September 21, 2011 - NEW HELL HOLE NEWS #33

NEW HELL HOLE NEWS

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

New Hell Hole News #33 *September 21st---Brewer’s Last Day on Earth* Right after the mail went out, Brewer went out on the rec. yard and som’, then the shakedown team came in and come running straight to my cell. I guess this major is not gonna leave me be and, is someone who likes to mistreat someone who is about to die, eh. Wonder if he believes in God? Hebrews essentially say the karmic debt will be high for those who mistreat the condemned.

It was just another of those “Fuck you, fork over you” type deals. I wish I could say I give a shit. I ain’t got nothing left I’m worried about losing. I sure wasn’t happy about being awakened at 6:00 am for that, but whatever. Now that I have nothing but legal material and a few magazines, it only took me about 3 hours to clean up, this time. Ha/ha.

Me, Sarge (Foster) got into it over the weekend. Every time a date is looming and we’re too close to someone, that happens. Don’t ask me why. Me and Moe fell out last year just before his date. Moe and Billy John fell out.

Billy John and Kevin got into it, Kevin and Moe, Moe and Bruistamorte, Bruistamorte and Frank Alix, and on and on. But me and Sarge were still on speaking terms. Me and Brewer were not. Monday I got a letter from Rob about Brewer---where I asked him to get some help for Brewer and he more or less told me no one in the D.P. Defense biz wanted to help Brewer (because he’s cussed everyone out), Brewer himself told us when he came back from a TDS visit that he saw a guy David Dow had sent up here and he didn’t like what he had said, so he cussed him out and told him get the f**k on somewhere.

Brewer wouldn’t talk to Sarge or me as Sarge left to go to the last visits and to the death chamber in Huntsville.

Then Brewer left for visit. I hadn’t slept in 3 days. Then yesterday at about 5:00 pm, they came got Sarge’s mattress and someone heard on the radio Sarge had got a stay at 3:30 pm. I was so relieved for that. He’d spent all his commissary money on me and him and Third (Steven Wood’s spreads) so I hope someone out there sends him some money soon. After that news, I crashed hard for 7+ hours.

After Third’s execution, I was just not ready yesterday to lose another friend. Man-oh-man (exclamation)...sigh.

Brewer started talkin’ shit to me about 3:30 am; I think imminent death was too much for him and he’s seriously losing it. He looked bad when they took him outta here this morning.

So now me and my legal material are all alone down here on row one. No neighbors at all on either side. They still have not gave me my level 1 back or any of my property, but I don’t care about that, either. I am content and perfectly free to do whatever I want. You know, sometimes less really is more. Ha/ha.

Donald Keith Newbury #999403, Texas Seven’s aka Lizzerd, is by himself over in B-section. I really feel sorry for him, he has no one. But he doesn’t want anyone, either. He’s in that H.L. Mencken mode right now, with his black flag waving. He knows what he’s facing and he’s dealing with it, I guess. I haven’t been able to talk to him. They won’t let him rec anywhere but outside, alone and the Sgt.’s take him and bring him back. I holla at him as he walks by.

Tabler, Thurmond, and Hernandez are up on 2 row with Frank Garcia, so I feel like I got the whole 1 row to myself and feeling like the Maytag repairman, huh, ha/ha. Now they brought Lupe in, 9 cell.

09.25 Sunday--What a week. I guess you’ve heard about this bullshit with Brewer not eating all his last meal food so this piece o’shit bitch Whitmire writes Brad Livingston “requesting” that he quit “wasting” the taxpayers money and Livingston immediately issued a proclamation that there would be no more last meals due to budgetary constraints. Ha! What a f**king joke. The chaplain over there told me, when I had my almostexecution, that I was a rare exception--I ate almost all of my food, except for the last half of a double cheeseburger. He said those guy’s in O.D.R. (officer’s dining room) fix those meals so good because 9 times out of 10 they know they’ll get it back and it’s assimilated into the meal for the officers and prisoners in the O.D.R. and they eat it. That’s why they serve the last meal at 4:00 pm and start trying to take it away from you at 5:30 pm---that’s suppertime for the kitchen workers. So it all works out just fine.

In the last night’s before Brewer’s execution, he kept running line with this dude upstairs but they had some

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goofy ass rookie working in here and she kept threatening Brewer, so he just went off the deep end on her and called her everything but a white woman. Next morning, on a f**king Sunday no less, they got the damn shakedown team in here searching his cell and Sarge’s. I told them, he ain’t doing nothing but passing his lil’ doo-dads and whatnots to the next man in line--his toothbrush with a handle on it that I made for him, etc. Just junk. They keep tripping like he’s “passing a cellular device” ha/ha.

So the day of his execution--no wait. Onward from Sunday. The last 7 days before your execution date you get 3 hours of rec each of those days, regardless. There’s a very good reason for that. Getting out there in the dayroom to move around and exercise relieves stress. The last 7 days are the hardest. You just do not sleep at all. So that’s so you can go out in the day-room and move, talk to your friends in the cells, they send you tacos n’ stuff out there--it all acts to keep you calmer. You got people all around you who commiserate and understand, you say your goodbyes, you get shit fixed in your mind so you can more readily deal with it. “This is it.”

