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Click the links below to navigate this page - "WEEPING MAY ENDURE FOR THE NIGHT, BUT JOY COMES IN THE MORNING."
"WEEPING
MAY ENDURE FOR THE NIGHT, (PSALMS 30:5) Seven years
later, sitting on Federal Death Row, l know that out of the most
heartbreaking sorrow and tribulations can arise new understanding and
strength. The unbearable transgressions that left me paralyzed and
pleading to die on the cold and lonely concrete floor has been forgiven.
God's marvelous grace is greater than 'any and all sins,' contrary to
what l felt in my heart. "For by grace you have been saved through
faith and that not of yourself, it is a gift of God." (Ephesians
2:8) Thank you for that precious gift, for without it l would certainly
already be dead from my transgressions.
Prison Walls are not a Barrier Separating Prisoners From Protections of the Constitution. "As Long as
the World Shall Last there will be Wrongs, and if No Man Rebelled, those The most
precious Constitutional Right a prisoner has is his or her right of
access to the Courts. Without it, all other Constitutional Rights are
illusory. Without distinction to non-prisoner litigants. prisoners are
subject to intricate procedural requirements prior to filing lawsuits in
Federal Court. This is because of legislation enacted under the pseudo
by congress to curb a run-on prisoner's frivolous lawsuits. The
undeclared motivation behind this Bill is that by nature our government
displays an enduring tendency to silence, or facilitate silence, those
voices that it disapproves of. This tendency is particularly pronounced
in prison because of its authoritarian structure, insulated and isolated
from public scrutiny. To achieve and advance this position Congress
enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act ("PLRA") in 1996.
Prison and jail officials quickly found this new enactment to benefit
them, twisting it to their advantage, preventing prisoners from gaining
viable access to the courts. Here are some of the clever ways they
achieved doing this. No Bill before
or since the enactment of the PLRA has been so detrimental and had such
injurious results on prisoners First Amendment Right to petition the
courts for redress of grievances other than the one astutely
orchestrated by the fine Senators from Kansas and Arizona, respectfully
Dole and Kyl during the 141st Congress. The PLRA amended, 42
U.S.C. 1997 and relevant section 1997e(a) states in pertinent part: [N]o
action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section
1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in
any jail, prison or other correctional facility until such
administrative remedies as are available are exhausted. This Bill has
severely curtailed prisoners abilities to actually receive a fair ruling
on their cases in Federal Court. It also caused enormous confusion and
controversy amongst both prisoners and the courts as to what constituted
conditions of confinement claims and what claims might be exempt from
the exhaustion requirements. The Supreme Court laid these concerns to
rest in holding that the PLRA exhaustion requirements applies to all
inmate lawsuits about prison life, whether alleging denial of medical
treatment, inhumane conditions of confinement, being subjected to
excessive force at the hand of prison guards, failure to protect claims
or any other alleged wrongs committed behind prison walls.
"(Emphasis Added). The speciousness of this BUI is easily seen with
only minimal scrutiny and the ulterior motive comes shinning through
which is to prevent prisoners from gaining access to the courts. Prisoners who
have pretty much fallen from the good graces of society are often
exploited for political gain. Political points are always scored by
politicians who are the driving forces behind legislation that appears
to be hard on criminals or crime. But appearances can sometimes be very
deceiving. The lonely voices of the nay sayers against the enactment of
this Bill were totally drowned out by the loud, fervor and blustering of
those who sought to suppress prisoner's First Amendment Rights. None of
the zealots, including the prominent Senator Bob Dole, could muster so
much as a scintilla of compelling evidence supporting this appalling
Bill. That is beyond the tiresome wailing of some of the most flagrant
and frivolous lawsuits filed by a selective handful of prisoners. Even
for the sake of argument if this legislation provided some relief from
prisoner frivolous lawsuits, which it doesn't, it is merely throwing the
baby out with the bath water. It is hard to find any distinction between
prisoner's frivolous lawsuits and that of non-prisoners, but even absent
that consideration this Bill has the proven propensity impeding
prisoners meritorious lawsuit from ever being ruled upon. In this case
it is explicitly true that, [l]t is just as well that justice is blind;
she might not like some of the tings done in her name if she could see
them.* And that is the case here! Senator Orrin
Hatch offered that the PLRA will bring relief to a civil justice system
overburdened by frivolous prisoner lawsuits...and will help ensure that
Federal Courts...remedy only actual violations taking place behind
prison walls. 'This is certainly a Pollyanna pipe dream where no
prisoner's viable litigation would go without redress and only the
frivolous would be quickly dismissed. Nothing in this case could be
farther from the truth and overwhelming evidence sustains that position. Under the PLRA
prisoners lawsuits are summarily dismissed over eighty percent of the
time without ever gaining an actual ruling on the merits of the case.
