by Rick Fisk | Sep 16, 2021 | From the Inside
We get letters sometimes which break our heart. This one came in through our contact page which we assume must have been posted by a friend. It has been edited for clarity. Besides a cry for help, this is a cautionary tale. Never let the police search your vehicle or your person, even if you have nothing to hide. Being innocent of any wrongdoing is not a defense that makes any difference if a cop plants evidence on you.
My name is Ricky Lee Hefner and here’s my story and I hope someone can help me. I have sent a complaint to the chief of Sylva police. I don’t know why this cop dislikes me as he does, but for nearly 3 years he constantly was stopping me or my mother if he knew I was in her vehicle. He has conducted many searches of our vehicles only to disappointment because he never found anything to arrest me for, and his words to me were, “I’ll get you one day for something and put you away for a long time.”
So here’s my story…… on June 12, 2018 I walked to Walmart, went to go inside and there was officer Heath Jones of the Sylva Police Department. He spoke, I spoke, went on in and used the restroom and then saw someone I knew so i asked if he could give me a ride to McDonald’s, he said yes. Walking out, officer Jones said “See you soon Hefner.” I said, “Not anytime soon you won’t.”
Officer Jones had been after me for some reason and had already told me once before that he was gonna get me for something that would put me away for a long time. And not only that but he’d pull my mother if he knew i was with her and do a complete search of her vehicle. Anyway after getting in the car in the back seat, it wasn’t long and officer Osborne-Evans and of course Officer Jones were on top of us. Evans searched my backpack, Jones searched my backpack. Yes they found evidence of where I had smoked meth. I will admit to anything that I do, they got us all out of the car and the other two guys didn’t get searched or hardly patted down.
They ran me through the ringer then Jones said “Hefner ain’t you an electrician?” I said, “Yes.” Jones wanted to know if there was any black electrical tape in my backpack. I told him you searched it. Next thing I know I’m being put in handcuffs and Jones asks us all, “Was the egg shaped container wrapped tightly in black electrical tape any one of ours?” We all said “No it wasn’t.” Jones says that he’s gonna arrest me because I looked nervous. I was eventually that night charged with possession of heroin.
I don’t and never have messed with that crap and never will. The other two guys, neither one of them, had a driver’s license because it was talked about while they were searching the car.
I was arrested and he let the other two known heroin users go. I wanted a jury trial. I asked attorney after attorney to get the body cams footage, none never could, until February of this year 2021. Upon watching Osborne-Evans about an hour into hers it plainly shows her and Jones talking about the planted evidence and her telling Jones that he blew it.
Now I’ve tried a couple times to file a complaint against Officer Jones and somehow it seemed I gave up until February of 2021 and obtaining the body cam footage Jones was corrupt. Imagine that, but I still have in my immediate possession the discs of the body cam footage….this case has been dismissed in my favor.
I have another situation involving this same Sylva NC police officer Heath Jones. He said I stole a TV from Walmart but I did not. It went to trial bc i requested a jury trial.
I represented myself with Ted Besen as standby council, 4 days of trial, then the jury found me guilty. How I may never know because the Walmart video plainly shows me at the door showing the door greeter a receipt and she allows me to exit the store. I honestly have no idea why officer Jones was after me so bad I’d surely love to know. I received a sentence of 10 yrs in NC prison system. On both occasions my due process, my civil and constitutional rights were violated and stomped on.
I just received this harsh sentence on May 28, 2021. I have an appeal in which i pray to our Lord in Heaven that the court on appeal finds me innocent or whatever they do to overturn this terrible sentence,
I know everybody hears, “I’m innocent,“ alot. Well, I’m here to tell you, that I, Ricky Hefner, swear that I AM TELLING THE TRUTH, I AM INNOCENT OF THIS AND I NEED HELP TO STOP THIS SYLVA NC CITY POLICE OFFICER!!
I have no pending charges. Everything, including the charge of heroin was dismissed and I am ready to sue bc my constitutional and civil rights have been violated. Can you please help me? I’m in Maury Correctional Institution in Hookerton, NC right now my # is 0985586.
