Doing Life Without Parole in the Missouri Department of Corrections

“What did you hit your cellie with?”

 

“I didn’t hit him with anything,” I answered, standing there buck-naked.

 

“Who did?”

 

” You’ll have to ask him about that,” I answered.

 

“You used something. That wasn’t done with your fists. You’re going to get more time for doing that.”

 

“I have life without parole and ninety-nine years.”

 

No sooner than I got my clothes back on I was handcuffed and taken to administrative segregation. When we arrived, COI (correctional officer) Gatson escorted me to a shower-stall, one secured with a metal-caged door, and equipped with a foodport. Once locked in, I turned around and stuck my hands through the foodport. But instead of removing the cuffs, Gatson walked off. Another COI–preparing to pass out food trays–saw me and asked, “Do you still have cuffs on?” with a quizzical look.

 

“Yeah,” I said, as I turned around and stuck my hands through the food port again. He removed the cuffs and went back to passing out trays.

 

Minutes later, Gatson returned, walking briskly toward me, carrying a large can of pepper spray. He stopped abruptly when he noticed I wasn’t in cuffs.

 

I said, “What was you planning to do with that?” and gave him a “fuck you” grin. (According to policy, a CO can use excessive force in ad-seg if an offender refuses to be uncuffed.”) 

 

A short time later, a sergeant (also known as a white shirt) entered the wing with COI Gatson in tow.

 

“How’s it going?” the white shirt asked me.

 

I didn’t answer him.

 

“I’m going to need you to strip out.”

 

I went through the usual procedure of getting naked. (These guys never tire of seeing naked men.)

 

“Show me your hands. Yeah, doesn’t look like you were in a fight. Who assaulted your cellie?”

 

“You’ll have to ask him about that.”

 

“Well, if you don’t know anything you could be down here for a year or longer and given another charge. When you getting out?”

 

“I have life without parole and ninety-nine years.”

 

 

I wasn’t asked anymore questions and assigned a cell on the top walk. My new cellie was a twenty-two-year-old white guy named Mike, who weighed about 140 pounds. He violated his parole and had a year left on his sentence. Unfortunately for Mike, he attracted a booty-bandit when he arrived. Unfortunately for the booty-bandit, Mike ate his food and smoked his weed without providing any sexual favors. And after a few weeks, when the booty-bandit started acting aggressive toward him, Mike packed his locker and checked-in, requesting protective custody, right after ten o’clock headcount.

 

While Mike and I talked, I saw Gatson lock Polo in a shower-stall, the guy who actually assaulted my old cellie. Nolo’s cellie wasn’t far behind him. (I heard later that the CO’s did a strip search of the entire wing. Nolo’s hands were swollen and cut up.)

 

At the evening meal, Nolo sent me a note stating my old cellie owed him money, which was news to me. Nolo said he didn’t mean for me and his cellie to get locked up and would tell the committee that we didn’t have anything to do with the fight.

 

The next morning, I saw the committee and was assigned despite Nolo’s confession. My next review date was thirty days away.

 

A few days later, Mike tried to declare a medical emergency due to a rash he had all over his body and began kicking the door, attempting to get a CO’s attention. I heard keys jingling from someone approaching. The next thing I knew, a CO opened the foodport and emptied a full can of mace into the cell. I covered my head with my blanket. Mike was sprayed in the face and chest. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The CO then shut the foodport and walked away.

 

Mike started screaming and yelling that he couldn’t breathe, and started crying, sounding like a small child whose mother left him with a babysitter. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. The more I laughed the more I inhaled, causing me uncontrollable coughing fits.

 

Once the mace settled, Mike tried to wash it off. Big mistake. The more water he put on his body the more it burned. A CO eventually stopped by our cell to tell us that.