Re-read ‘3 ½ steps’ that I wrote about Billy “Sonny” Vickers. That’s what happens to some who stay caged in that cell, pacing, going crazy.

Saturday and Sunday they screwed both Brewer and Sarge out of their recreation. This speech-impediment having idiot mofo, “Lt.” Ray New-burr-wee, decides they “might” jack the day-room so they can only go outside by themselves, one at a time. What he’s really demonstrating here is what a lil’ coward ho he is. Sarge went out by himself. Go out there with no one to talk to at all and look at the sky, smell the air. You’ll never see it again because they’re gonna kill you tomorrow. Soon as Sarge came in, the first thing he said was, “You’re sure right.

That just makes it worse.” I know. I’ve been there, done that.

By Wednesday morning, Brewer was a nervous wreck, capital N, capital W. He started cussing me out at 3:30 am as I was trying to talk him down--no way in hell. I thought, if I told him the procedures and processes, it’d calm him. But no, he only wanted to kill that ho-ass Major McMullen, he said. I could sure understand that. I’ve spent the last 2 months trying to protect that idiot from his own stupid self. No more! F**k him. F**k him. F**k him some more and f**k him again.

So Wed. mornin’ they finally put Brewer outside with the Mexican upstairs, Hernandez. They’re lucky they did that, else they’d a had hell ever getting Brewer over to Huntsville to kill him at all.

Soon they got out there, here come the shakedown team again to search the whole section this time and they single me out and stay in my cell 2 ½ fuckin’ hours, going through every lil’ piece of paper meticulously because the major is watching the camera. They found no contraband but a piece of tape.

Wednesday evening I sat down here by myself unabal to listen to the Execution Show ‘cause I had no neighbor to hook up with---all I got is a pair of headphones, I ain’t got no radio.

Tabler, of all people, rode to the rescue and told me over the run, “I know you ain’t got no radio and you’re down there by yourself, so I’mma holla down and tell you the blow-by-blow of what’s up with Brewer. I know he’s your friend.” But they didn’t have an Execution Show on Brewer at all. As you know, they pre-empted it for Troy Davis’ execution in Georgia. (I’ll ya’ll som’ interesting about him in a minute.)

I thought that was just really weird, but now I know why. When it dawned on me, I just started laughing and laughed damned near ‘til I cried. “Closure” is in the eye of the beholders. Ha/ha. Ride on, Brewer, R.I.P. As I said, he was in a sad shape by the time they finally came to get him but before that they tried to get him to come in and go talk to the major. Sure, that’ll fix everything! You should’ve heard Brewer sarcastically telling them he thought of that idea: “The major? The major?!! Why, f**k him! He f**ked me out of my rec Sat., Sun. and Monday with that bullshit, now I finally get out here with my friend here, Mr. Hernandez, enjoying my final two hours on Earth (not 3!), walking under a blue sky and it’s gettin’ cloudy already, too! and that major wants to interrupt my bliss?!! Ha!! F**k that Major! You tell that pushed-in Pekinese face lookin’ f**ker I’ll talk to him on my way out to my final visits and not a minute before! Now get the f**k outta here, you’re disturbing my serenity and causing waves in the tonal acuity of my vision that’s interrupting the messages they’re beaming in from Nibiru! So f**k off!”

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All that, in a real high-pitched, stressed out “I’m pulling my hair out” sorta mine. It sounded crazy as hell because we all knew exactly what he was talking about. Just chew it! Trust me! Just...chew...Third, I hope you’re getting all this from the other side of the vale. I sure miss you, man. R.I.P. Dead got the book.

I was super pissed at Brewer as he left outta here, until I realized it was the last time I’d see him for awhile.

Possibly a long, long while. But, like “Sleepy” Mike Sigala told me, “I can’t take it with me but I know where I’m going and I hope I don’t see you for a long, long time. But someday I hope I do!” That’s his way of acknowledging his own death and wishing me a long life. They killed Sleepy 22 days before my almostexecution on 03.24.10. About 3 days after Sleepy’s execution 03.02.10 John Alba (R.I.P.), another good friend of mine, gave me some photos Sleepy wanted me to have, along with a farewell note. We called Sleepy “Kungfu Panda” because he was short, wide, looked like a panda and knew kung-fu, of course. He used to put on demonstrations for us out in the day-room. He was good, too! Really knew his shit.

So after the shakedown team finished tearing my cell all to hell for 2 ½ hours and finding so much nothing, taking all my clean sheets but leaving dirty ones on the floor, I didn’t say nothing. Just quietly went to putting it all back together and cleaning up the mess, which took another 3-4 hours.

Usually they do not harass death watch. There’s no need to. We’re isolated in this corner of the pod, on Asection. B-section is empty, they call it “death watch overflow” but of course there’s never more than 14 execution dates at any given time and A section holds 14 people-14 cells. So B section is only utilized if they want to isolate som’ prisoner all the way out. Currently, “Lizzerd” Donald Keith Newbury is over there. (I’ll get to that in a minute.)