This is supposedly because the prisoner made a conscious decision to
bypass exhausting administrative remedies before going to court. The
reality of the mater is that prison and jail officials are keenly aware
that if prisoners are prevented from exhausting all available
administrative remedies then the prisoner will be foreclosed from ever
gaining a ruling on the merits of his case. Thereby, prison and jail
officials can literally run roughshod over prisoner's Constitutional
Rights with total impunity. There are numerous ways
prisoners are prevented by prison and
jail officials from satisfying exhaustion requirements through both
direct and indirect means, including subjecting prisoners to an array of
different methods of reprisal for filing grievances and lawsuits. So,
contrary to Senator Hatch's contentions that the Bill will actually
improve prisoner's non-frivolous lawsuits getting to the courts, the
results of the Bill could not be more harmful to achieving that goal. Absent the
skewing of the PLRA by prison and jail officials and the adverse results
of the Bill itself there are other reasons so many of the two million
plus crowded behind prison walls are prevented from satisfying
exhaustion requirements. It is a given that the majority behind prison
walls are of societies underprivileged. The majority of those have only
meager to intermediate education. Others are illiterate or suffer
insurmountable language barriers and/or both. Yet another particularly
disadvantaged group which is probably the fastest growing segment of the
prison population are those suffering mental illness. All of these
groups simply do not have the abilities to mount the procedural barriers
by themselves, as other more resolved and resilient prisoners do in
getting their cases to court. These prisoners must silently bear their
abuses, suffering without redress. These individuals deserve to know why
the procedural requirements under the PLRA are more important than their
First Amendment Rights to seek redress for sufferings endured behind
prison walls. For that matter, why are they treated differently than
non-prisoners who often also have lawsuits dismissed for being
frivolous. These questions beg answers. A case in point
is a prisoner who filed a lawsuit alleging denial of medical treatment
for a corneal disease he suffered and that eventually left him
blind. The prison rejected his attempts to exhaust his administrative
remedies because he did not timely file the first stage of the multi-level grievance
process. After obtaining help from another prisoner he filled a lawsuit in Federal Court.
Without so much as mentioning the issues of the litigation, the court on
its own motion dismissed the case for the prisoner's failure to satisfy
exhaustion requirement under 42 U.S.C. 1997e(a).* Government was
intended to suppress injustice, but the effect of this Bill has been to
embody and perpetuate it.
The
Government’s Sanitized Murders Continue Despite The Moral
Reprehensiveness and Limpid Senselessness of Such Supposedly,
these individuals, as the hundreds before them who have senselessly
forfeited their lives in the sorrow filled execution chambers throughout
this country were the "worst of the worse" deserving this
[just punishment]. This spurious, worst of the worse claim, is quickly
debunked for what it actually is through casual scrutiny and that is a
facade to justify these senseless killings. Out of the hundreds of
people convicted of murder every year, only a handful are actually
subject to the death penalty. Some people may actually be under the
illusion that only the most horrid of murderers receive the death
penalty, but this deception is realized through an abundance of evidence
to the contrary, There is absolutely no “meaningful basis"
distinguishing the few cases where the death penalty is imposed from the
many more that it is not. No legitimate evidence exist t o justify the
arbitrary select ion of who is to die and who is not based on this
fraudulent 'worst of the worse' claim. The only discernible evidence for
this arbitrary selection process is a mixture of racism and poverty,
with heavy emphasis on race. The visible signs of racism and prejudice
is obvious to anyone with reasonable intelligence, with the exception of
those who chose to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to it. Denying that it
exists does not make it any less real!!! It
should not be surprising that the biases and prejudice that permeate our
society would also play a substantial role in determining who will be
subject to the death penalty and who will not. The intuitive nature of
this affinity is palpable to most people, but as noted above, even
intelligent people seek solace through ostracism to these facts. The
racism infecting the death penalty has been documented through highly
reliable and respected research. The ^Bolus Study" showed that, w[b]lacks
who kill whites are sentenced to death at least 22 times the rate of
blacks who kill blacks and more than 7 times the rate of whites who kill
blacks."* Because of the 1nature of racism' permeating
the death penalty, reverse discrimination was introduced to disguise the
