“Another bug hung herself,” squawked the radio. The morbidly obese correctional officer pressed the reply button on the radio, responding, “Go to two.” He lowered his squinty eyes, wiping the sweat and stench from his furrowed brow with his ‘Batman’ Covid-19 mask. Hunched over his radio, he strains to hear the voice’s urgent message through static and inmate chatter. He pats the inner corner of his eyes with the last clean area of his mask and brushes away tears from the edge of his sunglasses. In a sympathetic gesture, he nods his great hog’s head in agreement, adding, “Ten-four. I have three 15s to take to the infirmary.” Turning to us, he confesses, “There’s been another problem in segregation.” “Who died?,” I asked. “Marissa _,” he answered. He’s known this woman for years as both were members of the Diné People (commonly referred to by the Spanish Conquistadors as “Navajos,” in the Four Corners region of the U.S., comprising Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado).
The officer, surprisingly agile for his size, sprinted up the path to the infirmary, close enough to keep a watchful eye on his three 15s. My two companions and I slogged up the hill in the extreme heat of late July, escorted by a cloud of buzzing gnats and ‘skeeters, each pondering the loss of the latest victim of hopelessness, “Marissa.” The Deputy Warden, huffing and puffing along the trail, stumbling on the crumbling asphalt, passed us at the crossroad and was apprised of the latest suicide. “They just ain’t tough enough these days,” he says, while spitting a long gooey length of drool on the largest rock, as if to make a lasting point. He sucks on his teeth, looking at our heated faces, mascara dripping like daggers from our eyes, and snarls, “Hell, I had three men kill themselves in a day.” He covers one nostril, snorting out green mucus from the other nostril. “Yeah, these kids are too soft” and mutters some expletives under his breath. The Deputy Warden kicks a stone and meanders off into another direction, slapping the mosquitos from his reddened face with his smudgy ol’ ball cap. Our officer places his sausage-sized index finger and thumb at his temple and re-adjusts his sunglasses as he twirls his index finger, indicating we need to hurry to the infirmary.
When I heard the name of the latest suicide, “Marissa,” I blanched. “Pretty girl.” I met this effervescent young woman the first day she barreled into general population, years ago, at the vulnerable age of sixteen. Now, she’s dead at twenty-seven. At the earliest splinter of dawn, she’d be walking and jogging with me in the cold. We were both on the gravelly track at 17° in the frosty winter light, burning calories. Double pairs of socks covered our hands as we were forbidden gloves. We tied rags around our necks for warmth. Neon orange beanies barely covered our heads to keep our ears warm. Like a deer, she leaps, skips, and frolics as we both laughed, staving off “cold” with humor. The snow-dusted track glistened iridescent in those early mornings. I will miss her. “Sad girl.”
Mindful of the artistic traditions of her heritage, Marissa painted or sketched in black paint, pens, or markers to create her Diné-inspired designs on handkerchiefs called ‘Panos,’ which she traded for commissary. Eventually, she became a notable prison ‘tattoo’ artist and rigged together a ‘tatt’ gun from the motor of a CD player, or whatever she could procure after the CDs and players were banned from the prison. Her flowers, cartoon characters and poems soon adorned the necks, arms, torsos, and legs of many inmates. Lively and resourceful, Marissa was delightful company. After release from prison, and two and a half years of an abbreviated freedom with a ‘tail’ (parole), her life pivoted. “Re-arrest.”
Marissa grew despondent in county jail, where she remained until the disposition of her criminal case. Transported in a ‘tin can,’ without a seatbelt, like the rest of us before her, now her second stint in prison, Marissa arrived tossed and shaken, while holding onto the double-folded belt hanging from the ceiling of the van. The small business card sized warning instructed passengers to “hold tight!” After numerous accidents, often serious or fatal as a result of these ‘tin cans’, pitching passengers to and fro’ in the decidedly unsafe prisoner transport vans, the manufacturer wisely tore the faux seatbelt down from the ceiling and reattached it to the seat, to cross over the prisoners’ laps, after millions of dollars in lawsuits on behalf of injured and paralyzed prisoner’s filed claims.