I’ve had an execution date since July 27th, set for November 9th. I came up here to death watch from F-pod 07.28 too. The major told me if I’d cut my hair and beard, he’d make me level I and give me all my property back, let me make commissary.

That was Thursday the 28th, Sun. the 31st they ran haircuts on this pod/section, so I cut my hair and beard.

Monday morning, Aug. 1st, I wrote to Disciplinary and told them that the Major said and that I’d complied.

Their response was, “When the Major requests your restrictions to be lifted, they will be lifted.” But the Major reneged on the deal!

It is common that when a prisoner gets a date, if he’s on level, they make him level I for the duration until his date. That would seem to apply to me more than anyone since I’ve been on level II and III continuously for more than 13 years for no reason other than these inbred stump-jumpers and rednecks don’t like my writings or grievances or my grievances for others or my attitude or som’ else, so they retaliate--which of course, is illegal.

The Hellhole News and writing grievances, etc. is constitutionally protected speech under the first and fourteenth amendment. But yeah, tell these Bubbas that.

I must live in the past. Or, I got more stature and integrity in the tip of my...little finger, than these fools got in their whole body. If I was Warden here and I had some prisoner writin’ on conditions or beefin’ about my policies, especially if said prisoner was sentenced to death, I’d expect that. I wouldn’t expect a condemned man to be happy no matter how I treated him. As long as he was going through the correct channels and not bringing harm to my officers, I’d tell him, “Rave on, catshit!” That’s exactly what those systems are in place for: to identify problems and give the prisoners a means to vent.

But for some reason, Mr Tim Simmons, Senior Warden and Virgil McMullen, Death Row Major, just can’t see it that way. Neither can their lil’ peonistic-minded captain, Patrick Dickened. Naw, these just gotta retaliate and screw over me, jack my property, jack my visits, my commissary, my level I...and I’m a condemned man, got an execution date in 44 days and a wake up. Just and only because they don’t like what I say/write.

When they read this, and I’m sure they will, since Crystal tells me that Tim reads all my writings, they’ll probably say I’m “crying about it” --well....naw. I don’t give a fiddler’s flying f**k about it, really. I’m just illustrating a point. That point being, why I have such an attitude towards Texas authority and TDCJ/law enforcement in general.

There are two kinds of people in law enforcement and corrections. 1/ Those who are there because they genuinely want to help people, to serve and to protect. 2/ Those who are there for the phallic and egotistical

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reasons. Most of those we’ve had here as rank are in the latter category. I haven’t really, truly, done anything to these fools, except, my writings tend to show them how they really are, how peonistic, insecure, egotistical, selfcentered, petty, tyrannical, chinchy and tetchy they are; like looking in a mirror of truth. The main reason they hate me is because, I see them as they truly are and when they look me in the eye, they know I see that, and not that B.S. facade they sell daily to everyone else. But I don’t smart off about it, I just treat them as I want them to treat me---as a fellow man. They get pissed because I won’t be sycophantic and bow down to them like most do.

But I don’t disrespect them unless/until they cause me to.

I can tell you, some people in law enforcement that I have love and respect for. Some of these are very famous names and some are personal friends of mine: Leroy Schulle--Hockley County Sheriff; Rufe Jordan--Gray County Sheriff; Wayne Carter--Bailiff 31st/223rd District Court; Lon Blackmon--Hutchinson County Sheriff; Ted Holder--Levelland P.D. Chief; David Potter--Gray County J.P.; Bob Muns--Gray County J.P.; Carl Weathers--Capt. Company C Texas Rangers; Parnell and Robert McNamara--Texas Rangers; Darryl Spence-retired FBI instructor, Hockley County District Atty’s investigator; Mickey Blackmon--retired Texas Ranger, Hutchinson County Dist. Atty’s investigator; Jackie Peoples--Texas Rangers; Red York--retired Dallas P.D., Eustace, TX P.D.; H.R. “Slick” Alford--Henderson County Sheriff; J.D. Barnard--Gray County S.O.; Bill McMinn--Gray County Dist. Atty’s investigator, Chief of Police in Littlefield, TX, home of Waylon Jennings, R.I.P.: “Just some good ol’ boys...never meaning no harm...beats all you ever saw, they’re in trouble with the law since the day they were born...makin’ their way, the only way they know how...that’s just a little bit more than the law allows...Yeeeeeeeeee-haaaaawwww! Whhooooooo hooooo!” Story of my life. (Theme song to ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’. Bo and Luke Duke. Grew up watching that TV show with Catherine Bach, “Daisy”, ha/ha.)

Some of those listed above are dead and gone. The titles I listed are what they were when I knew them. I doubt any of them are still in those jobs/offices. I’ve been locked up 17+ years now for something I didn’t do. But I’m just illustrating, my judgment is sound because I’ve known some of the biggest and best names in law enforcement all across Texas. The names listed above are just a few. I could’ve gone on for 2 or 3 pages.

