The Fight For Minimum Rights
My husband is serving a 40 year sentence in Texas. He is one of the very lucky ones who had a Death Sentence over turned and default to the lesser sentence at the time of conviction.
Being in prison in Texas is no walk in the park by any means. We have tremendously hot summers and pretty cold winters, sometimes even snow. There is no air conditioning in most of the units in the State, and when it’s cold, it’s cold.
Every day brings with it some fight for the families of the Texas incarcerated. From heat and cold to medical issues and retaliation by the establishment for ones self or family merely trying to get what is a right.
It is the formidable, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, or TDCJ as we know it, that houses the majority of the incarcerated in Texas. One would think as this State has more incarcerated people than any other State, more so even than populations of other States; roughly 221,800 that they would be better at it, but alas nothing could be farther from the truth.
My husband is, due to his conviction but despite his low custody level in one of the worst Units in the State, the Stiles Unit. It is home to many HIV and hepatitis patients along side the usual gang members etc. My husband suffers with dishydritic eczema, which leaves his hands and feet raw, cracked and quite often bleeding and weeping; yet he is unable to be given the assurance that he will not be housed with someone who has one of these deadly communicable diseases. The men are rarely if ever given any kind of cleaning agent with which to clean their cells, leaving my husband open to the possibility of infection. When challenged on this the Units medical response was, “we do not cater to people”.
The Stiles Unit is to say the least, filthy. The visitation area is diabolical, never any toilet tissue, the toilets have the stench of stale urine, no hand towels. I can only imagine what it must be like actually inside the prison. The only food available in the visitation area is candy and chips, to go along with the sugar laden fizzy drinks that one can purchase from the visitation vending machine. There are many children visiting parents there, Texas being as big as it is, most travel a fair distance to get there. My journey is almost two hours one way. It is sometimes just not feasible to stop en route to allow children to eat, so many have the candy, chips and fizzy drinks as their meals and drink for that day. No wonder the health of our children is as it is in this country when we offer no alternatives.
Inmates get to use the telephone for 20 minute calls, the phones are run by the almighty Securus. For a 20 minute call we pay a little over $5.00, this is better than it was but still amounts to extortion. But I am thankful for the option for him to call, after years of no contact it is like heaven.
The administration appears unable to keep staff at this Unit. Most days the men are, “racked up” for at least part of the day due to lack of staff. Officers do not turn in to work the day after payday and you can bet the men will be locked in their cells until there is once again enough staff to cover.
Life for the families of the incarcerated here in the Lone Star State is one long fight from dawn till dusk, constant rounds of phone calls and letters just trying to get the minimum that is supposed to be afforded to our loved ones. Those who have families who care enough to fight their corner are lucky. There are those behind the walls who have no one to fight for them, no one to help in the ongoing battle to be given the minimum that can be afforded to any life form; and that is all that most are asking for, the minimum.
Despite the issues we face on a daily basis, the fight for minimum rights, the heat, the cold having to eat food that comes often in a brown paper sack, due to lack of staff. The constant worry that one will become sick and have to fight for some form of medical assistance, having to pay extortionate rates for phone calls and to put money on books, despite all that I am thankful every day that we have the chance to do these things. For so long life was, well not a life.
Every day was filled with fear as the time ticked on and appeals were denied. I can not adequately describe living the horror, because that is what it is, pure horror. Having a member of ones family on Death Row. It’s steals your life and destroys all joy with in. If you have ever stood outside the Huntsville Unit, called the Walls, while an execution is taking place and heard the wailing of family members as they stand there knowing their loved one, who they have not been able to say a proper goodbye to, not been able to touch in many many years, is in a room being legally murdered, well if you have not been there you need to go, I can tell you now it is not a spectacle easily forgotten.
Below is some thing I wrote in my journal at a time when things for us looked bleak, and I will never forget it.
Lately I’m not doing so well on the sleeping front really. I woke up in the early hours with my heart beating, like it was trying to escape from my chest, and I don’t blame it, if it finds a way out I’m going with it. I have thought about it and analyzed things and its the same thing that causes it every time. It seeps past the sandbags in my head and drowns my ability to reason, forces me to view reality through a fisheye lens in all its warped and out of perspective glory. It’s amazing the power one little word, 9 simple letters of seemingly innocuous and benign origin, when put together in a certain way make for the very worst horror show ones mind can imagine. But with the sunrise things become easier, it never totally leaves, but the sandbag stackers are back to work and the fighting spirit wakes. So thankful for that sun rise. Up an’ at’em girl.
Of course my husband did commit a crime, but that crime as awful as the outcome was, made up not more than 180 seconds of his life and those 180 seconds will haunt him for the rest of his days, incarcerated or not. The remorse he has for what happened I am unable to describe, he lives and breaths with what he did, day in day out year upon year and it slowly eats away a little piece of him as each year goes by. Unfortunately had it not have been for the lies and deceit from the prosecutors and police department, our story may well have been different. It took 11 long and horror filled years to expose the levels of deception created by these so called, honorable people. Had they strived to get the truth, and see justice done, instead of being so hungry for revenge and bloodlust, my husband may only have a few more years before parole, as it is he has 25 years to serve in that fetid filthy unit in Beaumont. He has already spent 15 years in solitary confinement, cut off from the touch of any person other than that of a CO putting on cuffs or pinching his elbow as they walk him down walkways in nothing more than boxer shorts around 12 building, which is what Polunsky Unit calls Death Row. He has been a non-problematic offender during his time, only raising a hand in defense, living as much as he can within the rules. His low level of custody reflects his many years of good behavior as they call it.
This is a small window into the life of the incarcerated family here in Texas, my story is only different as we are the lucky ones in a way, we get to keep breathing, keep fighting and we will do every day for the next 25 years if necessary.
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