Death Row Journals

2012-01-21T09:15:00.000-08:00

Another year has now passed and despite the relentless efforts of morally and ethically corrupt state employed parasites, I am still alive. To be honest, at this time last year things were not looking too good and I had good reason to think I might not even live to see this new year.

But such is the roller coaster ride we are on. Just when you think you are going over the cliff to your certain death, a sudden twist and turn, and you’re shooting for the moon again. This time last year both the state and federal courts had denied my long pending “actual innocence” appeals, refusing to even look at the virtual wealth of evidence that supported my claim of innocence. I really should not had been surprised as I already knew that even the United States Supreme Court has plainly declared that innocence is not an issue. (Herrera v. Collins, 1992). So, it was not a surprise when the Florida Supreme Court rejected review of my innocence claim in a one sentence footnote, saying that a freestanding claim of innocence cannot be considered.

In several subsequent appeals to the federal courts, they too summarily denied review. Incredibly, the arguments (written brief) before the US Supreme Court, the state of Florida even specifically argued that Florida is not obligated to recognize a “fundamental miscarriage of justice” (actual innocence) claim, as if it is cognizable at all, then it is exclusively a federal claim. That was a disturbing insight into the moral corruption of our state courts, when they arrogantly tell the US Supreme Court that Florida can put innocent people to death if they want to – and in evidently they will.

Confronted with that truth, it wasn’t looking good and once again I had to confront my seemingly inevitable fate of being deliberately put to death for a crime I did not commit. That even evidence substantiating my innocence would not be enough to save me from those who would only too gladly take my life.

Perhaps some higher power was as offended by the state’s arrogance as just when it seemed that my fate was surely sealed yet another unexpected twist gave me renewed hope of winning my freedom within the foreseeable future.

Specifically, under applicable law the prosecutor must fully disclose any and all evidence that might be favorable to the accused. The failure to do so violates an important federal constitutional right, and if it is found that the undisclosed evidence is sufficient enough to undermine confidence in the jury’s verdict, then the conviction must be thrown out and a new trial granted.

In my now pending new appeal before the Florida Supreme Court, we are arguing that the State deliberately violated the law. Much to my surprise the State’s own lawyer actually conceded that the prosecutor did deliberately conceal numerous file folders containing state crime lab records that show that they had actually found hair belonging to the state’s only “key witness” on the alleged murder weapon.

Given that the State’s lawyers never concede an issue, and aggressively fight tooth and nail to win by any means necessary, I was utterly speechless when I read the States concession – and not surprised that when the state lawyer was quickly removed from case shortly after. God forbid that a lawyer for the state should actually be honest!

So now the only real question for the Florida Supreme Court to decide is whether the failure to fully disclose these state crime lab records and DNA evidence might had affected the outcome. In my case the State has consistently conceded that the whole case rested upon the jury believing their one key witness, Frances Smith. So, the question now comes down to if the jury had known that the prosecutor deliberately concealed evidence showing that the only forensic evidence found on the alleged “murder weapon” was hair belonging to Smith, would this have caused the jury to question Smith’s credibility and possibly reject her testimony?

If the Florida Supreme Court finds that this undisclosed evidence would have assisted in discrediting this key witness, then they must throw out my conviction and grant a new trial – which would almost certainly prove impossible and result in my release – freedom.

A ruling should come within the next month or two. So, I begin the New Year with renewed hope that in the not too distant future, after close to 30 years, I will finally win and be free. All things considered that’s not a bad way to start the New Year. At least for the moment I have hope and in here hope is what keeps you going.

Love Wins – Even on Death Row

2011-11-28T01:21:00.000-08:00

Recently a friend of mine sent me a very nice gift – a book by Rob Bell entitled “Love wins: a book about heaven, hell and the fate of every person who ever lived” (Thank you Jan!) Having known me for about 20 years, Jan knows that I enjoy books that are thought provoking. Especially if the subject matter is spiritual. In fact, I initially brought this particular book to his attention after reading a book review in the USA Today newspaper a few months back, but I couldn’t exactly run down to the local bookstore myself, so fortunately Jan knows that it is relatively easy to send books to death row prisoners as all he had to do was order it on Amazon.com and have it shipped directly to me.

This isn’t the first book I received from a friend as I am blessed to have several friends who sent me books recently. But I am writing about this particular book because of the message it provides, one that I have reached myself long ago – that our spiritual evolution is about embracing love, not condemning all of us to hell. Like many others I find the concept of being condemned to hell and subjected to eternal torture to be in conflict with what I believe God really is. If God truly loves even me, then why would he want to beat me over the head until I submit to what some self-righteous and self appointed representative of God tells me a true Christian is?

Many years ago I got to know one of the volunteers that regularly visit death row from churches. They come to save our soul, bless their hearts. Most of these men do so at their own expense and spend many hours each week going from cell to cell, reaching out to the condemned and showing a measure of compassion that reflects a true Christian spirit, and I enjoy the few moments I am able to share with them.

This one volunteer (“Carl”) told me something that has stayed with me since – at the time, I was facing a death warrant (formally scheduling execution) and upon learning of this, Carl came to my cell to see how I was holding up. I was alright, but we go to talk and he commented on how I was actually lucky to be facing then imminent execution, as most people do not really know when they will die and often die suddenly without any opportunity to get their heart right with God.

Anyone who really knows me knows that I’m never at a loss for words, but at that moment, I didn’t really know what to say. The implication was that those unfortunate enough to die without the opportunity to get their heart right with God would be condemned to hell for all eternity, no matter how good of a person they might have been, while at the same time a presumably “cold blooded killer” who by virtue of his condemnation and imminent execution would go straight to heaven because he had the chance to get his heart right with God.

Myself, I don’t buy that argument and it really makes no sense. But I’m not articulate enough to explain why this whole concept of condemning the righteous to eternal damnation while rewarding the worst of sinners with eternal heaven makes no sense and so I thoroughly enjoyed reading Rob Bell’s book “Love wins” as it explains beautifully what I have come to believe – that the whole concept of condemning anyone to hell for all of eternity is nothing but a fabrication by those “Christians” who want to use fear and intimidation to coerce others to believe only what they say the nature of God is.

Everybody has the fundamental right to believe what they want and for the most part, each if us find God in our own way. I prefer to believe in a God that embraces love, mercy and compassion towards all men, even the worst of sinners, as by believing God of that nature too I can hope that men will evolve to reflect that nature too. I’m certainly not perfect – but knowing that I’m not getting beaten over the head every time I do slip is comforting.

If in the end I am put to death for a crime I did not commit (please check with www.southerninjustice.com ) then it will be because of the imperfection of a judicial process corrupted by men. But for now, as I remain entombed in a man made hell few could begin to imagine, my real struggle is to rise above the anger and bitterness that tries to consume me. In reading books like “Love wins” it gives me that strength by reassuring me that in the end, it will be love – and not hate – that wins. That’s a concept I can embrace.

Mike Lambrix

2011-11-17T02:58:00.000-08:00

This is an article Mike liked and wanted to share with you...

I Committed Murder
Sep 25, 2011
Newsweek
By Michael Daly

For the anonymous executioners of death row, the ‘high’ of pulling the lever is often followed by a lifetime of doubt.

Only a fellow executioner like 59-year-old Jerry Givens would know how crushingly hard it will continue to be for those who put Troy Davis to death last week even as he continued to insist on his innocence.

“The executioner is the one that suffers,” Givens says on the day after Davis’s execution in Georgia. “The person that carries out the execution itself is stuck with it the rest of his life. He has to wear that burden. Who would want that on them?”

During the 17 years that Givens worked as an executioner in Virginia, he put 62 men to death. And each time, he felt what he calls “the executioner high,” an adrenalized state that always imparted a merciful unreality as he sat behind a curtain and pulled the lever, releasing a fatal cocktail of three drugs that seemed to him less humane than the electricity he previously unleashed by pulling a switch. The chemicals of lethal injection always took eternal minutes longer than the deadly jolt from the electric chair.

“I had to transform myself into a person who would take a life,” Givens says. “That transformation might linger for a while. You might be on that for three weeks.”

He figures this same high visited the executioners in Georgia who dispatched Davis last week, in accordance with the state’s Administrative and Execution Procedures, Lethal Injection, Under Death Sentence. “I guess those people last night were on that emotional executioner high.” He says the high is all the more intense with cases that receive public attention, such as when he dispatched the Briley brothers in Virginia in the mid-1980s after their seven-month spree of rape and at least 11 murders.

But once the protective high wears off, the executioner is left with the reality that he has taken a life. And in the case of condemned prisoners like Davis, who maintain their innocence to the very end, there is always that lingering doubt. The only certainty is that the penalty is irrevocable.

“You take an innocent life—that means I committed murder,” Givens says.

If Troy Davis wasn’t in fact innocent, there is a near certainty that some prisoners presently on death row are. A recent tabulation by the Death Penalty Information Center showed that 138 prisoners were exonerated after being sentenced to death between 1973 and 2010. That included five in Georgia, the state that remained determined to put Davis to death despite the numerous reasonable doubts regarding his guilt and the momentous public outrage joined by such varied public figures as Bishop Desmond Tutu and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs.

While the prosecutors, jurors, and judge all had their say in putting a prisoner on death row, the task of actually carrying out the sentence falls to an executioner with no idea of what was said and done at trial. “You don’t know,” Givens says. “You don’t take part in the trial. You weren’t there to witness it.” And even cases of undisputed guilt can continue to haunt executioners to the end of their days. In all 62 of Givens’s cases in Virginia, the official paperwork bore a word that has stayed with him. “When you look at the death certificate it says, ‘HOMICIDE,’” he notes. “How can it leave you?”

His career as an executioner ended 11 years ago, when he was convicted on charges of perjury and money laundering unrelated to his work—going to prison himself for four years, swearing he was innocent. Givens is now a truckdriver, but the residual horror of his time as an executioner flashed back to him as he followed from afar the news reports of the Davis case. “Whenever they have an execution, I get back to when I used to do them. It’s human nature.”

Also in human nature is a cumulative revulsion to taking life even when it is legally sanctioned. Those who finally have been driven to campaign against the death penalty include not just executioners like Givens, but a number of wardens who found it unbearable even to give the order that the executioners carry out. A longtime warden of San Quentin prison in California began to choke up when asked about four executions over which she presided, particularly the execution of Manuel Babbitt, a decorated Vietnam vet who killed a 78-year-old woman in a burglary. Babbitt’s brother had turned him in after false assurances that the state would not seek the death penalty. “The brother had to come that night and watch him be executed,” Jeanne Woodford, the former warden, recalls.

The 58-year-old lifelong corrections official says that presiding over executions actually becomes more difficult over time. “You have to appear normal,” she says. “You have to appear in control ... You try to tell yourself and your staff that this is the law.”

Her career of nearly four decades culminated with her 2004 appointment as the director of all of California’s prisons, but soon afterward, she resigned.

“I knew I couldn’t carry out another execution,” she says. “I knew I just couldn’t do it.”

She says that, from the start, “it never made sense to me that we would believe killing a human being would make up for killing a human being.”

Woodford has concluded that capital punishment also makes no fiscal sense. She figures that her state spent $4 billion to execute 13 inmates between 1992 and 2006—money that would have been much better spent on fielding more cops. She notes that nearly half of California’s murders go unsolved. “If this is really about public safety, then the better option is to keep police on the streets,” she says.

Woodford further suggests that the ultimate sanction is unacceptably arbitrary in its application. She has joined other former wardens, along with at least one executioner, in a national effort to save others from the experiences that perpetually haunt them.

“The death penalty shouldn’t exist at all,” she says.

In the meantime, executioners in 36 states will continue with the ritual that begins with swabbing the condemned’s arm with alcohol, a ghoulish precaution against infection from the needle that will momentarily deliver death.

One recent addition to the protocol in Georgia is the “consciousness check,” instituted this year after two of the condemned were apparently administered insufficient doses of an anesthetic that precedes the two chemicals that do the actual killing. Because of the insufficient doses, the two are believed to have suffered the horror of being suffocated by the paralyzing pancuronium bromide, and then the agony of being burned from within by the potassium chloride. A shortage of the anesthetic sodium thiopental had forced Georgia officials to purchase a batch from an English firm called Dream Pharma that operates out of a storefront driving school in London.

Besides adopting a new anesthetic, phenobarbital, Georgia adopted the new check, which involves tapping the condemned’s eye and nudging his arm after the administration of the first drug, to ensure he is unconscious before the remaining two are delivered.

That was the procedure followed in the Davis execution, by a team contracted by the state through a company called Rainbow Medical Associates. Rainbow is headlined by Dr. Carlo Musso, who presents himself as a professional descendant of Dr. Guillotin, arguing that he is only trying to spare the condemned prisoner unnecessary suffering.

If Musso is untroubled by his work, he is undoubtedly an exception. The others may still be finding protection in that “executioner high” that Givens describes, and they will likely experience it again on Oct. 5, when Georgia is scheduled to execute Marcus Ray Johnson for killing a woman in 1994.

When that high wears off and reality sets in, the consciousness check will be followed by a conscience check. And, if Givens is right, the executioners will then be the ones who suffer.

Givens finds refuge from his ghosts in religion, coping more successfully than some executioners of earlier days. Two of New York’s executioners committed suicide: Dow Hover by carbon monoxide in 1990 and John Hulbert with a gun in 1929 after saying, “I got tired of killing people.”

2011-10-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I last posted but I’m not dead – yet. Then again, Maybe I am at as I can’t imagine hell being any worse then where I’ve been entombed (here on death row) the past 27 years. No matter as here I am throwing a few more words out into that great beyond you all call the real world. Like one of my favorite songs (“Dust in the wind”, by Kansas) says, that’s what my words are, just dust in the wind.

I’ve been silent for many months. Sometimes things just become so overwhelming that crawling up inside my shell is the only way to survive when the whole world around you is coming down. I don’t think anyone could fault me for needing to step back away from all that’s going on and at least for a while retreat within that sanctuary of ‘self’.

Besides, it’s not like a lot has been going on in my world. I’m still in this cage and the uncertainty of whether I might live or die remains like a wet blanket trying to suffocate what little hope might still exist. But I’m not interested in the whole “woe is me” self pity party as when it comes down to it, I’m certainly not the only person in the world who’s life pretty much sucks. There’s a lot of people suffering out there and no matter and no matter how hard it might get here in my cage, at the end of the day I still get three meals a day and a roof over my head. Many out there don’t even have that.

As I write this, last night the state of Georgia murdered Troy Davis despite worldwide protests calling for clemency. Once again a legitimate claim of innocence has been silenced by killing the victim of incomprehensible injustice. But you know what the real tragedy is? Of the millions of people around the world who signed petitions and were willing to lend their voice in the futile attempt to stop the execution of Troy Davis, the vast majority will now only too quickly move on with their lives and forget about it.

But what if instead of fading back into their lives, even a fraction of those people who stood up for Troy Davis would now be motivated to keep fighting the fight? What if each one of those people now felt motivated by the cause of this incomprehensible injustice and each of them talked to one other person, and got them to see the light, and then that other people talks to and motivates yet another, then another and then that fading voice grows stronger and stronger. Imagine instead of a million people around the world motivated by the single injustice inflicted upon Troy Davis, there were millions willing to commit to a continuous campaign protesting against the injustice that continues to be perpetuated against so many more. As each of these singular voices grow stronger with support of more and more, can they so easily be ignored?

Troy Davis is dead, the victim of a corrupt legal system that is only too willing to murder innocent people under the malicious pretense of administering “justice”. But his death does not have to be in vain and the true injustice would be to forget about him and what his execution meant. His death should be the rally cry for all of us to now stand together and force the world to recognize that Troy
Davis was only one of the too many innocent victims of a corrupt legal system.

If his death is to mean anything, it should be that we now know that the death penalty itself is what makes it possible to put innocent people to death. We all know that there are many who will argue that troy Davis was not innocent – as far as they care, nobody is ever innocent as our legal system is perfect. But no legal system is that perfect and innocent people will continue to be put to death. The only way to truly stop this madness is to stop the death penalty itself.
But we know that won’t happen. The vast majority of those stood up to support Troy Davis have already faded back into the shadows and moved on with their lives. The voice will become silent again, until perhaps another innocent person is facing execution. But riving up at that last moment won’t stop the machinery of death from methodically stalking its next innocent victim. If there’s any chance of winning the fight, we all must be willing to stand our ground and fight the fight. Troy Davis will quickly be forgotten if we all don’t stand our ground and let out voices be heard today, tomorrow and everyday until this intolerable injustice has been defeated.

I hope that some will be motivated to keep the fight going. Otherwise, many more innocent people will continue to be put to death. If the Troy Davis case proved anything, is that it’s not enough to rise up at the last moment and sign a petition as petitions are worthless. We must fight the fight.

Before I go, I also wanted to share a few recent articles written about the death penalty here in Florida. The first one was written by one of Florida’s most respected pro-death penalty judges, Judge O.H. Eaton, Jr (of Orange County Circuit Court, Orlando, Florida). Judge Eaton has sentenced numerous people to death since taking the bench – but is now calling out for the end of the death penalty in his article “Capital Punishment – A Failed Experiment”. What he says makes sense – but will anyone listen?

The next article was recently published in a Florida newspaper as an editorial addressing the indisputable disparity between who faces death and who does not. Again, in this article (Orlando Sentinel, September 7, 2011 by Mike Thomas) it points out why the death penalty is fundamentally unfair and calls for an end to Florida’s death penalty. Mike Thomas - When will state stop arbitrary death-penalty decisions?

For those who may have read this, I thank you for your time. Keep the faith,

Mike Lambrix

When Evil Tyrants Reign Supreme Court

2011-07-01T03:01:00.001-07:00

Recently a friend sent me an article entitled “What’s killing inmates on Florida’s Death Row?” Apparently the political group PolitiFact Florida wanted to do a “fact” check on comments that Florida’s House of Representative Speaker Dean Cannon made to a group of reporters last month, in which he stated that “Florida judicial system has the authority to take away not only a person’s liberty, but also a person’s life. Understanding the severity and irreversibility of that penalty, we have a responsibility to ensure that justice is administered not only fairly, but also efficiently”

Speaker Cannon went on to complain “ The number of inmates since 2000 on death row dying of natural causes has now surpassed the number of inmates executed. Significant and unreasonable delays plague the current process of conducting state post conviction review in these cases and it appears that there is little that the Supreme Court can do to improve or streamline the process”

For those unfamiliar with Speaker Cannon, he is an uber-conservative pro-death penalty career politician who worked with the current Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canady back when Florida elected Jeb Bush as governor. Together they wrote up what became known as the “Death Penalty Reform Act of 2000”, which the Florida legislature passed into law attempting to adopt the Texas death penalty appeal process limiting capital appeals as a means of expediting more executions.

What was especially troubling about this legislative action was that it took the deliberate position that Florida would accept the inevitable execution of the innocent as a necessary consequence of expediting the executions of the presumably guilty. This “Death Penalty Reform Act” would have prohibited any post conviction appeals based upon newly developed evidence of innocence, even when it is found that the state deliberately concealed this evidence, as has happened too many times.

In one of the very rare exhibitions of moral courage by the Florida Supreme Court, they declared the adoption of this “Death Penalty Reform Act” as unconstitutional. They explained that only the Florida Supreme Court is authorized to adopt rules governing the
Capital post conviction review process responsible for the appellate review of death row cases. But the Florida Supreme Court itself simultaneously adopted new rules that actually did substantially limit capital post conviction appeals.

But the insidious politics of death are never that simple. The ultra conservative pro-death politicians like speaker Dean Connor were not happy when the Florida Supreme Court dared to tell them they must abide by the constitution, so they abused their political power to change the Florida Supreme Court by putting their own hand picked justices on the court that would do what they told them to do.

It took a few years, but bruised political egos don’t heal quickly. They took their time to stock the deck. Now the stage is set as in the recent 2010 elections the conservative Republicans succeeded in winning a “super-majority” in both the Florida house of representative and the Florida Senate. Additionally, they put “Tea Party” Republican conservative Rick Scott in as Florida Governor. But that’s not all, in the past few years they stocked the deck in their favor on the Florida Supreme Court. Those of us who remember the “Death Penalty Reform Act” remember that it was Charles Canady who acted as then Governor Jeb Bush’s General Counsel in defending this draconian action before the FSC, its defeat was a personal defeat for Charles Canady, but in politics nothing ends that easily.

Where is Charles Canady now? As of June 2010, he is now the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, after being politically appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Republican governor Charlie Crist. This is yet another example of how the politics of death deliberately corrupt the entire judicial process. But you won’t see Florida’s mainstream media talking about this. They sold their souls long ago and no longer have the balls to take on government corruption. Besides, more executions mean more controversy and controversy sells newspapers. Killing the possibly innocent is really good business for America’s mainstream media.

A few generations ago politicians like Dean Cannon would have stood in the town square wearing a white sheet, while advocating the lynching of blacks. But that’s no longer politically correct so the white sheet becomes a 3-piece suit – but the mentality is the same. This is the Deep South and some things never change.

Funny thing is that while they scream about the need to expedite executions, they never once recognize that Florida leads the nation in the number of wrongful convictions in capital cases – and that the leading cause of innocent people being condemned to death is prosecutional misconduct. But do we ever hear politicians talking about going after prosecutors who deliberately conceal or fabricate evidence, knowing they are sending an innocent man to death row? No, of course not.

Americans today have become consumed by hate and vengeance, even to the point where a large number of Americans believe that executing a few innocent people is perfectly acceptable as long as it means executing more guilty ones. That’s an easy position to tale when you’re on the outside looking in and not the one who is about to be executed for a crime you didn’t commit. I’m sure they’d feel completely different if it was them.

In the upcoming months we will again see Speaker Dean Cannon rally his pro death politicians to pass new laws attempting to adopt the draconian rules limiting death row appeals in Florida. They will attempt to do this with as little attention as possible and only once adopted will they jump up on their political soap boxes and tell the public what a wonderful job they have done.

This time it will almost certainly pass as now Speaker Cannon knows that they’ve stocked the Florida Supreme Court with their own politically appointed “brethren”. And chief Justice Charles Canady is already slobbering at the mouth in anticipation for finally winning the political fight he lost in 2000 – now he controls the court and they will do what he demands of them.

As these political manipulations unfold the one thing they will not talk about is how the evidence is growing that in Texas’ own rush to execute as many people as possible, numerous innocent people have been put to death for crimes they did not commit. Nobody – especially the mainstream media – will talk about how expediting executions by eliminating death row appeals will substantially increase the inevitable certainty that innocent people will be executed.

How many people must die before America grows a conscience and says enough is enough? Funny thing about evil tyrants is we don’t see them for who they really are until its too late. History will have to judge Speaker Dean Cannon

The Money Trap

2011-04-01T09:24:00.001-07:00

Many moons ago I read a story about how to catch a monkey. That story stuck with me, not because I ever wanted to catch a monkey, but because of its metaphor and application to many other aspects of life in general.

Here's basically how it went..generally monkeys are not too bright. But they can be pretty clever. If you're out in the jungle you can't just walk up to a monkey and grab it as their instinctive nature is to run away especially if they see you as a threat. People who live in parts of the world where monkeys are common often see monkeys as a source of food or income. So how do you catch a monkey?

The beauty is in its simplicity. No you don't build a monkey trap or try to chase them through the jungle as the monkey will pretty much win every time. Rather, all it takes is a common jar and a piece of fruit. You take the jar and attach it to a rope or chain, then fasten it to a tree or whatever. Then you take an apple or other round fruit that barely fits through the opening of the jar and place the fruit in the jar and walk away. Simple enough.

The monkey is going to want that piece of fruit. In fact, they'll often fight each other for the opportunity to be the one that gets that delicious piece of juicy fruit. Then the one that wins will put his hand into the jar to retrieve that fruit, only to discover that he 9or she) cannot extract the fruit as once the monkey wraps his hand around the fruit to pull it out, his hand is too big to fit through the opening of the jar.

The monkey now has a choice...let go of the fruit to allow his hand to get out, which would mean that another monkey will quickly move in to take the fruit, or hold fast and never let go. Most monkeys will become so fixated on the objective of getting the fruit - and not letting another monkey get it - that this simple jar becomes a monkey trap. This poor monkey simply doesn't have the basic, common sense to just let go even when the starving natives walk up and bash his head in with a stick or club.

This is a really good metaphor about how the death penalty in America is now administered. The death penalty politicians and our society as a whole have become so blinded by their narrow minded objective of killing the condemned that they cannot let go even though the fundamental failure of this death penalty experiment now threatens to take down the whole system.

Putting society's apparent need for vengeance aside, objectively speaking can anyone truly say that the death penalty works? In Florida, those of us on death row are now more likely to die of old age and natural causes while spending decades in continuous solitary confinement awaiting the uncertainty of our fate than face actual execution. I have personally been on Florida's death row since early 1984 - going on 28 years - despite the fact that I have consistently pushed for speedy review, even filing legal actions against the state arguing my right to a timely review. Politicians and the courts want to blame the condemned for dragging out appeals when they know that is not true - its just a lot easier to blame the condemned as we have no voice and are pawns of the system.
The actual truth is that it’s the pro death penalty politicians and judges who cause the delays by repeatedly frustrating the process itself. Blinded by their own zeal to kill, they constantly tinker with the appellate process trying to figure out ways to kill more of us a lot quicker. But each time they play these political games it actually slows the process down as new rules means a whole new round of constitutional challenges to these draconian rules.
Worse yet, each time they play with the rules governing appellate review of death penalty cases, it recruits in eliminating a level of appellate review and substantially increases the inevitable likelihood that innocent people will be put to death. But these politicians can not see that. They are so fixated on the fruit in the jar that they can not see how their actions will have irreparable consequences upon the integrity of our judicial process itself – and actually lead to having the death penalty declared unconstitutional, as it should be anyway.
Although the majority of Americans continue to favor capital punishment, support has substantially decreased in recent years as more people learn that the rate of wrongful convictions is substantially higher than anyone previously thought possible. DNA exonerations have proven that fact. But these DNA exonerations actually account for a very small number of the wrongful convictions in the country. In Florida, at least 26 inmates have been exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated after being previously declared unconstitutional. That means that for every two people Florida has executed since 1979, one person was wrongfully convicted and condemned to death. But of that alarming number only 2 have been exonerated through DNA evidence. The inconvenient truth that nobody wants to talk about is that very few of those at death row who are innocent have DNA evidence to prove their innocence. Most of those – including myself – who were wrongfully convicted and condemned to death in spite of innocence were convicted upon specious circumstantial evidence; without any eyewitnesses, no physical or forensic evidence, and no confessions. (Read my entire capital case, including trial transcripts, appeal briefs, etc at www.southerninjustice.com
Then there’s the political corruption of the courts themselves. Most of the judges on American courts are either publicly elected or politically appointed. Either way, these judges must publicly declare their support for the death penalty or they will stand no chance of being elected or appointed. Most judges are political cowards and lack the moral courage or integrity to do what’s right and would rather send an innocent man to his execution rather than risk political retribution for being too ‘liberal’.
Truth and justice have become irrelevant in the face of this insidious cancer of the “politics of death” No matter how convincing and even irrefutable the evidence is that the fundamental flaws of today’s death penalty is eroding public confidence in the judicial system as a whole, they will justify their actions and blindly continue on their journey of self destruction as their need to kill blinds them to all logic or reason.
So how do you get the monkey to let go of the fruit? The answer is really very simple – just don’t put the fruit in the jar in the first place. Take the death penalty off the table and join the rest of the civilized world by declaring the death penalty unconstitutional. This is not about letting the guilty go, but protecting the innocent from being executed. The simple truth is that if we as a society put even one innocent person to death, then we as a society become guilty of an act of deliberate cold blooded murder of an innocent man. Monkey traps only work if we refuse to let go of the fruit, so just let go!

Michael Lambrix
Death Row
Florida State Prison

Hello From Death Row

2011-03-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Hello to my faithful friends and those who follow my blog. From time to time I just want all of you to know that it really means a lot to me to know that all of you keep me in your thoughts and send positive support my way. No matter how hard my seemingly never ending struggle for justice and freedom may seem at times, knowing that I'm not alone gives me strenght and support. I need to make it through another day - and then one day at a time after that.

Recently I've had to struggle with the question "why?" as things have been especially difficult the past few months. Some of you sent me cards after reading my previously posted blog "The paradox of Hope" and each one touched me in a very special way. Its times like that I do realize just how truly blessed i am as there is no greater treasure in Heaven or earth then that of the compassion and love of a faithful friend.

Being condemned for a crime i did not commit is itself a virtual hell few could even begin to imagine. Each day I awake to a never-ending nightmare, the reality of my circumstances so tangible that its the first thing that I'm aware of each morning. Sometimes it is all I can do to just lay there on my steel bunk and stare at the ceiling until I find the strength to rise up and begin my day. Sometimes I really don't want to get up at all.

In my recent blog i spoke of how elusive hope can become when one thing after another comes along to pound me down into the ground. When it comes down to it, I'm only human and it is only human that i will have moments, even hours and days, when I am overwhelmed and find myself asking why i bother to fight anymore when I cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel anymore. The truth is that the struggle does become more difficult each time the judicial rug gets pulled out from beneath me by a politically corrupt judicial system.

But often it is at these darkest moments that a "light" shines down upon me, renewing my strength in the most unexpected ways. Maybe the truth is that we need to reach rock bottom to keep things in context and realize that there is still something worth fighting for. Maybe this is an inherent gift we all share as I'm certainly not the only one who struggles with hopelessness and despair when our lives seem to become a prison of its own making. Spend too much time basking in the light and the light itself becomes irrelevant. It's only too easy to take everything we have for granted without even realizing that we are doing so. When it comes down to it, from the moment we are born we are all condemned to die. I've clung so desperately to this thing we call "life", yet in the end, nobody comes out alive.

So, if its not about the beginning and in the end our fate is inevitably sealed, then it has to be about the journey between that matters. I used to say that "life itself is the mortal condemnation of an eternal soul" and I still believe that. Although i struggle with the contemporary definition of "God", I remain convinced that God must exist - just not the Supreme being many use to exploit and coerce fear into others for fullfillment of their own self serving agenda. The truth is that I've grown to hold in contempt this contemporary "Christianity" that only too quickly embraces God to justify their own hate and intolerance. I cannot believe in a God that could be so malicious and petty.

All of this is relevant to the restoration of the strength necessary to sustain my hope and through that the strength to fight the fight. Its like I have been thrown down into a dark abyss and I must struggle to climb up the slippery slopes of my prison if there is any hope of surviving. At times I will slip and fall backwards, descending into the darkness of the abyss that imprisons me. But it is at these times that I realize that I'm not alone - that there are those faithful friends willing to catch me when I fall.

For that, I'm grateful beyond any words can say. In my recent struggle, I was reminded just how fortunate I am - and how much my own struggles effect those who truly do care about me. So thank you to those of you who send me cards and letters with words of encouragement and for caring enough to catch me when I fall.

Now I am climbing the walls upwards again. I do not have much faith left in our corrupt judicial system - but I do have faith in my true friends and its because of their genuine concern that I find that strenght and will to renew my never-ending battle for justice.

The truth is that with both the State and Federal courts now denying reviews of the virtual wealth of evidence substantiating my innocence, there is not much left to go on. I am already pursuing a new state appeal that is based upon the discovery of deliberately concealed state crime lab records that show that the alleged "murder weapon" introduced as evidence at my trial was deliberately fabricated by the key witness and the state attorneys office.

Unable to find any lawyer willing to assist me, I recently filed my own legal action to the United States Supreme Court, asking that they exercise jurisdiction under "exceptional circumstances" to review the evidence substantiating my innocence.

But in what is only too common in the American courts, after I sent this 46 pages habeas petition to the US Supreme Court on January 24, 2011 about a week later the clerk of the court sent it back to me, refusing to formally file this innocence appeal because of a technical imperfection. Once again the incidious true nature of the American judicial system exposes itself - its not about truth and justice, but the politics of death, and irrelevant technical imperfections are exploited as a means of denying review altogether.

The clerk of court instructed me to correct the error and submit a "corrected petition". But that's not so easily done as when the court sent the box of copies back to me, someone here at the prison went out of their way to open the "legal mail" (which is prohibited) and maliciously destroyed the entire contents. Prison warden Steven Singer says that they are now conducting a formal investigation into the illegal destruction of this legal property, but I've been around here long enough to know how these so-called "investigators" always go... No matter that the officer delivering the legal mail even wrote a formal "incident report' to cover his own butt once he saw the over 2800 pages had been deliberately destroyed, and two lieutenants also verified this - it will still come out with the typical "the allegations of destruction of your legal property by FSP staff connot be substantiated"

This is just what we must deal with. The prison only too often goes out of its way to obstruct our ability to file appeals, even deliberately destroying our legal property and if we are lucky enough to get it to the court, then the courts go out of their way to deny review upon any irrelevant imperfection. Then if we do finally get a "corrected" petition filed so that the court will review the claims of innocence, the pro death penalty politically appointed judicial activists on the court will invent reason to deny relief anyways.

And yet I will keep banging my head against that proverbial brick wall, still wondering why. But at least I know I'm blessed with true friends.

Mike Lambrix 482053
Florida State Prison

The Paradox of Hope.

2011-01-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought about the concept of hope? Recently, I have. Funny thing about hope is that it can sustain you through the most difficult of trials and tribulations, but at the same time its absence can cast you down into the depths of despair, even to the point of making death seem favorable.

Here on death row I’ve often said that I will hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. That sort of became my mantra of choice and for many years I found some strength in it. For those of us condemned to death our existence is like being trapped on a runaway rollercoaster on a perverted path through the bowels of hell. With each twist and turn our guts are ripped apart as with each appeal our hope is escalated - then free falls to the lowest of the depths when the courts deny relief. Yet again and again we go through it, each time desperately grasping the imaginary rails that hold us in for fear that the sudden drop at the end of the ride will irreparably crush our mental state of mind.

My own case is but a single sample of what we all go through. After over 27 years convicted and condemned to death for a crime I did not commit (see www.southerninjustice.com ) I had good reason to believe that I would finally be exonerated and released – that I would be “home” for Christmas, and my nightmare finally be brought to an end.

My hope had a seemingly strong foundation as a virtual wealth of evidence supporting my claim of innocence had been developed in recent years and I couldn’t imagine any scenario under which the courts could deny relief. But I really should have known better. After all these years, if I’ve learned nothing else, it is that the courts are far more interested in “the politics of death” than they are in the novel concept of truth and justice, and few people today can argue in good faith that our courts are only too willing to ignore evidence of innocence and execute the innocent (see previously posted blog “Screw the truth”)

So, why was I so surprised when first the Florida Supreme Court, and then, a few months later, the Federal appeals court, denied my appeal? Why is it that this time my tried and true mantra of ‘hope for the best but prepare for the worst” failed me?

Now, once again I am forced to confront the probability that I will be executed and that nobody really cares whether I’m innocent or not. I’m sure that my dear friends will be upset – but nobody in the “justice” system cares. Only too often the courts deliberately turn a blind eye to evidence of innocence as they side with the State sanctioned serial killers to trust twist the truth around to meet their own agenda of carrying out an execution by any means necessary. And regardless of the fact that we see this again, our society chooses to ignore the inconvenient truth of how immoral, unethical and corrupt the American justice system has become.

I am angry at all of this. It is fundamentally unfair and as traumatic as being the victim of a violent rape – they raped me of justice. My dictionary tells me that “hope” is “a feeling that what is wanted will happen”, desire accompanied by expectation, and that “hopeless” is defined as “having no expectations of, or showing a sign of, a favorable outcome”. In a word I recognize that I have become ‘despondent”, which my dictionary defines as “utter loss of hope…implies such despair as makes one resort to extreme measure” (i.e. suicide) Hmm..That’s a familiar word – “suicide”, and not at all uncommon in my world where our hopes are often so deliberately crushed and the condemned do resort to that “extreme measure” of suicide.

I have actually contemplated suicide before. Once when my marriage was over and again when I was first convicted of this fabricated crime of alleged “premeditated” murder. Both times I could not follow trough and now I know that suicide is not something I could do so that simply is not an available option for me.

But at the same time I now struggle with the reality that I cannot win – that no matter how compelling the evidence of my innocence may be, truth and justice can never prevail before a judicial system that itself is completely corrupt to its own core. The cowards on the courts have neither the moral character nor the political courage to do the right thing and throw out a conviction that is now over a quarter century old.

Lately I find myself thinking about philosophical arguments I read years ago, such as Plato’s account of the Athenian philosopher Socrates being condemned to death by a politically corrupt tribunal. Plato tells of how Socrates faithful friend Crito stood by Socrates side, imploring Socrates to allow them to delay his execution in the hopes that after the emotional circumstances that led to his condemnation died down, they could appeal for a pardon. But Socrates accepted his fate and told Crito that although his heart was in the right place and he understood that his friends meant well in wanting to delay his execution, but, Socrates said “I am right in not doing this, for I do not think that I should gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; I should be sparing and saving a life which is already gone; I would only laugh at myself for this”

The words Socrates spoke so long ago still ring true today. I know that many of those who oppose the death penalty - and many of us here on death row - find it offensive and even a betrayal when someone “voluntarily” waives his appeals and seeks to expedite his won execution, which for all purposes amounts to a state sanctioned form of suicide.

But what of those of us who have already been through the appeals process again and again? And have been denied relief to the point where there is no hope left of getting relief? If we were to decide that enough is enough, and accept the inevitability of our own fate and simply choose not to pursue any further appellate review, then is it really fair to judge us as cowards and traitors to the cause, such as those are labeled when they decide to forego appeals altogether and “volunteer” to be executed?

