08/31/02
DOJ: A minimum of 80,000 innocent citizens in prison.

Do you know that of 361 cases that have been reversed for gross prosecutorial misconduct in the past 14 years not one prosecutor has been disciplined for those actions?

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Bureau of Justice statistics (go online and check it out), states that while the accepted figure of 5% innocent in prison in this nation is a conservative figure, the real figures they show are 4% federal prisoners, and between 8% and 12% of state prisoner?s are either actually or factually innocent. There are more than 1.6 million prisoners in both State and Federal prisons in this nation. Even at 5%, there are a minimum of 80,000 innocent citizens languishing in this nation?s prisons as you read this article. All prisoners do not claim they are innocent. But by disseminating the disinformation "all" prisoners say they are innocent, the government cause the public to ignore that 5% who claim, or can prove they are. By portraying all prisoners as the "boy who cried wolf," the government ensures the few who have a wolf at the door will be ignored. The government considers these innocent in prison as collateral damage. They are simply the cost of enforcing law and order. Divorced, all their savings and assets consumed by lawyers, tired and angry, they sit on steel bunks, like I am right now, staring at the concrete blocks in the walls of their cells.

Most cannot prove their innocence. Many cannot even read and write well enough to communicate their plight in a meaningful manner. They are dependent on jailhouse lawyers. Most of those are interested only in taking whatever cigarettes they can get from them while giving them false hope. Most jailhouse lawyers are not worth the powder to blow them away. But there are a few good jailhouse lawyers. You will never see them interviewed on TV, or read about them in the newspaper. The ones you do see are the idiots who are hand picked by the Warden to meet with reporters and the press, if that. A lot of the good ones end up in places like Pelican Bay, or Youngstown -the new SuperMax prisons. Not because of being physically dangerous, or predators, but because they had the audacity to tell the truth in a court, because, like me, they stood up for those in here that are falsely convicted, or because they helped a man beaten by sadistic prison guards for the fun of it bring a lawsuit.

Why, in the year 2001, is there no court, no paper, no action, where an innocent person can go to prove his innocence, and be released from this manmade hell on Earth. Neither I, nor the men described in part 3 have DNA evidence, because there is no evidence to test. My identity was not in issue at my trial. All that was in issue was whether or not my accuser, now a woman, was lying. Why would she lie? I don't know. Maybe because I dumped her mother to marry another woman, not once, but twice. The second time was when she first made these accusations to my wife, and thus caused my wife to file for divorce. After a long and bitter battle I lost custody of my children. I called and confronted her and her mother over the false allegations she had made, and asked that they tell my wife the truth. It was three days later I was arrested on these charges. Coincidentally, on my sixth anniversary. Why? Maybe she was afraid of me because when I called I was madder than hell. Or, maybe it has something to do with the fact and underlying problems surrounding her being under psychiatric care since she was seven years old. I honestly don't know.

But what I do know is it is impossible for me to be two places, 4,000 miles apart, at the same time, as I have now proven. What I do know is I am innocent, have indisputable evidence to prove my innocence, and that I have no where to take that proof and be heard.

I'm 49 years old (as I write this). My first parole board hearing is scheduled for May of the year 2036. The proof I am innocent has been thrown out of court without even being reviewed or discussed. I have spent over $300,000.00 so far in attorney fees, and will be spending another $20,000.00 within the next 6 weeks.

Unlike most in here, I come from a wealthy family, I am college educated, and I have an I.Q. that places me in the 99.4 percentile of the world population. Given an open door and the opportunity, I would leave this country and never look back.

Up until recently, I believed in our system of justice, or I would never have become a jailhouse lawyer. Up until recently, I considered myself as someone who would eventually prove himself innocent, and that I would be vindicated.

But now, I consider myself a prisoner of war, with all the duties and obligations thereof.

Justice Brennan once stated the prisoner's petitions of this nation were the first line of defense for the Constitution of the United States. That first line of defense has fallen to the likes of Senator Hatch and Senator Lott. The prosecutors, unchecked and unpunished for their misconduct by their brethren on the benches of the Courts of this nation, run rampant over defendant's rights with impunity. Fair trials, and the extreme value of the concept of innocence, have disappeared in the rush to "justice."  80,000 is the minimum number of innocent souls living a nightmare of false imprisonment in this nation. The upper end of the estimate could be as high as 160,000. That is 80 prisons full of innocent people.

But I know that doesn't really matter to the vast majority who read this. After all, it's not your brother, or your son, or your father or mother who is among those unfortunate few in the vast population 280 million.

But it just seems right to believe that we should have a place to go to be heard. It just seems right to believe if I write enough to enough people, magazines and newspapers, someone will see the value of what I have to say, and finally print it. In four years that has not happened. Maybe this time. Maybe someone will listen.

If being innocent, regardless of that innocence being proven after trial and conviction, does not matter in this nation, then the concept of punishing the guilty loses its meaning also in the larger scheme of things. If the government can take any single innocent citizen and place them in prison without recourse in the courts, then they can do it to you and your children also. God forbid, but it could be you one day writing an article like this one, or one or your children. One day, it could be you sitting here remembering reading this article and wondering why you didn't look into what was said, and if it was true, do something about it, before you were labeled as "one of those" who claim they are innocent.

The Free Press was established by the Foundling Fathers to expose government over-reaching and lawless action to the public that it would not continue to flourish hidden behind cliques of lawless elected officials secure in their power. Yet many of the public?s sources of knowledge are owned by the very persons who contribute money to elect the officials who are the cause of the issues presented herein. In particular, Gannett News Services and their subsidiaries, who have gobbled up hundreds of news media outlets, never publishes any letters from prisoners.

I saw the anonymous article printed by Playboy from the Texas prisoner last month. I thought maybe . . . maybe someone at Playboy would take enough interest in what I had to say to print this also.

Perhaps I've rambled too much in this. Playboy is of course free to edit it. I didn't. I just sat down and wrote what was in my heart. Even then, I do not know how to describe what I feel about all of this. Words are simply so inadequate to describe the despair of knowing I will grow old and die in prison for a crime of which I can prove myself innocent . . . and that no court will even review my evidence of innocence. This isn't the country I was taught about in school. This can't be what my friends died for in Vietnam, or why I hear Taps being played in my dreams to this day. If this is what is, then I have lived my life in a naive dream world. If this is what is, then I am ashamed to be called an American. If this is what is, God help us all.