Writes Pete Quandt, in "After Two Decades in Solitary, This Is His First Day Out After nearly 33 years in prison — and over two decades in solitary confinement — Jack Powers embarks on the first day of his new life" (NYT).
I highly recommend the 13-minute documentary, which simply shows Powers on the first day out of prison:
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He'll fit right in with those tats.
I'm reminded of the great line delivered by Tommy Lee Jones to Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive."
"I don't care."
The NYT should give him a job. He'd fit right in.
I can't read the article (paywall) but it seems fascinating. I'm curious why he spent all that time in solitary for bank-robbing? Is there more to that part of the story?
So, WHY did they keep him in solitary? for one escape attempt? Or was there more stuff?
I have a friend who spent 24 years in maximum security prisons but was released in 2020. Even after a year, it was very stressful for him to make a simple breakfast order at a diner. The stress in Mr. Powers voice is very real to my ear.
Well... Jack Powers rap sheet....
bank robbery-- how many crimes??
Three assault charges while in prison (other inmates)
Escape from prison...
12 years at the ADX Control Unit Supermax Prison (for his protection.. gangs after him)
tattoos all over his face and arms...
Strange thing is all the articles DO NOT GIVE HIS WHOLE RAP SHEET... Why?
Oh, he is a poor little abused boy... not his fault. That is what you find.
Google 'jack powers supermax inmate convictions' and see if you find all the crimes he did..
I can't find 'em!
What a crock. Don't want to go to Supermax? Don't get into fights in prison, don't try to escape, don't get involved in gang warfare, don't make yourself look like a freak.
Althouse wrote:
I highly recommend the 13-minute documentary, which simply shows Powers on the first day out of prison:
More context is needed. Powers robbed multiple banks in multiple states in the late 1980s. He also has convictions for stealing cars and possessing illegal weapons. Mr. Powers is a very dangerous man.
"I can't read the article (paywall) but it seems fascinating. I'm curious why he spent all that time in solitary for bank-robbing? Is there more to that part of the story?"
There isn't much more to the "article." It's just an intro to the video. Why he was there isn't the point of the video, which is solely about how it feels to emerge after all that time. It's impressionistic, not any kind of argument.
I'm just blown away by that. It was amazing and even beautiful on many levels. One cannot imagine what it would be like to spend over 2 decades in solitary. And of course, he was not in solitary for bank robbery. But that anyone fights in prison is more of a matter of survival than it is looking for trouble.
The comment above, "Don't want to go to Supermax? Don't get into fights in prison,..." You sometimes can't avoid what's been deemed to come at you. If his fighting and attempt to escape got him separated from the general population, then it worked.
But I cannot imagine the enormity of the sensory overload coming out from 20+ years isolated into today's world.
Key lines for me:
His mom mentioning he doesn't have to sleep with lights on all the time.
His mom asking him if he wants milk with his pizza.
No one drinks milk with pizza. But it was such a mom thing to offer.
From an Atlantic article in 2012:
"When Jack Powers arrived at maximum-security federal prison in Atlanta in 1990 after a bank robbery conviction, he had never displayed symptoms of or been treated for mental illness. Still in custody a few years later, he witnessed three inmates, believed to be members of the Aryan Brotherhood gang, kill another inmate. Powers tried to help the victim get medical attention, and was quickly transferred to a segregated unit for his safety, but it didn't stop the gang's members from quickly threatening him.
"Not then. And certainly not after Powers testified (not once but twice) for the federal government against the assailants. The threats against him continued and Powers was soon transferred to a federal prison in Pennsylvania, where he was threatened even after he was put into protective custody. By this time, Powers had developed insomnia and anxiety attacks and was diagnosed by a prison psychologist as suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."
Here's the link for thathttps://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/06/an-american-gulag-descending-into-madness-at-supermax/258323/
Solitary is fairly inhumane. Sometimes it is needed, sometimes not. How did this guy get put in solitary?
Now that he’s out of prison, I wonder if it might actually be easier for the gangs to get him.
Sometimes one reads the comments before he comments himself and asks questions.
Other times, he does not.
Thanks for that added info (and for clarifying about the focus of the original link).
Completely different context but it reminds me a little of that old Sean Connery movie, where he was a writer recluse who befriended a neighborhood kid and began venturing out.
There's a scene where he went to a basketball stadium and completely shut down because of all the people/noise. Having spent a lot of time at home and relatively introverted in general, I could see myself going that recluse road and it was a bit of a wake up call to get out sometimes just to get out. I can only imagine what it would be like to 1) not have that introverted personality to begin with and 2) to have that isolation absolutely enforced. Like traveling to a completely alien world where everyone looks and sounds familiar but is entirely foreign.
