to write an open letter to England's Prince Harry, but it wouldn't do any good ashe'd never read it and even if he did it's all but certain that he wouldn't care about what I have to say.

See here's the thing...as I write this Prince Harry is in Orlando, Florida hosting the Invictus Games, which is an organization he founded with what I'm sure was and is the best of intentions. What they do is provide a forum arguably comparable to the Olympics but limited to allowing disabled veterans from various nations to compete against each other in sporting competitions. I'm told by the media that Invictus means "unconquered"and it's an honorable thing to support those disabled veterans, although those eligible to compete do not necessarily have to be disabled during combat, but only be physically disabled, and a veteran.

As Prince Harry said to the media, the Invictus Games is intended to provide "a platform for those who served". And as much as I admire those who do try to help disabled veterans, I found it contemptable that those who claim to be reaching out to support disabled veterans deliberately turn a blind eye to the thousands of disabled veterans that are not politically and socially acceptable.

For all the bravado of Prince Harry's event held in Orlando, Florida there was absolutely no mention whatever of those honorably discharged disabled veterans incarcerated in state and federal prisons -  and you won't hear anyone speaking out in support of those disabled veterans.

Is it alright to pick and choose which disabled veterans are worthy of recognition? If you're going to turn a blind eye to any disabled veteran for no reason but that individual is not socially acceptable, then you clearly do not respect any veterans. This is especially true given the indisputable fact that many of the disabled veterans imprisoned in America - and there are thousands - are there for conviction of a crime that would not have happened if not for the physical or mental trauma they suffered while serving their country.

Florida likes the project this image of supporting veterans. But what nobody talked about is that the State of Florida also has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, and has a long history of keeping thousands upon thousands of those prisoners in long-term solitary confinement under physically and mentally oppressive conditions.

More importantly, Florida has a well-documented history of deliberately denying prisoners basic medical care, including the thousands of disabled veterans held in Florida prisons. In recent years even both the state and federal law enforcement applied have conducted investigations into the systematic denial of basic medical care - but as is only two common, they actually did nothing.

My own care illustrates what is widespread throughout the Florida prison system. When I was 18 years old and married, I voluntarily enlisted in the Army in the hopes of building a life for my new family. But while on duty I suffered an accident that left me hospitalized, then honerably discharged. When I left the Army I was thrown back out into the real world, and permanently physically disabled, with no medical care and unable to work.Back then in the post-Vietnam America, disabled veterans were extended the same measure of respect typically reserved for mangy dogs and considered outcasts or lepers.

As with so many other disabled veterans, I was left to fend for myself. And I was married, with a child on the way. As indisputable court records reflect, without meaningful access to medical care, I turned to alcohol and illegal drugs to manage my chronic pain I experienced. It wasn't long before the marriage ended, I lost custody of my children, and I ended up in prison.

But I wasn't a career criminal. What sent me to prison for 2 years was my first and only criminal conviction - a "bounced check", because I had insufficient funds in my own bank account to cover the check I wrote, I was convicted of a felony and sent to prison for 2 years.

Fast forward to where I am today...for 32 years now I've been on Florida's death row now, held continuously in solitary confinement. Florida has the highest date of wrongful convictions in capital cases in the country and undoubtedly will not hesitate to execute innocent men and women, as is evidenced by my own case - neither the Florida courts or Governor Rick Scott will allow that readily available evidence substantiating my innocence to be heard. (see http://www.save-innocents.com/save-michael-lambrix.html and www.southerninjustice.net )

Like myself, if you're a disabled veteran in the Florida prison system, you will not receive any meaningful medical care. Even if you suffer from extreme physical pain due to your military induced physical disability, the Florida prison system will not provide the care necessary to mitigate that pain.

And this is why it's bothers me when I see people like Prince Harry showboating his hand-picked disabled veterans in Florida, of all places. Do you think even one person involved in these Invictus games took even a moment to ask how disabled veterans in the Florida prison system are treated? Of course they didn't, that wouldn't fit into their image.

