For those who may wonder what a post about Texas Just-ice has to do with the stated paradigm of Ali3nizm…I would direct your attention to the following:
1. That philosophically, Ali3nizm is a common forum for individuals who feel they have been “alienated” by another group, culture, gender, etc. and the justice system chews up and digests Ali3nz by the thousands.
2. Though criminal systems aren’t the only repositories of underdogs, given my own experience, it should be fairly easy to expose inherent flaws in a system by investigating the multitudinous contradictions therein and ho they apply to the disenfranchised masses.
That’s exactly what you will find in the Texas “justice” system. Many of us who are subject to the U.S./Texas system of justice wonder how each branch of government can say one thing and do the complete opposite. Not long ago I asked myself that very question and decided to examine the very document which officials claim gives them authority over the individual.
Within the subject context is the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which states: “In all criminal cases, the accused shall be informed…of the nature and charge of the accusation against him.” For the life of me, I have not found the official definition of the Sixth Amendment term “nature” in any court opinion or statute in my unit la library. Perhaps there is no definition.
Prison officials claim that our institutional law library is sufficient for the body of inmates in general, yet we are barred from reading cases older than 20 odd years. When one considers that many older cases may be important due to the principles addressed in the prevailing court opinion—the barring of access to them, displays an arbitrary contradiction that epitomizes unfairness. Her is the short version of almost infinite contradictions one may encounter in the justice system:
Just contradictory examples…
Of the Law itself:
A. Inmate litigators experience the too frequent practice of judges ho simply ignore the proper filing of Pro Se pleadings, despite the fact those actions are a duty. It seems necessary in the majority of cases, for Pro Se litigants to resort to applications for mandamus with a higher court in an attempt to force a lower court to perform the duties they should be doing anyway. Why do we pay taxes for justices who do not perform their jobs?
B. I have heard so many stories about incompetent or outright crooked lawyers that it makes my head hurt. The most common complaint is the attorney promise to a defendant that if he takes a “plea” the sentence ill be shorter, or he will make parole after “X” number of years. Invariably, the judge will choose a sentence over that agreed upon, or there will be no true parole consideration by the parole board. For defendants who pay out-of-pocket for their legal counsel, a retainer will generally grow into a series of supplemental payments for “additional” or “unforeseen” services beyond the original agreement. (Some advice: Demand from the attorney in writing, an agreement that outlines specific performance, prior to any payment.)
Of Parole issues:
C. A type of parole in which an offenders’ “Good Time”, “Work Time” and “Flat Time” equaled 100% of his sentence that used to be called “Mandatory Supervision,” and would indicate the automatic release of an inmate unless time was deducted due to a disciplinary action. That type of release is no called “Discretionary/Mandatory Supervision.” In practice, no matter how much total “time” is accrued, it appears the release is routinely denied in an arbitrary and capricious manner.
Luckily some of us convicted Ali3nz have loved ones “outside” with internet access who are sometimes willing to copy precidential cases in order to snail mail them to Pro Se jailhouse litigators. So, without help from the state, I combed through some older cases looking for the word, “Nature,” hoping against hope to discover the definition of the term as it relates to the Sixth Amendment (so I may comprehend the predicament I’m in.) The Supreme Court opinion of Faretta vs. California, 95 Sct.2525, indicates the “Nature” has something to do with “Ground Rules,” yet to learn the ground rules, it takes the experience of an “attorney who has tried a lot of cases.” A different opinion from the highest court actually distinguishes between the “Nature”, “Statutory Offenses”, “Punishment”, “Defenses”, and “Facts”. Schneckloth vs. Bustamonte, 93 Sct. 2041 (1973).
At arraignment, is seems that judges routinely ask criminal defendants’ the statutorily correct question of whether the accused “Understands the Charge.” The case of Henderson vs. Morgan, 96 Sct. 2253 (1976), suggests that either “nature” OR “understanding” (understood) are necessary for a plea to be “voluntary.” Rarely it seems, does a judge mutter the word “Nature.” How iis it that the Sixth Amendment mandates that a defendant will be informed of the nature, but judges are asking defendants to agree (An understanding can be an agreement of sorts) to waive his rights without first a reference to the nature (or essence, which is the Webster’s definition of the term) of the accusation?
One may contemplate, what on Earth is the nature of a charge in which the very essence is based on contradiction? Many would-be defendants may not care to kno the answer until it’s too late, and they might ask, “Why do I need to know the nature of the charge anyway?”
The founding fathers thought that knowing the Nature of the Accusation to be important enough for it to be enumerated in the Constitution as a mandate. That alone leads me to believe the “Nature” is not only necessary information, but the statutes which allow a judge to side-step the duty—may be, unconstitutional!
