The 4th of July

What does the national day of freedom
mean to someone inside the walls of a prison
who was unjustly convicted?
Be certain that its connotations
are vastly different from this vantage point.

The bright orange sun warms the cold concrete cell quickly on this July 4th morning. By 8 AM, the chilly cement that is my home has become unbearably hot and humid. The emotional turmoil that this holiday fosters deep within me begins as soon as my eyes open. These feelings are unwelcome, but they come anyway, like so many aspects of prison life, uninvited but unavoidable. The sensations remind me of those of war veterans I've heard about who have suffered the amputation of a limb. These men disclose that often they get the sensation of pain or itching in an arm or leg which no longer exists.

My emotions work in much the same manner, emotions that I thought I amputated long ago as a means of adapting to my circumstances. Yet, like the unbidden spirits who tormented Ebinezer Scrooge on the Christmas Eve of his reckoning, these phantoms return to torment me about freedoms lost, perhaps never to be regained again, ghosts that cause me to feel the fullness of their presence at the most inconvenient of times and places.

I remember my last 4th of July in free society before this nightmare began. It was 1990, and it seems as if it happened on another planet during some other lifetime. As I sit on my bunk and reminisce, tears begin to flow freely and involuntarily, because it is a hint of the joy of the past that constitutes the main ingredient of this present pain. That Independence Day represented the quintessential joining of positive emotions and material progress in my life. My youngest son, Jerome, and I traveled by car from Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington during my two week vacation. It was memorable because it gave me an opportunity to spend an unlimited amount of time with my 14 year old son. His mother and I had divorced five years earlier, and the time Jerome and I had been able to spend together was one of the casualties of the split. The spirit of the trip was first captured when we loaded the car in L.A. at my ex-wife's home. My son and I agreed to an equal number of jazz and rap cassette tapes which we placed in my car's console. As we got onto the I-405 freeway in L.A., he would only listen to rap tapes and I to jazz. However, two weeks later, as we approached L.A. through the San Fernando Valley, he was consistently listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and I had come to appreciate M.C. Hammer and The
Fresh Prince.

On July 3rd, on our way through Oregon, we stopped at my friend, David Michael Smith's, home in Portland. The plan was for our two families to spend the holiday together and proceed by car to Seattle for the International Alcoholic Anonymous Convention, an event held in a different city every five years. This was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments, and David and I were thrilled to be attending a convention that would feature workshops and speakers from around the world. To share in the recovery experience of so many sober people would be, we knew, an unparalleled experience.
David and I had been close friends for over a decade at that point. Our first six years of friendship were spent in the radio industry in Portland, he as an on-air newsman and I as a disc jockey on the city's most popular AM station at that time, KEX. In the tradition of many broadcasters everywhere, David and I both had learned how to celebrate life to the extreme. We had freely indulged ourselves with beer, whiskey and cocaine during our off-hours, enjoying one another's company as we imbibed. Then, as they are wont to do, events caught up with us and, at approximately the same time while living in separate states, David and I concluded that the only way to continue with life as we dreamed it should be was to get sober. David got the message before I did, corresponding to the birth of his daughter, Devon, in 1984. I have always been a slow learner, and apparently needed a couple of failed relationships and a career which I balanced on the edge of an abyss for a few years to finally get the message.

By the summer of 1990, my friend and I were both celebrating several continuous years of sobriety. Our reunion after five years in which I lived in LA-LA land (Hollywood) was a real festive event in a deeply personal way. It was at once a reunion, a rebirth, and a victory celebration. There is no better stimulus for revelry than having survived a near-death experience, which would be, I think my friend would agree, the most accurate way to describe our drinking and drugging bouts.

On the evening of the 4th, my son and I sat in the living room of Nannette Troutman, another friend, looking out at the Willamette River and watching an impressive fireworks display. Nannette had been partners with David's wife, Sam, in one of Portland's largest talent and modeling agencies. Before I left the Northwest for a return to southern California (one in a series of fateful decisions that would eventually lead me to the dreary place where I now reside), the Troutman/Downey Agency represented me as an actor/model, and had secured work for me in a series of TV commercials entitled "Today's Chevrolet" which ran during the 1985-90 football seasons. I had received a number of welcome residual checks from that couple of days work, and often had toyed with the idea of pursuing a full time acting and/or modeling career. It became one of those ideas we get that come and go before we take time to bring them to fruition.

The next day, David, Jerome and I made a leisurely drive north to Seattle where we spent four additional days of joy, celebration and social networking with other recovering addicts and alcoholics. I cannot remember a happier time in my adult life. I was financially secure and successful. I was clean and sober. My three sons were nearly grown, and my youngest seemed to be no worse for the wear, despite the ravaging of my messy divorce. My appeal to the opposite sex was on the megawatt level and my social life was fulfilling. How differently I would have felt that holiday weekend had I known that I had less than six months of freedom left, much less the enormous prosperity I was experiencing at every level of my life.

