page 13.5

"i'll get a memory and i scream."

the people who made “surviving justice”, in the reading list, are very professional so we tried to make quotes fairly exact, yet they still have their full meaning only in context. everything is a quote. the meager information presented here mostly concerns exonerees,

while pointing very strongly to larger patterns.

in boxes immediately below are some amazing facts, followed by more detailed explanations. they will have ABSOLUTELY NO MEANING if you don’t read the box at the bottom of the page, headed “lines from real life”.

missouri supreme court judge:

“are you suggesting even if we find mr. amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?”

state assistant attorney general:

“that’s correct your honor.”

on another recent occasion,

virginia attorney general:

“evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”

while:

two appellate courts ruled that “sleeping council” did not violate the sixth amendment.

the “reid model”

interrogations should be video taped.

the camera should go on when the light is switched on.
convenience stores do it, so its not a matter of cost.

a canadian judge called the “reid model”, the standard of interrogation in north america,

“a huge psychological brainwashing exercise.”

"a person can be made to temporarily doubt his memory and confess with no memory of the crime." – a psychologist.

i didn’t think i was going to prison.

just being able to have an intelligent conversation with judges and lawyers

makes them irate.

prison is just like a war. you come back changed, brutalized, not fitting in. he is a shell of his former self… content to hold a set of keys to his sister’s house.

[he] stole the kool-aid barrel… and it almost started a riot… it was the ugliest thing i’ve seen in my life. shots were being fired into the ceiling.

the innocent are naïve.

the innocent are too trusting.

never volunteer.

never think it can’t happen to grandmothers or someone just dragged off the street.

[if a district attorney can write a novel, say anything he wants and get away with it, they can make you out to be anybody. they’re always right and we’re garbage. it’s a staged competition, a crap game. all that matters is their record, how a case will reflect on their career.]

when the accused asked his lawyer why the judge allowed this, his lawyer replied,

“do you know why a dog licks his nuts? because he can.”

only three states require outside accreditization of forensic labs.

there are no laws concerning the construction, maintenance or even security of “property rooms”, nor for techniques employed or for training of staff.

it could be the corner of an office.

there has been NO SURVEY of the reliability of scientific testimony.

there is NO SUPERVISION at government labs at any level.

prosecutors and district attorneys fight testing, including of DNA,

for decades.

and will fight for years after there is DNA proof.

with no evidence to take to court, the attorney appealed the ruling.

prosecutors and attorney generals

as a matter of routine

fight motions by the accused or prisoners and appeal rulings, again

for decades.

its all ego and career and to heck with justice.

this is THE RULE, not “justice for all”.

justice = “just us”.

figure this one out:

the 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act disallowed grants to any federal or state prisoners , essentially eliminating bachelors and masters programs.

“pell grants” were created for low income people, incarcerated or not, to help earn tertiary degrees.

education is proven to be the one factor that keeps people away from crime, and that helps keep discipline within a prison.

as of’05 there were 2.2 million people are in prison. a conservative estimate, nowhere near the estimate of some in the judicial system, of a .5 percent error rate makes

11,000 innocent people in prison.

possibly 1/3 of rape convictions are false. this is indicated by (1) DNA testing and (2) the proven high degree of misidentification.

only thirteen states have compensation laws for the wrongfully imprisoned, and few are able to attain it because it is another whole ordeal of proof.

“factual innocence doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”

– california deputy attorney general michael farrell.

in ohio, oklahoma, texas, virginia and washington d.c. if an exoneree had plead guilty they are automatically ineligible. in california, new jersey, washington d.c., west virginia and wisconsin if an exoneree “contributed to arrest or conviction” they are disqualified. this includes false confessions – one of the leading causes of a false conviction.

compensation laws can be seen as “soft on crime”.

“the amount of time, determination, money and faith that is required to reverse a wrongful conviction is so daunting that only the most stalwart and unwavering can hope to achieve it. the mental equipment is not to be found in a book, it is the confidence and strength to be better than the lawyer.”

nobody, nobody has come out in public and said, “we screwed up.” not the DA, not the cop, not anybody. nobody’s even apologized to me.

both canada and england have standard reviews of excessive sentences and wrongful convictions, with the power of subpoenas and enforcement of new regulations.

guards are the nitwits who can’t pass the state police exam.

there are no statistics on the use of SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.

on may ’05, 10,297 inmates were in solitary confinement in california, - 6.3 percent of the prison population.

little evidence exists that solitary confinement has a value as discipline.

sensory deprivation can cause: hallucinations, perceptual distortion, anxiety, acute confusion, violent and self destructive outbursts, hyper-response to stimuli, difficulties with thinking/concentration/memory, paranoia, and panic attacks.