Would I really be so wrong to accept the inevitability of my own fate and invite an expedited end to this nightmare by simply refusing to forego any further appeals, knowing that with the recent denial of my innocence appeal, my fate has now been sealed and all that really remains is delaying the inevitable at the expense of prolonging my own suffering?

I do not have a “death wish”. But neither do I have any desire to prolong my misery and suffering when I now know that my execution has become inevitable. As Socrates told his friend Crito: “What do I have to gain by delaying the inevitable but to make a fool of myself?” Like Socrates, I am blessed with a small group of dear friends who would be deeply hurt by my death, and their heartfelt desire to prolong my fate is genuine – but they are not the ones who must sit in this cage while the blanket of hopelessness and despair slowly suffocates the essence of life from me.

Such is the paradox of hope. For many years hope has sustained me as I had faith in our legal system to ultimately do the right thing. My hope and fate were my strength, generously sustained by my small circle of dear friends. But now I simply cannot find even a thread of hope left to cling on to and I find myself overwhelmed by the vacuum left behind – hopelessness.

But I find myself now struggling with the thought that increasingly haunt me. Even assuming that my fate is now inevitable, if I were to accept and embrace that finality would I be betraying the friends who stood by me and suffered through all of this? My death would bring an end to my nightmare but it would also bring pain to those who care about me. Would I be betraying their own loyalty and perseverance if I were to decide to forego any further appeals and allow the state to put me to death?

There are no easy answers. Perhaps I could believe in a merciful God, I would be blessed to simply die in my sleep and never again have to wake up to tomorrow and all these problems would be so easily solved as who could blame me of I died of natural causes tonight? But the God I believe in is not a merciful God – if he was, then he would not allow those who stand in judgment in our courts to pervert justice as they do.

So, I now struggle with this and pray that my nightmare will soon end. I no longer have the strength to hope for the best, but can only accept the worst. Soon I will have to make a tough decision and even now I don’t know what it will be. But I know that I have fought a good fight against the evil tyrant that is our legal system, and I know that I am now exhausted and even broken. Hopeless is now all that remains, with the only hope now left being the hope that my nightmare will soon come to an end.

Screw the Truth – Execute the Innocent

2010-11-08T09:27:00.000-08:00

Don’t you just hate it when inconvenient truths get in the way of killing people? Where do people get off thinking that carrying out executions has anything to do with such concepts as “truth and justice”? When it comes down to it, capital punishment is not about whether someone is guilty or actually innocent – it’s about the “politics of death” and feeding our twisted societies primitive need for vengeance. When a brutal crime occurs, we need to know someone will be held accountable and we are driven to find great satisfaction in knowing the crime has been avenged. That’s just human nature, and whether or not the person we ultimately put to death for the crime actually committed the crime really is not even relevant. The only thing that really matters is that we get our proverbial ‘pound of flesh”

In fact, we don’t even want to know that we may have executed an innocent man. Such an inconvenient truth completely undermines our fundamental need to believe in our judicial system. If we are forced to confront the truth then our own support for the death penalty makes us personally complicit in this morally and legally justified act of murder carried out in our name.

But most of us are good people of moral character and we would find it troubling that an innocent person was put to death for a crime he did not commit. We really don’t need to be weighted down by that moral baggage and so we choose to learn form the ostrich – we stick our heads in the sand and pretend it didn’t happen.

But the tragic truth is that it does happen and ignoring this truth won’t make it go away. By choosing to ignore the imperfection of our judicial system, we do become personally responsible for the execution of an innocent person. This truth can not be denied as if only more people would stand up and speak out against a system that refuses to admit its own mistakes then those we entrust to prosecute questionable cases will be forced to understand that both as individuals and as a civilized society, even the execution of one innocent person is not acceptable.

This past week, renowned bestselling author John Grisham released his latest book, entitled “The confession”. In this fictional story, Grisham writes of a 19 year old Donte Drumm, who found himself accused of the brutal murder of a local pretty young cheerleader in the small town of Slone, Texas.

Donte Drumm insisted that he is innocent – but what does innocence have to do with it? Without any real evidence, Drumm went straight to Texas death row. As the years pass, Drumm’s desperate appeals proclaiming his innocence are denied by one court after another and 8 years later Drumm finds himself facing imminent execution. Only then does the real killer have a crisis of conscience and comes forward to confess. But nobody wants to hear it. As we know only too well, prosecutors absolutely never admit they were wrong, and our courts never admit that a person might be innocent. Although innocent, Drumm never had a chance, as in our judicial system the puppet master would much rather execute an innocent person than to admit even the possibility of error.

This is not the first time Grisham wrote a bestselling book that tells the story of an innocent man being wrongly convicted and condemned to death, only to have evidence substantiating innocence deliberately ignored by the courts and the injustice intentionally perpetuated by the very people (judges and prosecutors) we trust to protect the innocent.

In John Grisham’s 2006 work, “The Innocent Man” Grisham told the true story of Ron Williamson, an aspiring high school athlete with a promising career ahead of him – until he suddenly found himself charged with capital murder in the state of Oklahoma and quickly convicted and condemned to death in spite of his innocence.

Only years later was DNA evidence discovered that not only proved Williamson was innocent but also revealed the true killer. But nobody wanted to hear it and both the prosecutor and the courts refused to admit that they could have made such a mistake. The only possible explanation was that either the DNA evidence had to be wrong, or maybe Williamson acted with this other person. To silence these claims of innocence, the state became that much more determined to expedite Williamson’s execution.

This is not at all surprising. For too long now this is how the American judicial system protects itself from having its mistakes exposed…they simply create new court rules and laws to limit post conviction appeals so that the evidence of innocence cannot be heard. By denying the wrongfully convicted any chance of proving their innocence, the errors are forever concealed.

Most recently this was the case in Texas when Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death. Willingham was convicted and condemned to death for allegedly setting fire to his own home, killing his own two young daughters. There were no eyewitnesses or confessions – but the local, small Texas town fire Marshall conducted his own investigation and concluded that the fire was deliberately set. This fire Marshall had no actual training in arson investigations, but that didn’t stop him from testifying in court that there was no question that the house was deliberately set on fire. To seal Willingham’s fate, the state brought in a prisoner from the local county jail who testified that Willingham told him that he had indeed set the house on fire to kill his two young daughters and did it to strike back at his wife after they had an argument.

Willingham insisted that he was innocent and that he didn’t know how the fire actually started. He testified that after seeing the smoke, he tried to get into the house to save his children, but couldn’t. The jury refused to believe him and court after court rejected his claim of innocence.

Shortly before Willingham was executed, some of the top arson investigators in the country were brought in to re-examine the case. Virtually every one of these experts concluded that the local fire Marshall was wrong and that the evidence showed that the fire was started by an electrical short – it was a tragic accident, and Willingham was innocent of murder as no murder occurred.

But the Texas courts didn’t want to hear it and refused to allow the evidence to be heard. Willingham was executed in 2004. Only after his execution did the evidence of his innocence catch the attention of the media, and the question of whether Texas executed an innocent man started to be taken seriously.

As the controversy build, Texas governor Perry formed a panel of experts to finally review the evidence to determine whether Willingham was innocent. This “commission on forensic science” thoroughly studied the evidence and reached the inconvenient conclusion that Willingham was innocent – that the State of Texas had deliberately put an innocent man to death.

But it was an election year and Perry was running for re-election. In Texas the death penalty is all about politics and you cannot win an election by seeming soft on convicted murderers or admitting you made a mistake. Using the power of his office, shortly before the Texas “commission on forensic science” was to public ally release its report declaring Willingham innocent, Governor Perry abruptly fired the panel and appointed his own hand picked political insiders. Once again, the inconvenient truth of innocence was suppressed by the insidious politics of death.

In John Grisham’s book “The Confession” he writes that “death row is a nightmare for serial killers and ax murderers – but for an innocent man, it’s a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive”

I know only too well of the eternal mental anguish of being a condemned man, convicted and sentenced to death for a crime I did not commit. In my main website, www.southerninjustice.com my supporters have posted my entire case – complete trial transcripts, appeal briefs, etc and the evidence supporting my actual innocence.

In my recently published book “To Live and Die on Death Row” by C Michael Lambrix (available online for free at www.lulu.com) I graphically detail what life is like on death row, the never ending torment of being in solitary confinement for over 27 years and the relentless struggle to maintain my sanity as one court after another refuses to even hear the wealth of evidence substantiating my innocence, see also my secondary blog, www.doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com.

The past month my lawyers filed a “last ditch” appeal to the United States Supreme Court arguing specifically that they must order the lower courts to allow my evidence of innocence to be heard – or I will be executed for a crime I did not commit. But will the Supreme Court even listen? I can only hope they will. You can personally read this recently filed appeal at www.supremecourtinnocenceappeal.blogspot.com

But my faith in our judicial system to protect the innocent and even in the nature of humanity in general is suffering. If I have learned nothing else over the many years, it is that too many feel “screw the truth – just execute the innocent”

A Simple Trip to the Doctor

2010-08-06T02:52:00.000-07:00

It seemed like a simple trip to see the doctor. When you're in prison it's not like you must go across town or even further just to see the doctor for a routine check-up as the doctor's office is inside the prison. But anyone familiar with with how a maximum security prison is actually operated would know there is no such thing as a simple trip to the doctor. Nothing is that simple if it is not in the prison's interest to make access to even minimal medical care that easy.

Before I was sent to prison I was in the military and suffered an injury while on duty at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1978. This led to my early discharge and a permanent disability resulting in chronic lower back pain. Through the many years that I've been on Florida's death row I have consistently received treatment for this well documented disability, even though it was only minimal treatment in the form of providing prescriptions to general pain killers like extra strength Ibuprofen or Naproxen.

Throughout the now almost 30 years of incarnation, I have been examined by many prison doctors and not one has disputed my lenghty medical history of extreme and often physically dishabilitating chronic lower back pain - at least not until I ran across Dr. G.A Espino.

Dr. Espino is a licened physician, and chief medical officer primarily operating out of Colombia Correctional, another state prison in the adjacent county. It is his job to find ways to save the prison system money by reducing the medical care provided to inmates unfortunate enough to be incarcenated in one of Florida's prisons under his control.

On Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 I was awoken at 5:30 in the morning and told that I had a medical callout, and asked whether I wanted to go. I'm sure that they would have preferred it if I said "no" and effectively waived medical treatment. But I had to go as the Naproxen I take for the lower back pain had run out and I had to get the prescription renewed.

Shortly after breakfast (about 6:30) they came to get me. I knew the routine only too well - at Florida's State Prison, anytime you are pulled from your cell for a "callout" (medical, legal visit, social visit, etc) you must first be placed in hndcuffs, waist chains and black box, as well as heavy legg shackles. Once secured, they then pull you from your cell, and the trip begins. But since it's a medical callout, thet're going to make this trip as unpleasant and physically torturous as possible. This meant that I would not be brought directly to the clinic way up at the front of the prison almost half a kilometer away, that would be way too easy. So, under the pretense of not having an escort available, I was removed from my cell, walked about 20 feet, then placed in the shower cell for about an hour, all the while being kept in the chains and shackles.

Finally I was brought off the wing and began the slow and painful shuffle up the main hall towards the distant clinic, the heavy iro leg shackles now painfully cutting into my ancles, soaking my sock with blood.

When I finally reached the main clinic, I was again placed in a "holding cage" not more than the size of a smll cardboard box (approx 2' x 2'), with no means of ventilation even though the Florida summer made the heat unbearable. But there I remained for at least 3 hours, alongside numerous other prisoners cramped ino identical small steel cages, sharing my same fate.

It was almost noon before I fnally was escorted into the airconditioned office and seen by Dr Espino. to my surprise, he wasn't interested in discussing my medical condition, but rather wanted to share with me his thoughts of a book recently released " To live and die on death row", by C Michael Lambrix (available online at www.lulu.com), and my ritical opinion of Florida's prison system, especially the cesspool of humanity known as Florida State Prison.

After his unsolicied tirade, he then informed me that he was done and called for the guard to return me to the small holding cage to now await an escort back to my cell at the far end of the building. Altogether, this simple trip to see the doctor lasted almost 8 hours, during which time I was continiously kept in the iron shackles and chains, both my ankles bloody and my wrists bruised. Several days later when I still had not received the renewed prescription for the only pain medication I was provided for many years, i was only then informed that Dr Espino had terminated my prescription for no apparent reason but that he didn't appreciate some of what I said in my recently published book. Since he couldn't just physically assault me without a lot of paperwork, he did the next best thing to inflict physical pain upon me - deliberately taking away my pain medication.

I filed the standard "Emergecy Medical Grievance" to the prison warden, but I already know that he will automatically rubberstamp it "denied" as that's just how it goes here. (and this is what happened also...)

Please mail the warden of FSP if you want to help.

Warden Steve Singer: singer.steven@mail.dc.state.fl.us

or the Secretary of Corrections mr Walter McNeil: secretary@mail.dc.state.fl.us

Thank you,

Cary Michael Lambrix #482053
Death Row
Florida State Prison

The Hypocrisy of Animal Rights Advocates

2010-06-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

What a twisted world we do live in. Recently I read an editorial in the ‘USA Today’ entitled “What’s the Godly Way to Treat Animals" by an American Baptist preacher, Oliver Thomas (USA Today, Monday June 14, 2010) in which Mr. Thomas referred to our society’s indifference to the cruel treatment of animals as a ‘moral blind spot’ that compromises the moral fabric of our society itself.

Quoting Mahatma Gandhi as saying “the moral fiber of a society is best gauged by how we treat our animals,” Mr. Thomas used examples of how we as a society must push for laws to protect animals from cruelty and graphically describes some of the inhumane abuses animals are all too often subjected to (ie “one of the saddest outcomes is a dog that is chained and left in the backyard. A tethered dog lives in utter misery without physical or mental stimulation...And that is how we treat the animals we love. As for animals we raise for food consumption, my guess is that few Americans have any inkling of the horror these poor animals endure.”)

Mr. Thomas then encourages his readers “to join the growing list of cities and states that have banned or placed restrictions on chaining animals- like Texas- or that have banned the most inhumane practices- like Florida and California.”

I’m not saying Mr. Thomas is wrong. I too think all animals should be treated humanely as a natural extension of the inherent sanctity of life. But I have to admit that over the many years I have grown to hold those such as Mr. Thomas, the ‘Humane Society’ and the organization ‘PETA’ (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) in contempt. The truth of the matter is that most of these people who scream about treating animals humanely are nothing but hypocrites. By selectively advocating only the politically popular concept of ‘animal rights’, they have proved themselves to be cowards unwilling to speak out against the inhumane treatment of millions of prisoners here in America.

The inconvenient truth about the epidemic of animal cruelty in America today is that it is a direct extension of who we really are as a collective society. The majority of Americans today- including the majority of members of the ‘Humane Society’ and PETA deliberately turn a ‘moral blind eye’ towards the widespread abuse of prisoners in American jails and prisons, and don’t see the relationship between the abuse of animals and the abuse of prisoners.

As long as we continue to choose to be a society in which it is acceptable, and even encouraged to treat prisoners like animals, then how can we expect members of our society to treat animals humanely?

I have now personally spent 27 years in continuous solitary confinement: in a six foot concrete and steel cage that under applicable state law it would be illegal to put a dog in. I have been denied any outdoor exercise, or even a moment or sunlight, for years at a time. I have been brutally beaten, and chained and shackled until I bled, and have not touched a blade of grass or dirt in over a quarter of century. And I am not alone, as this is how prisoners in America are treated every day.

Mr. Thomas argues that we should join states like Texas that now make it a crime to chain a dog in your backyard. However, he does not point out that Texas also executes more prisoners than all the other states combined, including many who may very well have been innocent. In Texas, prisoners are routinely put in chains and shackles, and led out to state run farms to work under conditions comparable to a southern slave plantation.

Perhaps before Mr. Thomas gets all giddy about how ‘humane’ Texas is, he should take a few minutes to read the 100 page plus Federal Court opinion of Ruiz v Estelle, 679 F.2d 1115 (5th Gr., 1982) (available on www.findlaw.com), in which it graphically details the systemic abuse of prisoners in the Texas prison system, including a routine practice of chaining prisoners to a post in the open sun for hours, even days, at a time.

Mr. Thomas commends Florida for passing laws that prohibit keeping animals under physically and psychologically oppressive conditions that would be a criminal act if only prisoners would be legally protected as ‘animals’.

Again, before Mr. Thomas encourages his readers to embrace Florida’s ‘humane’ ways of treating animals, Mr. Thomas should spend a day taking a tour of Florida State Prison, where at least a thousand prisoners have been held in long term solitary confinement under conditions so brutal that the vast majority are under psychiatric medication just to cope. Anyone who wants to read about how prisoners are routinely treated at Florida State Prison should read the Federal court opinion in Valdes v. Crosby, 450 F.3d. (11th Gr.)

But nobody dares to speak out about the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners as that is not politically popular. In our society today, it’s one thing to show compassion and mercy towards a cute little kitten, or a sad eyed puppy dog. But all too often these same animals’ rights advocates will foam at the mouth and respond with anger, or even violence, towards those who suggest that perhaps even prisoners should be treated humanely, too.

With their twisted logic, they will argue that animals are defenceless creatures in need of protection- and prisoners are responsible for whatever punishment brought upon themselves. I personally find it amusing when these people twist logic around to justify the way prisoners are routinely treated and why animals should be protected- but not prisoners.

The fact is that if the ‘USA Today’ newspaper (which is the most widely circulated newspaper in America) was to publish an editorial that called for the ethical and humane treatment of prisoners, then they would be flooded with hate mail from mobs of angry readers who see advocating the humane treatment of prisoners as a ‘bleeding heart liberal’ agenda.

So, the mainstream media and editorial writers like Mr. Thomas will not say a word about the ethical and humane treatment of prisoners. As long as they stick to kitty cats and puppy dogs, their message will be embraced and they will be seen as honorable leaders of moral integrity.

That, Mr. Thomas, is the true ‘moral blind spot’ in America today. Perhaps one day our society will evolve enough to understand that only by learning to treat each other humanely can there be any hope of raising our social and moral conscience towards the manner in which God’s lesser creatures are treated.

As long as we continue to be a society that aggressively advocates the inhumane treatment of millions of prisoners, and elect politicians upon their promise to be ‘tough on crime’ by inflicting misery and pain upon those we see as ‘criminals’, there will always be a significant percentage of our society that will never develop a concept of respect for the humane and ethical treatment of animals. Those who think they can have it both ways are just pissing in the wind. Only by advocating and demanding that we treat each other, even prisoners, humanely can there be any hope to live in a society that will treat all forms of life humanely.

Michael Lambrix #482053

Florida State Prison

7819 NW 228th St (death row)

Raiford, Florida 32026-1160

Mike's book published!

2010-06-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

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.

"The autobiography of C.Michael Lambrix, an innocent man who has spent 27 years under sentence of death on Florida's infamous death row. "

The book can be ordered here

Florida Court Denies Lambrix's Innocence Appeal

2010-05-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

After denying review and final disposition of Michael Lambrix’s state post conviction appeal arguing newly discovered evidence that substantiates Lambrix’s consistently pled claim of innocence for many years, in a bizarre and even absurd ruling the Florida Supreme Court has categorically denied all relief, finding that the virtual wealth of evidence presented by Lambrix is not credible. See, Lambrix v. State, 2010 WL 1488028 (Fla.) (opinion released on April 15th, 2010)

As those who have followed this wholly circumstantial capital case already know, and as the state has repeatedly conceded itself, the state’s entire case was based upon the testimony of Lambrix’s estranged ex-girlfriend Frances Smith-Ottinger. Although, Lambrix’s conviction and sentence of death were exclusively based upon the credibility of Smith-Ottinger, in denying Lambrix relief the Florida Supreme Court has now declared Smith-Ottinger “not credible.” Of course, the court has made no attempt to explain how in a wholly circumstantial case (no eyewitnesses, no physical or forensic evidence, no confessions, etc.) dependent upon the credibility of a single key witness; the capital conviction and sentence of death can still be upheld when the same witness has now been declared “not credible.”

Apparently, the Florida Supreme Court’s concept of credibility is flexible and subjectively applied – as long as a witness is providing favorable testimony for the state to secure a conviction, even in a wholly circumstantial case; the witness is credible. But if and when that same witness provides testimony contrary to the interests of the state, then the witness is not credible. That is how justice is administered in Florida.

The Florida Supreme Court’s absurd conclusions actually are not about whether or not the state’s key witness Smith-Ottinger is credible. What this case is really about is the Florida Supreme Courts unethical and constitutionally reprehensible protection of the Florida Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, Peggy Quince. If putting an innocent man to death is necessary to protect Chief Justice Quince from allegations of misconduct, then so be it.

Although not mentioned in the recent denial of relief, but fully detailed in the appeal briefs submitted in this case; Chief Justice Peggy Quince was previously an Assistant Attorney General and part of the prosecution team during Lambrix’s initial post conviction proceedings prior to her political appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. (All appeal briefs in this case can be found and read under the hearing-briefs tab at SouthernInjustice.com)

In her former capacity, Chief Justice Quince was (“allegedly”) personally complicit in the prosecutorial misconduct in this capital case. Lambrix filed a motion to disqualify the Florida Supreme Court (click here to read this motion in its entirety), which the Florida Supreme Court summarily denied even though their own recent decision in other cases, required disqualification; see, Wickham v. State, 998 So. 2d 593 (Fla. 2008). Apparently the Florida Supreme Court is not bound by its own established law.

What is clear by the Florida Supreme Courts ruling is they would rather put an innocent man to death than risk having Chief Justice Quinces own alleged acts of misconduct exposed. The fact that the Florida Supreme Court refused to even address the virtual wealth of evidence presented (see, appeal briefs) and the pled allegations of prosecutorial misconduct that collectively establish that the key witness Smith-Ottinger and the states lead investigator conspired and collaborated together to deliberately fabricate this wholly circumstantial case of alleged premeditated murder shows the Florida Supreme Court simply will not allow their Chief Justice’s own complicity in this deliberate miscarriage of justice to even be discussed.

At trial, in addition to Smith-Ottinger’s testimony that Lambrix told her that he had killed the two deceased, apparently “to take their car,” (which it should be noted, this vehicle was subsequently found in the exclusive possession of Smith-Ottinger, not Lambrix), the state presented testimony from Deborah Hanzel, who testified that Lambrix has also told her that he killed the couple to take the car. However, Hanzel has since provided sworn testimony that her trial testimony was deliberately fabricated – that key witness Smith-Ottinger and the state’s investigator deliberately coerced her to provide this false testimony in a conspiracy to ensure that Lambrix would be convicted and to protect Smith-Ottinger from prosecution herself. (Deborah Hanzel’s sworn affidavit can be read in its entirety by clicking here.)

The Florida Supreme Court now finds that Hanzel’s testimony that she was coerced to provide false testimony is “not reliable” and of course the court conveniently refused to consider any of the evidence that supports Hanzel’s claim that the key witness Smith-Ottinger and the state worked together to deliberately fabricate the entire wholly circumstantial theory of alleged premeditated murder – evidence that if fully and fairly addressed cannot be credibly disputed.

Again the Florida Supreme Court relies upon the absurd conclusion that when Deborah Hanzel testified for the state, she was the epitome of credibility – but now that she has provided sworn testimony detailing how the key witness Smith-Ottinger and the state had coerced her to provide false testimony, and that they knew all along Lambrix was not guilty of premeditated murder, the Florida Supreme Court finds that Hanzel is not a reliable witness. This is the unwritten rule of law – as long as a witness is providing favorable testimony for the state, then they are credible. If the witness admits to being coerced to lie by the state, then they are no loner credible.

Nothing reflects the Florida Supreme Courts deliberate hypocrisy and distortion of the truth more than the manner in which the Florida Supreme Court addressed Lambrix’s own post conviction testimony. What makes Lambrix’s consistently pled claim of innocence unique is that Lambrix has admitted to being in the company of the two people who were killed and that Lambrix was compelled to hit the male victim only after the make victim attacked and was assaulting the much younger female victim.

Lambrix’s claim of a spontaneous event forcing him to act involuntary self defense when attacked by Clarence Moore/ aka Lawrence Lamberson when Lambrix attempted to stop Moore/Lamberson from violently assaulting the teenage victim Aleisha Bryant is actually supported by the State own evidence, and the state has never provided any evidence to contradict this claim. In fact, the state knew all along that Moore/Lamberson was a career criminal and known associate of “drug smugglers” with a criminal history of violently assaulting other women in the same manner. A fact that the jury was not allowed to hear.

At Lambrix’s trial, the court prohibited Lambrix from testifying so the jury was never allowed to hear Lambrix’s account of what actually happened. It should be noted that key witness Smith-Ottinger also testified that she did not actually see or hear anything that transpired outside that night that led up to and resulted in the couple’s death. Her only claim was that Lambrix subsequently told her he had killed both of them.

During the post conviction proceedings Lambrix was finally provided an opportunity to testify and did then graphically testify to what actually happened outside. As the record shows, the state could not discredit Lambrix’s claim of self defense. (The entire excerpt of the transcripts of Lambrix’s testimony can be read by clicking here.)

In the recent order denying relief the Florida Supreme Court (at page 11) “Lambrix himself (testified) at this most recent evidentiary hearing that he struck one of he victims using a tire iron, although he denied that he intended to kill either victim.” Incredibly, the Florida Supreme Court actually twisted Lambrix’s own testimony into somehow being a confession of guilt of premeditated murder.

In doing so, the Florida Supreme Court completely ignored the overwhelming weight of the evidence that actually substantiates Lambrix’s claim. As reflected in the trial transcript, the jury was not allowed to know that Moore/Lamberson (the male deceased) had an extensive criminal history, including violently assaulting women. The jury did hear Smith-Ottinger’s own testimony that there was virtually no indication of animosity or intent to commit any crime, between any of the parties. In fact, Smith-Ottinger conceded that Lambrix, Moore/Lamberson and Bryant were “laughing, teasing, and playing around” immediately before Lambrix and Moore/Lamberson went outside during the early morning hours.

Smith-Ottinger specifically testified that Lambrix remained outside with Moore/Lamberson for approximately 20 minutes then returned to the trailer they shared alone. At that time Smith-Ottinger was absolutely certain that Lambrix did not have any blood on him, was not in possession of the alleged murder weapon (a common tire iron) and “looked normal.” According to Smith-Ottinger, Lambrix then went outside again with Aleisha Bryant as she remained inside alone cooking a spaghetti dinner.

Smith-Ottinger claims that Lambrix again returned alone, but this time was “covered with blood” and was carrying the tire iron, and told her “They’re dead” then proceeded to wash up. Smith-Ottinger has consistently claimed that she did not actually hear of see anything that transpired outside and only knows that Lambrix told her he killed them, but she also insisted that “he never said why.”

For this reason, only Lambrix knows what really happened outside. But by looking at the State’s own evidence, it becomes clear that Lambrix’s claim of being compelled to spontaneously act in self defense when attempting to stop Moore/Lamberson from fatally assaulting Aleisha Bryant is, in fact, supported by this undisputed evidence.

At trial key witness Smith-Ottinger testified that Lambrix told her that he had “choked the girl” and had “hit the in the back of the head.” But the states own medical examiner Dr. Robert Shultz concluded that there was no evidence to show that Aleisha Bryant was “choked” or strangled to death. In fact, it is a medical certainty that if a victim is choked or strangled to death, there will be evidence to show this such as hemorrhaging/bruising around the neck and damage to the soft tissue and larynx as well as probable fracture of the hyoid cartilage. And if a person is strangled to death, there will always be “peticule hemorrhaging” visible in the eyes. But medical examiner Shultz found no evidence of any of these tell-tale signs, thus Smith-Ottinger’s claim that Lambrix choked or strangled Bryant cannot be true.

Although a witness might lie, this type of evidence does not. Additionally, it is inconceivable that a healthy young woman who was not restrained in any manner would simply stand by and allow herself to be assaulted and killed without struggling and fighting for her life. Smith-Ottinger has consistently conceded that Lambrix did not have any scratches or bruises on him that would have been consistent with a struggle with Bryant.

However, the state’s own medical examiner Dr. Schultz conceded that Moore/Lamberson actually did have numerous scratches and lacerations consistent with what Bryant would have undoubtedly inflicted if he had struggled with Aleisha Bryant as Lambrix claimed he did.

Further, the medical examiner Dr. Schultz concluded that Aleisha Bryant did not suffer any physical injuries that would have resulted in a substantial loss of blood. (Smith-Ottinger was certain that Lambrix did not have any blood on him when returning to the trailer after Moore/Lamberson went outside, but before Aleisha Bryant went outside). But Dr. Schultz concluded that Moore/Lamberson did have numerous injuries that would have resulted in substantial loss of blood. Thus the only way that Lambrix could have been “covered in blood” after Bryant went out but not before was if Moore/Lamberson was still alive outside when Bryant went out — supporting Lambrix’s claim that all three were together outside and it was a spontaneous event that resulted in their deaths, not “premeditated murder.”

The states own evidence substantiating Lambrix’s claim that he was compelled to act in self defense when attacked by Moore/Lamberson is even stronger. As the trial transcript reflects, the state’s own medical examiner, Dr. Schultz, testified that Moore/Lamberson died as the result of blunt force trauma – being hit in the head with an object consistent with the tire iron.

However, Dr. Schultz testified with absolute certainty that Moore/Lamberson was struck eight times, specifically, that Moore/Lamberson died as the result of “multiple crushing blows to the head… resulting in severe fractures around the eyes and the cheeks,” and that these blows consisted of “eight (blows) – four times to the left frontal forehead, and four times to the right … applied in a continuous side to side motion.” (See, trial transcript, testimony of Dr. Robert Schultz)

More importantly, Dr. Schultz found virtually no evidence of any “defensive wounds,” and all of these blows were administered with Moore/Lamberson facing his assailant, leaving the only logical conclusion that – just as Lambrix claimed, Moore/Lamberson was coming at him and Lambrix was forced to swing in spontaneous self defense.

As if this evidence itself was not enough to substantiate Lambrix’s consistently pled claims of involuntary self defense, while ignoring the overwhelming weight of this irrefutable evidence the Florida Supreme Court also refused to acknowledge the conclusive evidence that key witness Smith-Ottinger and the state did deliberately fabricate evidence to support their allegations of premeditated murder with the intent and purpose of having Lambrix wrongfully convicted and condemned to death.

Specifically, as reflected in the trial transcript, Smith-Ottinger testified that Lambrix had deliberately placed Aleisha Bryant “face down in a pond” to ensure that she would die. This testimony was used to convince the jury that there was no doubt that Lambrix did act with premeditated intent to kill Aleisha Bryant, thus convicting Lambrix of capital premeditated murder.

But there never was any such “pond,” and no question that this extremely prejudicial testimony used to prove actual premeditation was deliberately fabricated to inflame the jury and convince the jury to convict and condemn Lambrix to death.

In the post conviction appeal now before the Florida Supreme Court, Lambrix’s legal counsel pro offered into evidence the sworn affidavit of the owner of the property, who attested under oath that there was no pond in the area where Bryant was killed. Additionally, two expert witnesses provided sworn statements as hydro-engineers and property surveyors that they went to the property and concluded that Smith-Ottinger’s claim that Bryant was placed face down in a pond to ensure she would die simply could not be true.

Not surprisingly, the Florida Supreme Court refused to even address Lambrix’s specifically pled claim of “fundamental miscarriage of justice” based party upon the pro-offered “expert report” of one of the country’s top homicide detectives, William Gaut, who was retained by Lambrix’s legal counsel to independently examine the case against Lambrix.

Mr. Gaut has over 40 years of experience in homicide investigations, and personally taught homicide investigation techniques in college classes. It was Mr. Gaut’s opinion after independently reviewing the case brought against Lambrix that the entire investigation and development of evidence used to convict and condemn Lambrix is “highly suspect” and not consistent with long established protocols. Quite simply, Mr. Gaut concluded that his own independent examination does support that the state’s key witness Smith-Ottinger and the state attorney’s head investigator Miles “Bob” Daniels, did conspire and collaborate together to wrongly convict and condemn Lambrix.

Why would the Florida Supreme Court deliberately ignore the overwhelming weight of this evidence? All of the records in the capital case are posted online, including the trial transcripts, appeal briefs, and other relevant actions so that anyone can read the record and decide for themselves.

The only logical conclusion is that the Florida Supreme Court is willing to deliberately put an innocent man to death for no reason but to protect the Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince, formally herself part of the prosecution team in this capital case, from being exposed for her own complicity in the prosecutorial misconduct that resulted in Michael Lambrix being – by deliberate intent – wrongfully convicted and condemned to death.

Crazy people don’t ask

2010-05-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

After more than a quarter of a century now in continuous solitary confinement on Florida’s death row, condemned to death row, condemned to death for a crime I did not commit (please check my website www.southerninjustice.com ) I’ve spent my share of time contemplating that inevitable question of whether I might have gone insane – and if I had not already crossed over that bridge of no return, when would I? When it comes down to it, it’s just not natural to spend one’s entire adult life in a six foot concrete crypt never for even one moment able to forget that I am simply being warehoused until the State of Florida can finally pull me from me from my cage and put me to death.

Certainly it would not be so unusual for any person to slowly slip beneath that metaphorical surface that separates what we commonly call reality and become lost in some form of psychosis and in truth under these circumstances perhaps insanity would be even a blessing. It is not hard for me to imagine that insanity could even offer the hope of freedom from this never-ending nightmare that I am trapped within. If only but for a moment I could awake and through some form of involuntarily induced psychosis I would just detach from this reality and if only within my own mind, find that “freedom”

In some ways I do pursue that elusive freedom by escaping into my daydreams of a life I once had, cherishing broken fragments of a now long ago part when I was a younger man and a husband and father. Sometimes I even must struggle to recall details that don’t really matter, but still I push myself to recall the details, knowing only too well that as the details slowly fade from memory, the that even the memory itself slowly fades away. Memories of a life I once had and the hopes and dreams of a future that would never be are all I have left.

But it becomes harder to pull up the thoughts and memories that kept me going. When I look out the dusty window on the outer wall of this cellblock I can see a patch of green grass between the wings and I try to remember what it felt like to stand barefoot on the grass, to feel the blades of grass beneath my feet and how it would give way as I took each step. But it has been too many years now since I felt the touch of grass and although I can still describe how it might have felt like, I cannot really remember or imagine how it actually felt to touch.

The other day I was talking to a guy who just came to the row and is now in a cell next to me. He is about the same age as I was when I first came here and yet when I talk to him, it’s as if he came from a totally different world as the world that I once knew didn’t have cell phones, or DVD’s or personal computers, and even so much of the language itself has changed as a new generation adopted it’s own way of saying things.

In the new guy I see some of myself. But now I’m 50 years old and my kids are grown and my grandchildren growing up fast. Where has my entire adult life gone as it doesn’t seem that I’ve been locked up this many years. And yet I know these years are now gone as I need only look into the mirror to see that the progression of age is slowly overcoming me.
Sometimes I have to wonder if maybe it’s all just a bad dream. Or maybe even a bad acid trip. What if I awoke tomorrow only to find that it was once again 1982 and none of this ever really happened? I actually do play around with that thought from time to time. And yet when I do awake, I must confront the reality that it is not just a bad dream.

So, it’s inevitable brings me back to the question I have asked myself only too many times – what if I go crazy? Maybe I already have and all of this is nothing more than a twisted psychosis that has become my reality, like the way the “crazy people” get lost in their own little worlds, and nothing anyone tells them can convince them that they are just imagining what they believe to exist as their “reality” has become their only reality.

When I look around me it’s not hard to see the signs in others, especially some of the guys that I’ve known for years who have slowly succumbed to their own relative form of insanity. It is not all that uncommon for guys who have been here as long as I have to develop paranoia and psychosis – giving in to the illusion that others around them are plotting against them, or – hearing voices that don’t exist, or convincing themselves that they are going home “tomorrow” and yet their tomorrow never comes.

If I can see these signs in others, then I have to wonder if maybe others see these signs in me. As far as I know, I’ not giving in to paranoia or psychosis – but I do still desperately hope for the day that I might yet go “home” and I can only hope that that is not an illusion.

These are thought that I do struggle with. In some ways I have to wonder just when will it be my turn to sink below that surface of insanity, will it happen suddenly as if I awake one day and find that I have gone insane? Or will it happen ever so very slowly and I’ll be the last to know? How will I actually know? Maybe I will be the last to know, continuing merrily along the path oblivious to my own insanity while others around me struggle to find ways to drag me back to the reality they think they’re still in touch with.

This riddle I struggle with was playing its usual mind game when I watched a movie on my TV the other day. It was a movie called Proof”, starring Anthony Hopkins and Gwyneth Pal throw and it was about an elderly mathematician (Hopkins) slowly going crazy as his equally brilliant daughter (Pal throw) struggled to cope with his progressive insanity, all the while wondering if maybe she was going crazy too. At one point early in the movie the father and daughter had a talk about her own fears that maybe the disease that eroded his own sanity also would afflict her – how would she know if she too was going crazy? That is when I finally heard the best answer to my own question. When Anthony Hopkins told Gwyneth Pal throw that the way she can be sure she’s not going nuts is because crazy people don’t ask it they are going crazy. That made me laugh and after some more thought on the matter I began to appreciate the logic of that simple truth – Crazy people don’t ask. You see, if I were really going nuts, then I would not know that I’m going nuts. Others might see it in me, but I’d never see it in myself. Simply because I still possess the capacity to ask that question is itself proof that I’m not (yet) nuts.

