The goal of the american justice system is to reduce crime and rehabilitate people who cannot
obey the arbitrary rules our society has put in place. At least we are led to
believe that it serves those goals. I stay out of jail because I bow in terror of those rules.
My husband however, has run afowl the dark side of this system for over 10 years. When I first
met him he was a computer nerd with a bible. He did work for the Southern Baptest Convention,
took care of his sick grandmother and mentally ill mother, and was pursuing a degree in computer
science. At that time he was pretty good at playing along and pretending to be just the type of
good boy American citizen that society is looking for.
In this country you grow up being told that anybody can succeed if they just try real hard.
If you are not a success in life, naturally it is your own fault because our government has a
plan for us. If you just have faith and follow the rules you will get 2 cars in the driveway and
a chicken in the pot every night. I have first hand witnessed the destruction of "The American Dream"
at the hands of a justice system that does not see us as people but rather revinue sources.
In 2003 my husband (at that time just my best friend) was convicted of felony bogus check fraud. He
tried to use his computer skills to pay for his grandmothers funeral and paid the price. His mentally
ill mother did too. Despite the fact that he tried to tell the judge she had nothing to do
with the bad checks because it was a joint checking account they both did prison time.
He got out, but he never came back. His mother came out of prison with a wealth of new life threatoning
conditions ranging from copd to congestive heart failure. My husband never went back to college. Instead he found himself trapped in a cycle of trying to figure out how to pay his fines, his mothers fines, and keep the medication required to keep his mother alive in stock. Forget about food, forget about shelter, they bounced from one eviction to another, eating at soup kitchens, staying with friends and family, frequently going back to jail every time their was a conflict between my husbands fines and his mothers medication.
Over the years my husband had to occasionally write more bad checks because if he did not his mother would
die, either from not having her medication, or from being homeless in winter, that sort of thing. More convictions, more jail time, more fines. My husband could not maintain a job because he never had more than 2-3 months free before he would be back in jail for failure to pay fines or failure to pay restitution. At one point he was hired at McDonalds and things were looking up until he got a call the next day telling him he was unhired. Aparantly this franchise branch had insurance that would cover them if they hired a murderer or a child molester but not if they hired someone with a felony bogus check charge.
As the years progressed I watched his mental state deteriorate. Its like every time he went to jail he
left a part of himself behind. He started having memory issues, anger issues, violent nightmares, and
uncontrollable flashbacks.
In 2009 his mother passed away. It was not his only loss. We went through a personal hell that summer and
he was in danger of killing himself. He tried to drink himself numb and when that did not work he tried to
run from his problems. At this point he had given up on ever having a life. He just wanted it to end. We
had no money to pay his fines (I was on unemployment drawing a small check every week).
He wanted to get a job and get caught up on his fines so the warrants would be withdrawn but he found himself
working alongside illegal immigrants because every job he looked into wanted to do a background check he
knew he could not pass.
Eventually the enevitable happened. I got pulled over in a used car we had just bought with our income tax refund.
I was trying to get my husband to the courthouse so we could pay to have the warrants removed. Yep, its just that easy. If you have enough money you can buy your way out of anything. My husband, afraid of going to jail mere hours away from paying off the warrants made a bad choice. He gave the cop his cousins name. Unfortunatly, his
cousin had a warrant for an even worse crime and my husband found himself back in jail facing Felony False Personation charges. In that county, in this state, lying to a cop is a felony crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. My husband freaked. I started getting calls when I was finally able to pay (extortionest fees on those phone calls by the way) to put talk time on his sheet, that I had to get him out. If I could not find a way to keep him from going to prison for 10 years he was going to kill himself. He desperatly begged me to get him in a program any program instead of prison. We explored mental health programs, not an option for him, I never got a straight answer as to why. I tried to hire a lawyer for him. I gave a lawyer my entire paycheck. She agreed to take his case based on the paperwork. Then she started making phone calls and talking to judges and DAs. She decided that no matter what she did she could not help him. The system was too tight. The town was too small. The good 'ol boy network was too strong for her to fight. She returned my money and appologized.
I finally talked the judge into letting my husband go to a drug rehabilitation program called Cenikor. I paid $750 to enroll him. I picked him up from jail, we stopped at the justice of the peace and got married. Then I dropped him off at Cenikors 2 year live in program. He survived a month. I got to go visit him for the first time after that one month program. I could see him sitting across the room and he mouthed "I love you." at me. Then they attempted to drag him off to write him up for talking to me without permission. He refused. Because it was a "voluntary" the doors were not locked. He walked out, got in my car, and said I give up. We spent 4 years running. Trying to keep him away from cops and situations where he might be identified by his real name.