 

We weren’t given a shower. Since changing the type of mace used on offenders, the MODOC also changed their policy on how it was administered. Evidently, CO’s can mace any offender, without warning, for kicking on the door. (This was the policy in 2005, the time of this incident. I don’t know if it is still the policy today. Haven’t been to ad-seg in over ten years.) This I did not know. Mike obviously didn’t know it either, but neither one of us would forget it.

 

In fact, it became a standing joke between us. I’d say, “Hey, Mike, kick on the door and tell them to hurry up with them slop troughs. My stomach is touching my spine.” Mike would reply, “Fuck that!”

 

The CO’s never brought us anything to clean up the mace, or any clean sheets. So we had to make due and use just water. And after walking around in the cell for hours my shower shoes soaked up the mace like a sponge. I found this out on shower night. When wet, the shower shoes burned my feet as if I was walking over coals at an Anthony Robbins’ “firewalk event.” But I had no choice. There was no way I was going to take a shower barefooted.

 

My day to see the committee finally arrived. When I walked in the room and sat down, a committee member said, “You can tell your girlfriend to stop calling now we are letting you out.” I was assigned to Six House, a house full of child molesters, booty-bandits, homosexuals, and strict CO’s and caseworkers who loved enforcing petty rules. I preferred Four House but even Six House was better than ad-seg.

 

Getting out of ad-seg after thirty-seven days left me in a state of euphoria, as I walked to Six House. But once I reached my assigned cell the feeling evaporated like a chance at winning the Powerball when your numbers don’t match. My new cellie Greg was strange, and broke. He didn’t have a TV, radio, or anything else. He was doing life without parole for murdering a man he had been staying with and setting the house on fire. His direct appeal was denied, and he only had two weeks remaining to file a post conviction motion so that weekend I helped him. Actually, I just did it for him. I read his discovery and trial transcripts, interviewed him about possible PCR claims, and then typed up a number of ineffective assistance claims. 

 

When I finished, Greg didn’t have the postage to mail it out, so I paid it. (Missouri offenders receive $7.50 [without a GED] or $8.50 [with one] once a month from the MODOC. Since most offenders do not have paying jobs, they resort to prison “hustles” [gambling, stealing, extortion, drugs, etc.], or they rely on family and friends’ generosity for financial support. These practices only perpetuate codependency and antisocial behavior, practically guaranteeing recidivism.)

 

Greg and I celled together for about a month. He took wobble-head meds at noon so he ate lunch before our house, and was usually back in the cell before I left. On the last day he was my cellie, I passed him on the walk on the way to lunch as he was returning to the cell. When I returned, a COI told me to pack up Greg’s property. She said he was locked up for a Rule 15.2, a sexual misconduct. Apparently, he was masturbating when a female COI looked in the cell door window.

 

I had a job cleaning showers and another offender wanted it so he kept writing snitch kites (notes) to staff, trying to get me fired. (Offenders are locked down twenty-two hours a day except on recreation days. Otherwise, they get out three times, for thirty minutes, nine cells at a time, to take showers or use the phone.) So my cell was searched a lot and was on staff’s watch list. When I requested a printout of my offender account for a court filing, I was called to the caseworker’s office and threatened with being locked up if I didn’t explain why the cellie I had a month ago sent me money. Ms. Gurtz said, “It’s funny how when he stopped sending you money he was assaulted. Are you extorting him?”

 

“No. He paid me to prepare a sentence reduction motion for him prior to being assaulted,” I answered.

 

“You can’t charge offenders for working on their cases Mr. Smith,” she said.

 

Then she brought up the hundred postage stamps found in my cell, stating my account didn’t show me buying any in a long time so she was keeping half of them as contraband, and that I was fortunate to have someone who loved and cared for me so I better get my act together. She then handed me fifty stamps and a stack of letters–taken during the cell search and read–and told me to return to my cell. 

 

Ms. Gurtz’s sizing me up became clear the next day when my new cellie walked in. He was a homosexual who was being fought over by some offenders in Five House. Evidently, the administration thought the solution to their problem was to move him to Six House.