I have an appeal going. My appeal lawyer is Sharon Leigh Smith out of Raleigh NC I’m hoping to find a civil rights lawyer that will at least look at my case come talk with me as several attorneys I’ve had on this 3 year old case have told me I definitely have a huge case with possible huge awards so please help me please!!
Please help me!!
Ricky Hefner #0985586
TF 37 Maury Correctional Institution
PO Box 506 Maury, NC, 28554
I need a civil rights lawyer!!!
by Bandi Crawford | Sep 9, 2021 | Guest Blogger
When we think of asylums it brings to mind images of poor medical care, unfair treatment and abuse. Asylums were the very real horror story of the 1800s and beyond. Now, they still exist, and prison is the asylum by another name.
Each year in the United States 2.12 million prisoners are housed, out of these, 1 in 5 have a disability. Not to mention, “32 percent of federal prisoners and 40 percent of jail inmates report at least one disability” according to idaamerica. This is a hugely disproportionate number, and why is that? Because they’re asylums, that’s why.
Reverby finds that the “deinstitutionalization of patients in the state mental hospitals that had begun in the 1950s affected incarceration by the 1970s” and that “the mentally ill were swept out of hospitals, into the streets, and then into jails and prisons” as a type of social cleaning.
Many, like Becky Crow, author of Orange is the New Asylum: Incarceration of Individuals with Disabilities, believe it is a way to remove the disabled from society. Her research goes as far as to demonstrate a “school-to-prison pipeline” shunting these people out of societies way, just as the wardens of the past did. This corroborates Reverby and many others.
Why else could the prison numbers be so high? And things are just the same as they were back in the day. Maybe they don’t force people into boiling baths anymore, but slotting them in a dark hole, limiting contact and electric shock treatment are still very real practices. Humans are suffering, not just any humans but those already at a disadvantage.
When it comes to learning difficulties Gormley, author of The Hidden Harms of Prison Life for People with Learning Disabilities, finds that there are “multi-faceted and nested forms of harm that people with learning disabilities encounter while in prison as a result of direct and indirect discrimination.” This is completely out of order.
Prison is hard enough at the best of times, with the Bureau of Justice Statistics finding that “30% of jail inmates reported symptoms of major depression”, so imagine the strain this puts on those with disabilities. Incarceration is a catalyst for decaying mental and physical health at the best of times, to place the mentally disabled here is dangerous. Perhaps even devastating since suicides are up by 22% according to prisonpolicy.org.
They need specialist care and although legislation states reasonable adjustments will be made, the term is ambiguous and poorly executed – if at all.
The point is that “modernization in the provision of health care had eluded prisons and jails” (Reverby PhD, 2018) which has led to a halt in progression of society, especially for those with disabilities. All “incarcerated people were perceived as prisoners, not patients” and so disability, both physical or mental, is not accounted for. There is a very toxic view that prisoners deserve what they get, but often people forget that their time is their punishment and that these are human beings – just as we did in the bygone eras. It is no wonder that Brecher and Della Penna said prisons were stuck in the “horse-and-buggy” era.
And let us not forget how so many disabled people are coming into the prisons – why? A lack of support in the courts and the problems only get worse in the next stages.
So, if you’re the sort of person who gets a thrill from watching movies about asylums, remember that for the disabled, the asylum exists. Those horrors are more real and closer to home than you thought.
References
by Boundless in the Midwest | Jun 26, 2021 | From the Inside
Whether you are for or against inmates being able to receive stimulus checks like rest of the country, the choice was made by a judge who cited her reasons very logically and with compassion for why she believed it was justified. ”Why should an inmate receive such a windfall, they all going to waste the money!” cry out some who see only the worst in inmates. Let’s face it, most people in prison are there by their own making and the state provides what they need to exist. Yes the state provides the bare minimum of food, shelter, and healthcare, but nothing more.
