The Power of the Pen

After the steel doors clang shut, you trudge down the shiny cement corridor with your state-issued clothing, in between  two towering correctional officers, to the tune of the clackety black-bulb, spittle-cleaned boots, harmonizing with the jingle jangle of the keys and cuffs, while static from the radio drowns out your thoughts, as you trip over the silver jewelry on your  ankles—you know then, your goose is not only cooked, but it’s burnt. You’ve been buried so deep in the prison system that it will take an engineering crew with earth-movers and lidar topography scanners just to reach you deep within the confines of a maximum-security penitentiary. The criminal justice system (1), designed to convict and punish, uses the coarseness and abrasiveness of the prison uniform scraping against your raw flesh as a gentle reminder of the might of the prosecutor’s pen.

Your procedural due process rights will be denied as often as the ambitious prosecutor can conveniently do so. You turn your life over to an indifferent Public Defender, while the state hides  exculpatory evidence—and in zero to sixty, you accelerate down the highway to justice, careening out of control with a public defender at the wheel—complaining about the low-pay only to crash and burn with a life sentence conviction. Your chance of overturning a life sentence is less than 2 percent. I had a death penalty trial, and jurors in such trials have been found to be more likely to convict than jurors in trials in which the death penalty isn’t an option. (2) My attorney failed to defend me as he represented  the state’s witness against me before trial, and my J & S (judgment  & sentence) with a sentence of 73 years tells me I can be paroled when I turn 119 years-old, if I can afford the parole costs. Heck,  I could barely afford to maintain myself in a cell, without heat or plumbing for the entire winter—with temps hovering around zero degrees.

That’s the situation I found myself in almost 24 years ago. I knew next to nothing about criminal law. In college,I had taken  one business law class, which was one more than the rest of the 600 inmates. Yet, everyone came to me for legal advice. I had a reputation to live up to, so I volunteered as the jailhouse lawyer, who would defend inmates at their disciplinary hearings to prevent  them from being thrown into the dungeon or having street charges which would extend their stay.

In the pink jungle, or the women’s prison, most of the women’s disciplinary reports involved either drugs, tobacco, or sexual  misconduct—those reports reading like soft porn. Over ten years, I had every major misconduct report either dismissed or lowered to “failure to follow published rules.” This was due in part to my writing skills. As the appeals process overturned major and  sometimes minor reports, I learned how to organize my thoughts and arguments into a logical and compelling narrative. My pen became my newest and best friend. Among the inmates, my  reputation grew, but so did the administration’s hostility towards me. I walked around “campus” with a bulls-eye target on my  backside. Cells tossed, law books burned or destroyed, my hygiene tossed in the trash during serious shake-downs, and worst of all, the potato chip bags and the prison currency, the ubiquitous ramen soups—brutally crushed—right before my eyes. I cried.

But I continued to win in disciplinary proceedings despite the onerous and petty prison officials. Every book burned (waste disposal unit outside the prison) resulted in acquiring two more. I studied criminal law by ordering the free jailhouse lawyer’s manual (3) given out by advocacy groups and often by reading  others’ legal pleadings, court opinions and decisions. Ordering every case in legal letters, decrees, or memorandum opinions, including the “Order Denying Petition,” I began to see the logic  and sometimes, even the beauty, of the American judicial system. It reminded me of being a kid: First you go to Dad. If you can’t  finagle what you want from him, you go to a higher power— Mom—but if that doesn’t work, you address the Supreme Court  of the Family Unit—Gramma or Gramps. Eventually, you’d win if you had the patience to persevere, similar in concept to the judicial system.

At night, while prisoners played spades for big bucks—ten ramen chili soups—and the pods reeked of cannabis smoke  (brought in by entrepreneurial officers), I spent every evening  reading U.S. Supreme Court decisions, like Strickland v. Washington and Cuyler v. Sullivan. I memorized every significant  passage, writing it over and over again, in a green-colored composition book with dog-eared pages. I deconstructed the  holdings, the dicta, and used a borrowed Black’s Law Dictionary to  understand legal terms such as, “Motion for Summary Judgment,”  “Dismissed without Prejudice,” and “Habeas Corpus.” I dreamt of the Sixth Amendment. The Due Process Clause. The Equal  Protection Clause. I borrowed a Latin book from the prison library. I learned that a court could, of its own accord, sua sponte, take corrective action in criminal or civil rights cases. I read all night, each night, until the blood vessels in my eyes burst.

After dissecting no less than 3,000 cases, I understood how jurists think, beginning with the most commonly-used claim  to overturn a criminal conviction, the “Ineffective Assistance  of Counsel,” or simply, the “ineffectiveness” claim. Over time, I mastered the subject matter. The law, through the biological  process of osmosis, seeped into the darkest recesses and lobes of my brain, illuminating the most salient arguments, and with the  power of the pen, I had the knowledge now to write arguments in a compelling manner that would sway judges. The pen I wielded, so artfully during disciplinary proceedings, and after years of  arduous work, became the device to not only set me on the path  to freedom, but others, wrongfully charged, or suffering under an illegal sentence.

In 2007, I began with the state courts, securing early releases for inmates based upon good, very good behavior, and  personal achievements. The first judge returned my motion, with suggestions as to how to succeed with early release motions. Six months later, he granted the request, allowing one woman to leave six months early. Chalking up successes over the years, I carved  each one into my bunk, a permanent tribute to the power of the  pen, after I fed the feral cats in the yard. Night classes at the prison helped me relearn the art of creative writing. Learning how to craft  a creative defense, not another formulaic murder mystery, became my focus.

My skills grew exponentially, until I easily defeated the two managing directors from the Law Office of the Public Defender in arguments to the courts; the L.O.P.D. fought against the court  appointing counsel to represent two inmates on their issues of competency and ineffectiveness. Pleased to see some of my efforts result in women walking out of prison thrilled to resume their lives, I continued to bring about changes in the local criminal justice system, as hundreds of other jail-house lawyers or prison advocates do daily, across America, in some of the worst, substandard housing  and prison conditions, suffering, as I have, under racist and sexist management.

In the famous case of Gideon v. Wainwright, a jail-house lawyer’s power of the pen changed the Constitution. A semi-literate prisoner in the 1930s would scribble his objections about his one sided trial in Florida onto thin tissue paper, eventually reaching the United States Supreme Court Justices—revolutionizing the criminal justice system in the process, ensuring that every indigent  defendant be appointed defense counsel at their trial. Brick by brick, we dismantle injustice by the power of the pen. 

(1) The Public Defenders are placed under the purview or oversight of the Justice Department, whose  purpose is to prosecute and convict. I was told by my own Public Defender that the state had no  money for my defense. Therefore, I would be denied DNA expert witnesses for one of the largest  D.N.A. cases in the state’s history. The state would falsify the DNA report, with the help of the police  (case documents available online).

(2) “The Effect of Death Qualifications on the Propensity of Jurors to Convict: The Maryland Example,”  by authors R. Seltzer, G.M. Lopez, Marshall Dayan, and R.F. Canan, 1986, Howard Law Journal, p. 35.

(3) The Warden destroyed one of the manuals, informing me that prisoners are not allowed legal books  or materials to be sent in to us. Instead, our prison libraries are comprised of just a few dictionaries  and old copies of prisoner’s rights books.