October 27, 2008Hello folks,
I quit writing this column a few years back because we had a decent warden who was trying to run this place professionally (actually we had two (2) in a row – Biscoe and Massey) and I didn’t want to be disparaging them. Things since have taken a serious down turn for the worse, to the point that now that I feel compelled to once again take up my pen and deal with it.
Running a prison is a difficult endeavor, I’d be the first to agree. Death Row is even more difficult due mainly to the attendant publicity of high profile capital cases. The prisoners themselves are some of the easiest to manage. However, we’re a laid back bunch. Kids grow up playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians. Pow, Pow! with their cap pistols. It’s quite a different thing though, when the caps are live bullets, blood flies and people die. As I’ve told y’all 10,000 times in the past, I’m innocent of the crime I’m here for and I have evidence to prove it --- but I’m not here this time to belabor that point. The courts seem not to care – so far. My case is currently in the 5th Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals. So thankfully, one way or another, my time here is about to end. But for others, some of whom are guilty, I’ve seen what death has done to them. Causing death, and / or witnessing it, has a profound effect on even the hardest of persons. It will humble you. It’ll make you get your heart right with God. It’ll make you wish a million times you could turn back the clock and ‘fix’ your wrongs, see the people breathing again. For me, they’ve killed 322 people since I’ve been here and, by the time y’all read this that number will be way higher since two (2) a week are set to die every week through the end of November. Before I came here I’d seen exactly five (5) dead people – my grandpa in a casket when I was 6 0r 7; I didn’t go to my dad’s funeral in 1991. I just couldn’t do it. So I didn’t see him dead and I’m glad of it. I prefer to remember him alive. The only funeral I’m going to will be my own and I’m gonna be late to that one, if I can. I saw my girlfriend dead but have little memory of that, except that I fell on her feet and nudged them with my foot; so I knew she was dead. I didn’t see my girlfriend’s sons dead but later I was forced to look at them in photos after they were dead and wished I hadn’t. In 1991 my best friend was shot and killed while I was standing right beside him, less than a foot away. He was shot in the right chest with a .30-.30 Winchester rifle. It blew pieces of him all over me as the bullet exited his back. More recently I’ve lost every friend I ever had here. Texas killed them one by one. They leave here. They never come back. I read in the paper what they said and how they died, how many minutes it took them to die, what colors they turn as the chemicals course through their veins, how they strangle, gurgle, rasp, snore and die, die, die. So, trust me, I’ve got experience here with death. Thirteen (13) years of it. 322 executions worth. For all the terrible things some may have done, I’ve never encountered any of the “monsters”, “demons”, “sociopaths”, “super predators” or “deranged killers” the D. A.’s and news media are always talking about. I’ve seen only human beings some wretched, true but mostly just twisted and broken by dismal lives and upbringings they themselves had little or no control over. I’m not seeking to lessen their responsibility, I’m just saying, it could happen to anyone and, it has.
Acceptance and realization of the enormity of the deed of causing death has affected so many so profoundly that we’ve had quite a few suicide attempts and completions. Others drop their appeals, but that’s suicide too, in my eyes. The most recent was Michael Rodriquez of the Texas 7. The isolation, desperation, sensory deprivation and the utter despair of realizing the enormity of what he’d done drove him to conclude that he’d rather die than continue to live in this misery, this man made purgatory called Texas death row. The media describes our conditions as “stark”. Ha/ha! What a malicious understatement. Look at the Walnut street prison “experiment” mentioned in the case of in re Medley, 1890 U. S. Supreme Court. This is a form of the “Pennsylvania System” which was instituted by the Quakers in mid 1800’s. It was known that as now, over 154 years later, that THESE CONDITIONS DRIVE MEN MAD, as Charles Dickens stated upon his visit to one of those SHU’s:
“The dull repose and quiet that prevails is awful. In his shroud [of a cell] is lowered an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and society, the living world; he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth until his whole term of imprisonment has expired… He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years and in the meantime is dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair”.