Since the statutes are silent on what constitutes the nature of an accusation, then perhaps the nature in non-statutory. I’ve already stated that I couldn’t find the definition cited in court opinions, yet where the statutes are silent, “Then the judiciary sets the limits.” James vs. United States, 366 US 213, at 200 (1961). With no other choice, I began to analyze the U.S. Constitution itself. In doing so I thought, if dictionaries suggest the nature is the “essence” of something, then it seems the Constitution grants certain types of courts to operate as colored arms of the legislature in Article I, or as an independent branch of government as in Article III.
Realizing this, if I were to be “arraigned” in court today, I would certainly inquire with the judge whether he is operating as an Article I or and Article III court. I know someone who asked a municipal judge this very thing in a misdemeanor traffic case. The jurist said his “power” came from the U.S. Constitution at Article III.
Naturally, I was next drawn to examine Article III, searching form some clue to the nature of my criminal accusation. It didn’t take long for me to realize that any power of any court in the nation must originate from one of four jurisdictions: (common) law, equity, admiralty, or maritime. Isn’t it essential then, to know the jurisdiction which the court uses to officiate, as one part of defining what the nature consists of? Each of those jurisdictions has its own principles which make it unique, different from the others. Otherwise, why would they be listed as separate? Woe to the litigant, who is unaware of the name of the power a judge has over him. Elementary logic.
Back to my acquaintance in the traffic case. Firmly established by the judge was that the case was “criminal,” otherwise the defendant could not be jailed for a failure to pay the fine. That ruled out equity jurisdiction. His honor indicated his jurisdiction was not based on the common law either. That left only Admiralty or Maritime, which the court said was not granting his power either. Another contradiction, because those are the only Article III jurisdictions the court has license to operate in.
The traffic court guy inquired with his judge as to what is the NAME of the seeming unauthorized jurisdiction. The court replied “Statutory.” Pressed further, the judge said, “The laws of the state of Texas,” then, “Legislative enactment,” and so on. The case ended in a stalemate wherein the judge assessed a fine anyway, but invited an appeal to the next higher court.
What’s wrong with this picture? I mean, what is the “Nature” of a charge that, on its face is so contradictory that no judge will name the judicial power that precipitates it? Logic dictates that, even if we are somehow contractually bound to a given piece of legislation, the court must still hear the case based on the principles of one of the four judicial powers we’ve mentioned. Setting aside the issue of “powers” for a moment, I decided on a whim, to explore the topic of agreements as a possible method of waiving constitutional rights. Research indicated that statutory definitions synonymous with some of my points of contention, are to be found within the U.C.C. (Uniform Commercial Code). As I investigated the U.C.C., in my mind, certain sections began to congeal into a logical paradigm which indicated to me that possibly there were a lot of constitutional protections that may have been inadvertently waived due to my unknowing participation in one or more implied agreements with the State.
One may ask the question, “How is it that the U.C.C. apples to the justice system, unless we are somehow subject to a commercial contract, right?” As it happens, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a corporate entity under license of the State and the United States. TDCJ is in the business of warehousing persons or humans for the purpose of creating/maintaining a valuable workforce, where one class of resident workers receives valid compensation of Federal Reserve Notes—in contrast with another class of resident workers that do not receive valid consideration for their labor. The Corporation of TDCJ utilizes the workforce labor to produce marketable goods for sale to other corporate entities. The value for the sale or exchange of products is calculated in dollar amounts of Federal Reserve Notes.
Resident inmates who are housed on property owned/leased by the corporate entity called TDCJ, are by their very existence, engaging in the support of the commerce which TDCJ prosecutes with other businesses, so the inmate has no choice in the matter.
TDCJ and its agents are contractually obligated by law, to provide for the care and custody of its’ inmate residents—regardless of any implied consideration on the part of the inmate(s). In other words, the corporation must provide for the health and welfare of all inmates no matter whether the inmate chooses to follow any rules, work, or otherwise cooperate with the corporation. This includes personal property/inmate labor. Inmates have been sentenced by a court to a term of confinement (time) only and not labor. Even if a court were to sentence a defendant to death, prior to his execution, and by law he has a right to life in the form of food, water, air, clothing and hygiene.
In Texas, it is the duty of those officials of TDCJ to provide those necessities no matter the conduct or other desired cooperation by the individual inmate. During the course of day to day commerce with TDCJ, the population of inmates can choose whether to cooperate with institutional rules in good faith, for consideration termed, “Good Conduct Time Credits.” The credits could qualify as valid consideration to the commercial contract between TDCJ and the inmate(s), if the credits represented true negotiable property value in the mind of inmate(s). However, Vernon’s Texas Government Code, Ann 498.003, provides that Good Conduct Time Credits are good only for early parole eligibility or Mandatory Release, yet the following points serve to remove any concept of value from the credits:
1. The inmate convicted of an aggravated sentence has no prospect for Discretionary/Mandatory Supervision, nor do his combined credits provide early parole qualification because he must serve 50% of his sentence before the parole board will review his case. In addition, it appears the common practice is for the parole board to require an inmate to serve 85% to 100% of his sentence “flat” irregardless of his positive institutional performance.
