Lyin Brian: Life Imitates Prison

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY, 2015.

 

            A story about my first year here. I thought if I put my legal education and experience to good use I could somehow improve life for most inmates. For months I wrestled with the schizophrenia that is life behind bars: Don’t judge the person – no matter what they did, don’t trust the person, don’t question anyone’s truthfulness. I had a few simple rules for helping guys. First, don’t lie to me. I needed to know, no matter what, exactly what transpired. Second, don’t offer to pay me. There was no quid pro quo. I wasn’t going to be some stereotypical “jailhouse” lawyer who promised guys he’d get them out for a small fee. Like the Eagles “Hotel California,” you can check into prison “anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

            I wanted to believe the system was corrupt (which it is) and that corruption was keeping behind bars thousands of innocent men (which it wasn’t). It took a long time for me to figure out there is a difference between “innocent” and “decent.” Prison takes apart the lives of thousands of decent men (and women) who did illegal – and in some cases horrific – things.

            So, I would read dozens of trial transcripts each week. More often than not, I would find that the inmate (1) was as guilty as guilty could be; and (2) had lied to me about the facts. I also learned that there was no rhyme or reason to sentences. Repeat offenders – those coming back to the system – were typically given a few years (I often heard those men were doing life in 3 year installments), while – depending on the jurisdiction you were in – the years for nonviolent offenses exceeded those handed out for child porn, child sex abuse, even second degree murder; and (3) worst of all, most of my “clients” weren’t remorseful. They were bitter, scheming, “career” lawbreakers who were looking for “an edge,” a way to go toe to toe with a rigged justice system.

            I would tell guys “no” all the time: no, you have no “loophole” to your conviction; no, you aren’t innocent and you weren’t railroaded. As you can imagine, that pissed people off. I didn’t care. The truth, I decided, mattered. I kept coming back to a letter exchange my then wife and I had while I was at the jail in ’08. She wrote and told me she hated me; “there is no more ‘us’,” she said. “You are a liar and a thief.” I wrote her back, told her I loved her and used the line George Clooney spoke to Julia Roberts in “Ocean’s Eleven” (a movie I watch every time it comes on because of their interaction), “I only lied about stealing.” Trouble is, you can’t compartmentalize lying. Honesty, truth matters, not just in marriage but in life.

            This week NBC News anchor Brian Williams had “some esplainin’” to do. He “exaggerated” – i.e. falsified – his narrative of a trip in 2003 to see soldiers in Iraq. He went from journalist dining with soldiers to an active participant in a mid-air RPG hit on the chinook helicopter he was riding in. This wasn’t the first time Williams told the story. For the last few years he has told it, each time embellishing just a wee bit more until the narrative no longer resembled the truth. It reminded me of the toothless crackhead who stopped my run one day in 2010 to tell me “I had a Bentley and a Ferrari, counselor.” “Of course you did,” I replied looking at a man without an education from the worst housing project in Norfolk, a man who was on his fourth trip to DOC for drug use. My buddy DC told me that day, “Guys become whatever they want to be in here and they think no one knows the difference.”

            The truth matters in here … and outside. I find myself thinking a lot about that fundamental premise right now. There are those in DOC (incarcerated and those who work here) that have made it clear to me that they don’t like my writing about prison life. I recently saw a quote from Stephane Charbonnier, director of the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo.” In 2012 he was interviewed and asked if he worried his publication’s attacks on “sacred” subjects could endanger him.

            “It may sound pompous but I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.”

            Charbonnier was one of those killed in the Paris Massacre at the “Charlie Hebdo” offices on January 7^th. The truth – honesty – matters.

            Truth: there is a need for prisons. There are some who are so anti-social that they need to be kept from society. However, for the vast majority of those behind bars, prison serves no rehabilitative purpose. You won’t leave prison a better man or woman because of your time behind bars but in spite of your time. Prison is dehumanizing. Prison does nothing to address the root causes of so much of the crime we see: poverty, lack of adequate educational opportunities, fractured families, recurrent cycles of violence. Worse, a significant number of those “on the front line” of corrections want offenders to fail for job security. Some are even hostile and contemptuous of those they oversee.

            Prisons “corrections” – need to be exposed to the truth. People need to see what really goes on in here and what incompetence and neglect their tax dollars are being frittered away on. This lack of honesty, of truthfulness isn’t just the Brian Williams story, or the story of a crackhead and his pretend Bentley, it’s the sum total of Virginia’s prison apparatus.