For the past 3 months now, since I was given a stay of execution, I have been denied even basic medication necessary to manage my extreme physical pain. I have done everything possible to try to get help, but nobody will listen. In fact, although there are countless organization all but competing against each other to perpetuate this politically popular image of taking care of disabled veterans, you will not even find one state or national organization willing to help incarcerated disabled veterans.

You know, I kind of like Prince Harry - he seems like the kind of guy that I would hang out with and have fun. But when a person uses their public image to advocate for disabled veterans, it shouldn't be just those hand-picked few that project an image they find appealing.

Death Watch Journal (part 18)

As I write this, it's been about 3 months since, only days before my then scheduled execution, the Florida Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of execution in light of the January 2016 United States Supreme Court decision in Hurst vs State (which for those who do not already know, declared that the process that Florida has utilised to sentence people to death was unconstitutional) as they debate whether Hurst must apply to all cases, including my case - what is technically called "retroactive application".

This issue remains as yet undecided, and even some of the best legal minds continue to be confused. Common Sense would seem to dictate that if the highest court in the country has declared the Florida process to be illegal then anyone sentenced under this process has been illegally sentenced to death and the only logical conclusion is that an illegally obtained sentence of death must be vacated.

But we're talking about the death penalty which exists primarily to appease societies thirst for vengeance not the more noble pursuit of justice, so basic principle of common sense simply don't apply.


If the average citizen does something illegal, they call it a crime and impose consequences. But if the legal system commits an act that is shown to be illegal then it is conveniently labeled a "technicality" and the courts will debate whether or not the consequences are necessary under their own interpretation of the "interest of justice". I guess it's just anotherperverse twist of that saying "do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do".


What all this comes down to is in this past generation of America's "war on crime" our legal system has devised its own set of politically motivated rules to protect this corrupt legal system from accountability. In this fanatical pursuit of vengeance the ends justify the means and the objective is to expedite executions not struggle with "technicalities" that might stand in the way.


The state of Florida has taken the position that the Supreme Court's ruling in Hurst does not affect any capital cases. In the numerous cases already addressed by the Florida Supreme Court, including my own, the state has categorically insisted that Hurst cannot apply. Bottom line, Florida would have the courts believe that the Hurst decision was merely a rhetorical refinement of technical statutory construction even though on March 7th, 2016 the Florida legislature itself rewrote Florida's death penalty laws, recognizing that the previous statute authorizing imposition of death as a punishment was invalid.
 

                                                                            

What the courts continue to struggle with is whether  this Hurst v Florida decision must be "retroactively" applied - meaning whether it must be applied to capital cases in which the sentence of death has already previously been affirmed on appeal, such as my own case.

Why would this be complicated? Because our courts have adopted technical rules that prohibit retroactive application of "new law" under applicable Federal law as specifically set forth in Summerlin vs. Schiro (2003), the Hurst decision (which is itself an extension of Ring versus Arizona) cannot be applied retroactively because by a marginal majority of 5 to 4 in Summerlin the Supreme Court declared that Ring/Hurst is a procedural refinement as opposed to announcement of substantive law.

However, in my case, and all others already heard, the argument is that this Federal law prohibiting retroactive application under Summerlin cannot apply as long established law recognizes that Federal constitutional law merely establishes what is minimally required and each state is constitutionally entitled to establish its own laws providing even greater protections....and Florida law has exercised that perogative by established the Witt v State standard of law defining when a new rule of law must be retroactively applied.

As evidenced by the legal briefs filed, and the May 5 "oral arguements" held before the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Attorney General has reluctantly accepted that whether or not Hurst versus Florida is retroactively applied will be decided under Florida's own law and not federal law..and that under applicable state law it is almost certain that the Hurst vs. Florida decision will be retroactively applied to all Florida cases.

So, now the Florida Attorney General has focused its argument on why the Florida Supreme Court should not grant relief to any case. Their argument now insists that rather than vacate even one death sentence, the Court should instead conduct its own "harmless error analysis" to determine, based upon subjective speculation that each and every jury that previously sentenced every person on death row to death

would have found at least one statutorily defined "aggravator" required before a person is eligible for death so any failure to comply with constitutional law is "harmless".