Likewise TDCJ personnel, but I’ll just name four Wardens I really respected: Jim Shaw--he used to call me ‘the prodigal son’. When I’d parole, he’d come see me in the barber shop/chain room and tell me what he wanted me to do. The first time, it didn’t take. Within 10 months, I was back. The second time, it did take--I successfully completed my parole and got discharged in May of 1993 and I did that by doing nothing except what Warden Shaw and Warden Bruce Thaler told me to do. Those guys produced winners, they cared. They truly served the public and the prisoners they were responsible for.

Then I got framed for these murders and I’ve been fightin’ for my life ever since. While I’ve been on death row, I’ve known three Wardens I respect--Loyd Massey, Chuck Briscoe, and Michael Butcher, in that order. and of course, Bruce Thaler when he was Warden at Ellis death row, but I’ve already mentioned him.

The administration we have here now runs death row in a punitive fashion, Nazi-style. It’s not about Zyklon-B, but LA-10 “Punch!” gas and it’s not ‘throw them down the stairs’, it’s a form of “Mind f**k by Mattel.”

Torturous head games. But yeah, physical abuse too, by Major Minor McMullen.

Now that I’m done qualifying that I know what I’m talking about and that I got sufficient experience to assess the situation...

Somewhere along Sept. 10-15th, Lizzerd got into a disagreement with the rank and laid it down on them in the hallway at A-B Medical (That’s the Nurses’ station here on death row.) Lizzerd was cuffed behind his back when this happened and when he laid down, they shackled his feet, too. “Laying it down” is a form of passive resistance, to make the pigs have to do som’ work. They gotta pick you up, put you on a gurney, wheel you to your cell and put you in it. It’s a minor use of force that they have to do paperwork on.

There is no policy-based justification for using gas on a restrained prisoner. In fact, the Use-Of-Force Plan forbids it.

This crazy-ass Major, Virgil McMullen, who just got here and replaced Joe Smith, ordered Sgt. Williams to gas Lizzerd in the face. He claims he can do that in order to “gain compliance” ha/ha. Yes, of an unrestrained prisoner who’s violently acting out or, who’s jacked the restraints and is refusing to submit to a strip search and

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exit the cell. But here’s Lizzerd laying on the floor, on his side, cuffed behind his back and shackled. Remember, I’ve told you before, you cannot get up by yourself when in that position--it’s akin to being hogtied. So McMullen orders him to get up, he can’t, they gas him in the face and all over his upper body 3 separate times.

Then they pick him up and put him on the gurney. They take him to B section 19 cell, turn off the water to that cell, put him in it, take off the shackles but leave on the cuffs behind his back and leave him laying like that in the cell for 8 hours, cuffed behind his back, covered in gas all over his face and upper body. Needless to say, the skin blistered and peeled off his face and neck as if he was sun-burnt. If that is not cruel and unusual torturous punishment that violates the 8th amendment, what would be???!!! All of this is caught on cameras! 19 cell has a camera in it like death watch does. There are cameras out in the hall where this happened and of course, they had to have a video-cam operator for the entire Use-of-Force. Any of you out there can file an open records request from TDCJ Executive Services “for any and all video footage of events leading up to, during and after the Useof-Force on Donald Keith Newbury #999403, D.o.B. 05.18.1962, anytime during the month of September at 12 Bldg Death Row A-B Medical continuing on to A-pod B-section #19 cell and for approximately 8 hours of incell camera footage after prisoner Newbury was place in the cell and left in restraints after the cell was secured and exited by officers.” You need to make sure your request makes clear that you want “both stationary camera footage from hall, pod and cell plus the mobile U.o.F. camera footage taken during the entire Use-of-Force incident.” I can guarantee you, that’ll be some film you’ll never forget watching. Some of you out there should put it on Youtube and let the whole world watch it.

Back to my situation. So I got subjected to a shakedown from hell on Wednesday, 9.21. Like I said, I just cleaned up the mess and carried on.

Well, this just wasn’t good enough for old Major Minor McMullen, nope. The little fellow just wasn’t satisfied.

He felt sure the shakedown team didn’t do a good enough job and somehow they forgot to confiscate my cash, dope, cell phone, handcuff keys, pistol, switchblade, straight-razor, etc., etc. So he, the very next day (09.22), sent another shakedown team to lure me out of the cell on the pretext of assessing my legal material to see if I qualify for a legal box. Of course I do, twice over, but I’m not allowed to have one, by edict of Huntsville Dep. Dir. Operations Permanent I.O.C. Now I could’ve just kept my mouth shut and let Major Minor McMullen step in the huge pile of dookey he’d been in if he had issued one but that’s not really what it was at all. It was a pre-textual situation; he thought that if they come up on me by surprise after I’d just got shook down the day before, and if I thought it was only a legal material assessment, I’d come on out and leave all my cash, dope, pistol, cell phone, handcuff keys, etc. in the cell and then he could then rush right in there and get it--make the BIG bust! Naw, sucka. So sorry, Virgil.

