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The following article was published in our article directory on February 2, 2017.
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How Prison and Unfair Sentencing Disparity brought two Men Together

Article Category: Self Help

Author Name: James Nussbaumer

Prison sentencing disparity or unfair sentencing has been common in the United States with many Judges, and often for political gain.

A brand-new evaluation of thousands of instances in mostly state courts has located huge variations in the jail sentences by courts supervising comparable situations, and there are questions concerning the level to which prison time is sentenced by the specific courts as opposed to by the conditions of the situations.

In my 2nd book of the ever-developing series, Mastering Your Own Spiritual Freedom: Lessons from A Course in Miracles, I discuss at great lengths many experiences of prison life and unfair sentencing slammed on me that was overtly political at a time of panic and abuse in the investment industry.

The stench of the county jail was inhumane, even as a most conservative description.

In the corner sat the seventy-eight-year-old, white-haired man, sobbing all through the night. My initial take on the unshaven, grizzled guy was that he was an alcoholic vagrant doing a few days to dry out. Maybe a drunk and disorderly violation, I figured. Whatever his misdemeanor, he seemed harmless.

The noise echoed off the cement walls and solid steel door of the cell, a dank cavity infested with the germs and body odor of the sorry group of inmates packed inside, ranging from a DUI violation to violent criminals. One man was waiting for the transport bus to prison, where he would spend three years for car theft. Another, also waiting, had just been sentenced to life imprisonment for rape.

This type of temporary and unnecessary dumping and holding is the norm for prisoners in transit or waiting for backed-up court hearings and unfair sentencing. At that time I was there in transit from prison, waiting for a court hearing on technicalities of my own prison sentence. I expected my business to be finished by the end of the day I arrived, then to be sent back to prison.

I had already been there waiting for three weeks. During this time I sat in this densely crowded jail cell with as many as twenty-five men at a time, when it was clear to see that the cell had been designed to sleep six. It contained only one toilet, one washbasin, one open shower, no windows, and a few rows of tiered metal slab bunk beds with floor cots between them.

Some of the men were on their way to other counties and some to other states.

When the metal bunk beds were fully occupied—almost always—the floor cots were dragged in by new inmates and crammed into the thirty inches of space between each bunk. With barely enough space to move around, the tripping over and stepping onto others was a breeding ground for fights.

I met men who, after a few days in such holes, fell into severe shock. This is when I noticed seventy-eight-year-old William, another example of unfair sentencing, who later asked me to call him Willie. Something inside me urged me to speak a few kind words to this despairing and broken Irish-looking grandfather type, with facial growth covered in dried blood.

He explained that guards had dragged him from the initial holding cell to this cell. Handcuffed and shackled during the move, Willie, at his age, could not keep up with the guards' brisk pace, and he had fallen down a flight of three or four steps, landing on his face to the concrete floor. He had received no medical treatment or attention.

After a couple of days of watching Willie stare at the walls while leaning upright on his floor cot, I decided to approach him. He seemed relieved or comforted that during this horrendous time I was offering a few minutes to chat and share our thoughts on rising above adversity. We hit it off fairly quickly, as we each sensed a mutual helping hand in the other.

Through our conversations, and to my amazement, I discovered Willie to be very much a family man. His wife of fifty-two years had sadly passed away a few years prior, after a lengthy stay in a nursing home, due to a stroke. He had two loving sons who were close in age, and close to my age of fifty-one.

Willie liked that about me. His sons had families of their own, and were coping with the day-to-day struggles of balancing careers with family life. But their busy lives had blessed Willie with grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

The oldest of his sons had just left to go back to Oregon, but had been at his father's side when Willie was sentenced to go to prison. Out of loneliness, Willie had remarried a woman about his age who loved to travel around the country with Willie in his motor home. They'd seen many great places together in the two years they'd now been married.

His new wife's daughter was against the marriage from the start, however, and was causing a lot of chaos and grief in both their lives. She was concerned that Willie would squander her mother's nest egg and leave the estate penniless for herself as the rightful heir.