But we do kill people based on speculation, or is something more then what amounts to a guessing game required? It would appear that a majority of the Florida Supreme Court is inclined to reject any such "harmless error" analysis.

But even that is speculation as during the height of the death penalty popularity when politicians won elected office by completing to see who would kill more people Florida (and most other states, as well as the federal government) passed laws significantly expanding the stationary defined "aggravating circumstances" that makes a capital defendant eligible for death to now include almost every conceivable circumstance any murder is committed.

My own case will undoubtedly address this issue - because there were two victims, under Florida law the "aggravating circumstance" of "previously convicted of a violent felony"was applied that the Florida Attorney General now argues makes Hurst versus Florida inapplicable to my case because by finding me guilty of both alleged "murders" in the guild face, the jury implicitly found this aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt, even though in my case during the penalty phase my jury was actually instructed that this particular aggravator did not apply as it was never previously convicted of any violent crime, but only the sentencing judge subsequently applied this aggravator by finding that each count justified application to both counts, hence making one statutarily eligible for death.

If the Florida Supreme Court adopts this arguement that my case and most others will be denied relief. And not only those cases like mine that in which the question of retroactive application was the determinative factor, but many of even the most recent cases - for example, the majority of capital cases are prosecuted under the theory of "felony murder" not actually premeditated intent to kill. What this means is that the victim died as a result of actions or events attributable to the commission of an underlying felony such as robbery, burglary, arson - or other.

So, if during the guilt phase of the trial the jury finds the defendant guilty of felony murder and a crime enumerated by statute, then the Attorney General insists that Hurst v Florida cannot apply, even if the jury did not subsequently recommend a sentence of death by unaminous vote, or specifically identify any of the statutorily defined aggravating circumstances required to be found before a sentence of death can be imposed.

If the Florida Supreme Court adopts this arguement, then the Hurst v Florida would apply to very few cases and Florida's machinery of death will continue to grind it's gears on the bones and flesh of those illegally condemned to death - the ends justify the means and it's about appeasing societies thirst for vengeance, not administering justice.

Finally, assuming that Hurst v Florida must apply retroactively to all Florida cases, as it would appear that it must, and a majority of the Florida Supreme Court rejects the Attorney General arguements that the Court can simply conduct its won subjective speculation as to "harmless error" and categorically deny application of Hurst v Florida to cases which a statutory aggravator was implicitly found by virtue of the jury's finding of guilt, then the final question is whether those entitled to relief under Hurst v Florida are entitled to an automatic reduction of death sentence, to life, or the case must be remanded to the trial court for a new sentencing trial so that a new jury can determine whether a sentence of death is appropriate under the new 2016 statutes.

But that then generated debate by the Court as to whether Florida's recently adopted law allowing for a sentence of death to be imposed by merely a 10-2 jury vote ("super majority") is even itself unconstitutional - the vast majority of states allowing the death penalty require no less than an unanimous jusry vote before a death sentence can be imposed.

Because the question of whether Florida's recently adopted 10-2 law is itself constitutional now that it will impact those entitled to new sentencing under Hurst v Florida, it is unlikely the Florida Supreme Court will decide any of these cases until it first addresses that issue - and it has already scheduled "oral arguements" on that issue for next month (June). If this 10-2 law is found to be unconstitutional, then all of this could easily drag out until at least next year, as the Florida legislature would be required to yet again rewrite Florida's death penalty laws....and then the subsequent challenge to the newly rewritten laws.

In conclusion, it would appear that this issue will not be resolved anytime soon but will continue to drag out for at least a few more months and possibly even years. Until that time I will remain on "death watch" and under that uncertainty of whether I will live or die.

You can watch video interviews of me with various recent media sources here, not only addresing the Hurst v Florida issue, but addressing my substantiated claim of innocence, too. The videos are also available to watch at the right side of this blog.

