Inmates letter about - death row conditions in Terrell Unit, Livingston ! - Law - http://maxpages.com/prisonministry/Condition_at

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Terrell Texas--How to Dismantle this Torture Chamber
First, get it in your mind to go off defense ,go on offense.
They have a guard there, a major Lester, who is so
scared
his
actions will become public, he is afraid to give his full name to people
trying to overturn this chamber of horrors.
Form a group that does background checks
on
every guard that works there. Say, 1000 guards work there. Of that
number
are
a certain number of rapists,caught at another prison, given a slap on
the
wrist, a wink from the warden, shipped off to another prison--Terrell.
Put
the word out to prisoners all over Texas, that you are doing background
checks on guards. Get data. Solid data.

In
that
prison are a certain number of child molesters, drug
dealers.prostitutes,caught at another prison, given a slap and a wink
from
the warden, shipped off to Terrell. Publish, I will publish, their full
names.

Go to the Common Sense Forum, study the
article
that tells exactly how to get the F.B.I. to investigate Terrell. You can
get
the F.B.I. involved but you have to find out how.

In Terrell, today, prison
guards
brought in illegal drugs.It is not hard to find out how, or who.This is
reality. I live hundreds of miles from an Indiana prison. I found out
how
drugs were being brought in, their price, and even one of the closets
that
the female prison guard prostitutes were using to service the cash
paying
prisoners.I did not do anything with the information because I knew the
local
cops were not interested. About 9 months later, an F.B.I. investigation
turned up the exact same evidence I had.This is not a brag. This is
reality.
YOU can find out who is bringing in drugs, how much they cost, etc.There
are
prisoners all over the USA who are not afaid of the freaks that work in
prisons.

The group
working
on background, has to stay right with it.

Another
small
group starts to work on lawsuits. I can explain how to file thousands of
lawsits, no cost except postage. We file against every single guard that
works there.We file against every judge that sent a person to prison at
Terrell.

Another small group works on how much is
being
stolen out of the prison by guards.We look for ex-guards. fired guards,
retired guards.

We invoke the freedom of
information
act when dealing with the freak warden who runs the prison.

We contact as many visitors
as
we
can who go into the prison to visit the prisoners. We feed information
both
ways,into the prison, from the prison.

The prisoners
have
to
guard the guards. What guard walks down what tier, says what, to who.
beat
who. tortures who, an so on.

Find
the
ex-wives of the freaks that work at this prison,get their stories.

Try to trace these freaks back to high school, get the stories of their
classmates--how did the freaks turn into freaks, Where their parents
freaks
and so on.

Try to find out how much time the children of these
freaks are doing for their drug busts. Now, as in the case of King
George,
his daughter is a pot head, cocaine dealer,nothing will ever come of it,
she
is the daughter of a king, but these guards are not quite so immune
from
the
law,and maybe some investigations can start with the households of these
freaks.

Infiltrate the
areas
where these freaks hang out, tell their stories, brag of their freakness
to
each other.

Form
think tanks on the internet, brain storm ideas of how to go on the
offense.

If I had the means to do it, I would go to Terrell Texas, set up, find a
few
good men, and within a month would have that prison wishing to the good
Lord
above they had never heard my name.

You can do all these things, get the same results I could.
You
have to focus. Each small group must work on just one project. It will
all
come together. Personally, I would write handbills, put my name and
address
on them and expose the freaks by name, by deed. I did it here in
Gastonia,
North Carolina, got the whole town upset, from the mayor to the local
newspaper to the local cops,have no idea if those 3 tall well-dressed
gentlemen where from the F.B.I. who came to my front door as the sheriff
covered my back door,but you get the picture.

Prison guards are just people, they are not gods. They think they are
gods,
the King George mentallity easily transfers to fools with a little
authority.
Mayors, city councilmen, county board of commisioners,cops, F.B.I.,these
are
all people--not gods.

You can do everything I have done,,just form small groups.Each
group has to have focus,displine,it all will come together.