Sometimes the bare minimum just isn’t enough — or even humane. When you have to make a choice between buying over the counter medication or hygiene on your $18 a month state pay, which do you choose? As there is very little in the realm of recreation provided by the state in general, many inmates often fall back into old and abusive behaviors for their own survival. Positive and entertaining diversions other than the state-sponsored schooling and programming, designed for nothing more than to give the illusion that the state actually cares about rehabilitation, are critical to the well-being of prisoners. Doing time should entail more than eating and sleeping. Having basic needs met and positive things to do to occupy the time reduces fights, theft, and use of illegal substances — which seem to flow as freely as rain from the sky.
In this article, I will attempt to show what the money is being used for behind the chain linked fence of one Ohio prison. Some of this is no surprise — but in my observations of other inmates, I was most pleasantly surprised. I would only ask you, Reader, to try to keep a open mind.
THE UGLY: Unfortunately when the first stimulus checks started to hit random inmates’ commissary accounts, the flood of drugs was as if a mad deluge of every possible type of narcotic found its way onto the compound. This fact in and of itself is rather odd as according to staff and ODRC, all drugs in prison come from relatives and friends who slip drugs to inmates during supervised visitation. The other way drugs supposedly get in is by people running up to the fence and tossing the contraband over. What makes these claims rather odd and unlikely is that when the checks started coming in, we were in the mist of the covid pandemic and visitations had stopped months before and only a small amount of inmates were allowed out on the yard at any given time and they were quarantined to a very small area and heavily supervised. On top of that, there are a number of armed staff members patrolling outside the perimeter in vehicles. Yet, somehow we were having as many as a dozen drug overdoses a day in the block of 140 men that I was in. Before the checks hit, the same block would have one to two overdoses a week.
THE BAD: Many inmates were able to pursue their chosen vices with great vigor. One inmate, we’ll call him Mr. S., was always getting high despite the fact he didn’t have a prison job at all. Having no support from his family on the outside, he would do any odd job, steal anything, and even trade sexual favors just to get high — an attempt to escape his misery and loneliness. Once Mr. S. saw the money on his commissary account, he made sure that the block drug dealers were aware of the money on his account. Suddenly he had unlimited credit and in only one month, racked up a $800 drug debt. Then Mr. S. got himself thrown into the hole and when he got out, he was moved to another block were he once again ran up a huge debt. He was eventually moved out to another camp for his own safety.
THE GOOD: Another inmate, Mr. L., was getting out of prison in just six months when the first of his stimulus checks hit. He paid off his court cost and the money he owed ODRC. Mr. L. was very frugal with the money and only spent part of his normal state pay at commissary. Upon leaving the prison Mr. L. owed no one and went to the halfway house with nearly a thousand dollars in his pocket and a plan for success. He left prison much more confident and without the burden of having to start over in debt and with only gate pay which is about $75. I’m sure he was not the only one to use the money in such a manner.
Mr. H. is one example that truly shows what an inmate with hope can do to make a difference with his money. Mr. H. was estranged from his ex-wife and children like so many of us are in prison. His solitude, like others, comes from the embarrassment that his family felt over his trial and conviction. His wife moved on after divorcing him and his children call another man father.
Mr. H. was able to have his mother to send his children, who were both in college $300 Walmart gift cards each for Christmas and the same for their birthdays with no strings attached. Mr. H., who hadn’t had any contact in over seven years with his children, expected nothing. It was just a kind gesture by a caring parent who had previously been unable to do anything for his children. He then spent some of the remaining money on getting himself a TV, a food box and such.
Six months later and out of the blue, Mr. H. received an emotional email written from his two children. They wish to be part of his life again. They explained about their anger at him over abandoning them at such an early age. They forgave him and gave their father a second chance.
Some people over-indulged in their own vices, while others used the money for a fresh beginning. And a few mended fences and made a small part of the world a better place for those they still cared for.
What did you do with your own stimulus? Did you chase a poison or did you heal a wound?
Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash.
by Melissa Bee | Apr 30, 2021 | From the Staff
The deadline to file 2020 taxes is May 17th, just over two weeks away.