Lil’ Lester Pester tried all this stupid shit and more. It never worked for him either. Tsk-tsk. What can I say? I’m just too...sensitive. I can smell a swine snout from 5 miles out! Ha/ha.

When I gather up all of my legal material and go out there, I get informed by Lt. McGhee that it’s not a legal property assessment alone, no. Major Minor McMullen has signed an I-186, an administrative equivalent of a search warrant, to search and read all my legal material for written contraband.

A lil’ interlude here. Numerous supervisors and rank who’ve had it in for me over the years have tried to use these methods to “get Skinner”. Billy Hirsch--Warden Brokeback Sugar Britches; Tim Lester a.k.a. Warden Napoleon; Steve Miller--Major Messy; Major Mama Melodye Nelson; Capt. David Dickersham; Warden Carey Steve Staples, etc., etc. It never worked for a single solitary one of them, not once.

The law library officers, McKee and Stackhouse, have been used and abused in this way by rank, on me, dozens of times, to no avail. I keep my legal current and correct, 100%. There is never any “written contraband” in my legal material. I will readily accede that it is well-know that gang leaders try to keep a lot of legal material and conceal gang related material--membership lists, constitutions, etc. in it. However, I’m not a member or leader of anything except the Hank Skinner Club and I’m not only a member, I’m the president!

The primary objective of the Hank Skinner Club is to sue state officials who persecute and violate the civil, constitutional, due process or other rights of Hank Skinner, see. For example, currently Gray County District Atty Lynn Switzer is a primary objective of the Hank Skinner club. and Major Minor McMullen is about to become the next one, along with his friend Tim Simmons and some others, shortly.

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The Access to Court rules specifically state that only the Senior Warden (NOT Major Minor) can authorize an I186 search of legal material and only he or his designee can perform the search--in the prisoner’s presence.

Ok. So we get out to the legal booth, they put me in the back and my legal material in the front section, I’m separated from it by a wire cage window sorta deal so they can do it in front of me and I can tell them what is what. Fine by me.

But whoops--Stackhouse ain’t coming. He’s got a class to teach. On this unit, Tim Simmons is the Senior Warden, so he’s got to authorize the search and the only designee is the law library officers, Richard McKee and Kenneth (I think that’s his first name, not sure) Stackhouse.

This I-186 is signed only by Major Minor, V. McMullen. That won’t fly. McMullen then tells McGhee he wants him and 3 members of the shakedown team to perform the search. At first, I object to that but McGhee tells me that they’re not assessing it--docket numbers current, etc. (They can’t. They’re not trained in Access to Courts); they’re just gonna search it to make sure there’s no obvious contraband in it. I’m cool with it, let’s do it, so I can go back to my cell.

But that ain’t all Major Minor wants. Last week I’d wrote my HSDF manager in Switzerland and told her, it looks like we’re about to engage some serious litigation over the matters raised in my NHHN #31. So Major Minor wanted Stackhouse to see what I’m filing on him and whether it has any legal merit. So...that’s why Stackhouse didn’t want to come down here. That’s illegal. Discovery in violation of the Access to Courts rules.

So I tell McGhee that ain’t none of Major Minor McMullen’s biz, just do the contraband search and leave it be, I’m going to alert my attorneys to what’s going on here, all of it.

This is particularly pertinent because, due to trouble I’ve had in the past, I’ve since put all my legal material in 12x16x2 expandable Zyvek envelopes and I’ve written a menu on the face of the envelopes that explicitly lists the individual contents of each envelope, so there can be no question what’s in each envelope, that it is indeed legal material, that it is mine and applicable to one of the three current litigations I have going in the State and Federal courts; and/or drafts of anticipated litigations I’m about to file just any day now on death row conditions and 8th amendment violations, retaliation, etc., etc. But I figured I’d wait until after Nov. 9th, otherwise it’d be a waste of my time, eh.

So, Major Minor McMullen himself shows up and suddenly he’s got a different agenda altogether now. I’m just sittin’ there, waitin’ on the search to begin--it ain’t gonna take 20 minutes because in the envelopes is only what I’ve got listed on it, legal material.

So I ask Mr. Jones of the shakedown team, did you search this stuff yesterday? He says, “Yes, I did. Now, I didn’t read it but I went through it and it was all typed legal material and I found no contraband at all. We’ve never, ever found any contraband in your legal material, anyway.” Major Minor McMullen is just outside the door, talking to Lt. McGhee, so I know he’s hearing this. So I asked Jones, “Did you tell the Major this?” He said, “Yes, I did.” I asked, “and what did he say?” Jones said, “He only told us to go get it and you and bring it to this legal booth.” I said, “So he knows it’s a futile endeavor, he’s just doing it to harass me, then?” Jones said, “I don’t know.”

At that moment, Major Minor himself stalks into the booth and attacks me, “What’s that in your ear?!!! What is that string tied on your glasses?!!!” I politely told him, “I did not come out here to discuss my ears or my glasses, I came out here to get this legal material searched, so can we go ahead and do that?”