Eventually it all caught up. He got caught, went back to face the judge. And was sentenced to 10 years with 8 suspended and 2 years of probation. 10 years, for giving a cop his cousins name to avoid jail for failure to pay fines on a (then) 7 year old case.
He started sending me copies of every piece of paper he got in jail and prison from write ups, to intake forms, to mental health evaluations. I started getting paperwork with blacked out portions. I asked him about it and he said there were things on the papers he did not want me to see. This was odd for him because I am his power of attorney. I agreed that I would be responsible for keeping the documentation safe and now suddenly there were things he did not want me to see. It was months lator that I got the call. He had been moved to another prison at that time and was working with a new therapist. My husband was in a prison therapy session and his therapist let him call me free of charge (that scared me, their are no free calls in prison). My husband had tested positive for Hep C. The forms he sent me with blacked out portions were from a prea case. He was assaulted by another prisoner in the worst way possible.
During that conversation I found out what he had been going through In the preceeding months.
When he went through the official prea investigation process he told the staff exactly what happened. He admitted that he had smoked spice and it caused him to be unresponsive and unable to defend himself. He named the person who assaulted him. In the end the only person punished was my husband, for admitting to smoking synthetic marijuana on the anniversary of his mother's death. He was told it was all in his head. He was told shut up it never happened. He was forced to disucuss the ongoing prea investigation from within his cell through the cell window in front of other prisoners. His private information was held to the window where everyone could see.
He then started writing complaint forms about how the situation was mismanaged. He got a response from the warden himself saying "You will be transferred. This has been dealt with. Just wait for the transfer" He spent over a month locked in a jail cell, being ridiculed by staff and inmates alike for the prea investigation which had by this time become an open joke in the prison. Nobody would do anything to help him. He did not receive treatment for the hep C. He was not even told he had contracted hep c until after he was transferred to another prison and went through a round of standard intake testing.
I have documentation showing that the prison he was assaulted at tested him for hep c, diagnosed him with hep c, and did not treat him. In fact that prison did not even inform the prison he was transferred to of the diagnosis. He only found out as a result of standard testing done on a set schedual in any prison.
So now at this point the punnishment for lying to a cop has become 10 years in prison with 8 suspened, 2 years probation, rape, ridicule, and a life threatoning illness.
Finally he was released. We started trying to rebuild our life. I had gotten a good job. I was making ok money. We live like poor people though because my husbands monthly fines and fees amount to more than our combined rent and utility payments so its like paying for a small household for ourselves and big mansion for the state.
A few months after he was released my husband had a really bad flashback. He started screaming and fighting as if he were back in prison. He ran out the door, grabbed a bike and started riding as if the devil were after him. He got drunk. He was walking the bike back because he did not trust himself to ride it and he got hit by a car. Bad for him he was wearing an old coat and did not realize he had a marijuana pipe in his pocket.
We got a lawyer. Over the course of 6 months the only time we see this lawyer is for 30 seconds at court dates,when he shows at all. My husband was told pay $750 and it will all go away. We gave the lawyer a $750 check and the next day get a letter saying that now we have to pay $1500 by the end of the month or my husband goes back to jail. We don't have that kind of money.
So this is the story of how a young bible thumping Baptist becomes a mentally ill convict with hep c hoping for nothing more than to be put out of his misery by a trigger happy cop.
Please, if their is anything you can do, start a calling campaign to annoy the judge, the district attorney, or Governer Fallon. Maybe start a campaign to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars my husband has to pay in exchange for the freedom to just get out of this hellish state once and for all. Please. This man has been destroyed by a justice sytem that is anything but. He has never committed a violent crime. He has suffered far more than any of his crimes warrant. We just want to keep him free so he can get the hep c treated (no he has still had no treatment, he went to a doctor paid for by my company insurance 2 days ago.) And get into a therapist to deal with the trauma. He is not going to be able to go through the treatment regime now though because he is going back to jail instead. We have not been able to get the people who wronged him punnished. We have not been able to pay all his fines and keep him out of jail. Its just a non stop list of demands for more money than we will ever have. I dont know what to do. We want justice, true justice, not the warped and twisted version of justice available in Oklahoma. Help!
obey the arbitrary rules our society has put in place. At least we are led to
believe that it serves those goals. I stay out of jail because I bow in terror of those rules.