biases and prejudice. The reverse racism remains alive and well today,
despite numerous challenges of such In the courts. This malicious effort
to disguise the biases and prejudice in the death penalty selection
process was like stacking ‘dog shit on top of ape shit’, trying to
hide the stench of one form of racism with the repugnant stench of
another. Despite the overpowering stench of racism infecting the death
penalty there are still those who chose to hold their noses and deny
that the stench exists. One
individual who remains obstinate and oblivious to the biases and
prejudice of the death penalty is a man of stature, race and position,
Someone, who you would imagine would be highly poignant to these issues,
but Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas denies the very existence of
any biases or prejudice in this country’s death penalty
scheme, Instead, he finds
dubious support for his death penalty dogma through twisted and pitiful
reliance on 4,000 year old obscure biblical text and 200 year old
antiquated legal philosophy. He shared these views in Morgan v. "[W]hoever
has committed murder must die .... Even if a Civil Society resolved to
dissolve itself with consent to all its members, . . . The last murderer
lying in the prison ought to be executed before the resolution was
carried out. This ought to be done in order that every one may realize
the dessert of his deeds. . ." (l Kant, The Philosophy of Law 198
(1786). In support of this declaration Justice Thomas cited: "Exodus 21:12 [H]e that smiteth a
man so that he dies, shall surely be put to death)." *Morgan
v. This
precarious reasoning by a man of Justice Thomas stature and race is not
only sad but demonstrates his hardhearted position for the death
penalty, that he
uses to determine issues of the death penalty in cases presented to him
by the court. Based on t his untenable and unbelievable reasoning by a
member of our country's highest court to justify the most severe
punishment there is, it is not hard to imagine how many other members of
society finds support for the death penalty through similar twisted
logic and reasoning. At
another time and place, over two centuries ago the purpose of the death
penalty was put into context. In The King's
Court v. Smith, the
court held in consideration with executing a morons or mentally deficient
individuals that: “[T]hat
marginal! satisfaction of blood !lust and vengeance secured through the
execution of a
cognizable moron is far out weighed by the need
of mercy and higher justice-“ The
King's Court identified the quintessential purpose behind the ignoble
and cowardly executions of it's citizens, that being amongst other
things, "[t]o satisfy societies [blood lust] and [vengeance]."
Put into perspective, that court held, as our highest court did through
a similar conclusion two hundred years later,* that "executing
morons only served marginal satisfaction of blood lust and
vengeance", in comparison with killing someone who has their full
faculties about them. In this context, the death penalty of today serves
no different purpose than what The King's Court proclaims In Smith;
to satisfy societies blood lust. The
difference For
a minute let's forget about the biases and prejudice that
permeate our society and that of the death penalty as well. Even absent
those valid considerations, the most sophisticated death penalty scheme
cannot eliminate human error from condemning and executing the innocent.
Because it Is so morally reprehensible to think that an innocent person
may be executed, we deceive ourselves Into believing that the checks and
balances in our judicial system will prevent such an atrocity. The
evidence, although, does not support this deceptive thinking,
particularly In light of the huge number of death row prisoners who's
convictions have been overturned based on DNA evidence, eye witnesses
recanting their own testimony, withholding of exculpatory evidence by
the prosecution, use of fabricated evidence by law enforcement,
including trumped up jail house Informant testimony and based on a
literal array of other factors tainting the convictions of so many
waiting to die. Justice Thomas and others would have us believe that
executing the innocent .is acceptable under the death penalty schemer
as long as they received all of the processes due t hem under the
law. What a sad proclamation for anyone, let alone a Supreme Court
Justice. This type of death penalty dogma was reflected In 1900 by
Charles Dickens in his book, 'Bleak House'', where Dickens wrote, "[I]t
is better to hang some feller than no feller." Another legal
epigram with substance here is, "[T]here is no man so good, who,
were he to submit all his thoughts to the law, would not
deserve hanging ten times over in his lifetime."* Based on
the vast number of individuals sentenced to death that have been
exonerated after spending many, many years on death row, definitively
distills any illusions anyone may have had that innocent people have not
been executed and will not continue to be executed as long as the death
penalty in this country exists. Recently
the state of
By: Wesley Purkey #14678-045
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