Monday, April 4, 2022

IN BONDAGE-- 44 Years an American Slave

 

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

No comments: