Numerous guards over the last four days have come to my cell and told me that they will find me guilty at my hearing because it is my word against the word of a staff member. They laugh because just to get a hearing could take up to a month and guys usually just agree to be done in four days. "Take the plea!" I have been deprived of all my personal effects through the end of last week and the weekend, being effectively subjected to punishment for longer than the plea offer would have been. Due Process requires you serve punishment before you are convicted? They don't call it punishment but they impose all of the punishment restrictions. About 1:20pm, a shorter woman named "Jander" comes to the cell door and tells me to put my shirt on. She is taking over as my advocate. We are interrupted by a blue shirt, regular non-supervisory guard, who gives me a paper bag of my "allowables." I sign the inventory sheet even though I already see some things were not collected from my previous cell. Jander listens to my side of the story and says she will try to get surveillance and witness questions put together for a hearing on Thursday the 20th, hopefully. I am insistent we build an adequate record for appeal since the guards were laughing that the hearing will inevitably be decided against me. They also commented about these allegations are often made by the librarian. It is something she has done to numerous other people as well. I am thinking that if the ridiculously, inappropriately, tight shirt isn't a clue, then her ambush, no, "booby trap" in the entry to Unit 11 should have been adequately recorded. It's obvious. Jander and I talk about some additional indications in her statement. Between her lies and the camera footage I am hopeful the hearing will go well, but if the guards themselves say the hearings are prejudiced then how can I expect a fair trial in front of a neutral magistrate? My allowables are a soap, a deodorant, my glasses (now damaged) and a heap of paperwork. Messages, legal documents, forms, envelopes, have all been stripped of staples and tossed in a pile. All the pictures on messages people sent to me have been separated as well. So now messages people sent are all jumbled and disorganized. The pictures all go through TextBehind and are also reviewed before they are initially processed. Trashing my messages for safety and security? Even more obvious that it is malicious; they bring me mail this afternoon with staples in it. So why pull the other staples?
There is a small dent in the rim of my glasses now but I was able to pop the lens back in all the way. What does J.R. Tolkien say about prison guards and the parking lot at shift change? The problem with being forced to share the same uniform with people who behave so rotten is that it often creates the wrong sort of identity transference. When did the boys in blue become the bad guys? When did the clowns in brown become good guys? I think, to be really mature you need to support policy that allows people who have made mistakes to do good things, and acknowledge that people who have respectable reputations or positions of authority will have a compulsion to abuse that power. I probably rant a lot about how privilege should be minimized to positions of authority to curtail or disincentivize the abuse of that power. The blind allegiance of some people to just accept that law enforcement does what is "right" or that elected officials are honest is only substantiated with an accurate and complete account of their history. Many people are made rotten by a position of authority or power. Why trash all my paperwork? Why lie to perpetuate my incarceration? It is not a superiority complex that begs the question but the realization that I suffer damages because of it. I would suppose to opine otherwise would indicate a superiority complex of those whose prerogatives differ. In a simpler fashion: if you agree with the way people mistreat other people, it is because you think you are better or you think the abusers are better, and you are wrong. If you cannot tell, then just wait for someone to needlessly trash all of your belongings. Another downside to being moved to RHU is that I only get two phone calls per week in RHU. I did call my daughter. Although I don't cry daily anymore, I still cry sporadically and almost always during or after speaking to my kid. The call cut off before finishing the conversation with my daughter. I love them and miss them, painfully deep. I will try again soon. One of the reasons I don't write to them, even if I cannot mail it to them, is because it requires I spend time in an emotional place that is currently an irreconcilable hurt. When I speak and interact with them there is some reciprocity and consolation. Without the interaction it is more a matter of being held under whatever pressure causes your chest to ache and the swelling behind and around your eyes that they immediately become pink. The pain in your throat from suppressing the heavy sobbing cry. It is always just hiding underneath the surface and waiting to erupt at unexpected times for no discernible reasons, at least none of the immediate relevance. Sometimes it is best to just lay down and cover my eyes or get up and pace back and forth. No clue which therapeutic approach might benefit more. Those that have written to me about being strong don't seem to understand. I am not. I just don't have a choice. Even worse, if you ask for help from medical staff or they suspect there is an issue, they categorize inmates with some mental health concern. I have reasons to be sad. Drugging me to counteract depression doesn't solve the issue. Plus, if it is an issue of just issuing inmates "happy pills" then why lock so many of them up in the first place? But, for me, just let me talk to my kids? All the excuses in the world to keep me away from using the phone but if they responded to symptoms of sadness they would call it depression and mistreat me further. My disinclination to take drugs is not a superiority complex. What did Graveley say about me playing by a different set of rules than everyone else? Society? The jurors? I don't drink coffee. I nap. I don't take pills. I surround myself with people and activities that keep me happy. Well, not while I am incarcerated. But, eventually, I will get back to that. Hopefully sooner than later.
1 Comment
Sandra
8/4/2023 12:56:57
...the pain you are feeling sounds like grief... Its not about staying strong its about just putting one foot in front of the other and getting through a day at a time by any means... Every day must seem so empty
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aboutThese are the journal entries of Zachariah Anderson. All entries are originally handwritten by Zach and then transcribed on his behalf. Please note that occasional misspellings and grammar errors may be fixed during transcription for the sake of making the entries easier to read and sensitive information may be redacted. Archives
July 2024
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