October 27, 2008 - NEW HELL HOLE NEWS #2

NEW HELL HOLE NEWS

PART 2 OCTOBER 27, 2008

HELL HOLE NEWS October 27, 2008 – Part 2 Hello again, To continue the story…Whitmire says nine other prisoners used the phone and they’re all gang members, this ‘n that. “What about the judges, prosecutors, jurors and victims who put those people away who’re in fear for their lives when these gang members put “hits on them”? Pardon me, but as O.I.G. head John Moriarity himself stated in another story I read, these people are calling home to mom, sis, and wives, not putting “hits” on anyone. Out of the 2,800 phone calls Whitmire is ballyhooing, not one prosecutor, judge, cop, juror or victim was called. TDCJ has confiscated, in a year’s time, 19 phones, the story said. Let’s assume they all made at least 1,000 calls. Out of 19,000 calls and probably more than that, no judge, prosecutor, cop, juror or victim was contacted. TDCJ is installing pay phones for prisoners. There are gang members in population just as there are on death row. Whitmire isn’t worried about who they’ll call is he?

Whitmire alleges there is a rampant problem with cell phones and prison officials are “lax” in doing anything about it. The evidence refutes these assertions. Nineteen (19) phones in a year. That’s less than two per month in ten months. The population of death row is roughly 400 people. That’s less that ½ of 1% of death row prisoners who could or did get a phone. Since the lockdown began they found three phones.

This attests to the fact that Polunsky Unit officials have been very persistent and diligent in busting and seizing the phones from anyone who managed to get one.

I don’t like Wardens Billy Hirsch or Timothy Simmons and likely I never will because they’ve done nothing but mistreat me and my loved ones since the day they got here. Hirsch has threatened my people, Simmons has made demonstrably false allegations against my wife and both of them had her taken off my visitors list and put on a negative correspondence list because she is an activist and has helped me file grievances and complaints on them and because I’ve written letters to her wherein I was critical of them. To this day they are still retaliating against me every time I write a grievance on them. If you have any doubts about this, I’ll be more than happy to supply you with copies of the grievances and evidence I possess - just write and ask.

That said, in this one instance, I’m forced to side with them where Whitmire is concerned. There has been more contraband confiscated and its routes plugged since Simmons got here than at any time in the last 13 years I’ve been here and I’m absolutely 100% certain that TDCJ’s own records will bear that out.

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Again, to put this ‘rampant’ cell phone ‘problem’ in perspective, in the last 3 years Moriarity has logged a total of 700 cases in a prison population of 155,000 convicts?

That’s miniscule! Again less than 1% folks! By comparison, in Maryland, a state 1/20th the size of Texas, with a prison population of only 27,000 – 1/6th the size of Texas, officials in Maryland confiscated over 300 cell phones in one week, a total of 800 in 2007. You can readily see, with numbers like this, that Whitmire’s claim is bogus in extreme.

The next thing is, for the most part we have pretty decent guards here. They’re mostly humane to us but you couldn’t pay one of them $10,000.00 to bring something in here. No death row guard has been caught bringing anything in here this year, that I’m aware of. While I’m not going to put it out there, there are many ways for things to get in here that do not involve any human carrying it. To attack these guards, subject them to false allegations, rumors of “spy cameras in the vent” watching them, searching them and otherwise showing distrust of them is only going to destroy their morale and make them want to quit their pathetically low paying jobs and walk out. Then who’s going to run the show? DPS? Ha/ha.

Whitmire’s suggestion to put ‘law enforcement’ officers in here is ludicrous; the police here to police the police? At whose expense? At your expense, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public taxpayer! So Whitmire would take DPS officers off the streets where they can protect and serve you folks out there, only so they can protect Senator Whitmire from unwanted phone calls from in here? Hmmmm. How quaint.