My husband however, has run afowl the dark side of this system for over 10 years. When I first
met him he was a computer nerd with a bible. He did work for the Southern Baptest Convention,
took care of his sick grandmother and mentally ill mother, and was pursuing a degree in computer
science. At that time he was pretty good at playing along and pretending to be just the type of
good boy American citizen that society is looking for.
In this country you grow up being told that anybody can succeed if they just try real hard.
If you are not a success in life, naturally it is your own fault because our government has a
plan for us. If you just have faith and follow the rules you will get 2 cars in the driveway and
a chicken in the pot every night. I have first hand witnessed the destruction of "The American Dream"
at the hands of a justice system that does not see us as people but rather revinue sources.
In 2003 my husband (at that time just my best friend) was convicted of felony bogus check fraud. He
tried to use his computer skills to pay for his grandmothers funeral and paid the price. His mentally
ill mother did too. Despite the fact that he tried to tell the judge she had nothing to do
with the bad checks because it was a joint checking account they both did prison time.
He got out, but he never came back. His mother came out of prison with a wealth of new life threatoning
conditions ranging from copd to congestive heart failure. My husband never went back to college. Instead he found himself trapped in a cycle of trying to figure out how to pay his fines, his mothers fines, and keep the medication required to keep his mother alive in stock. Forget about food, forget about shelter, they bounced from one eviction to another, eating at soup kitchens, staying with friends and family, frequently going back to jail every time their was a conflict between my husbands fines and his mothers medication.
Over the years my husband had to occasionally write more bad checks because if he did not his mother would
die, either from not having her medication, or from being homeless in winter, that sort of thing. More convictions, more jail time, more fines. My husband could not maintain a job because he never had more than 2-3 months free before he would be back in jail for failure to pay fines or failure to pay restitution. At one point he was hired at McDonalds and things were looking up until he got a call the next day telling him he was unhired. Aparantly this franchise branch had insurance that would cover them if they hired a murderer or a child molester but not if they hired someone with a felony bogus check charge.
As the years progressed I watched his mental state deteriorate. Its like every time he went to jail he
left a part of himself behind. He started having memory issues, anger issues, violent nightmares, and
uncontrollable flashbacks.
In 2009 his mother passed away. It was not his only loss. We went through a personal hell that summer and
he was in danger of killing himself. He tried to drink himself numb and when that did not work he tried to
run from his problems. At this point he had given up on ever having a life. He just wanted it to end. We
had no money to pay his fines (I was on unemployment drawing a small check every week).
He wanted to get a job and get caught up on his fines so the warrants would be withdrawn but he found himself
working alongside illegal immigrants because every job he looked into wanted to do a background check he
knew he could not pass.
Eventually the enevitable happened. I got pulled over in a used car we had just bought with our income tax refund.
I was trying to get my husband to the courthouse so we could pay to have the warrants removed. Yep, its just that easy. If you have enough money you can buy your way out of anything. My husband, afraid of going to jail mere hours away from paying off the warrants made a bad choice. He gave the cop his cousins name. Unfortunatly, his
cousin had a warrant for an even worse crime and my husband found himself back in jail facing Felony False Personation charges. In that county, in this state, lying to a cop is a felony crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. My husband freaked. I started getting calls when I was finally able to pay (extortionest fees on those phone calls by the way) to put talk time on his sheet, that I had to get him out. If I could not find a way to keep him from going to prison for 10 years he was going to kill himself. He desperatly begged me to get him in a program any program instead of prison. We explored mental health programs, not an option for him, I never got a straight answer as to why. I tried to hire a lawyer for him. I gave a lawyer my entire paycheck. She agreed to take his case based on the paperwork. Then she started making phone calls and talking to judges and DAs. She decided that no matter what she did she could not help him. The system was too tight. The town was too small. The good 'ol boy network was too strong for her to fight. She returned my money and appologized.
I finally talked the judge into letting my husband go to a drug rehabilitation program called Cenikor. I paid $750 to enroll him. I picked him up from jail, we stopped at the justice of the peace and got married. Then I dropped him off at Cenikors 2 year live in program. He survived a month. I got to go visit him for the first time after that one month program. I could see him sitting across the room and he mouthed "I love you." at me. Then they attempted to drag him off to write him up for talking to me without permission. He refused. Because it was a "voluntary" the doors were not locked. He walked out, got in my car, and said I give up. We spent 4 years running. Trying to keep him away from cops and situations where he might be identified by his real name.
