Plea Deals: The Duplicitousness of the Government

     I was offered a plea deal by the prosecutor.  

     The plea deal involved paying the government a large sum of money in exchange for no prison time.  Plea deals are possible up until the moment the jury delivers a verdict, but the plea deal I was offered was made early in the game, around the time of my indictment.  

     If I pleaded guilty to the 210 charges in the indictment and agreed to not go to trial or otherwise take the government to task for wrecking my reputation and my life, and if I paid the government a lot of money (negotiable, perhaps), I could get on with my life.  

     Clearly, the prosecutor didn't regard me as a risk to society, someone who needed to be isolated from the world so that I couldn't "commit more crimes."  You wouldn't offer a plea deal to a serial murderer.

     But it's a crime to lie to an officer of the court.  Punishments for lying to FBI agents, the police, a prosecutor--any official in the CRIMINAL SYSTEM (people have stopped calling it the "criminal justice system," funny thing) are extreme.  Lying is termed an "obstruction of justice."

     The penalty for obstruction of justice in the federal system is 5 to 10 years in prison, plus a fine.  

     For interfering with a witness or tampering with evidence (18 U.S.C. § 1512)--5 years.  For obstructing proceedings before Congress or government agencies (18 U.S. C. § 1505)--5 years.  For influencing a juror or an officer of the court (18 U.S. C. § 1503)--10 years.     

     If I pleaded guilty, I would be lying to ("influencing") an officer of the court, because I wasn't guilty. The punishment for this is 10 years in prison plus a fine. "It's part of the game," people told me.  "Take a plea deal." 

     I cannot accept this.  People should not have to say they're guilty when they're not.  Legislators made a law that punishes lying.  Prosecutors force innocent people to lie to avoid the charade of a trial and almost certain prison time.  Innocent people who believe in the uprightness of the justice system and go to trial are punished more heavily when a jury convicts them--punished for not lying.

     I was not guilty of a crime or any wrongdoing.  I refused to say I was guilty to avoid prison.  I went to trial.  I got a prison sentence and a fine  

     I don't recommend this path, and I don't discourage it.  

     But today, I can live with myself.

Is Federal Prison Camp "Club Fed"?

      No.

     If there is a "Club Fed" out there, it wasn't where I went.  It wasn't where Martha Stewart went, either.  (She went to Alderson Federal Prison, in West Virginia.  I was at Coleman, near Leesburg, Florida.)

     The term, "Club Fed," may have been coined to foment anger in the public against prisoners who "deserve" to be punished and are, instead, the story goes, being treated to the high life.

     Prison is a ruthlessly punishing experience--even prison camp, the "best" of the prisons.  It's not "camp" at all.  It is an experience of constant surveillance, curtailment of most freedoms (except the freedom to think, as long as you keep your thoughts to yourself), temptation to rat on others if you think it might cut your time, and constant fear that you'll be caught in a fight or someone will do something that implicates you in a scheme (to get cell phones, perfume, drugs, cigarettes?  I don't know--) and gets you sent to "County," i.e., the county jail, where conditions are worse and you may be in solitary confinement, a.k.a. "the Shoe."  Prison is nothing but mind-numbing sameness.  The world closes in on you in prison.  Unbeknownst to you, your brain shuts down, a little bit more each day.  The walls within which you live are like a vise: they narrow your sensorium to such an extent that you forget most of the outside world.  Survival matters.  You are reduced to survivalism.  

     When I was released home after prison, I couldn't remember the names of my cats or dogs, I "forgot" how to turn on the oven, and I didn't recognize the contacts in my cellphone.  My sons thought I had developed dementia.

     It's true that in prison you get enough calories to sustain yourself.  There is air and water, and you have prison friends.  You can stay alive, strictly speaking. (The water, however, at Coleman, was contaminated by Legionella last winter, and many women became direly sick.)  I could walk outside on the track, get access to a piano most days for 30 minutes, and have books sent to me by my family.  If that was "Club Fed," then I suppose I was in Club Fed.