So, with all that said, you know I’m qualified as a lay expert on these subjects. I’ve been all over death row in my years here and talked to countless men, some guilty, some innocent, some in the murky gray areas in between. I can tell you that when a man lays dying on that gurney and says his is so sorry for what he did, he really means it and, when he sheds a tear, it is for the victims, not for himself. We’re scared of death, as everyone is; but most of us who have any sense left view death as an escape from this torment. Yes, dying is bad. But it’ll be over in a few minutes and thus it’s the easy part when compared to all we’ve suffered and seen here.
It is profoundly disturbing to watch a sane man you’d just talked to in the dayroom, from your cell one day, when he just “snaps” and goes stark raving mad the next day, covers himself in feces and cuts himself to ribbons or, hangs himself with a sheet or mattress cover strips braided into a rope. The next day he’s gone, the empty cell a ‘stark’ (ha/h) reminder of what happens here. I’ve seen it many times.
All this brings me to Richard Tabler. He’s hardly some dark dangerous thug as portrayed in the media. First of all, this kid is mentally disturbed. He’s in his early 20’s, he’s 6’ 2” or 3”, weighs about 145 lbs and looks like a walking pixie stick with rickets, he’s so skinny. He’s bald headed, has big ears, no teeth and is goofy as the day is long. We call him “Gollum”, after the creature in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”. If you saw him you’d readily agree he looks straight out of Hobbitville. His I. Q. is maybe 5 points above being profoundly mentally retarded. Go to the TDCJ website for death row and look at a photo of him. It speaks for itself.
A few years ago some fool put a gun in his hands and showed him how to use it. Supposedly he killed two teenage girls and two grown men. Apparently he accepts his fate, since he’s dropped his appeals and asked to be executed and, he hasn’t yet been on death row long enough for this place to drive him crazier.
Tabler loves attention. He’ll do anything to get it. I’ve seen him in the dayroom squatted down like Chuck Berry, walking back and forth with his thumbs under his armpits, flapping his folded arms like a bird and hollering over and over “quack, quack, I’m a duck! quack, quack, I’m a duck”! – to settle a bet.
Well, most recently another fool gave him a phone. It was not an officer who gave it to him and Tabler did not pay anyone $2,100.00 for it. I certainly agree he had no business with it at all and I’d repeatedly voiced that sentiment to several, previous to these latest happenings to verify that Tabler is a mental patient. He’s recently tried to kill himself and (I think) he is currently on suicide watch at Jester IV nut hatch.
I’ve read a handful of news stories out of my own and various associates’ newspapers about this fiasco and had reported to me what others heard on the radio about it, most notably excerpts from Senator Whitmire’s special hearing of his Committee on Criminal Justice on October21st. (http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/commit/c590/c590.htm)
So I’d like to point out the following:
The news media keeps saying Tabler threatened Whitmire’s daughters. That is simply NOT true. From what Whitmire described at the hearing of their phone conversation, Tabler never threatened him or his family.
Tabler called Whitmire in a desperate plea for help. He’d dropped his appeals, he was maybe having second thoughts and most of all he wanted Whitmire’s help to see his mother and grandmother one time before he died. He appealed to Whitmire as a parent and mentioned he knew Whitmire had daughters.
Whitmire took the original call despite the fact that Tabler misrepresented himself as an old friend Whitmire knew he did not have – once he verified that, all he had to do was say, “I don’t know you, don’t call this number again” and hang up. Instead, he led Tabler on, discovered his real identity, gave Tabler his personal cell phone number, told Tabler he could call him anytime and promised to help him any way he could – now though he’s crying that “no one should have to go through what he’s been through the last three weeks”. Well boo hoo. He invited it all upon himself by his own actions! He could’ve just hung up and walked away. But no, he instead set out to entice and entrap Tabler. Make no mistake about it, his actions are the quintessential definition of entrapment. Just to make a little political hay in the media and attack TDCJ for gain on his own little personal hate agenda. He says Tabler “frankly, scared the hell out of” him. Tabler’s locked in a box. He can’t hurt anyone. He doesn’t hold any sway with anyone in the world – except maybe his mama and his sister, who allegedly helped pay his phone bill. Whitmire enticed Tabler’s mother to believe he would help he. She flew to Austin for a last visit with her soon-to-be executed son. Instead he made a public spectacle of arresting the poor old woman, 61 years old. I guess Tabler’s 84 year old grandma was left to fend for herself and only because she didn’t buy her grandson a few phone minutes? What I really can’t understand is, why can’t someone see Whitmire’s actions for the ridiculous stunt it is? Why?