SUICIDE is the # 1 cause of death in jails and #3 in prisons. suicidal inmates are written up as “disciplinary problems” and often put in solitary,

where 2/3 of all suicides occur.

one exoneree, for being suicidal, was stripped, given a wool blanket and put in a cell with a broken window during winter, the blanket becoming soaked, for three days.

medical “care” in prison

in 2005 california’s prison medical system was placed under federal control. in florida an investigation showed that 30 percent of the doctors had bad records, including “malpractice”, and “defrauding federal insurers”. in order to cut costs, states are using private companies, an industry worth 2 billion dollars. one company provides 10 percent of the 2 million plus needing care. the new york times found “medical staff trimmed to the bone, doctors under-qualified or out of reach, nurses with responsibilities beyond their training, drugs withheld, records unread, and misconduct unpunished. one exoneree entered prison crippled, yet had his leg brace taken away, was denied medication, put on hard physical labor, and was left vulnerable to violence.

“felony murder” is insane.

felony murder is a very recently enacted law that says a person “associated” with an attempted murder can be sent to prison for life without chance for parole. there is no purpose or precedent for this law, but it is being used to fill the prisons.

you are “guilty by association.” nothing like this has been seen since the middle ages.

(1) people - the jury system has critical flaws.

people that don’t know anything can decide your fate: idiocy, greed and “a culture of fear”.

"where there’s smoke there’s fire."
"he wouldn’t be charged if he wasn’t guilty."
"the one thing is, you can take the man out of prison, but you can’t take the prison out of the man."
americans assume a public defender implies guilt,

putting at least 80 percent of the accused in line for a wrongful conviction.
in georgia 97 percent of death row inmates could not afford a lawyer.

they say, "a reasonable man would never plead guilty",

but you’re only reasonable when you’re in a normal environment. at this point [in the interrogation] you’re just defeated.

there is a common assumption of a criminal profile by outsiders, even relatives:

“they didn’t pick you off the street.”

but they did, and do.

[i don’t know why my wife’s friends would say these things. they never liked me. they were into drugs and partying and being rowdy and i didn’t want any part of it.]
my friend's lawyer questioned some of the jury afterward., and one said,

“we didn’t know what to do so we found him guilty of everything.”

a “witness” comes forward forty days after a child is murdered and after a 5,000 dollar reward is offered.
"i saw one case were a prosecutor was drummed out of his job because he dropped charges against someone where the evidence was not compelling. and that’s frightening – that the public almost forces someone who wants to do the right thing to bend the other way."

(2) police

the whole point of interrogation is to WEAR A PERSON DOWN, guilty or not.

an appeals court found the alleged confession invalid and his arrest illegal because there was not even a “probable cause’, a most elementary part of police work.
often there is use of the same techniques of interrogation for
victims as well as suspects
and there is a
coercive, influencing, and selective

interview style with CHILDREN - “believe the children” has been a rallying cry – but not when the children say they were not molested.

a major example: in a case that attained national attention, at the mcmartin preschool at manhattan beach, california, ray buckey then peggy mcmartin were accused of molestation. children who cooperated were praised and those who did not were unfavorably compared to those who did. when there was no indication of inappropriate touching the children would be asked, “where else?” the detectives sought earlier instances of abuse, and "found" them from before buckey taught at the school. young childrens’ desire to please any adult is very strong. imagination alone produced: (1) trips to the cemetery to dig up coffins and cut up corpses, (2) the wearing of santa clause and clown outfits while molesting the children and (3) molestations in hot air balloons and underground tunnels (4) beating a horse to death to instill fear. many parents took their children to the Childrens Institute International, a child abuse treatment facility, run by kathleen mcfarlane,
who had no training in psychology or psychological evaluation.

in 1994 a survey of 12,000 large scale abuse cases found not one to be physically substantiated. over a hundred people were convicted, and almost all convictions were overturned.

(3) media

the foolishness, really, the insanity, of all media - amplifying vague information when peoples' lives are at stake. sensationalism over all, is the rule, making the most of every tidbit of information and any wild speculation.

"if a five year old says you did it, you did it. there was nothing in the paper about them denying it, that they seemed perfectly normal."