For some strange reason the logic of that truth brought me comfort. I can’t really explain it, but for the first time I have a way to “self-diagnose” my own fear of insanity as long as I can continue to ask whether maybe I’m finally going crazy, I know I’m not quite there yet. That’s got to count for something. I slept well that night, almost as if a weight had been lifted from me. The next morning I still through about that simple answer to the question I’ve asked so many times. And I smiled as I did. The next morning I awoke again and got into a prolonged conversation with my cell neighbor and then reading a few magazines and watched some TV. Before I knew it, the whole day had passed and as I prepared my bunk to go to sleep it occurred to me that I had gone the whole day without asking myself if I was going crazy yet. A whole day without asking that simple question – then it suddenly hit me…now I know I must be finally going crazy as I’m no longer asking, and only crazy people don’t ask!

Michael Lambrix
Death row Florida

Marking the Milestones

2010-04-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

As I write this, it occurs to me that it’s been exactly 26 years ago today that I first came to Florida’s death row! I’ve now been continuously incarnated on this capital case over 17 years, but that includes over a year in the Glades County jail awaiting trial, then going through two separate jury trials after my first trial ended with a “hung jury” (which means that the jury could not agree in convicting me of anything)

It’s been a really long road. Thinking about it made me think of all the years and the changes along the way. Most of the guys I first met when I joined the ranks of the condemned are now long dead. Some of the others have had their sentences reduced to “life” and have since been scattered across Florida’s prison system. And a few went home a free man.

Marking the milestones – I suppose we all do it in our own way. All of us encounter events along this path we call life that become our own milestones. Often these milestones reflect nothing but our age. When I first caught this case, I was 22. Before I was 30 the State of Florida attempted to execute me not once, but twice. That deathwatch experience will forever be a “milestone” that I will never forget. To this day I can still vividly recall sitting in that solitary cell just a few feet away from the steel door that led into the execution chamber (see: www.doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com)

Some parts of that experience will never be forgotten. Just a few months ago my small electric fan started vibrating for reasons I don’t know. But that immediately brought back memories of the concrete floor beneath my feet in that “deathwatch” cell and how it vibrated with a low hum as just beyond that steel door they did a mock execution to make sure the chair (“ole Sparky”) would be ready for me the next morning. For several long moments I could only watch my fan vibrate, transfixed by that memory. Only then did I reach up to turn it off – and I left it off the rest of the day, preferring to endure the heat and humidity then to be reminded of that vibration. The next day when I did turn on the fan again, it no longer vibrated – maybe it never really did. Maybe it was all in my mind.

In the cell that I am now I can look out the distant window and across a narrow space of grass to another wing opposite this one. That used to be called “S” wing and it was the first wing I was housed on. Looking from window to window across the way, I can remember who was in which cell. As I do, I get about halfway down and the name Jim Chandler came up. I had often shared a cellblock with Jim through the years, and was on the same floor with him up until just a few months ago when I was abruptly transferred back over here to Florida State Prison.

A few weeks ago I got word that Jim Chandler had died just about a month ago now. I wasn’t surprised as he had been struggling with medical issues for a few years now. But I was sorry to hear it.

Another milestone to mark – with so many of us virtually warehoused here in solitary confinement for decades on end, many of us are growing old. Now death by “natural causes” claims the lives of more condemned prisoners here in Florida than executions. Just in recent months three guys on my floor alone have died - Henry Garcia, William Cruse and now Jim Chandler. Like me, most of these guys have been on the row for twenty, even thirty years. And one by one, we are growing old and dying.

Sometimes I count the number of days that I have been locked away on a crime that I did not commit. (Please see: www. Southerninjustice.com ) As of today, it is 9881 days since march 2, 1983 – that’s counting 6 days for the loop years that have passed. Soon, about the first week of June, I will mark my ten thousandth day, and that will be significant even if it is nothing but a number. Like the odometer on a car, each day just rolls over but at Day Ten Thousand, I have crossed into a whole new column of numbers. Funny how much of a psychological difference the number 9,999 is from the number 10,000. But it is – and I’m not sure how I should mark that day. Maybe I will try to just sleep through it.

By the time you are reading this I will cross perhaps one of the biggest milestones of all – I will turn 50 years old on March 29. I don’t particularly feel like I’m already 50 years old, but then again I’ve never been 50 before, so I don’t know. It’s supposed to feel like it’s just another milestone, but a significant one by any measure as the great state of Florida has easily spent millions of dollars to try to kill me before I made it to that mark. Knowing that I did make it to 50 when they’ve tried so hard to kill me before I even made it to 30 gives me a sense of victory over these corrupt state sanctioned serial killers.

Turning 50 does make me think about the many years that I’ve now lost forever, and can never get back again. When I was arrested on these charges at age 22, I still had my whole life in front of me. At the time I was recently divorced with 3 young children who went on to grow up without ever really knowing me.

Now I have four grandchildren that I also have no opportunity to get to know and be part of their lives as they grow up. When I look in my small plastic mirror I see the gray hair – at least where it hasn’t fallen out anyways! And other physical signs confirming that I’m growing old and I wonder if perhaps it is also my fate to slowly grow old and die here in this cage far away from family and friends.

But another milestone could soon pass this year as I anxiously await a ruling from the Florida Supreme Court that could possibly even order my immediate release. It has taken over 27 years of screaming to anyone who would listen that I am innocent of what they’ve accused me of to get to this point, where a wealth of new evidence developed over the past 12 years has now been collectively presented to the Florida Supreme Court, arguing my innocence.

If the court agrees that this collective evidence substantiates my claim of innocence, they could throw my convictions out completely and order a new trial – or even order my complete and unconditional release, as they have done in many similar wholly circumstantial cases.

No matter what the strength of the evidence may be, it’s hard to get my hopes up that the court might do the right thing. After 27 years of living this never ending nightmare, I no longer have confidence in a judicial system the only too often will ignore claims of innocence – and I have no doubt will even knowingly execute the innocent rather than admit to error.

But what f they do rule in my favor? Making that milestone is itself almost as terrifying as the hours of death watch leading up to the uncertainty of my then imminent execution, as after spending my entire adult life in solitary confinement condemned to death the thought of being fee again scares the hell out of me!

But like turning 50, that is a milestone I’m willing to accept and embrace. And I can now only hope that I will have the opportunity to cross that marker.

Michael Lambrix
Florida Death Row

Please check out my website www.southerninjustice.com

The games they play

2010-04-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

Those familiar with my blog articles already know that I’m a prisoner on Florida’s death row. In Florida, death sentenced prisoners spend everyday in a small concrete cell by ourselves, with minimal human contact. The only time we are allowed out of our cells is when we get a legal or social visit, or a medical callout, or supposedly we are allowed to go outside to the recreational yard for two hours twice a week. I say supposedly because more often then not death sentenced prisoners are routinely denied any opportunity to go to the rec yard for no other reason but the games the guards play to deny regular yard.

To fully explain this problem I must first tell you some of the history relevant to recreational activity for death row prisoners in Florida. Florida has a long and well documented history of being the “cesspool” of the prison system, and the abuse of prisoners by the guards is systematic. As the former Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC )Secretary (director) Walter McDonough repeatedly said in published newspaper articles, a pervasive “culture of corruptions” exists within the Florida Department of Corrections in which the guars hired to work in the prison are themselves all too often nothing less than “criminals and thugs” , hired only because their father or uncle worked for the FDOC, there is rampant abuse of prisoners, systematic misconduct and a complete absence of professionalism in which supervisory staff simply refuse to “put a leash” on guards who are out of control.

All too often, those guards who do engage in abuse of prisoners at Florida State Prison are actually rewarded with promotions and favorable shifts schedules, effectively encouraging similar misconduct among all staff.

Abuse of prisoners come in many forms, and is not always so easily seen as when a prisoner is brutally beaten to death – as was the case of Frank Valdez See, Valdez v. Crosby, 450 F.3d.1231 (11th Cr 2006) (graphically describing the assaults upon prisoners, including the murder of Frank Valdez by guards known to have a history of similar violence against prisoners at Florida State Prison)

One particular form of abuse often inflicted upon death row prisoners is the deliberate deprivation of adequate outdoor recreation. It doesn’t take a medical degree to appreciate the importance of getting sunlight. Some of you might recall the movie “Brubaker”, where a new prison warden is assigned to clean up the abuse in a southern prison and takes a trip to the unit for death row prisoners. When the warden (played by Robert Redford) goes into the unit he finds that the prisoners had not been allowed outside for years. The movie then shows the warden passing out sunglasses to the inmates and ordering their cell doors open as he personally leads them out into a rec yard. Many of the prisoners are blinded by the sunlight and can barely even stagger outside.

In Florida State Prison ever hired a warden like that, committed to basic human treatment, that scene could easily had been filmed here on Florida’s death row, where many of the men have not been allowed to go outside in many years, often denied yard time for no reason but that they dared to complain.

About 30 years ago it took federal court intervention to even compel Florida prison officials to provide minimal outdoor recreation to Florida’s death row inmates. That was done through a federal “class action” lawsuit known as Dougan v Duggan and it allowed the federal court to monitor the recreation provided. Even when the Department of Corrections entered into a settlement, agreeing to provide the prisoners a minimum of 4 hours of outdoor recreation per week, the federal court subsequently had to hold prison officials here at Florida State Prison in ‘contempt of court’ when they routinely acted in deliberate bad faith by canceling outdoor recreation on a regular base and routinely denying the death row prisoners their yard time for years at a time.

Only after prison officials were held in actual contempt of court for refusing to comply with their binding “consent decree” to provide a minimum of minimum 4 hours or outside recreation per week, did things finally get better and we started to receive regular yard time.

But then in 1996 the federal congress passed the “Prisoner Litigation Reform act” (PLRA) which passed federal laws prohibiting the Florida courts from continuing oversight of prison conditions if prison officials established they were in compliance. Not long after this Florida prison officials moved to dismiss the federal lawsuit overseeing death row recreation, claiming they were in compliance and the Federal court had no choice but to dismiss the case, relieving Florida State Prison of any further oversight.

It had been about ten years now since the “Dougan v Duggan” Federal class action lawsuit was dismissed because of the PLRA. And once again Florida State Prison is back to playing the same games that compelled Federal Court intervention back then. When it comes down to it, given the virtual absence of professionalism among staff in Florida’s prison system, the only way to compel Florida’s prison officials to follow long established law governing the basic treatment of prisoners is to have the Federal courts watch over them and hold them in contempt of court if they refuse.

About 3 months ago I was transferred back from the main death row unit of Union Correctional Institution to Florida State Prison’s secondary death row unit. Since I have been back over here at FSP, I have personally witnessed this systematic abuse of prisoners, especially by the guards assigned to work the death row yard.

Theoretically, all death row prisoners are entitled to go to the rec yard twice a week for two hours each time, for a total of (maximum) of four hours per week. But Sergeant Strong, who runs the rec yard, doesn’t think death sentenced prisoners should have any rec yard at all. Sgt Strong abuses his authority by routinely refusing prisoners their rec yard time. Not surprisingly, he has a long history of alleged abuse of prisoners and was only promoted to being the yard Sgt after inmates filed grievances that he was involved in numerous physical assaults upon these prisoners.

Myself, I like to get out to the recreation yard at least once a week even though I’m no longer able to participate in volleyball or basketball due to a military injury that left me physically disabled. But at least I can go outside for a few hours and walk around and talk to other prisoners and get some much needed sunlight.

However, in the 12 weeks that I have been back here at Florida State Prison, Sgt Strong. has only allowed me to go out to the rec yard 3 times. The first week I was here he told me point blank that he wasn’t going to pull me for rec yard because I had filed a lawsuit years ago against other guards here for physically abusing me and others. He then told me that the next time I “will go out in a box like Valdez”. Frank Valdez was the death row prisoner that was beaten to death by guards at this prison in July 1999. See Valdez v. Crosby,450 F.3d 1231 (11th Cr.2006) I’ve never been one to back down from a coward, so I wrote Sgt Strong. up for refusing my yard and threatening my life.

Of course the warden of FSP took virtually no action, even though numerous other prisoners have filed similar complaints against this sergeant. But then, we don’t expect much out of this warden as he is a “good ole boy” who has a long history of turning a blind eye to inmate abuse. This warden is part of the “culture of corruption” and he will do whatever it takes to cover for his guards even when the evidence is overwhelming.

For weeks after that Sgt Strong invented one excuse after another to deny me my rec yard time. Last week I was able to go out only because the wing Sgt put me down on the rec yard list – but again this week I was denied yard, this time because I had written up a grievance against Sgt Strong last week and so he told me I’m not going to rec because I wrote him up.

My own experience is not unique – routinely all death row prisoners are denied red yard by Sgt Strong as he deliberately abuses his power. Often we are written down as “refused yard” because Sgt Strong found some petty reason to deny yard, such as the bunk was not properly made, or the cell light was not on, or a cup was on the sink. But consistently what it really comes down to is that Sgt Strong doesn’t think death sentenced prisoners should have any rec time. And if you do complain to the warden of FSP, he will not listen – and Sgt Strong will then threaten us with physical assault and even death for writing him up.

Once again we must now file a new Federal lawsuit against the Department of Corrections, compelling the Federal court to intervene and monitor our ability to get outdoor rec time. This will now undoubtedly cost Florida taxpayers a substantial amount of money, and for what? Because the warden refuses to address a problem and take appropriate action to ensure that we are provided with adequate rec time.

I would like to ask each of you to email FDOC secretary McNeil or Warden Singer of FSP and ask them to look into the matter. Attach a copy of this blog with your email so they can read it too.

Walter McNeil FDOC Secretary email address: mcneil.walter@mail.dc.state.fl.us

Warden Singer, Florida State Prison email address: singer.steven@mail.dc.state.fl.us

Michael Lambrix
Florida Death Row

Florida Adopts in your Face Executions

2010-03-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

I have been on Florida’s death row now well over a quarter of a century and in these many years I’ve been an indirect and involuntary witness to more executions than I can count. Most of those who were methodically murdered by the state were men that I came to know well through years of living in close proximity of each other and became close to as of we were all part of a large extended family.

In the past I have written many stories about executions from my own perspective, mostly talking about the man who was put to death, to remind those who might read my words that the man was a unique person with value as a fellow human being. It’s often just too easy to see only what we want to see and in the case of those we condemn to death, perhaps it is too convenient to believe that this person was nothing more than a monster and we deny any redeeming quality.

But each of those individuals did possess that measure of humanity that gives their life meaning. Each had family and friends that cared for them and will now grieve at their death. No matter what the nature of the alleged crime was that they were led them to the execution chamber, they still each laughed and cried like all of us do and if only we could miraculously remove that momentary transgression that resulted in another death, than most of those would be no different than those we live among in our communities.

Yesterday the state of Florida put Martin Grossman to death. Those of us who knew him called him “Eddie” He had been on Florida’s death row almost as long as I have and through the years I came to know him as a generous and giving individual, who did not hesitate to share what little he had with others around him.

Eddie was a good natured guy with a quick sense of humor. He had a way of making others around him laugh and if only for a few moments forget about the hellhole we live in. His character possessed a quiet and respectful sense of integrity that those who knew him came to respect. Although kind of a big guy, he was never a bully and he stood up for the little guy on many occasions.

It bothers me that the world judges him only by the alleged crime that led him to death row. Even assuming that he did what the state claimed, the objective facts establish that he was a troubled teenager who, while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, spontaneously responded to an event that led to the death of the law enforcement officer (a game warden). But did he go out and commit a deliberate act of murder? I just don’t think so.

Now Eddie is gone and he will be missed. But there’s something about the execution of Eddie that really bothers me, and I think would bother anyone of moral conscience. This execution was unlike any other that I’ve seen carried out and reflects what can only be described as a sickness that has no place in any so-called civilized society.

I spent many hours. Long into the night last night trying to find a way to put into words why I found the ritual of Eddie’s execution so offensive. In the many, many years that I’ve been on death row, when the state did carry out executions, it has always been the policy of the prison administrators to maintain as much of a “normal” routine inside the prison as possible. Wardens painstakingly made a point of minimizing any reminders that an execution was being carried out. Of course we all knew that on the next wing over they were methodically putting a man to death, a man that each of us personally knew. But by maintaining a daily routine, it was something we could detach from in a way and not be forced to deal with. But now for the first time ever Florida has adopted in-your-face executions where all the prisoners of Florida State Prison are now effectively forced to involuntarily participate in these ritualistic executions.

I’m certainly not the only one who found this new policy offensive and inhumane – a number of prison staff even attempted to take the day off just so they would not have to participate, but were told they could not.

What made yesterday’s execution completely different from any other that I’ve seen carried out in all the years I have been here is how the new warden of Florida State Prison went out of his way to make this an all day event. Up until now those who ran he prison had enough sense and humanity to know that forcing other prisoners to be reminded of what was going on, and making them unwilling participants, could only cause a lot of tension and anxiety among the prison population and could contribute to possible escalations and even violence.

But unlike before, when any change of routine was minimized, yesterday all the staff was ordered to dress up in their dress uniforms, typically only worn when a visiting dignitary was inspecting the troops. That meant wearing neckties and spotless uniforms and polished boots. Although to those unfamiliar with the daily grind of prison life that might not seem like such a big deal, it actually is the only time in almost 30 years of being a prisoner in the Florida State system that I’ve ever seen the rank and file staff ordered to wear their dress uniforms all day while working the cellblock areas. Then they brought breakfast about two hours early, and then lunch was later that morning and dinner by early afternoon. By late afternoon the circus became even more obvious when we were told that the whole institution was on lockdown and they would not do the showers until they were told restricted movement had been lifted, also mail would not be delivered until after the execution. All this served to force every one of us to stand by and become an involuntary participant to this execution.

From early in the morning, throughout the day and into the early evening each of us was forced to confront the imminent execution they intended to carry out. That caused a substantial, even tangible tension on the wing. But as I said, it wasn’t just us in the cellblocks that found this execution process troubling as many of the officers working here also wanted no part of it. And yet we were all forced to go along with it just because one man at the top found it necessary to make a circus out of an execution, even finally announcing on the radio (closed circuit radio system allowing communication within the prison) that the execution had been carried out and it was alright to resume “normal activity”.

Michael Lambrix
Death row Florida

Welcome to the Jungle - part II

2010-03-06T00:36:00.000-08:00

Recently I wrote a blog article entitled “Welcome to the Jungle” which described the environment I have recently been cast down upon. Florida State Prison has an especially brutal history as over the years it earned its reputation as the “Alcatraz of the South” This history is well documented in court records, such as Valdez v. Crosby,450 F.3d. 1231 (11th Cir. 2006). Anyone who might doubt the claims that I make should simply read that Federal Court case, which describes how gangs of prison guards systematically preyed upon prisoners with complete impunity, brutalizing prisoners for no other reason but that they could.

Countless other Federal Court cases document the history of extreme violence towards prisoners at Florida State Prison. I myself have been subjected to brutal beatings by these guards on two separate occasions. I then too the case to Federal Court, attempting to sue the guards responsible only to have the Federal Court obstruct my ability to litigate the case, forcing me to accept a “settlement” in which the state of Florida paid me substantial amounts of money to drop the case.

But the guards who assault prisoners are never held personally accountable. Any monetary award is paid by the State. Incredibly, many times guards who have histories of assaulting prisoners are promoted within the Department of Corrections, rising through the ranks until they become the supervisor and even the wardens, and then they too turn a blind eye to the guards who attack prisoners and the cycle continues.

When a prisoner complains of being assaulted will be investigated by the Department of Correction’s own “inspectors”, under the supervision of the FDOC Inspector General Paul Becker. To illustrate the truth of what I write, a person who needs to look at Paul Becker’s own career within the Florida Dept of Corrections. “Top cop” Paul Decker is responsible for appointing other FDOC employees as the lower level “investigators” or “inspectors” who then investigate individual allegations of prisoner’s assaults. But what few know is that Paul Decker himself rose through the ranks at Florida State Prison and worked directly under the FSP warden James Crosby during the years graphically illustrated in Valdez v Crosby, 450 F3d 1231 (11th Cir. 2006) and was personally the supervisor over the guards who beat countless prisoners at Florida State Prison.

This is the culture of corruption that defines the Florida Department of Corrections. As a prisoner I have watched as one Governor after another publicly promised to clean up the corruption in the Department, bringing in a Director from out of state under the pretense that an “outsider” will not be corrupted by any career alliances to others in the FDOC. But without exception, the new FDOC “secretary” (Director) will immediately appoint only those long time ‘good ole boys” from within the Dept of Corrections to positions such as Inspector General who are responsible for enforcing the law within Florida’s prison system. I have seen this same cycle repeated over and over again and have come to believe that nobody really wants to stop the epidemic of violence in prisons as the American public and elected politicians do not have the moral integrity it takes to be outraged by these actions.

My first experience in personally witnessing the violence of prison guards was in the summer of 1982 when I was incarnated at baker Correctional, a maximum security prison in the adjacent county north of Florida State Prison. The compound erupted into a free-for-all riot in which hundreds of prisoners took control of the institution. Numerous staff members were assaulted and within hours vans full of guards from surrounding prisons flooded into the parking lot and quickly organized into military formation, wearing riot gear and then marching into the compound, taking back control within a few hours. But taking back control was not enough. They wanted to avenge their fellow officers who were assaulted. It didn’t matter whether those who were singled out for retaliation actually had anything to do with the riot at all, as all that mattered was that someone – anyone – was held accountable. Throughout the evening and into the night the entire prison was terrorized by gangs of guards who randomly pulled out one prisoner after the other from their cells and brought them up to the “admin building” where they were brought handcuffed and blindfolded and forced to walk down a long hallway lined with guards, and the guards would brutally beat each prisoner as they passed by, then load them into a transport van and move them to either Florida State Prison or Union Correctional institution.

Formal complaints were filed with federal agents at the Justice Department and within a few months the guards who were responsible were indicted on federal charges, then brought to trial as “the Baker Eight”, They had a right to a jury trial (which I fully support) but nobody was surprised when the Jacksonville jury acquitted all 8 of them of all charges. A few years later I came to Florida State Prison under sentence of death. One of the first guards I saw was one of the infamous “Baker Eight”. After being acquitted of assaulting at least 20 inmates following the riot, the FDOC promoted him to Lieutenant and put him in charge of supervising other officers at Florida State Prison. This is just one of the many examples of promoting an FDOC employee with a history of assaulting prisoners. The unspoken tragedy of all this is the undeniable consequences of this culture of corruption. If the correctional officers who wear the badge of law enforcement will not respect that badge they wear, then why should any prisoner respect it?

In the many years that I have been imprisoned I have seen this cycle of violence repeat itself again and again. It is not just a coincidence that assaults upon guards and staff have significantly increased following a similar increase in reported assaults upon prisoners by guards. As long as I can remember it has been said that any angry man will hurt you - a scared man will kill you. If only these guards who participate in these acts of violence against prisoners would just stop and think about it, they’d realize that they are investing in inevitable acts of future violence against them, and other innocent people.

What I must emphasize is that it is actually only a small percentage of guards who will get involved in this violence. See, that’s the difference between a prison guard and a correctional officer. Although they both wear the same badge, they are cut of different cloth. A correctional officer is someone whose work has earned the respect of those he or she works with as well as the prisoners, as he has proven that he is a professional and possesses that measure of moral character necessary to rise above the daily grind of this zoo. But a guard will never amount to anything more than a guard, even if he is promoted up through the ranks to the highest level of the Department of Corrections, as the person is just as much a violent career criminal as those who are imprisoned.

Some might say that I’m making myself a target by speaking out against this epidemic of violence against prisoners here at Florida’s State Prison. But I am already a target and I will be as long as I remain at this prison. For me it is a matter of principle. I truly believe in what Abraham Lincoln once said: that evil can only triumph when good men choose do nothing. Each one of us has a moral obligation to speak out against any evil around us – especially when that evil only exists because of the abuse of power entrusted upon them by “we the people”, which is the system of government we live under. I do not invite violence against myself. But I will not conceal my contempt for those that do participate in these assaults – and as a matter of principle I will never remain silent when a prisoner is being abused around me.

America has taken it upon itself to be the model of basic human rights. But increasingly we are being exposed internationally as the arrogant hypocrites that we are, and all because of a very small number of morally corrupt individuals who give the rest of us a bad name. But in truth it is those at the highest level of our state and federal government that are ultimately responsible for compromising the perception of our moral values as a nation if conscience. When those empowered under the color of state are free to abuse that power with complete impunity then the malignancy of corruption becomes absolutely inevitable.

The time is long overdue for those in power to systematically weed out these few guards who are responsible for the vast majority of assaults against prisoners. I know that there are many correctional officers within the Florida Department of Corrections who feel as I do and would gladly be rid of those guards that give them all a bad name. But as long as these guards with a known history of violence are being promoted rather than prosecuted, this cycle of violence will never stop.

Michael Lambrix
Death Row Florida

Florida's Death Squad

2010-02-17T02:26:00.000-08:00

As many of the regular readers of my blogs already know, on December 18 I was abruptly transferred from the main death row unit at Union Correctional to the old death row unit at Florida State Prison, where all of Florida’s death row prisoners used to be housed before they built and opened the ‘new’ unit at Union Correctional in 1992.

Coming back to this old prison was not something I anticipated as the last time I was housed at this old prison I was brutally assaulted by the guards in an attempt to silence me as I had witnessed the gangs of guards physically assault many other prisoners, leading up to the deliberate murder of another death row prisoner by the name of Frank Valdes. His own brutal assault and murder is graphically detailed in the federal court ruling Valdes v. Crosby, 450 f.3d 1231 (11th cir. 2006) and anyone who might doubt that violence against prisoners in American prisons doesn’t happen should read that case as it describes the systematic assaults and even murder of countless prisoners at this prison. I would strongly encourage you to read it so you can see how Florida often treats death sentenced prisoners.

After that 1999 incident I was transferred to the main deathrow unit at UCI which is just a short distance down the road from here. The state then paid me a substantial amount of money to drop the lawsuit, and I agreed to ‘settle’ the case- but only on the specific condition that I would not be transferred back to Florida State Prison. By now transferring me back here they’ve deliberately violated the specific terms/ conditions of that federal court settlement, so now I fully intend to reopen that federal lawsuit and this time I will demand a public jury trial to fully expose this prison’s long history of violently abusing prisoners.
But although I certainly do not like being here, it’s not too bad as by coming back over here I am able to see many old friends I’ve known for years, including Paul Johnson.

I’ve known Paul for many, many years, and of the many hundreds, if not thousands of prisoners I have known in all these long years, Paul is one of the very, very few who I would gladly welcome in my own home. He’s as straight as they come, and that’s a quality that is very rare in any prison. But a few months back Florida’s governor ‘Chaingang Charlie’ Crist eagerly gave in to a political campaign to try to expedite Paul’s execution, even though he was not ‘death warrant’ eligible, and signed a death warrant to schedule Paul’s execution in an attempt to obstruct and circumvent his pending appeals.

But the Florida Supreme Court then stayed Paul’s execution, publicly condemning Governor Crist’s politically motivated attempt to deny Paul a fair review of his appeal by insidiously pushing for an expedited execution. The court’s senior Justice, Barbara Pariente, made it very clear that Gov Crist engaged in improper misconduct when signing Paul’s death warrant while his appeal was still pending.

As coincidence would have it, once I was transferred back to this zoo, I was placed in a cell on the same floor and in close proximity to Paul, even though he remained on ‘death watch.’ And I enjoyed many long conversations with him, especially when we went out to the recreation yard for a few hours twice a week. Paul sends his thanks to all of you who have sent him cards and letters of support.

One of the conversations I had with Paul really shocked me, and believe me, after a quarter of a century on death row there’s not a lot that shocks me anymore! I have been on death watch myself and even come within hours of actual execution, not just once, but twice (please read, Doing Life on Death Row) and so I’ve been through the Phase 11 of death watch, which is when they come down to measure you for the suit the state so generously provides to kill you in, and you order your last meal and write down your ‘last will and testament.’

But when I went through all of that the state still used the infamous ‘Old Sparky’ ~ the electric chair. They’ve since switched to lethal injection as the means to which to now put the condemned to death after numerous prisoners quite literally burst into flames in the electric chair and challenges of cruel and unusual punishment were pursued ~ somehow they think injection is more ‘humane.’

So, of course I asked Paul how they do it now. Although it may seem a little morbid for two condemned prisoners to compare notes on how the state intended to kill them, when you’ve lived in the shadow of death for as long as me and Paul have, it is just part of ‘normal’ conversation.

But not even I could not have anticipated the horror that Paul described. Apparently the state is now concerned about reaching that hour of execution only to find that the prisoner’s veins are damaged and then there may be a problem in killing him, as there have been numerous executions, such as that of Angel Diaz, who were slowly and deliberately tortured to death two years ago here in Florida, which they claimed was his fault as his veins were damaged from years of drug use.

So now they’ve come up with a new procedure which to my knowledge has never been publicly exposed before, and should certainly shock the conscience of any person of conscience. Here’s how Paul described it to me ~ about a week after he was moved down to the bottom of Q wing, where Florida’s death house is, suddenly the back door that leads to the actual execution chamber opened. From personal experience, I know that this solid steel door is only a few feet from the cell they keep you in while on death watch.

Through this door walked in at least four, perhaps even 6 people who were fully dressed in plastic ~ like suits and a full helmet/mask over their head like we have often seen in the movies ~ such as those who handle nuclear waste. Slowly they marched single file only to stop in front of Paul’s death watch cell, then facing him they demanded to examine his veins. Paul says that even the small widow in the front of their uniforms was concealed, so that he could not see their faces.

As if he were nothing more than a piece of meat, without showing even the slightest semblance of humanity, this state sanctioned ‘death squad’ coldly examined Paul’s veins on his arms and talked openly among themselves about how his veins seemed to be alright. Paul was ordered to stand there as they took turns examining each arm, agreeing with each other that they would have no problem inserting the lethal chemicals to deliberately put a man to death.

Once they all agreed that Paul’s veins would pose no problems when they were called to kill him, then they turned and filed back through that solid steel door that leads to the execution chamber.

I cannot even imagine this utterly surreal scene that Paul described ~ nor can I imagine how unconscionable such an act is. Never before, other than the infamous death squads of third world countries, have I heard of a group of deliberately concealed and masked men approach a condemned prisoner and without even a hint of humanity, coldly examine him with the intent to put him to death. This is America, we don’t have masked death squads that serve the government and it shocks me that they would do such a thing. But I have also to wonder- am I the only one who is shocked by the use of death squads in the USA? What does it say about the society we have become that a state government can act in such an unconscionable and inhumane manner? Equally so, what does it say about our so-called civilized society that others are not as equally shocked by this?

Well, the good news is that this cold blooded state sanctioned death squad will not inflict deliberate death upon Paul Johnson as this past week the Florida Supreme Court has thrown out Paul’s death sentence upon finding that the state deliberately engaged in misconduct leading to his death sentence. Within the next few months Paul will be sent back to Polk county for a new sentencing phase trail and I pray that he will then be sentenced to ‘life’ rather than death.

As for me, I remain in this zoo hoping that my own nightmare will soon end. But just knowing that the Florida Supreme court was willing to stand up against the immoral politically motivated attempts to have Paul expeditiously executed gives us all hope that the courts will still recognize state misconduct and throw out death sentences obtained illegally. And we should all now pray that the lower court that will review Paul’s new sentencing will show its own compassion and humanity and sentence Paul to something other than death.

Please read also my website www.southerninjustice.com
Michael Lambrix

Welcome in the Jungle

2010-01-21T00:05:00.000-08:00

With over 100.000 prisoners now incarnated within the Florida Department of Corrections, there are almost 70 different prisons throughout the state. Most are not all that bad, with large open compounds where the prisoners can spend long afternoons playing sports and just “hanging out” with each other as their sentence ticks down one day at a time and they dream of the day they can go home.

Florida State Prison is the exception. All prisons in Florida are formally called “correctional institutions” and by law are intended to provide a “rehabilitative” environment where the offender can participate in various programs before being released back into society, hopefully a better man going out than when he came in. But Florida State Prison is the only institution actually formally called a “prison” in Florida – and for good reason. At “FSP” there are no rehabilitation programs and prisoners are not allowed to go out to an open compound. Rather, the prison is intended to do nothing but confine the prisoner in a solitary cell until they either die or must be released back into society.

I’ve personally been in “the system” almost 30 years now – the past 26 years on death row. Many of these years have been spent here at FSP, beginning back in the early 80’s when FSP was a different place, a prison commonly known as “the Alcatraz of the South”, and for good reason. Other then these sentenced to death, which automatically came to FSP, this was the end of the line for prisoners who, because of their propensity for violence or stupidity, could not be housed anywhere else.

Back then, most of the “wings” at FSP were “open population”, where the prisoners were allowed out of their cells to work jobs within the prison during the day, then locked in their cells at night. They had a large recreation yard where they could play sports or work out with weights.

Since FSP opened around 1959, it has always had a history of extreme violence. It was a kill or be killed environment where assaults and murders were simply part of the daily routine. Florida State Prison was also more commonly known for being home to “Old Sparky” (the electric chair) where Florida carried out its executions. The lesser known truth was that far more prisoners went out in body bags, after being killed in general population, than were executed by the state of Florida. Many of these long forgotten souls
rest in the prison’s graveyard “boot hill”, where prisoners who die in the system are laid to rest if nobody claims their bodies. Only their prison inmate number marks the grave, their own name is soon forgotten.

By the early 1990’s FSP started to drastically change. One wing at a time they eliminated “general population”, replacing the most violent offenders with mentally imbalanced inmates, where they now remain for years and even decades in solitary confinement. New housing units were built where the recreation yard used to be and it now houses minimum or medium security inmates who journey over to the “main unit” each morning to work; clean up, kitchen and maintenance jobs.

By December 1992 the Department of Corrections opened a newly constructed 332 bed unit at Union Correctional Institution (UCI) specifically as the new “death row” and within months the majority of Florida’s death row prisoners were transferred to the new unit. Only a few death row prisoners remained at FSP, those who allegedly had a history of assaulting or killing guards.

But it didn’t take long before the new death row unit filled to capacity and those originally sentenced to death row after 1992 continued to be sent to FSP where they remained until a cell became available at UCI. Equally so, death row inmates in UCI who allegedly became a "security threat" or those who created too many problems by filing many grievances or stepping on the wrong toes found themselves transferred back to FSP.

After UCI opened I was one of the first ones being transferred there. It was a new building, clean and shiny and the cells were bigger than at FSP. It was a big improvement over the deplorable living conditions at FSP where the cellblocks were infested with cockroaches, rodents – even bird and snakes. If you had to be on death row, the UCI unit wasn’t a bad place to be. To an outsider looking in, it was perhaps pure hell but for those of us living for years at FSP, it was like winning the lottery and moving into a big mansion.

But then there’s the dark side of death row. Beginning in the early 1990’s it became increasingly common for guards to target prisoners for violent assaults, especially those who dared to file grievances. In late 1996 I had to file a grievance when a book I had mailed in was taken. The Administration Sergeant (Norman G) had me brought to his office, of course handcuffed and shackled. At first Sgt G began talking to me, clearly agitated because I dared to file a grievance. That quickly escalated and suddenly without provocation he came at me and began to violently assault me. The other officers pulled him off, but not before I sustained injuries and then spent the night in the prison infirmary (hospital)

I’ve never been one to back down and so I soon filed formal complaints against Sgt G and then a Federal lawsuit. As it’s only too common within the Florida Department of Corrections (or as many newspapers have described it, the “Department of Corruptions”) after the lawsuit was filed Sgt Gemelli was promoted to a supervisory position and I soon found myself being transferred back to FSP.

In the first weeks of January 1998 I walked back into Florida State Prison and descended back down into the bowels of the beast. But FSP had radically changed since I had left in December 1992. I walked into a familiar world in which I was a stranger. Never could I have imagined that even as bad as FSP was in the past, it had become an even more brutally violent place. Only now it was not the prisoners responsible for the violence and chaos but rather the guards. I quickly found out that under Warden James Crosby the guards were allowed to violently assault prisoners and actually FSP was now run by the guards. Of course, while assaulting a prisoner they made sure the inmate was handcuffed and physically restrained, completely unable to defend himself. Not all the guards got involved with this, but each shift had its own group of guards that became the predators in this jungle. Like a pack of rabid dogs they preyed upon their victims, assaulting anyone they choose to target for whatever reason. These coward thugs had no respect for the badge of law enforcement they wore and were themselves nothing but state paid violent criminals.

Repeatedly I saw one prisoner after another pulled from his cell under pretenses such as a medical callout or cell search, only to be taken to the “quarterdeck” where other inmates could not see the actual assaults, and a few minutes later they would be brought back bruised and bleeding from the violence that had been inflicted upon them for no other reason but that these coward dogs just had to bite someone.

In June 1999 I was subjected to a “disciplinary report” for allegedly disrespecting one of these guards. Soon I found myself being moved to “X-wing” (now called Q-wing) where I was to do 30 days in lock-up (disciplinary confinement). Death row lock-up was on the third floor of X-wing and already there were several other death row prisoners housed up there, including Frank Valdez, who was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a prison guard in South Florida.

The two upper floors of X-wing (or Q-wing as it is now known) consist of 6 cells on each side for a total of 24 cells. They are used to house only the “worst of the worst” and it is in itself a level of hell beyond description and just the threat of being sent to X-wing causes even the toughest convict to shiver. Very few prisoners ever see the inside of X-wing, and of those who did many have come off X-wing in a body bag out of the back door. The bottom floor of X-wing is Florida’s execution chamber, with 6 cells for “death watch”.

On June, 4 1999 I was housed on 3-west of X-wing. Late that evening a guard came around shutting the outer cell doors of each cell. Unlike most other cells, only the cells on X-wing had both an outer solid steel cell door and an inner door made of steel bars. When this outer door is closed and locked, it completely seals the cell with only a small space at the bottom of the door where a sliver of light could come through. But if you laid down flat on the floor you could see under the door just enough to see whether anyone is congregating in the hall outside.

