Monthly Archives: February 2016

From Cradle to Cellhouse

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I find social science research so rewarding that I am seemingly always in data gathering mode.  This gratifying activity, as with most pleasurable things, has a downside;  in this case, there are times that I feel like a creep and a fraud.  One may query, what can be creepy or fraudulent about info collecting?  The short answer is that whether it is an inmate or a guard that I am speaking with, I can never let the examinee know what my position is, lest it color their position.  Consequently, what seems like a casual conversation to them is really a snoop session.

Yet, karma does well at balancing things out.  This is rural Iowa and oft time, because of my snooping, I am forced to listen to diatribes trumpeting the intellect and perspicacity of Glen Beck over that of President Obama’s, and I have to keep a straight face.  How does one juxtapose a blowhard who barely finished high school and a University of Chicago Constitutional law professor?  As usual, I have divagated.

There are two punishments in our society that much of my post-secondary writings prove me a passionate antagonist of:  capital punishment and corporal punishment.  The creepy  and fraudulent thing that I did yesterday regarding one of these punishments was to—in the words of my southern relatives—throw a rock and hide my hand.  I started a conversation with other inmates about the Adrian Peterson child abuse case, and once it was started, I blended into the scenery to observe and take notes.

This prison has a softball field and a set of bleachers, the bleachers are divided in half with a walkway splitting them; my observations took place on the south end section of the bleachers.  Doing field research on the south end of the bleachers is not inconsequential.  The north end of the bleacher area is unofficially reserved for skinheads, Aryans, a group who calls themselves “the Peckerwoods,” and generally anyone else who considers himself a winner on the sole basis of possessing melanin deficient skin.  The south end is an eclectic mix of everyone: regular white cats, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asians.

The seeming consensus among this heterogeneous sampling (I must be in my statistician frame of mind) was that Adrian Peterson was within his parental rights to “whip his son’s ass.”  Further, their parents had beaten their asses, and they in turn had beaten their children’s asses.  For about forty minutes, seventeen inmates—coming and going—took part in the conversation with the only variant being at what age do you cease to spare the rod, but all seventeen agreed that the rod must be levied.

Today I did some inconspicuous follow-up and learned that 10 of the 17 unwitting participants had been convicted of violent offenses.  Two more of the conversation’s participants had initially been charged with violent offenses; however, those charges had been dropped due to plea deals.  Yet another one of the guys told me that he was not comfortable revealing his reason for being here, which usually means that it is a sex offense.

The thesis topic for my master’s degree, and an article that I am preparing to submit for peer-review and possible publication entitled “Hey honey, let’s have a …convict,” examines how corporal punishment and other socialization factors are linked to violent crimes and drug use.  After writing my hypothesis for these endeavors, I took a preliminary look at my data and discovered that 60% of the persons who committed violent crimes had either one or both parents who used corporal punishment.  This suggests that there is a correlation between violent crimes and corporal punishment, but in the language of the statisticians, correlation is not necessarily causal.

Accordingly, as a scientist, I will wait until I finish the analysis of the data to offer a scientific opinion.  However, I will offer up that these preliminary findings are disturbing. It is also interesting that even with such a small sample size—seventeen—the group in the bleachers was still in lockstep with my earlier findings as nearly 60% of them (.588 to be precise) had been convicted of violent offenses and were corporally punished as children.

During one of the follow-up conversations, I spoke with a 51 year old, white inmate who is originally from rural central Missouri, but does not fit in on the north end of the bleachers.  My initial thought was to paraphrase what he offered, but I have subsequently decided to quote him.  He said, “Big Pip [addressing me by one of my nicknames], most folks considered my daddy to be a pretty decent man, and so do I.  He whipped his kids and women, and if they deserve it, I don’t see nothing wrong with it.  And that’s why I think that they shouldnt’ve done that to Adrian Peterson.”  Again, here is an instance where I could not let my true feelings show, I was forced to just listen and learn.

Sociological and statistical training notwithstanding, the empirical evidence and knowledge that I have accrued from nearly 19 years of continuous incarceration has been my best teacher.  That teacher has taught me that not only is the criminal justice system broken, but so too are many of our socialization processes that we label culture.  We are teaching children, at the most impressionable age, that conflict and disobedience is solved by force, which leads to my next seemingly jejune and sophomoric statement: violence begets violence.  Honest assessment will lead some well-meaning parents to the conclusion that they share the blame and shame of their sons’ orange prison suit.