(4) courts

in the mid 1980s digital fingerprint files started to be installed. DNA was first used to exonerate a prisoner in 1989. only a judge can allow DNA evidence.
in other words, some of the huge faults in the system are only being brought to light because of very recent technology.

only for those sentenced to death is it required to have an “appellate attorney”, driving some to seek the death penalty.

factors that can contribute to a false conviction:

false confessions
eyewitness confusion
biased investigators
incompetant attorneys
zeal of prosecutors
race
bad science
snitches

juries are picked for their willingness to convict.
the community is indifferent.

(1) police

police DO lie.
an innocent person can be threatened with the death penalty.
if a witness is a mother they may threaten to take her children away.

(2) eyewitnesses are critical to juries. – this is NOT RATIONAL.

in a study of exoneration, between ’89 and ’03, 64 percent involved misidentification by an eye witness – the leading cause.

factors causing errors in eye witness identification: (a) stress during the crime,
(b) weapons (by distracting attention from the person), (c) drugs and mental illness.

in large scale tests stress caused an only 30 percent accuracy in identification.
memory is malleable. verbal influence by anyone, and the attempt itself to reconstruct the memory can affect its final form.
groups of mug shots produce a “relative judgment” – the choice of the one “most like” the image remembered.
police procedures: “show up” identification, in which only one person is shown. in one case a person was convicted after being identified only from a moving police car.
race. the department of justice says only 10 percent of white women are raped by black men, yet 45 percent are black by victim identification.
the photo resembles the composite resembles the attacker –slowly changing the memory or its “acceptability”, yet [she] did not correctly identify the attacker, who was proved to be so by DNA.

(4) public defender case loads are three to ten times what is recommended.

while prosecutors receive from state governments three times the money of defenders.

funding affects:

training
investigation
expert witnesses
technology

between ’87 and 2000, 4 of 13 exonerees from death row in illonois were represented by lawyers later disbarred or suspended. in georgia a group of lawyers contracted with several counties to handle felony cases at a cost of less than fifty dollars per person. in washington, one county had a single lawyer handling 40 percent of the cases. in ’95 in mississippi court appointed lawyers in capital cases earned 11.75 per hour.

there was a sample of semen, too small to be DNA tested by the techniques of the day, but which was enough to exclude his blood type. his lawyer failed to bring this forward.

(5) in cases of DNA exoneration, 50 percent showed prosecutorial misconduct.

“we didn’t want criminal defense lawyers to just willy-nilly test any biological evidence in a case. if evidence hadn’t been tested, they wanted to be able to. we opposed [that]. a good defense lawyer would always make a claim that their guy needed a new trial… but, I mean criminal prosecutions are based on circumstantial evidence all the time... statistically, its insignificant”.

- a detective and framer of that state’s appellate law

at the time, california had a law that required prisoners and their lawyers to be notified if evidence was to be destroyed. without notification the state destroyed almost all the evidence.

(6) see above, in relation to eye witness of rape suspects.

(7) forensic science – flawed science and flawed people – corruption and incompetence combined.

there has been NO SURVEY of the reliability of scientific testimony.
there is NO SUPERVISION at government labs at any level.
a person may ignore contradictory data or distort the significance of the findings.

major examples: one forensic witness failed chemistry yet worked for w. virginia state police for thirteen years. he became head of serology in another state office – a course which he also had failed. he “essentially produced evidence to order”. in 1992, following an exoneration, a court ordered investigation found he had “fabricated or falsified evidence in just about every case he touched.” in 2002 a HOUSTON police lab was shut down after an investigation motivated by an audit showed every single lab technique was faulty.

these sorts of evidence are no longer legally acceptable:

hair analysis
handwriting
bite marks
voice recognition
carpet fiber analyses
tire tracks.

yet they are still used because of inertia - they were always used and are now not questioned.

in 1993 the supreme court (daubert vs. merril dow pharmaceuticals) warned against unsound science, yet

the defense ALWAYS loses using this challenge.

only three states, ny, oklahoma and texas, require outside accreditization of forensic labs.

there are no laws concerning the construction, maintenance or even security of “property rooms”, nor for techniques employed or for training of staff. it could be the corner of an office.

there almost no laws mandating the preservation of biological evidence after a conviction.

in houston, a large city with a correspondingly funded police department, 280 boxes of evidence were found abandoned, including body parts and bloody clothes, involving over 8,000 cases. two exonerations resulted.

the federal government in ’02 commissioned the national research council, which said polygraph tests showed no sign of being reliable. thirty two states have judged such evidence inadmissible and seventeen only on agreement between defense and prosecution. they are useful in producing confessions, so police lie about their reliability.

