What not to read in the doctor's office


I’m sitting on a little bench in the examining room, waiting for the doctor, who is about to perform my annual physical examination. No magazines allowed, thanks to COVID 19. So, I scroll through the daily email dispatch from the wonderful Marshall Project on my telephone screen.

Item #1, Nearly 79,000 prisoners have tested positive for COVID-19 in state and federal penitentiaries.

Item #2, New Jersey legislators are poised to pass a COVID-19-related measure that would authorize the release of about 3,000 state prisoners who are within eight months of their release date. (Something like that could and should be happening in Michigan, but it is not!)

Item #3, Death row prisoners in California are dying of COVID-19 while the state’s attorney general defends dubious convictions and sentences.

Item #4, Patricia Ann Prewitt is the longest-serving woman in Missouri’s prison system, sent away for life after being convicted of murdering her husband in 1984. There was little evidence against her—she professes her innocence 35 years later.

Item #5, William Haymon has spent more than 500 days in an adult jail in Mississippi without any charges filed against him and without prosecutors presenting evidence to a grand jury. Haymon is 16 years old.

Item #6, Prosecutors in Miami-Dade, Florida, dropped charges against a county prisoner after a video shows him, handcuffed and with a cane, being attacked by a guard.

I stopped reading, as the door opened.

“Do I detect I spike in your blood pressure, Mr. Tjapkes?”

Grrrrrrrr

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gregory John McCormick: 1964-2008

Itchy is dead. The lifeless body of this talented rock musician, whose band Shock Therapy was a popular group especially in Europe, was found in a field in Detroit last Wednesday, November 5. The Wayne County Coroner's office informed father Glenn McCormick that the body of his son Gregory, better known to all of us as Itchy, bore no signs of trauma. Glenn said that Itchy, who had been living at his father's dental lab in Detroit, had been drinking to excess for some time. While the toxicology report has not been released yet, the general consensus seems to be that he drank himself to death. Our agency, while still named INNOCENT, first got involved with Itchy in 2005. The Detroit native, who called Germany his home, got involved in some unfortunate activity that placed him in the Michigan State prison system on a charge of arson of a dwelling. It was really just a bonfire in an alley, but an alleged parole violation placed him in prison for 1-20 years. I personally sat w...
Read more

Half-a-race!

The HFP Drag-Racing Fund-Raiser had the potential of being extremely successful, and could have raised several thousand dollars. Let's just say it was partly successful. For background purposes I'll explain that I was racing a 1963 supercharged Studebaker Lark that has a reputation of being one of the fastest stock Studebakers in drag racing today. The engine was built by one of the finest Studebaker engine mechanics in the country, and the car many times has achieved quarter-mile runs in less than 14 seconds! We promised to make at least ten passes in the Pure Stock Muscle Car Drags at Mid-Michigan Motorplex in Stanton, Michigan, this past weekend, and we asked for pledges ONLY ON THOSE RUNS REACHED IN LESS THAN 14 SECONDS. On Friday, here's how we fared: Run #1 13.936 @ 101.24 mph Run #2 14.027 @ 101.30 mph Run #3 14.091 @ 100.88 mph Run #4 13.805 @ 102.84 mph Run #5 14.058 @ 101.26 mph By the 5th run we discovered that ...
Read more

Three lives, connected by a divine thread

My kids say it should be a book! The Doug, Pat and Mark story is a doozie!   About 25 years ago, while fighting to free Maurice Carter from prison, I read a newspaper column written by Pat Shellenbarger of the Grand Rapids Press on the topic of eyewitness identification. I contacted Pat re that story. That led to a friendship between Doug and Pat that continues to this day.   In subsequent months, Pat would go on to assist me in an investigation into the Maurice Carter case that eventually led to solving the crime.  That particular episode became a chapter in my book about the Carter case, SWEET FREEDOM, published in 2006.   Fast forward to 2009, A New York businessman claims wrongful conviction, and while serving time in a Michigan prison is handed a copy of my book. Mark Hartman, who was also convicted in Berrien County, was amazed at the similarity of these two stories and tried to reach out to me. His letters bounced.   Persisting in his efforts to c...
Read more