04-05-2022
They don't call us slaves any more. Too many negative connotations. For some
time they called us convicts, then prisoners, followed by their newest
euphemism, "inmates," like deranged patients in a mental hospital,
rather than slaves, what we really are. There are over two million of us in
America, the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave.
Tuesday, April 5, 2022, will mark my forty-fourth year of enslavement in a
succession of twenty-one Florida prisons. April 5, 1978, I awoke for the last
time as a free man.
We are not allowed to write on our cell walls, endless scratches marking the
days, months and years of captivity, like actors in those old black-and-white
prison movies we used to see, but if we were, my wall would be filled with over
16,000 scratches, over 16,000 days in these small, dreary cages. I was
twenty-eight years old when I was enslaved. I am seventy-two now. Add it up.
Don't take my word for it.
To go along with that, they tell me I have over 10,000 days of incentive
"gain-time" accumulated, over 27.4 years credit, at twenty days a
month, every month, for "above satisfactory" good behavior and
positive program involvement, for what good it does me.
My "Prospective Parole Release Date" (PPRD), remains frozen at July
4, 2017, the date I was supposed to be freed to return home to my
wife, Libby. However, the politically-appointed parole commissioners owed a
debt to the corrupt former prosecutor, Mark Ober, who suborned perjury from
convicted felons to wrongfully convict me for murder. His more powerful
political crony had him appointed to the "Parole Qualifications Committee,"
(PQC), where he personally approved the appointments of the three sitting
parole commissioners, a neat hat trick. No way would those three go against the
wishes of their benefactor, who claims he fears me. What does he have to fear
from me? I forgave him his sins against me long ago.
After I turned down his increasingly lenient plea offerings, after he
threatened me with the electric chair, the death penalty if I refused his
offers, after I refused to pay the bribe that would make the case "go
away," Mark Ober was overheard telling his lackeys, "Norman will
never survive a life sentence." Mark, I beg to differ with you. Although I
am in failing health - prison grinds down the strongest-- I've vowed to survive
this life sentence and once again breathe the air as a free man.
We are seeking a new parole hearing before the renamed "Florida Commission
on Offender Review" (FCOR), asking the commissioners to affirm the July 4,
2017, release date and grant my parole. I have an excellent parole release plan
that was approved five years ago. My trial judge, J. Rogers Padgett, a senior
judge still on the bench, wrote letters to each parole commissioner approving
my parole, a rare act. The FCOR commissioners ignored his recommendation.
There is so much more. Many men and women are out on parole with far more
serious sentence circumstances, with convictions for two and even three
murders, even suspected serial killers released after serving their 25-year
minimum sentences. In the law, that is called proportionality, "may the
sentence befit the crime." The Florida Supreme Court examines every death
penalty case for dis-proportionality, but since I didn't get the death penalty,
the issue didn't come up.
Do you want to help? Letters from citizens in support of my release have a
positive impact. Emails work, too, but Libby needs copies of letters and emails
to include in our release plan. Any questions? Libby can answer them, and we'll
be thankful for your help.
Last but not least, I still believe God has a plan for all our lives, and pray
that plan comes to fruition soon. Without faith and hope, and the protection of
guardian angels along the way, I would never have made this forty-fourth
anniversary.
Thank you and God bless you.
Charles Patrick Norman