2. One may conclude that all Texas inmates are denied a valid parole review because the average review in absentia takes only 3 to 7 minutes. How can anyone review a file that is likely “inches” thick in such a short time span? If no valid parole consideration is available, the value of the combined “Time Credits” falls to zero, or less.
3. Should an inmate actually experience a parole miracle—prior to his actual release he would be compelled to sign an agreement that effectively trades all accrued “Time Credits” for however many months of parole it will take to discharge his sentence. The problem here is, as a negotiable instrument, the unequal rate of exchange to months on parole is never uniform from one parolee to the next, which is against the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
4. Although the above relates to what is termed “Work Time Credits,” or inmate time sheets, it appears the code (498.003(e)) considers the two types of “Time Credits” the same as to the stated criteria for “accrual.” In any case, the state contractually awards the time credits to inmates in exchange for their “volunteer” labor or other participation, unless the inmate is mentally or physically incapable of participating.
5. Which brings us to another point of inequity. Is it fair to award the same amount of credits to inmates of a given class when some of those inmates work full time, part time, or not at all? This unfair practice would indicate that sub-classes of inmates exist in this aspect which may go against the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
6. Should any Texas inmate fail to “volunteer” to participate in a work or education program, then he is subject to arbitrary administrative disciplinary action, which can further limit institutional liberty, as well as negatively affect his classification status.
7. Regarding the above points, the inmate’s labor has true value as personal property, but more importantly, is the value in return for consideration in support of a simple contract (U.C.C. 1.204). As stated above, the Good Conduct Time Credits have absolutely no value whatsoever to the average inmate and by extension, the quasi-contract between the state and the inmate.
The fact remains that inmates are coerced into performance of the implied quasi-contract under threat of disciplinary action, without viable remedy or recourse. These facts evidence the “lack of meaningful choice,” and combined with “contractual terms that unreasonably favor” the state, together, meet the “objective standard” that proves the existence of an unconscionable contract. Unconscionable contracts are void and unenforceable.
The Texas statutes which authorize TDCJ to engage in what appears to be void contracts of a commercial nature, suggests the business practices of TDCJ are impairing the obligation of contracts in violation of the U.S. Constitution Article I Section 10.
We’ll explore that possibility in a future post. Until then, don’t sign anything!
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Profile
My name is Eddie Alan Nunnelley, Jr., but people who know me call me Alan. I’m a 48-year-old heterosexual male, 6 ft. 2 in. tall, 200 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. I was born under a hot summer sun in Childress, Texas, less than two years prior to the J.F.K. assassination.
ANCIENT HISTORY
My high school years were spent in Garland, Texas, where I was sort of an anti-student at Lakeview High School. Academia wasn’t my strong suit so I quit school, earned a G.E.D., joined the U.S. Air Force, and married one of my high school sweethearts—the wrong one. Well, were wrong for each other, anyway.
We went our separate ways none too soon, but I continued, zombie-like, in a cycle of toxic relationships for the next two decades. My dysfunctional way of life is also evident in my diverse work history. There aren’t many jobs I haven’t tried—including a few of the illegal ones. I’m not proud of any of that, but I did at least become more stable with age. Prior to my latest trouble with the law, I spent some years in the hardwood flooring trade, and that opened the door to a year-long job managing a furniture refinishing project for a hotel. The job I most loved, though, was as Captain of a small cruise boat for a resort on Lake Texoma. I would have done that for half the money.
Nearing forty, I had the life I thought I wanted; I had plenty of money, sex, drugs, and no looking back. I was a “functioning addict,” and by the standards of myself and my circle of associates, I was something of a success.
Then 9/11 came. Business dried up, jobs and money disappeared, and I sank into a quagmire of drugs, crime, and craziness that I couldn’t extricate myself from. Financial and relationship stresses made my mental illness worse, and I wasn’t getting the treatment I needed. Finally, I ended up in prison on charges of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon and other things. I didn’t know what had hit me.
It took awhile until I was able to pick myself up and begin to piece myself back together. When I did, I started to question who I was and how I had reached the state I was in. I would have described myself as a fairly articulate “regular guy” who was basically as harmless as a box of kittens. Surely, I was neither a brute nor a mania, yet here I was, in prison for violent crimes. How had it happened?
There aren’t as many rehabilitative programs within the prison system as one might hope, but there is some useful material if one is willing to seek it out and make use of it. After a couple of years, I got my present prison job as a teacher’s aide in the CHANGES class, (that’s “Changing Habits and Achieving Goals to Enable Success”) and found some good insights there.
