Federal Death Row Journals

By Tommy

Monday, August 27 - 10:00 p.m.

Sorrow and pain. These two words seem to be the meaning of my existence. Not only to feel them, but to cause them. It has been almost seven years now since my crimes and the torment I live with has not abated one bit. They thought to punish me by sentencing me to death, but it is I who punish myself by fighting the sentence. Death is too easy for me. It would be an act of mercy. The only reason I still live is because I lack the courage to take my own life. I am a man of conscience, and being so, living with what I have done is more of a punishment than death will ever be. So I fight my sentence in order to mete out of justice, true justice. For each day that I live, each hour, each second that ticks by, is pure torture to me, being forced to live so is true justice for the vile things I have done.

Thursday, August 28 - 9:33 p.m.

A quick thought. If Wendy’s uses always fresh, never frozen meat as they claim, where and how do they store their meat? Have they built slaughterhouses onto every establishment? This doesn’t make any sense to me? Why do I even care?

Tuesday, August 28 - 4:35 p.m.

They say that some things should be left unsaid, how about this? Some things should be left unthought-of, or, some people should be left unborn. But, people will be born, thoughts will be thought and things will be said. Perhaps if some thoughts were not thought, than some things wouldn’t be said, and consequently no one would be born.

Tuesday, August 28 - 10:56 p.m.

It was a beautiful day today when we went out for rec. Unfortunately, it was canceled about ten minutes into it. No reason was given, but I found out later that it was due to a prisoner refusing to take a TB test. As usual in prison, the idiots (powers) that be decided to punish us all for ones transgressions. I will never understand their narrow minded tunnel vision in the way they do that every chance they get. Sure, I understand that to them we are just dirt, nay, even worse than dirt, human excrement. Still, they can at least obtain a medium of civility. There is no need to punish every individual for one single persons action. What they look for in such a situation, is for us all to turn on the one responsible for the punishment of all. In effect, to police ourselves. It is not gonna happen. Most of us are in a continual struggle just to make it through the day without tightening a make-shift noose around our necks. Especially the innocent ones and I guarantee there are at least a couple. I myself am not innocent, but I completely understand hopelessness, but I digress. I am not my brothers keeper, therefore, I will not do the guards job for them. After all, it is what they get paid to do. Continually punishing us all for one man’s actions will eventually just bring misery down on their heads when someone gets fed up enough by such treatment and resorts to drastic measures. In any case, another droll day ended, so I shall bid all adieu and relax a bit before turning in. There will be more disjointed thoughts and observations maňana.

Wednesday, August 29 - 5:12 p.m.

‘That old law about “an eye for an eye” leaves everybody blind’

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yet to this day, in a so called “enlightened, civilized” society, the practice of an eye for an eye continues. The ritual murder of people continue, some of who are undoubtedly innocent. All for the selfish reason of vengeance. Vengeance which accomplishes nothing but more pain and suffering. Now, tell me who is worse or more sick in the head. Those who in a fit or drunken, drug induced rage, on the spur of the moment, extinguish a couple innocent lives and live in perpetual pain and sorrow for what they have done? Or those who meticulously plot and plan the pre-meditated murder of a fellow human being for years and than sit down to watch it joyously as if it were a sit-com? There is no question that the former is horrible and drugs and alcohol are no excuse, though the human mind is fragile enough without them to begin with. The latter, on the other hand, is a conscious decision to sit in joy and revel in ones pain and death after years of plotting and dreaming to do so. Well, I wont point any fingers, I think they are both equal in a sense. I just thought I would ask the question. What is worse, and quite sick, is the ritual murders of those who have been and presently are innocent. Not only that, but doing so, despite all evidence and pointing to their innocence. When prosecutors and those too emotionally distraught to see reason don’t even care about a persons actual innocence, but just want to see someone die in the name of “justice”, therefore , and innocent man is slain, while the guilty party is free to kill again, if they so choose, and by doing so, perpetuating this senseless wheel of death all in the name of misguided vengeance, otherwise termed “justice.” That judges allow this to go on is even worse. When will people finally see reason and bring this senseless wheel of death to a halt?

Thursday, August 30 - 11:55 p.m.

I just finished reading the September 2007 National Geographic. In it was a small item about the restoration of buildings on Ellis Island . It seems that millions of Dollars of both state and federal funding have been handed over for this, how nice. Millions of tax payer money that could have been spent on homelessness, hunger, programs to help drug-addiction or better education for our children, goes instead towards restoring useless buildings. There are many more uses for these millions than the four I name and anyone, including one of my four, would inadvertently help to reduce crime. Spending millions on building restoration on Ellis Island will do nothing of the sort. What is more useful, helping people become better, more productive assets to society and thereby reducing crime or restoring useless buildings out of nostalgia? I would have to go with the former on this one. Let the nostalgiants themselves pay for restoration out of their own pockets if the choose. Tax payers money, however, should always go to useful reforms.