Arriving at the prison gates on the island of “broken dolls, broken hearts and broken dreams,” the beastly maw swings open and swallows the van. Two US Marshalls, dressed in black and tan, escort Marissa off the van. Flailing her arms while cuffed, the Marshalls hurl Marissa through the “in-take processing” doors, to be rid of her. Marissa hears familiar laughter, the deep baritone voice of Jumi. The tall regal Black woman in the next room was also a “return” to prison. Jumi waved and yelled, “Ma-riss-a!” which reverberated throughout the offices to the dismay of the two female correctional officers – tapping their feet in annoyance. Jumi and Marissa would see each other again in approximately five hours, in segregation for time still owed from past misconduct reports.
Jumi’s “vent” partner was Marissa in “seg” (segregation is isolation). One day, Jumi grew frantic when Marissa would not answer her calls through the vent, they both shared. Jumi screamed and pounded her cell window, shrieking for help from the correctional officer seated alone in his control room. Jumi punched the “call button” repeatedly for the officer’s attention. He heard the din created by Jumi and responded, telling her he’d called for “back-up.” The intercom system was working this day and first responders cut down Marissa. Despite medical and correctional officers’ diligent efforts to revive her, Marissa remained lifeless. The officers laid her gently on the bunk and called “the time of death.” One young officer used the radio to announce the news. “Another bug hung herself,” a favorite term they used for inmates.
Marissa lost heart when the court reinstated her suspended time. Depression and feeling of hopelessness settled in her bones. Her only companion was Jumi’s disembodied voice through the air vent. Isolated from human contact, despair beckoned her to partake in risky behaviors. It began with a razor cutting through her flesh and ended when Marissa chose freedom over life, choosing never to be caged again. “Free Spirit.”
Prison authorities claimed her body, holding her remains hostage, while logging in the suicide as an “escape.” After all, she did not serve her entire sentence, according to the warden. However, no one came forward to negotiate for the body’s release. The Chaplain allowed us to celebrate a memorial tribute for Marissa in the chapel. Most of us attended, including staff members who knew her for years. The enormous officer with belly rolls lumbered into the chapel service and shuffled into a corner of the chapel, standing quietly and respectfully. But the officer had another purpose in mind, besides “security.” As he lowered his head, I could see his mouth move – whispering. Then, his sausage-sized fingers wiped away the trail of tears rolling down his porcine cheeks. He braced his back against the chapel wall, casting his enormous head downwards to his shiny, black-bulb boots. In syncopated beats, he sang in his and Marissa’s native language. He said his goodbyes. I imagined it sounded something like this, “We will all miss you little warrior. You are now free.”
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Like a kitten, frail and small, Sarai clawed her way through an existence on the streets, alienated from her family, until she found herself in prison. Placed in segregation for fighting, hopelessness overcame her sensibilities. In a moment of desperation, she hung herself in isolation. I knew Sarai in passing and although not a close friend, she existed as part of our sad little community, until she existed no more.
Losing all faith in the administration’s ability to do the right thing, many of us decided that she (very young) would get a memorial service. I designed flyers with sparrows and thoughtful verse, urging everyone to attend. I posted the flyers everywhere inmates gathered. We persuaded the Chaplain, perhaps against his will, to allow the memorial tribute. In his opening “eulogy,” the Chap dedicated the service to “Sarai.” Then, as we sat and listened to the Chaplain ramble on about his favorite African American authors, we never heard her name mentioned again for 30 minutes. Although I too liked his choices, it was entirely out of context for Sarai and not suitable for this service. Others grumbled in the first three rows of chairs. When we could finally interrupt the Chap’s “monotonous monologue,” to express “heart-felt” words of a positive nature about this child, he exclaimed, “No! Oh no, we have no more time for her!” With that said, the Chaplain’s aide turned on the music and we marched single file out of the chapel. Nary a word of comfort or inspiration was bestowed upon the spirit of this child.
Maybe, just maybe, if someone over the past few months had made time to visit Sarai in isolation, we wouldn’t be sitting in this sterile and dusty chapel, mourning another lost life. “Sarai, dear child, you died too young.”
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Gloria? What can I say about her? I describe her as a “chameleon,” someone who is changeable, “a rebel, but hard-working and reliable.” Gloria was devoted to her son, taking a murder rap for him. Sentenced to life, she sacrificed her own life, freedom, hopes and dreams.