This fool blows a fuse and goes off the far deep end. “Get this legal material out of here!!! We don’t need to search it in front of him anyway! F**k him!! Go to his cell and take everything! I’m confiscating all his property! Go around there and subject him to a proper strip search, take his glasses and everything he’s got, including that shit in his ear and if he refuses, gas the bitch!! Now!! Do it!! Do it!”

He’s shoving the Sgt. over there in front of the door, screaming in his face, “Give him the orders! Gas his ass!!

Gas him!” The Sgt. is clearly not with this bullshit. But I try to make it easy on him. I’ve had my left ear pierced for 30+ years. I keep this lil’ homemade stud in it to keep it open. My glasses, when TDCJ gave me them, they

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ordered the earpieces too short, so they sit on top of my ear, won’t fit down behind it; so I have a piece of string tied from the end of one earpiece to the other. It goes around the back of my head like a strap, to keep my glasses from falling off.

My glasses have been broken so many times during cell extraction “run-ins” with the goon squad, they’re only held together with spit, tape and string anyway. More recently a psychotic prisoner got ahold of my glasses by accident and stomped them and broke them worse. Chaplain Collier asked Ms. Humbird and Warden Simmons to get me some new glasses, as my prescription is about 7 years (policy says you can get ‘em updated every two years). Simmons response to this was “There’s no evidence the glasses were tore up like Skinner says they were and f**k Skinner, I don’t like his attitude anyway, either.”

To explain that right quick--Sarge (Cleve Foster) and I go to outside rec together and I take my glasses. We play b-ball so I take ‘em off and lay ‘em on the water fountain so they won’t get more broken. Officer Pinkard comes out there and tells me it’s time to come in, hurry up because he’s got to go get the chow cart.

So I strip out and he cuffs me and takes me in, I tell him I forgot my glasses. He says, “Do not worry, you and Foster are the last two anyway. I’ll get ‘em when I come back with the chow chart.” I’m cool with that.

But somehow Pinkard don’t get the chow cart, he puts this nutcase prisoner on the yard without first picking up my glasses or searching the yard. So the dude mangles them, stomps them, the left lens pops out and goes down the storm drain, he says later. He throws them in the urinal.

Mrs. Griffin comes by breaking out Pinkard, or escorting, not sure which. I ask her if she’ll step on the outside yard and get my glasses for me. She says, “Ok.” She goes out, comes back with my glasses all broken and my lens missing, says they were in the urinal and this prisoner did it.

She tells me I “have to report it because he claims one lens went down the drain and we have to account for it, it’s glass/hard plastic.”

I did not even know he was out there until she told me.

So I go to medical on another issue and on my way back Lt. New-burr-wee asks me what time it happened, I came in. I told him and he went and pulled it up on the outside yard’s camera. So there’s the prisoner tearing up the glasses, Pinkard didn’t search the yard correctly between recs, etc., etc. So the Capt., Dickened, reviews the video, calls Pinkard out there and reprimands him or whatever, but they don’t do nothing at all about it. It’s Skinner’s glasses, who gives a shit? Right.

But still, I don’t understand what Simmons is talkin’ about “There’s no evidence they got tore up that way”?

Duh. Yes, there is Plenty! But, what does that have to do with it? They’re broken. I can’t see without them. I need new ones. I’m five years overdue. Obviously, I do not abuse them--I’ve made them last 5 years longer than they’re otherwise supposed to, huh?

Back to Major Minor and this search of my legal material for “written contraband” ha/ha. So he’s got me all cornered up in the legal visit booth threatening my life and trying to force the Sgt. to gas me. I’m standing there calmly telling the Sgt. “You know you cannot read my legal material outside my presence, you know you cannot use this as a springboard to confiscate or search my personal property, etc., etc.” He tells me, “Yeah I know. Just give me the piece of plastic out of your ear and we’re good.” So I give it to him and Major Minor starts hollering, “His glasses! I want his glasses too!” So I tell the Sgt., “These are all I got to see with, I’m down to using only one eye ‘cause the other lens is gone.” He says, “I know. Just give ‘em to me, I’ll give ‘em back.” so I do. Major Minor starts hollerin’ “Strip search! Strip search! Make him do it right!”

“Do it right” is a euphemism for making a prisoner lift his penis, raise his balls and bending over and spreading your cheeks and letting them look up your asshole. People like Major Minor like to use things like this to exert dominion over others, to humiliate and subjugate them, to ridicule them, etc.

So we go through the routine, and when the Sgt. says: “Now turn around and bend over and spread your cheeks”, I said “No. See, what’s really going on here is, Major Minor’s little show is getting more and more desperate

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because I’m beating him at every turn and he can’t stand it. But I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and I know how it goes. I’m just letting this idiot make a bigger fool of himself. This legal visit booth door has a huge window that’s below waist level just so it can accomodate/facilitate strip searches. Major Minor is now sure I must have som’ up my ass and he’s excited! He rushes up to the window and starts running his mouth and I told him “Naw, bitch, I just want you to make sure you watch this!” As I bend over and spread my ass as far as it will go and back up to the glass and let him get an eye full of that. Ha/ha. Ha/ha ha.