Eventually it all caught up. He got caught, went back to face the judge. And was sentenced to 10 years with 8 suspended and 2 years of probation. 10 years, for giving a cop his cousins name to avoid jail for failure to pay fines on a (then) 7 year old case.
He started sending me copies of every piece of paper he got in jail and prison from write ups, to intake forms, to mental health evaluations. I started getting paperwork with blacked out portions. I asked him about it and he said there were things on the papers he did not want me to see. This was odd for him because I am his power of attorney. I agreed that I would be responsible for keeping the documentation safe and now suddenly there were things he did not want me to see. It was months lator that I got the call. He had been moved to another prison at that time and was working with a new therapist. My husband was in a prison therapy session and his therapist let him call me free of charge (that scared me, their are no free calls in prison). My husband had tested positive for Hep C. The forms he sent me with blacked out portions were from a prea case. He was assaulted by another prisoner in the worst way possible.
During that conversation I found out what he had been going through In the preceeding months.
When he went through the official prea investigation process he told the staff exactly what happened. He admitted that he had smoked spice and it caused him to be unresponsive and unable to defend himself. He named the person who assaulted him. In the end the only person punished was my husband, for admitting to smoking synthetic marijuana on the anniversary of his mother's death. He was told it was all in his head. He was told shut up it never happened. He was forced to disucuss the ongoing prea investigation from within his cell through the cell window in front of other prisoners. His private information was held to the window where everyone could see.
He then started writing complaint forms about how the situation was mismanaged. He got a response from the warden himself saying "You will be transferred. This has been dealt with. Just wait for the transfer" He spent over a month locked in a jail cell, being ridiculed by staff and inmates alike for the prea investigation which had by this time become an open joke in the prison. Nobody would do anything to help him. He did not receive treatment for the hep C. He was not even told he had contracted hep c until after he was transferred to another prison and went through a round of standard intake testing.
I have documentation showing that the prison he was assaulted at tested him for hep c, diagnosed him with hep c, and did not treat him. In fact that prison did not even inform the prison he was transferred to of the diagnosis. He only found out as a result of standard testing done on a set schedual in any prison.
So now at this point the punnishment for lying to a cop has become 10 years in prison with 8 suspened, 2 years probation, rape, ridicule, and a life threatoning illness.
Finally he was released. We started trying to rebuild our life. I had gotten a good job. I was making ok money. We live like poor people though because my husbands monthly fines and fees amount to more than our combined rent and utility payments so its like paying for a small household for ourselves and big mansion for the state.
A few months after he was released my husband had a really bad flashback. He started screaming and fighting as if he were back in prison. He ran out the door, grabbed a bike and started riding as if the devil were after him. He got drunk. He was walking the bike back because he did not trust himself to ride it and he got hit by a car. Bad for him he was wearing an old coat and did not realize he had a marijuana pipe in his pocket.
We got a lawyer. Over the course of 6 months the only time we see this lawyer is for 30 seconds at court dates,when he shows at all. My husband was told pay $750 and it will all go away. We gave the lawyer a $750 check and the next day get a letter saying that now we have to pay $1500 by the end of the month or my husband goes back to jail. We don't have that kind of money.
So this is the story of how a young bible thumping Baptist becomes a mentally ill convict with hep c hoping for nothing more than to be put out of his misery by a trigger happy cop.
Please, if their is anything you can do, start a calling campaign to annoy the judge, the district attorney, or Governer Fallon. Maybe start a campaign to pay off the tens of thousands of dollars my husband has to pay in exchange for the freedom to just get out of this hellish state once and for all. Please. This man has been destroyed by a justice sytem that is anything but. He has never committed a violent crime. He has suffered far more than any of his crimes warrant. We just want to keep him free so he can get the hep c treated (no he has still had no treatment, he went to a doctor paid for by my company insurance 2 days ago.) And get into a therapist to deal with the trauma. He is not going to be able to go through the treatment regime now though because he is going back to jail instead. We have not been able to get the people who wronged him punnished. We have not been able to pay all his fines and keep him out of jail. Its just a non stop list of demands for more money than we will ever have. I dont know what to do. We want justice, true justice, not the warped and twisted version of justice available in Oklahoma. Help!