On this sweltering July 4th morning eight years later, I sit sweating profusely in an 8-foot by 12-foot cell trying to extinguish the pain and the memories which won't be intimidated away. I am seriously contemplating the words of Nathan Hale who, in a moment of revolutionary fervor during the agonizing birth of America, cried out, "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" I am truly shocked to discover how true that phrase resonates to the very depths of my being. I stand and yell those oft-repeated words as loudly as the circumstances will allow without attracting the wrath of the guards. However, my next door neighbor obviously hears my cry for freedom and responds, "Right On, Brother!"

Today, on this day which most American's take for granted as the bellwether of their freedom, I am questioning the very essence of the concept of incarceration and the deprivation of one person's freedom by other men. Guilt or innocence notwithstanding, who among us has earned the "right" to incarcerate another? By what authority, privilege, or right of passage? I am assured by the powers-that-be that the "people" have reserved such a right to themselves, and have invested it in a few men of authority who are charged to exercise this right. It is within the people's purview, I am told, to protect themselves. But, I must ask in response, who are they being protected from? Themselves? Their fellow citizens? Or is the answer to this question so profoundly disturbing that most of the nation's fat and lazy populace today is unwilling to ask it, content to let others carry on the dirty work of imprisoning and tormenting their fellows, sight unseen?

The assumed right to judge and imprison another human being seems to imply, at the very least, that it is grounded in some form of moral code. There must be the force of "moral authority", if you will. And so I ask again, upon what does late 20th/early 21st Century America base such authority? This is, after all, the same country which virtually eliminated an entire race and culture of native Americans through trickery, thievery and murder. I must presume that the words ascribed to Jesus when he came upon a group of "righteous" men about to stone a prostitute do not apply to modern America. What was it he said? "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone".

If what happened to countless native American tribes doesn't lend clarity enough to my point, let's add more grist to the mill. For example, the government of the United States is the same government which forcefully took the western third of the North American continent from Mexico, based upon a trumped-up war because the Mexican government had displayed the nerve to disagree with the American institution of slavery.

This is the same country which only freed their slaves a little over 130 years ago, but legally continued to segregate those former slaves from the rest of the population until the late 1960s.

This is a country which routinely spends far more for weapons of war than education of the young or the feeding and care of poor children. Weapons manufacturing and exporting around the globe is the single greatest source of income from this same "righteous" government.

This is the same country which spent untold billions of dollars napalming and otherwise bombarding the peoples of southeast Asia who had the gall to attempt their own revolutions against a variety of colonial yokes.

This is the very same nation which incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other so-called "civilized" country.

This is also the country with the greatest gap between the haves and have-nots, a gap that is increasing with such geometric proportions that there is a literally frantic effort underway to build more prisons, getting the cages ready that will be needed to ensnare those who eventually will refuse to allow the rich to get richer, building their empires on the skulls of the masses of oppressed peoples who man their factories, flip their burgers, wash their cars, mow their lawns, and play nanny to their children while they, the moneyed class, frolic in the sun with their latest toys -- endless piles houses, boats, resorts, luxury cars, computers and lord knows what other forms of distraction for their empty lives. The top 2% of the populous still owns 95%-plus of the wealth.

Do tell me, then; from whence derives this moral authority to judge others? Upon what foundation other than race and economic status does this supposed authority rest? Certainly not on any system of morality or spirituality of which I have ever read.

In ancient times, God supposedly directly appointed the wise men of the world, men such as Solomon, Abraham, David and a long line of biblical judges based upon the sole qualification that they were truly righteous men who led exemplary lives. Alas, we are not blessed today with such wise, morally righteous men. Need I point out that this stops none of the shameless men-of-power today who manipulate the machinery of government, law and business to their own ends? Let those who have eyes to see, see; let those who have ears to hear, hear.

In our time, judges and prosecutors are elected or appointed political pawns, doing the bidding of their masters, creating portfolios of self-promotion that will allow them to further their careers on the heaped up bodies of the indigent and ignorant. Guilt or innocence matters little if at all. Like the warriors who roamed the jungles of Vietnam, these soldiers of the system know that what matters is a hefty body count, not justice. And those bodies fir for sacrifice are to be found not in the boardrooms but in the ghettos. This is the origin of the old joke justice is actually "just-us", because from down here at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, the view is clear: justice is far from blind. It is for the rich alone, "just-us" who can afford to foot the inflated bills, the lawyers and their perks, the bribes for judges, prison guards, and all the rest of the minions who man the walls that keep the filthy masses separated from the rest of society. Rather than an objective process designed "for all", it is a selective process of slaughter exercised day in day out, by the haves against the have-nots. Today's judges and prosecutors are routinely bought, bullied and bribed into keeping the streets clear of anyone who does not have a clearly defined role the play in the economic game. By becoming fodder for the penal system, the nation's poor assume their place in the economic scheme of things. I ask the reader again: where is the moral authority required for the power these men hold over life and death?