Monitor this page for updates – download blank and sample forms and instructions. See the FAQ and Resources at the top.
Use the IRS online Get My Payment tool to check the status of your stimulus payment. To use this tool, you’ll need SS#, DOB, mailing address and zip code on file with IRS (the last one you used on your 1040 form).
by Boundless in the Midwest | Apr 23, 2021 | From the Inside
Nine years ago today I walked into court with my wife of nineteen years on my arm. We were nervous but sure that we would be walking out together. We. were both wrong.
Nine years ago today my nightmare began and it was a journey that only got worse as it went. I lost the great loved of my life. She was my Goddess, my muse, and my passion, and despite all of the betrayal, I still miss her.
Prison is an adventure in losses. In the first year you lose the respect of your children, the love, loyalty and faithfulness of your spouse. Losing your freedom is only the beginning. It is also the one that hurts the least compared to your other loses.
It isn’t until your second year that you actually find out that your wife took a lover only a few weeks after your conviction. This is around the same time that you find out that she has given birth to a child that could not possibly be yours and you are served with child support papers and divorce papers in the same month.
The very last thing you finally lose is the one thing that is easiest to lose given the circumstances but it’s the one thing you need the most. I’m speaking of hope.
All of your aspirations of greatness, of creating an enduring positive legacy is gone. You are a fragile shell of a man. You need a hero in your life, somebody capable of sharing their greatness.
Nobody is born great. Sure some people may be born with expectations of doing great things during their life because of family history. Sometimes those expectations fall short of the dreams of those who raised or even created the person in question.
Perhaps greatness is not something your born with or even aspire to but is something different. Maybe it’s something that happens most unexpectedly by those who have the singular characteristic of being compassionate.
As I write this, I’ve had the extreme pleasure of being a lucky individual who was adopted 34 months ago through Adopt an inmate by Clare. Our relationship has its ups and downs as every relationship does. There are rare times that myself and Clare both struggle to keep the long distance relationship going. Running out of things to talk about in our emails is a real problem from time to time. I’ve found that by opening myself up, making myself vulnerable even to the point of making serious mistakes is the best way to have a lasting and honest friendship. Most of the time our friendship is just so easy and comfortable. It’s like being hugged by for the very first time every single time I receive a letter or email from her.
Having no expectations but keeping yourself open to the possibilities of a good friend I feel is the secret to being adopted and having that friendship last.
Clare has become a proxy for all of the people I lost. She reminds me that life continues even during the worst of times. She is just a caring person with a little extra time that she wishes to share that time with me.
With the millions stuck at home bored out of your skull ask yourself. Do you have the time, the compassion to be a light in the darkness of somebody’s nightmare. Then consider Adopt an inmate. You can’t binge watch The Office forever you know.
Boundless in the Midwest.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
by Jacob (Justin) Gamet | Apr 13, 2021 | From the Inside
Sunday, April 11, 2021
I just wanted to share some great news about one of the bills (SB 5164) that our state’s (Washington) Congress passed and how it affected a man I know called “All Day,” who happens to live directly above me.
People call him All Day because he is doing Life Without Parole (LWOP). He’s a three-striker, meaning if you commit three different strikable crimes/offenses then Washington state law says you’re never leaving this place. All Day is a 46 y/o black man, and he’s been locked up for about 14 years.
Well, I was trying to help All Day convince the Seattle Clemency Project to take up his case for clemency with Governor Jay Inslee but they kept rejecting his case saying he’s not a viable candidate at this time. Clemency is basically a conditional pardoning of someone by the Governor.
One of All Day’s past crimes was a second degree robbery, which the state Congress had previously removed as a strikeable offense but didn’t allow it to apply to guys already in prison who were time-barred. This was grossly unfair.
But recently, in light of racial and social equity movements, Congress decided to take up the issue again. All Day, who’s not keen on law (obviously) and looks at it skeptically, wasn’t even aware that Congress was working on passing SB 5164 to fully remove second degree robbery from the strikeable offense list – and make it apply retroactively.