 

He was tall and skinny, with an uncanny resemblance to a young Mick 

Jagger from the Rolling Stones. He introduced himself as Melissa. (Hereafter referred to as she or her.) I didn’t waste any time on my new babysitting job, instructing Melissa on what I expected. I told her to keep offenders away from the cell because I don’t like being disturbed when I’m working on legal matters, that if they wanted to talk to her they can do it on rec or thirty’s, and that I wasn’t going to allow any funny business in my cell. Period.

 

Melissa took everything I said to heart. The first time an offender came to the cell she quickly told him not to come to the cell again, that if he wanted something to talk to her at rec, during meals, or thirty’s because I didn’t like people coming to the cell and hanging out. She didn’t have any financial support on the outside but that didn’t keep her from getting things. Other offenders were always giving Melissa canteen items. She didn’t have a TV or radio so I let her borrow my walkman, which she later broke by dropping it. I also loaned her a pair of sweatpants so she didn’t prance around in her short shorts. The little jabs from other offenders were unrelenting, saying things like: “Hey Zach, I heard you got a baby. Where’s she at, washing your boxers?”

 

Being in the cell with her was like being in the cell with a eleven or twelve-year-old kid. After a few weeks, I applied for honor dorm status, where offenders have open wing movement, access to telephones and dryers, and get a lot of rec time. To be eligible, offenders must be conduct violation (CDV) free for a year. Once assigned, they are required to have a work assignment and not get two CDV’s within a year or they are sent back to population. Melissa tried to talk me out of it and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t interested in being her daddy when I have life without parole. She said, “But you have forever and that bitch on the street can’t do for you what I can.”

 

I said, “Thank you but no thank you. I’m not gay. No matter how much time I have.” (She found a daddy named “No Legs Darrell.”)

 

We were put on lockdown status a short time later after several offenders assaulted CO’s, in the dinning hall, during breakfast. It was rumored to be payback for a CO punching an offender in the face after he refused to cuff up. So I figured the opening of another honor dorm wing would be put on hold, but it wasn’t. After a few days from Crossroads Correctional Center (CRCC) being taken off of lockdown I was told to pack my stuff and move to Four House. I was elated, no more, “Thirty’s are over. Lock down gentlemen.”

 

I was assigned a top bunk in 4C-145. My new cellie Danny, who brushed his feathered hair a lot, was a laid-back guy in his early forties. In caricature form, he would look a lot like Stan’s dad on South Park. Danny was sentenced to twenty years for raping his ex-wife. He said he blacked out during a drunken attempt to reconcile their marriage and didn’t remember what happened, which is why he pled guilty.

 

Being able to talk on the phone for more than thirty minutes, take a shower whenever I wanted, use a dryer instead of a clothesline made with shoestrings, and get rec twice a day was a freedom I wasn’t used to. I was mentally and physically drained after the first week. At night, I couldn’t wait for the lights to flash and a CO to call lockdown so I could go to sleep.

 

I spent a lot of rec time in the gym working out. Danny liked playing basketball and looked funny running up and down the court. He had a sizable hernia in his stomach and a “Homer Simpson belly” full of fluid from his Hepatitis C. Within months of living with him, he started to show signs of his condition becoming worse. Dr. Matthews prescribed Danny Ibuprofen for pain which caused him to have bloody stools, and Corizon, LLC,–MODOC’s healthcare provider–used it as the reason to deny him Hep. C treatment, claiming the disease was too advanced and there wasn’t anything that could be done other than to make him comfortable with drugs until he died.

 

I filed a 1983 civil rights action against Dr. Matthews and Corizon but could not overcome summary judgment, because I couldn’t find a medical expert to refute theirs. Danny lost his fight with Hep. C about eight months later. (On 8/6/15, Dr. John A. Matthews was charged with possession of child pornography and was sentenced to twelve years in prison. The MacArthur Justice Center filed a class action lawsuit against Corizon and MODOC for its denial of adequate medical treatment for offenders suffering with Hep. C. The case is still pending in the Western District Court of Missouri.)