What prison does offer a lot of is time to think, so I spent a lot of my time thinking. It took time, and honesty, and it wasn’t pretty, but I looked back over my prior life and the many mistakes I had made. I had hurt a lot of people over the years starting with the four children I had helped create but hadn’t been a father to. Then there is the rest of my family, my friens, and even if only indirectly, co-workers and taxpayers at large. I regret every bit of it, but can I do better than that? Yes, with what I know now, I can.
The First Book: ALI3NIZM
As part of the process of finding answers to my questions and of re-casting myself I a more positive mold, I began to write. What eventually emerged was an odd sort of memoir. The first part was largely a chronicle of my life up to and including prison, and of the gradual metamorphosis of my thinking about myself and the world. But this is not your average “Gee, I screwed up—don’t let this happen to you” sort of convict testimonial. This is a no-holds-barred personal expose, sort of a psycho-spiritual autopsy. I also describe my encounter in 2002 with a source of information so compelling that it has radically changed my view of and approach to life. The latter part of this memoir then consists of my attempt to express this transformative knowledge in an accessible form. I completed the manuscript in 2006.
While dealing with the impossible logistics of submitting a manuscript from prison and waiting for replies from publishers, I kept continually discovering books and articles that supported or amplified on those themes I’d written about in my manuscript. Dozens of unlooked-for sources just sort of fell into my lap. It seemed too much to be coincidence. This new material quickly piled up, so in 2008, I decided to incorporate much of it into an expanded and annotated version of my original manuscript under a new title.
What I describe in the second part of the book is a complete paradigm of life, so inspiring, that I feel obliged to share it with an many people as I can, but the most novel and hopeful portions are the practical strategies that stem from the basic principles. Especially now, with the situation around the world and in every area of human life rapidly worsening and approaching crisis, we desperately need new ways of doing things. We need to upgrade to a sustainable values system, and I believe that the principles and approaches described in the book could help to turn things around for us. I’m eager to put these ideas into practice and see how well they do, and I have a practical plan to do that which I’ll implement as soon as I’m no longer freedom challenged.
The Cost of Complacency
My own history, my downfall, my experiences in prison, and my present work with the CHANGES program, afford me an unusual insight into the mind and motivations of the ordinary convict, why they offend, and why they so often re-offend and return to prison. Some of these people, it must be said, just aren’t right and are never going to be right. Many have one ire-mediable defect or another, whether it’s labeled habituation, sociopathy, or some other kind of mental illness. But most are fairly ordinary people, some brighter than others, who have learned negative beliefs and antisocial habits of thinking, coping, and behaving. Most of them lack maturity, real self-security and perseverance, are habitually self-focused, and come to prison with a distinct entitlement mentality. They’ve formed the habit of seeing “the system” (society) as a the adversary.
Provided that they can be led to see their errors and that they want to change, they are, mostly, capable of reform. Here, motivation is a crucial consideration. Reform, however, is both a personal and a social process. New views and ethics have to be practiced successfully in order to become ingrained. Cultivating empathy, generosity, and charity requires opportunities to help others without any expectation of direct return. The satisfaction derived provides its own reinforcement, and the new behavior soon becomes a new habit. Personal responsibility in inculcated though the pressures of accountability imposed through real relationships with real people.
Today there are, by some estimates, over 1.6 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons. The great majority of those will eventually be released into the population at large with only a few dollars, limited supervision, inadequate preparation for employment, and too few of the basic interpersonal and life-skills that might make it possible for them to maintain themselves and build positive lives for themselves in today’s society. These factors, along with other negative external influences, often combine to impel ex-cons to re-offend. And take it from me—once you’ve been in prison and survived, the threat of incarceration alone is no longer a deterrent to future anti-social behavior.
The fact is that the current practice of releasing ex-cons unprepared to manage themselves or meet their own needs, only serves to promote recidivism—it’s an open invitation to return to Criminal College. The policy only benefits employees and stakeholders of the prison-industrial complex. Its effects are unhealthy for society overall.
Society has an obvious interest n finding real ways to reduce the incidence of ex-cons returning to the Big House. Lip service is cheap, but the national average of $24,000 per convict per year to warehouse people isn’t so cheap. Yet a number of programs have shown that it takes much less money to simply change the offenders’ behavior instead of keeping them in prison.
My first step, as soon as I’m released, is to establish a non-profit organization that would help ex-offenders to build positive, productive lives for themselves and avoid falling back into criminal behavior, and which would also benefit society more directly by employing the huge human resource potential represented by so many releasees to help with community service projects and other volunteer activities.
The core of this enterprise will be a re-entry program established in a sort of halfway-house in a rural setting. There, former inmates will be able to provide for their own basic needs through small-scale organic market gardening, animal husbandry, and some sorts of “green” manufacturing. Initially, this will probably focus on the manufacturing, installation and maintenance of renewable energy systems. Along with these basic responsibilities, program participants will also contribute their service to various charitable efforts such as Habitat for Humanity projects. We’re hoping to partner with a number if philanthropic and socially-beneficial organizations life heifer.org, networkforgood.org, organicvalley.coop, and pointsoflightinstitute.org, if they’ll have us.