Whitmire says nine other prisoners used the phone and they’re all gang members, this ‘n that. “What about the judges, prosecutors, jurors and victims who put those people away who’re in fear for their lives when these gang members put “hits on them”? Pardon me, but as O.I.G. head John Moriarity himself stated in another story I read, these people are calling home to mom, sis, and wives, not putting “hits” on anyone. Out of the 2,800 phone calls Whitmire is ballyhooing, not one prosecutor, judge, cop, juror or victim was called. TDCJ has confiscated, in a year’s time, 19 phones, the story said. Let’s assume they all made at least 1,000 calls. Out of 19,000 calls and probably more than that, no judge, prosecutor, cop, juror or victim was contacted. TDCJ is installing pay phones for prisoners. There are gang members in population just as there are on death row. Whitmire isn’t worried about who they’ll call is he?
Whitmire alleges there is a rampant problem with cell phones and prison officials are “lax” in doing anything about it. The evidence refutes these assertions. Nineteen (19) phones in a year. That’s less than two per month in ten months. The population of death row is roughly 400 people. That’s less that ½ of 1% of death row prisoners who could or did get a phone. Since the lockdown began they found three phones. This attests to the fact that Polunsky Unit officials have been very persistent and diligent in busting and seizing the phones from anyone who managed to get one.
I don’t like Wardens Billy Hirsch or Timothy Simmons and likely I never will because they’ve done nothing but mistreat me and my loved ones since the day they got here. Hirsch has threatened my people, Simmons has made demonstrably false allegations against my wife and both of them had her taken off my visitors list and put on a negative correspondence list because she is an activist and has helped me file grievances and complaints on them and because I’ve written letters to her wherein I was critical of them. To this day they are still retaliating against me every time I write a grievance on them. If you have any doubts about this, I’ll be more than happy to supply you with copies of the grievances and evidence I possess - just write and ask.
That said, in this one instance, I’m forced to side with them where Whitmire is concerned. There has been more contraband confiscated and its routes plugged since Simmons got here than at any time in the last 13 years I’ve been here and I’m absolutely 100% certain that TDCJ’s own records will bear that out.
Again, to put this ‘rampant’ cell phone ‘problem’ in perspective, in the last 3 years Moriarity has logged a total of 700 cases in a prison population of 155,000 convicts? That’s miniscule! Again less than 1% folks! By comparison, in Maryland, a state 1/20th the size of Texas, with a prison population of only 27,000 – 1/6th the size of Texas, officials in Maryland confiscated over 300 cell phones in one week, a total of 800 in 2007. You can readily see, with numbers like this, that Whitmire’s claim is bogus in extreme.
The next thing is, for the most part we have pretty decent guards here. They’re mostly humane to us but you couldn’t pay one of them $10,000.00 to bring something in here. No death row guard has been caught bringing anything in here this year, that I’m aware of. While I’m not going to put it out there, there are many ways for things to get in here that do not involve any human carrying it. To attack these guards, subject them to false allegations, rumors of “spy cameras in the vent” watching them, searching them and otherwise showing distrust of them is only going to destroy their morale and make them want to quit their pathetically low paying jobs and walk out. Then who’s going to run the show? DPS? Ha/ha.
Whitmire’s suggestion to put ‘law enforcement’ officers in here is ludicrous; the police here to police the police? At whose expense? At your expense, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public taxpayer! So Whitmire would take DPS officers off the streets where they can protect and serve you folks out there, only so they can protect Senator Whitmire from unwanted phone calls from in here? Hmmmm. How quaint.
