Mongoose Distro

It might well be argued that the Criminal Justice System is being used, deliberately, to drive labor market wage scales downward, in much the same way that the Criminal Justice System used leased convict labor to do the same during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those bearing the burden of a criminal record often find employment difficult to obtain and are then as often forced to accept lower wages to obtain employment. That approximately 100 million Americans now have criminal records then betrays intentional design. This means that nearly one-third of all Americans have criminal records. But the picture is more complex than just this. Rather the painted picture is of a pyramid, whose base (the densest strata of criminal convictions) is set in the midst of those most needful of gainful employment and a living wage – the impoverished. As one climbs the pyramid and escapes the prison of poverty, one finds fewer and fewer criminal convictions the higher the one gets on the pyramid. On reaching the top of the pyramid one finds bright, sunny and criminal-conviction-free days, and a people who are not targeted and harassed by the criminal justice system and its actors.

Steven McCain 2096064
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266

By: David Matt Strunk #102504
Fremont Correctional Facility
P.O. Box 999
Canon City, CO 81215

No Safety at Safeway– Gangstalking, Vol. 4

Dear gentle reader: greetings and welcome to what is now my Fourth installment of “To Those Interested in the Gangstalking of a Targeted Individual” which has turned into a series of volumes about “psy-ops” known as “gangstalking”. This is a true story.

Also known as “Organized Stalking” and “Gas-lighting”, the slang term “gangstalking” is a term that describes a specialized set of a variety of harassment aimed at an individual, with the intent of driving that person insane. Insanity is intended to end in the suicide of the individual. Barring that, the only other acceptable ending is that the individual acts out violently enough to be incarcerated in a prison or mental institution, for life. There is no third option. Once the person- called a “Targeted Individual”- is entered into this “program”, the harassment against the target continue, and get worse & more frequent, for the rest of their natural life, until the “end game” is achieved: suicide, or lifetime incarceration in an institution.

Before I go further, I’d like to pause here to just give a little “shout-out” to the handful of people who have supported me thus far in this, my catharsis on the experience of being a Targeted Individual that I relate in these zines: first of all, my publisher Mongoose Distro. Without them, these zines would not be possible. I am serving what amounts to a life sentence in Colorado prison, for a murder that was staged as the direct result of my being gangstalked.

Here in prison, even something as relatively easy to put together as a “zine”, is impossible to do. I have to hand-write these stories with a pen & notebook paper, and mail them to Mongoose Distro, or else this zine would not exist.

Because, I have no access to computers. I was first introduced to zines as a teenager in the mid 1980s, as a punk-rock fan publication for .50¢ at my local alternative record store. Now I see the zine movement as nothing less than the savior of print. There is permanence to print on paper. You can’t go on Wikipedia and change what I have to say about “gangstalking”. So again, thanks to Mongoose Distro. And thanks to Jason Rodgers and Christopher Robin, who I met thru “Slingshot”, a protest newspaper, for encouraging me to believe in my writing and give Mongoose Distro a try.

Thanks to my 1,000+ followers on the Mongoose-related anarchist website who read and liked what I wrote, and thanks to Aaron Bushnell who wrote to me under the alias “Anar-kitty” to show his support before he immolated himself and live-streamed his death to protest the Gaza situation, may he rest in peace. I feel blessed that he wrote to me. As for the rest of you, I still have 40+ years left in here, and now Aaron Bushnell is gone, can someone out there please reach out to me with a “snail-mail” letter while you still can, before The Singularity happens and you can’t buy postage stamps at 7-11 anymore? Because, “gangstalking” is no joke, it can happen to you and the best defense against it is awareness.

I will now relate the story of how I got trapped inside a grocery store by a gang determined to kidnap & murder me, as the result of a “gangstalking” tactic. I’m currently in prison and have no idea how many people are following my zines, but I have been promising to relate this story now for the past couple of issues of these booklets. I’ve been promising this story for over a year now, my apologies to anyone who has been waiting for it. But I sort of doubt it, I have no access to computers but I had a family member go online and check, and it seems that I’ve had just about a thousand hits on an anarchist website connected to mongoosedistro.com, and no one writes to me via the “snail-mail” address for me included with these zines. So if anyone is following my story, all I can say is: I can’t tell. I have a 40-year prison sentence, I’m a single man in my 50s, so if anyone is reading this, a “yelp” review does me no good. What would do me some good, is go to your local 7-11 or post office and spend a dollar on a stamped envelope to write me.

I think the best way to tell this story is to just get to it, without much back-story. The explanations can follow at the end, but I think I’ll begin by just getting to it.

The year was either 2006 or 2007, I am not sure which- as I have suffered damage to my memory as the result of a concussion and because of damage from microwaves emitted from DEW’s (Directed-Energy Weapons). The damage mostly affects dates, numbers. However, I think the actual year this happened really doesn’t matter- what matters is the events, which I remember clearly.

I was homeless, and living in an abandoned house near the public library in Fort Collins, Colorado. I had lived in Fort Collins since 1996– Fort Collins is home to CSU, so it’s a very transient town populated by college students and retired folks. Also, for some reason Fort Collins is the #1 town in America for police to retire. Maybe due to word-of-mouth, I don’t know, but there’s a strong “cop culture” in Fort Collins. It’s easy to go to jail there – it being a college town, there’s a lot of beer-drinking, and the cops love the money DUIs bring. I got a DUI in a vehicle I wasn’t even driving. I was in it with engine off. I have a friend who got a DUI on a bicycle. So, that’s just a few examples of how ridiculous the policing gets in Fort Collins. Needless to say, they don’t like homeless people. Homeless people drink, but they don’t have money to pay all the fines the cops like to suck out of the average citizen. The police keep a list of known homeless people there. For this reason, when I fall below the poverty line in Fort Collins, and find myself homeless, I hide. I stay out of view, so the police there won’t harass me and shower me with a bunch of tickets I can’t pay.

So I was homeless but staying in an abandoned house, for cover. The windows were not boarded up, so it didn’t look abandoned. I did not want to get in trouble for breaking into it, so I went around back and stayed on the house back porch, which was open. The backyard had a wooden privacy fence around it, so no one could see me back there unless they came right up to the fence and peeked thru a knothole, or unless they walked around from the front, like I did. Only the property owner would have a reason to go back there. Out of sight, out of mind. So I don’t have to explain myself and my situation to some cop who thinks he’s better than me. So, this abandoned house I found was a good hiding spot, but I only slept there. I’d sneak back there at night, I had a sleeping bag on the back porch. But I was careful not to be seen.

Due to my situation, I had to buy food every night because I had no way to cook it or store it. Cooking it would require a campfire, which would blow my cover. The cops look for campfires at night, it’s how they find homeless people to harass. I had a sleeping bag that I rolled up & hid in a hiding spot during the day, a cooler was more stuff than I wanted to try to hide during the daytime when I left. I didn’t want a bunch of stuff on the back porch of this house to indicate someone is staying there- it would blow my cover, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep there anymore. The cops would set a trap for me, wait for me, to show up at dark-fall and ticket me for trespassing. Little did I know they had already set a trap for me, but I did not yet know about “gangstalking”.