At the same time, residents will undertake other programs to develop life-, social-, and job-skills, and will gradually ease back into full outside employment, cultivating critical community relationships in the process.
I think that if the “outcasts of society,” ex-convicts, can independently support themselves, even in a depressed economy, can improve and reform themselves, and prove themselves to be a valuable, constructive members of society, they might well inspire and motivate countless others. All we need is the opportunity.
This idea will take time, work, and resources to realize, the most critical of which will be a plot of rural property to start out with. The long-range plans calls for about 160 acres in order to have a completely sustainable, self-supporting mini-farm, but we could probably get started with as few as forty acres. Land donated by some generous individual or organization would be ideal, though a zero-interest, long-term, lease-to-own arrangement with a trust might be an option. Also, there’s only so much research and planning that I can do alone and behind bars. I’ll have to be paroled to actually implement any of this. Any help on that score would be very welcome.
If I fail to make parole when I first become eligible, I intend to use the extra “time” to file several novel court claims which should challenge the constitutionality of some statutes and procedures the currently fetter criminal defendants. One example is the following:
All across the nation of prisons, inmates are paid for their labor in dollars. (I realize there are several pro and con arguments on this issue but those are off point right now.) One reason for this is that judges nowadays sentence offenders to only a term of incarceration rather than a term of labor as in the old days. Without a sentence of labor, the practice of coercing a prisoner to work against his will and without some sort of compensation violates the U.S. Constitution’s anti-slavery clause. Yet Texas is doing exactly that.
The constitution also forbids making any law or rule that may “impair the obligation of contracts,” and it’s from this angle that I’m attacking the policy. The claim will demonstrate how the state is using coercion, along with substituting worthless “work-time-credits” for money, to compel all Texas inmates’ participation in an unconscionable contract, which is illegal. Consequently, the respective convictions are void, and these issues are addressable in a non-statutory Habeas Corpus.
Another example is a Constitutional error that can be found in the arraignment process of every person in America who is accused of a crime. The court will read the formal charge and ask the defendant, “Do you understand the charge?” Being under duress and not wanting to alienate the just, defendants will usually answer in the affirmative.
There are several problems with this procedure, but the primary concern is that the statutorially prescribed admonishment from the court is taken by virtually everyone as a satisfaction of the State’s 6th Amendment duty to inform the defendant of the nature of the accusation. We contend, however, that is does not do so, that the legal system has never adequately define the “nature” (or essence) of the charge, and that it should properly include a good deal more information than the minimal amount required by the statute, beginning with the Article III judicial power under which the court hears a statutory case. Again this claim would be presented in a Habeas Corpus.
There are numerous other issues that can and should be addressed, but my larger intent here is to write a book about the Criminal Justice system, from commission of a crim to sentence expiration, using the results of the court claims in support of the narrative. Ten or twenty years ago, such a book wouldn’t have been viable, but with the current economic downturn and the possibility of an associated increase in the crime rate, this information may now be important to people. You may know people, even friends or loved ones, who might wind up in the unfortunate position that I have found myself in. In that case, wouldn’t you want them to know what to expect?
There’s a stereotypical image of prison inmates, endlessly recycled by the popular media, that no only presents convicts in a wholly and exaggeratedly negative light, but lumps all convicts together into a faceless, homogenous mass. The fact of the matter is much more complex. The prison population is a reflection of the country’s overall population. While I haven’t met any princes or saints in here, I can tell you that not all of these people are slope-browed imbeciles, amoral deviants, treacherous con-men, or vicious thugs. There’s big money and political power in the fear-mongering, hate-pimping propaganda, but no truth to the propagandists’ nation of a global “criminal type.” While there are some monsters here, our prisoners are by and large just people who have made mistakes and broken the law in the process, just as you do every time you back your car out of the driveway and into the street. (Yep, it’s reckless driving. Check it out.) At any rate, they’re individuals and should be considered as individuals. Most of them, even if flawed, are salvageable human beings.
Acknowledgements
Personally, I’d like to believe that I’m reforming and re-creating myself, and influencing others in a positive way in my attempt to right a few wrongs—some of which I egret to say that I myself have perpetrated. In that spirit, I’d like to publicly extend my thanks, apologies, or forgiveness to the following people for the various things that I think of as significant. They may be large or small things, the details of which are between that person and myself. I want these people to know that they have my respect, that I appreciate the role each has played in bringing me to where I am in my life today, and that they deserve some share in the credit for my future successes.