For once Major Minor is speechless! He’s standin’ there like a fish outta water, with his mouth workin’ but nothing coming out. All he could say was “That don’t look like a cell phone would fit in it, does it.” Hallelujah!

Finally, I got a witness Depressed over his loss, Major Minor McMullen don’t how to take this, or what to do now. So he tells the officers to search all my property, again. Instead, they call it an “inventory”---you only get your property inventoried when you’re downgraded in level. I’m not. Still Level 2.

As of this date, 09.28, they’re still screwing me out of my level I, my visits, my commissary, my postage, all my other level I privileges and I ain’t done a damn thing, nothing. Can’t see my wife, can’t get no glasses to see with, period. and now I discover, because of this clown deluxe, Senator John Whitmire, I won’t even be able to enjoy a last meal before I die for this crime I did not commit. I got 44 days and a wake up. If it weren’t for my mama, my sis, wife and daughter, I’d be glad to go, just to get away from these pathetic asswipes. I’m as so sick to death of this pathetic piece of shit Whitmire, I could puke.

There are several very valid reasons for giving a man a last meal. I was shocked to see what Jim Harrington of the Civil Rights Project had to say about it: “It is anomalous that you would do this for anyone in prison.” Duh! You’re not doing it for someone “in prison”, you’re doing it for someone who is about to DIE! That being the very last meal he’ll ever eat, it should be one he’ll want to eat. Because he’s all nervous at the prospect of dying anyway; he’s sitting there looking at the gurney and I.V. lines that are his death, it’ll have to be som’ really good, that he can overcome and eat it anyway.

The psychological reasons aren’t “guilt” over killing him, Jim Harrington, you dumbass. It’s two reasons. One is so society can say “We subject you to a humane death. We let you visit your lawyer and your spiritual advisor for 30 minutes each starting at 3:00 pm. We let you use the phone to call your loved ones and your witnesses over at the hospitality house. We give you a shower, dress you in clean clothes, feed you a good meal of your own choosing and full, fat and sated, we send you on to meet your maker.” It’s the last meal you will ever eat on this Earth. It should be a good one.

It’s also the executioner’s secret. I cannot say for sure that the food is drugged. It might be, I don’t know. I can say that, in this situation the food itself is a drug. It’s part of accepting your death. People under extreme stress take great solace in the familiarity of a ritual. Eating is a form of ritual and when you eat good, get fat and full and sated, you get sleepy and lethargic. Docile! Easy to manage! That’s just exactly how they want you, so they don’t have to fight you up onto that gurney, because I can tell you from first-hand experience that a man who decides to fight, he’s gonna put into it everything he’s got and then some, because he knows damn well it’s the greatest and last fight he’ll ever fight, they’re gonna kill him. So you’re not fighting for your life, you’re fighting your death and you’re gonna lose but, as long as you’re fighting, you’re still breathing and living and how exhilarating it is! So keep going ‘til you drop fool, because once you do, it’s over, you will die. So fight like hell ‘til you can’t raise your arms no more.

I can tell you, when you get a serious execution date, all you want to do is eat and masturbate (actually you want a woman; but since no woman is provided or available, it’s a date with Rosie Palm, her four daughters “The Fingers” and Auntie Thumb, baby). My personal psychiatrist explained to me that it is the limbic system, your lower, baser, (animal) brain which triggers this response. You think food will somehow make you well when you’re threatened with death and you want to procreate then, in the face of imminent death, in order to pass on your seed to the next generation. We’re hardwired for self-preservation and to continue our bloodline to insure the survival of our kind. The smart executioners take advantage of that fact, that knowledge, and use it to subject you to a more peaceful and hassle free death. For the price of nothing but a little food, they easily and effortlessly conduct you to your death.

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For the price of a little food, society can sleep at night by saying, “This marks the difference between us. We will kill, yes. But we will not be what you are, a vile and remorseless killer. We do this to you because we feel we must; you are too dangerous to be allowed to keep on living among us. You are a future danger to us and our children. But we will afford you a humane death; we will feed you a good meal of your own choosing, we’ll let you talk to your loved ones and say goodbye. We’ll let you talk to your spiritual advisor and prepare yourself, we’ll make your death as painless as possible. That’s the difference between us and you: You murdered in cold blood; we will not. We do it with care and compassion, only because we must, and we reserve it only for the worst, for whom we cannot do otherwise.”

That is the societal statement behind the last meal. There’s another medical reason for it too, but I’ll let you figure it out for yourselves.

The fact that John Whitmire, Jim Harrington and/or Brad Livingston don’t know these things is profoundly disturbing and only goes to highlight two of the Nietzsche’s maxims, which I’ve mentioned several times in this column before: “One should be ever wary of all those in whom the urge to punish is very strong” and “He who fights ‘monsters’ must be ever vigilant to not become that very thing he loathes.”

John, Jim and Brad would do well to recognize. These people are just baseless, asswipe idiots. Yet we’ve elected them to or they’ve otherwise somehow ascended to positions of public trust and/or power. Maybe what we really need to do is examine how they came to be there, then take measures to insure that it never happens again. We need smart leaders, not those who consistently pander to the lowest common denominator and baser, dark instincts. Those kinds of people will only drag you all down, not lift you up. Hate begets hate.