So to avoid cooking or cold storage, I got my food every single night at a grocery store called Safeway, about six city blocks from the back porch I stayed at. I’d buy a big hoagie sandwich or some other kind of ready-to-eat meal for dinner, and some donuts for breakfast, plus soft drinks. I’d double- bag it, and carry it back on foot. The next morning, the garbage from the food containers goes back in the grocery bags, and I throw it away in a trash can across the street at the public library, where I’d go to wash up in their restroom. That way, there’s no trash left on the property I’m staying at: my sleeping bag is rolled up & hidden under the porch, the rest of my belongings are in a back-pack on my back, and there’s no trash or anything else to indicate somebody is living there. What I didn’t know, is that my nightly walks to the grocery store made it easy for anyone following me to know where I will likely be every night. My routine made me an easy target. I was already a target but didn’t know it yet, because I didn’t understand “gangstalking”.

The Safeway grocery store on North College Ave. in Fort Collins, closed at midnight. Once upon a time it was open all night, or at least later than midnight, because it was smack-dab in the middle of town and where all the bars are, which closed at 2AM and the drunks would all want to buy something to eat. But then Walmarts started to pop up everywhere, and other 24-hour businesses such as 7-11s, so the Safeway lost business and it started closing earlier. It doesn’t even exist anymore, I’m told that since I came to prison in 2016 the Safeway closed and the building it was in has been repurposed. But back in 2007, Safeway stayed open until midnight and compensated for the lack of customers by closing most, or all, of their cash registers by ten or eleven pm. Late-night customers would have to check out at the Customer Service counter.

Because of my camping situation, I had gotten used to being the only customer in the store most nights, showing up just about 11pm. Usually I’d show up and there would be maybe two or three other customers in the whole store. There was a gas station and a 7-11 closer to where I was, but I liked the lower prices offered at the Safeway, and I enjoyed the walk. Sometimes I’d bump into someone I knew along the way. This night was no different than most, with one exception: instead of two or three other customers, on this particular night I was the only one.

It was late but I don’t remember the time- certainly close to 11pm, if not after. I remember immediately noticing that I was the only customer in the store, and all of the cash registers were closed except Customer Service. I didn’t need a cart because I wasn’t getting much , so I grabbed one of the red plastic hand-baskets, and started putting items in it.

I had been shopping less than ten minutes and only had three or four items in my basket, when I noticed another customer behind me. Except, he had no basket, and no items. That’s when I noticed he wasn’t shopping at all- he was just following me. No matter what aisle I went down, he would be five feet behind me. He was on a cell phone, and talking loud enough for me to hear him- he was describing me. What I looked like, the color of clothes I wore. He was Mexican.

That’s when I noticed other guys coming into the store- all in their 20s, all Mexican. All gang members. I recognized the numbers and symbols tattooed on their arms and faces, as that of a local Spanish street-gang. I say local, only because I recognized some of them from the bars. But in fact, the gang they belonged to is a nationwide, cartel-connected group.

At that point, I noticed the gang-members were all filing into the store in a single-file line, about ten of them, and posting up at every single door in the store, blocking every available exit. The bakery, the deli, the butcher. The florist. The back storage area, and the walk-in freezer. The management offices, the upstairs. The restrooms. If it had a door, there was a gangster posted up in front of it. And every last one of them, staring at me. Hard.

At this point, I’m the only middle-aged white guy in the store full of young Spanish gang-members. I took a tour around the store, to make sure what I was seeing was real: none of them had any interest in shopping, they were just there to block the exits. The automatic sliding doors in front of the store, had five more gang members loitering around in front of it. All of them looking at me. I was trapped. No one spoke a word.

I was not yet in a full panic, but I was at least alarmed. I had given up on shopping at this point, but still had my hand-basket with a few items in it. I decided, the best thing to do would be to go to Customer Service, and call a friend to pick me up. I had no cell phone of my own. But when I went to Customer Service, the one and only employee in the store said the phone had quit working, and I couldn’t get a call out.

I wasn’t quite in full panic yet, mostly because I noticed the store employee did not seem alarmed. Surely he must’ve noticed? But he seemed calm. I thought, if the night manager isn’t freaking out, maybe it’s not that bad? But I also didn’t plan to stick around & find out.

That’s when I remembered the Starbucks coffee empire had installed a small Starbucks kiosk in the middle of the store. It was like a tiny island the size of a pickup-truck bed, with a thatched roof, like something you would expect coconuts to fall out of. Like a beach-bar at a resort in Hawaii, but smaller, and with a coffee machine. But most importantly, it had a phone. It was closed and no one was there to man the register, but I had worked the service industry enough to know where they stow the phone: on the bottom shelf, underneath the cash register. I reached over the counter & behind it, and sure enough the employee landline phone was stowed where I expected it to be. I pulled it out, checked the line, and got a dial tone.

At this point, I’m no longer thinking of just getting a ride from a friend. I decided to involve the police. Because, if I’m getting a dial-tone on a phone at a closed business, an un-manned Starbucks kiosk in the grocery store, that means the phone works at the Customer Service, too. The night manager was in on it, whatever “it” was. So I dialed 9-1-1.

The 9-1-1 operator came on, and it’s also a Spanish woman, talking in a sexy voice. But, talking in Spanish. I said, “…English?” She kept speaking Spanish, except now I recognize some of the words as cuss words. Saying things like “chocha”, “puntah”, and so on. So I said, “I don’t understand you”. That’s when she switched to English, and said: “You’re going to DIE, vato!” That’s when I realized, the gang had re-routed the phone somehow to call one of their women if anyone tried to dial 9-1-1 at the Starbucks kiosk.

My reaction to it, surprised even me- in a situation like that, you would think I’d be shitting my pants with sheer terror. But instead, I got mad. I mean, really mad! I formulated a plan, on the spot, and sprang into action.

I left the Starbucks kiosk and marched directly back to the Customer Service desk. Just as I suspected: I hadn’t noticed before, but the night manager was maybe a bit light-skinned yet also Spanish, and had a similar tattoo on his arm like the gang-members had. He was one of them. So I said: “Hey, buddy! Check this out: you ARE going to get on that phone- NOW!- and call the police. OR- if you do NOT call the police, I will begin at Aisle “A” and go thru to Aisle “Z” and knock ALL of the items off of EVERY SHELF and STOMP THE FUCK OUT OF IT ALL, and make the BIGGEST

MESS YOU EVER SAW. Then you can explain why to your boss! Because, I’m NOT gonna just let your gang take me someplace to kill me! So I’m gonna get a cop escort off the property, OR ELSE! NOW!” He could see I was very serious. I said “Should I get started…?” – and acted like I was going to start knocking things over. He reached for the phone, and called the cops. He was in a panic.

As he spoke to the cops on the phone, I turned and saw all the gangsters filing out of the store, single-file. I looked out the window, and saw them all get into their cars. But none of them drove away. They just sat there, on

stand-by. Watching.

A squad-car pulled up in front of the Safeway, even before the guy got off the phone. It was as if the cop had been parked right around the corner, waiting for the call. Knowing what I know about “gangstalking” now, that is probably the truth. It’s all a pre-arranged set-up, and the cops are usually “in on it”. I mean, it’s not a bank or even a bar, it’s a Safeway grocery store, so why did it take the cops about 90 seconds to show up? And I don’t exaggerate– the guy called, and in less than two minutes, while he was still on the phone, a squad car was already pulling up in the front of the store.