I caught up with All Day to let him know about SB 5164. Having been let down many times before, he wasn’t too hopeful. But I told him I’ll track the bill for him and monitor its progress through both chambers of Congress. He was appreciative.
To the surprise of several prisoners, Congress recently passed SB 5164 and made it apply retroactively to All Day and others also charged with second degree robbery! I showed All Day the bill and explained it to him, and then I found another guy and worked with him to figure out All Day’s offender score, which determines how much time he’d have to serve based on a set of sentencing grid calculations.
We figured out that All Day will actually be going home when he’s resentenced according to the Bill, i.e., when it’s signed into law by Governor Inslee and goes into effect 90 days thereafter.
The prosecutor will then petition the court to bring All Day into court to adjust his crime and then resentence him to a period of time that is shorter than the amount of time he has already served.
In short (pun intended), All Day will be a free man soon!
I, too, was waiting on a law to pass that could have resulted in my early release, as well as many others. But unfortunately it didn’t get passed out of the House Appropriations Committee.
Nonetheless, I’ve served the bulk of my sentence and will be released next April. I just feel bad that there are so many others who really needed HB 1282 to pass for them.
That’s the nature of our broken criminal justice system. Sometimes it works to the advantage of some, and to the disadvantage of others. But the only time it works is when good people stand up and stick their necks out to ensure justice and equity for others.
For now, I’m just glad that Dwight Russ no longer has to be referred to as All Day, which I’m sure you agree was such an ill-fitting nickname.
by Jacob (Justin) Gamet | Apr 10, 2021 | From the Inside
Saturday, April 10, 2021
Today marks my one-year countdown to freedom!
After 19 years, the world I left will be profoundly different. Sitting on my cell bunk, I imagine what freedom will look like and feel like in 365 days. I imagine its new flavor and texture, how it will taste to my exiled soul.
Occasionally, I piece together varied glimpses of freedom from TV, from conversations with some of you, and from faded memories of life predating April 2003, memories which have bound themselves to peripheral fragments of lucid dreams, pressed into a peppermint-flavored reality that is sweet yet bitterly unreliable.
In 365 days, I’ll examine freedom through a different lens (past colliding with modern), beholding it from an eagle’s vantage point. I’m improved by the ticks of time, ever evolved by prison’s sub-worldly experiences and its melting-pot populace.
Indeed, my carceral experiences have rendered me all the wiser and discerning. For what once tripped me up, I spot from a distance. What I once considered beauty is now hideous. What I once considered pleasurable (or even tolerable) is now detestable. Those I once considered companions, well, they’ve shown themselves as otherwise. But some, on the other hand, have proven themselves true.
* * * Preparing to Make My Million Dollar Dreams a Reality * * *
I just finished reading Invent It, Sell It, Bank It! by Shark Tank’s warm-blooded shark Lori Greiner, who has a whopping 120 invention patents to her credit. She’s a powerhouse inventor/businesswoman. Lori’s empirical wisdom taught me how to further develop my three best inventions and make them into a million dollar reality.
In preparing to write my own patents (and have an attorney later polish them up), I have five other invention books to read:
- The Independent Inventor’s Handbook
- The Inventor’s Complete Handbook: How to Develop, Patent, and Commercialize Your Ideas
- Navigating the Patent System
- Fun With Patents
- Patent Pending in 24 Hours
But b e f o r e reading the books listed above, I have one book in particular to read: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, who based his book on the financial principles of Andrew Carnegie, a canny, lovable, old Scotsman who supposedly developed a “magic formula” that has made fortunes for more than 500 exceedingly wealthy people, whom Hill claims he “carefully analyzed over a long period of time.”
Pairing well with Hill’s book, my Small Business Entrepreneurship classes through Edmonds College resumed last Wednesday. That said, I have two homework assignments to complete before Monday – preliminary preparations for achieving my million dollar dreams.
Most important, though, I look forward to spending quality time with family and friends who have walked with me (closely and from afar) on my 19-year journey to freedom.