DNA testing costs – depend on (1) who is doing them, (2) the type of tests (3) the number of samples, and (4) if the evidence is old, improperly stored or of a very small quantity.

the cost can be from 3,000 – 15,000 dollars per test – FAR BEYOND the capacity of defendants, their families, and innocence projects and charities. texas, california and others now have laws requiring that DNA be tested, but only if there is a great likelihood of it proving innocence.

(8) in many, many cases the only or major evidence for a conviction is the word of an incarcerated person, while the unspoken truth is that most of these people receive “payment” in the form of reduced sentences or dropped charges. one person, for spending little time in jail after many convictions was described by a judge as “knowing how to work the system”. why should this be allowed, much less have its own idiom?

(5) prison

prisons are meant for suffering.

"the days when american prisons were interested in rehabilitation, in releasing prisoners back into society as improved, reformed individuals are long gone."

officials use gangs to control the prison population.

bad condition are the result of an “exploding prison population”. government surveys have found vermin infestations, bed shortages, lack of hygienic privacy, rooms filled beyond intended capacity.

in 1993, 43 states were under court order to correct overcrowding.

in 2000, 69 inmates were killed, while 8,094 required medical attention from violence. there three types of violence: individual, gang and collective. most violence is related to social structure, for instance snitching, failure to pay debts, and against those convicted of child crimes.

in ’04, the us department of justice reported at least 8,210 cases of rape or abuse. since the primary rule in prison is "don't snitch" its likely that rape is vastly underreported. one person claimed he was raped 27 times in nine months, and infected with HIV. a prisoner must prove “deliberate indifference” in prison rape.

how likely do think they are to succeed?

a prisoner tries to keep documents for their appeals in their cell. abusive guards might steal them or create an excuse to collect “property”, which is then lost. there is the very taxing emotional hurdle of long debilitating waits between motions, appeals and decisions.

“jail house lawyers”
the supreme court ruled in 1969 that, as part of the first amendment, a prison inmate may provide legal assistance to another inmate. this ruling was prompted by a case where a prisoner was punished for doing so.

guards are a MAJOR source of violence and abuse.

one prisoner is strapped into a restraint chair, pepper sprayed and choked and ends up in a coma for 71 days with brain damage.
in 1990s california passed a law that prevents a convicted sex offender from visiting with their own children. not just child molesters, but all sex offenders. GREAT, LETS DESTROY MORE FAMILIES.
"when the guards saw us fighting

they locked the door so i could kill this guy."

THE DUMBEST MOVE ON THE PLANET - education and its value

in 1993 the federal bureau of prisons and all forty three state prison systems granted an associates degrees, fifteen states granted bachelors degrees, 9 states and the fbop conferred masters degrees, pre-release prisoners in f.b.o.p., maryland, massachusetts, and indiana could get a ph.d. this was in large part because of “pell grants” for low income people, incarcerated or not, to help earn tertiary degrees.

benefits of education:

improved discipline in prison
diminished parole revocation rates
higher employment rates after release
re-incarceration rates may be more than cut in half

in the 1990s politicians denounced “country club” prisons.

in 1994 the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act disallowed grants to any federal or state prisoners , essentially eliminating bachelors and masters programs.

today 342 of 350 colleges programs were gone.

(6) afterward

some prison programs provide minimal assistance to ex-convicts – but not for exonerees, who are not entitled to housing, employment, financial assistance or health care. it is difficult to expunge one’s record. it may take years and much money and NOT SUCCEED.

ex-convicts are not allowed “section eight” housing assistance if their record is not cleared.

released prisoners are “institutionalized”, unable to THINK FOR THEMSELVES or interact NATURALLY. prison brutality destroys the soul. rape, stabbing, killing. PTSD, depression, flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares, paranoia, detachment from society, avoidance, hyper-vigilance, anxiety related purely to the massive loss of years of freedom, suffering that is impossible to make sense of or grow out off.

a third of a life may be lost while the world changes. the outside is so busy it makes you dizzy, overwhelmed. prisoners are released with no skills, no compensation, no apology in the case of exonerees, no ability to fend for themselves, dependant on relatives, too damaged to function. unlike in the popular myth, prison diminishes sex drive - deprivation, social changes, rage and despair cause suspicion and distancing.