The Customer Service counter was located at the front of the store, about 50 ft. away from the entrance, and the front of the store, is all glass, so you can see the entire parking lot outside and all that goes on there. When the squad-car rolled up, I immediately disengaged from the Customer Service guy and began to walk out of the store. The Customer Service guy, who was engrossed in the phone call to the police didn’t see the squad car at the exact moment I did, noticed- he then dropped the phone and flew out from behind the counter, physically shoving me out of the way as he ran out the door to meet the cop. I was already just about 4 or 5 ft. away from the Customer Service counter- he could’ve just ran around me, there was plenty of space; shoving me out of the way, was all part of the plethora of intimidation tactics employed by the “gangstalkers”. They are meticulous in detail and never waste a moment, they never waste an opportunity to have a negative interaction with you. They smother you with negativity, the point is to surround you in an envelope of negative interactions that you think you can’t escape from. It’s claustrophobic.

So as I walk out the door of the store, the Customer Service guy already has the cop’s attention and is pointing at me and waving his arms around excitedly, obviously painting me as the “bad guy” in the situation. I was two minutes behind him because he ran at top speed, and I walked. But I wasn’t going to leave without talking to the cop. The half-dozen cars that the gangsters went to upon leaving the store, had not moved.

At that moment, a compact car rolled up in the front of me and blocked my way. The timing was clearly orchestrated to block me from going up to the squad-car. I was at the curb of the front of the store, getting ready to step down off of the sidewalk curb into the parking lot and walk about twenty ft. to the squad car, when this car pulled up directly in front of me. Blocking my path.

A pretty blonde white girl, dressed up like perhaps a middle-class college student, rolled down the window and stuck her face out to get my attention. She said, “I’ve been sent to tell you that you are experiencing a psychotic break with reality. We are here to take you to safety.” I looked in the car: three very muscular Mexican men, obviously gang-bangers with tattoos on their faces, and her. In a car similar in size and shape to, say, a VW Rabbit. I said, “Where is ‘safety’?” She replied, “We are going to take you to a mental hospital, for help.” I said, “Is that so. Where do you plan to have me sit in the car, for the ride over?” And she said, “You’ll sit in the middle between two of these guys in the back seat.” So I said, “Nice try. Go tell your people it won’t be so easy to kill me tonight.” At that moment the car sped away, as if on cue; the Customer Service guy sauntered away from the squad car, back toward the store. I could visually see him puffed up with proud indignation, as if he has “won” something by tattling on me to the cop.

Now it was my turn. I went over to the squad car. I went over to the passenger-side window where I had seen the Customer Service guy. I didn’t waste any time. I said “My life is in danger and I need a police escort off of the property.”

The cop responded with: “This Safeway employee just now told me you are high on drugs. He said you are on meth, and threatening the store.”

I replied: “I am not on drugs. If I am ‘on meth’ as you say, go ahead and check me. Search me, search my back-pack, whatever. In fact I’ll even give you a piss test down at the station. But I need you to escort me out of the area because I am in danger.”

Then the cop said, “The store guy said you threatened him. Said you threatened the store. Did you tell him you planned to knock all of the produce off of the shelves, and bust out the windows!?”

I said, “Absolutely! Absolutely. And he’s lucky he called you, or that absolutely would have happened. Gang-bangers had me surrounded in the store, I have no cell phone and he wouldn’t let me use the store phone to call the police.”

There followed a report of what happened: I basically gave the cop the play-by-play of all that happened, including my attempt to dial 9-1-1 at the Starbucks kiosk and being re-routed to a gangster. I finished by explaining I had seen them getting in cars spread throughout the parking lot, but that none of them had left. I told him that I sincerely believed my life was in danger and that I needed him to escort me off of Safeway property and “a few blocks in any direction” to evade my predators. I implored him as an officer.

The cop then said: “I’m not letting you in my car. I’m not going to check your pockets, because I might get poked by a needle. I don’t want to catch AIDS (again with the sly-putdowns: remember, as I said, they don’t ever waste an opportunity to say something negative to you and/or about you). I think you are high on drugs, and I’m not going to ‘escort’ you anywhere.” Then, he threw his squad car in drive, and drove off.

The moment the cop drove off, all half-dozen parked cars where the gangsters had gone to sit it out while the cop was there, immediately opened all of their car doors, a dozen Mexican gangsters exited the cars and began to walk towards me. As if on cue: it was as if the cop himself sent a mass text to all of them, saying “The coast is clear, you can come get him now.” I mean, it was as choreographed and orchestrated as a dance move for a Britney Spears concert. The timing was perfect: as I looked out over a sea of parked cars, I could see at least six cars simultaneously open all their doors and a bunch of tattooed young Mexicans get out and calmly but intently walk in my general direction. They did it so promptly, and so lock-step, that if the cop had looked in his rear-view mirror as he pulled out of the Safeway parking lot into traffic on College Ave. (old route 287), he himself would’ve seen it. But he didn’t need to, because he already knew it anyways: in these types of “gangstalking” situations, the cops are in on it. I suspect they often are the ones orchestrating it! You see, you don’t end up as a middle-aged white guy being stalked by a dozen or more Spanish gang-bangers intent on kidnapping & killing you, for no reason at all. The reason is slander, usually perpetrated by a fake detective, and involving family. But I’ll get to that later- for now, it’s on to how I managed to escape with my life at all, to even be able to write this! I suspect others were not so lucky.

So there I was, in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Safeway, with the cop I called driving away from me and the dozen or so gangsters who had me trapped in the store a mere twenty minutes ago, walking towards me. My brain raced. The number one thing, I thought, was this: STAY IN THE PUBLIC. THEY CAN’T GET YOU IN PUBLIC. So, I very calmly, but very quickly, started walking towards a Perkin’s family restaurant that is open 24 hours, and was located directly behind the Safeway store. I was their problem now: I didn’t have the money for a dinner at Perkin’s but I had enough for the pay-phone in the lobby. Furthermore, there’s a cash register in the lobby, and a podium where a hostess waited to seat new customers, so that meant at least two employees were there at all times, paying attention to who comes & goes. I planned to use the pay phone; not bother to call the worthless Fort Collins police but instead use it to call a girl I knew who had members of the Sons of Silence 1%er motorcycle club in her immediate family, and whom was probably armed, come to pick me up. Sad to say but, at that time in my life, a skinny 130lb. white girl was the most badass person I knew, and the only person I trusted to come save me out of that situation.

I get to the Perkin’s, with all dozen of the guys from the parked cars at Safeway following about ten feet behind me, very conspicuously, now in a single group of ominous-looking guys. I went straight to the payphone, dropped .50¢ in it, and called. The conversation was very short and to the point. I said, “Krista? (not her real name), I’m at Perkin’s. I got at least a dozen bangers after me, maybe more. Picked them up at Safeway, they followed me over here. They already tried to get me into their car. A girl is involved… I have no idea what happened, but it’s bad and now they have me trapped at Perkins. I’m not on drugs! I’m not on drugs. It’s real, and I need a ride out of the area. Bring back-up.” And she said, “I’m on my way. Can you hold them off for 20 minutes? I’m all the way in Loveland.” So I said, “Well, I’m in the lobby on the pay-phone at Perkin’s, my guess is they will try to flush me out but won’t try anything in the restaurant. So, yeah, I can do 20 minutes.” So then she said, “Can you go back to Loveland, or do you need to be in Fort Collins?” I said, “Loveland works. These are Fort Collins bangers, I doubt they’ll follow us. If they do, you can lose them.” So she said, “On my way.” CLICK. Call over. And that was it. The whole call was maybe three minutes. It was like an action/adventure movie: in those days, I could make one phone call, and someone reliable who was also armed & dangerous would be on their way. I could sit back and relax at that point. Those days are gone now.