Is Plea-Bargaining and Testimony for Leniency Justice?

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Is Plea-Bargaining and Testimony for Leniency Justice?

If you have read my bio or an earlier post, you know that I am incarcerated; a conviction in Iowa and one in Illinois.  Both of my convictions were solely the result of cooperating co-defendants who received lighter sentences to point the finger at me.  The fact of the matter is that in Iowa I did not do a damn thing, unless you count being a jerk and asshole to the prosecutor as a crime.  No, I am not saying that I was not involved in the robbery of drug dealers and the resale of drugs;  however, the ones that I actually committed were thrown out of court.  My real crime was that on each occasion that the prosecutor had to dismiss a charge I made it a point to let him know that he was a dimwit, who was otherwise unemployable, and would starve to death if he were not allowed to sup at the public trough. Exactly what a twenty-six-year old, wannabe thug would be expected to do.  That was a mistake.  For the case in which I was eventually convicted in Iowa, he offered me an out-of-court settlement of ten years with a seven-year mandatory;  I refused it, because on the worst day this was no more than a five-year conspiracy case that carried no mandatory. He ultimately ended up offering a deal to the people who actually beat, robbed, and terrorized the drug dealer and his family.  The deal was a ten-year sentence with no mandatory to “testi-lie” against me.  They accepted the proposition and all served three years or less.  Here I sit, nearly nineteen years later.

If I were to attempt to pay a witness for testimony this would be considered a bribe and against the law, but if the state’s attorney does the same it is justice.  I would have only been able to offer a witness money, which of course is an incentive for the unscrupulous to lie, but the state could offer freedom, a thing that some of the most principled people would commit treachery in order to keep.  One has to wonder if plea-bargains should even be part of our judicial system.  Plea-bargaining, although it has permeated the fabric of the U.S. justice system, may not even be legal (Lynch Jul2011).  The American “Founding Fathers” made no provisions to govern this kind of contract between the government and its citizens, in fact, quite the contrary;  they made provisions for all crimes—excepting treason—to be tried by jury.

Have you heard of Sonya Singleton?  She is a young person that had but one real shortcoming, she was loyal to friends.  Therefore, when she was approached by law enforcement and questioned about alleged drug dealing by an acquaintance she suggested that they do something outlandish, their jobs.  She would be taught a costly lesson for remaining mostly silent.

These investigators and prosecutors eventually got their man, who in turn struck a deal.  They wanted to teach this destitute, minimum wage earning mother, Singleton, a lesson.  The drug dealer would testify that not only was Ms. Singleton well aware of his activities and condoned them, but that she herself was in fact a drug dealer.  He received a reduced sentence while Ms. Singleton was convicted on his lies.  The finding in her trial was initially reversed as a three-judge appeal panel agreed with her contention that the only witness against her had been bribed, as he testified for leniency, which was in fact even more valuable than money.  However, the full federal appellate court reinstated her conviction.  Part of their reasoning for the reinstatement of her conviction was that such a ruling would destroy years of jurisprudence, and creates a backlog—someone would have to work.  The United States Supreme Court refused to review the case.  Plea bargaining allowed an admitted dishonest person to do a further dishonest thing, in street vernacular it is called “testi-lying,” that is, testifying and lying.  It resulted in a reduced sentence for the testi-liar, and ruined the life of one who was innocent or alternatively less guilty.

Federal rule 18 U.S.C. §201(C) (2) plainly states that anyone who gives or promises something of value to someone for or because of their testimony, that was given under oath, has committed bribery and shall be fined, sentenced to two years, or both.  Yet, politics and status quo, rather than law, justice, and morality continue to win out.

I re-think my own decision often.  Even given the serious nature of the crimes that I actually did commit in Illinois, had I not demanded to go to trial in Iowa I would have been home with my family nearly nine years ago.  It is a heck of a dilemma; either take the plea or exercise your right to a jury of your peers and face a punishment that is 500% worse than what is being offered by the prosecutor.  If a citizen is forced to relinquish their right to vote, it is called disenfranchisement.  If ones’ right to their privacy of person is impeded it is rightly termed sexual harassment.  If someone who is similarly situated as another, but is treated adversely different, then their right of equal protection has been violated.  With those examples being the criterion to measure freedoms and rights in America, how can we—in good conscience—consider  being threatened with excessive loss of liberty, freedom, or even life, for demanding the right to a trial by peers, justice?