Tabler was calling Whitmire to inform him about the unconstitutional and deplorable conditions extant on death row. Whitmire inexplicably failed to mention this, except for prisoner Billy Mason who is starving himself to death. He’s currently in sad enough shape that they have to wheel him to the infirmary in a wheelchair or on a stretcher.
Captain Bryant and his cronies are currently employing leveling classification as their own personal tool of punishment and retaliation without any due process whatsoever. They have various prisoners they don’t like isolated in corner cells all over 12 building, mishoused and misclassified, while falsely calling it an “integrated” cell assignment. Any prisoner who resists such assignment is gassed excessively, beaten and given a case.
Personally, I had no involvement whatsoever with Tabler’s escapade. Yet the same day they ran down on him, 10-20-08, 45 minutes later Bryant used it as his excuse and license to run down on me, too. Why? Because I’ve been filing grievances on him and Hirsch and their pet property officer Ms. Smith (same name as the Major – likely his wife, sister, or both). They took my table light, my pillow, my clothes, my bed sheets, my socks, my underwear and even my under arm anti-perspirant purchased from the commissary. I realize that’s slim pickin’s but that’s all that’s left because the last few grievances I filed before, they ran down on me and took all my books, magazines, fan, legal material, food and even my postage stamps and envelopes – trying to keep me from mailing the suit I’m about to file on them, I guess, or to keep me from communicating with my lawyers.
This property officer, Smith, is terrorizing death row in her own little campaign of hate. You know in the last 10 years they’ve taken nearly every single “privilege” we ever had, all in the name of “security” or some other vague reason. Now, all we have left are books and magazines to read and items we purchase from the commissary which is little of nothing.
The books come from vendors like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, ordered and paid for by our families and loved ones out there. On commissary you can buy a typewriter; a nightlight / table lamp, soft soled boots; tennis shoes; a hot pot ; a fan; a radio and headphones; a wrist watch; a chess set, a few other items. Now, anytime a prisoner comes to level or they want to retaliate against him, Smith is destroying his property receipts and falsely claiming the “ownership is questioned” and confiscating the prisoner’s property. She doesn’t even give the prisoner the opportunity to contest it and prove ownership per policy, she just writes “refused to sign” on the confiscation form and sometimes gives it to the prisoner, sometimes not……then the prisoner doesn’t even know she has done away with his property until he makes level one again and doesn’t get it back. When questioned by another prisoner she loudly and proudly proclaimed that Warden Hirsch and Major Smith told her to do it that way.
Of course it hurts the prisoner to lose his stuff. But it’s not the prisoner who’s ultimately losing; it’s his family and loved one who paid for the books or put money on the prisoner’s commissary account to pay for his commissary items.
Friederich Wilhem Von Nietzsche so famously said “Beware of all those in whom the urge to punish is very strong”. In recent years we’ve been subjected to a veritable blitzkrieg of inbred redneck yahoo idiots as ranking officers and administrative authorities who only want to punish, isolate, restrict, restrain, subjugate, suppress or otherwise mistreat us for reasons that are not related to true prison security, order or discipline. In my view, regardless of what they did or didn’t do, anyone who mistreats or abuses prisoners who are locked in a box awaiting death and otherwise helpless to defend themselves is on the same level with pedophiles, rapists and people who steal old folk’s social security checks out of their mailboxes. We’re not here to be punished and mistreated on these fools’ personal whim in order to make them feel powerful or in a control or, otherwise assuage their petty egotistical needs and personal desires. We were sent here to die. That’s our punishment and according to TX VAACP (Code of Criminal Procedure) Art. §43.24 we’re not supposed to be mistreated, tortured or abused otherwise. Perhaps Senator Whitmire could expend a modicum of his precious time seeing to that dictate of the law instead of death row bashing for political gain? Well, I don’t know…asking him to impassively and correctly do the job he was elected to, that might be too much to ask, eh?
The other thing Nietzsche so famously said was: “He who fights ‘monsters’ must be ever vigilant to not become that very thing which he loathes”. Guess some of these Texas prison authorities and Senator Whitmire himself have fallen in that trap, huh.