Whenever I have raised this issue since my incarceration, I have repeatedly been pointed towards the criminal justice system as the source of this moral authority. Yet no sane or sophisticated man should dare make that assertion in public for fear of ridicule. This is the stuff of grade school civics classes, not the real world of bones and blood. Any one remotely associated with the criminal justice system knows that justice goes to the highest bidder. This is common knowledge in every criminal defense law firm in America. White America was outraged that O.J. Simpson "got away with murder". Innocence or guilt aside, the only point that mattered in that trail, that matters in any trial, is the money. O.J. had the resources to buy the best, so he beat the rap, despite all the odds. Usually, it goes the other way, with poor black defendants being swept away by the system because they don't have the financial resources to buy their way out. White America seethes with anger when the same game works on behalf of a black man. Too bad. It's your system, you built it to work that way. The only way to stop other O.J's from winning is to make certain that only white people have all the money. And I know there is as much effort put into that becoming a reality as ever, perhaps more now than in the early years of the civil rights movement.

For further proof of my contention, look at how the jury system in America works. Most Americans might be stunned to learn that a "jury of one's peers" was actually an invention designed to protect the gentry of medieval England from the filthy, unlanded masses. By building this convenience into the system, their lord and ladyships were assured that they would be judged by other nobles, not by the rabble.

The jury system relies upon a generally uninformed electorate who would have a difficult time spelling "reasonable doubt" much less understanding its implications as the standard of proof at trial. Juries today are selected solely from the list of registered voters in a given county. Statistics suggest this method allows for juries to be made up of people who represent less than 20% of the total population, very much in keeping with the original English intent behind assuring one a "jury of their peers". Race and economic class distinctions adversely impact the formation of juries that are truly reflective of the diverse faces which make up America. Those earning higher incomes tend to vote more than lower income people, so the voter registration roles from which juries are selected are comprised of these higher income people who can identify hardly at all with the lives of those who they are asked to hold judgment over.

Thus, juries are generally made up of middle class whites. Conversely, prison populations are generally comprised of poor, blacks, Mexicans and between 10%-20% whites. Therefore any moral authority attributed to the jury system has been undermined by race, class distinctions, lack of education, and limited access to resources, especially of the green variety. Experienced criminal trial attorneys will quickly confirm for anyone willing to listen that a well paid, skilled attorney can readily convince most juries of just about anything, without regard to trivial issues like actual guilt or innocence. Such attorneys cost a great deal of money. One of my sons was informed by a prominent attorney in Los Angeles, for example, that my case was very transparent, that I don't belong in prison. The solution? $100,000, pure and simple. If I can raise one hundred grand, I can "buy" the justice that will otherwise be denied me. Where can I, or most others in prison, find $100,000?

The changing attitude towards actual innocence is another vexing characteristic of America's prison system which no one wants to talk about. I've been told that in the early days of our republic, it was axiomatic that "it is better to free one hundred guilty men than send one innocent man to jail." This is probably historical hyperbole, but an ideal to strive for if not one to be reinstated. Those who understand how the system works will officially admit that conservatively, between one and two percent of all prison inmates are legally innocent. More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more. With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

In a country where the national prison population stands at roughly 2.3 million citizens (and growing), that represents approximately 23,000 innocent persons incarcerated illegally in America! Think about that for a moment. I tend to be more skeptical than not, and believe the real figure is much closer to ten percent of the total prison population, or 230,000 thousand innocent persons, people who have done nothing wrong, but who are too poor or uneducated to prove it, rotting unjustly behind bars as you read this sentence.

However, in terms of the moral foundation upon which the system supposedly rests, what difference does it make whether the number of innocent men and women in prison is closer to 23,000 or 230,000? One person wasting away under such an unjust system is one person too many. The system has essentially violated its moral contract with the citizenry. Almost weekly now some television news program or newspaper headline recounts for us the sad story of another miserable human being illegally deprived of their liberty for decades who finally is discovered to be, usually by some happenstance, innocent of the crime for which they stand convicted. Never once have I seen such a story told in which the criminal justice officials involved have had the decency to even say, "We're sorry. We made a terrible mistake. Hope you'll forgive us for depriving you of two decades of your live."

Where is the moral authority in such a justice system?