And, sit back and relax I did. Having made my phone call, and knowing the calvary was on their way to save me, I sat in the waiting bench of the lobby where hungry customers wait to be seated. So did the gangsters- having literally followed me into the lobby, they found a waiting bench opposite mine, and two of them sat down to basically babysit me and make sure I didn’t sneak off and, what? Find a window to crawl out of in the bathroom? The kitchen? Did they plan to have a shoot-out with my get-away driver in the parking lot? A high-speed chase? What? And so we waited- me, and the people trying to kill me, both quietly waiting on my ride, pretending not to notice each other.

That’s when the families began to show: I mean, the families of the gangsters. I started to notice a bunch of Spanish families being in line to get a table at Perkin’s, and it was all of a sudden, like at lunch hour but actually late at night. And that was when “IT” happened: one of the old Mexican ladies tipped her hand and showed me what the whole fuss was about. I had been accused of molestation, of sexually abusing a young family member.

I was mortified! See, at this point in my life I had no idea what “gangstalking” was, but I was indeed familiar with police slander techniques, because I had seen it happen on two separate occasions. On one occasion, a roommate had gone missing, and a man claiming to be a police detective showed up at our house, asking about the man. He claimed the man was a sex-offender and had broken his sex-offender parole by committing more sex

crimes, and my live-in landlord, gave this “detective” all kinds of information about the guy, but no one bothered to really check his credentials. The live-in landlord was a bitch of a man, really he was an old woman of the sort who plays bridge and gossips about whoever isn’t there at the moment. You know the type. Later I found out he was asking the detective questions about me until I showed up to find out what is the matter!. The point being, I remember no one took this guy’s badge number or called the station to find out if the guy was, in fact, a detective. He could’ve been anyone and was able to gain a bunch of information about a total stranger in about 15 minutes, simply by flashing a badge. He could’ve got the badge from the toy section at the Dollar Store six blocks from where I lived and attached it inside an old leather wallet. Nobody checked. On a second occasion, I was in jail with a guy who was being harassed by an actual detective, and this detective was upset because his wife worked at the Utilities office and they had turned off this man’s gas for nonpayment, in winter. Freezing to death, the man showed up to dispute the payment, and an argument ensued. He called her a few choice names, which she reported to hubby. The man then used his clout as a police detective- and her access to his personal files, after all he had to reveal all of his identity to gain access to utilities- to go around to literally everyone this man knows, and claim he’s “under investigation” for all manner of vile, perverted sex crimes. After all, anyone can be “under investigation” for anything at anytime, and the detective isn’t breaking any laws if he, say, shows up at your mother’s house, and claims you are wanted for questioning for raping a five-year-old. If you happened to be there, he could then say, “Did you rape a five-year old? No? Well, we must’ve made a mistake. Have a nice day!” So, even years before I learned it was a “gangstalking” tactic (and it is), I was already aware of slander as a weapon. And one things for sure: anyone who has watched the movie “America Me” or “Blood in, Blood out” and got the impression that family means a lot in Spanish culture? You are correct. It isn’t just a racist cliché or a crass stereotype, it is actually very true that family is everything to a Mexican. So when the old Mexican woman in line at Perkins pointed directly at me and told the hostess “that man molested my niece”, I understood what kind of trouble I was in. Lucky for me, that old woman also gave me the key to solving the problem.

My first reaction, was to become enraged. If you are someone who isn’t a pervert, there isn’t much worse than being publicly accused of being one.

My cellmate here in prison is a pervert, and it’s not a life worth living. He’s here for having consensual sex with a 16-year-old. But he is like 70 years old, so I doubt it was a consensual thing. By his own admission, cocaine was involved. And, these types of molesters lie and lie a lot, so he probably added a year or two. Probably the victim was 14. It’s creepy. He’s a creepy old pervert, and deep down he knows it. My life sucks, but I’m glad I’m not him. So when some Mexican woman accused me of molesting some girl related to her, out loud, in public, at a restaurant, I lost it. I marched up to her and said, loud enough for everyone to hear: “Is that so? Well let me tell you

something- people like that, who molest little girls, have priors. They have done it before, they have a file. So- here’s my State I.D. and here is ALL MY INFO (meanwhile I’m pulling various forms of I.D. out of my wallet to show her), and write it down because you can go to the County Clerk at the courthouse and for five bucks they will print you out my criminal record. And I do have a criminal record- but NOTHING sexual-related! So I don’t know who told you I molested your niece, but I have NO PRIORS for that sort of thing! Not only that, but I WASN’T EVEN HERE! See this Greyhound bus ticket? I’ve been gone all summer!”- and as I said it, I was already pulling a Greyhound ticket stub out of my pocket to show her. The look on her face was priceless. And yet, she wrote down the info. So she wasn’t bluffing- someone had indeed told her I had done something to a niece of hers, and she in fact planned to have me checked out.

I wasn’t done there- next came the gangsters. I approached the two gang-bangers sitting in the waiting area to “babysit” me. I said, “I know you heard me. See this ticket? Greyhound makes you show I.D. to buy a ticket.

There’s my name right there. There’s the date I left Colorado, and the day I got back was about three days ago. So that means you GOT THE WRONG GUY. I WASN’T HERE.” And they said, “We don’t know what you are talking about, bro.” But they took my ticket.

After inspecting my ticket stub, they gave it back to me. But the point is, they looked at it. It did matter. I went back to the phone, pretended to make a call- but really, it was a cover so I could eavesdrop on the gang-

bangers. Sure enough, they said: “Hey bro, that ticket looks legit. I think maybe we got the wrong guy?” Right after that, I saw one of them give a signal to a guy out in the parking lot. Immediately, car fulls of the gangbangers started their cars, and drove away. As luck would have it, Krista pulled up in her car right then, and I got in. She had a girl in the backseat, a street girl I knew from Loveland. Not much for back-up against the odds I faced, but better than nothing. Whether or not they were packing I don’ know, I never asked. But they drove me back to Loveland, and all’s well that ends well, as they say. Never saw the gangsters again.

In the book “Guinea Pigs-Technologies of Control”, John Hall defines “gangstalking” this way: (following several pages in which surveillance of the Targeted Individual is accomplished by often faked police investigation credentials, as I explained earlier): “Stalking of the target is a natural extension of the surveillance phase. These phases differ in that the surveillance phase is usually unknown to the target while the stalking phase is done with full awareness of the target. In current literature, the stalking phase of this type of victimization is usually described as gangstalking, organized stalking, or cause-stalking. Gangstalking and cause-stalking are inaccurate descriptions in that they imply either street-gang involvement or some grandiose reasoning behind the stalking. Organized stalking is probably the most accurate description, reflecting the highly organized and methodical methods involved are directly adapted from the COINTELPRO operations ran by the FBI in the 1950s and 1960s against groups seen as radical elements. The tactics include total inundation of the target at home and wherever they may go, breaking and entering of their domicile and physical harassment and intimidation. Electronic harassment is used during this phase with regard to email tampering, computer hacking, cell phone spoofing, and cyber-bullying. More exotic forms of electronic harassment are covered as part of the attack phase but may be present in any phase of this type of victimization… The stalking phase serves several functions for the group perpetuating the operation to insure that the target is totally enveloped