In this place you cannot have anything, say anything, see anything, know anything, do anything, be anything, hear anything or enjoy anything. It’s beyond being merely inhumane; locus es terribilis iste! – “this place is terrible!” Some of you might be quick to say “well, they’re capital murderers and they shouldn’t have anything anyway”. To you I would say, again, not all of us are guilty but besides that, our court sanctioned punishment is DEATH; we forfeit our very lives for the crimes we’re accused of, so we shouldn’t have to forfeit more, extra-judicially, in the meantime just because others want to make us suffer. If you believe otherwise, then you are the very thing you accuse us of being: a remorseless, vile, sociopathic killer. The mark of a civilized society is supposed to be it’s ability to rise above the baser instincts of animalistic terror. If you wish to visit that upon us, you are not part of civilized society. It is that same society which condemns such actions by sentencing people to death who commit them... i.e. again, you become the ‘monster’ you loathe.
The Texas media says this is the first “prison sweep in over a decade”. Ha! What a joke. There’s a statewide lockdown in the system annually and another shorter one in the summer, semi-annually for a major shakedown (i. e. unit wide total search and destroy) every year since the escape, so that assertion by the media is just totally false.
Secondly, Senator Whitmire complains that “contraband” issues are the #1 case TDCJ officers write and something needs to be done to alleviate/eradicate the “contraband problem”. I agree but only to this extent: Whitmire obviously does not even understand how TDCJ defines contraband. In short, contraband is anything, some officer or rank doesn’t want you to possess any longer. If an officer doesn’t like your attitude or, is irate with you for his own personal reasons, he’ll just go search your cell and find a reason to take your stuff. Your t-shirt got a pinhole in it? Loose seam? Contraband, confiscate it. Your night light got a crack in the shade? Contraband, take it. You fan got a small chink missing out of the grill? Contraband…kiss it goodbye! Anything changed from it’s original shape? ‘altered’ it’s contraband! TDCJ teaches its officers to retaliate against prisoners and the ubiquitous, all-encompassing “contraband” is used as a tool of punishment in this fashion. Until something is done to change this practice contraband will always be the #1 case written, simply due to the way it is misused. Something which is “altered” is not supposed to be considered as contraband and confiscated unless it “presents a treat to the safety and security of the institution, staff and or other offenders” i.e. a frayed cord on a hot pot or radio could short out and presents an electrical fire hazard. But the way TDCJ employs the rule, if you use a bar of soap you just bought, it’s ‘altered’ and they can take it from you.
Lastly, if you were a parent with a child of yours on death row and he were about to be executed, wouldn’t you want to talk to him and come see him once before he was murdered by the state? Regardless of what he may have done, he’s still your son, right? Sure he is. TDCJ hold its prisoners, especially death row, in virtual isolation. They’re interdicting and otherwise obstructing and censoring our mail for reasons not related to prisoner needs or security but trying to use it as a tool of manipulation against us, while delaying its delivery for days or even weeks. Last week I had a delivery of briefs and grievance copies robbed from me, where the mailroom illegally confiscated the copies and still refuses to give them to me. These are briefs filed in my case, upon which my very life depends. It’s circumstances like these which are driving other prisoners to seek alternative means of communication. TDCJ’s own draconian practices – which by the way are illegal and unconstitutional – are causing these problems. Why should the prisoners be made to suffer for it? The enticement, entrapment and arrest of Mrs. Tabler is a shameful and sadistic act which rests on Whitmire’s shoulders. Whitmire has intentionally lied and misled the media about much of this matter; he should be called upon to answer for it, rather than encouraged by the media to continue his political grandstanding.
Best regards to one and all,
Hank Skinner
Henry "Hank" Skinner is currently awaiting execution on Texas death row after being convicted in a 1993 triple murder.
http://www.hankskinner.org/
Mailing address:
#999143 Polunsky Unit
H W Hank Skinner
3872 FM 350 South
Livingston TX 77351-8580
USA
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