Willie told me that he hadn't remarried for the money. In fact, he was doing fine financially, with his own pension from the post office and the estate he and his first wife had worked hard to build.

The new stepdaughter, about age forty-five, accused Willie of puncturing the tires on her brand new Lexus with an ice pick that was found at the scene. Willie had been spotted at the crime scene by neighbors, which he openly admitted; he had gone to check out the area after he saw a gang of teenagers hanging around the new car.

One thing led to another, and the stepdaughter was able to convince police that Willie was the culprit.

Willie was charged with possession of a criminal tool (the ice pick), along with burglary. The very morning I met him, with his face covered with dried blood, he had just been sentenced to thirty months in prison. When the incident first occurred, resulting in Willie's felony charges, he did not want to trouble his two sons or interrupt their family lives.

They were both living out west, and he did not want his own adversities to become their problem. But Willie was in no way aware of the severity of the charges. He figured the whole mess could be straightened out by the public defender's office and saw no reason to get an expensive lawyer involved.

He didn't believe the state would want to send an old man to prison. But he was wrong!

The state does want to send people to prison. In fact, the state is in the business of sending people to prison, and this is why sentencing disparity has become a severe problem. This "prison business" involves big money; it keeps the law practices busy and the judicial system flowing.

The public defender who was assigned to Willie scared him into believing that if a jury found him guilty at trial, he would receive at least ten years in prison, partly to justify the expense of taxpayers' money to fund a trial. In this way the system convinces people who are innocent of crimes to plead guilty and accept a plea bargain.

At his age, Willie was not going to chance this. Willie had never been in trouble before, and he trusted the public defender's advice to take the deal. Without telling his sons, he accepted a thirty-month prison term, with a possibility of being released early after six months.

I spent a few more days with Willie in the broiling summer heat of that oven of a cell, before he was transported off to prison. I gained an unusual, but bonding friendship with this all-American grandfather, and learned much about myself in the process of sharing our views on life.

My thoughts were to one day look him up when this tough time of rising above adversity in both our lives was behind us.

A few days went by, and it was my turn to be shackled and handcuffed, and transported back to Belmont Prison, some two hours away. About ninety days later, on a day when a busload of new prisoners were arriving from the state's main intake and reception prison—a place to process new inmates into any one of the thirty-two men's prisons in Ohio—there was Willie, checking into housing unit #3, called "3 House."

There are eight separate housing units at Belmont, each of which holds 272 prisoners, and they are always at full occupancy. Belmont alone had two busloads a week coming into the prison, which gives you a good idea of the large number of new prisoners arriving and ones being released: a continual revolving door.

What were the chances of Willie being assigned to Belmont, let alone to 3 House, where I was situated? It was once again a comforting meeting, and it was surely my pleasure to help Willie get squared away and to show him the ropes of his new prison environment, which can be very frightening. Prison is rough on everyone for countless reasons, and having a friend close by can make a world of difference.

Was it a "coincidence" that Willie showed up at Belmont? I'll let you decide for yourself.

Willie has since served his thirty-month sentence in its entirety; he was denied an early release as promised by the public defender. I realize the public defender would have said that the court would "consider" early release. However, a prisoner in such harsh conditions will naturally take such a statement as an assurance; and Willie had certainly taken his attorney's advice to take the plea bargain based on the phrase "six months."

Willie writes to me often and has told me in detail what a feeling it was when his two sons both traveled from their homes out west to greet him as he walked out of the prison gate. He was eighty-one years old when he was released—over an ice pick and punctured tires. On one side, a teenage prank for which he paid the consequences with unfair sentencing; on the other the perception of a "punctured" estate.

He doesn't have to worry about his wife any longer, since their divorce was finalized just before he was sent to prison. But Willie has let go of all that occurred with her and her daughter. He says he understands that it takes two to tango; and he has planted in his mind a message that says, "Let the old battleaxe be." Willie now tells me that he has "truly seen it all."

To the best in you

Keywords: sentencing disparity, unfair sentencing, rising above adversity

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