90% of the criminal defendants who are actually guilty routinely plea bargain their way down to charges which have absolutely no relationship to the crime. Even the innocent often plea bargain when the odds seem overwhelming. Prison (the dead end of the criminal justice system) serves no purpose other than being the money-making industry it has grown into. Let me assure any and all comers that, from here where I have been for nearly a decade, these institutions lack all sense of moral authority and social relevance. The society as a whole would be better served by putting inmates on a deserted island with no resources. The outcome would be essentially the same.

The governmental agency which oversees this dismal failure in the State of California is called the Department Of Corrections. What an extraordinary misnomer. The system incarcerates millions in the name of "correction", then systematically removes all of the necessary resources needed for rehabilitation, in the name of punishment. What "correction" is involved in putting many of society's most dysfunctional men and women -- the addicted, the drunk, the mentally ill, the ignorant -- into one location where they are thrown together with no consideration for what is to follow once they are placed here? The concept is warped by definition, a legacy from the dark ages which flies in the face of common sense when closely examined.

But no one wishes to closely examine this mess for fear of what they will find. And so, America's deepest, darkest, most afflicted secret continues to fester, like an unlanced boil, waiting for the inevitable systemic infection that will inevitably come, spreading its way beyond the walls of the prisons, no longer confinable, until the disease created in these deadly test tubes consumes the entire society.

I should like to invite the disbeliever to visit virtually any prison in America, and observe the men and women who run these institutions, as further anecdotal proof of my contentions. This sad collection of humanity are the dregs of our society, often no more well educated than those they are paid to cage. Civil servants with little training, and certainly no expertise in penology, this sorry lot suffers from low self esteem at the least, and often from severe emotional disturbances that make them thoroughly unfit for the tasks they are called upon to perform. Prison "corrections" officials are not tested on issues of ethics, philosophy, administration, moral principles, comparative religious values or any subject related to the moral authority they loudly proclaim and attempt to flaunt every day on the job. Yet they are allowed to make critical life and death decisions day in and day out, without oversight or insight. This is not only an abuse of power, but of the supposed moral authority that gives them the right to function in the first place, assuming that that moral authority exists, which I contend it does not.

The current political climate of a decided and sharp turn to the Right has created a class of classic political prisoners in America. In the 1960s, the title was first claimed by many in the prison system. Today, in states like California, the label is an accurate description of the people who are kept in prison in no relationship to the time prescribed for the crime or their behavior during incarceration. Former California Governor Pete Wilson routinely rescinded all parole dates awarded by the commissioners on the Board Of Prison Terms. During his administration, parole rates dropped from approximately 50% to less than 1%. The Governor's wholesale denial of parole to eligible prisoners was supported by no moral principle or authority. Political climate summed up the parameters of his
authority.

If the required moral authority necessary to deprive an individual of his liberty is not found in the judicial system, the corrections department or in the elected officials, where is it hidden?

Can we assume that it is within the society itself which created and empowered all of these social structures? Is it within a society where children have turned inward and now murder their own parents, teachers and schoolmates in an almost routine manner? Can the society deny that it created these children through the movies, music, home life and social environment in which they were raised? Wouldn't a wise, moral society assume the necessary responsibility for such atrocities rather than simply reduce the legal age at which these kids can be sentenced to death? This is especially significant (and hypocritical) in a society which increasingly calls for individual responsibility.

A truly wise and just society, one based upon firm moral principles, would feed and educate all of its children before buying another weapon of mass destruction. A society that denies its own children of their birthright in the name of profits is a society with no moral authority or compass. Somewhere within the history of wholesale genocide against Native Americans, of the enslavement and then racial segregation of Africans, of economic corruption, of social and economic Darwinism, and of the routine exploitation and abuse of the poor, America has forfeited all claims to moral authority.

On this anniversary celebration of American liberty and freedom, as a prisoner, I can feel only the kind of disgust one experiences when listening to someone lie to their face. America's celebration of liberty is a myth at best, a terrible farce and tragedy at worst. Not only do I lack the motivation to celebrate a freedom which has never existed, I feel no compulsion to assist or cooperate with those who deny freedom to me and others in the name of a bankrupt moral authority. I have been fortunate enough to experience life and a sense of relative freedom for many years before arriving here. I have traveled and enjoyed the natural beauty of this country. I have enjoyed a wonderful home life and the love of family and the respect of friends. I have been blessed to have earned enough money to afford many luxuries. I have consumed conspicuously, and tasted the difference between real life and life-in-prison. Life in prison is a denial of the life force, of all that we aspire to, as we reach for our higher nature. Therefore, on this holiday I loudly proclaim, "Give me liberty, or give me death, by any means necessary."