 

Death Watch Journal (part 17)

One thing about death row is that not much changes around here through the years, other than the receding hairlines and a few faces from time to time. Maybe that's why being on death row throws us off so much as it's a complete change of environment and as the weeks pass and your date with death draws closer, it sinks in that you're down there waiting to die.

Just as you resolve yourself to that reality that you will be next to die, changes come again when the court grants a temporary stay of execution as they consider a legal issue that will ultimately decide whether you will live or die, as they did in my case almost three months ago. But that change of location from being down in that cell immediately next to the execution chamber to being moved back to the regular death row wing doesn't really seem like that much of a change as I'm still technically under an active death warrant and anytime now the court could rule against me and lift this stay of execution, sending me a right back down to that same cell next to the execution chamber.

This week we received a memo advising all of us that effective immediately the mailing address for Florida State Prison as been changed (new address at the end of this post) and although the address has changed I don't feel like I've gone anywhere.

Why would they change the mailing address for the prison? That's the first question I asked as obviously the prison didn't move anywhere. I was told that the Florida Department of Corrections Secretary's office has decided that the regional mail centers, where mail coming to all the area prisons was processed, proved to be a waste of time and money so that they decided to put the mail room back in the prisons.

They never really took the mail rooms out of each prison when they came up with this idea of saving money by creating a regional mail center as although the mail first was processed by this original center, it still had to then be sent to the individual prison and distributed to the housing areas. Maybe by now eliminating that extra step and allowing our mail to come directly to the prison it will mean that our mail will get to us quicker so maybe his address change will prove to be a good thing...time will tell, I guess.

Other changes are also in the works. In the 32 years that I've been on Florida's death row we have been prohibited from making social phone calls to family and friends, unless there was an emergency to an immediate family member such as death. But even then it was hard to get a phone call.

Recently the Florida Department of Corrections decided that allowing death-row inmates to make phone calls would be acceptable and after almost a year of figuring out how this would be implemented, the FDOC came out with rules that will now allow each death row prisoners to make only a 15-minute phone call per month,  and only to those on a pre-approved phone list.

Why only 15 minutes phone call a month? Prisoners in the general population can make at least one phone call a day and even prisoners who are placed in close management, because they committed violations of prison rules, are allowed more than that, so how does it make any sense that those on death row will only be allowed one phone call per month?

The only informal response I got to that question was that one phone call per month is a lot more than none at all, so it should be glad that we would be allowed that.

But then there's the process we must go through in order to even get anyone on out "approved" phone list. Each person who wants to be placed on our list must first provide a verifiable copy of their phone contract and billing information. This is required under the pretense of allowing the prison to verify that the phone number is to that person and at the address where that person lives.

Which begs the question..if you're willing to write to a prisoner would you be comfortable mailing that prisoner your confidential information, especially into a prison where it could be "accidentally" given to the wrong inmate who does who knows what with it?

Prison is what it is, and there's no doubt that the multi-billion dollar industry that American prisons have become today are nothing less than bureaucracy's, and it's the nature of any bureaucracy to create unnecessary obstructions that really serve no purpose but to justify the necessity of creating this bureaucracy in the first place.

In closing, I again remind you that effective immediately the mailing addres has changed.  All mail sent to the old address will be forwarded for up to 30 days to the new address, which is:

Florida State Prison

P.O. Box 800

Raiford, Florida 32083

 

Thanks also to all people who left comments, sent cards or letters. I do receive them all and appreciate them, it means a lot to me. 

I can't prove my innocence if I'm dead - Article Michael Lambrix in News4Jax

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A South Florida judge declared the state's new death penalty law unconstitutional earlier this week while the fate of everyone on death row is being considered by the Florida Supreme Court.
While the ultimate penalty in Florida remains uncertain, some inmates would rather die than eat poor food and get bad medical care for decades.