Also in the National Geographic was a long article on Pakistan . It says that in villages, to punish a man for cheating on his wife, they gang rape the wife. It sounds to me like she is the one being punished for her husbands infidelity. What the hell is wrong with people. That a woman can be punished by being gang raped because her husband cheats on her is just sick. That a government (a U.S. ally, I might add) sits by and allows this is even worse. What a wonderful world we live in.

Friday, August 31 - 1:01 p.m.

A quick thought. If a person is born unable to feel, hear, see, taste or smell, is that person able to formulate thought? It stands to reason that a person born in such a condition, unable to take in any stimuli whatsoever, can not formulate thought. Unless, somehow, we are born with some knowledge already in our brains. Are we? I wonder.

Later,

Who am I? I don’t think I even know anymore. I am now twenty seven years old, and life is as meaningless to me now as it was the day I was born. I still feel like an infant must feel. Thrust out of the womb into an unforgiving world of selfishness and desire. A world where most people gladly trample their fellow humans into the dust of bitterness and despair, as long as they can achieve their own goals, a world of hatred, greed, envy and lust. It gets harder to find good people every day. Hypocrisy runs amok. Our leaders are war-mongers and vile men who abuse their power shamelessly. Yet the world has always been this way and there does exist goodness and love amidst all this corruption. But, will what little exist be enough to save mankind from himself? Fuck it all, what does it matter anyway? We are all fated to die the moment we are conceived. The years we spend in between just seem so worthless, and mine has been more worthless than most. I have murdered, cheated, lied and stole. Yet in my heart, I know myself to be a good person. I can not equate that into a mathematical formula, logic would dictate that having done these things makes me an evil person, however, I know that I am not. I cannot explain the things I have done, and if I could change the past, I would. That is impossible though, as we are all too aware. So, I sit here in exile. Awaiting my death and entertaining thoughts of hopelessness.

Saturday, September 1 - 7:12 p.m.

As usual, my team disappointed me. Only this time it is at the beginning of the year. C’mon, how the hell does Michigan lose to Appalachian State. It is patently ridiculous. It is looking like they are gonna be the only team in the top 25 besides the loser of California and Tennessee , to lose. This will of course knock them right out of the top 25. With the Mets already choking in baseball, the only hope I have left foe any of my teams are the Eagles in the NFL. They will most likely choke as well though, as they usually do.

Later,

Listening to the House of Hair on the radio. I love the show for the most part, but I will never understand some things. For instance, why do special programs play songs that are normally played by the stations? Or, why do people request songs that they can normally hear during regular radio air play? Special programs should be dedicated to music not normally heard on the radio and should also ignore such foolish requests for such songs.

Even later,

Waiting for the game to come on while news play. It got me thinking about certain anchor women. Has anyone seen Robin Meade on CNN. I don’t know what it is, but she is totally hot! What a beautiful woman. So is the entertainment woman Adrianna, wow! Anyway, that was just a quick thought.

Later still,

I have always wondered why people assume that the apple is the forbidden fruit that Eve partook of and fed to Adam. At least an apple is what is usually shown when that particular scenario is referred to. Now the Bible says “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat.” It says tree not trees, so it is singular. Meaning there is only one such tree. Since there is only on such tree, and the Garden was closed off when Adam and Eve were booted out of Eden , it stands to reason that the apple is not the fruit. Unless of course, they shat out apple seeds which started to grow. I guess it is plausible, who knows.

Sometime close to midnight,

Rage Against the Machine’s version of Bruce Springsteen’s, The Ghost of Tom Toad is an amazing song. For those of you wondering who Tom Toad is. He is a character from a book called The Grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck. I highly recommend his books.

Yes, I said books. I realize that in this golden age of high speed information due to the internet, that reading is a vanishing hobby. Aside from Harry Potter anyway. Seriously, people should read more, because when King George starts burning books, you are going to wish you did.

Ha, those two short paragraphs were my attempts at being pedantic and facetious. I know I can usually pull of the latter, but I am not so sure of the former. I think it is sufficiently pedantic. Anyway, time to go watch Bleach.

Sunday, September 2 - 4:26 a.m.

Sleep eludes me yet again this night, now morning. It happens more often than not. I don’t know what the answer to it is. I know what the problem is. While my body may be tired, my mind is restless again. I can not clear my head at all in order to sleep. Stray thoughts just keep popping up and I follow them along until another catches my fancy. They are mostly about the past. Things I have done, both right and wrong. Things I could have and should have done differently, and things I could be doing right now if I had not have been such a fool in my life. I can’t seem to let this shit go, no matter how much I try to or want to. These ghosts just wont leave me. I usually find myself thinking of the names of ten songs, or names or something else, beginning in each letter of the alphabet in order to tire out my mind and drive it to sleep. This seems to work. I rarely make it to the letter I. It is certainly an interesting exercise, whatever works, I guess.