Inside her cell, she kept mementos of her previous life and fashioned a tailor’s shop with an old sewing machine she haggled out of the laundry’s clutches, stashed in a spidery-webbed corner. This allowed her to mend old, stained uniforms and tattered thermals. She created headbands, head warmers, and neck wraps for winter. Gloria turned trash into art. After 27 years and a reputation as a “rabble-rouser,” she refused to submit to prison’s authoritarian control. This resulted in a flurry of misconduct reports – not just dings on the face sheet, but major dents on her offender history at the prison. This placed her in a compromised position, when, at 30 years, as the first woman sentenced to life at CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), she went to her parole hearing. The parole board had nothing positive to say to her. The gavel fell hard, and she was denied release because they believed she wasn’t taking re-entry into society as “serious” as she should. The parole board slammed the gate on Gloria, like a selfish lover. Her life spiraled into a “tailspin,” as she lost control. That year, she developed double pneumonia due to the harsh winter.
Years ago, Medline was conducted three (3) times a day. It required the elderly and infirmed to wait at the outside gate for up to an hour or more in the rain, sleet, and snow for an escort up the hill to the infirmary. During the winter blizzard of 2017, Gloria waited patiently at the locked gates in her wheelchair covered with two blankets, a knitted scarf and her beanie, while heavy snow embraced her. She sat as still as a garden statue. Her frosted breath indicated she was still breathing. Gloria may have been deathly ill. I acknowledged her, in my passing, with a smile and a nod. I will never forget the pitiful sight of Gloria – stoic as ever, waiting for an officer to escort her to medical. Somehow, this lady survived it all. But her luck would not last. During late spring, she was resting in a prone position on her bunk, in her cell. Her “daffy and delinquent” caregiver gave her several pieces of hard candy to suck on. The candy lodged in her throat, and had the caregiver raised her upper body to a sitting position and cleared Gloria’s mouth with her fingers or given Gloria water to drink and a few slaps on the middle of Gloria’s back, she would have survived. But the caregiver whined and cried, while Gloria suffocated. The candy choked Gloria as she gasped for breath. Gloria’s courageous efforts to survive were all for naught, as the “dim witted” caregiver never asked anyone else for help, including the rover on duty.
Denied the opportunity to provide a memorial service for Gloria, we implored her daughter to reach out to the administration to allow the inmates to provide Gloria with a small service. After 30 years of service to the state, we couldn’t move either the administration or the obstinate Chaplain into giving us thirty minutes of chapel time. “Rebel lady” Gloria, you are never forgotten. We remember your glorious tattoo of ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe,’ stretched across the length and width of your back as the canvas, emblazoned with bold and vibrant colors. (The Lady is thought to protect worshippers from ambushes or desperados, hell bent on killing the believers. The Lady also is known to protect believers, such as ‘criminals’). Rest in peace sister.
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Barely eighty-pounds strong on a tiny frame, Inga piled her burnished blonde hair high on the top of her head, with long tendrils and bangs framing her delicate features. Her green eyes, flecked with gold, lit up like “July” sparklers when she laughed. Freckles dotted the bridge of her nose, narrow and sharp, spilling down the curves of her cheeks like fairy dust. This waif-like woman was more ‘fey’ than the fairies. Inga possessed a fair complexion made rose by working in the hot summers, caring for her prison gardens. But, by August, the rude and overbearing sun scorched her complexion crimson, with the oppressive rays. The big floppy hat she wore allowed us to spot her anywhere she worked in the yard.
Animals of all species and sizes flocked to Inga’s magical ways, as she worked under the supervision of a lumbering giant of an officer, whose height and girth were equal. Inga had no history of criminality, alcoholism, or drug addiction. Kind and compassionate to everyone and everything, I couldn’t understand why she was at the prison, with a sentence of over 40 years. As far as I could tell, her only addictions came in small, pink packets (Sweet ‘n Low) and in furry or feathered coverings (bunnies and birds).
Over time, she opened up to me and shared her story and documents with me, a tragic past tainted by betrayal and cruelty. Trapped in a “suicide-by-law-enforcement” plot, hatched by her soon to be ex-husband, Inga crashed violently into the prison system. Soon after she filed for divorce, while under the same roof as her spouse, he plotted the revenge. After years of living with this violent and emotionally abusive man, Inga, in her mid-fifties, sought her freedom. The County, for some unknown reason, was involved in legal attempts to divest some of the husband’s ranch land into the County’s “cashbox.” The situation escalated when he sent threatening letters to all opposing parties. For Inga, this was not the best time to file for a separation from a husband on the verge of madness. Once notified of her intentions, he instigated a “crossfire” stand-off between himself and the horde of SWAT team members, the sheriffs, and the news media which covered the incident on local news.