in the operation with minimal chance of escape. It places the victim in a victim-mind state of hopelessness, especially once the victim has been ignored by police agencies through which the victim has sought help… The hopelessness that ensues from the feeling that all backs have been turned from believing or assisting the victim is integral to the success of the operation.” (from pages 72-73 of “Guinea Pigs” by John Hall). So as you can see, the term “gangstalking” has nothing specifically to do with street-gangs, but a street- gang can be employed by the “gangstalkers” if they prove to be a handy tool for the gangstalkers. Sort of like all thumbs are fingers but not all fingers are thumbs, or like all jacuzzi’s are hot-tubs but not all hot-tubs are jacuzzi’s. A Spanish street-gang, just happened to be useful to the gangstalkers to use against me, because they were in my area and were easy to manipulate into hurting someone by telling them I had done something to a family member. I probably even know some of them from my own dalliances with small cocaine purchases on occasion, so that I looked familiar to the gang members when a fake cop (or a real one) started showing my photo around to them as part of the slander phase of the surveillance. Using a gang is a convenience to these “gangstalking” groups because of the tribal mindset and the highly organized command structure of the gang- as an example, the fact that one hand-signal from one member, caused the rest of them to get in their cars and leave. But John Hall was correct to say that the term “organized-stalking” is more correct, and that they have more in common with COINTELPRO. But the end result is the same: they want the target DEAD. Just, they want someone else to do it!

I’d like to end this by saying, if you decide to go online and investigate “gangstalking”, please ignore mainstream status-quo sites like GotQuestions/GotAnswers.org, which portray gangstalking as a delusion caused by drugs and conspiracy websites.

Gangstalking began as an MK-Ultra-style CIA black-op and then filtered down to “Neighborhood Watch” groups to “get rid of undesirables”. I was once literally called an “undesirable” to my face by one of the gangstalkers during a confrontation. Basically, these are lawless vigilante committees, only instead of lynching you by hanging you from a telephone pole or a tree, they are hired by technology-assisted groups made up of retired alphabet-agency people. The point being, other than just being sociopaths who enjoy targeting people, they collect data about the stalking in order to sell it. Legitimate websites about it get taken down or compromised.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that reasonable doubt is a fundamental requirement of due process.¹ And it is reasonable to believe that there is a universal consensus here. But many courts, for a variety of reasons, declare that reasonable doubt should not be defined.² One judge in fact said to the jury, “who are we to tell you what is reasonable and what is not? That is wholely within your purview.”³ In 1881, and again in 1887, the Supreme Court offered, that reasonable doubt “may be, and often is, rendered obscure by attempts at definition, which serve to create doubts instead of removing them,”⁴ but, at the same time, the High Court avers that it “has never held that the concept of reasonable doubt is undefinable, or that trial courts should not, as a matter of course, provide a definition.”⁵ According to the late Justice Ginsberg, “the words ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ are not self-defining to jurors,”⁶ and she then goes on to state that “(s)everal studies of jury behavior have concluded that ‘jurors are often confused about the meaning of reasonable doubt’ when the term is left undefined.”⁷ And being in apparent agreement with Second Circuit Chief Judge Jon O. Newman, she invites us to consider his words: “’I find it rather unsettling that we are using a formulation that we believe will become less clear the more we explain it’”⁸ And for this part, Justice Blackmun offered the following: “To be a meaningful safeguard, the reasonable doubt standard must have a tangible meaning that is capable of being understood by those who are required to apply it. It must be stated accurately and with the precision owed to those whose liberty or life is at risk.”

So there we have it, straight fro, the lips of Justice Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court, the reasonable doubt standard of proof, because it does not have a tangible meaning, because it is not capable of being understood by those who are required to apply it, and because it has not been accurately stated, with precision, is not a meaningful safeguard against the State illegitimately depriving one of life or liberty.

Steven McCain 2096064
PO Box 660500
Dallas, TX 75266

1Miller v. Shealy, Jr. “A Reasonable Doubt About ‘Reasonable Doubt’”, 65 Okla L. Rev. 225, 227-228 (2023)

2Daniel Pi, Francesco Parisi, and Barbara Luppi, “Quantifying Reasonable Doubt”, 72 Rutgers U. L. Rev. 455, 455 (2020)

3Wansing v. Hargett, 341 F.3d 1207, 1214 (10^th Cir. 2003)

4Victor v. Neb., 511 U.S. 1 (1994) (Ginsberg, J., concurring) (quoting Miles v. United States, 193 U.S. 304, 312, 26 L.Ed 481 (1881); Hopt v. Utah, 120 U.S. 430, 440-441, 30 L.Ed 707, 7 S.Ct. 614 (1887))

5511 U.S. 1 at 26

6Id.

7Id. (citing Henry A. Diamond, “Defining Reasonable Doubt”, 90 Colum. L. Rev. 1716, 1723 (1990). This article is mistitled in this cite. The actual title of the article is “Reasonable Doubt: To Define, or Not to Define.” (citing studies)

8Id. (citing Jon O. Newman, “Beyond ‘Reasonable Doubt’”, N.Y.U. L. Rev [979, 984 (1993)]. This cite contains a correction. In the Lexis database, Victor v. Neb., at 25, has a hyperlink whose text shows, “68 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 201, 204 (1994)”, but this link takes the user to an article by 19 Authors, “The Law of Prime Numbers”, 68 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 185 (1993). Justice Ginsberg, on page 26 of Victor, references back to Jon O. Newman, Beyond ‘Reasonable Doubt’”, placing it at ¢* N.Y.U. L. Rev. 205-206, but following this address leads the user to Robert L. Carter, “Thurgood Marshall”, 68 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 205 1993).

One key element to understanding what a nefarious actor is truly up to is motivation: why the hell did you do that? Why would an entity, be it a person or a government agency and the henchmen therein, go to what sometimes amounts to extraordinary lengths to obliterate liberty? Why would they bend the rules to the breaking point just so that one of their fellow human beings, once tumbled into a legal oubliette, might never again see the light of day?

Well obviously, for the money.

Setting aside the tired old trope about it being the root of all evil – which I’m the last one to dispute – money does crop up in my research as a baseline motivation for many actions I consider deviant or abhorrent. And to be clear, I mean the motivation for state-sponsored actors, not the individuals who run afoul of their paper tyranny. While often anything but angels, a single individual would have to strive long and hard to replicate even a fraction of the avalanche of misery and injustice inflicted by the American legal machine. It’s a prodigious beast, and the fuel it guzzles to sate its unquenchable thirst is money – cash, dollars, greenbacks, samolians.

But vengeance makes a good cover story. Avenging evil deeds, protecting the common good, and striking terror in the heart of evildoers packs a mighty emotional wallop that punches the audience deep down into their feelings, far distant from any inconvenient critical thinking abilities. By inciting onlookers to wrath, a proper instigator can bypass any number of pesky moral quandaries and get right down to the good stuff – all in the name of plain old greed. Selfishness. Stinginess. It’s-mine-screw-you-ishness.

So let’s talk about one such supposed menace to society who must be locked away in service to the almighty dollar. Rather than getting mad1¹, though, let’s retain our brains so that we can do more than gnash our teeth and surrender our agency to the first string-puller who happens by.

In 1998 – twenty seven years ago at the time of this writing – a woman was arrested for the crime of ‘tampering’ in the State of Missouri.

” Tampering in the First Degree: a person commits the offense of tampering in the first degree when they knowingly receive, possess, sell, or unlawfully operate an automobile, airplane, motorcycle, motorboat, or other motor-propelled vehicle without the consent of the owner thereof.”