Abelin, Jim Nunnelley, Patrick
Allen, Matt Nunnelley, Sean
Bond, Jeff Nunnelley, Whitney
Bucko, Courtney Nunnelley, The Family
Carson, Jane Pollan, Tanya
Carson, Randy Rankin, Lynn
Cheek, Teresa Ray, Benton
Corley, Kelly Ray, The Family
Doucette, Tim Rochelle, Christine
Gibbs, Clifford Smalley, Dixie Gladys
Hale, Kathy Smalley, Glenn
Jewel, Stephanie Stubbs, Kerry
Jourden, Cole Talley, Penny
Jourden, Diane Wayne, Kim
Moorman, Amanda Wrinkle, The Family
Moorman, Jill
If I have forgotten anyone or if you have comments or questions about this post, I invite you to contact me via U.S. snail mail at the address below:
Eddie A. Nunnelley, Jr.ANCIENT HISTORY
My high school years were spent in Garland, Texas, where I was sort of an anti-student at Lakeview High School. Academia wasn’t my strong suit so I quit school, earned a G.E.D., joined the U.S. Air Force, and married one of my high school sweethearts—the wrong one. Well, were wrong for each other, anyway.
We went our separate ways none too soon, but I continued, zombie-like, in a cycle of toxic relationships for the next two decades. My dysfunctional way of life is also evident in my diverse work history. There aren’t many jobs I haven’t tried—including a few of the illegal ones. I’m not proud of any of that, but I did at least become more stable with age. Prior to my latest trouble with the law, I spent some years in the hardwood flooring trade, and that opened the door to a year-long job managing a furniture refinishing project for a hotel. The job I most loved, though, was as Captain of a small cruise boat for a resort on Lake Texoma. I would have done that for half the money.
Nearing forty, I had the life I thought I wanted; I had plenty of money, sex, drugs, and no looking back. I was a “functioning addict,” and by the standards of myself and my circle of associates, I was something of a success.
Then 9/11 came. Business dried up, jobs and money disappeared, and I sank into a quagmire of drugs, crime, and craziness that I couldn’t extricate myself from. Financial and relationship stresses made my mental illness worse, and I wasn’t getting the treatment I needed. Finally, I ended up in prison on charges of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon and other things. I didn’t know what had hit me.
It took awhile until I was able to pick myself up and begin to piece myself back together. When I did, I started to question who I was and how I had reached the state I was in. I would have described myself as a fairly articulate “regular guy” who was basically as harmless as a box of kittens. Surely, I was neither a brute nor a mania, yet here I was, in prison for violent crimes. How had it happened?
There aren’t as many rehabilitative programs within the prison system as one might hope, but there is some useful material if one is willing to seek it out and make use of it. After a couple of years, I got my present prison job as a teacher’s aide in the CHANGES class, (that’s “Changing Habits and Achieving Goals to Enable Success”) and found some good insights there.
What prison does offer a lot of is time to think, so I spent a lot of my time thinking. It took time, and honesty, and it wasn’t pretty, but I looked back over my prior life and the many mistakes I had made. I had hurt a lot of people over the years starting with the four children I had helped create but hadn’t been a father to. Then there is the rest of my family, my friens, and even if only indirectly, co-workers and taxpayers at large. I regret every bit of it, but can I do better than that? Yes, with what I know now, I can.
The First Book: ALI3NIZM
As part of the process of finding answers to my questions and of re-casting myself I a more positive mold, I began to write. What eventually emerged was an odd sort of memoir. The first part was largely a chronicle of my life up to and including prison, and of the gradual metamorphosis of my thinking about myself and the world. But this is not your average “Gee, I screwed up—don’t let this happen to you” sort of convict testimonial. This is a no-holds-barred personal expose, sort of a psycho-spiritual autopsy. I also describe my encounter in 2002 with a source of information so compelling that it has radically changed my view of and approach to life. The latter part of this memoir then consists of my attempt to express this transformative knowledge in an accessible form. I completed the manuscript in 2006.
While dealing with the impossible logistics of submitting a manuscript from prison and waiting for replies from publishers, I kept continually discovering books and articles that supported or amplified on those themes I’d written about in my manuscript. Dozens of unlooked-for sources just sort of fell into my lap. It seemed too much to be coincidence. This new material quickly piled up, so in 2008, I decided to incorporate much of it into an expanded and annotated version of my original manuscript under a new title.
What I describe in the second part of the book is a complete paradigm of life, so inspiring, that I feel obliged to share it with an many people as I can, but the most novel and hopeful portions are the practical strategies that stem from the basic principles. Especially now, with the situation around the world and in every area of human life rapidly worsening and approaching crisis, we desperately need new ways of doing things. We need to upgrade to a sustainable values system, and I believe that the principles and approaches described in the book could help to turn things around for us. I’m eager to put these ideas into practice and see how well they do, and I have a practical plan to do that which I’ll implement as soon as I’m no longer freedom challenged.