Well, today will cap off a week of keeping a journal in my life. As whoever reads this can see, I am not very good at it. The problem is that when I go to write most of the time, my restless mind all of a sudden becomes blank. It is very strange and it makes me more than a little angry. I have always been a person of few words though I have gotten better at my end of conversation in the past couple of years, but I am still not very good at it. The thing is, I am very comfortable inside my own head and most people I can either take or leave. I do try to be polite and engage others in conversation, but at some point it falls into one of those uncomfortable silences you hear so much about. It is not uncomfortable for me, I enjoy silence, but other people start to squirm, usually quite visibly. I can’t help it though. My whole life I have barely had anyone to talk so I have never been very good with other. Trust is a foreign concept to me, it was sucked out of me at an early age. Violence is all I have ever really known in life, it was all I was ever thought growing up. I don’t care what anyone says either, we are all products of our environment. How we are brought up is usually how we will be. Some escape it, but not many. I tried very hard to, but I have obviously failed. Sometimes, most times actually, I find myself wishing I was never born. Not out of piteous or sorrowful woe is me feelings for myself. I have neither pitied nor felt sorry for myself a day in my life. No, I find myself feeling this way because the world is just a horrible place and instead of doing anything to change it, I have contributed to it. My own contributions are a mere footnote at best, but I have contributed and I hate myself for it. What’s more is that human beings have this innate desire to atone for their wrongs. Whether we are born with it, or it was somehow placed there through centuries of indoctrination by organized religions is a question I can’t answer. I only know it exists, at least in most people. I have it, yet I know that there is absolutely nothing that I can ever do to atone for my wrongs. It eats at my mind that I have done these things and have no recourse to make them better. Who knows, maybe the idea of re-incarnation will hold true and I will get another chance at life. One can only hope so and that if I do I will do better next time around. One can only hope.

It is funny the things you find yourself missing after being cut off from the world for any significant period of time. Things that on a daily basis while you are free, are so inconsequential that you don’t even notice them anymore. Like simple walking down the street, for example. How I would love to be able to just walk through the city like I used to. Listening to some music and taking life as you pass it by. Or feel the grass. I have not felt grass or touched a tree in so long. Nor have I been able to stare at the night sky and just gaze at the stars. There is so much more, but you get my point. We humans take everything for granted, but we only realize it once it is too late. As they say “You don’t know what you got, till it’s gone.” That saying is too true. Well, guess I’m gonna try to get some sleep.

Sunday, September 2 - 10:13 a.m.

I am still awake, and haven’t slept in 20 hours or so. I just came in from rec. It was a gorgeous day out. The temperature is starting to lessen now as we head into fall and the sky was blue. The only problem is that damn wall and the lovely cages. It got me thinking. I have heard people talk about the elephant in the middle of the room, and how he is ignored. We, however, carry our elephant on our backs. A little hard to ignore.

Waking up every morning to the stark reality of life gone astray, alone, in a cell, with no hope of freedom or life, is a form of torture that can only have been devised in the very bowels of Hell. I realize that in this cold place of death, are many good people. People who after years of torment in the outside world have succumbed to the demon within. We all possess the capacity for violence, yet only a few are overtaken by it. Many of us fight our whole lives to best this demon, but still loose. So many years of built up pain that have smoldered into rage so blistering with no outlet to relieve it, will eventually erupt. When it does, woe to all who get in the way, for a person in this condition is never fully aware of his or her actions. When this rage bursts forth, a supernova of startling intensity obliterates all in its path. When it finally burns away, that person is left standing in the ashes of his or her life and can never go back. When the realization of what they have done finally intrudes upon their consciousness, a self loathing so deep worms its way into their very soul and takes hold with an iron grip. Not a day goes by that they are not haunted. By their actions. By the lives they have destroyed, they don’t know the reason why. All they know is, that by their actions, when this spectre overcomes all that they are for whatever amount of time it takes to burn away, they have taken away that which can never be returned, life. The blood on their hands become acid eating away at their sanity, in this cold place of death, where they have consigned themselves to a living tomb in a far corner of Hell. I am one of these people, and there are many like me. Have any of you ever wondered, or ever cared to know what goes through such a persons mind after committing such inexplicable acts of horror? I doubt it. Others tend to forget that we are people as well, though we may have done monstrous things. The things we have done affect us in ways you can never imagine. Sometimes fundamentally changing a person so deeply that they become another person entirely. Not another personality, but a new being reshaped by the fires of their own hell, to become someone new.

I can never truly explain to you how I feel about what I have done. There exist no words, in any language that can adequately convey how I feel inside. I wish that those who need to know, or care to, could somehow tap into my being and feel it for themselves, so that they could know the truth of my sorrow before I die. It is a feeling felt throughout my whole body. It is mental, physical and spiritual, it is all that one can feel. Try to equate the sum total of all human misery . It is as if that has been placed right in my soul, right in the center of who I am, of what makes me, me. I don’t know if anyone can understand any of this, but I hope so, I have to get some sleep.

Later,

I got a couple hours of sleep before dinner came. I am not refreshed one bit, but I will try to sleep early tonight. Try being the keyword here. I have written what I could in a week, though I wish I could have written more. I will try to do better in the future when I write. I don’t know who, if any read this, but I am fairly sure someone will. I hope, whoever you are, that you can get something from it. I shall say farewell now, a week has ended and another has begun. They say “When a door shuts, another opens.” What door or doors have opened for me? And who are “They” anyway. Ora Pro Nobis.

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