Tabler was calling Whitmire to inform him about the unconstitutional and deplorable conditions extant on death row. Whitmire inexplicably failed to mention this, except for prisoner Billy Mason who is starving himself to death. He’s currently in sad enough shape that they have to wheel him to the infirmary in a wheelchair or on a stretcher.

Captain Bryant and his cronies are currently employing leveling classification as their own personal tool of punishment and retaliation without any due process whatsoever. They have various prisoners they don’t like isolated in corner cells all over 12 building, mishoused and misclassified, while falsely calling it an “integrated” cell assignment. Any prisoner who resists such assignment is gassed excessively, beaten and given a case.

Personally, I had no involvement whatsoever with Tabler’s escapade. Yet the same day they ran down on him, 10-20-08, 45 minutes later Bryant used it as his excuse and license to run down on me, too. Why? Because I’ve been filing grievances on him and Hirsch and their pet property officer Ms. Smith (same name as the Major – likely his wife, sister, or both). They took my table light, my pillow, my clothes, my bed sheets, my socks, my underwear and even my under arm anti-perspirant 2

purchased from the commissary. I realize that’s slim pickin’s but that’s all that’s left because the last few grievances I filed before, they ran down on me and took all my books, magazines, fan, legal material, food and even my postage stamps and envelopes – trying to keep me from mailing the suit I’m about to file on them, I guess, or to keep me from communicating with my lawyers.

This property officer, Smith, is terrorizing death row in her own little campaign of hate. You know in the last 10 years they’ve taken nearly every single “privilege” we ever had, all in the name of “security” or some other vague reason. Now, all we have left are books and magazines to read and items we purchase from the commissary which is little of nothing.

The books come from vendors like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, ordered and paid for by our families and loved ones out there. On commissary you can buy a typewriter; a nightlight / table lamp, soft soled boots; tennis shoes; a hot pot ; a fan; a radio and headphones; a wrist watch; a chess set, a few other items. Now, anytime a prisoner comes to level or they want to retaliate against him, Smith is destroying his property receipts and falsely claiming the “ownership is questioned” and confiscating the prisoner’s property. She doesn’t even give the prisoner the opportunity to contest it and prove ownership per policy, she just writes “refused to sign” on the confiscation form and sometimes gives it to the prisoner, sometimes not……then the prisoner doesn’t even know she has done away with his property until he makes level one again and doesn’t get it back. When questioned by another prisoner she loudly and proudly proclaimed that Warden Hirsch and Major Smith told her to do it that way.

Of course it hurts the prisoner to lose his stuff. But it’s not the prisoner who’s ultimately losing; it’s his family and loved one who paid for the books or put money on the prisoner’s commissary account to pay for his commissary items.

Friederich Wilhem Von Nietzsche so famously said “Beware of all those in whom the urge to punish is very strong”. In recent years we’ve been subjected to a veritable blitzkrieg of inbred redneck yahoo idiots as ranking officers and administrative authorities who only want to punish, isolate, restrict, restrain, subjugate, suppress or otherwise mistreat us for reasons that are not related to true prison security, order or discipline. In my view, regardless of what they did or didn’t do, anyone who mistreats or abuses prisoners who are locked in a box awaiting death and otherwise helpless to defend themselves is on the same level with pedophiles, rapists and people who steal old folk’s social security checks out of their mailboxes. We’re not here to be punished and mistreated on these fools’ personal whim in order to make them feel powerful or in control or, otherwise assuage their petty egotistical needs and personal desires. We were sent here to die. That’s our punishment and according to TX VAACP (Code of Criminal Procedure) Art. §43.24 we’re not supposed to be mistreated, tortured or abused otherwise. Perhaps Senator Whitmire could expend a 3

modicum of his precious time seeing to that dictate of the law instead of death row bashing for political gain? Well, I don’t know…asking him to impassively and correctly do the job he was elected to, that might be too much to ask, eh?

The other thing Nietzsche so famously said was: “He who fights ‘monsters’ must be ever vigilant to not become that very thing which he loathes”. Guess some of these Texas prison authorities and Senator Whitmire himself have fallen in that trap, huh.