The horror! This woman, let’s call her Joan, stole a car. She was arrested. In 1999, she pleaded ‘not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect’ [in other words, ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ or NGRI] to the charge of tampering.

NGRI pleas are often portrayed as a get out of jail free card, ‘getting away with it by playing crazy.’ Let’s be clear that this is absolutely not the case; the bar to actually prove you are NGRI is astronomically high. Even if you succeed, you only ‘get out of jail free’ in order to be locked up in a state psychiatric hospital instead. For those of you who don’t know, take it from the ones that do – there’s nothing free about a place like that except the meds you’ll be taking, whether you want them or not.

We have a decent grasp on psychiatry in this country, though. If the function of a so-called forensic hospital falls in line with their mission statements, people should get helped, healed, and discharged from there. Since successful NGRI pleas make up such a small number of convictions as to be effectively negligible, over time most state forensic hospitals ought to be emptying out rather than filling up.

Why, then, are they all stuffed to the padded rafters with alleged loons?

Spoiler warning: it’s not because most people under involuntary civil commitments in secure treatment facilities are foaming at the mouth and itching to wreak havoc upon polite society. They are not rabid, raving lunatics – so why are they there, for years and years?

Money. More specifically: state and federal social security and disability benefits, because in the ravenous grab for dollars there is no lower limit on the level to which a state-sanctioned hand will not stoop to scoop up a few easy bucks.

Here is Joan’s story in her own words:

“I did something stupid 25 years ago. It was a cry for help. The owner of a vehicle left his keys in his car and I took it. Now I’m in here with murderers and rapists, being warehoused. We are supposed to have rights but they routinely violate them and falsify records. The Missouri Protection and Advocacy Services [the entity responsible for representing the clients of the state mental health system and ensuring that their civil liberties are not chucked under the bus] rubber stamp anything this place [Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center, AKA SeMo] does. For example both I and the psychologist I had in the community were denied the right to be present at my conditional release revocation hearing, as well as the hearing to forcibly medicate me.

My conditional release was revoked because Lightning, my service dog, was attacked. I used all my money and resources to move to the Eugene Fields Apartment Complex. To make a long story short, Lightning was mauled right in front of me by a German Shepherd/Rottweiler mixed breed dog. Lightning is a miniature American Eskimo dog, much smaller. She had to have two surgeries and took two full months to heal.

Animal control had the vicious dog removed from the premises. The dog’s owner, and her friends, then started to harass me. This went on for over a year. Another tenant threatened to kill me and Lightning with a switchblade, but MACO, the apartment management company, refused to give me her name so I couldn’t get an order of protection.

Then Lightning was attacked again by another dog. When I complained that I kept Lightning on a lead but other tenants let their dogs out of their control, MACO gave me notice that Lightning had to go. So, I packed up all my things and started looking for a place to live.

That brings me to my ‘crime’: I took Lightning to Columbia, MO to be evaluated by a dog trainer. I failed to call my forensic case manager Justin H– prior to leaving Park Hills, MO. In retrospect my psychologist and I should have called before I went to the bus station, but I already had an oral agreement with Justin that I was going to take Lightning to the trainer. I did notify him I was in Columbia within 48 hours of arriving, but they revoked my conditional release anyway and sent me to SeMo.

I lost everything – my apartment, furniture, belongings, clothes, Christmas ornaments and knick knacks that have sentimental value. Thank God good friends are taking care of Lightning. She’s all I have left. I’ve done a little over two years [as of April 2024] for this.

I also have a financial issue when I get out. The owner of the vicious dog only paid $50 towards a vet bill of $800. Then MACO says I owe them $600 after they let the other tenants take my belongings. I’m below the federal poverty level, but SeMo also says I owe the $3,200 for services. And my social security disability was not discontinued, so this place took another $3,200 and made me use it on clothes and more services here. I can’t save anything or stop incurring costs and they won’t release me.

It’s frustrating here. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do but they won’t even give me more privileges, let alone let me out. I’ve asked the nurses what else I need to do but they only say ‘keep on doing what you’re supposed to.’ They just warehouse people. Then if you fight them in court they say you’re a mental patient and the judge takes the psychiatrist’s side over yours.

I’d like to get my freedom so Lightning and I can live in a single-family unit or house in a nice quiet area. I want to be gainfully employed at least part time and work from home. I have an Associate’s degree with honors in Law Enforcement and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Affairs as well as Criminal Justice. I’m certified as a paralegal and also have taken classes in: business management, animal care, constitutional law, fitness, nutrition, psychology, and social work.”

Joan was involuntarily committed following her NGRI plea in 1999. She obtained conditional release in 2005 and spent an unspecified amount of time living under supervision in the community before having her release revoked. She obtained conditional release again in 2015, and in 2022 she was again returned to custody because she called her case manager after she got on a bus rather than before.

Tampering in the first degree is a Class D felony in the State of Missouri, punishable by a maximum sentence of 7 years in the state penitentiary. However, the court has the discretion to sentence the person instead to one year in the county jail in lieu of any prison time at all. After release, the person is subject to a conditional release [parole] period of one third of their prison sentence, meaning the most someone could possibly be punished for the crime Joan plead NGRI to is 7 years in prison followed by 2 and one-third years on supervised release.

Yet Joan is still entangled, 27 years later, in the state hospital system. That is three times longer than even the most hard-assed judge could possibly sentence a fully competent, fully liable convict to serve.

But if she’d gone to prison, the court couldn’t have made her a ward of the state. And if the state hospital hadn’t become her conservator, they couldn’t collect her disability checks on her behalf for as long as she remains under their dutiful care. And if SeMo couldn’t bank their clients’ checks, they couldn’t use that sweet government money to pay themselves for doing such a bang-up job providing mental health care to the people the court orders into their secure facility – all while ensuring they don’t do quite a good enough job that they accidentally help someone get well enough to get out, and take their government benefits with them.

That would just be fucking crazy.

https://roningrey.substack.com

roningreyauthor@gmail.com

TERHUNE AD0786
CTFN PO BOX 705
SOLEDAD CA 93960

1. I promise you, I’ll be enraged enough for all of us – I always am!”

I received 44 years to life for several attempted murders I did not commit. I was just 16 years old when I went to adult court. One thing that stood out was the word NIGGER in my trial.

The one word that is so controversial was how I was identified. I mean, the main and only evidence that tied me to the crime was identification by one person Marvin Kelley, who supposedly circled my picture during a 6 person line-up. He denied ever identifying me when forced to get on the stand, so they played the 9-1-1 tape. On the 9-1-1 call, Marvin told the 9-1-1 operator, “I just seen these niggaz”.

No ER, but the district attorney, Jacob Glucksman’s closing argument during my trial. I was called a nigger by Jacob. He said, “You heard the 9-1-1 tape. Marvin Kelly said I just seen this nigger!”. Wow.

Last year one of my “friends”, so I thought, said during our conversation when he was visiting Texas that out in their home town they called a certain area “Nigger Hill”. As soon as he said that it reminded me of trial. Just as in trial, I couldn’t believe my ears. My “friend” was white, by the way. So now I’m trying to file paperwork in court out here in California to get a retrial for prosecutorial misconduct and the California Racial Justice Act, which just was passed. I will be publishing a book called N-Word Hill about my journey through the prison system from the age of 16 till now at the age of 32 and how the n-word caged me and freed me. Amen.