Generally, it was a good idea to pay attention to what was going on as when the outer doors were closed like this, that was more often than not a warning that the pack of rabid guards were planning to come in on someone – and it could be you. But this time it was not me. A few minutes after the outer door was closed I could hear a scuffling sound of boots outside my door and I watched from beneath the door as at least six sets of boots passed by. They were putting someone in one of the other cells and from the sound of it; the “welcome party” was working overtime brutally assaulting him. It is hard to describe the distinctive sound of boots repeatedly hitting flesh and the involuntary sounds of extreme pain – but for these familiar with it, you don’t soon forget.

Throughout the night these sounds continued. Never before, or since, had I heard such sounds as I heard that night. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sat silently in his cell that night as the sounds of one prisoner after another being brutally beaten filled the air, each of us not knowing what was going on – wondering if at any moment our own cell door might open and it would be our turn to suffer the fate.

Only the next day did I learn what had happened. A number of inmates at Hamilton Correctional Institution, a facility about an hour away, had gotten into a confrontation with a guard which escalated and a female officer was assaulted. Anyone who has ever done time knows that as extreme the consequences would be if you assaulted a guard, they would be a lot worse if you assaulted a female officer. Now I understood what was going on.

It didn’t take long to find out that they had moved four black inmates to X-wing the night before, all allegedly responsible for assaulting the female officer. Each of the four was then repeatedly assaulted by the guards throughout the night and that were the sounds we heard all night long.

But it wasn’t enough to extract that proverbial pound of flesh from each of the four inmates – these guards wanted revenge and they intended to get it. For several days the guards took turns assaulting each of these four and each time with extreme malice. There was no doubt in my mind it was just a matter of time before they killed them – and it wouldn’t be the first time a prisoner was brutally beaten to death by guards at FSP.

The first rule about doing time in any prison is to mind your own business. But I’ve never been one to just ignore the deliberal abuse of anyone around me. I know that I could not physically intervene to stop what was happening - but I could write letters to let people know what was going on. So I wrote a federal judge in Jacksonville and several letters to several newspapers, graphically describing what was going on, pleading with each to do something before these guards killed somebody. I was not the only one. Frank Valdez was also writing letters, hoping that someone would look into what was going on before they killed these guys.

Frank Valdez

But these brutal assaults continued, the screams of pain and misery echoing off the walls at all hours of the day and night. Some might argue that they brought it on themselves by assaulting the female officer and even I don’t think much of a man who assaults women. But nobody deserved this.

About a week later outside people started calling into the prison, asking about what was going on. Although I don’t know it for a fact, I’m pretty sure that they found out that me and Frank Valdez had written to the lawyers and media as I was suddenly moved off X-wing to an isolated cell on G-wing where I had no direct contact with other prisoners. In all the years that I had been on death row this was the first time and only time I had ever been isolated on a floor by myself, so I knew something was up.

That next day I found out that they had jumped on Frank Valdez and beat him to death. The autopsy report later documented the severity of the assault with clearly defined boot prints all over his body and almost every bone broken. Clearly they crossed the line as beating a prisoner to death would not go unnoticed. Now they had to cover their butts and as they gathered to fabricate their story of how Frank Valdez had climbed up the bars of his cell and repeatedly threw himself down onto the steel bunk – clearly a case of suicide – the guards also had to silence the few who knew what exactly was going on.

The same night, which was a Sunday, they came to my cell. As is all too common, under the pretense of conducting a cell search for contraband they handcuffed me and removed me from my cell, ordering me to walk to the front “quarterdeck” area (officers station), but as I did they suddenly pushed me into the empty shower cell at the front of the wing and as one held me from behind, the Sgt repeatedly slammed his fist into my stomach. With each blow the Sgt told me that if I told anything about what was going on on X-wing, I would go out in a body bag. And I truly did believe him.

Even though it was only a few moments, it seemed at the time that this assault went on forever. I’m not ashamed to say that I truly did believe them when they said that they would kill me if I told anything of what had happened. When I was finally led back to my cell I found all my property deliberately destroyed. I was not surprised. At the time, though, I was in extreme physical pain and I lay on my bunk staring at the ceiling. I knew better than to request medical assistance as I knew I would be attacked and beaten again.

But by the next morning I had no choice and told another Sgt that I needed to go to the clinic. The pain had not subsided and I was concerned that I might have suffered internal injuries. Reluctantly they day shift Sgt had me brought to the clinic and only then did I find out that both the Federal and State police had taken over the prison that morning after learning of Frank Valdez death.

As I sat in the holding cage at the clinic, I watched as one after another inmate with obvious physical trauma was escorted to the clinic by Federal agents. Soon I learned that the Federal and State police had done a wing by wing search of the prison, finding countless prisoners who had been assaulted by guards, then left in their cells without receiving any medical attention, including the four prisoners on X-wing who had been beaten daily and were found with broken bones and substantial injuries.

Never before had I seen Federal agents and State police take over a prison, especially a maximum security prison. By the next day pictures were taken of my own injuries – one of the pictures used on the front page of the Miami Herald in an article about the violence against prisoners at FSP.

That next night the Department of Corrections transferred those of us who had been targeted by the guards to the nearby North Florida Reception Center (NFRC) at lake Butler, where they kept us isolated from others under the pretense of “protective custody” but in truth they did this to keep us from talking to the media or anyone about what had happened. For almost two weeks I remained in an isolated cell at NFRC until my injuries were no longer so obvious and only then was I transferred to the death row unit at UCI and placed back among other prisoners.

In the flowing months the investigation into the systematic assault of prisoners at FSP resulted in the formal indictment (criminal charges) for murder against six of the guards directly involved in the attack that resulted in Valdez’s death, including Captain Thorton – one of the highest ranking officers at FSP, who, it was discovered, had personally participated in Frank Valdez murder!

Through legal council I filed a federal lawsuit against those who assaulted me as well as the FSP warden James Crosby, who had not only allowed, but had encouraged these guards to assault prisoners. Although it was discovered that during the 18 months that Crosby served as warden at FSP, there were at least 157 documented assaults upon prisoners rather than terminate his employment the governor (Jeb Bush) actually promoted James Crosby to Secretary of the entire Department of Corrections! Here Crosby remained until he was indicted in federal court for running a multi-million dollar criminal enterprise within the Florida Department of Corrections. Crosby subsequently pled guilty to the charges and is now serving an 8 year prison sentence at the Federal prison.

Although formally charged with the premeditated murder of Frank Valdez, the trial itself was a circus. The prosecutor Rod S. announced his plans to run for the State Senate – an election he knew he could not win without the support of the employees of the area’s prisons. Rod S. took the indicted guards to trial in Bradford County, a rural area with numerous prisons and it quickly became clear that he had no intention of actually convicting these guards of murdering a death row inmate. The jury then declared them “not guilty” and the guards walked free.

By late 2002 the State of Florida wanted to reach an out-of-court settlement on my pending lawsuit and I reluctantly agreed to accept a monetary settlement but only on condition that part of the settlement was that I would not be transferred back to Florida State Prison unless I was under an active death warrant and facing execution. The State agreed to that in writing and it was made part of the final federal court judgment entered in my favor.

But I should have known that the Department of Corrections remains as corrupt as the day is long, and they would not honor even a federal court judgment. Sure enough on Friday December 18, 2009 I was abruptly transferred back to Florida State Prison for no apparent reason. Already several guards, who worked also here at that time, have made a point of reminding me that they have not forgotten.. their implicit threat of retaliation was clear. Now, I can only hope to compel the Federal judge who presided over that earlier case to hold FDOC secretary McNeil in contempt of court for having me transferred back to FSP.

note:
Please read Mike's letter to Governor Crist that has been pubicly posted on his website http://www.southerninjustice.com/

Part II to follow soon..

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2010-01-10T01:46:00.000-08:00

In the world renowned classic Christmas story “The Christmas Carol”, crabby old Scrooge was visited upon by the Ghost of the Christmas Spirit. Perhaps this tale touches each of us in it’s own way as we too each find ourselves reflecting upon what once was and what might have been if only our lives had taken a different turn at a particular fork in the road at some point so many, many moons ago.

As I write this, it is Christmas day, 2009. A with each Christmas now for over a quarter of a century I sit in a solitary cell on Florida’s death row. It has become a world of loneliness and despair, of overwhelming sense of abandonment and regret that I have become only too familiar with – a virtual hell that neither body or mind can ever truly escape from as once one has descended into the “bowels of the beast” it becomes branded forever on your soul as a never ending nightmare that one will never awaken from.

But the manmade hell of steel and stone have become the only world that I know now and although the eternal nightmare is as constant as the sun rising with each day, on some days it becomes worse and today is one of those days. Today I will again struggle with the ghosts of Christmas and find myself tormented and haunted by what once was and what might have been, if only.

Growing up in a large family, Christmas as I remember was always a traditional event. I can still recall the anxiety of awaiting Santa Claus when I was a child and smile at the memories of threats of getting put on that feared “naughty” list. More often than not for getting caught eating the Holiday cookies and treats that were always prepared and laid out on the dining room table, supposedly for the guest that might visit – but they knew that us kids would find a way to sneak the treats just at that moment when no one was watching, then quickly retreat to a hidden corner to savor the fruit of our labor.

Along the fireplace mantle, stockings would hang empty, each with our names written in glittering gold and to the nearby corner would stand a brightly lit classic Christmas tree, with the antique ornaments and flashing colored lights and ribbon of silver and gold tinsel laced upon the evergreen branches – and the on top an angel with her fragile wings spread and angelic head bowed but always watching from above.

Each Christmas Eve the ritual would repeat itself. Each of us kids would invent excuses to stay up as long as possible but inevitably march off to bed for fear that Santa Claus would not come. And fight it off as we might soon enough we would surrender to exhaustion and slip off to sleep – only to be awoken in the early morning hours with that scream that every child anxiously awaited to hear – “Santa’s come, Santa’s come!!” and suddenly as if on cue all of us kids would jump from our beds and run into the living room and be ready to receive the gifts we waited so long for.

Only now, knowing what I did not know as a child when I still believed in the magical miracle that Christmas was do In now realize just how much my father struggled to preserve the sanctity of this sacred event. When I was still so young the family business was forced into bankruptcy and almost overnight we went from being a comfortable middle-class family in the suburbs of Marin County, California to living on welfare with ten kids crowded into a two bedroom farm house in rural central Florida.

But even when our whole world was turned upside down, Christmas remained the same. Looking back, I don’t know how dad did it. Although we more often than not did not get what we asked for, we were never disappointed with what we got. Now I can only smile and cherish the memories of what once was, and even to this day it brings joy to my heart when I picture all us kids gathered around that Christmas tree, each anxiously awaiting our name to be called as dad plucked one brightly wrapped gift from beneath the treat a time and by the time it was over all that could be heard was the ripping of paper and the unsuppressed excitement and joy of children that only Christmas can bring.

That was the Ghost of Christmas past, the warm memories of what once was but will never be again. Like a wisp of wind they are so quickly gone, replaced by the cold chill of the Ghost of Christmas present and the reality of where I am today.

Now I look around me on this Christmas day and I see only empty pale pastel walls around me. As I sit here in the early morning hours sipping at my barely warm cup of black coffee, there are no sounds of children or the magic of Christmas. It is just another day, a day most of us try to ignore as we don’t really want to remember that today is Christmas – and yet, how could we forget.

Christmas on death row wasn’t always so bleak. But with each year that passed those with nothing but malice and hate in their cold hearts have gone out of their way to take from us even the spirit of Christmas itself. When I first came to death row in early 1984 Christmas was something to look forward to, a time of the year when the true spirit of Christmas penetrated even the steel and stone walls of death row.

My first Christmas on death row surprised me as I did not expect the kindness and charity of those that came into the bowels of the beast to share with us. The prison would allow church volunteers to come in and then the condemned would be led in small groups into the visiting park (a large fully enclosed dining hall). A decorated Christmas tree would be put up and the tables would be laid out with all sorts of Christmas cookies and treats. Groups of church volunteers would sit in communion with the inmates for just a few moments but in those few moments the love in their hearts became the greatest gift of all. Just as quickly we would be rushed out so the next group could be brought in. As we were handcuffed and led back to our cells the voices of the volunteers could be heard singing Christmas carols, slowly fading away as we were led further and further down the main hall towards the solid steel door that would once again open up to swallow us as we descended back down into death row.

Back then our families and friends could send in two Christmas packages with items such as shoes, or winter clothes or maybe a good radio and like little children we anxiously awaited what Christmas would bring. Even the State itself would go out of its way to make Christmas special. On Christmas morning we would awake to find a bag of fruit with apples and oranges and grapes. Only on Christmas day would the whole wing awake so early and many of the radio’s would be turned in to a local station playing classic Christmas songs in which many of the men would shamelessly sing along. Up and down the floor men could be heard trading an apple for an orange, or whatever, and many would pass out candy bars bought from the canteen and the cold-blooded killers we supposedly were became cheerful Santa Clauses to those we lived among that became our only family.

By noon the holiday meal would arrive and the trustees and officers worked overtime to pass out what the kitchen had prepared, each tray overflowing with the traditional feast of turkey and stuffing with gravy and thick juicy slices of honey baked ham and cranberry sauce and yams and so much more. Then a second tray would be brought to each cell, loaded with generous slices of chocolate cake and pumpkin pie and small plastic cups of thick fudge and dried fruit cups and again the trading would begin as each of us did our best to bargain for our favorite foods and through the day we would each slowly savor every bite.

A few weeks before Christmas the prison canteen (store) would start selling real fruitcake and boxes of chocolate mints and chocolate covered cherries that quite literally melted in your mouth, and large bags of Christmas cookies and candy. Even those who had no money got something as most of us who had enough to buy a few treats looked out for those that had nothing as that’s how it was on death row back then.

But all of that is now long gone. Each little piece of what Christmas once was stripped away until nothing remained. Each year something else was taken. Most often under the pretense of “security” concerns as those who wanted prisoners to suffer invented excuses to impose their malice upon us – especially at Christmas.

What little now remains is but a shadow of what once was. They still allow volunteers to come in as they attempt to share the spirit of Christmas with us, but no longer are we allowed sitting in momentary communion with them. The few treats they are still allowed to share with us are now brought to us at our cells, but each year they are allowed to share less and less. Today is Christmas and yet it is not. There are those who would reach out with Christian compassion and charity to the condemned on this holiest of days, but they are no longer allowed to do so.

Death row has become a different place and no longer is the spirit of Christmas among the condemned. Now each of us in our own way tries to ignore the day altogether. It would be only too easy to say that I myself have become bitter and perhaps that is true. When a man spends a quarter of a century in a solitary cell then bitterness becomes inevitably. I’d like to think that I’m stronger than that but I suppose no man is.

But this really is not about me or what I’ve become as I’m not responsible for the deprivation of even the smallest act of Christian charity that has come to define death row today. Rather, this is about what we have become as a society today, where it is now no longer enough to condemn a man to death for the alleged transgression he or she might have committed. Now as a society we thrive on making the prisoner needlessly suffer and reward politicians who invent ways to inflict even greater deprivation upon those we imprison.

What I speak of today is not about me, but about what we have become as a society. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when a man spends his life fighting monsters, his greatest fear should not be the monster itself, but should be of becoming the monster himself. When we as a society can no longer find that measure of mercy and compassion in our hearts that presumably defined us as a Christian nation, then inevitably we will awake one day to realize that the monster that we once claimed to fight now stares back at us in our mirror. Even as much as I now might be deprived of, it is we as a society that is deprived of so much more.

Thanksgiving with Henry

2009-12-11T09:48:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving is the traditional American Holiday, the one day of the year when family and friends gather around the table with a feast laid out in abundance and give thanks for the blessings that have been and might yet be endowed upon us. Up until just a few years ago the prison system would recognize Thanksgiving with a special holiday meal of real turkey and all the trimmings, as well as various tasty deserts and we would all look forward to that one meal a year. Weeks and even months ahead of time we would make deals with each other to trade a favorite food such as maybe trade the turkey to someone for their pumpkin pie. Everybody had their favorite food, for me it was the turkey more than anything else.

But in recent years they’ve all but eliminated the traditional Thanksgiving dinner for prisoners. We haven’t seen real turkey in many years now. The prison system will tell you that they still serve us a “holiday meal” but it’s not like it was before and what they do serve now isn’t worth writing home about.

For this reason many of us will plan ahead and make our own holiday feast by saving up what few extra dollars we can and buy foods off the canteen. Both as a means of communion with those we live among, who have become our surrogate family, and to share costs of the purchases. Many of us will plan ahead with our cell neighbors as e must order the necessary items at least a week ahead of the time on order to get them on time.

This year me and Henry decided we would eat good. Henry’s been my cell neighbor for a few years now, and was my neighbor on another wing before that. But for awhile now Henry has been fighting liver cancer. He’s put up a pretty good fight, which is not a surprise as Henry is a natural fighter and never had an easy life. Born in Texas of Mexican descent, he grew up poor and gave in to the lure of an outlaw at a very young age. Through the years Henry did time in some of the worst state and federal prisons in the country back when doing time meant struggling to survive every day. Yet through these hard years Henry remained one hell of a man, and was quick to share his sense of humor and in all the years I’ve known him, not even once did he have a harsh word to say about anyone.

Neither me nor Henry had any reason to expect a visit over the Holiday weekend. Although we both come from large families, through the years our families slowly drifted away and that’s just how it is, and we accept that. So, when it came to planning our Thanksgiving Holiday each of us became the others “family” and we spent countless hours what we would make to have a holiday meal that was different and special.

Last week and the week before we got the packs of tuna and mackerel to make fish steaks, the Ramen soup so we would use the noodles a make a casserole, with more tuna and assorted packs of potato chips for flavor, with a dill pickle on the side. And that was just for the main course.

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a lot of sweets. In past years I would make up a big batch of chocolate treats for everyone on the floor. But between the elimination of many items necessary to make them and substantial increases in the prices of what is now sold, it just is no longer possible. So we pitched in together and bought a Hershey chocolate bar for everyone on the floor so that everyone would at least have a little something.

With meticulous details we planned our meal. In a lot of ways, planning out what we intended to eat was almost as good as the eating itself! First, as an appetizer we would share a box of Ritz crackers, with beef and Jalapeno cheese sticks to go with them. We planned to start at around 10 o’clock that morning, and then around noon we would make up the main course. It would take me a few hours to make the fish steaks, which were a lot like crab cakes, but made with a mixture of tuna fish and mackerel steaks, mixed with crushed Ritz crackers and then seasoned with the spice pack of the Ramen “spicy vegetable soup” and a packet of soy sauce, and a bag of crushed spicy potato chips for flavor. Then coated with a crushed Ritz cracker crust. We would each have two.

The tuna casserole was basically flavored Ramen noodles mixed with tuna fish, a lot of mayonnaise and sweet relish and poured over crushed sour cream onion potato chips, with generous slices of dill pickles.

After having the main course, we planned to each have a Bear-claw pastry for dessert, with a cup of hot chocolate. Although we can only purchase the small envelopes of hot chocolate of the canteen, by adding some coffee creamer and a Hershey chocolate bar, it made a cup of thick hot chocolate which goes really good with the cinnamon and spice bear-claw pastry.

Later in the day we planned for some more sweets and snacks as football would be on TV all day – another Thanksgiving tradition. We had bought a box of Swiss rolls – basically small chocolate covered, crème filled cakes, and we’d make up some big cups of sweet tea to go with it. For later in the day we planned to use up the last big bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips I still had, pouring two packs of hot chili with beans over it, then topping it off with numerous packs of melted Jalapeno cheese spread – you just can’t put too much Jalapeno cheese on anything!

Yep, me and Henry planned to eat pretty good this Thanksgiving. Although holidays are meant to spend with family, in here it’s the guys we live around that become our family and we looked forward to sharing it together.

This year Thanksgiving would be on Thursday, November 26. Every year it’s on the last Thursday of November. But for all our meticulous plans it’s always the unexpected that comes along to ruin them.

On Monday our floor had recreation yard and Henry went outside to play volleyball for a few hours. With his health problems, yard usually left him exhausted but he would sleep it off and be ready to go again. Monday was not different and by early afternoon Henry was joking around, as we often do. By dinner he was his usual self, and then we had the thrice weekly showers (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

After showers the mail comes in and we talked a bit about that it was late on Monday as the guard who normally passes out the mail has the week off. So we didn’t get our mail until around 8.00 PM. Henry said he got one letter, but was concerned as he didn’t hear from his longtime dear friend Liz. I told him that they probably just didn’t pass out all the mail – he’d probably get a letter from her tomorrow.

About an hour later they came around for the nightly “master count” That’s the only time of the day we must each stand up and give our number – not our name, but only our prisoner number as in here that’s all we are – a number. Henry’s cell light was on and he said he was going to write a letter. But when the Sgt got to his cell he found Henry slumped over his table and the end of his bunk and Henry was not responsive. For a few minutes they yelled and banged on his door, assuming he was asleep as that was not uncommon, and the Sgt got on the radio and called for the nurse.

After several minutes Henry responded and awoke, but seemed somewhat out of it and wasn’t able to get up. So the Sgt decoded to send him to the main unit infirmary so they could check him out. This Sgt is a pretty good one and goes the distance to help us out. A few years ago he was working the floor when another guy fell ill and if not for this Sgt quick response in getting this guy out he would have died. Once again, this Sgt (who I am deliberately not naming) was quick to call for medical help.

They brought a wheelchair and Henry got on it and they pulled him out. As he stopped for a moment in front of my cell while they grabbed his photo ID I spoke to Henry and he seemed a bit out of it. But said he’d be right back.

A little while later I caught the Sgt making his rounds and asked how Henry was doing. By that time, he should have been back. The Sgt said that after they pulled Henry out, he started to cough up a lot of blood so they decided to keep him over at the main unit infirmary for the night.

But in the early morning hours just before breakfast the midnight staff came and packed up all of Henry’s belongings. If they expected him right back they would not pack up his property so I knew something was up. Throughout the day I asked others how he was doing and they said he’s not too good and would probably stay over at the main unit infirmary for a few days just to keep an eye on him. But they said they’d save his cell next to me, so I didn’t think much of it.

By Wednesday afternoon those I asked started saying that Henry took a turn for the worse and didn’t look good. Anxiously I squeezed all the information I could from those I knew would know.

Early Thursday morning, Thanksgiving Day, I was told that Henry had died at 2:30 AM, but that he didn’t suffer. I try to tell myself that at least his fight is over and he’s now in a better place and that at least his suffering was not prolonged as only too often it can be with cancer. But somehow it isn’t much of a comfort as he was a good friend and neighbor – he was family.

Just that quickly on Thanksgiving there isn’t much to be thankful for. The plans we made for weeks for our holiday feast now meant little as Henry was gone and so was my own appetite. Instead I spent the day just pacing my floor back and forth, four quick steps to the front then four quick steps to the back, listening to the radio and trying to get my head out of this place.

Then a song came on that made me smile….maybe even a message from Henry to a friend and brother who already greatly misses him. Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on heaven’s door” a song that not so long ago me and Henry sang together. Hearing that song brought tears to my eyes – but I smiled, as just hearing that song, at that particular moment, let me know that Henry’s alright and is now in a better place. Here’s to knocking on Heaven’s door – I will miss you my brother.

Mike

Forgotten Veterans: Condemning America’s Heroes.

2009-11-26T06:12:00.000-08:00

As I sit in my concrete cage condemned to death, I take a moment to remember that today, November 11th, is Veteran’s Day. That is the legal holiday in which America honors those who have served in the military, willing to give their life to protect the constitutional liberties we all too often take for granted. In America, on the 4th of July, we celebrate our freedom, but today we take a moment to remember those who are fighting to protect our freedom.

Growing up in the San Francisco bay Area in the late sixties and early seventies, I often witnessed the chaotic protests against the Vietnam war at the time and because of the era in which it was, veterans coming home from service in that war were all too often looked down upon. For reasons that made no sense to the child that I was these men who served – often voluntarily – were blamed for a war they didn’t want to fight. Only many years later when I enlisted into the army did I realize the truth of a bumper sticker I saw while stationed at Ft Sill, Oklahoma: “Politicians start wars, soldiers fight them”.

It wasn’t that long after that brief military experience that I awoke early one morning, hours before even the sun came up, to a deaf-defying scream that awoke the whole wing on death row. About 4 or 5 cells up from me was a black man named David Futchess. At the time I was still new to this strange world in which I remain condemned to, and didn’t know that David often had these nightmares in which he was once again in Vietnam in yet another firefight with an invisible enemy, that was methodically picking off his fellow comrades one at a time. The technical term is post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and it is common among men who served in combat, as David had.

In the coming months I came to know him as we shared the recreational yard together. For the most part, he was a quiet guy and easy to get along with and some might even say he was passive. But sometimes in the middle of a conversation his mind would just drift away and his eyes would go death as if staring off into a distant horizon and his hands would start shaking, sometimes causing his whole body to tremble. On one such occasions as he stood there in his trance a ball hit the ground near him and David spontaneously fell to the ground, screaming something incoherent.

A few years after I came to death row, in April 1986, the State of Florida put David to death in the electric chair. Just in the relatively short time that I was on death row, David was the 12th man executed since I came to Florida State Prison. Back then when the cell lights would go off just before an execution, I would pray for each, dropping to my knees and pleading with a God that never once answered my prayers and I continued praying until the lights came back on, knowing that once they did, yet another man was dead. Through the window out on the catwalk in the front of my cell I could then see the same white hearse they brought in through the back gate to collect the remains of the executed and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who stood at my cell door silently watching it slowly drive past our windows with the body of our friend and brother inside.

Those familiar with David Futchess’s case know that serving his country screwed his head up. After coming home a forgotten hero his neighbor said that it was not uncommon
for David to dig foxholes in his yard and sleep in them. Others talked about how sudden loud noises put him into a state of shock. Some said he turned to drugs to deal with the nightmares and it wasn’t that much of a surprise that one day he snapped and killed somebody. Just that quickly he was no longer an American hero who sacrificed his own sanity to serve his country and the very country he so willingly served with honor turned against him and quickly condemned him to death. I can only hope that now he has found peace.

Through the years I have come to know many others here condemned to death who by every right and reason are American heroes – now abandoned and condemned to death by the country they gave so much to protect.

Perhaps few cases could illustrate the tragedy of this injustice more than that of George Potter, who remains here on Florida’s death row to this day. George is now in his seventies and growing old on death row is not easy. I have been blessed to know George through the years and I find strength in his own perseverance. But when I think of the injustice that has been so deliberately inflicted on this man of honor and integrity I become disgusted of what my country has become and how quickly we turn on our true hero’s.

When George was barely 17 the Korean War broke out and George was so anxious and determined to fight for his country that he went down to the local military enlistment center and lied about his age. Within months this kid quickly became a man while fighting a war for a country that he believed in. While the friends he grew up with were still struggling to graduate high school back home, George was on the front line fighting a war. Not long after that George was shot and subsequently awarded a purple heart.

Even then, George refused to go home, insisting that they send him back up to the front line as he refused to abandon his fellow soldiers and brothers in arms. Even before his first wound fully healed, George was back on the front lines pushing North under General
McCarthy when his company (attached to the Eight Army) was suddenly overrun by the Chinese army and slaughtered.

Back to the south the politicians calling the shots decided to just let them die as the Chinese army could not be stopped. But George never gave up, not even when they gave up on him and left him for dead. Most of his comrades were killed, their bodies thrown into heaps like garbage. George was again severely wounded in combat and presumed dead. Only days later was he found and treated and subsequently awarded another purple heart and other medals honoring his sacrifice and service to his country. Then they sent him home.

For over 30 years George was an outstanding citizen and member of the community. But he was still haunted by the nightmares he couldn’t escape and like is only too common he turned to drinking to drown the ghosts of those who died beside him. During one of these drunken bouts George got caught up in a spontaneous event, a domestic argument with a woman he dated that too quickly escalated into her tragic death. Unable to cope with what happened, George pled guilty, then went back to his cell and attempted to take his own life.

But he lived and just as quickly our legal justice system forgot about his honorable service and the many medals bestowed upon him and quickly condemned him to death. Years later numerous high ranking military officers came to court to testify on behalf of George, speaking of how George earned each of the medals for honor and bravery and asking the court to show mercy to this genuine American hero – but the court refused to do so and denied their appeals. George remains here on death row, barely able to read and write, not only abandoned by the country he fought for, but also most of his family and friends.

But the stories I tell about David and George are only a few of the so many more. The tragic truth is that there are many forgotten heroes on death row, those who did not hesitate to run into battle to defend the very constitutional liberties now used to condemn them to death.

Many of the veterans served during the Vietnam War and were changed by their experience, but their numbers now dwindle as Florida is only too eager to put them to death. A few years ago it was Arthur Rutherford who had served as a marine in Vietnam and never recovered from that experience. As with all the others, his service to country meant little to a judicial system that sees military service only as a minor “non-statutory” mitigation factor given little to no weight when deciding whether these men should be condemned to death.

Many of these men have too much honor and self respect to argue that their military service should be used to save them. Take for example Thomas Pope, who has now been on Florida’s death row almost 30 years. Like Rutherford, he too has served honorably as a marine in Vietnam when still a young man and was recognized for his service and sacrifice for his country.

But the years have not been kind to Tom (Pope) as his service to country has long been forgotten. Now he very rarely even gets mail or a visit – like so many others his family and friends have long ago forgotten him. For many years Tom was my cell neighbor and I love him like my own brother. But now he is housed in another part of the building and I haven’t talked with him in a long while as it is almost impossible to talk to others housed on other wings. But he is not forgotten and I can only hope that others might also remember him. In a few months (January 29) he will be 60 years old so maybe someone will send him a birthday card to let him know that he is not forgotten.

Now, a new generation of military veterans is coming to the row as already I see new faces and learn of their own experiences that forever changed their lives. Not long ago I talked to a man now condemned to death who served with my older brother in the first Gulf war in Iraq. He remembered crossing paths with my brother shortly before my brother took an Iraqi grenade in the chest. More recently I see younger men now coming to join the ranks of the condemned who fought in combat in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, today I want to take a moment to honor these men who stood their ground willing to sacrifice their lives for this country and the constitutional freedom that we often take for granted. All of us fall short of the glory of God and not one of us is perfect. Even assuming that these men committed a crime for which the law demands accountability, I think that it is indeed a sad commentary on the degradation of our own moral values as a society that we so quickly condemn our heroes to death and forget the service and sacrifice they gave so that we could remain a free society. Today I salute these forgotten heroes.

Vengeance is Mine, Saith the Law

2009-10-31T02:35:00.000-07:00

Last week Florida's Governor Charlie Crist signed a "death warrant" on Paul Beasley Johnson, scheduling his execution for Wednesday November 4, 2009 at 6:00 PM. In Florida, all executions are carried out at Florida State Prison near Starke, Florida. Immediately upon signing this death warrant Paul was transferred from the main death row unit at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford to the maximum security Florida State Prison in the adjacent county of Bradford. In actuality these two prisons are practically side by side in the rural area outside of Starke, along Highway 16, separated only by a creek they call "new River", which coincidentally is also the county line separating Union County from Bradford County. From the window of the death row unit at Union Correctional i can look in the distance and actually see the imposing structure of Florida State Prison. But it's a sight I don't particularly care to see and don't make a habit of looking out to.

In 1981 Paul had killed a cop in Polk County, Florida (between Tampa and Orlando) as well as two others while wasted on the drug "crystal meth". At the time I lived in the area and am familiar with how the relatively small and rural farming communities there in Polk County had responded with outrage. It wasn't long before that incident that this same rural area was virtually terrorized by what was known as the "ski-mask" gang - one of the ringleaders of that, Daniel Thomas, was already put to death in Florida's electric chair in April, 1986. But the community didn't forget and in these farming towns the support for the death penalty is extremely high.

Anyone who wants to see how "justice" was served in Polk County back during that time need only read Barden v.Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168 (1986) in which the Supreme Court addressed the facts of extreme prosecutional misconduct and judicial bias when Willie Barden was accused of a brutal crime in the same area. Barden, known to us as "Shargo", was executed in March, 1988 despite substantial evidence of actual innocence and what numerous Supreme Court Justices characterized as extremely prejudicial prosecural misconduct comparable to that fictionally depicted in "To kill a mocking bird".

In Paul's case, he never pled innocence. But the factual circumstances still warrant questioning the conviction and imposition of the ultimate punishment. There's no question that at the time of these murders Paul was wasted on a powerful drug commonly called "crystal meth", which if and when used to the extreme, such as in Paul's case, is known to cause psychotic and even violent paranoia and render the person's actions involuntary. So, the real question comes down to whether Paul actually intended to commit any act of violence resulting in these tragic deaths.

At trial, Paul's specific defense was insanity and the question came down to whether Paul could tell the difference between right and wrong at the time of the crime, and possessed the mental capacity to form intent to commit the crime. The evidence, including numerous expert witnesses, testified that given the drugs that Paul was under and what many others witnessed in his behaviour, Paul was by definition "insane" and not responsible for his actions at the time.

Do we deliberately convict and condemn those who are insane? Under applicable law, we do not. Numerous Supreme Court cases consistently prohibit the execution of any person who is mentally incompetent or insane. In Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986) the Supreme Court defined this as a person "whose mental illness prevents him from comprehending the reasons for the penalty of death"

But when a defendant attempts to argue "insanity" as a defense then the burden of proving that he was actually "insane" at the time of the crime is on the defendant, and ultimately it is up to the jury to decide whether or not to ind him "not guilty" by reason of insanity. See Leland v. Oregon, 343 U,S. 790 (1952). With 3 victims - including a police officer, the jury was hardly sympathetic to Paul's argument and evidence that he had 'voluntarily" ingested massive amounts of crystal meth to the point of having an involuntary psychotic episode rendering him legally insane and thus not responsible for his actions. The jury rejected this insanity defense and sent him to death row.

That same year that Paul suffered his own drug induced psychotic breakdown resulting in the deaths of three people, the entire country was already outraged at the concept of an insanity defense as just a few months earlier the now infamous John Hinkley deliberately stalked, then shot, President Ronald Reagan on a sidewalk in Washington DC. At the same time Hinkley shot also several others, including a police officer, a secret service agent providing security for the President, and press secretary James Brady, who has since remained paralyzed.

But unlike Paul Johnson, John Hinkley came from a wealthy family and they quickly spent millions of dollars to hire the best lawyers and expert witnesses. Hinkley stood trial despite the fact that his crime was actually caught on camera with quite literally millions of people watching him gunning down the president and at least three others.

Money makes all the difference despite the overwhelming evidence against John Winkley, the jury in his case found him "not guilty" by reason of insanity. But Hinkley's insanity was not caused by toxic levels of alcohol or drugs - rather, Hinkley claimed that he was "intoxicated" to the point of psychosis by an even stronger influence - love. Hinkley convinced the jury that because of his "unrequited love" for actress Jodie Foster after seeing her portrait as a child prostitute in the movie "Taxi driver". Hinkley argued that to prove his love for Jodie Foster, he had to shoot the President and anyone else who got in his way.

But when Paul went to trial he was just another poor man defended by an overworked and underpaid court appointed lawyer. And thanks to Hinkley's widely ridiculed insanity defense, any jury at the time would be extremely skeptical of any "insanity" defense. So, it was no surprise that unlike John Hinkley, Paul Johnson was convicted and quickly condemned to death.

The irony of all this is that I've known Paul Johnson personally for over 20 years and I can tell you that Paul would be the first one to tell you that he should be held accountable for these deaths. In the 26 years that I've been on death row among the "cold blooded killers" and what society calls the worst of the worst psychopaths, there's probably not more than 5 guys who I would welcome into my house without reservation and sleep soundly through the night...Paul Johnson is without any question at the top of the list.

Since coming to Florida's death row Paul has now become a completely different man. No longer living his life with toxic levels of hard drugs, Paul has become a genuine Christian, who lives a life of moral values. In all the years that I have known Paul I never even once hears a single person say anything negative about him, nor have I ever seen or heard Paul engage in the games that are only too common around here. Quite simply, you just couldn't find a better man to live around and be blessed to call him your friend.

But now they want to kill him for an isolated act of violence brought about when he was under the influence of drugs almost 30 years ago. The state of Florida wants to put him to death for who he was a lifetime ago, deliberately taking the life of the man he is today.

I realize that there are many who would argue that Paul must be held accountable for the lives that he took. Anyone who actually knows Paul would know that he possesses genuine remorse for what he did and has often argued that he should be held accountable. But can anyone truly say that Paul falls into that category of the "worst of the worst" and that society would have anything to gain by now taking his life?

It is at times like this that I struggle with this concept of "justice" so commonly practiced by what we dare call a "civilized" society. What is "justice" anyway? When I look into my dictionary it says that justice is "the upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor" and "the principle of moral rightfullness and equity"

I do understand that as a civilized society we must hold those who commit a crime accountable, or our society would quickly descend into chaos. But I also understand that there is a substantial difference between administering justice and inflicting vengeance and that's what this is really all about - vengeance. This is about that dark and destructive need to exact vindictive revenge, not administering justice.

My dictionary defines "revenge" as "something done in vengeance, a retaliatory measure; a desire for revenge and vindictiveness" Then, when I turn a few pages over to the word "vindictiveness", I find that it is defined as "disposed to seek revenge, marked by or resulting from a desire to hurt, spiteful"

Under these objective definitions of the English language, Paul's now imminent execution is not about administering justice, but inflicting vengeance. And by doing so, our so-called "civilized" society becomes the very monster we say we seek to slay.

I can only ask you to pray for Paul and let him know that he is not alone. I can tell you this - even as Paul faces his own death at the hands of those consumed by hate and vengeance, I know without doubt that Paul will be on his own knees praying for them and accepting his own fate even if I cannot, like so many others. If Paul is executed by the state of Florida on Wednesday November 4 then his death will forever take a part of all of us and without the man he is today among us, as a society through his death we will all become something less.