In this place you cannot have anything, say anything, see anything, know anything, do anything, be anything, hear anything or enjoy anything. It’s beyond being merely inhumane; locus es terribilis iste! – “this place is terrible!” Some of you might be quick to say “well, they’re capital murderers and they shouldn’t have anything anyway”. To you I would say, again, not all of us are guilty but besides that, our court sanctioned punishment is DEATH; we forfeit our very lives for the crimes we’re accused of, so we shouldn’t have to forfeit more, extra-judicially, in the meantime just because others want to make us suffer. If you believe otherwise, then you are the very thing you accuse us of being: a remorseless, vile, sociopathic killer.

The mark of a civilized society is supposed to be it’s ability to rise above the baser instincts of animalistic terror. If you wish to visit that upon us, you are not part of civilized society. It is that same society which condemns such actions by sentencing people to death who commit them... i.e. again, you become the ‘monster’ you loathe.

The Texas media says this is the first “prison sweep in over a decade”. Ha! What a joke. There’s a statewide lockdown in the system annually and another shorter one in the summer, semi-annually for a major shakedown (i. e. unit wide total search and destroy) every year since the escape, so that assertion by the media is just totally false.

Secondly, Senator Whitmire complains that “contraband” issues are the #1 case TDCJ officers write and something needs to be done to alleviate/eradicate the “contraband problem”. I agree but only to this extent: Whitmire obviously does not even understand how TDCJ defines contraband. In short, contraband is anything, some officer or rank doesn’t want you to possess any longer. If an officer doesn’t like your attitude or, is irate with you for his own personal reasons, he’ll just go search your cell and find a reason to take your stuff. Your t-shirt got a pinhole in it?

Loose seam? Contraband, confiscate it. Your night light got a crack in the shade?

Contraband, take it. You fan got a small chink missing out of the grill?

Contraband…kiss it goodbye! Anything changed from it’s original shape? ‘altered’ it’s contraband! TDCJ teaches its officers to retaliate against prisoners and the ubiquitous, all-encompassing “contraband” is used as a tool of punishment in this fashion. Until something is done to change this practice contraband will always be the #1 case written, simply due to the way it is misused. Something which is “altered” is not supposed to be considered as contraband and confiscated unless it “presents a treat to the safety and security of the institution, staff and or other 4

offenders” i.e. a frayed cord on a hot pot or radio could short out and presents an electrical fire hazard. But the way TDCJ employs the rule, if you use a bar of soap you just bought, it’s ‘altered’ and they can take it from you.

Lastly, if you were a parent with a child of yours on death row and he were about to be executed, wouldn’t you want to talk to him and come see him once before he was murdered by the state? Regardless of what he may have done, he’s still your son, right? Sure he is. TDCJ hold its prisoners, especially death row, in virtual isolation.

They’re interdicting and otherwise obstructing and censoring our mail for reasons not related to prisoner needs or security but trying to use it as a tool of manipulation against us, while delaying its delivery for days or even weeks. Last week I had a delivery of briefs and grievance copies robbed from me, where the mailroom illegally confiscated the copies and still refuses to give them to me. These are briefs filed in my case, upon which my very life depends. It’s circumstances like these which are driving other prisoners to seek alternative means of communication. TDCJ’s own draconian practices – which by the way are illegal and unconstitutional – are causing these problems. Why should the prisoners be made to suffer for it? The enticement, entrapment and arrest of Mrs. Tabler is a shameful and sadistic act which rests on Whitmire’s shoulders. Whitmire has intentionally lied and misled the media about much of this matter; he should be called upon to answer for it, rather than encouraged by the media to continue his political grandstanding.

Best regards to one and all, Hank Skinner h.w.skinner@gmail.com http://www.hankskinner.org 999143 Polunsky Unit H W Hank Skinner 3872 FM 350 South Livingston TX 77351-8580

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