Joadanus Olivas AE9727
CHCF-Stocktown B4B-108
Stockton, CA 95213

Kristopher Storey 26731-018
Federal Medical Center
PO Box 14500
Lexington, KY 40512

I’m grateful there’s people out there like mongoose, I dug and reached and succeeded in finding something I longed for in prison. Companionship. Its just not the same talking to prisoners all the time. You have a high volume of mental illness in prison, so seeking good conversation is iffy at best. I’ve once spoken to a man who was very attentive and looked as if he was paying attention to all the conversation I was dumping on him. He smiled and shook his head, until he excused himself, said he had to make a phone call.

I was like go for it, but soon after, an inmate comes up to say,” You know he’s not all there right? Uh uh, I wasn’t aware, Anne said look at him. The man was having a full blown conversation on the phone, so I was confused, so i said “so?” There’s nobody on the other line dude.

C’mon man are you serious?

Yeah, watch.

Sure enough, the man says his goodbyes to his imaginary friends and proceeds to dial a number, but its not making sense, he’s starting to talk without missing a beat, prison phones are like a serious pain in the ass, you have to do voice verification, punch in your identification number, then the Phone number, its a fucken three ring circus, there’s no way anyone picked up right after dialing a number.

Well, lesson learned, don’t believe everything you hear and only half of what you see!! There’s a term for people like that,” psych patient!!”

TDCJ doesn’t send them to psyche hospital, they put them in general population to be harmed, in any way you can imagine, in fact if you’re reading this, its happening right now.

What’s wrong with our criminal justice system? I’ve seen stuff you would feel sick to see. Officers bullying borderline mentally retarded inmates for fun, send them down the rabbit hole of administrative segregation, its sad, many of them are pushed to suicide themselves this way. I’m not the smartest man,but if I had trouble coping with the ad seg PTSD,can you imagine someone with cognitive deficiency?

Its cruel and highly unusual. I found an identity in prison, its activist.

I refused to allow the policy to shape my mind or ideology.

I refused and resisted, and even though I’m paying a high price for what I have, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Solidarity Forever.

For as long as I can remember America has had a fixation – bordering on a compulsive obsession – with what television, the media, politicians, and other similarly situated loud, influential, profit-oriented voices call ‘justice.’

JUSTICE: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair; the principle or ideal of just dealings and right action.

JUST: conforming to truth, fact, or reason.

The purpose of justice in a society is to maintain order and civility, so that a community of human beings might be forestalled from descending into an orgy of barbarism when the inevitable conflicts that arise from gathering too many freethinking individuals together threaten to supplant reason with emotions. Simply put, mob rule is a coup by feelings that topples logic, an anathema to anything civil.

Justice, in a society that actually practices it, serves as the release valve for the tension that comes when things get, as the Grinch says, too ‘peoply.’ Justice allows the wheels to turn and life as folks have become accustomed to it to continue without everybody freaking the fuck out because they can’t reconcile their feelings with the circumstances surrounding them. Justice balances the iconic scales, and balances out emotional reactions with rational contemplation.

Unfortunately, we don’t practice justice in this country.

VENGEANCE: punishment inflicted in retaliation for an injury or offense.

When someone hurts us our knee-jerk reaction is to hurt them back. This is not rational; it is an emotional response, a reflex, a little kid-ism that if indulged becomes a real nasty habit. We didn’t heed the warning label, so now we need to break this habit before its toxic byproducts deliver to our society an ugly, painful, premature death.

There’s no patch, or pill, or 12 step crutch for kicking vengeance but that doesn’t mean we’re helpless.

There may not be any methadone-esque substitutes for brutally excoriating those fellow citizens whose actions run counter to what has been quite literally by hook or by crook established as the baseline of what our society deems acceptable, but there’s something better than any synthetic skag or going cold turkey: forgiveness.

There are few more misappropriated, misused, or misunderstood concepts in our modern lexicon than forgiveness, but much of that confusion is manufactured and disseminated by the same aforementioned hooks and crooks who prodded us into this mess to begin with. Rather than quibble over rhetoric let’s stick with the old wordbook:

FORGIVENESS: to cease to feel resentment against.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean excusing a wrong or permitting its commitment. It doesn’t even mean not punishing someone. It’s just about accepting the past – which cannot be changed – and moving forward without holding a grudge. It is, in short, about justice.

When someone does wrong, an emotional response calls for wrong to be done back to them – an eye for an eye. Retribution. Vengeance. Yet once we take off the blinders that being led around by the nose care of our feelings put on us, the logical mind recognizes that answering harm with more harm only leaves us with a collective that has suffered twice. We can’t heal harm with more harm any more than a doctor can beat broken bones back whole.

That we still try to do just that speaks volumes about the insanity of building an orderly society then surrendering its maintenance and care to the emotional whims of the aggrieved heart and the offended sensibility.

Speaking of insanity, let’s talk about Wanda Mercer. More specifically, let’s decide whether our system for determining where a person is ‘insane and dangerous’ is itself insane and dangerous. If we find that it is, hopefully we can then agree that to consign anyone to it, regardless of their past, would be an act of vengeance that flies in the face of any true justice, and is therefore in nobody’s best interest save for the fear mongers and string pullers.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sick of them running the show.

The following tale is not pleasant and doesn’t have a happy ending. I don’t ask you to reserve your judgements, only to be aware of them and to consider whether they are at their core an emotional reaction or the product of rational, objective consideration.

Wanda Mercer dedicated her life to serving others. She was a mother, a homemaker, a United States Army veteran, a law student, an artist, and a poet. She was also a strong, intelligent, outspoken, ambitious individual who rarely sat idle and never played a passive role in her own life.

Yet life pulled no punches when it came to Wanda. After struggling in silence for many years she sought help from a professional to get out from under the crushing emotional burden brought on by an abusive marriage and contentious custody battles. The doctor prescribed an antidepressant to her and she believed that she would soon feel less stressed and sad.

But Wanda’s struggles were only beginning. Over the next sixteen years the doctors she trusted prescribed her more psychiatric medication to combat the problems in her life that only seemed to grow more intractable as her dosages crept ever upward. Eventually Wanda experienced a rarely discussed but frighteningly common reaction to her mind-altering regimen: instead of helping her through her most difficult times, she became delusional. As she withdrew further and the medication’s hold on her senses became total, Wanda tumbled into a bottomless hole of social and existential isolation, psychotic, paranoid, and completely separated from the people in her life who might have recognized she was in crisis.

In the depths of this darkness she then did something so shocking to the conscience that it threatens to cloud an outsider’s reason as thoroughly as the meds clouded hers: Wanda took the life of her beloved daughter, then attempted to kilI herself as well. She did not act with malice, but out of a love expressed through the warped lens the meds had imprinted on her mind. She believed her child was in imminent danger of being kidnapped by Satanists hellbent on consigning her to a brutal life of exploitation and damning her eternal soul. So, she did the only thing she could think of to spare her daughter.

Wanda was arrested. She spent days in the hospital recovering from the wounds she had inflicted upon herself, then she went to jail. After two years the court found her Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. Despite no longer being acutely psychotic, the crime which came to define her life stood too large in the public attention for forgiveness to even be considered. With the media fanning the flames, justice was abandoned in favor of vengeance. Instead of asking how a person who had fallen so far but survived such an ordeal might be made able to grieve her devastating loss and become once more whole, Wanda was thrown away into the forensic hospital system.