Nelsen Mandella taught us that we have
to
keep a dialogue going with the opposition.the only dialogue I care to
have
with the freaks is '' Do you give up, unconditionally?'' There are a
thousand
groups out here saying ''Oh please, listen to reason''. And I hope
someday
the pigs who work in prisons will listen to reason, Meanwhile,let's do
all
of
the above for breakfast. After breakfast I will come up with 1000 more
things
to do to get the attention of the King George freaks that work in
Terrell
Texas.

Never give up, never, never, never. First they will ignore us, then they
will
laugh at us, then we will win.THAT IS THE WAY IT WORKS.

Been there, done that.

Jackdanford@aol.com

http://www.common-sense-newspaper.net

************************************************************

Sept. 3

TEXAS: (death row conditions):

*** note *** the following are inmate descriptions of death row
conditions at the Terrell Unit in Livingston....

"And what has been happening here? Every time something good is about to
happen, then something bad happens and it cancels out the good plans. If
the men could behave, then I think that good things (like small groups of
recreation) could be restored. The officers are willing to do it, because
then they have less volume of individual work, but the officers do not
make the policies; administration makes the policies!"

Since the chaplain was attacked...we must sit on our bunds during feeding
time. They tell us to sit on our bunks, then the door (the food slot
door) is opened and they set a tray on the door, then they back away from
the door and we go to the door and grab the tray, set down our cup (if we
want juice or tea), then we must return to our bunk again and sit down
before they will fill the cup with a drink. They they back away from the
door and tell us to come get it. After we return to our bunk, then they
shut the food slot door.

It's a tedious policy, and not all of the officers follow it. Only some
of them! At any other time, they do not follow this policy (when they are
passing out laundry, picking up food trays, and so forth).

Nothing else has really changed since my last report. We recreate
individually still. The necessities are all passed out during the
daytime, so we do have peaceful nights for the most part. Meal times are
3 or 4 a.m., 3 or 4 p.m., and 10 p.m.

The shakedowns, cell-searches, are more respectful here. The officers
search our cells more professionally than they do at the Ellis Unit where
many times properties are destroyed.

What bothers the men the most here though is that we have nothing to do.
The men, most of us anyway, would like to have the work program, group
recreation, craft privileges, and television again. Of course that would
be ideal, but any one of those privileges returned would be a great
improvement. Group recreation would be a good start, because this lack of
human contact is very taxing on the mind and tension easily builds up
amonst the men. Humans need human contact of some type; it's just our
nature. As it stands now, the only contact we get is when an officer
places manacles on our arms before we leave the cell to go to the shower,
visitation, or recreation.

Another problem that still exists is the lack of visitation cages for
"special" visitors who visit from overseas, etc. The prison is only
reserving a few of these cages for that purpose and I have heard that a
few penpals have been denied special visits because of a lack of visiting
cages. That should not be.

Other than that, I cannot think of any atrocities. We are placed on
"lockdown" a lot and when that happens, we receive the same food stuffs
at every meal (peanut butter and pancake sandwiches). That gets old very
quickly!

Outside of those things, this place is not too bad. I mean, no matter
where we go, it will still death row. The lack of human contact is the
worst. I personally can go without television (although I will miss the
Olympics and football!!!), but I listen to the radio a lot, and I get
plenty of world events from it. But men must find ways to remain
creative. Creativity is the last vestige of our humanity in here to
remind ourselves that we are living beings! It would be nice to see the
craft privileges restored."

*******************

(letter 1)

I am writing to you in a state of desperation. I don't usually write
letters telling of the way we are treated or complain about our living
conditions, but the treatment we are receiving here is more than just
cruel treatment, it is a form of torture.