Michael Lambrix admits to killing one person in self defense. He is a high school dropout who originally went to prison for passing bad checks in Tampa. He was convicted of a double homicide in Glades County on the testimony of a girlfriend who was sleeping with the prosecutor's investigator.

Lambrix has spent most of his adult life on death row. He was next in line to be executed when the U.S. Supreme Court said Florida's death penalty was ruled unconstitutional. Lambrix said many, not most, but many of those on death row would like to stay there.

“One of the big elements weighing heavily on these guys on death row who are saying, 'I don't want a life sentence,' is because they see people growing old in prison," Lambrix said. "They see the kind of medical care we get around here."

But after coming within days of being executed, Lambrix said he is not one of those who wants to die.
“I don’t want to grow old like that, but the alternative is to die," he said. "I can’t keep trying to prove my innocence if I am dead.”

Most prisoners claim innocence. With Lambrix, it has been a constant since 1983 when he was first charged and offered a plea deal that would have set him free more than a decade ago.
"I would have gotten a sentence of 17 to 22 years," Lambrix said. "I would have been out many years ago, but I wasn’t going to plea to something I didn’t do.”

As recently as last week, the state was saying that most of the 390 death row inmates should still be executed.

If Florida justices agree with the state, the final say over who lives and who dies will likely come from the U.S. Supreme Court.

"(What would it be like) to walk out into the free world? I think about it every day," Lambrix said.

Mike Vasilinda  - May 11, 2016

 

Copyright 2016 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.

Read article here (with audio)

Death Watch journal (part 16)

As I write this, it has now been 10 weeks since the Florida Supreme court ordered an indefinite stay of my previously scheduled execution pending judicial review of whether or not my death sentence remains legal under the United States Supreme Court's January 2016 decision in Hurst v. Florida, in which the highest court declared Florida's death penalty process illegal because it allowed a judge and not the jury, to ultimately determine what the sentence would be.

Nobody knows when the Florida Supreme Court will decide this issue, or how they will rule when they do...all we can do is wait it out and until then I will remain under an active death warrant.

So, this week I would like to address another matter - the systemic denial of adequate medical care in the Florida prison system. Generally, I don't talk about my own health problems as it's not something I want to put out there for public consumption. But like so many others here at Florida State Prison - and the Florida prison system as a whole - it's gotten so bad that I must address it and ask for help from those who are reading this.

It's an undisputed fact that many years ago while serving in the Army I had an on-duty accident that resulted in a lengthy hospitalization and my honorable discharge. I am now a legally recognized "disabled veteran" and suffer a permanent physical disability recognized as "degenerative disc disease" in the lower lumbar spine, and "lumbar radiculopathy" with incomplete mild paralysis. What this means in layman's terms is that when I suffered this accident, it resulted in permanent and progressively degenerate damage to my spinal cord that produces often extreme physical pain.

In the many years that I've been in the Florida prison system I have come to accept that the best I can hope for is minimal treatment. If I'm lucky, I can get non-narcotic pain medication to try to manage the pain. Generally, that means a prescription of extra strength Ibuprofen or Naproxen. Being that I am in prison, they're not going to prescribe anything stronger so the most I can do is try to manage the pain, mostly by avoiding physical exertions that would cause a flare-up.

As my condition predictably progressed through the years, so too has the now almost constant pain substantially increased to the extent that even the Naproxen or Ibuprofen have little effect. Again, I generally accept that this is prison and they are not going to do anything more than the minimum. However, shortly after my death warrant was signed and I was transferred to Florida State Prison, I began having problems getting even the Naproxen that that I regularly received, and the Flexeril that I received as a muscle relaxer so that the muscle spasms regularly suffer will settle down enough so that at least I can sleep at night.

The thing is, I'm not alone, since Florida contracted prison medical care to a private company called 'Corizon", which is a for-profit healthcare provider with a long history of denying adequate health care, complaints such as mine have become only too common. These privately contracted health care providers get paid the same whether they actually provide adequate health care or not and so every dollar they spend providing treatments, or even prescribing medication, takes money out of their own pockets and for-profit companies cannot stay in business long if they don't make a profit.