The Cost of Complacency
My own history, my downfall, my experiences in prison, and my present work with the CHANGES program, afford me an unusual insight into the mind and motivations of the ordinary convict, why they offend, and why they so often re-offend and return to prison. Some of these people, it must be said, just aren’t right and are never going to be right. Many have one ire-mediable defect or another, whether it’s labeled habituation, sociopathy, or some other kind of mental illness. But most are fairly ordinary people, some brighter than others, who have learned negative beliefs and antisocial habits of thinking, coping, and behaving. Most of them lack maturity, real self-security and perseverance, are habitually self-focused, and come to prison with a distinct entitlement mentality. They’ve formed the habit of seeing “the system” (society) as a the adversary.
Provided that they can be led to see their errors and that they want to change, they are, mostly, capable of reform. Here, motivation is a crucial consideration. Reform, however, is both a personal and a social process. New views and ethics have to be practiced successfully in order to become ingrained. Cultivating empathy, generosity, and charity requires opportunities to help others without any expectation of direct return. The satisfaction derived provides its own reinforcement, and the new behavior soon becomes a new habit. Personal responsibility in inculcated though the pressures of accountability imposed through real relationships with real people.
Today there are, by some estimates, over 1.6 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons. The great majority of those will eventually be released into the population at large with only a few dollars, limited supervision, inadequate preparation for employment, and too few of the basic interpersonal and life-skills that might make it possible for them to maintain themselves and build positive lives for themselves in today’s society. These factors, along with other negative external influences, often combine to impel ex-cons to re-offend. And take it from me—once you’ve been in prison and survived, the threat of incarceration alone is no longer a deterrent to future anti-social behavior.
The fact is that the current practice of releasing ex-cons unprepared to manage themselves or meet their own needs, only serves to promote recidivism—it’s an open invitation to return to Criminal College. The policy only benefits employees and stakeholders of the prison-industrial complex. Its effects are unhealthy for society overall.
Society has an obvious interest n finding real ways to reduce the incidence of ex-cons returning to the Big House. Lip service is cheap, but the national average of $24,000 per convict per year to warehouse people isn’t so cheap. Yet a number of programs have shown that it takes much less money to simply change the offenders’ behavior instead of keeping them in prison.
My first step, as soon as I’m released, is to establish a non-profit organization that would help ex-offenders to build positive, productive lives for themselves and avoid falling back into criminal behavior, and which would also benefit society more directly by employing the huge human resource potential represented by so many releasees to help with community service projects and other volunteer activities.
The core of this enterprise will be a re-entry program established in a sort of halfway-house in a rural setting. There, former inmates will be able to provide for their own basic needs through small-scale organic market gardening, animal husbandry, and some sorts of “green” manufacturing. Initially, this will probably focus on the manufacturing, installation and maintenance of renewable energy systems. Along with these basic responsibilities, program participants will also contribute their service to various charitable efforts such as Habitat for Humanity projects. We’re hoping to partner with a number if philanthropic and socially-beneficial organizations life heifer.org, networkforgood.org, organicvalley.coop, and pointsoflightinstitute.org, if they’ll have us.
At the same time, residents will undertake other programs to develop life-, social-, and job-skills, and will gradually ease back into full outside employment, cultivating critical community relationships in the process.
I think that if the “outcasts of society,” ex-convicts, can independently support themselves, even in a depressed economy, can improve and reform themselves, and prove themselves to be a valuable, constructive members of society, they might well inspire and motivate countless others. All we need is the opportunity.
This idea will take time, work, and resources to realize, the most critical of which will be a plot of rural property to start out with. The long-range plans calls for about 160 acres in order to have a completely sustainable, self-supporting mini-farm, but we could probably get started with as few as forty acres. Land donated by some generous individual or organization would be ideal, though a zero-interest, long-term, lease-to-own arrangement with a trust might be an option. Also, there’s only so much research and planning that I can do alone and behind bars. I’ll have to be paroled to actually implement any of this. Any help on that score would be very welcome.
If I fail to make parole when I first become eligible, I intend to use the extra “time” to file several novel court claims which should challenge the constitutionality of some statutes and procedures the currently fetter criminal defendants. One example is the following:
All across the nation of prisons, inmates are paid for their labor in dollars. (I realize there are several pro and con arguments on this issue but those are off point right now.) One reason for this is that judges nowadays sentence offenders to only a term of incarceration rather than a term of labor as in the old days. Without a sentence of labor, the practice of coercing a prisoner to work against his will and without some sort of compensation violates the U.S. Constitution’s anti-slavery clause. Yet Texas is doing exactly that.
The constitution also forbids making any law or rule that may “impair the obligation of contracts,” and it’s from this angle that I’m attacking the policy. The claim will demonstrate how the state is using coercion, along with substituting worthless “work-time-credits” for money, to compel all Texas inmates’ participation in an unconscionable contract, which is illegal. Consequently, the respective convictions are void, and these issues are addressable in a non-statutory Habeas Corpus.