Armed with special weapons, cameras and bullhorns, the spectacle grew as law enforcement surrounded the perimeter of the property. Because she was unable to reason with her husband during the sheriff’s attempt at negotiations, she fled to the garage with her phone. During this time, she was in continual contact with dispatch operators in the sheriff’s office. Concerned for the safety of her menagerie of animals – dogs, cats, llamas and even a horse, Inga stayed in the garage during the entire siege. Her efforts to work her magic on the sheriff’s dispatch however tailed. No one was willing to allow her the opportunity to move her animals to a “safe space.” She was now trapped as well.
Moreover, her decision to stay in the garage would turn into an “ill-fated” move, with a cascade of consequences. In the garage, she would hear the first “ping” of bullets. She believed it was emanating from her husband’s weapons in the front part of the home where he was situated. Gunfire blazed for fifteen minutes until he was wounded. It continued for two hours until her husband was killed. Animal carcasses, fallen during the siege, littered the ranch, both inside the home, along with her husband’s body, and outside near the perimeter of the property.
Law enforcement proceeded to send in an autonomous robot to surveil the inside of the home for potential threats. After clearing the home for hidden threats, the robot approached the back door to the garage, spying. Inga curled into a fetal position on the garage floor, unarmed. The robotic device extended its cold, metal claw, grabbing her ankle and dragging her eighty pounds of sobbing misery, out of the dark garage, into the daylight of the carnage.
With her husband tucked “safely” into a body bag and nothing left alive to kill, the slaughter ended. Arrested, cuffed and “Mirandized,” Inga is systematically shoved into the backseat of the squad car with a hand on her head. Charged with 25 counts of “assault with a deadly weapon”, despite testimony from 25 law enforcement officers who stated they did not see (Inga) with any weapons, nor did they find her “intents” or fingerprints on any weapons and despite the film footage of the siege and two hours of recorded conversation with the sheriff’s dispatch, begging for a reasonable end to the stand-off. Inga could be heard crying to the dispatch to quell the battle, to no avail, and Inga was prosecuted for a shocking, violent incident. My former trial attorney, “G.M.,” who refused to defend me (in a death penalty trial) years earlier, represented Inga in court. His alibi was that “Inga was insane,” the same alibi he used for me and other innocent women such as “Donna B.”
He made no effort to mitigate the “forty-seven years with no time suspended” sentence. He knew, as a defense attorney, that an insanity defense only works to the client’s benefit in a first-degree murder charge. No law enforcement officer was hurt. As usual, he blundered through the case, protecting the state, at all costs. He failed to challenge the accuracy of the charges or the state’s theory. G.M. ensured her conviction, failed to mitigate, and he failed to help her prepare a statement for the court during “allocution.”
The justice system failed to protect her through her brutal years of marriage, during the “stand-off,” or even at the trial proceedings. The “injustice” system fails to adequately defend the vulnerable and the poor. Inga quickly lost her middle-class status, as friends and family deserted her.
She arrived at the prison within three weeks of her three-day trial. Inga was in a “trance state” when she emerged from RDC (Reception and Diagnostics Center) into general population. Trauma left her in a zombie state. Blossoming into an alert, vibrant woman after six months, she found her calling, working with her hands in the gardens. She appeared almost happy. Inga built watering areas in the gardens for the birds, chipmunks, and desert rabbits. She planted purple irises, mint, and red-hot pokers, to hide the creatures from possible predators, including the two-legged females, who hunt for animal sacrifices for their “drug goddess.” Inga designed both decorative and functional landscapes, such as nesting mounds with burrows for the mother rabbits and their spring bunnies. Inga poured love into her special projects, nature, and wildlife. In turn, she was richly rewarded with vibrant, bold colors in spring and summer and fecundity among her animal friends. The grounds had been sterile of life; brown and dusty. Inga sprinkled her “fairy dust” everywhere and the barren earth grew green and verdant with lush foliage in every corner. It was no less than magical. Pigeons, sparrows, the blue bird of New Mexico and every migratory bird stopped on its migration route to enjoy Inga’s hospitality. These years were the times we grew milk thistle and beckoned the Monarch butterflies to dally in our fields, before embarking on the long, arduous journey to central Mexico (Michoacán). These tranquil times soon changed.