 

Getting rec twice a day was short lived. Ad-seg offenders filed a lawsuit against the warden for making them wait for bedspace before being let out of ad-seg. He was forced to turn an ad-seg wing into a population wing. The first time we all went to rec together the CRCC administration noticed there was too many offenders out at one time and cut our rec in half.

 

A short time later, MODOC enacted a policy prohibiting offenders from soliciting pen pals on the Internet, claiming offenders were defrauding people. (In 2007, Trudy Worthy was sued under the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act (MIRA). She was receiving financial gifts from a suitor she met through a penpal ad. The Missouri Court of Appeals ruled against the State, finding that because gifts can stop at any time they cannot be considered assets for the purpose of triggering a suit under MIRA, and ordered the State to return the funds it took fromTrudy’s offender account.) 

 

But MODOC policies don’t prevent prison romances from blooming in an already sexually charged environment. Especially among MODOC employees, where some find love and a career. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you blow,” said Alysia Dale, a former CRCC employee who won an $82,500 sexual harassment suit against MODOC. (The MODOC has had over sixty sexual harassment suits filed against it. [See 11/22/16 article from www.pitch.com]).

 

And while prison romances were budding all around me–even among CO’s and offenders–mine ended. Phone sex and freak letters were not enough to fulfill my ex-girlfriend Debbie’s physical needs, so she started a secret love affair with a guy she said was a childhood friend, instead of being honest and ending our relationship to pursue one with him. She wanted her cake and eat it too. So I ended our relationship. A life without parole sentence is understandably a deal-breaker with most women, so I didn’t have a problem with an open or polyamory relationship. I just resented Debbie for trying to force me to accept her lover after months of lying which destroyed the trust that was built between us over several years.

 

Two weeks later, Debbie’s lover was arrested for burglary. She spent her savings and took out a loan to hire an attorney to get him out of it. He was sentenced to seven years in prison instead. She moved on from him and met someone new, who died from an overdose a few years later. 

 

As time went by, a lot of things changed, some good, others not so much. One good change was Prison Legal News (PLN) contacting MODOC and advising them that their policy prohibiting distributors from sending offenders books violated the first amendment. Soon after, offenders were allowed to receive books ordered by friends and family and sent to them through distributors like Amazon and PLN, etc. I took advantage of the new policy and buried my head in books, distracting myself from the day-to-day insanity going on around me. 

 

Whenever someone asked me if I wanted anything I’d give them a book title, since MODOC stopped allowing us to order shoes, coats, blankets, towels, and other clothing items from outside vendors. Now everything must be ordered from MODOC contracts and Missouri Vocational Enterprises (MVE), who employs offenders, at low wages, to make clothing items, toilet paper, trash bags, and other things which are then sold to offenders for high prices. (For example, one roll of toilet paper costs fifty cents, and a pair of gray sweatpants–without pockets–costs eighteen dollars and nineteen cents plus sale tax.)

 

MODOC also entered into a phone contract with Securus for five cents a minute. Before then it was easy getting on a phone, now not so much. The cool guys stay on the phones day and night. But it was still easier getting a phone in the honor dorm than in population, because we had six phones per wing instead of four.

 

As a result of MODOC’s policy of raising offenders’ custody level for accumulating six or more CDV’s in a year, a large number of younger offenders were transferred to CRCC. More and more prison gangs began forming and violence became a daily occurrence.

 

In the summer of 2017, a few fights broke out between the Mexicans and Family Values, erupting into an all-out brawl on B yard, with at least fifteen offenders, during an afternoon rec. The CRCC staff had a difficult time breaking them up, and immediately put CRCC on lockdown.

 

A few days later, CRCC was taken off lockdown and the rec schedule was modified. We no longer went to rec with our house, only with one other wing, for forty-five minutes, four times a week. The administration also started cutting programs and locking us down in our cells on the weekends, stating there was a shortage of staff. 