When we got to the Terrell Unit on March 2, 2000 (the first 2 weeks) they
didn't treat us a sbad as they do now. It seems to get progressively
worse. Some of the men seem to losing it. I will try to write this so you
can understand. The officers at night are now turning on th elights from
9:30 pm to 1:00 am. Second shift will turn on all the lights at 9:30 pm
and go around and count, then the lights will go off at 9:50 pm and third
shift comes on at 10 pm and they will turn on all the lights and go
around and count, then they will turn off the lights and about 10 minutes
later they will turn on all the lights and come around picking up and
giving out socks and shorts 3 nights a week ---other nights they will
give out jumpsuits 2 nights a week and one night they will come around
picking up and giving out sheets and pillow cases and toilet paper. They
they will turn off the light and about 10 minutes later they turn them
back on a population inmate will com e around and sweep the runs.

The they will turn the lights off and 10 minutes later turn them back on
and the same inmate or another wil come around and mop the runs. Off with
the lights adn then back on with the lights and a sergeant will come
around and each time the lights are on they have speakers above our doors
and a ding souond will ding every 8 seconds as long as the lights are on.
This will make some of the men go off and they will beat on the doors and
they will yell "turn off the lights!" or other names for officers, which
seems to make the officers do it more and the men go off more.

I hope you can see how this effects all the men and how this is torture,
the same as a military would do to a POW to make them talk. It some times
will get quiet from 1 am until 2:30 am when they turn on the lights for
the nurse who will come around giving shots to the men with diabetes and
then they will come around between 3:45 am and 4 am with breakfast-- so
you can see it is very hard to get any sleep and in the the day time it
is the same way as they come around taking men to rec. or showers to to a
visit or dentist or other medical services and the other 2 meals fo rthe
day and taking count. The thing is these people are doing all they can to
make it hard to get more than 2 hours slleep at any one time. It's this
treatment that makes this place hard, not the cells. It is the attitude
of the officers and the degrading way they treat us.

I don't know what can be done about this, but I do know it is wrong. I
can't help the men here and can only ask God to ease their pain and to
give all of us a loving heart, even to those that treat us badly.

(this was written in April, 2000)

****** (letter 2)

THANKS!! --some changes have occurred....we can now sleep from 11:30 pm
to 3:30 am on some nights and from 12:30 am to 3:30 am on others with NO
LIGHTS OR DINGING SOUND for 3 or 4 HOURS.

We cab see by the attitudes of some of the officers that they feel their
fun has been taken away and they are not one bit happy about that.

********

(letter 3)

"WE NEED FEDERAL MONITORS TO COME INTO THE TERRELL UNIT."

"This is my third letter about the problem the men on death row are
having in regards to not being able to get than 2 hours sleep at any
given time.

The progress that we had hope for was short lived and never did fully
come about.

It only took the officers a little over a week to get a routine down that
is more torturous than before any changes were made.

The superficial change TDCJ made were only cosmetic, because the officers
say they have not been told they are to have the work done by any certain
time, so we can have more than 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

There is sleep deprivation gong on here at the Terrell Unit...this is a
well-known form of torture.

Everything I described in my first letter is back into effect. There are
many forms of torture, mental and physical. Here at the Terrell Unit they
are mentally torturing us as well as the physical torture of not being
able to get 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. The mental torture comes in
the form of a degrading and dehumanizing regulation that cannot be
enforced without being directly detrimentally harmful to the person it is
being enforced on.

HELP!!

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"All days are a never ending series which seem the same, so that I cannot
tellthe difference from one to the other.

Our existence here at this new death row is so restricted in all manner
that there is no event by which one can differentiate the passage of
days, weeks or months. It all runs together because it is the same. No
worship services on Sundays, no activities except the opportunity to
spend 1 hour of each day, 7 days per week, in a bit larger cage a few
feet distant from the cell. But there is nothing to do once in the cage,
except stand there and talk to the prisoners in the cells. No volleyball,
no others to walk and talk with, just one's loneliness and despair to
visit with. It truly is a mere "existence," not any form of human life we
live here, now.

(source: letters, Texas death row inmates)

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Reiner Stensgaard Goldau
Dove Prison Ministry International
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Page Updated Sat Apr 7, 2001 3:01pm EDT