LINES FROM REAL LIFE

police. to a twenty one year old, tapping his arm: “this is where the needle is going to go in if you don’t cooperate.” when he walked in he slammed his fist
on the table. “you’re young, your fresh, they’re gonna have you [in prison].” they would start and stop the tape recorder. it took a long time. they would
get mad [when I didn’t get the details right]. at one point the sergeant threw his chair at my head. those guys were really big. “now we know you’re guilty,
only guilty people call for an attorney.” his requests for an attorney were denied. they were calling my mom every day, “you got to get him to plead guilty.” they really wanted [another man also]. i’m coached before i go into the court room and told what to say. the prosecution threatened his alibi, his girlfriend, with charges. they told [the other man’s] alibi, his girlfriend, “we’re going to send you to jail. they’ll take your kids away.” the officer told a couple who were the victims of a home invasion by a man who later fired bullets into their car, “i can’t protect you unless you drop charges. if i lock up [the witness], he’ll just bond out and he may come back [and] get you.” this was done in exchange for false testimony. – from a written report. his elderly parents are found dead. he is questioned all night, with nothing to eat except ten or twelve cups of coffee. “my blood sugar was plummeting.” the officer says, “a polygraph is really reliable.” he learns from the polygraph tester that his parents’ throats had been viciously cut. one cop says, “we have a stack of evidence against you this tall.” they said they found a bloody knife in my pocket… bloody clothes in my bedroom… bloody sheets. he said, something must have snapped, i couldn’t keep this inside. he slammed the pictures on the table, like he’s got a winning hand, very graphic, my folks throats were cut to the spine. it was horrible. they asked me to go through a hypothetical, they’re not asking me, they’re telling me, i killed my parents. maybe i was in a black out. [he was a recovering alcoholic but had been thirty two days sober.] i just completely broke down and cried. i’m still looking to them to help solve this crime. i’m thinking, this must be jogging a memory. they started hollering, “we don’t want to here about [your day], we want to know how you killed your parents.” they tell my sister on the phone that i confessed. i was taken to a precinct house in chicago famous for
brutality and torture.
the finger prints did not match. witnesses chose other mug shots. before the line up the witness was told , “to pick number three.” police checked the prints through an automated system in 1989 and found a match but did not reveal the match until 1994, only under court order. [my dad] lived about a mile from the police station, but he was probably afraid. he didn’t want to go down there and stir anything up with the police. there was blood on his prison issued clothes that was years old yet was used as evidence. i was accused of raping a thirteen year old. when they arrested me i was going with my little boy to get chips and soda. they had their guns out. there was no evidence against me. my girl friend provided an alibi. [we found out later] that the police grilled the victim like a murder suspect, insisting she identify someone. the perpetrator learns of the false conviction and writes a confession, including crime scene details, yet police take no action. he asks about DNA testing and is told, “you’re going to make it worse for yourself”. i realized the police were lying during the interrogation. court. i can’t understand what he’s saying because i don’t know the process. i don’t know the language. [the lawyer] was patting me on the back all the time. charges were changed from first degree murder to accessory after the fact [for the person who implicated him]. he got two years probation. there was no physical evidence. later, witnesses say the accuser received 5,000 dollars for their testimony. the judge complained it was taking too long for a capital case. “i did not know how to read or write, or speak english well”. evidence was withheld, then “misplaced’ and subsequent lawyers were unaware of it. his lawyer never brings up the rebuttals he mentions. he never prepared before trial, and insists that

“homicides are won on appeal”.