The purpose of involuntarily committing someone to a state psychiatric hospital is ostensibly to administer treatment to the individual so that they might record from the disorder or disease which rendered them ‘insane and dangerous,’ the prerequisite for confinement under her state’s NGRI laws.

Yet Wanda had been dangerous only because she was psychotic, and psychotic only because she’d been prescribed an irresponsible cocktail of psychotropics and left to her own devices until she imploded. Once the medication no longer polluted her mind she was neither.

But ‘justice’ – vengeance – must be served, and her time within the state hospital designated to heal her saw only harm piled atop harm as the doctors tried to beat her broken psyche back to wholeness.

Wanda was assaulted over 90 times by other patients over the next dozen years. She had her hair pulled out by the fistful, she was beaten, kicked, clubbed, stabbed, and attacked with a chair resulting in five bulging discs in her neck. Her attackers were sometimes psychotic, egged on by malicious staff members. Other times those who assaulted Wanda did so in exchange for favors, treats, or privileges from the nurses and technicians in charge of the facility.

These same staff members also took a more direct role in her torment: during the same twelve years, Wanda was verbally, physically, and sexually abused by hospital employees. They also violated her sense of safety with intrusive searches at all hours, cavity searches to humiliate her, and sleep deprivation to ratchet up her stress until she developed PTSD. Some even encouraged her to kilI herself and one went so far as to provide her a plastic bag and instruct her to wrap it over her head so she could suffocate.

Still – Wanda had never been a pushover. She weathered years of abuse, refused to take the medications which had led her into this nightmare to begin with, and petitioned for discharge in order to return home and care for her dying father. Despite being neither psychotic or dangerous she was denied. In a moment of despair she attempted to end her own life by taking pills, but she only became ill. The next day she self-reported her suicide attempt but did not require any medical attention.

Two years later Wanda petitioned for a conditional release again. This time the judge recognized that due to the longstanding antagonistic relationship between Wanda and the head psychiatrist, she could never receive effective mental health care while confined to the state hospital. The judge believed her to have a personality disorder, to be ‘difficult, disagreeable, and narcissistic’ as well as ‘unlikeable,’ but to neither be psychotic nor dangerous, so the judge – the same one who presided over her original trial years before – ordered her to be conditionally released pursuant to a five year plan the thrust of which was that Wanda would live in her own apartment in the community rather than at the hospital and would receive ongoing mental health treatment from a private psychologist who in turn would promptly report any violations of the many conditions of Wanda’s release should they come to pass, much the same way a parole agent would.

Wanda was released. The irresponsible hacks at the local newspapers whipped the public into a frenzy, rehashing the gory details of Wanda’s crime and warning that a ‘throat-slashing psycho mom’ was coming to a suburb near you. This inflammatory rhetoric brought immense scrutiny and backlash – emotional firestorms, just as the papers intended by dropping such incendiaries.

The prosecutor filed an appeal, citing that there existed ‘no clear and convincing evidence that [Wanda] would not reasonably be expected to inflict serious harm upon herself or others,’ should she be allowed out of the secured environment of the state hospital. The keystone that his entire argument rested upon was none other than Wanda’s self-reported suicide attempt from years before.

After less than two weeks living in her own apartment on conditional release, the courts agreed with the prosecutor that Wanda could possibly still be a threat to public safety despite the overwhelming lack of evidence; in over 90 instances she was assaulted yet she never once even defended herself, and in all this time the only person she’d ever harmed, once, was herself. She was ordered back into the hospital’s custody and she turned herself in.

She remains there to this day. Her prospects for ever earning a release seem grim. Because of the court’s ruling, the burden of proof for Wanda – and anyone else seeking release from her state’s hospital system – has been shifted to the petitioner. Meaning: in order to be released, Wanda must prove while she is in custody that she will never harm herself or anyone else were she not in custody.

Our legal system rests upon a foundation of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ precisely because of the inherent impossibility of proving a negative. In this instance, while locked up Wanda cannot demonstrate how she would behave in the free world, yet she cannot re-enter the free world until she demonstrates how she would behave there. Thus she twists in the wind, condemned by her past mistakes to have no future.

Were she to have been found guilty in court as a criminal and sent to the penitentiary, whatever the penalty, we could debate the fairness and justness of the sentence. Yet she was found not guilty, and sent to the hospital for treatment. She fulfilled her responsibilities by returning to sanity and no longer being dangerous, but because of the nature of her reason for being there and the inflammatory rhetoric used by the prosecutor and the media she was painted as such a monster that the courts felt justified in creating a new cage in which to keep her. They let their emotions reign, and changed the rules. They piled harm on top of harm for the sake of sating the mob’s thirst for blood.

Is that justice, or just vengeance?

~

Beyond The Ninth Wave Journalism Project

Roningreyauthor@Gmail.Com

Https://Roningrey.Substack.Com

Or Contact Direct:

Terhune AD0786
CTFN
PO Box 705
Soledad, Ca 93960

To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes,so that through transforming action they can create a new situation,one which makes possible the pursuit of a Fuller humanity. — Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

I had been B-Line for months now, and people would come visit me and field ministers would come pray and play music for us, and one of them I knew really well. The man would minister to me and we would have these conversations about the resistance and unionization, and how impactful its been for the unit as a whole. On this day,he’d told me a field minister died. The man was a father of three, married and was about to get sent somewhere to begin his journey of field minister job. However, something had happened to one of the Providers on the unit, who was known for denying all medical needs to inmates.

This man had been diagnosed with H-pylori bacteria, and they told him there was nothing they can do about it. Well, I tell the guy, why didn’t you tell me sooner, that’s bullshit they can’t do nothing about this. His response was, he didn’t want them to retaliate on him and take his visitation or something. Anyway, I was like don’t worry about it I’m going to show you its bullshit. The next day I put in to get checked for H-pylori and they drew blood from me within the week. Nothing happened, it took them a couple of months to give me my results, but someone in that medical department was holding the results hostage.

I don’t who or how, but it ended up in the mail, absent right to my cell, lo and behold I was positive and on the high side of infection. Well, I get the results and walk them to my visit, and the nurse had said I was going to see a provider, and she asked me why I was there. I said I’m positive for H-pylori, and she said how do you know? I flipped the blood test results out and she panicked, she went straight to the nurses and began bombarding them with questions as to how I received my results. After this she prescribed three different antibiotics, some generic pepto bismol pills and sent me on my way.

The following weekend the field minister comes to me, and I show him the meds and my results. He was in tears. He couldn’t believe his friend was left to do for nothing, just because the provider was trying to save money for the state. The story was that after that, he was told there was nothing they can do for him, he began to waste away, and within 3 months he was pale and skinny ,and walked into the medical department and begged them to please help him, he couldn’t take it anymore. They said he was rushed to the emergency room where he died of cancer caused by the H-pylori infection, and its intentional neglect by the staff there at Darrington Unit.

This was of course my next campaign, with help from certain people, we told the entire unit what they did. We asked them all to get tested, and it began a slow movement, for months people were getting checked, and coming out positive for the bacteria. TDCJ was overwhelmed immediately and began trying to cover it up, getting rid of medical records and handing out antibiotics to just about anyone who was asking for them, no questions asked, the lastime I saw the man who I spoke to about this, all I could say was I’m sorry about your friend, but like I said, it was bullshit they fed him. He was lied to, and you guys bought it.

I just showed you what this agency is about, never forget it. Just because they’re in authority is the red flag, always question their motive, and if in doubt, get the outside to call in and question it.

Julio A. Zuniga 1961551
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266