Dispatch from an Alabama Prison
"Being Black in America in the eyes of the law means you are nothing"
We talked with James at the beginning of this year about the violence he’s faced in Alabama’s prisons after a brutal stabbing with an ice pick by another inmate high on drugs. He was transferred to a different prison right when COVID-19 started. Last week we caught up with him on the phone. He’s continued to struggle to get adequate care for his injuries and is now worried that he will get COVID-19.
“It’s real serious in this prison,” James said. The virus is already in the prison. Because of a punctured lung from the assault he survived, he’s at high risk for the virus. His wife said he only just stopped sounding like a robot when he tries to breath.
Both the inmates and the guards aren’t taking the COVID-19 seriously, he said. Officers show up to work while sick because they are afraid to loose their job, and inmates have limited ability to practice distancing and recommended sanitation practices. Inmates who get sick are told they have sinus problems or have a cold, he said. He’s worried if he got sick that he’d face the same lack of medical care that he did after his assault.
Many Black men are put in jail for false charges, and James says he is one of them. He doesn’t believe he should be in prison. “I am tired. I am frustrated a lot because I am supposed to be home,” he said.
Over the past months since his assault, he’s become increasingly mentally stressed. “I am losing my mind,” he said. He had to fight for his life after the assault. He was transferred to a prison he says is more violent then his last, and now COVID-19 is in the prison.
“[I] almost lost my life then. If I do catch it, I might not get over it,” he said. There is a cruel irony that James fought to survive only to be faced with another life threat, and now he’s watching America march for another Black man: George Floyd
Floyd’s murder doesn’t surprise him though. How can it? He’s a Black man in America in prison.
“Our lives don’t matter,” he said. “Black lives matter, but in the eyes of the law, Black lives don’t matter,” he said over the phone.
“It is not right for law enforcement to treat a person like that,” he said. He is watching the whole world rebel from his cell. “Change has never come by being peaceful,” he said. “A lot of people have lost their lives for change.” The justice system’s injustice doesn’t just stop in the streets. If Floyd had survived the police officers brutality, he just would have been caught by the legal system that James is still tangled in.
“Just let me out. Let me go home to my family,” James said over the phone Friday. He feels like his life was taken away by the judge that sentenced him, and he is not sure he will make it out of prison alive to ever get it back.
Context: George Floyd had his own unjust encounters with police before they killed him.
News
America Convicted of racism: Every state has been set afire in the wake of George Floyd’s video taped murder by a police officer, demanding systemic changes. [NBC]
Not “less-than-lethal”: The rubber bullets and other tactics deployed by police officers to disperse crowds can cause major injuries and even death. [The Trace]
Not enough: Police reforms that failed to save George Floyd. [The Marshall Project]
Sued: Colorado is sued by prisoners who say the government hasn’t done enough to protect them from COVID-19. [Westword]
Pandemic still here: Extensive testing reveals high infection rates in L.A. County jails, as high as a group with almost 60% testing positive. [LA Times]
Shhhh: Towns with prisons who face stricter or pushed back openings are now disowning the prisons and pretending they “don’t exist” [The Marshall Project]
Let them out, for now: Supreme court allows order to release at-risk inmates to proceed for now in Ohio. [Washington Post]
SAME bullets: Video shows inmates facing non-lethal rounds after a disturbance in Arizona. [KOB 4]
Not allowed: “Inmates asked for COVID-19 protection. They were met with riot gear” [Rolling Stone]
Trapped: Women who killed their abusers now face a deadly virus inside prisons with now way out. [Mother Jones]
Immigration: The first ICE detainee to die of COVID-19 suffered horrific neglect. [The Intercept]
Educate yourself: Why efforts for compassionate release amidst COVID-19 are failing. [Prison Policy]
Long read: “An innocent man spent 46 years in prison. And made a plan to kill the man who framed him.” [CNN]
Forty-six years later, legal observers would say Richard Phillips had served the longest known wrongful prison sentence in American history. The National Registry of Exonerations lists more than 2,500 people who were convicted of crimes and later found innocent, and Phillips served more time than anyone else on that list. Undoubtedly, the justice system failed him. The police failed. The prosecution failed. His defense attorney failed. The jury failed. The trial judge failed. The appellate judges failed. But on that cold day in the prison yard, as he walked toward the Blind Spot with the homemade knife under his sleeve, Richard Phillips was not thinking about a nameless, faceless system. He was thinking about the man who put him there: his old friend Fred Mitchell.
COVID-19 resources: State Policy Changes. News. Bureau of Prisons updates. State court changes.
We want to hear from you about how COVID-19 is impacting you and the people connected to you. What is not being talked about? What story do you have that needs to be heard? Who do you want answers or explanations from? Please reach out to lj@dawsons.us.
The Des drops into your inbox weekly with a collection of small and digestible snippets concerning the criminal justice system. It promises to be humanizing, spunky, and educational. Our name: The Des is short for Desmoterion or “place of chains”, used to describe prisons in ancient Athens. We like the idea of the chains because incarceration expands far beyond bars, connecting all of parts of this country. We are here to cover it all.