This point needs to be addressed momentarily - the reason America has the highest incarceration rate in the world today is because the American prison system is a for-profit multibillion-dollar industry, and there are thousands of companies that compete for contracts to provide services to prisoners, from sypplying toilet paper, food, health care - even running entire prisons. Most would argue that that doesn't make any sense as prisons cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year.

However, while the taxpayers to pay obscene amounts of money to keep all those prisoners locked up, what is not as obvious is that companies wanting to provide services to this prison industry win the contract by donating huge sums of money to politicians running for office. And when the politicians win elected office, they reward their benefactors with lucrative contracts, only too often amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. That's how the system really works.

Companies like Corizon have a long history of being rewarded contracts to provide health care only to then refuse to provide basic health care as a means of increasing their own profits. In fact, Corizon itself previously went by another corporate name that was awarded a contract to provide medical care to Florida prisoners and provided such deliberately incompetence care that prisoners died, and the contract was terminated...the company then changed the name of the corporation to Corizon, donated huge sums of money to State politicians running for election, and got the contract back.

In the past year the health care provided by Corizon has gotten so bad that again  many prisoners died from being denied adequate medical care. Only after the media made it a story did the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and the Florida legislature open investigations into the systematic deprivation of adequate health care in Florida prisons. Not surprisingly, neither the FDLE or the Florida legislative actually did anything - not a single person within the Corizon corporation was held responsible for the many inmate deaths resulting from the deliberate denial of adequate medical care..not even one! As soon as the mainstream media lost interest, the whole issue quickly died. 

                                                                 

That's how healthcare in American prisons system really works - it's a completely corrupt process in which the only thing that matters is that the company awarded the contract makes millions while the prisoners suffer and die - and since we are prisoners nobody really cares.

Back to my own problems with receiving even minimal medical care. After my death warrant was signed and I was transferred to Florida State Prison, my prescription "expired" and the doctor simply refused to renew them. They play all kind of games to try to blame the prisonor for the denial of adequate medical care. In my case,  they said that before my prescriptions could be renewed, I needed to have a blood test, and in late February 2016 I had the blood taken, then was seen by "dr. Lee", who refused to renew my medication. I then took the matter to the Florida state prison Warden, who tried to help - only to have the Corizon-employed Health Services administrator blatantly lie to the Warden, telling him that I refused to the blood test, claiming instead that I was seen on March 17th, 2016 and counseled on the importance of providing blood test.

These are the games they play. Anytime you file a formal grievance about the denial of adequate medical care it comes back with the same response - put in a request for "sick call" (the process available to seek medical care). But as with me, and most others, I did put in numerous "sick call" requests, but the Corizon staff will then wait up to several weeks and then do nothing but talk to you at cell front, and they'll tell you to put in another "sick call" request, then another - and if you're lucky several months later you might actually see a doctor, who will then tell you that you need to do another "updated" blood test before medication can be prescribed, and ofter you wait for weeks to have that done, they'll claim you "refused" to do the blood test, and you must start the whole process over again. Of course, they can never produce a signed 'refusal' form as you didn't refuse.

For months now this is what I've been going through - it is what so many others also go through, with many prisoners being forced to suffer, in prolonged physical pain, or even dying. I've been going through this malicious merry-go-round of deliberate denial of basic medical treatment now for over 2 months and still not receiving the medications I need to manage my chronic physical pain. For this reason, as my last available means, I'm asking your help in attempting to compell the Florida Department of Corrections to provide proper medical care. I would ask that you please email Mrs Julie Jones, Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections (email:  jones.julie@mail.dc.state.fl.us ), and Dr. Ogunsanwo, Assistant Secretary, Medical and Health Services ( email: ogunsanwo.olugbenga@mail.dc.state.fl.us ), and ask them to initiate an investigation into the deliberate denial of adequate medical care to inmate Michael Lambrix #482053 at Florida State Prison, who is a legally recognized disabled veteran being denied medications necessary to manage his chronic physical pain.