there was no motive established and no evidence. two years after his conviction federal authorities phone tapped motorcycle gang members talking about how they murdered his parents and told prosecutors, who did not tell his lawyers. the attorney didn’t do any investigating. three eyewitnesses identified someone else. “they can manipulate, fabricate. he did such a good job [i could see how] i was guilty.” he asked the head of the department to run the prints but the state’s attorney general told him to stop, because it “would impugn the integrity of [that] office.” the first attorney walks in, first time he ever saw me, says, “boy, are you in big trouble.” not, “what’s going on” or did you do this?” i fired him immediately. the court said the children could not be examined by a doctor “because it would be too traumatic”. clearly coached children change their testimony. no one knows what was said in the hallway [when the prosecutor was unable to get him to say he was molested.] my [five year old] son doesn’t know the word "penis" but he’s saying it on the stand. they rolled right over us no matter what we proved. if it didn’t happen one day then it was another. those little kids were scared shitless. [he] had no record, not even an accusation. the judge pushed a jury that was dead locked three times to reach a verdict. [even being almost illiterate he can see that] the lawyer is totally incompetent. he addresses the judge, wanting a new lawyer. the judge tells him to speak through his lawyer, and that “if there is another outburst, we’ll hold these proceeding without you.” they brought evidence of my girlfriend’s sweat pants and my boots. it didn’t mean anything. why did the judge allow that? the virginia supreme court refused repeated requests to retest evidence with modern techniques, even after public outcry, newspaper publicity, and appeals from world notables, including mother teressa, pope john paul V and the italian government. he was executed. a man’s wife is murdered. at the trial the state says his refusal to speak without an attorney is evidence of guilt. five of six witnesses recanted. four said they were forced by the prosecutor, law enforcement and social workers to falsely testify. there was a confession from the real killer from one month before the trial. prison. forty guys in a twelve man tank. they’re on the tables. they’re sleeping under the tables. it was dirty. it was loud. the tension was tremendous. innocent, imprisoned and killed. there were bullet holes in the ceiling. i had to go through riots, lock downs, pepper spray, tear gas. i started seeing body bags. i saw one guy get stabbed. if you look at the female guards they beat you up pretty good. the other prisoners taught me how to read. [the place] was infested with rats and roaches. i don’t mean mice, rats. the roaches beat you to breakfast [when it was shoved through the slot].
the rats want to be warm so they climb in the blanket.
they knew about the DNA but they kept him for years. security comes before life. it takes up to an hour to shackle a a man who has had a heart attack. a man drops to the ground foaming. the guards take their time with the walkie-talkies. a great fat man comes walking slowly with no medical bag, [tobacco juice] dripping down his face, says, “i’ll have to go back for oxygen.” after slowly walking back for it he says, “i’ll have to go get another one. this one is empty.” i say, you can do CPR. he spits and says, swearing, “i ain’t gonna put my mouth in there.” we asked the chaplain why he never visited death row. he sent back a message that “we’re all going to hell, he doesn’t need to come over.”

[for those who want to commit suicide] they get the runner, he’s not condemned to death, he works there, he’ll swing that “tool” into your cell, a plastic bag, a strong one, for a couple of stamps. you twist it up and make a noose, then throw yourself down.

it took six months to get to trial, i’m told that’s fast for a homicide. well, we don’t feel like letting you out [of your cells] today. they couldn’t prove i’d done anything so they put me in the hole for nine months. a bare light bulb on all the time, it drives you nuts., so you cover it with cardboard. if a guard sees it he’ll knock it off. it just tasted awful, watered down. this guy ripped his achilles tendon, it went up to the bottom of his knee. they told him he’d pulled a muscle. a week later they sewed it, but it was too late. it was a basement, with almost no ventilation. just roaches and rats. i woke up the first night with cockroaches all over me. he was bringing in a quarter pound of marijuana a week. [eds. note – why is this so easy?] when the guards saw us fighting they locked the door so i could kill this guy. parole. i didn’t know how sarcastic they would be, how demeaning it was. as my lawyer said, i had gone without so much as a parking ticket. who on the parole board could say that? in california only people against a parole can testify, no one in favor. if anyone deserved it was me. educated inside, creating programs, running programs, stopping riots., no, one, two, three, four times. even the guards said, “i don’t believe it.” afterward. mistaken for someone else, he was beaten and kicked in the head, suffering brain damage and now needs life long care. his family became homeless, the children were taken, until his mother accepted custody. their mother
“kind of went crazy”
and couldn’t take care of them any more. that’s a picture of my daughter. she’s gone [dead]. when they shipped me two thousand miles from massachusetts to texas, she couldn’t take it. i wake up in sweats. its hard to trust [just regular] people. i had no emotion in my heart [to survive in prison]. i have nightmares. i don’t tell anyone. i don’t tell my mom. the first four years [after i got out]… i couldn’t sleep.
i’ll get a memory and i’ll scream.
the whole experience is always right there. i’m scared to talk [to my sister] or answer the phone. i musty have been killed too. he hasn’t been able to make a decision,. not whether to go to the bathroom, not whether he can eat. he’s been treated like an animal, or worse – its horrifying. you can’t feel much. you can’t see beauty. he’s afraid of cars because of the sensory overload [when driving one], the fear of something happening. he’s reluctant to get a license.