See y’all in 365 days!
by Inmate Contributor | Apr 8, 2021 | From the Inside
BY: Jeremy in Louisiana
Have you ever spoke with someone, heard their voice, and immediately knew that they were a part of you? The words they said, the tears they shed, every syllable could have been you when you were eleven, talking to your 30 year old self over the phone. You want to tell the young version of you everything you’ve learned over the years, all at once. You think of all the warnings and wisdom you have to offer. A million things bounce around inside your head. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, be nice to people, don’t be mean to Tommy. It’s overwhelming. But the young voice isn’t a younger you. It’s another life, in another time. A life you helped to create.
When you were eleven years old, it was 2001. It’s 2020 now. The world has changed so much in nineteen years, but when you hear the young part of you, your mind and heart go to your past. You see your mom, waiting in the kitchen for you and your brother to get off of the school bus. You see yourself sitting with granny before school, drinking a big glass of coffee milk, loaded down with sugar. You see all the trouble you got in and want so bad to keep the young one from following in your footsteps. You remember your mom and dad, granny too, saying you better not date a black person, so you go to tell the young one the same thing, but something in you remembers that it isn’t 2001 anymore and only your dad is still alive. You’re not eleven anymore. You shake off the old hatred that’s been taught from generation to generation and promise it will end with you. You won’t pass that on. You want better for the young one.
You recall riding around in trucks in Indiana with rebel flags waving in the wind, drinking beer and not caring who you hurt. It took years to cleanse your heart of that hate. At times it consumed you. You recall the black lady who used to clean your mom and Granny’s house when you were even younger than the young one. How your mom and granny used to call her nigger behind her back and chuckle. You and your brother doing it. The nicest lady in town. She always took you to the store and let you pick out any candy you wanted. You wish Mrs. Celestine were still alive, so you could apologize, beg for her to forgive you for calling her hateful names, tell her how much you love her and how nice she was to help your crippled mother. You hope she’s somewhere in the afterlife smiling down on you. You know she’s watching over you because that’s the kind of person she was.
One day, you and your brother called her nigger as she was walking away and she heard it. The nicest lady. All she did was help. When she looked back, tears ran down her face. The hatred taught to you blinded you from her pain. She didn’t fuss. She didn’t whip you, she just let you see her tears that you can feel now, in 2020, and walked away.
by Inmate Contributor | Mar 24, 2021 | From the Inside
This morning (3-24-21) at Twins Rivers Unit in Washington state, an incarcerated individual approached C.U.S Collins with a complaint about the imposition of a new DOC policy that required incarcerated individuals to cohort. This man asked why is it that we are being subject to punishment if we don’t cohort, but the staff (Corrections Officers and Administration) walk from unit to unit and potentially pass Covid. This man was told that staff is doing what they can.
Then when asked “How come we are not allowed to sit at a table that has 4 seats with 3 other men, or a table with six seats with 5 other men?” When all Washington counties are in phase 3. We have 3 wings per unit and it’s basically bedrooms (cells) with a living room (day room) but with each wing having 75+ men we are only allowed about 23 men in the day room and we have to be six feet away with our masks on. Now when we get caught with our mask down on a phone or talking to another person we are subject to punishment. We are basically in our house’s living room – why do we have to wear a mask at home? Staff go home and remove their masks and relax. Staff can only bring Covid into us so they should be the only ones wearing mask as you would if you had company come over.
Furthermore we should have the governor give guidelines for the prisons if they are not to follow the phase for the county they reside. The whole state is in phase 3, DOC is in sec.1 of phase 1. As communities move forward, DOC moved back. After expressing all this to C.U.S Collins this man was told to make a complaint. His response was “I am making a complaint.” Then he was told to yard in as they were gonna have a “Play Safety Muster.” Which is where they talk about safety in the units. When they should be talking about how punishing us for not following a unwritten rule doesn’t coincide with state policy. State employees will not be fined or punished for not wearing a mask but can impose punishment for a choice.
Our families need to know we’re being taken care of by knowing DOC is following all the phasing that is taking place in the state. And that we’re not being punished for asking why.