Michael Lambrix

NOTE: on October 28, 2009 Paul Johnson received a stay of execution in order to
consider significant issues raised in Claim 1 of this appeal concerning
prosecutodal misconduct.

Death by Unnatural Causes

2009-10-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

It seems that only too often I write about yet another person here on Florida's death row has passed on. In my more recent blogs I talked about the recent executions of Wayne Tompkins and John Marek (please read "The perfect murder") But in the past years executions have become only a secondary cause of death for Florida's condemned as now we have many more succumbing to death by "natural causes" than by state sanctioned execution.

Today Bryan Bryant passed on after a prolonged and painful fight with cancer. A few weeks ago it was Alphonso Green, who endured many months of painful suffering before
pancreatic cancer took his life. Two more of Florida's condemned are now gone. To be honest, when I hear that they died of "natural causes" I'm conflicted on how I feel. On one hand I am disgusted by the characterization of "natural causes" when I know that they spent decades in a concrete cage condemned to death and I am convinced that this oppressive and solitary environment contributed to their fate. But on the other hand they've escaped the even crueler fate that the state intended them to suffer.

Having been on Florida's death row now for over a quarter of a century myself I know that death is only too common around here. When I fist came to Florida's death row in early 1984 those that died mostly were put to death by execution, although one that I know of back then (Mad Dog Nelson) did abruptly drop dead of a heart attack on the rec yard.

Ironically, as more men and women come to death row, executions actually slowed down and the population of the condemned grew to almost 400. Increasingly, as many of us aged, death death by natural causes has now become the leading cause of death among the condemned. Many of us have been locked away in these cages for twenty or more years and are simply growing old.

On my floor we have 14 men and just out of curiosity I added up the number of years that 14 of us have now been on death row - collectively, that's over 300 years, with an average of over 20 years each.. This is about the same on all the floors - a total of 24 floors just here on the death row unit of Union Correctional Institution, with another bunch held at Florida State Prison.

What really gets me is that the pro-death penalty politicians and parasite judges who fanatically push for the death penalty, they got to know that they will never actually execute all these men and women. Florida has pretty much never executed even 10 men and women a year, and in recent years that rate has significantly dropped. But even if they did start executing 10 a year beginning tomorrow, it would still take 30 years just to clear out the current death row population and by the time you did that you'd still have hundreds more that have come to death row since.

But that's just never going to happen - and I certainly would not want to see it happen either. My point is this - we all know that in truth, when we sentence people to death we (as a society) don't really mean that they will actually be executed. Instead, what the courts really mean is that they will be sent up to the state prison and virtually warehoused until they slowly rot away and die of "natural causes"

It really bothers me that the lawyers and anti-death penalty groups will quickly rally together in unified opposition when the state screws up an execution and the condemned prisoner suffers for a few minutes, and yet there's virtually no organized advocacy speaking out against the fact that the average death sentenced prisoner now spends at least 20 years or more in solitary confinement with minimal contact or interaction with others. I don't understand how these people can get so motivated to fight against the relatively momentary infliction of unnecessary suffering resulting from a botched execution, yet these same people say nothing about the suffering the condemned endure as they slowly rot away in solitary cages until they finally die of "natural causes"

Incredibly, every time this issue is actually raised, these rabid pro-death penalty parasites that feed off the misery of others will quickly jump up on their soapbox and scream about how the solution is to simply kill them all quicker. When I see this, it only confirms what the facts show - the dumber a person is, the more likely it is that they will support the death penalty.

For over 30 years now these rabid lynch mobs have done all they could to speed up executions, only to corrupt our entire judicial process and substantially increase the inevitable execution of the innocent by playing politics with the appeal process. And yet they are so blinded by their blood-lust that they can't - or want - see that the more they push for quicker executions and corrupt the judicial process, the less execution are actually carried out.

In recent years more and more judges and politicians are finally speaking out against the corruption of the judicial process and admitting that based upon their personal experience within the judicial system they are convinced that innocent men and women have been executed. But those who advocate limiting appeals and expediting executions simply will not even talk about the inevitable risk of executing the innocent. They are so pathetically intoxicated by their thirst for vengeance that they cannot see the dark side; the consequences of their corruption of the process. But when it comes down to it, the execution of even one innocent person is nothing less than an act of deliberate murder.

Which brings me back to the issue I want to address. We call ourselves a "humane" society that respects the concept of basic human rights and the preservation of human dignity. But we tolerate this type of inhumane treatment of thousands of condemned prisoners - many of whom are subsequently proven innocent.

I personally both knew Alphonso Green and Byron Bryant - as I have most of those who have died here in the past 25 years. I understand that both had been convicted of brutal murders and neither had a convinced argument of innocence. I also know that many will say that they "deserved" to suffer, and that we should think about the victims, not the cold-blooded killers.

But it amazes me that we just refuse to see that when we, as a presumably civilized society, throw those we condemn into a concrete tomb and then let them just slowly rot away until many decades later they finally succumb from "natural causes": we ourselves, as a society become the very monsters that we claim to be fighting. When our grand-kids look back at us, how will they judge us?

I know that my words will not change anyone's mind. As the bible says "their hearts are hardened' and those that advocate this treatment of the condemned will only applaud the death of Green and Bryant. And there will also be those who, like me, are troubled by the tragedy of their deaths and even angry that it is our so-called "civilized" society that allows this to be.

I've heard it said that the true measure of a man's character is defined by possessing the moral courage to stand up against the crowd and admit when one is wrong. Throwing men and women into solitary cages, knowing that their true fate is to slowly rot away until they inevitably succumb to death by "natural causes" is immoral and inhumane by any definition, it is wrong. If this is what we have become as a society, then we have forfeited any right to claims of being a civilized society - and we have become the very 'monsters" that we claim to be fighting against.

Mike

The Perfect Murder

2009-09-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

Countless books have been written and movies made about “the perfect murder” with fictional plots that ingeniously weave a web of diabolical motive and opportunity so creatively twisted that the reader must wonder what the truth really is, but in the end there’s always that one small detail that trips up the cold blooded killer and the heinous crime is exposed and the murderer quickly brought to justice. In this fictional world, truth and justice always prevail, as that’s how we always want a story to end. In a fundamental and inherent way, we delight in the gratification of knowing that justice was done.

If only this were true in the real world. All too often the truly diabolical cold-blooded killer can so easily twist our own perception of the truth so that all we really see is nothing more then what they want us to see, and then they commit an act of cold-blooded murder right before our own eyes, as in our ignorance of the truth, we even cheer them on and applaud them for taking another life in our own name. I’m talking about the state sanctioned serial killers who spent their careers methodically preying upon the innocents and without conscience, exploiting the overwhelming power of the almighty state to deliberately perpetuate the most inconceivable of injustices – the intentional execution of an innocent man.

What is truly remarkable is just how deliberately ignorant we choose to be, refusing to see the inconvenient truth that innocent people are being executed - and these executions are being carried out in our name. We – you and me, and all of us who silently stand by and say nothing as these executions are being carried out – are the cold blooded killers committing the quintessential “perfect murder” (please read “Where do we draw the line of moral responsibility”)

Incredibly, most of us will find that statement offensive, as our own conscience will conveniently create excuses as to why we are not responsible. After all, none of us actually pulled the switch, or put the needle in the arm to bring about the execution of an innocent man. “We” had nothing to do with it and probably didn’t even know about it. But make no mistake, if you really want to see the face of a cold blooded killer committing the perfect murder, then all you have to do is just look in the mirror. In our constitutional democracy our government only has the power “we” the people give them. And when the state carries out an execution, they do it in our name. By choosing to remain silent and refusing to speak out against the continued practice of pursuing executions in cases of questionable innocence, we become the cold blooded killers.

The truly tragic commentary on the state of our contemporary society is that there are those intimately familiar with the dynamics of the administration of our judicial system who have now for years spoken out and admitted that we are executing innocent people, but nobody wants to listen, their words go unheard and they are even labeled “bleeding heart liberals” and openly ridiculed by pro-death penalty politicians and rabid judicial activists only too eager to invoke and inflame the lynch mob frenzy that all too often makes inconvenient truths and reason irrelevant as this intoxication of blood-lust and vengeance take control – and they know it.

Numerous Supreme Court Justices have now openly admitted that innocent people have been and will be put to death. Recently US Supreme Court Justice Sandra day O’ Connor public ally admitted that we are executing innocent people (see. “Justice has doubts about death penalty: Justice O’ Connor says “The system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed’ St Petersburg Times, July 4 2001), only to subsequently be ridiculed by pro death penalty politicians and coerced into silence.

Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan, who spent his career as both a prosecutor and judge, also made it clear that there is no doubt that we are executing the innocent. In a speech given in Orlando, Florida on October 23, 1999 (see also “Justice questions guild of executed” Gainesville Sun, December 24, 1998) former Chief justice Kogan proclaimed;

“I estimate that, in the last 40 years, I have participated either as a prosecutor, as a defense attorney, as a trial judge, or as an appellate judge to the Supreme Court in the deposition of more than 1200 capital cases….There is no question in my mind, and I can tell you this having seen the dynamics of our criminal justice system over the many years that I have been associated with it; prosecutor, defense attorney, trial judge and supreme court Justice, that convinces me that we certainly have, in the past, executed those people who either didn’t fir the criteria for execution in the state of Florida or who in fact were factually not guilty of the crime for which they have been executed”

With such an unequivocal declaration by someone so intimately familiar with the judicial process, can any of us actually say with absolute certainly that innocent people are not being executed?

It is human nature to become conveniently blind to what we don’t want to see, especially it the inconvenient truth makes us morally uncomfortable. It is only too easy to say that there is no way innocent people are being executed as every capital case goes through countless state and federal appeals challenging the validity of the conviction before the person can be put to death. But we know now with absolute certainty that this appellate review process does not weed out the innocent and protect them from execution.

A few years ago United States District Court Judge Rakoff dared to confront this inconvenient truth in united States v. Quinones, 205 F.Supp.2d 256 (S.O.N.Y 2002) when the Federal government attempted to seek the death penalty against an accused murderer. After an exhaustive analysis of the issue, Judge Rakoff concluded that the government must be prohibited from even attempting to seek the death penalty as the evidence conclusively shows that the system itself has become so corrupted by errors that even allowing the government to seek the death penalty would itself create a “constitutionally intolerable” risk of executing innocent people.

In reaching this conclusion Judge Rakoff looked at irrefutable evidence that shows that despite the protracted appeal process in capital cases, it is clear that a substantial number of innocent people do still face execution in spite of having their capital cases reviewed by numerous state and federal.

Judge Rakoff stated in United States v. Quinones;
“What DNA testing has proved, beyond cavil, is the remarkable degree of fallibility in the basic fact-finding processes on which we rely in criminal cases. In each of the 12 cases of DNA exoneration of death row inmates referenced in (the earlier) Quinones, 196 FSupp 2d 416, the defendants had been found guilty by an unanimous jury that concluded there was proof of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; and in each of the 12 cases the conviction had been confirmed on appeal, and collateral challenges rejected, by numerous courts that had carefully scrutinized the evidence and the manner of conviction. Yet, for all this alleged “due process”, the result, in each and every one of these cases was the conviction of an innocent person who, because of the death penalty, would shortly have been executed - some came within days of being so – were it not for the fortuitous development of a new scientific technique that happened to be applicable to their particular cases.”

Since Judge Rakoff wrote that opinion in 2002 numerous others have been proven to be innocent by conclusive DNA testing.

The problem is that in most capital cases there is no forensic evidence that would allow a person’s guilt or innocence to be proven conclusively by DNA evidence. In recent years at least 135 men and women have been wrongfully convicted and condemned to death only to be subsequently exonerated and ordered released by the courts. See www.deathpenaltyinfo.org ) and only a handful of these cases involved the use of exoneration by DNA evidence.

Another troubling factor that substantially increases the likelihood that innocent people will be executed is that even in cases in which DNA evidence proved the innocence of the person on death row, and revealed the identity of the true killer, not even once has the state even so much as conceded to the possibility of error. In virtually every one of these cases, no matter how strong the evidence was of innocence, the state continued to uphold the conviction and pursue the execution of an innocent man.

Think about this for a minute. If those representing the state are unwilling to admit to even the possibility of error in cases in which the evidence of innocence becomes overwhelming – such as DNA evidence – how can we trust the state to protect the innocent from being put to death by execution in cases where new evidence undermines the moral certainty of guilt?

A good example of this is the last two executions carried out in Florida. Wayne Tompkins was executed in early 2009. Please read: (When does execution become murder) and John Marek was executed on August 19, 2009. Both cases were remarkably similar in that they were both “wholly circumstantial” cases – meaning that there wee no eyewitnesses, no physical or forensic evidence, and no confessions to support the state’s specious case. Both cases relied upon testimony given by witnesses who had a personal interest in helping the state convict and condemn them. And in both cases a substantial wealth of evidence was presented to show that a legitimate claim of innocence existed.

In Wayne Tompkins case the only person actually testifying that Tompkins admitted to committing the crime was Kenneth Turco, a “jailhouse snitch” who only agreed to testify against Tompkins because the state attorney agreed to help Turco with his own criminal charges. Prior to Tompkins execution irrefutable evidence was presented to the court to show that the prosecutor Michael Benito had actually told the jailhouse snitch to lie and fabricate evidence, a fact that the prosecutor (Benito) admitted. Even though the Florida Supreme Court admitted that Kenneth Turco’s testimony was “the most crucial evidence of Tompkins guilt” and there was no question that the prosecutor deliberately instructed Turco to provide false testimony, the court denied relief and Tompkins was executed.

In the more recent case of John Marek, not a single person could say that Marek killed the victim. Marek had consistently claimed for over 25 years that John Wigley, his acquaintance at the time who was also in the company of the woman shortly before the body was found, had committed the crime. Wigley was convicted of the crime, but sentenced to ‘life”, Marek was sentenced to death presumably because he refused to admit guilt.

Prior to Marek’s execution at least six witnesses came forth providing sworn testimony that John Wigley had told them - in graphic details – how he had killed the woman, not John Marek. But since all of these witnesses were “convicted felons” the court decided that they were not credible.

You see, in Florida – and many other states – it only takes one jailhouse snitch to provide the necessary testimony to convict and condemn a person, and even if that testimony is later proven to have been deliberately fabricated the conviction will stand. But if the defendant attempts to prove his innocence by presenting the testimony of at least six prisoners, then that testimony is rejected as not credible. This blatant hypocrisy openly invites error.

Another tragic similarity between Tompkins and Marek’s cases was that even though both cases involved legitimate claims of innocence, there was virtually no organized opposition to their execution prior to their execution. Presumably there are millions of people who oppose the death penalty on philosophical and moral grounds, especially when a legitimate claim of innocence is raised. And there were those who opposed both executions on these broader grounds. But there was virtually no organized opposition to these executions based specifically on their innocence.

Thus, my dear friends, I give you the quintessential “perfect murder” - a cold blooded killing committed right before our very eyes, and even in our own name. I cannot say with absolute certainty that either Tompkins or Marek were innocent. But I can say with absolute certainty that our judicial system is not perfect – and is not willing to admit to its own imperfection – and that makes the execution of the innocent absolutely inevitable, as we cannot count on the state, or the courts, to protect the innocent. Therefore, it is our moral duty to speak up and express our opposition in questionable cases before the state carries out that execution.

Please check www.southerninjustice.com

Mike

“When history looks back”

2009-09-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

In my death row cell I have a small T.V. and I watch way too much of it. Most of what I watch is for entertainment and serves no real purpose but to distract me from the reality of being condemned to death and the uncertainty of my fate. All too often many of those around me drown in the reality of their circumstance, slowly sinking beneath that surface of insanity until they’ve lost touch with reality.
Sometimes I wonder if perhaps my worst fate is that I cannot so conveniently detach from what we call “reality” and at least mentally escape my cruel fate. (Please read text of www.doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com)

But I also watch a lot of programs on history. Among my favorites a documentary style program by Ken Burns, such as the “Civil War” series. This looks back on how that war was brought about and the effects it had on our country, both past and present. Similar, programs take an in-depth look at more contemporary historical events, such as World War II, the Vietnam War and even the cultural shifts in our society in the past generation.

That got me to wondering what our own future society will see when history looks back upon us. We live in an incredible time, at the very forefront of the “digital” age when even the most insignificant event in our lives is reduced to “instant texting” and “twitter” – and there in the infinite realm of “cyber-space” preserved forever, just waiting for future generations to look back and peek into our own lives - and judge us upon what they see.

When our grandchildren – and their own grandchildren, too – look back at the records of our lives, what will they see? Just as today we look back and judge past generations, how will our future generations judge us? Already in recent years complex internet ‘search engines” have been built that enable us to simply type in a name and come up with a wealth of information and it’s a safe bet that these computer programs will only get better. Our grandchildren will easily be able to take a close look at out entire lives by “mining” the internet for anything with our name.

This will undoubtedly prove embarrassing for the millions of kids today who put social networking sites such as “MySpace” or “Facebook” without realizing that what we throw out into cyberspace today can last forever and our grandkids can dig up our past and wonder what possessed us to put up some thing of that nature, as it’s almost certain that future generations will come to respect the need for discretion and restraint.

Out more importantly, we live in an age in which even the lowest of the low, the very least amongst us, have a voice. Can you imagine what the millions of Jewish Holocaust victims might have said if only they could have written about their experience on the internet? O the generations of slaves brought to America as nothing more that property to be bought and sold?

When we look back into the shadows of history what we consistently see is that those actually making that history truly believed in what they were doing and even Hitler convinced many millions that mass genocide was for the good of all, that the senseless slaughter of millions, not only by Hitler, but by Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, and even more contemporary mass murders of ethnic populations such as Slobodan Milosevic in the Baltic Nations, and continuing today in many African countries, such as Sudan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe – just to name a few.

They all have one thing in common – the perception that their purpose is justified and serves the interest of their society. It’s funny in a tragic sort of way just how incredibly easy it is for our leaders to convince the populations that the wholesale murder of so many were and is justified and in their own interest.

When I think about these things, I think about America’s we of the death penalty – the only western democracy still allowing it’s citizens to be put to death by the state, in company with countries like Iran, China and numerous other countries that have long been condemned for their own disregard for basic human rights.

How will history look back upon today’s America, and judge us? Our country today openly admits to using torture to extract confessions from suspected terrorists and unquestionably imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the word. Our own supreme court has been declared that the states may execute the innocent and that the agents of the state who are empowered to convict and condemn those accused of a capital crime are absolutely immune from accountability if they engage in deliberate acts of prosecutional misconduct to convict and condemn the innocent.

We can only hope that future generations will evolve and look back upon our own generation, and just as today we must ask how those of past generations could have justified their own acts of murder in the interest of a better good, that our grandchildren will look back and wonder how, as a matter of moral conscience, we might have justified the use of capital punishment to execute the innocent, even if although not directly advocating the executions of the innocent to take place, we still are responsible for not speaking out against it (please read “where do we draw the line of moral responsibility” at www.southerninjustice.com/blog )

I have often quoted Abraham Lincoln’s words “evil can only hope to triumph when good people choose to do nothing”, as these words are as true today as when they were first spoken over a century ago. Too often history has proven that our sense of moral conscience is only too easy influenced by the contemporary passions that drive us. And there are few contemporary social issues more compelling than capital punishment. Too many today blindly embrace the death penalty out of ignorance or instinct without realizing that it’s not just about holding the guilty accountable - it’s only too easy for morally corrupt politicians and judges to exploit high profile capital cases and use images such as “Ted Bundy” to convince the public why we must have the death penalty.

But the most vast majority of those condemned to death are unknown, their cases relatively unremarkable. All too often the worst of the worst actually are not sentenced to death. Rather, the majority of those we only too quickly condemn to death are simply pawns sacrificed to the perpetuation of that insidious blood thirsty beast called “politics of death”.

When history looks back from us what they will see is that the American judicial system had become completely corrupt by these beasts, the “politics of death”. What they will see is that although a few judges and politicians do speak out against the moral corruption of capital punishment, even admitting that the innocent are convicted, condemned and even put to death, and that there truly is a virtual epidemic of injustice as ethically corrupt prosecutors knowingly convict and condemn the innocent (please read “Anatomy of a corrupt prosecutor”) and equally corrupt judges knowingly uphold these wrongful convictions for fear that they will be subjected to political retaliation if they throw out a wrongful conviction. Only too often these locally elected judges are far more interested in winning the next election than protecting the innocent from wrongful execution.

But when history does look back, they must have a record to look to, and that is why it is so important that we document these capital cases that involve legitimate claim of innocent that the morally and politically corrupt courts refuse to correct. These judicial cowards and morally corrupt political parasites must be exposed for what they are. Maybe we cannot stop them from committing deliberate acts of murder under the pretense of administering justice, no more than a single German soldier could had spoken out against and stopped Hitler from slaughtering millions of innocent Jews.

But we can document these authorities and leave a record for future generations to look back upon – and that is precisely what I have been doing, through the gene row help of several people. (See www.southerinjustice.com ). Personally, I would love to see every capital case fully posted online – but that would be impossible for me to do.

What I would like to ask is that you help build a record for future generations to look back upon by leaving your own comments on my blog and sharing your own thoughts. Maybe one voice can be too easily drowned out by the roar of the lynch mob – but I know I am not the only voice and you too can be heard. So, I ask you to leave your comments and opinions on this bog, as well as on www.southernjustice.com . Together we can build a record that future generations can look back upon and let our grandchildren see that not everyone supported this inhumane injustice called capital punishment, used to put the innocent to death.
Our voice should be heard.

Until next time, Mike

Do as I say, not as I do

2009-08-12T10:05:00.000-07:00

On Monday June 8, 2009 the United States Supreme Court released its long anticipated decision in a case in which that Court was asked whether judges who had obvious bias in the outcome of the case must disqualify themselves from sitting in judgment. To the average person it would seem obvious that if a judge is a friend to one particular party, and even received substantial amounts of money from that party effectively owing the successful election to the monetary support of that friend, there would be a presumption of bias that would automatically require disqualification.

But we’re talking about the American judicial system, where the primary rule of law especially in the higher courts – is generally “do as I say, not as I do.” The fact that this case was even the subject of intense judicial debate is itself a testament of the hypocrisy and political corruption within our judiciary.

The facts in this case are pretty clear. In 2002 Hugh Caperton, owner of a West Virginia coal mining company by the name of Harman Mining Company won a 50 million dollar jury verdict against the A.T. Massey Coal Company. Subsequently, Don Blankenship, the C.E.O. of A.T. Massey Coal Company pumped millions of dollars into a local election to remove incumbent Democratic Judge Warren McGraw and put his own pick for judge, Republican Brent Benjamin on the court.

The clear implication is that Don Blankenship wanted to have the court in his own pocket. This isn’t rocket science and all but the deliberately ignorant can read between the lines. Blankenship pumped millions of dollars of his own money into this judicial election for only one purpose – Blankenship knew that he would need a “friend” on the court to that earlier $50 million dollar jury verdict thrown out.

Sure enough, Blankenship’s appeal of that jury verdict against him and his company climbs its way up to the West Virginia Supreme Court and – surprise! – guess who cast the deciding vote throwing out that $50 million dollar verdict? Yep, you guessed it – none other than Justice Brent Benjamin.

Incredibly, although any objective person would obviously question Judge Brent Benjamin’s decision in favor of his dear friend, motions to disqualify Justice Benjamin were all denied. Lawyers arguing in behalf of Don Blankenship and his morally corrupt A.T. Massey Coal Company essentially argued that as long as you are a rich powerful company it is perfectly acceptable to effectively buy justice from the highest courts of the land. And this case had to go all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the validity of this absurd argument as the lower courts could not reach a consensus on this moral question.

Then the case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court and is fully argued by both parties and on Monday a decision was released in which a marginal majority agreed that there was an obvious conflict of interest in allowing Don Blankenship and his A.T. Massey Coal Company to pump millions of dollars into the campaign to get Justice Brent Benjamin elected to the West Virginia Supreme Court, only to then have Justice Benjamin preside over his benefactors case and decide the case in Blankenship’s favor.

What must be emphasized is that this case was close – believe it or not, but four of the seven Supreme Court Justices actually wrote dissenting decisions in favor of Don Blankenship and the A.T. Massey Coal Company. Not surprisingly, it was the ultra-conservative pro-corporate America Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. All four of these conservative justices were appointed to the court by conservative Republicans.

Once again this case graphically illustrates the moral values of an increasingly corrupt judicial system in which the power of politics determines the outcome of a case, whether it is a civil dispute such as the above, or cases involving social issues such as abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, etc.

In my opinion the average person simply doesn’t understand just how completely corrupt our contemporary judicial system has become in this past generation of conservative politics. Regardless to what your political position might be, anyone familiar with the process in which judges are either appointed to the bench or must campaign publically and be elected to the bench by popular vote, the result is the same – the insidious corruption of politics actually decides who becomes a Judge or Justice, not the particular qualifications of the judges themselves.

Repeatedly we have seen this pathetic circus play out as elected Presidents pick their nominees for a seat in the U.S. Supreme Court. Up until recently the conservative Republicans controlled both the White House and the senate responsible for casting the deciding vote that affirmed the nomination.

Recently dethroned President George W. Bush made no apologies for his undeniable agenda to appoint only ultra conservative judges to the bench. The nominee’s political and ideological philosophies were far more important then the qualifications – both of Bush’s most recent appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito irrefutably attest to this.

But now the Democrats control both the White House and the U.S. Senate with the recent retirement of Justice Souter, President Barack Obama has announced the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, and next month the U.S. Senate will begin its confirmation process. Most already concede that Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed – but only because the Democrats control the Senate. The simple truth is that if Republican John Mc Cain had won the presidential election last year, Sonia Sotomayor would not have had any chance of being nominated to the highest court regardless of her qualification. Equally so, even with President Obama in the White House, if the Republican’s had won a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate, then they would use that political control to block the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment.

With these political interested so blatantly corrupting our judicial process, how can justice ever truly prevail? Those appointed to the highest levels of our judiciary are effectively puppets of the politics that define them. Any case that might come before these politically corrupted courts will undoubtedly be decided not on the merits of the case, but upon the political agenda of those appointed to the court.

Maybe its time that we, as a society, start to take a long, hard look at what our concept of “justice” is. As a constitutional democracy every level of our government exists to serve the people – not just the politically influential, or the rich and powerful, but the average individual.

I believe that as a society we have forgotten the democratic principles that have made our republic – The United States of America – the envy of the world. How many Americans today are even vaguely familiar with the original “Bill of Rights” contained within our constitution? How many Americans have ever contemplated upon the fact that in these ten articles historically known as the Bill of Rights, virtually every one of them are specifically intended to protect the individual against the politically corrupted abuse of power by those who act in the interest of government? Not even one of those articles exists to empower any for of government, including our judiciary, to deprive any individual of even one of these protected rights.

Arguably, the most important constitutional right is that of “due process,” which itself protects the recognized right to a fair and impartial process when an individual must go before the courts to invoke or enforce their other rights. Under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, it states that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

The courts have long recognized that this Due Process Clause protects the “fundamental fairness” of the judicial proceedings, requiring that any judge who might have a personal or political interest in the outcome of a case, or harbor personal opinions or ideologies that might unfairly influence the outcome of a particular case in favor of either party must disqualify themselves from presiding over the case.

Is this actually the case? Or has our judicial system itself now become so completely corrupted by the pervasive “politics of death” that the integrity of our judicial system itself has become inherently corrupted?

The Supreme Court’s decision recognizing the corruptive influence of politics and money actually only addresses the very tip of a much larger iceberg that ultimately may very well sink our constitutional democracy.

In recent years we have gone to war against every conceivable external threat to our constitutional democracy – except the threat that comes from within. For a generation now conservative politicians have exploited their own self-created “war on crime” to scare the public into supporting their own ideological agenda of methodically eliminating the individual rights of all people. Under their influence, our judiciary has been stacked with judicial activists such as the cartel of ultra-conservatives on the Supreme Court (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) who fanatically force-feed their own political prejudices down everyone’s throats, whether it be the over-zealous pursuit of expediting executions by any means necessary, even openly advocating the execution of the innocent in the interest of what they see as the greater purpose of expediting finality, or declaring that abortions are “murder” and compromise the value of society’s respect for the sanctity of life (apparently, aborting an unborn fetus is murder, but executing an adult, even if they are innocent, is moral), these conservatives came to the Court with a politically motivated ideological agenda.

The question I ask now is, just what is the difference between a morally corrupt party blatantly buying justice by pumping millions of dollars into the campaign to elect the specific judge he wants to decide his case, and a politically corrupt process that handpicks potential judges and Supreme Court Justices based upon their political ideologies and agenda’s rather than their qualifications?

The administration of “justice” must be impartial; truth and justice can only prevail when the fundamental fairness of our judicial process itself is protected by exorcising politics and personal ideologies from it. Tragically, even with the greatest minds not one has yet come up with a viable solution to protect against this corruption. In such a system, can “justice” ever truly prevail? I ask you to please check out and read my website Southern Injustice.

Is Compassion and Mercy Too Much To Ask?

2009-06-23T02:34:00.000-07:00

A few months ago the Orlando Sentinel newspaper in Florida published an article entitled “Justice Denied? On Florida’s death row many lives end – but not by execution” (February 20, 2009 by Sarah Lundi and Vicki McClure) in which the general premise was that when those condemned to death await the finality of that sentence for decades only to end up dying of “natural” causes. Before their date with the executioner comes, they are somehow cheating justice as, by God – we want to see these condemned killers die at our hands, not let them slowly rot away and die of cancer or a heart attack.

What kind of sick twisted mind actually thinks that slowly rotting away in solitary confinement while awaiting the uncertainty of the fate of being condemned to death is somehow too humane a way to die? I’ve heard it said that our humanity is defined by our capacity for compassion. As a self proclaimed “Christian” nation, the Bible - the very words of Jesus – teach that if we don’t forgive others, we will not be forgiven ourselves, and that mercy will be shown to those that have shown mercy to others. And yet, as a society, is this what we really practice?

Lets be honest – the death penalty is not about administering justice but appeasing that primal need for vengeance. In the Orlando Sentinel article the journalists quoted several members of the victim’s families, both of whom expressed their need and desire to actually watch the prisoner, condemned for killing their loved one, actually die. They want a first row seat and watch that bastard take his last breath.

But is this about victim’s right – or is it about vengeance? These families suffered a tragedy beyond comprehension and lost someone they loved to a senseless murder. I do understand their anger and sense of loss – and I pray for them, that by the grace of God they will find the strength to overcome that pain.

The problem is that it is only too easy to hate and want to seek revenge upon those that have caused us so much pain. Maybe that’s why our Christian faith teaches us that we must forgive. When Jesus was subjected to the infliction of a horrific death by crucifixion, he prayed for forgiveness for those that put him to death. In that moment of his own mortality, how much easier it would have been for Jesus to call upon his Father and bring down the very wrath of God upon them?

A few years ago we watched the news unfold as a “crazed gunman” went into an Amish schoolhouse and senselessly slaughtered numerous children for no reason but that he apparently didn’t like Amish people, a sect of Christians long defined by their simplicity and Christian charity.

Few of us could even begin to comprehend the immeasurable depth of pain and loss these people – loving Christians must have felt. Like so many others, I watched this horror unfold on my TV, and then I could not suppress the tears that filled my eyes as these Amish people pulled together, and public ally prayed for the forgiveness of the man who had just killed their children.

Even now, just thinking about it I get a lump in my throat, never before, and never since, have I seen such a remarkable example of true Christian compassion. I remain in awe and wonder of these people whose spiritual faith was so pure and strong that even in that moment of anguish they found the strength within them to pray for the forgiveness of this killer. At that moment I’m sure that angels wept, and the Lord looked down upon this pitiful world and took pride in this creation of humanity that has proven such a disappointment.

When I read about the victim’s family’s need to find closure only by personally watching the man who murdered their loved one die I feel sorry for them as they must be consumed by hate and anger and when it comes down to it hate and anger truly are the cancer of the soul.

Although I certainly do not negate the tragic loss of their own loved one, I can’t help but wonder if the greater loss is their own sense of spiritual peace as one cannot find true spiritual peace while still consumed by the destructive forces of anger and vengeance.

But I also wonder what it says about us as a society when the mainstream media so deliberately provokes this need for vengeance, exploring the victim’s families for no purpose but to sensationalize the facts and sell a few more newspapers. I believe it was famed journalist Edward R. Murrows who said that journalistic integrity is defined by the objectivity of the report.

When I read these all too common newspaper articles that so deliberately exploit the pain of the victim’s families as a means of provoking societies unquenchable thirst for revenge, do they reflect a fair and objective account?

The Orlando Sentinel would have its readers believe that those who dare to die of “natural causes” on death row before the state can kill them somehow cheat justice. But what I found remarkably absent from report is any mention of the pain and suffering that the condemned prisoner’s own family feels as their loved one slowly succumbs to death by cancer, or whatever, dying under horrible and inhumane circumstances.

Consider the case of Frank Lee Smith – conveniently not mentioned by the Orlando Sentinel. Frank Lee Smith was convicted and condemned to death in Broward County, Florida for the brutal rape and murder of an 8 year old girl. Smith swore before God and all who would listen that he was innocent. As year after year slowly passed Smith received few visitors and like so many others, became alienated from the outside world. As the years passed, his own psychological degradation too its toll and he retreated into his own world, isolated and alienated from even those around him.

I last spoke with Frank Lee Smith in 1999, a few months before he finally died a slow and painful death from cancer. Not long after that someone sent me a newspaper article from the Ft Lauderdale Sun Sentinel (owned by the same company that owns the Orlando Sentinel) that told of how after 9 years of fighting the state to test forensic evidence, the test results came back and conclusively showed that Frank Lee Smith was innocent of the crime he was condemned to death for all along. He spent 16 years on death row, and even though his innocence was proven by indisputable evidence, Smith still died on death row.

Just as it is only too easy as individuals to give in to that primal need to hate and demand revenge, so too it is only too easy for journalists to exploit these destructive forces for the purpose of selling newspapers.

Whether we personally support the death penalty or not, capital punishment is a complex issue that reaches far beyond the simplicity of superficial, primal passions of our individual need for vengeance. It is too much to hope that perhaps all of us that call ourselves Christians can learn a lesson from the Amish and find the spiritual strength within each of us to overcome the destructive passions of revenge and instead show mercy and compassion towards these that have caused such tragedy and pain?

As a death sentenced prisoner myself (please see, www.southerninjustice.com ) I have my own prejudices and I apologize to those that might find my opinion offensive. But after a spending over a quarter of a century in solitary confinement awaiting the executioner myself, and watching so many of those around me slowly grow old, waste away and die of “natural causes” I can tell you that they are not “cheating justice” as it would be hard to imagine a more inhumane and horrific way to die then to slowly rot away in a cage. (Please check out www.doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com )

Cranking up the Killing Machine

2009-05-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

Here we go again; Florida is cranking up its killing machine. A few weeks ago Florida’s governor “chaingang” Charlie Crist signed two more death warrants; scheduling both David Johnston and John Marek for execution in May. As I write this John Marek has just been granted a stay of execution – but David Johnston remains under the gun and on death watch. (by the time this article was received and typed up David Johnston has also received a stay of execution)

Since governor Crist took office in January 2007 he has shown unexpected restraint in signing the death warrants of Florida’s condemned. As a long time conservative Republican politician who has often voiced his strong support for the death penalty most of us had expected governor Crist to aggressively pursue executions- to be own version of George W Bush, another conservative Republican who paved his way to the white house of ordering the execution of 157 men and women while serving as the governor of Texas. Of course we all know how well that worked out when George W Bush then went on to become the President of the United States.

Few familiar with the death penalty could deny that capital punishment is really about is the politics of death. The true nature of our so called “democracy” is that nothing can win an election in the south quicker than jumping up on a soapbox and start foaming at the mouth while promising the good citizens of these redneck states that you will kill more people.

It’s difficult to really understand the mentality of people in the south. If you were to meet most of them on the street they’d appear to be good, God-fearing Christians who place great value in the concept of compassion towards their fellow men. Most will proudly call themselves Christians and will pack themselves into their chosen church every Sunday.

There is a lot to be admired about most southern folks – but then there’s that dark side of the southern states, only a generation or two removed from the undeniable racism and even slavery that was not so long ago all too common. As sweet and pleasant as these southern might be, there is still a lot of deep-rooted hate and bigotry in the hearts of those that gather for their Sunday socials on the lawn of their local southern Baptist Church.

It doesn’t take much to bring this hate and bigotry out. In today’s world it’s now politically unpopular to use specific racially derogatory names and characterizations, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still in their hearts. This insidiously inbred hate is passing along from generation to generation and manifests itself in the most subtle of ways that most of those who actually participate perpetuating this hate don’t even see it for what it is.

The death penalty is one of those catalysts that will quickly expose this hate in the hearts of those southern belles and their gentlemen. And politicians down here in the Deep South feed off of the barely concealed bigotry – and I’m afraid that Governor Crist is no exception.

It wasn’t so long ago that Gov. Crist was an ambitious and up and coming politician. For many years he shamelessly exploited the politics of death by proudly campaigning in support of the death penalty. Over the years he earned the name “Chaingang Charlie” as a state legislator as he campaigned for the elimination of early releases and expedited executions. He built his political career on the blood and misery of those imprisoned and condemned. He became the pretty boy poster child of the quintessential southern politician, with his puppy dog eyes and his cold-blooded heart.

After serving first as a State Representative then as a State Senator, Charlie Crist went on to become Florida’s Attorney General – the “top cop” responsible for among other things fighting appeals filed by death row prisoners and seeking to carry out their executions. It seemed that “Chaingang Charlie” was made for that job.

