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

Women Who Have Impacted My Life

 On Friday, March 25, 2022, Charlie was asked to give a brief speech at the Women's History Month program sponsored by the Lake C. I. Gavel Club/Toastmasters group. Here is his speech and some family photos from "LIFE IN PRISON--A Photo Exhibit."

Each of us owes our lives to our mothers. In most cases she had the greatest influence on us. In order to explain how several women besides my mother impacted my life over these seventy-two years, I must give you a brief history of my family.

During World War II, a long time ago, my future father was a seventeen-year old Georgia farm boy who convinced his sickly mother to sign the papers allowing him to join the U. S. Army. At eighteen years old he was carrying a heavy Browning machine gun in the Philippine jungles, fighting against the Japanese.

He survived the war and travelled to Dade City, Florida, where his mother and brother had moved while he was in the military. He drove a fork lift at a citrus packing plant by day, drove a taxi cab at night, and hustled players at the pool hall in between.

There was no work in Texas. My mother and a friend joined a busload of young women going to work at the packing plant in Dade City. My father saw her and was smitten. My mother was eighteen when my parents married. My father had just turned nineteen.

Three weeks before I was born in September, 1949, her doctor told my mother there were complications with her pregnancy. There was a good chance that the mother, the baby, or both would die.

If she were going to die, my mother wanted to be with her mother and family in Texas. My parents packed up their meager belongings in a 1938 Chevrolet that had seen better days, and headed on a thousand-mile trip to Texas. My father carried thirty-six quarts of oil in the car trunk, and every thirty miles or so he had to stop and add another quart to the smoking Chevrolet. They had no money for motels, and slept in the car on the side of the road for the three days it took to reach Texarkana.

The doctor at St. Michael's Hospital told my parents that they could save the baby or mother, but not both. They chose to save the mother.

The doctor cut me out of my mother's womb and tossed my lifeless body in a steel pan. Fortunately for me, a young doctor didn't want to discard the newborn, and frantically worked to revive me, alternately dipping me in hot water, then cold, to shock me, a medical technique called a contrast bath. It worked. The young doctor saved my life, but my mother faced a long recovery.

My mother's younger sisters, eight-year old Alice and eleven-year old Patsy stayed with my mother and took care of me. My grandmother, who I called Memaw, was there every day tending to both my mother and her miracle baby. Although they were little girls, my aunts helped nurse my mother and me back to health. For the rest of our lives Alice, Patsy and I shared a special relationship, a bond broken only by death. Their love and devotion to me, as well as Memaw's, continued to support me for years, as my mother struggled through two more difficult pregnancies, and beyond.

Memaw was a skilled story-teller. At night in the dark before bed, with only a single candle flickering, we implored her to tell us ghost stories and tales of our pioneer ancestors' encounters with wolves, panthers, and Comanche Indians. Her example of hard work, love of family, and her faith in me sustained me, taught me, and helped me grow into a man who does his best.

In the late 1990's I had already served over twenty years of a life sentence for murder. Don't ever think that learning to write and telling your story won't change your life. It changed mine. Because of my published writings I became friends with a famous newspaper columnist who took an interest in my case. He wrote an article about me that was published worldwide. He called on Governor Lawton Chiles to grant my pending clemency application for a wrongful conviction for murder. At a Wednesday meeting with my family at the Capitol, the governor agreed to sign release papers the following Monday.

My bad luck — the governor died on Saturday. No clemency.

My good luck — a woman in Jacksonville read the newspaper article, was intrigued, and wrote me a letter. I wrote her back. A few months later she visited me, and I met the most extraordinary person in my life. She accepted me the way I was, and I accepted her. We shared remarkably-similar views on politics, religion, music and life. It was like two sides of the same coin, reunited.

I could talk for hours about my true love, Libby, but now I have only minutes. Suffice it to say that Libby has stood by my side like no other, travelling long distances to visit me in a succession of prisons across Florida. I asked her to be my wife and she agreed. We have been together over twenty-two years, and our love continues to grow and strengthen. That has kept me alive. No doubt I would have given up hope years ago were it not for her.

Love can be found in the most unlikely places. In my life from the beginning, I have been blessed by God with women who loved and cared about me, and by doing so have given me strength and taught me to love in return. In first Corinthians 13:13, St. Paul wrote, “...and now...the greatest of these is love.” I am living proof of that.

Thank you.

March 25, 2022

 

Redwater, Texas, circa 1952

Charles’ grandmother, Velva Marie “Memaw” Walker, holding Cherry, her youngest   

   child. Charles is firmly in Bebaw’s strong grasp. Uncle Junior’s commentary: 

   “Mama and Daddy, Charlie and Cherry, on Bonham’s place behind the big house.

That barn is the scene of a million corn cob fights.”