Back to Major Minor and his little clown show. While they’re searching my property, he’s standing out there in the hall fingering my glasses in a suggestive way and says, “Yeah, these are the glasses that got all stomped in, ain’t they?! (Gloating) Did you put in for some new ones?!!” While he’s slowly ripping the string off them and finishing breaking off the ear piece. Interestingly, all the officers in the hall are frowning at him, not me; the other rank, too. Ha/ha. He just doesn’t realize what it is that he’s showing people---they’re repulsed by his behavior. We really have some decent people working here; it’s always just some petty tyrant upper rank who spoils it for everyone. Hirsch, Bryant, Lester, now this idiot Major Minor McMullen... Nobody ever comes over here to this unit but losers--on their way down or on their way out.

So they bring me down here and put me in an empty cell, not even a roll of toilet paper. No cup, even stole the water regulator off my sink so I can’t use it, it squirts water all over the floor. So I just pace in my empty cell, back and forth, back and forth, 3 ½ steps. I’m kinda hot, but not really. I’m just kinda surprised at how overtly ignorant ol’ Major Minor is, you know. and, at how stupidly paranoid. He thinks I must have all this contraband, the shakedown team just didn’t take it. WTF? So he personally is going to supervise this search of my property.

Guess what he has them take from me? My clean sheets that I just washed myself, my clean towel and washrag, all my commissary soap, all my state soap, my toothbrush, my tooth powder, my clothesline and my cholo shorts. So, I guess he’s got som’ against older, good-looking men like me who dress well, brush their teeth and wash regularly and otherwise practice good hygiene?

Last time this happened (oh yes, this is the third time since this clown got here 3 months ago) he calls me out to his office and starts talking to me like “Straw Boss” off the movie “Cool Hand Luke” (I love Paul Newman and George Kennedy!) and he tells me “You gone get your heaaarrrrhhht (heart) riiiiiigght (right) baweh (boy). I’m going to shake your cell down every hour on the hour.” Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, right. I just tell him, “No, you ain’t.” He says, “Why ain’t I?” I said, “Because if you keep on f**kin’ with me for no reason, you ain’t gonna be here that long, that’s why.” He says, “Oh, is that so?” with his face screwed up real funny and his chin tucked in.

I thought he looked kinda cute doing that, so I started laughing and told him, “Yes Sir, that is so; it’s a fact.” and I got up and started out the door. He says, “You sit down! I’m not done with you!!!” I just keep on going and tell him, “Oh, yes you are. Way past done.” and I go back to my cell. On the way back, one of my escorts tells me, “Man, I’m glad you left out of there, that shit was makin’ me mad and he was talkin’ to you!”

This Major talks the same way to his under-rank and other staff/guards. He barks and shouts and cusses and mistreats them just as he does me. I think we’re fixin’ to have a mutiny! Ha/ha. He has alienated every Sgt., Lt.,

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Officer C.O. III, IV, or V on this building! There is not a single person here who wants to work for this man. and here I am with a serious execution date, in the middle of this stupid crap...

They finally bring my property back late that afternoon and put it in my cell, tell me the Major wants to see me.

I’m not interested. Sgt. Glover talks me into it though. It pisses me off, I have understandings with all these Sgts. and Lts. Almost all of them, I knew when they were C.O’s so whatever they ask me to do, I’m going to do it, for them. They got my respect. They treat me in a humane way--so how can I not listen to them, you know what I’m saying? I just feel like this Major is trading on their decent natures and stupidly thinking that because I comply with what they ask me to do, it somehow means he’s running something. Ha/ha ha/ha ha.

So I go out there one more time to try to talk to this fool and he tells me he’s gonna beat my ass and ram my head through the wall. So I just smile and tell him, “Really?” He says, “I can do it!” I say, still smiling, “You wanna take these cuffs off first?” He says, “Why?” I say, “Well, if you do that while I’m sitting here cuffed behind my back, you’re surely gonna lose your job--that’s a way crazy excessive Use-of-Force. But if you were to unhandcuff me first, you could say I come out of ‘em and assaulted you, you had to defend yoruself, or som’ like that...you think?” It got real quiet. He finally tells the officers “Get him out of here”, but I’m already gettin’ up and leavin’, ‘cause I made my point. Major Minor is an idiot, he just ain’t that stupid, huh....41 days now...They can only kill me once...

Hank 999143 Polunsky Unit H W Hank Skinner 3872 FM 350 South Livingston TX 77351-8580 h.w.skinner@gmail.com http://www.hankskinner.org Facebook http://on.fb.me/Justice4Hank Twitter http://twitter.com/Justice4Hank Newsletter http://eepurl.com/cYCIE For those of you who use JPay to write, don’t forget to always include your postal address and your e-mail address after your signature, so I can reply. www.jpay.com don’t forget to enter my TDC number as an 8digit number: 00999143.

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