In 2006 Florida needed a new Governor as Republican Jeb Bush (younger brother of George W Bush) had served the legal maximum of 8 years. It came as no surprise when Charlie Crist tossed his hat into the running with the blessing and backing of the Bush family and their political money machine. Sure enough, Chaingang Charlie became the new Governor of the state of Florida.

Those of us on death row saw this as a dark cloud on the horizon, certain that Charlie Crist would come gunning for us and Florida would son become another Texas, where executions are so common that they don’t even warrant a byline on the evening news. One particularly talented artist on Florida’s death row even drew a blank ink drawing of the Grim Reaper – with Charlie Crist’s face clearly showing beneath the black hooded robe.

But then Chaingang Charlie surprised us. Just before he was sworn in as the elected
Governor in January 2007 Florida executed Angel Diaz in a “botched” execution that witnesses testified left Diaz writhing in pain and conscious of his physical torment for over 30 minutes. Lawyers quickly filed petitions arguing that Florida’s lethal injection protocol constituted cruel and unusual punishment thus making the death penalty unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court got involved and all executions came to a quick halt.

To our surprise, Governor Crist public ally supported a moratorium of all execution in Florida until a commission could determine what went wrong when Angel Diaz was executed and how it could be prevented from happening again.

As Crist got comfortable in his new office, he surprised us even further by public ally supporting a proposed law allowing for monetary compensation to those who had been wrongfully convicted and signing an executive order making it easier for previously convicted felons to have their civil rights – including the right to vote – restored.

As the months, then first few years, passed Governor Crist showed surprising and completely unexpected restraint in signing any death warrants, and even seemed to focus only upon a few cases in which the condemned prisoner had committed an act of rape and murder on a child and guilt was not a question.

Then an unprecedented 4 vacancies on the Florida Supreme Court opened up and for the first time in Florida’s history a single governor had the opportunity to virtually handpick the majority (4 of the 7) justices. Governor Crist’s conservative Republicans could almost be seen foaming at the mouth over this opportunity to stock the court with hardcore conservative judicial activists who would have the majority power to steamroll their ideological causes – outlaw abortion, expedite executions, and privatize government.

The dark clouds on the horizon seemed even more ominous and we just knew that the conservative killing machine would crank up and slaughter our ranks without mercy.

But again governor Crist proved to be unpredictable. His first two appointments to the Florida Supreme Court (Canady and Polston) were straight out of the rank and file extreme pro-death penalty conservative Republican insiders, both long time Bush family supporters. The conservatives who put Chaingang Charlie were proud of their good ole boy and just knew that in coming months they would have control over the Florida Supreme Court.

I only wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the Good Ole Boy’s clubhouse when much to their surprise and dismay Governor Crist rejected the next two handpicked conservative judicial nominees and instead selected a moderate Cuban – American from South Florida, and (gasp!) a “liberal» black man from Central Florida.

Suddenly the very conservatives puppet masters who put Chaingang Charlie in the Governor’s office were screaming “traitor”, openly accusing good ole Charlie of being a closet “liberal” (in conservative politics there is nothing lower than being called a “liberal”) and vowing to end Governor Crist’s career.

Not long after this political backlash Crist suddenly began to act like a conservative politician again, first ordering the execution of Wayne (“Grey Cloud”) Tompkins, who may have been innocent, but was never the less an easy execution. And just a few months later, for the first time since taking office, he signed two death warrants the same day.

All of this brings us back to the one question – after several years in office, why has Governor Crist suddenly become more aggressive in signing death warrants and attempting to expedite more executions?

I believe that the answer to that question is simple enough – southern politics. See, in Florida the Governor’s race is run each 4 years, and next year (2010) Gov. Crist must run again for re-election. Political campaigns require huge amounts of cash and next year’s governor’s race has already begun. If Crist wants to run and win re-election, he must suck up to his supporters now. This is how the politics of death are played. Here in the south all politicians know with absolute certainty that the only way to win and elected office is to suck up to these God – fearing southern Baptists and promise to kill the condemned. That beast within them, that inbred need for hate and bigotry must be fed and with racism and other forms of bigotry now outlawed the only way to manifest this hate in a politically and socially acceptable way is to call upon the killing machine and carry out more executions.

David Johnston now awaits in a solitary cell only steps away from the death chamber – in a cell I myself had once occupied when I too faced the Grim Reaper, but make no mistake about it – David Johnston is not facing imminent execution for any crime he may (or may not!) have committed. Rather, David Johnston is merely the latest led to the slaughter to appease the blood thirst of these pro-death penalty conservatives so that Governor Crist can win their support in his own upcoming political campaign for re-election. That’s what it is really all about - the politics of death and those of us who are condemned are merely the helpless pawns.

Are Prosecutors above the Law?

2009-05-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Some might argue that as a death sentenced prisoner I’m hardly qualified to throw stones at anyone, and maybe they’re right. In the Bible it quotes Jesus Christ as saying “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”. But then, I suppose it could equally be argued that it is human nature to find fault in others around us, in our own way, we all throw stones so is it really all that terrible that I throw a few stones, too?

Those familiar with my previous writing already know that I am especially critical of prosecutors who have exalted themselves to gods and use the power entrusted in them to victimize the innocents. For the life of me I just don’t understand why our society continues to tolerate what clearly is a virtual epidemic of prosecutional misconduct.
We live in a constitutional democracy and these prosecutors are employed to represent us, “we, the people”. When a state (or district) attorney prosecutes someone, they do it in our name.

But very rarely do we hear anyone speak out against these self-exalted “gods”, not even when we know they are corrupt and have consistently abused their authority.
Even our courts protect them by granting these parasites immunity, so that even if they do deliberately fabricate evidence and send an innocent man to his (or her) death under the pretence of administering “justice” they can look the court in the eye and know they are protected.

Recently I read an editorial in the USA Today newspaper (April 6, 2009 “Real-life CSI rife with conflicts of interest”) in which it mentioned only in passing that Texas had implicitly conceded they executed an innocent man. The editorial discussed a recent report in the National Academies of Science, in which independent investigators revealed that crime labs across the country routinely manipulate forensic evidence to favor the state, assisting the state in securing a conviction.

In that unnamed case the individual was convicted and condemned to death primarily upon the forensic evidence testing by a state-owned lab. But the test results that sent this man to his death were deliberately manipulated and at best, “unreliable”. This man protested his innocence to no avail - forensic evidence is presumed to be objective and jury’s will believe the science over the self serving protestations of innocence every time, oblivious to the fact that this all-powerful forensic evidence all too often is not what it seems, and is even routinely manipulated and fabricated to give the prosecutor the evidence needed to convict.

This Texas case is by no means the exception. Similar independent studies of crime labs in almost every other state have consistently exposed similar acts of manipulation of forensic evidence to win a conviction. Although perhaps in most cases the accused actually was guilty - but what about the countless cases in which the accused was innocent?

What this is really about is winning by any means necessary. Those familiar with the American criminal justice system know only too well that prosecutional misconduct is by far the leading cause of wrongful convictions. In the past year we have seen numerous high profile cases in which prosecutors deliberately broke the rules to win a conviction. Most recently it was the case of U.S. senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, ironically himself a career conservative who voted in the very Federal judges and US Supreme Court justices who have given prosecutors immunity even when they deliberately fabricate evidence and knowingly convict and even condemn the innocent.

Senator Stevens spent decades as a powerful politician – arguably one of the most powerful politicians in America. But he fell from political grace when he campaigned for “pork-barrel” projects that included an infamous “bridge to no-where”. Subsequently in came out that he had a substantial amount of money- which some said were pay-offs for his political support. Imagine that- a politician accepting kick backs.

Last October Senator Stevens was convicted of corruption, and his long political career abruptly ended in public disgrace. He of course vowed to appeal, protesting his innocence. But he was just jet another convicted felon crying innocence, and nobody bothered to listen.

Earlier this month the newly appointed US attorney General Eric Holder personally called for the conviction to be thrown out after his office discovered the prosecutor had actually withheld exculpatory evidence from Senator Steven’s lawyers. Although the prosecutor in the Stevens case is claiming inadvertent “carelessness”, the now revealed court intent in concealing the evidence that if exposed would had discredited the states case against Senator Stevens.

Think about this for a minute- if a prosecutor can deliberately conceal exculpatory evidence when convicting one of the most powerful senators in America, in a high profile case, then what chance does the average indigent accused criminal defendant in America actually have?

The American judicial system is completely corrupt to its very core- and I for one am absolutely convinced that the true cause of this inherent corruption is the judicially invoked absolute immunity the US Supreme Court has granted prosecutors.

For those unfamiliar with the legal concept of “absolute immunity”, basically it means that according to the US Supreme Court prosecutors cannot be held accountable, not even if they deliberately fabricate evidence to convict an innocent man.

In fact this issue is now again pending before the US Supreme Court (Pottawattamie County, Iowa vs. Harrington, US Sct case # 081065). In this case the lawyers representing two prosecutors (Joseph Heval and David Richter) are now arguing that although they do not deny deliberately concealing exculpatory evidence (evidence supporting innocence) from the accused, that based upon Imber V. Pachtman, 424 vs. 409 (1979) they are absolutely immune from being held accountable and the case must be dismissed.

What does it say about the integrity of the American judicial system when prosecutors can appear before the US Supreme Court and openly admit that they did knowingly withheld evidence resulting in a wrongful conviction – and claim that under the law established by the US Supreme Court, they cannot be held accountable?

The problem here is that the American public in general is ignorant- they just don’t have a clue as to how completely corrupt the judicial process has become. Most Americans don’t realize that the US Supreme Court has itself declared that prosecutors can deliberately fabricate evidence with the intent to convict and condemn innocent men and women with completely impunity – and that in America, the constitution does not even protect the innocent from being executed.

Without accountability there can be nothing but inevitable corruption. But how do you hold corrupt prosecutors accountable when the court protects them?
Even now as the public is becoming increasingly aware of the virtual epidemic of wrongful convictions we still tolerate a corrupt judicial system that effectively advocates convicting and executing the innocent by refusing to hold corrupt prosecutors accountable.

Maybe I’m wrong for throwing stones. But as Abraham Lincoln said – “evil can only triumph when good men choose to do nothing”. If the recent case of Senator Stevens clearly shows nothing else, it is that nobody- not even the most powerful politician in America, is immune from being victimized by deliberate “win by any means necessary” prosecutional misconduct.

I would encourage you to read the previously posted blog article “The Anatomy of a corrupt prosecutor" and think about why this matter really is by far the most important issue relating to the contemporary epidemic of wrongful convictions. Any legal system that knowingly tolerates the deliberate fabrication of evidence, including the deliberate concealment of exculpatory evidence, and allows this type of deliberate prosecutional misconduct to become the leading cause of wrongfully convicting and condemning innocent men and women is nothing less than completely corrupt itself.

But unless people start to speak out against this evil it will never end. How many more innocent men and women must be victimized by morally and ethically corrupt prosecutors who are more interested in winning the case than ensuring justice is served?
How many innocent men and women must be executed by a corrupt judicial system before people out there realize that if it can happen to me, it can also happen to you?
What will it take for the public out there to get it through their heads that if a corrupt prosecutor can do this to the most powerful politician in America, then they can do it to you too?

If this issue matters to you, then I ask that you check out www.southerninjustice.com , and read the currently pending appeal briefs in my case presently before the Florida Supreme Court. Collectively, these recently filed briefs (written arguments) show how easy it is for a state attorneys office to deliberately fabricate a case against anyone, and knowingly send an innocent man to death row. And just as it can happen to senator Stevens, and as it has happened to me, it can also happen to you or someone you love. Isn’t it time that each one of us stood up and spoke out against this epidemic of prosecutional misconduct and start demanding that our judicial system hold any prosecutor who dares to deliberately violate the law fully accountable. Anything less only serves to undermine the integrity of our judicial system itself.

A Day in the Life Under Death

2009-04-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

What a pathetic sight I must be as I attempt to squint here at the very edge of my steel bunk seemingly transfixed by the way the slivers if sunlight slowly steal their way across my cold concrete floor on a journey that will soon enough lead up to my evening ritual. With a cup of coffee in my one hand I sip at the bitter taste as I patiently wait for that moment when the distant descending sun will stretch these slivers of light their fullest length allowing me to then see the sun itself as there, so far beyond the three sets of bars that separate me from that narrow dusty window I can look outside across the barren field where the infamous “Raiford Rock” once stood for more years than anyone I know can even remember, but now an empty field where not even weeds will grow as if even the hope of life itself has long been abandoned.

At a distance beyond that condemned piece of ground I can see a row of tall Grandfather Oak trees running along a road that leads to the front gate of Union Correctional Institution on the main prison compound. Just beyond those stately trees stands the simple brick structure of the prison chapel with its traditional towering white steeples reaching towards the heavens.

Soon the sun will set beyond that distant horizon directly behind this chapel and that horizon will ever so very slowly explode into a kaleidoscope of brilliant colors of fiery reds, pastel oranges, and accents of yellow before slowly surrendering into darker groups as far as I can see in either direction and but for a brief second that fading light will perfectly silhouette that distant chapel cradled in the branches of those trees as a portrait of tranquility trapped between the two worlds of night and day.

It is at that moment of each day that each day itself is defined for me, that moment of comfort and private communion that renews my physical strengths if but only by the knowledge that I’ve survived yet another day. Soon that stealthy light will be consumed and swallowed by the distant horizon and I will rise from where I now squint and face yet another of what has already been far to many long and cold nights in my solitaire cage relentlessly haunted by the demons of what once was and what might have been – and even more by the thoughts of what may very will never be.

Just as my hopes and dreams live with the light of each day, my fears and regrets come with the cold loneliness of each night as when the small world around me grows silent I am reminded of just how alone and abandoned I truly am. As the many years have slowly passed too often sleep would never come, perhaps my way of holding on to today for fear of having to confront yet another tomorrow, until I finally surrendered to a dependency on antidepressant tranquilizers that each night induced an involuntary sleep as without that temporary refuge of unconsciousness one day would become the next and too quickly overwhelm me.

It has been a long and difficult journey. A few photos hang on my wall to remind me of the generation that has now passed me by. There’s the photo of me taken just before my arrest in early 1983, a young man with a whole life still ahead. A photo of my now long divorced ex-wife holding our daughter on the day we brought her home from the hospital, now faded and tattered at the edges; and then, the more recent photo of me holding my grandson in the death row visiting park. My children were so young when I was first imprisoned – and now I am a grandfather: a generation has passed.

Each day has a beginning and an end and yet it is the end of the day that I look to, to define my beginning. As each day begins I will awake from the sound of the chow cart coming through the steel door and moving down the wing towards my cell. Reluctantly I will stretch and then half stagger towards the combination sink and toilet a short step away. The cold water brings me to life as I blindly reach to the wall for my towel. As I dry off, I incoherently voice a vile thought towards this new day and then walk the few steps to the front of my cell to receive the tray of bland, cold food I’ve actually become accustomed to.

My cell has no table or chair and to eat I must precariously balance the plastic food try on my lap while sitting on the steel footlocker that holds all of my worldly possessions. We are allowed only a plastic spoon to eat with but then eating cold oatmeal or grits with a plastic spoon is not that difficult and few foods we are served would require more than that.

After I eat my breakfast I will turn my small T.V. on and listen to the morning news as I read through old newspapers or magazines that are passed down the line and shared. Although we are allowed to receive magazine subscriptions, few of us can afford to so what any of us receive are most often shared and passed down the cellblock.

The magazines not only keep me informed on what’s happening in the real world but also provide pictures of the rapidly changing world beyond us in full color. It’s funny how you never really think about it, but in my world the system methodically attempts to deny us any color. The walls around me are cold and gray – not really gray as they are actually a light tone of beige with brown trim and the bars flat black. But in my mind I still see only grey… cold, cold, colorless gray.

Since a few years we are allowed to buy a small color TV, the ones who have the money to do that and the ones who don't have a small black & white TV donated by various religious organizations, we also can buy a small “walkman” type radio. Reception on both is often, at best, bad but it brings in the sound of the real world. I smile when I think of that as at times a particular song will play on the radio and someone will holler out, and as others quickly tune into that station a number of men will simultaneously break out singing along; because all radios must be operated with headphones, the song itself is not heard – only the broken voices of the men; each singing along but not necessarily in tune. In stolen moments like that we each in our solitaire cell become one.

The hours pass by mid-morning the cellblock begins to come alive. Down the hall I can hear a couple of guys calling out chess moves and I momentarily follow the game. Closer to me tow others exchange trivial conversation around a concrete wall that separates them and at the far end I can hear one of the “bugs,” those of us so-called because we – or I should say he – has lost touch with reality and will spend the day talking and yelling to himself, or imaginary others.

As the morning passes and noon approaches I again hear the metallic clang of the food cart and wash my hands to eat. Soon enough the cart is at my cell and I silently accept my tray, most often some form of mystery meat or breaded “fish” complimented with half cooked rice and watery beans. Whether or not the particular food served that day is different from the day before remains debatable. as the bland food all tastes the same, if one can tell the taste at all.

Then the long afternoon passes and if it is not my floors day to go to the outdoor recreation yard -- an enclosed concrete pad with high fences topped by shiny razor wire – I will pass the day reading a book if I have a book worth reading, or writing a letter. If we go out to “rec” we are allowed two hours each time, but no more than a maximum of four hours each week, to play basketball or volleyball, or just to talk to other guys on the floor without the concrete and bars separating us.

By late afternoon the guards change shifts and as the new shift comes on we prepare to shave and shower. As simple as showering may be, it becomes a humiliating and even painful experience in this world as each time we leave our cells we must first be handcuffed behind the back and then escorted to a small shower cell at the very front of the wing. Once securely locked in that shower cell the handcuffs are removed and a quick shower is taken before the guards replace the cuffs and escort us back, one at a time. Cheap plastic disposable razors are passed out just before we shower and collected and counted immediately after.

As evening approaches it is time to eat again, yet it’s just another meal very much the same as that fed at lunch. There is little variety in the food we eat as the menu repeats itself weekly – for years at a time. If I happen to forget what day it is, I’m quickly reminded by what we are served at breakfast. I eat what I can but even after so many years I’m unable to eat most of what is served. That which I do not eat I feed to my cellmate Johnny Coe Mode, that being the toilet and believe me, he eats well and is apparently even grateful, as he’s never complained.

My time with my ritualistic sunsets varies and is at times broken by the evening meal. For now I am fortunate that I am in a cell with this view as most of the cells look out over the concrete rec yard and to the adjacent wing beyond. But even then I would look out if for no other reason than to watch the birds on the yard.

We all engage in our rituals this time of day as the cellblock becomes abnormally quiet while we anxiously await the days mail run, each of us hoping to get a letter from someone we love. And after the mail runs it remains silent – the few who got mail quietly read that cherished letter while those who did not retreat into a depressed silence that can last for hours –even days. Even as uplifting as it is to receive even one letter, it’s the despair of not receiving any at all that overwhelms you.

The evening turns to night and most of us withdraw to watch television, the electronic pacifier that helps us maintain our relative sanity as God forbid that we should lose touch with reality and become mentally incompetent as if deemed to be incompetent we cannot be executed. The televisions are not a luxury provided for our comfort but a necessity provided to maintain our sanity so that we can ultimately be executed.

That tranquility of my evening ritual marks my day, both beginning and end. Another day has run its monotonous course and my cage has become my refuge as I even become accustomed to this small, solitary world. My world is deliberately structured to methodically institutionalize me and intellectually I know that. I accept that the deliberate degradation and humiliation are intended to ever so slowly erode away my identity and even humanity so that by the time I do reach that fate that awaits me I am reduced to something inhumane and unworthy of comparison. By breaking me completely when the time comes to face that fate I am programmed to surrender passively, even welcoming my fate as a means of finally escaping a fate even worse than death itself… the fate of slowly rotting away in solitaire confinement as that fate stalks you relentlessly.

This was my day today and will be my day again for all of my tomorrows. In my own mind I chase the ghosts of the past to acquire the strength to survive the future, as the only life I know is the life I once had. In the world I’ve been condemned to I am neither allowed to live or die and it’s that existence without the ability to exist that is my worse fate of all.

The Resurrection of the Star Chamber

2009-03-31T07:14:00.000-07:00

Imagine being only a few feet away from the shore in a body of water way over your head – and you’re drowning. Desperately you look to a crowd of people who have gathered to watch you go down and yet not a single person even attempts to throw you a rope. You struggle to tread water, but it’s a losing battle and slowly you begin to sink into the cold depths and still those gathered to watch, those who could so easily save your life, just stand there and let you go down. Your life means nothing to them – they don’t care.

As a death sentenced prisoner, that’s just as I feel. I’m drowning and my death means inevitable. And yet the lawyers the state pays to throw me the rope and save my life are just standing there, watching me go down. The rope is right there at their feet and all they have to do is just bend over, pick it up and throw it. But they won’t. My expectations are unrealistic as in truth they don’t work for me, they work for the state – the same state that wants me to die. Saving me from death is not in their interest as that would be biting the hand that feeds them.

I don’t understand it and yet I’ve seen it too many times. When it comes to the death penalty, who lives and who dies is not decided upon the nature of the crime allegedly committed, but upon the quality of legal representation the condemned is provided. However, the state doesn’t play fair – they deliberately stack the deck by creating obstructions to prevent appointed legal counsel from too “zealously” representing their clients – and the lawyers play along as they adopt the Marxist philosophy that the good of the many outweigh the good of any one man.

Even the innocent are expendable when it comes to the politics of death. I would challenge anyone who might question my innocence to check out www.southerninjustice.com and decode for yourself. But my innocence is irrelevant and the US Supreme Court has already proclaimed that the US Constitution does not prohibit the state from putting a person to death simply because they are innocent Herrera v. Collins (1993)

For the reason my only chance to avoid being executed in spite of my innocence is to present material “new evidence” that sufficiently “undermines confidence in the verdict”, thereby establishing the foundation upon which the courts can grant a new trial by throwing out the wrongful conviction.

But specifically in our politically corrupted courts this is a very difficult thing to do, especially when the evidence used to convict you was wholly circumstantial – meaning there never was any eyewitness, or physical or forensic evidence, or confessions. Although the US Supreme Court does recognize a “fundamental miscarriage of justice” exception to politically manufactured and statutorily created procedural bars that would allow the litigation of a successive post conviction appeal, this exception requires the condemned prisoner to first produce “reliable new evidence” such as scientific evidence (DNA evidence) or other physical evidence substantiating innocence. See House v. Bell, 547 US 518 (2006)

The problem is that if there never was an eyewitness, or physical, or forensic evidence to begin with the how could it even be possible to produce this type of evidence? The fact of the matter is that the less evidence there was to convince a jury to convict you, the easier it is to execute you. How does that even make any sense?
Anyone who might doubt that the innocent ARE being executed should consider the words of now retired former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan, who had public ally stated that:

“ And there in no question in my mind, and I can tell you this having seen the dynamics of our criminal justice system over the many years….that convinces me that we certainly have, in the past, executed those people who never didn’t fit the criteria for execution in the State of Florida, or who – in fact – were not guilty of the crime for which they have been executed”

The irony of all this is that the vast majority of people out there believe that the courts thoroughly review every capital conviction specifically to ensure that the person actually is guilty of the crime before they are executed. That simply is not true. The courts actually are legally restricted to review only the specific claims raised on appeal as presented by appointed legal counsel. A free-standing claim of innocence cannot even be raised on appeal, as innocence in itself is simply irrelevant.

The entire appeal process is governed by a complete set of procedural rules that prohibit legal counsel from raising claims unless they deal with the alleged deprivation of a specific right that arguably deprived the “convicted killer” of a “fair trial” See, as the US Supreme Court explicitly states in Herrera v. Collins, 506 US 390 (1993) in America, you have the constitutional right to a “fair trial” but you do not have a constitutional right to be protected from execution simply because you are innocent

This is where the complexity - and the insanity – of the capital post conviction appeal process really takes its toll. Because of the politics of death, over the years pro-death penalty politicians and judges have created a complex maze of rules that govern death penalty appeals. By arguing the need “to expedite the finality” of capital convictions so that the sentences of death imposed upon the condemned can be carried out without “unnecessary delay” these pro-death penalty advocates have created procedural rules that because of their complexity the condemned prisoner cannot possibly attempt to pursue his own appeals and must depend upon legal counsel to do so.

But in numerous cases the US Supreme Court has declared that there is no right to legal counsel in capital (death-sentence) post conviction appeals. See, Murray v. Giarratano, 492 US 1, (1989), recently reaffirmed in Lawrence v. Florida, 549 US 327 (2007)

Here in Florida, this created a problem. After the death penalty was re-instated in Florida in 1974 and found to be “constitutional’ in Proffitt v. Florida, 428 US 242 (1976) Florida was once again cleared to crank up its killing machine and in 1979 Florida became the first state to put a person to death (John Spinkelink) against his will. In the years that followed, beginning with the execution of Robert Sullivan in the late 1983 Florida then took the lead in the number of executions it carried out – back then (1983-1986) not even Texas could keep up with Florida. But then Florida reached a bottleneck. During these dark days of cranking up “ole Sparky” a small group of volunteers (Susan Carey, Charlotte Holdman etc) worked diligently to recruit lawyers willing to represent the growing death row population. But as the number of death sentenced prisoners steadily increased, there simply were not enough lawyers willing to volunteer to represent them – and yet then Governor Robert Graham kept pushing for more executions.

Under the law that existed at the time; see Graham v. State, 372 so 2d 1365 (Fla. 1979),
although there was no constitutional right to appointment of post conviction counsel in capital cases, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that “due process” (a constitutional right governed by the concept of “fundamental fairness”) required the courts to appoint legal counsel “ when a prisoner filed a substantially meritorious post conviction motion and a hearing on the motion was potentially so complex that the assistance of council was needed”.

By 1984 the Florida Supreme Court was compelled to begin composing “stays of execution” to stop the execution of those who did not have legal counsel. Politically, this did not look good for governor Graham and then Florida Attorney General Jim Smith, so they got together to talk about what could be done to provide legal representation to the condemned so that they could continue carrying out more executions.

As this umbrella of politically influenced circumstances came together, both governor Graham and Attorney General Jim Smith proposed establishing a state-funded agency that would be responsible for doing nothing but representing the condemned, sort of like a ‘public defenders” office.

By mid 1985 this state-funded agency came to exist as “Capital Collateral Representatives”. A small group of dedicated lawyers (director Larry Spalding, along with a staff of thee lawyers) were hired to run it. At first, to avoid any appearance of politically motivated conflict, the state allowed this small staff of lawyers free reign to manage the office, but as these original “CCR” lawyers proved very effective at aggressively representing the condemned and executions in Florida came to a sudden stop, the very politicians that originally advocated for the creation of this state-funded agency believing that it would serve to expedite more executions now began seeing it as an obstruction.

In 1986 pro-death penalty Republican Robert Martinez became governor in Florida and quickly adopted an insidious plan to circumvent the effectiveness if this “CCR” office. His policy was to simply sign numerous “death warrants” so that the minimally funded and staffed “CCR” office would be overwhelmed and rendered ineffective. Once again the rate of executions in Florida picked up.

But the pro-death penalty politicians in Florida’s capitol were now at open war with the rag-tag band of “idealists” who fought to prevent any executions. A then relatively new Republican politician by the name of “Chain gang Charlie” Crist led the political fight against this state-created “CCR” agency. As the years passed “Chain gang Charlie” built his political career feeding off the blood-lust lynch mob frenzy of the pro-death penalty advocates and eventually rode that wave all the way up the political ladder to where he is now – Florida’s elected governor.

With mounting political pressure, the original “CCR” director Larry Spalding was metaphorically tarred and feathered, and run out of town. By law, the governor was responsible for appointing a new director but could not so obviously appoint anyone too pro-death penalty for fear that to do so would create a legal challenge due to conflict of interest.

As the years passed this “CCR” office continued to fight the fight, but increasingly it was losing a battle. The agency was completely dependent upon state-funding and the pro-death penalty politicians increasingly invented new ways to limit their allotted budget as a means of choking off the lawyers ability to adequately represent the condemned clients. See Spalding v. Duggar, 526 So 2d 71 (Fla, 1988); State ex rel Butterworth v. Kenny, 714 So 2d 404 (Fla 1998); Arabalaez v. Butterworth, 738 So 2d 326 (Fla. 1999), etc.

In 1992 the Florida Supreme Court joined the political battle to restrain the lawyers assigned to represent the condemned and created the “Supreme Court Committee on Post Conviction Relief in Capital Cases”. The specific purpose of this committee was to identify and eliminate the causes of delay in executing those condemned to death. Consistent with this politically motivated agenda, the Florida Supreme Court formally adopted new rules governing capital post conviction appeals, and imposed a strict time limit for filing these capital appeals – one year if the condemned prisoners post conviction was not filed within that one year after the conviction became “final”, then the entire post conviction appeal was automatically “procedurally barred” and lost forever.

Because of the political interference, increasingly the lawyers responsible for representing the condemned were performing inadequately. Largely in part because of inadequate funding the attorneys did not fully develop and present the post conviction claims that should have been raised. As a result numerous death sentenced prisoners began to argue that the constitutionally protected right to “meaningful” post conviction review was being circumvented by the “ineffectiveness” of appointed post conviction counsel.

The argument that a death sentenced prisoner might be entitled to pursue a whole new post conviction appeal if he could establish that the lawyer the state provided did not provide reasonably competent representation and failed to raise claims that should have been raised suddenly threatened to undermine the pro-death penalty political efforts to expedite executions. Suddenly the statutorily created “right” to post conviction counsel arguably opened the door to the state being responsible if that appointed counsel failed to provide adequate representation.

The Florida Supreme Court knew that to recognize this argument would open the door to a virtual flood of new post conviction appeals, which would undoubtedly agitate the powerful pro-death penalty politicians. That simply could not happen. In this author’s own case, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that claims that appointed post conviction counsel failed to provide ‘competent” representation were not cognizable
as there was no constitutional right to post conviction counsel in the first place, thus there could be no protected constitutional right to receive competent post conviction representation. Lambrix v. State 698 So2d 247 (Fla. 1996)

In plain English that means that the state of Florida only wanted to establish the pretense of post conviction representation – NOT the actual privilege of competent representation. In other words, the Florida Supreme Court decided that as long as they assign a lawyer to the case they have fulfilled any obligation – if by chance that lawyer proves to be completely incompetent, well – too bad.

Not surprisingly it didn’t take long after this absurd, politically motivated ruling for the pro-death penalty politicians and judges to invent yet another way to obstruct death-sentenced prisoners ability to pursue meaningful review of capital convictions. Once again under the fictions pretense of preserving the “fairness” of this corrupt process, and only after yet another politically motivated “commission” empaneled to find new ways to expedite executions “recommended” restructuring the state funded “CCR” office, the predominantly pro-death penalty Florida legislature rewrote Florida statistics, chapter 27 to “break up” the “CCR” office, and in its place create three separate “regional” offices.

These offices became known as “Capital Collateral Regional Counsel”. The North Florida office was known as “CCR-North”, the central Florida office as “CCR- Middle” and the southern Florida office was referred to as “CCR-South”. By law the Governor was responsible for appointing the director to each of these regional offices, and each director was obligated to answer to the newly created “Commission on Capital Cases” which is overseen by a board of directors comprised of – not surprisingly – pro-death penalty politicians. These changes brought with it a complete collapse of confidence in these state funded agency’s commitment to adequately and effectively provide post conviction representation. In all fairness, a number of lawyers previously employed by the original “CCR” office continued working in the regional offices and did all they could to provide adequate representation – but not without political consequences.

Systematically the “old school” lawyers who continued to aggressively represent Florida’s death sentenced prisoners were run out of the office, often deliberately replaced by former prosecutors and completely in-experienced lawyers. Increasingly the condemned prisoners sought to have these lawyers discharged due to incompetence, or even try to raise the necessary legal issues themselves (what is known as “pro se” filings)

But once again the arrogance of those so deliberately determined to corrupt the process in the interest of circumventing meaningful post conviction review rose to a whole new level when the pro-death penalty politicians became angry end even incensed when the CCRC-North office (under the direction of Michael Reiter) dared to successfully appeal numerous capital convictions, resulting in the Florida Supreme Court being compelled to throw out at least three condemned prisoners appeals (Barry Hoffman, Michael Mordenti and James Floyd) and two others were thrown out in the lower courts (Juan Melendez and Rudy Holton). All of these convictions were thrown out because of prosecutorial misconduct used to wrongfully convict them. Juan Melendez, Rudy Holton and Michael Mordenti were all set free, while both Barry Hoffman and James Floyd “pled out” to lesser sentences. All five could now not be executed. Suddenly these rabid pro-death penalty politicians controlling the state funded offices responsible for representing Florida’s condemned were (metaphorically) foaming at the mouth – how dare these lawyers actually win these appeals, setting these “convicted killers” free! (so what if they were innocent!) Within months these politicians came up with yet another way to keep these lawyers in check – in blatant, politically motivated retaliation, these politicians abruptly eliminated the state funding for the CCRC –North Office, and closed it down. (the office that had won these appeals)

The political message was loud and clear – the lawyers employed by the state to provide post conviction representation to Florida’s condemned prisoners were not hired to provide competent representation, but rather only the pretense of representation if any of these lawyers dared to too aggressively represent their condemned clients they would find themselves unemployed. It was as simple as that.

Among the condemned prisoners, the knowledge that these lawyers were providing nothing more than a pretense of representation became only too clear in a desperate attempt p protect their own interests, those death row inmates that could began to file “pro se” supplemental appeals, arguing in these hand written legal “briefs” that their appointed post conviction counsel was not providing adequate representation, and attempting to raise the arguments themselves.

But once again the Florida Supreme Court acted with deliberate indifference to protect the politically corrupted capital post conviction process. Confronted with these “pro se” actions. The Florida Supreme Court literally invented a judicially created rule that specifically prohibits any prisoner from filing a pro se action if they are represented by legal counsel. Logan v. State, 846 So2d 472 (Fla. 2003)

Although Logan v. State actually was not a capital case involving a death sentenced prisoner, immediately the Florida Supreme Court began to aggressively apply this “Logan” rule to any pro se action submitted to the courts by death sentenced prisoners. See, Lambrix v. State, 900 So2d 553 (Fla. 2005), Lambrix v.State So2d (Fla 2007) (Fla Sct Case *SC06-0038)

Numerous death-sentenced prisoners, including myself, then moved to have these “CCRC” lawyers removed so that the necessary supplemental actions could be filed – only to have the Florida Supreme Court then apply the rule to automatically dismiss and strike these motions to discharge counsel. Incredibly, the Florida Supreme Court has now adopted the policy and practice of refusing to allow Florida’s death sentenced prisoners to discharge these “CCRC” lawyers, leaving death sentenced prisoners in Florida with virtually no means of protecting against the incompetence of appointed counsel, thus accomplishing a complete pretense of representation.

To illustrate this complete deprivation of the most basic concept of fundamental fairness I would encourage you to read in its entirety the action entitles “Petition for Declaratory and/or exercise of All-Writs”, which can be easily reviewed at www.southerninjustice.com/collateral-actions/ In this comprehensive petition, I specifically attempted to argue that the Constitution’s “Due Process” clause that governs the concept of “fundamental fairness” requires judicial recognition of protection against incompetence by appointed post conviction counsel before the
Incompetence results in the irreparable deprivation of meaningful post conviction review. Quite simply put, that the basic concept of fairness requires that the courts provide some means in which to allow death-sentences prisoners to fully present their post conviction appellate “claims” if appointed counsel is not doing so.

But once again I underestimated the pervasive political corruption within the Florida Supreme Court, naively believing that I could appeal to their sense of moral conscience, and compel the court to do what was right.

On march 11, 2009 the Florida Supreme Court ordered that my pro se Petition for Declaratory Judgment was an unauthorized pleading under Logan v. State, and ordered that this petition be stricken from the record.

As if that was not enough, I have now been informed that if I do continue to file any further legal actions attempting to challenge the competency of the CCRC counsel the State has appointed to represent me, that under Florida law I can and will be subjected to “disciplinary actions at the hands of prison officials under the pretense that since any and all pro se actions are now prohibited under this draconian “Logan” rule, any further filings will be deemed “frivolous”

What this means is that the Florida Supreme Court has now decided that to shut me up they will instruct the prison officials to subject me to inter-departmental disciplinary actions, which will result in me being placed in “disciplinary confinement” with a complete loss of any privileges (TV, radio, visits, canteen, reading/writing material, etc) for a period of 30 days each time I attempt to file any further action. Additionally, since I would have to mail any such action to the court, I would also be disciplined for “improper use of the mail” and will be subjected to suspension of all “mail privileges” (and contact/communication with the outside world) for up to 6 months for each alleged infraction.

This brings us to the complete resurrection of the infamous “Star Chamber”! By this I do not mean the Hollywood movie starring Michael Douglas as a corrupt judge who moonlights as a vigilante, stalking and killing those who have escaped justice by some legal technicality. Rather, I am referring to the infamous quasi-judicial tribunal that existed in England in the 16th century. In Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 821 - 23 (1975) a far more “liberal” US Supreme Court used the historical example of this draconian “Star Chamber” to conclude that a criminal’s right to address the court in person is fundamental, and cannot be denied. As the Supreme Court fully explained:

“ In the long history of the British jurisprudence there was only one tribunal that ever adopted a practice of forcing counsel upon an unwilling defendant in a criminal proceeding. The tribunal was the Star Chamber, that curious institution which flourished in the late 16th and 17th centuries, was of mixed executive and judicial character, and characteristically departed from common law traditions. For those reasons and because it specialized in trying “political” defenses, the Star Chamber has for centuries symbolized disregard for basic, individual rights. The Star Chamber not merely allowed, but required defendants to have counsel. The defendants answer to an indictment was not accepted unless it was signed by counsel. When counsel refused to sign the answer, for whatever reason, the defendant was considered to have confessed (See, J.Stephen, “A history of the criminal law in England”, 341-42 (1883) As Stephen commented on this procedure, “There is something especially repugnant to justice in using rules of practice in such a manner as to debar a prisoner from defending himself, especially when the object of the rules so used is to provide for his defense” (end quote)

Most people out there do not realize just how pathetically corrupt the death penalty process in America is. It’s no wonder that those most familiar with our judicial system such as former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan publicly admit that Florida has, and will continue to, execute innocent men and women.