 

But the violence continued. The most notable one occurred in either 5A or 5B, where several offenders attacked each other with mop handles and broom sticks. The violence was caused over the telephones. Certain offenders had been allowed to control and dominate the telephones and other offenders grew tired of it.

 

On May 12, 2018, offenders’ frustration boiled over and two wings from Four House and two wings from Five House decided to organize a sit down and make some demands. The administration must have been aware of their plan because these wings were the last ones called for the evening meal. Two hundred and nine offenders entered the dinning hall, sat down to eat, and refused to leave when the doors opened. Some offenders tried to get up and leave but were told to sit back down by other offenders. One hundred and thirty-one offenders eventually got up and left seventy-eight remained.

 

CRCC staff started breaking out the dinning hall windows and threw in tear gas, and all hell broke loose. The offenders started destroying food service and the central services building, allegedly totaling a million dollars or more in damages. The local police and the Missouri Highway Patrol were called in to end the riot; it lasted six hours.

 

I slept through the entire thing. The first sign I had that something happened was when the Certified Emergency Response Team (CERT) delivered breakfast to my cell: brown bags. I took bird baths, washed my clothes in the sink, and ate hot meals for the first week. They started allotting us ten minute showers, twice a week. 

 

I had enough food and supplies to last me for the first thirty days or so but eventually ran out. The cold cuts, twice a day, got old real fast. I couldn’t stomach anymore of it and started throwing it under the door, where it made a nasty slap sound when it hit the walk below.

 

I received an email from Debbie. It said, in part: “I want u to know that over the years this is how I always kept myself thinking and smiling of u– I will listen to this song! One of my all time favorites and I always remember our LOVE we once shared while listening: MAKES ME SMILE THIS BIG!” Then she copied a song from 3 Doors Down called “Here Without You.”

 

I wrote her back and told her I was married to a jealous bitch named Missouri, until death do us part, and that we could never be again. To me, trying to ignite an old flame is like picking at a fresh scab; the wound takes longer to heal and leaves an ugly scar. Sigmund Freud said, “One ought to love in such a way that emotion is held back, subjected to reflection, and not allowed to take its course until it has passed the test of thought.”

 

Debbie didn’t write back, and usually only wrote when in between relationships or was fighting with a lover and wasn’t feeling good about herself. (To date, Debbie is an alcoholic and addicted to meth. She was recently arrested for theft and drug possession.)

 

The days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, and the depression demons started circling, knowing that I’m vulnerable when I don’t have books to read and start thinking about past and present suffering, wondering when it will end. After three months, we were allowed to order forty dollars worth of canteeen every two weeks. We were also given twenty minutes to shower and use the phone, three times a week.

 

A few weeks before we were given open wing in the honor dorms, Paul Ferguson, an older white offender in a wheelchair, was beaten to death by his black cellmate, who is serving a life without parole sentence. The beating was so brutal, Paul’s blood covered the cell door window. (The more two men are locked in a cell the greater the risk of violence due to incompatibility, irritability, mental illness, personality disorders, and frustration from being confined to a room the size of a small bathroom, for twenty-two hours a day, for the rest of their lives. Maximum security offenders should have single-man cells.)

 

On January 19, 2019, MO. Gov. Mike Parson announced his plan to consolidate CRCC with WMCC, converting half of WMCC into a maximum security prison. It is rumored that bids went out to equip it with a death fence. WMCC has communal showers, and offenders are expressing discomfort with the idea of being forced to shower in full view of other men and CO’s of the opposite sex. Comments like “don’t drop the soap” are already circling. The violence and gang formation will continue from CRCC to WMCC. (Communal showers are a violation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).)

 

As the living conditions in the MODOC get worse, my life without parole sentence remains the same, day after day, year after year, with no change in sight. The only change is the change I make within myself which is possibly the greatest challenge I’ve ever chosen to confront.