Another example is a Constitutional error that can be found in the arraignment process of every person in America who is accused of a crime. The court will read the formal charge and ask the defendant, “Do you understand the charge?” Being under duress and not wanting to alienate the just, defendants will usually answer in the affirmative.
There are several problems with this procedure, but the primary concern is that the statutorially prescribed admonishment from the court is taken by virtually everyone as a satisfaction of the State’s 6th Amendment duty to inform the defendant of the nature of the accusation. We contend, however, that is does not do so, that the legal system has never adequately define the “nature” (or essence) of the charge, and that it should properly include a good deal more information than the minimal amount required by the statute, beginning with the Article III judicial power under which the court hears a statutory case. Again this claim would be presented in a Habeas Corpus.
There are numerous other issues that can and should be addressed, but my larger intent here is to write a book about the Criminal Justice system, from commission of a crim to sentence expiration, using the results of the court claims in support of the narrative. Ten or twenty years ago, such a book wouldn’t have been viable, but with the current economic downturn and the possibility of an associated increase in the crime rate, this information may now be important to people. You may know people, even friends or loved ones, who might wind up in the unfortunate position that I have found myself in. In that case, wouldn’t you want them to know what to expect?
There’s a stereotypical image of prison inmates, endlessly recycled by the popular media, that no only presents convicts in a wholly and exaggeratedly negative light, but lumps all convicts together into a faceless, homogenous mass. The fact of the matter is much more complex. The prison population is a reflection of the country’s overall population. While I haven’t met any princes or saints in here, I can tell you that not all of these people are slope-browed imbeciles, amoral deviants, treacherous con-men, or vicious thugs. There’s big money and political power in the fear-mongering, hate-pimping propaganda, but no truth to the propagandists’ nation of a global “criminal type.” While there are some monsters here, our prisoners are by and large just people who have made mistakes and broken the law in the process, just as you do every time you back your car out of the driveway and into the street. (Yep, it’s reckless driving. Check it out.) At any rate, they’re individuals and should be considered as individuals. Most of them, even if flawed, are salvageable human beings.
Acknowledgements
Personally, I’d like to believe that I’m reforming and re-creating myself, and influencing others in a positive way in my attempt to right a few wrongs—some of which I egret to say that I myself have perpetrated. In that spirit, I’d like to publicly extend my thanks, apologies, or forgiveness to the following people for the various things that I think of as significant. They may be large or small things, the details of which are between that person and myself. I want these people to know that they have my respect, that I appreciate the role each has played in bringing me to where I am in my life today, and that they deserve some share in the credit for my future successes.
Abelin, Jim Nunnelley, Patrick
Allen, Matt Nunnelley, Sean
Bond, Jeff Nunnelley, Whitney
Bucko, Courtney Nunnelley, The Family
Carson, Jane Pollan, Tanya
Carson, Randy Rankin, Lynn
Cheek, Teresa Ray, Benton
Corley, Kelly Ray, The Family
Doucette, Tim Rochelle, Christine
Gibbs, Clifford Smalley, Dixie Gladys
Hale, Kathy Smalley, Glenn
Jewel, Stephanie Stubbs, Kerry
Jourden, Cole Talley, Penny
Jourden, Diane Wayne, Kim
Moorman, Amanda Wrinkle, The Family
Moorman, Jill
If I have forgotten anyone or if you have comments or questions about this post, I invite you to contact me via U.S. snail mail at the address below:
ID # 1186691
Neal Unit
9055 Spur 591
Amarillo, TX 79107
Monday, April 19, 2010
INTRODUCTION
ALI3NIZM . . . is an evolutionary, Nuevo-movement that, unlike popular “ism’s,” intuitively responds to the unbalanced spirit of the earth by ministering to positive people who have been alienated (anomic) from full participation in mainstream society.
Using a mechanism that is based on a revelatory source of information, we ALI3NZ seek to balance planetary energies through the creation of a series of sustainable rural communities, where everyone participates equally, (sort of like “secular” Amish). The philosophic reasons for bringing society’s ALI3NZ to the countryside are summarized as follows:
To re-establish our connection with nature by teaching each other techniques of organic farming. ALI3NZ will discover every aspect of what it really takes to produce our own food, as well as other useful, but forgotten skills. We expect this experience to foster a greater appreciation for natural things like well-grown food and clean living. We hope our positive example will encourage even non-alienated folks to find a balance by simplifying their own lives—and by extension—world balance.
Since there aren’t many jobs outside of cities, agriculture ill provide some revenue for ALI3NZ until a “green” form of supplemental micro-industry can be established.
The coming burden for ALI3NZ will be finding ways to achieve the goals of ALI3NIZM in a culture dominated by capital-“ism.”
We’ll be posting related (and semi-related) entries on this site in the future and welcome all comments and questions. But, first, below is the “complete” FaceBook profile by the founder of ALI3NIZM, with some backstory on how this mission was conceived.
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