Florida has deliberately re-created this infamous “Star Chamber”. There is no criminal penalty more “political” than capital punishment. Just as in England’s “star chamber”, the state of Florida has established a system of legal representation that is virtually controlled by pro-death penalty politicians who openly and intentionally manipulate the lawyers employed to represent these sentenced to death, so that these lawyers provide nothing more than a pretense of representation.

As with the “star chamber”, these lawyers cannot be discharged no matter how incompetent they might be, and by law (Florida Statutes, Chpt 27) they are prohibited from pursuing or raising any defense not specifically authorized under these statutory provisions. Like the infamous “star chamber”, these lawyers can be subjected to severe consequences if they attempt to prevent an unauthorized appeal, including the suspension of their license to practice law, thus depriving them of their livelihood.

Finally, just as with the Star Chamber, through he adoption of fundamentally unfair judicially created rules, the courts will only accept pleadings specifically filed by appointed counsel, and if such counsel screws up and fails to adequately present the appointed counsel, the condemned prisoner is prohibited from presenting the claims to the Florida courts himself, and ultimately will be put to death.

Bottom line – only the defense authorized by the State, and presented by the State controlled legal counsel are allowed. But this is not new – this has been going on for years, and yet not a single lawyer or organization has challenged this system.

You see, I don’t blame the pro-death penalty politicians and judges who openly use their political powers to manipulate and corrupt the process in their own agenda to expedite more executions even if it means putting innocent people to death. They are what they are, as that is their nature. They have no moral conscience. Rather, the ones truly responsible for the continued existence of such a blatantly corrupt system are the lawyers who represent the condemned prisoners. For the most part, they have sols out – they have become cowards, willing to stand by and watch their client drown yet
unwilling to simply pick up the rope and throw it in before their client goes under.

In have no doubt that the State paid and State controlled lawyers appointed to provide for my legal representation are fully aware that the manner in which my post conviction appeals have been, and continue to be, handled is ‘fundamentally unfair” and this corrupt process could be challenged in Federal Court – but these lawyers are not willing to pursue any action that might offend the political powers that control these state-funded offices, as they know that to do so will undoubtedly result in the office losing its funding. I suppose when it comes down to it, it is better to be paid to throw your client to the wolves than not be paid at all.

As I have previously quoted in other articles, as Abraham Lincoln so well said “Evil can only triumph when good men choose to do nothing”. I will continue to try to tread water as long as I can, but I know that ultimately it may very well be my fate to succumb into the dark, cold depths as those I must trust to save me stand idly by, watching as I sink deeper and deeper. If that is to be my inevitable fate, then I have but one final question to ask…to paraphrase the words that the father of democracy, the philosopher Socrates, once spoke to the corrupt tribunal that condemned him to die…..”to which of us go the worst fate – you or I?”

Mike Lambrix

Please check out my full case argueing my actual innocence, including all court records, trial transcripts, and appeal briefs at www.southerninjustice.com

Everybody’s Innocent

2009-03-25T23:54:00.001-07:00

You know what my biggest problem is? It’s that everyone is innocent. There are no guilty men or women on death row. We are all innocent. So what if in most cases there was physical or forensic evidence, even eyewitnesses or a co-defendant who testified that they committed the crime together, and just as often the condemned man now claiming innocence actually confessed to the crime – we are all still innocent.

See, that’s just how most people see it – there are so many men and women on death rows across the county claiming that they are innocent that they dismiss all claims of innocence with a sarcastic “oh yeah – they are all innocent” Even the courts and media often respond to a claim of innocence with a yawn, followed by “here we go again”

The truth is that many who might claim innocence are not innocent. As case after case is picked apart and claims of innocence are discredited by the courted, the credibility of all claims of innocence is undermined. As we see case after case in which a condemned man or woman claims to be innocent in spite of overwhelming evidence the very concept of innocence itself is discredited and not surprisingly most of the public, the courts, and even the media become skeptical of all claims of innocence.

But I’m not throwing stones at those who claim innocence in spite of overwhelming evidence of their guilt. The fact is that in the 26 years that I have been on death row I have seen too many cases where men were convicted and condemned to death on what appeared to be solid evidence, only to later learn that the prosecutor deliberately fabricated evidence, of key witnesses had reason to lie, or alleged “confessions” wee not what they seemed to be.

In these many years I also have seen one thing above all else that convinces me that the state will knowingly and intentionally convict, condemn, and execute innocent people. That is that in almost 150 cases in which a condemned man or woman has been exonerated and released from death row, even when DNA evidence conclusively clears the wrongfully convicted of the crime, not even once has a state attorney admitted they made a mistake.

Maybe claims of innocence are being abused – but when our judicial system has such a well documented history of wrongfully convicting and condemning innocent people and those representing the state categorically refuse to acknowledge that they might have made a mistake, then how can any of us actually know with any measure of moral certainty who is innocent and who is not?

Many years ago a man named Frank Lee Smith came to Florida’s death row. He was convicted and condemned to death for the brutal rape and murder of an 8 year old girl in Broward County, Florida. The evidence seemed to be convincing despite the fact that Frank insisted he was innocent.

It didn’t help that Frank wasn’t exactly wrapped too tight to begin with, or that only a few weeks prior to this horrific crime he was released from prison. Those factors almost seemed to create a presumption of guilt. Since he was a bit nuts and an ex-con to boot, surely he had to be guilty? Besides, with his past criminal record who could believe his claim of innocence?

Frank spent about 16 years on Florida’s death row and that was not easy times as if being on death row itself wasn’t bad enough, Frank also caught pure hell from both other prisoners and guards because he was convicted of raping and killing a young child. In prison, baby killers are not very popular.

I am ashamed to admit that I was one of the many who deliberately shut Frank out. On death row most of the guys generally look out for each other. If you have coffee and your neighbor doesn’t, you give him a cup or two until he gets up on his own feet or if chow that night isn’t too good (and it never is!) maybe you split a pack of cookies with him

But Frank didn’t have much of nothing – and nobody wanted to look out for him. Like Dante’s “Inferno”, there are many levels of this hell we call “death row”. I was only one of too many who made Frank’s “hell” that much more unbearable by deliberately refusing to reach out to him as like so many others I judged him based upon what he was convicted of, and no matter how much frank protested his innocence, I completely dismissed it, refusing to give him the benefit of the doubt – the same benefit of doubt that I ask others to give to me.

How could I have been so wrong? As the many years passed, I knew only too well just how completely corrupt our judicial process is. I knew without any doubt what so ever that it is all too common for innocent men and women to be wrongfully convicted and condemned to death and yet in my admittedly small mind I made the decision that he had to be guilty because he was convicted.

About ten years ago I was transferred from the regular Florida death row at Union Correctional Institution to the maximum-security “x-wing” at Florida State Prison, where “high risk” death row inmates were kept. On the bottom floor of the “x-wing” (now renamed “Q-wing”) was Florida’s electric chair (“Ole Sparky”) and the “death watch” cells. On the two floors above the death chamber were a total of 24 cells for maximum security confinement.

As coincidence would have it, Frank was in a cell two cells away from me. There’s not a lot to do when you’re “locked down” on X-wing as you’re not allowed to have any TV, radio, magazines, books, or anything. So breaking many years of silence, I started talking to Frank, or at least I did when he could stay in touch with reality long enough to carry on a conversation as through the years Frank had “bugged out” as we call it.

I’ve long had a reputation as a “jailhouse lawyer” and guys regularly ask me for my help on legal matters. Most of the time I do what I can to help, even if its really nothing more than build their faith up and keep the hope alive.

Frank told me how many years his lawyers have been trying to compel the court in Broward county to do DNA tests and how his lawyers found out that the prosecutor had arrested another man for similar type of sex crimes in the same area where he allegedly raped and killed that little girl, and people who knew that other man were saying that he committed the crime Frank was convicted of, so he needed that evidence to finally prove his innocence. But the problem was that both the Broward County State attorney (prosecutor) and the Florida Attorney General office were refusing to allow his lawyers to do DNA tests on that evidence. Even though they knew this other man may have committed the crime Frank was convicted of, and the DNA evidence could conclusively prove who actually committed that crime, the state refused to even allow the evidence to be tested, and they did all they could to prohibit Frank’s lawyers from being able to test that DNA evidence.

To further compound this injustice, Frank was dying of cancer. Although I couldn’t see him through the concrete wall that separated us, Frank was crying as he told me he just wanted to prove his innocence and let everyone know he was not a baby-killer before he died. For many hours after he told me that, I could still hear him crying late into the night. For the first time in the many years that I had known Frank, I really felt for him. That next morning I gave him my breakfast tray.

A few months later I was transferred back to the main death row at union Correctional institution and I never say Frank again. Not long after that I heard that he had died of cancer, just as so many others do here in “the row”

Less than a year later I received a letter from a friend. She sent me an article from the Ft Lauderdale “Sun Sentinel” newspaper that told how almost a year after Frank Lee Smith died of cancer the DNA evidence his lawyers had fought to have tested for almost a full decade was finally tested – and not only did the result conclusively slow
That Frank was innocent all along, but the evidence also showed that the other man who was already in custody for similar crimes in the area actually committed the rape and murder of that young girl they convicted and condemned Frank for.

Subsequently the POS program “Frontline” did a special about the Frank Lee Smith case, and the tragedy of him spending 16 year on Florida’s death row for a crime he did not commit – and how the state had deliberately obstructed his lawyers for almost a full decade, refusing to allow the DNA evidence that ultimately exonerated him to be tested.

You see, I do understand the skepticism that is all too common when we hear yet another death row prisoner protest his innocence. As a condemned prisoner protesting my own innocence even I fell into that trap of doubting Frank’s claims. But I was wrong. And I can’t help but wonder now if maybe I had given him the benefit of doubt, maybe – just maybe – it would have made a difference. I probably couldn’t have done much to help him in his legal fight and I couldn’t have cured his cancer. But I could have been a friend and by just doing that I could have made his days in this man-made hell just a little easier.

Looking back at how I treated Frank Lee Smith – how almost everyone on the row treated him – because I choose to dismiss his claims of innocence and did not give him the same benefit of doubt that I ask others to give me, I am ashamed. I could have been – and should have been – a better man than that as the truth is that I did not know whether he was innocent or not. Rather, I simply assumed that he had to be guilty. I was wrong.

To this day, now almost ten years later, this bothers me. But this experience also made me realize just how easy it is to become complacent, and even indifferent, to the claims of innocence we so often hear. Maybe everybody who claims to be innocent is not innocent - but how do we know who is and isn’t? What we do know without any doubt is that there are far too many men and women being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death - and we know that no matter how conclusive the evidence is that exonerates the wrongfully convicted, those working for the state will never admit they are wrong.

I ask that you check out a website featuring my case. Rather then ask you to believe me, I ask only that you examine the evidence for yourself and then decide. The entire trial transcripts and appeal briefs are all now posted on that website so you can fully review the entire case as if you are the jury. Then you decide - am I guilty or innocent? Please check it out at: www.southerninjustice.com

When does Execution become Murder?

2009-03-12T00:20:00.001-07:00

On February 11, 2009 the State of Florida put Wayne Tompkins to death by lethal injection at Florida State Prison. Tompkins had spent over 20 years on death row, of which at least the last six years were on “death watch” Through the years there have been many appeals, most of which focused on Tomkins’s consistently pled claim that he was not guilty of the alleged rape and murder of his then girlfriend’s 14 years old daughter.

The evidence against Tompkins was completely circumstantial. There were no witnesses, no physical or forensic evidence, and no confessions to establish that Tompkins actually raped or killed the young woman. At trial the State convinced the jury of Tompkins’s guilt by calling upon another teenage girl who claimed that she had visited the house where Tompkins and the teen victim – her “best friend” – told her to “call the police” This witness then left, but did not call the police or contact anyone.

The body of the teen girl was later discovered concealed beneath the house where they had lived. But arguably because of decomposition no forensic evidence (DNA, hair etc) could be recovered.

At Tompkins’s trial nobody could say that they actually saw Tompkins kill the victim and nobody could say that she was the victim of a sexual assault. But as is only too common in questionably, wholly circumstantial cases, the State called upon a ‘jailhouse snitch” to testily that Tompkins confessed to him that he committed this crime. For those who are unfamiliar with what a “jailhouse snitch” is, it is another inmate who agrees to testify for the state to help convict someone in exchange for a reduced sentence in his (or her) crime.

The courts have consistently recognizes that the testimony of jailhouse snitches is highly unreliable. Basically you have a person in jail for committing a crime who knows that by ageing to testify that another prisoner “confessed” he will have his own sentence significantly reduced. Some courts have went as far as calling such testimony prosecutional prostitution, using these jailhouse snitches as whores paid to knowingly lie and send innocent men to their death just to help themselves.

In the Tampa Bay area where Tompkins was convicted and condemned to death, the local prosecutors had long relied upon “jailhouse snitches” to win convictions. As reflected in published cases a great number of these convictions were later overturned and in many cases it was later revealed that the “jailhouse snitch” deliberately fabricated the incriminating testimony, knowingly sending an innocent person to prison – and even to death row – just to win a reduced sentence on a crime they did commit.

Considering the well established unreliability of jailhouse snitch testimony, and the long history of unethical prosecutors using that they know is false testimony deliberately elicited by the lowest form of scum – those that would sell out their own mother just to avoid prison themselves – should we as moral society to be put to death upon the word of a jailhouse snitch?

I have been on death row myself now for almost 26 years. During that time I came to know Wayne Tompkins personally. As an American Native, he went by the name “Grey Cloud”. A few years back I introduced him to a female penpal who he later married. I think it’s fair to say that me and Grey Cloud were close, even perhaps “friends”. In all the time that I’ve known him he has always insisted that he did not kill that young woman.

Now does it make sense that only one prisoner out of thousands that Grey Cloud came to know through the years said he admitted his guilt? How is it that a man can be convicted and condemned to death on the word of this one inmate when many other prisoners would readily testify that Grey Cloud has always said that he was innocent?

Grey Cloud’s execution bothers me. Many of those that I’ve come to know through the quarter of a century here on Florida’s death row have been executed, or committed suicide, or died of natural causes and it’s never easy when someone you know passes on.

But what about when the state sanctioned execution becomes murder? The death penalty is a punishment imposed under law and exclusively dependent upon first finding that the person to be put to death actually did commit the crime of capital murder. Even then though, the death penalty can only be imposed if additional “ aggravating circumstances” are found and the jury hearing the evidence specifically recommends imposing the death penalty.

But nobody can deny that our judicial system is far less then perfect. In recent years at least 25 prisoners on Florida’s death row alone have been found to have been wrongfully convicted and then judicially exonerated and released from prison. Recently the ‘Innocence Project” has announced that just in the last decade they have proven the innocence of at least 200 men through DNA evidence. This undeniable virtual epidemic of injustice should compel any person of moral conscience to question the validity of any conviction based upon wholly circumstantial evidence. The fact is that as a civilized society we owe it to ourselves to insist that if we are going to put a person to death, there can not be any question of guilt. To allow any execution of a person whose guilt is not in question will inevidently result in the execution of an innocent person.

When capital punishment is carried out in the name of “We, the People” and never one innocent person is wrongfully executed, then we as a society are all guilty of cold-blooded murder. Maybe even in spite of my wrongful conviction I still remain naïve, but I like to believe - I got to believe – that we as a society are better than that.

That brings me to what also really bothered me about grey Cloud’s execution last week – his long pled claim of innocence wasn’t even an issue, not a single newspaper or television station even mentioned it although just a few months ago the Florida Supreme Court specifically addressed the claim of innocence in a published court opinion. Although obviously the court ruled against him on a legal technicality, the legitimate issue of innocence was not fully addressed and resolved.

What if Wayne Tompkins actually was innocent? What if yet again our judicial system made a mistake – only this time that mistake went uncorrected and we, as a society, just murdered an innocent man? Can even one person today step forward and declare under oath with absolute certainty based upon personal knowledge that Wayne Tompkins actually committed the murder that he has now been executed for?
Nobody can. Wayne Tompkins was not executed because the state proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Rather, as is only too common, Wayne Tompkins was put to death because he couldn’t prove his innocence. Maybe Tompkins actually was guilty, but how do we know for sure? And if we don’t know for sure, then how do we know with moral certainty that we did not execute an innocent man?

No matter what side of the fence you stand on the issue of capital punishment, I know of no one who would argue that the execution of an innocent person is justified. But if we are not morally certain of the condemned man’s guilt, then how can we be certain that we didn’t just execute an innocent man?

I would ask you to check out my website www.southerninjustice.com and then ask yourself if we can really be sure that our courts are willing to protect against the execution of the innocent – or are our courts so politically corrupted that they will knowingly put innocent people to death?

Michael Lambrix

From The Official Blog of the Innocence Project of Florida, Inc.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

From a friend of Tompkins

Michael Lambrix has been on death row in Florida for 26 years. Today one of his journals is posted on the Death Row Journals blog here. He expresses sadness and disbelief over Wayne Tompkins' execution on February 11 of this year. Having known Tompkins personally, and referring to him by his Native American name "Grey Cloud," Lambrix explains that Tompkins' conviction was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, and he explains his more general misgivings over death sentences that are obtained all the time with such scant evidence. This was a particularly well-written section:

But nobody can deny that our judicial system is far less then perfect. In recent years at least 25 prisoners on Florida’s death row alone have been found to have been wrongfully convicted and then judicially exonerated and released from prison. Recently the ‘Innocence Project” has announced that just in the last decade they have proven the innocence of at least 200 men through DNA evidence. This undeniable virtual epidemic of injustice should compel any person of moral conscience to question the validity of any conviction based upon wholly circumstantial evidence. The fact is that as a civilized society we owe it to ourselves to insist that if we are going to put a person to death, there can not be any question of guilt. To allow any execution of a person whose guilt [is] in question will inevidently [sic] result in the execution of an innocent person.

The Maryland Senate took hesitant steps recently to assure that death sentences could only be handed down in cases where there was biological evidence, a taped confession, or a taped crime. That is a meaningful step, but it does not go far enough.

Florida Convict Isn't Joking This Time

2009-03-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

By Natalie O'Neill in Miami New Times
Wednesday, Mar. 4 2009 @ 8:55AM

When death row inmate Michael Lambrix applied to be a Florida Supreme Court Justice in January, the nominating committee had a good laugh. "It's tongue-in-cheek," said Chair Robert Hackleman - and it probably was. (Lambrix wrote: "My biggest qualification...is that I'm the only applicant that has been totally screwed by the justice system.")

But it seems the chuckles ensuing from lawyers and judges have now faded into an uncomfortable silence. This past February 9, the litigious convict scrawled a 26-page motion "to Disqualify the Entire Florida Supreme Court." He demanded it be filed appropriately and addressed in a timely manner. His claim: Chief Justice Peggy Quince helped prosecute his murder case in the 1980s. It has since come to light -- he says -- that the team of lawyers acted unethically. He writes: "Numerous documents [that show] the state knowingly withheld evidence"

Researcher Mike Hikey - who has followed the case out of sheer curiosity --is taking Lambrix seriously. "The fact that he has turned down offers for a reduced sentence twice shows he is serious about his innocence claims."

The clerk's office of the Supreme Court has since processed the inmate's complaint. Problem is, they're not quite sure what to call it. For now it's filed under "other."

Comments:
Torres says:
Read his website 'southerninjustice.com for his full case history and recent motions.

Apart from Peggy Quince, Lambrix also criticizes these people:
Miles Daniels investigator who had sex with state witness Smith during trial.
Randall McGruther- prosecutor who manufactured evidence against Lambrix.
Carol Dittmar Senior Assistant State Attorney who filed actions saturated with deliberate deceptions and factual misrepresentations intended to deceive the Supreme Court.
Posted On: Thursday, Mar. 5 2009 @ 7:24PM

Jan Arriens says:
Lambrix's stand needs to be taken very seriously indeed. I have been corresponding with him for 18 years and have made him three times. His story has never wavered. I know him as a man of exceptional courage, intelligence and, yes, integrity. His account of what happened makes a whole lot more sense than of the State. Killing two people without a gun - strangling and then striking a blow - is not easy. Does the second victim wait around calmly until it's their turn?

Posted On: Friday, Mar. 6 2009 @ 2:34PM

karen says:
This case has all the features of a classical wrongful conviction.

1. Ineffective trial counsel who had never represented a capital case before (Jacobs).
2 Hanging judge with bias against capital defendants. (Stanley)
3. Small town jury with links to victims and law enforcement officers.
4. Married investigator Daniels having sexual relationship with both state witness Smith and Co-investigator Mitar.
5. Manufactured evidence.
6. Lost fingernail clippings of victim which would provide DNA evidence.
7. State witness Smith illegally offered immunity for testimony.
8. State witness Hanzel coerced to testify- recanted in 1998.
9. Defendant Lambrix denied right to testify.
10. Judge refused to allow cross examination of chief state witness so as not to 'confuse' jury over her many fabrications.
11. Totally ineffective 'direct appeal' counsel which made it impossible for Lambrix to get relief in subsequent appeals.

The list goes on and can be read on southerninjustice.com which has full trial and appeal transcripts online.

Shame, Florida, shame.

Posted On: Saturday, Mar. 7 2009 @ 4:20AM

Torres says:
Well may the chuckles of lawyers and judges be fading as Lambrix methodically exposes the malfeasance and misconduct of some of the highest legal professionals in Florida.

Be alert-
Randall McGruther Chief Assistant State Attorney- investigated for unethical misconduct and chief prosecutor of Lambrix.
http://lambrix.blogspot.com/2007/03/anatomy-of-corrupt-florida-prosecutor.html

Be alert
Carol Dittmar- Senior Assistant state Attorney whom Lambrix accuses of 3 incidents of unethical conduct. See http://www.southerninjustice.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/bar.pdf for full complaint.

Be alert
Peggy Quince- Chief justice for unethical misconduct in his case.

This 'litigious convict' is only seeking justice after a 25 year miscarriage of justice which sent him to death row.

Posted On: Saturday, Mar. 7 2009 @ 5:01AM

Michael Lambrix Wants to Be the Next Supreme Court Justice

2009-02-04T23:17:00.001-08:00

Dear faithful readers,

I have decided to ask that I be considered for the next appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Below is a copy of the letter I have sent to attorney Robert Hackleman, the “JNC Chair” (Judicial Nominating Committee) responsible for processing applications of those who want to be appointed as a Justice of the Florida Supreme Court. I hope that my friends will support my campaign…personally, I think I’d make a great Supreme Court Justice. Have fun reading the following…

Robert S. Hackleman, JNC Chair
Gunstey,Youkley and Stewart,PA
450 East Los Olas Blvd (Ste # 1400)
Ft Lauderdale, Florida 33301

Michael Lambrix 482053
Union Correctional Institution
7819 NW 228th street
Raiford, Florida 32026-4440

January 16, 2009

Dear Mr Hackleman,

In the January 15, 2009 “Florida Bar News” they included an announcement that applications for nominations to be appointed as a Justice on the Florida Supreme Court, to replace soon to retire Justice Wells, are now being accepted and that applicants should send such applications to your office for consideration.

In all fairness I would ask that you do not so quickly discount my own desire to be a Justice on the Florida Supreme Court. As a legal citizen and longtime (albeit not voluntary) resident of the State of Florida I believe I am legally entitled to due consideration, and even subsequent appointment to the Florida Supreme Court.

Of course, I do understand that since I am currently a death-sentenced prisoner (and have been on Florida’s “death row” now for 25 years – please see, http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com ) there will be a predictable measure of political and public opposition to my appointment to the Court, but then we all know that it is the Governor’s perogative to appoint anyone and if the narrow-minded public doesn’t like it, they can always vote me off the Court in 6 years when I come up for “retention vote”. And until that time, I would be in service of the Governor.

The truth is that I believe (and many others would agree!) that I am far more qualified than some of these brain-dead political puppets currently being appointed to the Courts. I mean, lets be honest – our contemporary judiciary is no longer about serving the oh-so-patheticaly-naïve public, or arguably “novel” concepts of truth and justice. Rather, these appointments are about perpetuating the corruption of politics and political activitiesin our judiciary as our elected leaders pick appointments based upon political ideology – and the amount of monetary contributions – then actual qualifications.

So, why not pick a convicted felon so that at least the public will know what they are getting rather than a wolf in sheep’s clothing? To the extent that my criminal convictions might be an inconvenience, I would note that I have had a petition for executive clemency based upon my actual innocence pending before the Governor (please see, www.southerninjustice.com ) since Gov. Lawton Chiles was in office in 1998 and so Gov. Crist can miraculously claim to have suddenly developed a “moral” concience and grant a pardon for my wrongful convictions, which would then make me immediately eligible.

I believe our judiciary needs fresh blood and a conflicting perspective and that my appointment would serve the interest of all Floridians. When it comes down to it, don’t you think our constitutional “democracy” should be reflective of all the citizens that it claims to serve? At present, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world, with at least one out of every 100 citizens now imprisoned, and many millions more under some form of non-custodial governmental restraint such as probation or parole, and tens of millions more forever politically disenfranchised as “convicted felons” even though they have long ago paid their “debt’ to society.

Arguably, our judiciary could be served by incorporating a voice that can empathize with, and even “represent” this significant percentage of disenfranchised Americans. As for my qualifications, although I have only a 9th grade formal education, in addition to being honorably discharged from the army due to duty-related disability, I have proven self-initiative been earning a GED (high school equivalence degree) and a degree in Christian Theology since coming to prison. I have also extensively studied other subject matters that contribute to the person I am today.

More importantly, I have spent over 20 years as a practicing “jailhouse lawyer’ and arguably have significantly more actual courtroom experience than most of those who might otherwise seek appointment. I have personally litigated cases at virtually every level of both the State and Federal Court systems, including numerous criminal and civil actions argued before both the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court.

But I believe that my most compelling qualification is that I am relatively certain that I am the only applicant that has been totally screwed by the so-called “justice” system. At present there has not been even one member of the judiciary that can relate to the incomprehensible trauma of being wrongfully convicted and condemned to death, and even facing actual imminent execution for a crime they were innocent of. As the facts of my case reflects (please see, www.southerninjustice.com ) and a substantial wealth of “newly discovered” evidence substantiates, I was wrongfully convicted and condemned to death in a wholly circumstantial (no eyewitnesses, no physical or forensic evidence, no confessions, etc ) case that was deliberately fabricated with the intent to wrongfully convict and condemn me.

Collectively, my unique experiences and qualifications would bring a much needed balance to the court and compel other members of the court to remember the inherent need of the fundamental fairness and service to truth and justice – not politics and ideological activism.

And ultimately, if I don’t “play ball” with the powers that be, then arguably Governor Crist could rescind my “pardon” and send me straight back to death row, where his political puppets that remain on the court can quickly rubber-stamp any further appeals “denied” and put me to death.

So, based upon the above I would respectfully ask that you give fair consideration to my application for nomination to be the next appointed Justice on the Florida Supreme Court, and submit my name to Governor Crist as a nominee for appointment

Thank you for your time.

Most sincerely,

C. Michael Lambrix

note: Mike's application to the FSC was noticed by several news sites:

Daily Business Review

Miami New Times

Above the Law

Political Fight over Florida Supreme Court

2009-02-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

Anyone who might still doubt that politics’ control the administration of justice can now bow their heads and accept the error of their ways. To be honest, the ignorance of the public often amazes me. It’s a lot like looking out upon a vast prairie of ostrich’s, each with their head deliberately impaled in the ground – they can’t see it because they don’t want to see it. Ignorance is bliss and they’d rather ignore the inconvenient truth that our American judicial system is completely corrupted by special interest politics than be compelled to accept a truth that would haunt their own social conscience.

At a national level there is simply no question that our elected President’s hand-pick judicial nominee’s for positions on the Federal courts, choosing only those who reflect their own ideology. Former (finally!!) President George W Bush took political corruption of the courts to a whole new level. First by stealing the presidency by having a controversial vote in Florida derided in his favor by a marginal majority of conservative justices on the US Supreme Court (Bush v. Gore, 120 Sict – (2000), and then, once politically elected by only 5 Justices to the office of President, (despite the fact that there is just no question that George W Bush lost the popular, “general” election) dear George then used his power to appoint even more ultra-conservative justices to the Court to secure a legacy of conservative ideology within the Federal Judiciary.

Now in the shadow of that circus another Bush-inspired judicial coup is unfolding in Florida and a political showdown may just follow. This story begins with the present Florida governor, “chain gang Charlie” Crist, winning election as Florida’s governor in November 2006. Governor Crist is a career ultra-conservative republican, proudly cut of the same cloth as George W Bush, who he campaigned for while at that time serving as Florida’s elected Attorney General while George W Bush ‘s younger brother Jeb Bush was governor of Florida.

Some argue that Governor Crist is nothing but a willing puppet of the mighty political cartel that empowers the Bush clan. Whether they are right or wrong, we will most likely never know. In all fairness to former Governor Bush, he has proven himself to be willing to confront conservative politicians and go “against the grain” to support wrongfully convicted men such as Alan Crotzer and William Dedge who were exonerated and released after DNA evidence established their innocence. Subsequently, Governor Crist fought conservative politicians to pass state laws providing monetary compensation to the wrongfully convicted. But although Governor Crist appears to stand his ground to “do the right thing”, at a more fundamental level there’s no question that he remains a tried and true red-blooded conservative subject to the strings that tie into the Bush cloth. Anyone who might doubt that need only look to the recent appointments Governor Crist has made to the Florida Supreme Court.

As a death-sentenced prisoner, the court’s willingness to fully and fairly hear appeals has a direct impact on my life - literally! Conservative justices such as those on the US Supreme Court (especially Justices Scalia and Thomas) will always rule in favor of the state or big corporation as the individual citizen means nothing. The greater goal of protecting the almighty “state” from the embarrassment of making a mistake, such as sending innocent people to death row, means that these conservative justices have consistently ruled that our constitution (the foundation of our protected rights) does not prohibit the state from executing the innocent Herrera v. Collins, (1993)

So the last thing I’d want to see is the Florida Supreme Court politically stacked with rabid, ultra conservative justices that have no respect for innocent lives, like those blood thirsty pro-death penalty ideological zealots who control the US Supreme Court. But that’s exactly what appears to be happening as Governor Crist is now systematically stacking the Florida Supreme Court with justices hand-picked from a list of die-hard Bush family insiders. Governor Crist has the opportunity to do what no other Governor has been able to do – in just the first two year of his first term as governor Crist is able to appoint 4 of the 7 justices on the Florida Supreme Court. This means that he will be able to pull a conservative political coup on the court, allowing that conservative ideology to control Florida law for many years yet to come.

In a previous blog article I wrote about the first Justice appointed to the court a few months ago. Charles Canady is now a Florida Supreme Court justice and there’s simply no question that the primary qualification for the appointment was that Charles Canady previously served as legal counsel to Governor Jeb Bush. Not long after that appointment Governor Crist was called upon to appoint another Justice for the Florida Supreme Court, and consistent with his conservative campaign he picked another Bush insider, Rickey Polston, to the court. As with now justice Canady, this soon-to-be Justice Polston worked in the Bush administration.

Suddenly influential politicians in Florida took notice and started speaking out against Governor Christ’s obvious campaign to stack the Florida Supreme Court with Bush administration conservative insiders. Former Florida Governor (and former US senator) Bob Graham joined forces with former American bar association president Talbot “Sandy” D’ Atemberte and others to scream “foul” in an editorial in the St Petersburg Times (“Take politics out of Florida’s Judiciary” Sunday December 28, 2008) Both Graham and D’Atemberte argued why Governor Crist should not politically corrupt the Florida Judiciary by hand-picking conservative Bush family insiders to control the court.

But just a few days later on January 2, 2009 Governor Crist responded by public ally announcing that his third appointment to the Florida Supreme Court is Jorge LaBarga, a Cuban-American from south-east (Palm Beach County) Florida. Not surprisingly Jorge LaBarga previously campaigned for Jeb Bush when he ran for governor in 1994 (see Florida Bar News, January 15, 2009 Crist names LaBarga to the Supreme Court)

But just who is Jorge LaBarga and can he fairly be labeled a “conservative”? As the article in the Florida Bar News reflects, Justice LaBarga fled his native Cuba as a child of only 11 years old. His family built a home in rural southeast Florida, where his father worked in the sugar cane fields. Justice LaBarga worked his way through the Florida State University to earn his law degree and coming out of college went to work as an asst public defender (criminal defense attorney) from 1979 to 1982.

For reasons not reported in 1982 he then jumped the fence and went from defending criminal defendants to prosecuting them. LaBarga spent 4 years as an Asst State Attorney in palm Beach County before quitting that job to go into private practice where he remained until then Democratic (not Republican) Governor Lawton Chites appointed him to the circuit (trial level) court in Palm Beach County. Justice LaBarga remained as a lower level circuit court judge for almost 12 years – until his recent appointment.

The question now is just who is Justice Jorge LaBarga? In a public statement announcing LaBarga’s appointment, Governor Crist stated that “Judge LaBarga brings to Florida’s highest court all the qualifications needed in a justice, including integrity fairness and compassion”

I suppose the truth will remain to be seen. There is no question that all 3 of the new justices appointed to the Florida Supreme Court have direct political ties to the Bush family political cartel. In the next two months Governor Crist will pick a fourth appointment to the Florida Supreme Court to replace soon to retire Justice Wells – and we can already assume that whoever Crist picks he (or she) too will have political connections to the Bush family. But perhaps Governor Crist will be wise to remember that he will have to run for re-election in 2010 if he plans to remain on as Florida’s elected governor. Does he really want to provoke a political fight that will cost him that election?

Written by Michael Lambrix.
Please check out also: http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com/

Shoe-acid Thrower Takes Shot at Bush

2009-01-06T23:16:00.001-08:00

It was the damnest thing that I ever did see. There I was, sitting on the edge of my bunk minding my own business, waiting for a football game to some on, when suddenly my TV flashed “Special Report” across the screen. That caught my attention as this had to be something big that they would dare interrupt a football game.

With increased curiosity I patiently waited. Then there it was – President Bush had apparently made a surprise visit to Iraq and after taking a stroll along the formation of American troops with Iraqi politicians at his side, soon to be dethroned GW Bush then retires to a small room to give a news conference. I’m sure that each member of the media allowed into that room was thoroughly searched for any form of weapons, not at all unlike what most go through at airports these days, thanks to the 9/11 terrorist attack and subsequent threats by shoe-bombers.

Realizing that I was in for yet another final gasp of President Bush’s grandstanding, I reached towards the TV to change the channel when suddenly a man’s figure leapt up right in front of the camera and to my (delighted!) surprise, he threw first one shoe and then another straight at the obviously surprised President Bush., who actually did a good job ducking each shoe as if this happened all the time and was just a part of the daily routine.

Now, I know that in the Arab cultures, throwing a shoe at someone is the ultimate symbol of disrespect. Already reports are coming in from around the Arab world calling for the Iraqi journalist to be called a “hero”. I’m sure that to many he already is - even if the guy is a lousy shot!

After I finally got through laughing about it as hard as I have in more years than I can remember, I got to thinking about what I had seen. The one thing that struck me first was just how well GW Bush ducked both shoes without even breaking a sweat – obviously the guy had a lot of experience ducking incoming shoes, which begs the question….just who is throwing shoes at GW that we don’t know about? Maybe Laura Bush??

If it is Laura Bush, then I wonder if she will accept requests?? Being that I’m on death row I’m only allowed to have one pair of shoes – and we are prohibited from having any type of hard shoes or boots that that might be used as a “weapon”. But I would be willing to mail my only pair of well-worn shoes to Laura Bush if she would agree to throw them at ole GW for me. I’ll even tell her to keep them if she promises to throw them at him repeatedly.

Then it wasn’t long before I got to talking to another guy here on my floor and we came up with a way to make a million dollars of this thing. See, I’m white and he is black. So I figure that we can get one of these “dunking tanks” that they have at county fairs all the time, where people pay money to throw a ball, trying to let a small target that triggers a release to dunk the clown into a water tank. But instead I figure I can get a GW Bush Halloween mask and we can take turns working the dunking tank – only instead of throwing balls we can charge extra so people can throw shoes. Why, I’ll bet people would line up around the block just for the chance to throw a shoe at GW Bush, or even Barack Obama for that matter. So we can make a million bucks and if these people are as bad at throwing shoes as that Iraqi journalist then there’s a real good chance we won’t even get wet!

Of course, since ole GW Bush will be looking for a new job next month, he may just steal my idea and do this himself. When it comes down to it, there’s not a lot of difference between a politician and a carnival sideshow and even someone as intellectually challenged as GW must realize that there is a lot of potential for some serious money by working a dunking tank at the local county fairs. Being that he’s the ex-president and all, I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who would gladly pay a premium to throw a shoe or two to knock him into a tank of water. In fact, I’d gladly pay a few dollars more if instead of just water they fill the tank up with oil – and as he rises from being dunked into the tank of oil, for an extra dollar we can blow feathers on him!