Years ago, we were behind locked doors, as one would expect in prison. With no reliable officer in sight for hours at a time and a malfunctioning intercom system, it became a waiting game for disaster to strike, and so it did. One morning, when count cleared, no officer came by to open our locked cells. The rover was always late and opened our cell doors when he got around to it. The morning count clears at 6 am, but the officer hadn’t shown up by 6.15 am. Around this time, Inga grew nauseous and dizzy. By 6.30 am, Inga bellowed for help beneath the cell door and pounded on the window and door. She cried for help through the vents. Neighbors heard her cries, the pitiful sounds of a woman dying of a brain aneurism. The sense of urgency caught fire as all the women (32) pounded their doors and windows in unison as Inga’s Greek chorus. My neighbor and I were in prime locations above the maze and courtyard. Anyone coming through should see, and someone did come this way, an administrator and several inmates who saw our gestures and frantic expressions. This was about 6.40 am and the admin staff radioed for back-up. More uniformed officers arrived. It was minutes before 7 am before the ruckus subsided, and medical first-responders found Inga. The time it took to notify medical was simply too long in a crisis that turned fatal. The emergency buttons were inoperable for the past two years. (The intercom system wouldn’t be operational for another six and a half years). The rover lumbered in around 7 am.
We remained in lockdown for another two days for the investigation. Inga had either blacked out or fallen into a coma while her brain functions shut down. She had been removed by gurney to the prison medical clinic. The clinic was not a hospital; however, the medical staff did CPR and used a defibrillator, but Inga never regained consciousness. The nurses did their best to re-set Inga’s 63-year-old heart, but it had broken long ago.
The facility had conducted a standard investigation into an inmate’s death, carefully connecting “all the dots” to the desired outcome, determining Inga had died of natural causes. The critical factor in this inmate’s estimation was the failure to provide inmates with a reliable, working intercom, for emergency services and a dependable rover who could release inmates when count cleared. After this incident in 2018, the women broke all the locks in two housing units as retaliation for Inga’s death. These issues of course were omitted from the final report, and no culpability was assigned to the facility or the staff. Unlike Marissa’s suicide and subsequent determination that she had “escaped” her sentence, Inga died in custody of natural causes.
Of course, the Chaplain and the administration would deny her a memorial service, as she was a slave of the state under U.S. constitutional amendment XIII. Her passing left a void in my life, but not in my heart. Her death denied me the opportunity to “bring justice to her wrongful conviction.”
The tragedy, possibly, could have been averted with an alert, trained officer available in control units (officers tend to sleep or have sex in the control units). Having functional, working equipment that’s maintained, and defaults to the “master” control unit when other control units don’t respond to the emergency calls, could have alerted medical responders sooner. With the announcement of Inga’s time of death over the radio, the rotund officer with the “Kim Jong Un” haircut, sat down and bawled in the control unit. Inmates gathered around the control door in an effort to console him. He shook uncontrollably as Inga was one of his favorite inmates and employees. He wept without shame. For a big fellow, he had an even bigger heart. There wasn’t a dry eye among all the prisoners that day.
Inga knew that a sentence of 47 years with only 15% good time (due to violent charges) meant that she’d die in prison, but I don’t think she ever expected to die that soon. She will always be a member of this community, a member that we’ll always treasure, and a member whose life touched everyone.
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No one collected Inga’s remains, as her only sibling, a brother, had no interest in her. Lonely graves in the “back-40” of the prison, were dug. Only the howling wind, blowing rain, and sandy soil stood as prayerful sentinels to the burials of my friends. Without proper farewells, blessings, or mourners to pray for the departed, these women whose colorful lives brightened the “cinder-block gray” monotony of prison life, vanished beneath the freshly shoveled earth, and laid to eternal rest in a simple pine box. No names or markers identified the women, just numbers identifying the spaces in the ground. Dust, dry leaves, and withered weeds clung to the makeshift coffins, escorting these freed spirits into the next realm. “Moments more, we all die.”
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