You see, even after 25 years on death row, my imagination can reach beyond these walls that entomb me to inspire a nation into a new pastime…paying a few bucks to throw a shoe or two at a soon to be former president. So folks, just line on up and have your turn.

Please read my main website www.southerninjustice.com and my blog http://doinglifeondeathrow.blogspot.com/and if you would like to donate a pair of old shoes to the cause, please send to: Laura Bush, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.

Keeping the Hope Alive

2009-01-04T00:40:00.001-08:00

Years ago I read a book by Victor Frankl called “Man’s search for meaning”. A friend had sent it to me and I remain grateful to this day as the book gave me a lot of insight to my own experience – as a man condemned to death. Frankl was himself uniquely qualified to provide his insight as he himself had spent years in a Nazi concentration camp at Auswitz and his insights were based upon his own observations and experiences.

The truth that I gained from reading that book so long ago is that surviving any adversity is all about maintaining the will to want to survive. It’s about keeping the hope alive and focusing more on the rainbow then you do the storm. In fact I have written about this in my website and in previous essays I have written about my experiences as a condemned man. ( http://www.envelopesofhope.com/viewtopic.php?t=722)

Through the many years that I have now been condemned to death I have personally witnessed too many around me simply give up and lose the will to want to live. I know only too well the transformation a man goes through, the way the “light” within his eyes slowly fades away until only a dark emptiness remains. Those of us who have seen this know that haunting look only too well and know the truth – that a man can die within by losing the hope and the will to live long before his body becomes “dead”.

I write of this now as recent events in my own life have brought me to that point where I felt that will to live erode and was so helpless to even stop that decent into that cold darkness of hopelessness. Although I was aware of this happening I was powerless to stop this very slow slip into that place where I have been before, but hoped that I would never be again.

Maybe I tend to think more about it then others do. I don’t really know. But at times I do wonder just what the point of the struggle to live really is. At times I even envy those I’ve known here who have put an end to their own nightmare in the most permanent of ways, such as my friend Bill Coday who recently committed suicide (see “Bill is dead” http://deathrowjournals.blogspot.com/2008/05/bill-is-dead.html ).

I am somewhat reluctant to admit my own weakness – that not only have I entertained (and even fantasized) thought about taking myself out but many, many moons ago I even tried, but failed. Does that make me weak when I admit such a thing? Maybe so. Or maybe not.

Most recently I went through an ordeal that is only all too common among those of us here. After being condemned to death, our only hope is depending upon the lawyer appointed to represent us and the quality of the appeals that they file. If, for any reason, they fail to properly present our appeal to the Courts then any hope of winning our freedom from this nightmare becomes non-existent. In the past I have had my critical appeals “procedurally barred” because of the incompetence of the lawyer the state had appointed to represent me.

What makes my own case unique is that I’m not just another condemned man trying to claim he is innocent – the evidence actually supports my long pled claim. In recent years an overwhelming wealth of evidence has been brought forth that substantiate my consistently pled claims that the entire, wholly circumstantial case upon which I have been wrongfully convicted, was deliberately fabricated. (Please see “http://www.southerninjustice.com/ ). But all the evidence substantiating my claim of innocence amounts to nothing if my lawyers do not adequately and “effectively” present it to the Courts. Recently the Court gave us until October 27, 2008 to do that. Actually the lawyer had almost a full year to prepare the appeal, but it had to be filed no later than that date.

As that court ordered deadline approached, I felt the lawyers were deliberately jerking me around. No matter how much I pushed for a working draft of what they intended to file, they simply would not give me one. It was as if I was their enemy and they would not divulge their “secret” of what they actually intended to file.

As the deadline approached, my own anxiety and stress built. In fact, I think it is fair to say that my anxiety was not at all unlike that I felt when I was facing imminent execution in 1988 (please read “http://www.envelopesofhope.com/viewtopic.php?t=663”) When it comes down to it, I knew only too well that if the lawyers did not file an adequate appeal by that date, then I would be dead. It really was very much like again being on “death watch” and yet as that clock ticket closer and closer to that court deadline, my anxiety and stress only built.

With a week left to go, my confidence in my lawyer’s willingness to get this appeal filed reached a new low when I was finally provided with what they called a draft, but was actually garbage. When I read it, I already knew that if they filed an appeal that even resembled that garbage, I was dead.

I began to confront my own mortality – to accept my own death as a possible means of circumventing the fate that seemed only too imminent. If they filed this garbage they were showing me, then any appellate review would amount to nothing more than a pretense. I knew that if that was the case, my further hope I so desperately tried to cling on to would be lost.

As I struggled through these dark days, I shared my growing feeling of desperation with a few friends. For the most part, they were generously supportive and quickly rallied in their own campaign to compel my lawyers to do the best job possible on the appeal. And I know I am truly blessed with genuine friends, who in my own time of weakness and despair, they so generously give of their own selves to give me strength. I cannot even begin to thank them.

In the end, the appeal was filed at the last possible minute of the court deadline. Although it was not perfect, it was and is surprisingly good. What was filed actually did not even resemble the “draft” I was provided with previously. And now my hope has been renewed.

But a few friends actually were critical of the way I expressed my then overwhelming sense of anxiety and even hopelessness. It was even suggested that I was simply engaging in an “emotional powerplay”, perhaps to manipulate my lawyers. These are genuine friends who I know truly do care about me. But that got me wondering if maybe I was wrong to so openly and honestly share what I felt with my friends.

I do know that nothing I can ever say will ever allow those who do their best to stand by me to actually “feel” what I feel. So I certainly do not hold it against anyone when they just cannot appreciate the depth of my anxiety and that overwhelming sense of hopelessness that had compelled me to accept that even my own death would be a preferable course of action than endure what would become years of pursuing an appeal that I knew was already lost.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I do owe it to my true friends to simply keep how I feel to myself. A big part of being condemned to death is the never-ending rollercoaster ride through the extreme ends of my emotions. But no matter how much they might care, they cannot understand what I feel. Nor do they understand that there will be times that I need my friends the most.

My experience is not unique to me, but common to all of us who are condemned. So whether I was right or wrong, I thank my true friends for carrying me through that darkness when my own strength failed me. It is through my friends that my own hope remained alive. Now the journey will continue.

President Obama's election and what it means to death row

2008-12-09T23:56:00.000-08:00

Well the election is over and Barack Obama has won by a large margin. Equally important, the Democratic Party has gained control of Congress despite the conservative Republican Party attempting to label Obama and the democrats as “liberals” and “socialists”, like that’s a bad thing..

The question now is what will this mean to those of us on death row? Maybe it won’t mean anything as when it comes down to it the death penalty is about politics and especially in the southern states, where the death penalty is particularly popular, even those in the Democratic Party fanatically support capital punishment.

When asked about the death penalty months ago President Obama made it clear that he does support the death penalty, although he qualified that response with his belief that it should be ‘fairly” administered. As a state senator from Illinois, President Obama is familiar with the circumstances that compelled then Governor Ryan of Illinois to grant pardons and order the release of 5 condemned men he believed were innocent, while commuting the death sentences of all other prisoners then on death row in Illinois. So it stands to reason that Obama is personally familiar with how fundamentally flawed the death penalty is.

But what can he really do about it? Not even the president of the United States has the power to order the States to abolish the death penalty. President Obama cannot even compel the States to be “fair” in the administration of the death penalty as our Constitution gives the States the power to make their own laws.

However, if so inclined President Obama can directly make a significant difference. To start with, now that he will have a majority support of the United States Senate, he can (and presumably will) begin nominating judges to the Federal Courts that do not come in with their own pro-death conservative agenda.

President Obama is perhaps the most qualified president during our lifetime when it comes to picking qualified judicial candidates as Obama has himself been a Professor of Constitutional Law prior to running for political office. It can be safely assumed that Obama will choose judicial candidates who have similar experience in constitutional law.

Most importantly of course will be the probability that at least a few of the present US Supreme Court Justices will be replaced within the next four years. We can say what we want about President Bush, but he wasn’t stupid. The ultra conservative Justices he put on the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito) will be around for a long time to come. With equally conservative, pro death penalty Justice Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas, we know that at least 4 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices would see hell freeze over before they even considered voting to declare the death penalty unconstitutional. But even with these 4 votes, they do not have a majority. This is why the election of President Obama is so important. In coming years he will put his own pick on the Supreme Court, giving us hope that maybe, just maybe, the future Court will be more receptive to abolishing the death penalty all together.

But what I would like to think is possible now is something no one else has mentioned …having the Democratic controlled Congress repeal the 1996 “Anti Terrorist and Effective Death penalty Act”. As those of us familiar with the death penalty know only too well, this “AEDPA” has brought about more executions than any other act of legislation.

This law was rushed through Congress shortly after the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing that killed over 300 men, women and children. The alleged mastermind was quickly labeled a “terrorist”, years before the infamous 9/11, was brought to trial and convicted, then executed under the Federal death penalty, largely thanks to the expedited review process brought about and made possible by the 1996 AEDRA law.

The problem is that this Timothy McVeigh inspired restriction on Federal “habeas” review has significantly limited review of those capital convictions and death sentences imposed in state courts, making it all but virtually impossible to pursue meaningful appellate review in the Federal courts.

It has become increasingly common for state prisoners to find that they will have virtually no Federal review of their convictions and death sentences because their state appointed lawyers failed to file the Federal appeal on time. Inevidently this use of politically inspired procedural bars will result in the execution of innocent people.
The AEDRA is for all practical purposes a restriction of the “inalienable” right to pursue habeas review a death by default law.

Thus this is my biggest hope, that as a former Professor of Constitutional Law and a man of moral conscience, newly elected President Obama will now take a personal interest in compelling the now Democratically controlled Congress to repeal the 1996 AEDPA and restore some semblance of fundamental fairness back into the Federal Courts, and equally restore a basic safeguard against executing the innocent.

Political Transformation of the Florida Supreme Court.

2008-11-14T02:55:00.001-08:00

In coming months the Florida Supreme Court will be transformed by the appointment of four (of the seven) new Justices, giving Governor Charlie Crist an unprecedented opportunity to reform the Court in his own conservative ideological image. Governor Crist is a career politician who has spent many years earning the name “chain gang Charlie” as both the state representative, then a state senator before being elected as Florida’s Attorney General prior to then becoming Florida’s elected Governor.

Throughout Governor Crist’s long political career, he has aggressively supported the death penalty and has used his political influence to push for expanding the use of the death penalty as well as expressing his favor for limiting appellate review in capital cases. As the Attorney general, Governor Crist served on the Florida Cabinet for 8 years, not even once voting to grant clemency in a capital case.

With the unique opportunity to now hand-pick fellow pro-death conservatives to the Florida Supreme Court the manner in which capital cases are reviewed and decided could significantly change.

Under Florida’s constitution all capital cases in which the defendant is sentenced to death must be directly reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court. Additionally, although state post conviction appeals are typically filed in the lower state circuit courts where the original trial was held, any decision rendered by these lower courts are then appealable by the Florida Supreme Court.

Under these constitutionally established rules, to be granted relief before the Florida Supreme Court, at least four of the seven justices must agree. For this reason Governor Crist’s appointment of four of the seven Justices could prove to completely preclude any possibility of being granted relief before the state courts.

As an indication of Governor Crist’s intent to stack the Florida Supreme Court with pro death penalty conservatives, much like President George Bush has done with the US Supreme Court, following the recent resignation of Justice Raoul Cantero, Governor Crist announced that his first appointment to the Court would be none other then Charles T Canady.

According to the Florida Bar News (September 15, 2008) in 1979 Charles Canady graduated from Yale University Law School (as did President George W Bush) then went into private practice at several law firms in Florida before being elected to the Florida house of Representatives in 1984 and serving in that position until 1990.

A longtime personal friend and conservative Republican colleague of Governor Crist, Charles Canady the was elected to the US Congress, serving as the elected Representative for the district encompassing Lakeland and other area’s of central Florida from 1992 to 2000.

After proving his conservative political ideology in Congress, former Republican Governor Jed Bush appointed Charles Canaby as his “general counsel” during his first year as Florida’s Governor. While serving in this position Canady was instrumental in pushing through the “Death Penalty Reform Act of 2000”, which was passed by the state legislature, then signed into law by Governor Jeb Bush.

However, the Florida Supreme Court subsequently declared this “Death Penalty Reform Act of 2000” to be unconstitutional by concluding that the Florida legislative cannot promulgate rules governing court procedure.

Had the Canady-created “Death Penalty Reform Act of 2000” gone into effect, Florida would have adopted the general procedures used in the State of Texas to severely limit death row appeals, including prohibiting appeals based upon alleged new evidence, even if that evidence might conclusively prove the condemned man’s innocence.

With Charles Canady now appointed as a Justice on the Florida Supreme Court we can expect Canady to aggressively push for judicial adoption of rules that will severely limit death row appeals. Within the next six months Governor Crist will appoint three more new justices to the Court, ultimately reforming the Florida Supreme Court in his own ideological image.

Within the next few weeks, it is anticipated that Governor Crist will announce his appointment to replace retiring Justice Bell. Then in January, 2009 Justice Anstead will be forced into retirement under Florida’s law requiring retirement at age 70. Last, in March, 2009 Justice Wells will also be forced into retirement when he too turns 70. So within the next 6 months Governor Crist will have appointed the majority of the Justices that will sit on the Florida Supreme Court for many years to come. If the next three appointments reflect the conservative pro-death penalty agenda long embraced by Justice Canady, then within the foreseeable future Florida can become a mirror-image of Texas..

Death Row Conditions Challenged

2008-11-10T07:11:00.001-08:00

According to an article published recently in the USA Today the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has filed a civil lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, claiming that the confinement on the Federal death row in Terra Haute, Indiana are “cruel and unusual”

In the lawsuit, the lawyers working for the ACLU argue that individually and collectively the deplorable conditions on death row inflict punishment upon those condemned to death by the Federal Government in excess of what is constitutionally allowed.

To understand the nature of this argument one must first understand the concept of the United States constitutional prohibition against the infliction of “cruel and unusual” punishment. Although simply being incarnated in itself is arguably a severe punishment, the concept of “cruel and unusual” is subjective in nature and basically is defined by what the Court believe reflect societies contemporary values as to how prisoners are treated and the conditions they must live under.

Basic conditions of confinement have long been recognized under this doctrine. When the individual state or the Federal Government imprisons a person after being convicted of a crime, they take on the responsibility to provide for the prisoner’s basic needs, such as food clothing and shelter. The courts have also established that prison officials must provide adequate medical care, including dental and mental care and that prisoners cannot be confined to cells that are unnecessarily unsanitary and might subject the prisoner to the risk of health problems.

Confinement on any death row in America is unlike any other form of imprisonment as only those condemned to death are automatically placed and kept in long term “solitary confinement” for non-punitive reasons. The courts have recognized that temporary conditions of confinement that may be substandard generally are not constitutionally intolerable even if objectively deplorable – but the longer the durations of these deplorable conditions, the greater the impact is on the prisoner. So the fact that death row prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for many years, even decades, makes deplorable conditions constitutionally intolerable.

But the bigger problem is that very few courts are willing to even entertain any legal claim that death row conditions are “cruel and unusual” punishment. I have been on Florida’s death row now for about 25 years so I have long term personal knowledge and experience (please see www.doinglifeondeathrow.com ) In my personal experience I can tell you that the conditions we must “live” under far exceed any objective definition of “cruel and unusual” punishment. Although the prison is legally required to provide for our basic needs, they only do so at the absolute minimum and what is provided simply does not account to basic needs.

Here in Florida the state prison system has contracted a private company to provide our meals. These companies must compete with each other and whoever can feed us for the least amount of money wins the contract. As a result, the quality of food provided is at best barely edible – at worst, lethal. It had become common for death row inmates to develop food poisoning after eating spoiled food. Most of what is served is of such poor quality that very few can actually survive off the food we are provided. Most of us actually live by purchasing food from the prison “canteen”.

Of course this exposes the true motivation for the Florida prisons system to provide meals that are inedible. By law they must provide 3 meals a day, although the law also says these meals must be edible, whether they are or not is up to the court to determine, and the court in Florida simply will not even consider the issue. So the prison knows they can get away with feeding us anything they want – and by doing that they know we must buy food off the canteen.

Last year alone the Florida prison system sold prisoners over 100 million dollars worth of food and they made a substantial profit. If they are forced to feed us meals that are actually edible, then it will reduce the substantial profits being made. But what about those who cannot afford to buy food from the canteen? They simply must go without or ask food from other prisoners.

It’s the same story on all the ‘basic needs” the prison is legally required to provide. To meet their obligation to provide clothing we are each provided one pair of bright orange pants/shirts and a jacket. If we want to have a decent sweater, thermal clothes, pajamas and even extra socks, t-shirts, and a decent pair of shoes we must buy it from the prison canteen. Even here in Florida the winters get very cold (below freezing) so without the ability to purchase these “extra” clothes the best we can do is stay under a coarse wool blanket all winter and that’s assuming you can even get a blanket.

I can only hope that the lawsuit brought against the Federal prison will be successful and through its litigation maybe, just maybe, establish some judicially recognized minimal standards that that can subsequently be used to improve living conditions here on Florida’s death row. I realize that many out there advocate deplorable conditions as a means of maliciously making the condemned suffer. But the inhumanity we allow to be inflicted on even the lowest of the law is an inhumanity inflicted upon all of us.

Death Penalty opponents declared Terrorists

2008-10-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

With the majority of American’s supporting capital punishment and the politically motivated “war on terror” making it only too easy to label anyone who engages in any form of anti-American activity as un-American, it was really just a matter of time before some of these conservative boneheads running government started to label anyone who didn’t agree with their pro-police state mentality a “terrorist”

This week the USA Today released a story about how the Maryland State police had spent 14 months in 2005 and 2006 illegally conducting secret investigations against anti-death penalty groups and had labeled 53 people involved in anti-death penalty and anti-war protests as “terrorists”

These investigations were conducted under the direction of then Maryland state police superintendent Tim Hutchins, and only came to light because the former Maryland Attorney General found that the state police had violated federal regulations and “illegally intruded upon law-abiding residents” rights to express themselves. Now Hutchins says they “made a mistake” and apologized, and that they would attempt to contact these individuals improperly labeled as” terrorists” and expunge their records. (See USA Today October 8, 2008)

This didn’t happen in China or Russia – this happened in America. Incredibly, very few even comprehend the significance of this police state mentality. As a constitutional democracy founded upon the doctrine of “free speech” it boggles the mind to even imagine any police agency conducting secret investigations against law-abiding citizen then declaring these individuals as “terrorists” for no other reason but that they expressed an opposition to the death penalty.

Is this what America has become? We are only now beginning to understand just how destructive a generation of “conservative” right-wing politics has been. Under their “God and Country” mantra, these elitists such as the Bush dynasty have sold America out, and transferred what was once the model of human rights into what it is today.

As the rich got richer, the middle class became increasingly burdened with both private and public debts. When Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981 the total debt our Federal government owed was about 500 Billion dollars – now only a generation later the entire economic system is on the verge of total collapse and America now owes more than 10 Trillion dollars, with almost 6 Trillion dollars attributed to just the present Bush administration. And before he is run out of office it will undoubtedly go even higher.

And what do we have to show for all that debt? Our public schools and transportation infrastructure is in a shambles. Many states now spend just as much, if not more, money on maintaining the ever-growing prison systems as they do education. In recent years states such as California, Texas and Florida have actually cut funding for public education to pay for expanding their prison systems.

Even with everything that America stands for - the very foundation of our fundamental belief in a constitutional democracy built upon the beliefs that “we, the people” control government – now falling down around us like a house of cards, too many Americans still refuse to see it.

Our sons and our brothers are now fighting a war that we cannot win, giving their lives in vain because the arrogance of an elected President deliberately lied to the American people and invaded Iraq on the pretence that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorists. Now we know this was not true, but there is no easy way out.

Under the Bush administration we have used our military to invade two sovereign countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) with the specific intent to overthrow their governments and install a government we wanted in place – yet nobody seems to be bothered by the significance of that action. But when Russia sent its troops into neighboring Georgia, after being deliberately provoked, the Bush administration labeled Russia an evil empire and threatened to resurrect the “cold war”

Under the Imperial Dynasty of the Bush administration we declared the Geneva Convention inapplicable to us as we began to systematically torture and imprison those labeled as “enemy combatants”, denying them even the most basic rights – and then declaring that they will be provided a “military trial” before hand-picked officers who will then adjudicate them guilty and sentence these “terrorists” to death.

And now we learn that a state police agency within a stones throw of our capital in Washington has declared private citizen to be “terrorists” for no other reason but that they dared to express their moral opposition against the death penalty. This is the America we have become and nobody cares.

The Execution of Richard Henyard

2008-10-20T22:06:00.000-07:00

Last night they executed Richard Henyard. Although I didn’t personally know him, his death still bothered me. For almost a quarter of a century I have been on Florida’s death row myself and through these years there have been many men whom I personally knew led to their own death. But since we are all kept in “solitary confinement”, effectively segregated from the many others who are also condemned, it is not so unusual that although Henyard had been here for over ten years, I never got to know him.

That is only a small part of what bothers me. I know only too well just how completely isolated each of us here can feel when we are cut off from all our family and what friends we had before we came to prison. I know that for one reason or another, this place has a way of alienating the condemned. That outside world just slowly drifts further and further away as the years slowly pass by, each day bringing us closer to that last day.

But it bothers me that in the small world we call “death row” one of us can live among us and yet not be known by most of us. If those of us who are also condemned do not know those who are put to death from among our own ranks, then it stands to reason that it would be so much easier for someone among us to also be forgotten by society.

Henyard was deliberately chosen to be executed. What does that say about the mental process at work that decides who should live and who should die? This was the second execution ordered by Governor “Chain Gang” Charlie Crist since he took office last year. Both Richard Henyard and Mark Schwab before him were deliberately selected from among many who had already exhausted their appeals. Not because a jury decided that Henyard and Schwab were somehow more worthy of being executed than the dozens others also considered “death warrant eligible”, but because the Governor himself has proclaimed that those convicted and condemned to death for commiting a crime against a child are his first priority.

Of course, this deliberate selection process has more to do with politics then it does “justice”, but am I the only one bothered by how politics can only too easily decide who will live and who will die? Like so many others, I don’t care much for anyone who would prey upon an innocent child. Even here on death row those convicted of killing a child are often looked down upon.

But when politicians deliberately select individuals for execution because of the specific nature of their crime, then at what point do we, as a society, cross the line from carrying out “justice”, to advocating lynch mob vengeance? Shouldn’t our highest elected officials, such as Governor Crist , be above shamelessly using his power to play vigilante?

As yesterday passed I had a hard time finding out if Henyard was still scheduled. I know that they had his execution scheduled for 6:00 pm last night, but none of the local news stations mentioned it. Only later did I finally hear a report that said Henyard’s execution had been delayed for two hours as the US Supreme Court considered his last appeal. But at 8:00 pm last night they carried out the state-sanctioned execution of Richard henyard.

This means that in the final hours of his life Richard Henyard was forced to anxiously await the uncertainty of his fate. Imagine if someone put a gun to your head and cocked the trigger, then at the last minute said ‘oh, let’s think about this just a bit more”. All the while the gun remains cocked and loaded, pointed at your head. And then finally, they decide to go ahead and kill you after all.

How could this not be the very epitome of any definition of ‘cruel and unusual punishment”. The prolonged anxiety of imminent death, the long minutes ticking away as your faith remains undetermined. Can any of us even begin to imagine the torment this man must have endured?

So here I am contemplating these thoughts. How can we call this “justice” when at so many levels the whole process to put even the most “worthy of death” (so they say) to death is carried out in an undeniable cruel and unusual manner.

Playing Politics with Death.

2008-10-10T11:37:00.001-07:00

It’s an election year in America and that means that it’s time to prove you’re willing to kill if you want to win an election – or help others in your political party win an election. It doesn’t matter what office you’re running for as the only way to win is to prove you’re willing to kill those that society says should be killed. Nothing gets the political juices flowing more then whipping the public up into a blood-thirsty frenzy them promising that if they will vote for you, you will kill the monster they’ve conveniently created.

As someone who has now spent over 25 years on Florida’s death row (please check www.doinglifeondeathrow.com) I know only too well just how political the death penalty is. Through the years I’ve seen only too many politicians run for public office by promoting to kill more condemned prisoners. And those politicians who express their moral reservations in taking a life to win an election quickly find themselves voted out of public office. That’s politics in America, where our concept of “democracy” has come to be defined by our willingness to kill.

But it is not just about the death penalty. For the first time that I can recall, those running for political office this year are not even mentioning the death penalty. At least, not as major campaign issue as it has been in the past. The issue did come up a few months back when a majority of the Supreme Court decided that putting someone to death for raping a child (but not committing murder) would violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Only too quickly all there running for public office rushed to condemn the members of the Supreme Court for being “soft” on those who prey upon innocent children. But just as quickly this uprising of outrage and rabid cry for killing others died down and
not even a whimper could be hears since.

That got me to wondering ….could America be evolving and moving away from the long history if overwhelming support for the death penalty? Could it be possible that today’s generation is finally willing to recognize that capital punishment is an abomination to the morality of any civilized society?

The fact is that studies have shown a substantial decline in the public support for capital punishment. In recent years as more and more men and women have been exonerated and released from prison (including death row) after being found to have been wrongfully convicted and condemned to death, many have been compelled to question whether capital punishment might result in innocent people being executed.

Most recently state legislatures have begun to question the cost of capital punishment. In a recent study by a state sanctioned commission in California, it was concluded that California alone would save approximately 110 million dollars per year if they simply did away with the death penalty.

Another legislative commission in Illinois reached a similar conclusion. Comprehensive studies of many states death penalty systems by the American Bar Association have concluded that the systems, including Florida’s are “fundamentally flawed” and rendered unfair and arbitrary. Even in a recent Supreme Court ruling (Baze v. Rees, 2008) Justice Stevens recognized that the death penalty was about vengeance, not justice, and consistently discriminates against the underprivileged and too often victimizes the innocent.

So, there was reason to hope that maybe – just maybe- America was finally beginning to see the light and recognize that the death penalty has no place in our presumably evolved society.

Or so I had hoped. But this week I got a reality check when I learned that Florida’s Governor “Chain gang Charlie” Crist has appointed his first Justice to the Florida Supreme Court. Although Florida has a large number of highly qualified jurists, Charlie Crist decide to play politics and chose a Republican party insider, a “conservative” pro-death penalty jurist (Judge Conady) whose prior experience was “general counsel” for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and was part of the political campaign that spearheaded the “Death Penalty Reforms Act of 2000” which was intended to transform Florida into another Texas by significantly restricting death row appeals and eliminating any exceptions for claims of innocence.

The only reason these draconian laws did not pass was because the Florida Supreme Court declared that the politicians could not pass rules governing the court – only the Florida Supreme Court can. So, now it appears that Governor Crist has decided to simply stack the Florida Supreme Court with conservative, pro death penalty zealots so that once he has control of the court, these “streamlined” rules governing death penalty appeals can be implemented. Again, in the end, it all comes down to politics.

Charlie's Web

2008-09-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

Although I am in solitary confinement, I’m not quite alone as I have a companion. It is my friend and I must be especially careful not to let the guards know that I’m sharing my cell with Charlie, as surely they would take him – or her (I really don’t know which) away, I would rather that Charlie be allowed to stay.

Charlie is my pet spider, although I suppose that if you asked him he might say that I’m his pet. I’ve had him awhile now, and this may surprise you, spiders really do make great companions. I decided to call him Charlie because of the classic book of “Charlotte‘s web”. I’ve known a few Charlotte’s through the years - my grand mothers name was Charlotte., and some Charlotte’s simply go by “Charlie” so it’s a name that could be male or female, fitting my companion quite perfectly.

When I first discovered Charlie sneaking in along the wall beneath my bunk he was just a tiny little thing with long skinny legs. We call these spiders “Daddy Long Legs”, which is appropriate. He was a spunky little thing and I had to chase him around my cell before I could capture him – careful not to hurt him. For weeks I had to keep him in a small plastic container and I would take him out several times a day to play with him. Slowly he became accustomed to my handling and didn’t try to run. But I don’t mind if he does run now and then as its fun to play chase with him. I think Charlie enjoys it too as when he does get away he just finds a corner and hides until I find him, then allows me to gently pick him up again. Sometimes I think he is smiling when I do, as if maybe he got over on me.

After a few weeks, I then moved him to a plastic bag that I taped to the wall between my toilet and the wall. After over 25 years in solitary confinement I knew that by doing this Charlie would build a web within the plastic bag and attach it to the wall. After a day or two I gently pull the plastic bag away leaving some of the web attached to the wall – and then Charlie would build a web in the newfound freedom.

Once Charlie built the new home I would catch small insects and flick them into his web. He really is picky about what he eats and I envy that as I’m forced to eat whatever they give me. But Charlie likes his food fresh so I must catch the tiny insect alive and carefully flick them into the web. Then I watch as they desperately struggle and Charlie moves in for the kill.

I must admit that there is something fascinating about watching a spider capture his prey. Some might argue that I must be sick to be fascinated by this, but why? The truth is that nature programs are very popular. I would venture to say that at one time or another we have all watched in fascination as a lion stalked its prey, then pounced upon it. And I watch Charlie.

Like a raccoon playing with its food, Charlie doesn’t move in for an immediate kill. He rather quickly approaches his prey, then, using his two back legs, he will entwine the prey in a cocoon of webs, spinning it until it has been completely wrapped and is rendered helpless. Sometimes Charlie will then move in for his meal, sucking the blood out of the insect before discarding the body from his nest. Other times Charlie will move his wrapped meal to another part of the web and consume it later, like a squirrel stashing his winter nuts.

I talk to Charlie too. He is really easy to get along with. We have never had an argument. Over time I have learned ways to tell Charlie’s mood. When he becomes agitated he will move his body up and down as if flexing his muscles at me or whatever else annoys him. I know to leave Charlie alone when he is agitated as he won’t stay in my hand when in that mood. Other times Charlie seems to want my company and will almost voluntarily walk into my open palm and then I will move to my bunk and we will watch TV together.

I’m not alone by any means. I’ve had many pets through the years, as have others around me. Some of the guys prefer to catch a small mouse; others will try to feed the birds outside the window by getting the runners to place bread outside the window. Then spend hours watching the birds feast – but never able to touch them or have them as a companion.

Perhaps that is why I prefer a spider. It comes into my cage on its own account thus I’m not imprisoning the little fellow against its will. And Charlie asks very little of me, while giving so much in return. Solitary confinement is about being alone, but I’m not alone as Charlie shares my cell with me.

But I know that one day I will awake and Charlie will be gone. I can only hope that when he does move on he will remember me in his own way as I will remember him. And when that time comes, I will then find a new Charlie that I can find companionship with and call my friend.

The Florida Death Row Advocacy Group

2008-09-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

Florida is known for its long hot summers. While most who live in the state easily find refuge from the oppressive heat in air conditioned buildings or cars such luxuries are not so easy to come by here in my world. On death row we live in concrete cages that become virtual ovens during the summer. I have endured 25 consecutive summers in these cages and each one seems to be worse than the last one. But then I can also remember that for the first 20 years or so we had no way to find any relief from the heat and humidity with at best minimal ventilation in our cells we would quite literally drip sweat all day and all through the night, awakening the next morning laying almost naked on a sweat soaked mattress.

During these summers we would try to find any form of relief we could. Most of us would spend many hours each day sitting or even standing naked over the toilet/sink combo each cell is equipped with, slowly pouring water over our head and body and savoring in that temporary relief. Other times we would try to obtain even small pieces of cardboard to use as a makeshift handheld fan, but then they decided that any form of cardboard was a “fire hazard” and the officers would come into our cells and take these cardboard fans. Anyone who dared to even so much as verbally protest or refuse to give up that piece of cardboard would find themselves on their way to lock-up for a month or so, where you have no means of escape from the heat.

Many years ago another inmate came up with an improvised turbine we would make out of cardboard then attach to the single small ventilation duct at the back of each cell. As the air was sucked through this vent it would turn the improvised turbine which in turn would be attached to a “pulley” made of old shoelaces or yarn or whatever we could find and that would turn a small paper fan mounted on an empty plastic sewing thread spool. It wasn’t much, but made all the difference to us and soon everyone had one. Then they came around and declared them contraband and confiscated them.

Part of being sentenced to death is being condemned to misery. Many who hold power over us sadistically invent ways to make us even more miserable, as if condemning us to death and confining us to years and even decades of solitary confinement isn’t itself enough to make us suffer. (please see: http://www.doinglifeondeathrow.com/) But a few years ago our pathetic existence became just a little bit better thanks to the commitment and perseverance of a small group of people who formed a group called “Florida Death Row Advocacy Group” (FDRAG for short) Most of the members had a family member or friend who was on death row and their objective was simple enough – to simply attempt to advocate for the human treatment of the condemned.

Through their selfless commitment and generosity about 4 years ago they made it possible that over 300 small electrical fans were purchased and suddenly the long hot summers didn’t seem quite as bad. As I sit at my steel table, that plastic fan is about two feet from me, directly blowing a breeze on me and when I think of all those long hot summers we endured a prayer of thanks goes out to those who made it possible for this little bit of relief that makes a world of difference.

In my world it’s only too easy to feel like the whole world is out to make us suffer. But even as difficult as it might be to endure the circumstances of my seemingly eternal solitary confinement, it’s that isolated act of compassion and kindness that makes the difference.

So in today’s entry I would like to salute those who have proven their commitment to reaching out in genuine compassion to those of us who are condemned and on behalf of all of us here I would like to thank them for what difference they’ve made.

It is only too easy to become one of the lynch mobs and throw stones at the condemned while wanting us to suffer as much misery as their cold hearts can invent. But for all the hate and malice that is piled upon us, it still remains that small act of compassion that truly touches our souls. So I salute those who reach out to us in compassion as they are the true hope for all of humanity. And I would encourage others to join them in their efforts by becoming a member of this wonderful group. http://www.fdrag.org/

Memorial Weekend Visit

2008-06-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

Few things mean more to any prisoner, especially those of us who have been locked away in solitary confinement under a sentence of death, then getting a visit from a special friend. Even as much as the letters mean, being able to see the person and hear their voices, and even touch them so that we know they are for real, means more than any words can begin to describe.

I know how truly blessed I am as I have a very special friend I’ve known for years and about once a year I get to meet her in person. At great expense she travels half way around the world, then puts up with the hassles of coming through the security checkpoints and into the depths of the prison all the way to the death row visiting park

How can you even begin to describe a friend who is willing to do that? But what makes it so truly special is that here in my world we very seldom see any semblance of compassion. Each day, every day we live in a world filled with hate and malice, treated as something even less than an animal. Sometimes the hostility in this environment becomes overwhelming – but inescapable. At every level our existence here is described not by the humanity, but the inhumanity of this hell that we must exist within.

Like a dog that has been beaten down his whole life, kindness from a stranger can often be met with fear of reluctance. So many that live around here have long given up on the hope of finding kindness in the smile of a stranger willing to reach into our world and become a friend. With over 300 condemned men here on death row, only a very small percentage gets regular visits. Long ago isolated from and abandoned by that world “out there” they are like that dog, their faith in the humanity of others now non-existent.

The past weekend I had my visit with my friend. For months, then weeks, then days I anxiously awaited her arrival. Because she was traveling from Europe, she was entitled to have an extra day, and then with Monday being a regular visiting day due to Memorial Day holiday, that meant we had 3 consecutive days of visits.

In the weeks leading up to this visit we heard rumors that the death row visiting area would be filled beyond its capacity, and many visitors might not be able to get in. To make it even worse, we heard that once the visiting area did fill to capacity, they would start terminating visits early so others could get in too. Like my friend, many of these visitors were traveling from Europe and other faraway places, just to visit a condemned man that they too have come to know. So we all were very anxious.

Finally Saturday (May 24) came and they called my name for the visiting park. I had already spent hours getting perfectly groomed, as anxious as if I was preparing for a prom date. The guards escorted me to the visiting park and I was “dressed” out in the clothes we are required to wear during visits, then I checked my hair (or what’s left of it anyways :)) one last time and pushed the door leading into the visiting park open, quickly scanning the room for my friend-and then there she was and we both smiled from across the room.

Not a moment later I was at our assigned table and she stepped to me and without reservation embraced me in a hug that silently spoke of how genuine her affection for me was. Not only had she journeyed halfway around the world just to bring a glimpse of humanity and compassion into my life, but her open arms welcomed me with an equally open heart.

The hours passed much too quickly. The visiting park quickly filled. And to our surprise the warden himself had decided to work the entire holiday, personally supervising the visiting areas to ensure that the visits went smoothly. Nobody was denied a visit and no visits were terminated early and we all owe one big thanks to the warden for that.

But the three days quickly passed and all too soon it was time to say goodbye. That saddened both of us. The moment came when the visiting park sergeant announced that the visiting hours were over and instructed all visitors to come to the front so they could be escorted out. We slowly walked towards the front door – knowing only too well that I could only so far – and then we embraced one last time and said our goodbyes. For a few more minutes she stood just inside the door as other visitors gathered, then the guard opened the door and let them out and they were gone. One last smile and a quick wave and she disappeared out of sight and once again I returned to my cell and back into my world so deliberately devoid of compassion, still marveling at the miracle that that compassion can be nurtured in a complete stranger on the other side of the world and no matter how bad of a day I may be having or how overwhelming my circumstances may become, I can so easily see that smile and that itself makes me smile too.

Until next year we will once again be limited only to communicate by letters, unable to hear her voice or see her in person. But already I am counting the months, weeks and days until she comes to visit again, just as many others here do too. But I also say a silent prayer for the many more who never receive any visits or even a simple letter from someone – anyone who might reach out in compassion and show but a moment of kindness to a condemned man, to whom it would mean so much.