LIfe is beautiful and this video shows that with great tenderness.
There's so much left unsaid about his past behavior that there is no counterbalance to the sympathetic portrayal of his incarceration as injustice. We all need to know a lot more about that. I wasn't able to get much of a picture just by Googling, just that he committed more than one bank robbery in more than one jurisdiction and that he possessed an illegal firearm at the time of his arrest for the self-described "unarmed" bank robbery. Plus a "nonviolent" escape. Sounds like he did a lot of serious crime BUT I also know that Federal sentences are usually substantial, with little leeway given to the sentencing court to reduce them.
I'm a criminal prosecutor married to a federal prosecutor. We are both open to any kind of sensible sentencing and/or prison reform and think that any extended period of solitary confinement is unacceptable torture. We also think that some people need extensive or even life sentences in order to protect the public and to serve justice.
I wish I could have been the person in the Thrift store who had a conversation with Powers. If he were willing to be candid, it would be invaluable to know from an expert what kinds of consequences the prison system CAN impose on inmates so as to maximally incentivize decent behavior. Whatever works, carrot/stick. Inmates must behave if for no other reason than that it is unfair to other inmates to be preyed upon.
There are a number of stories about writers falling in love with prisoners. Perhaps the best known example.
Another was Robert Stroud, who became famous as "The Bird Man of Alcatraz."
Stroud is considered to be one of the most notorious criminals in American history.[1][2][3] Robert Niemi states that Stroud had a "superior intellect," and became a "first-rate ornithologist and author," but was an "extremely dangerous and menacing psychopath, disliked and distrusted by his jailers and fellow inmates."[4] However, by his last years, Stroud's behavior had improved and he was viewed more favorably; Judge Becker considered Stroud to be modest, no longer a danger to society, and as having a genuine love for birds.[28] Given his level of notoriety, the crimes he committed were unremarkable,[10] especially as the assaults he committed had a clear cause. Carl Sifakais considers Stroud to have been a "brilliant self-taught expert on birds, and possibly the best-known example of self-improvement and rehabilitation in the U.S. prison system."[22]
Still a psychopath.
The funniest and most informative thing about this documentary is that we used to put people in jail for 33 years for robbing banks.
Now that don't even rate cash bail in New York, thanks to the NY Times' efforts.
33 years seems excessive even for bank robbery and assaulting a prison guard. And look at the insane sentences being handed down to the J6 protesters for entering the Capital. meanwhile, Lt. Bryd murders Ashli Babbitt and gets a medal, and Antifa isn't even arrested And people in Chicago are walking after shooting people.
What the hell is wrong with judges in the USA?
As for solitary confinement. Most people kept there are either a danger to other inmates, or they're in danger from being killed by other inmates.
The Birdman of Alcatraz was kept in solitary because he was a dangerous psychotic who killed a guard, and attacked several other inmates who "disrespected" him.
Don't know the details of Power's case.
One reason for Prison violence is racial gangs. Calf tried to separate gangs by Race, but that oFfended Grandma O'Connors sensibilities. If numerous men were killed or wounded in racial strife, well so be it. It didn't affect her.
Pure Marshall Project bullshit. You don't spend that much time in prison, let alone a Supermax, for a bank robbery and, as they claim, "A non-violent prison escape."
That escape was, incidentally, half a mile from my house. He says he just stole a car (near my house), but details are obscured. How did he get the money to drive from Atlanta to Syracuse? We don't know, but it likely was not "non-violent."
He confessed or was identified in at least 30 bank robberies. He claims he was unarmed. Why believe that? Why believe a serial offender? Show us the witness statements. Show us the victims. Most prolific offenders commit a variety of violent crimes. Few are sentenced for even a fraction of their offenses. He made up some cock and bull story about fighting the Aryan Brotherhood in prison, probably coaxed by the Marshall team. Why even believe that? Any white guy entering federal prison will join the AB, just as blacks will join black gangs and Hispanics Hispanic gangs. The whites are extremely outnumbered and specially targeted for racial violence. why doesn't he take off that weird hat? Probably the Aryan swasticka on his head.
He is covered with tatoos that include AB symbols. He is a well-trained liar for the Marshall Project, which is a very wealthy, anti-incarceration, Soros-funded "journalism nonprofit" that places stories like these in major dailies, posing as news. They and dozens of their coalition groups in OSI's anti-incarceration "silo" have also been instrumental in systematically suing and agitating and taking over elected court clerk, DA, and Secretary of State positions in order to conceal criminal records that could be easily found a few years ago. Where are the crime details, the victims' stories?
Solitary confinement is a last resort to protect prisoners from other prisoners or guards from violent prisoners. I don't believe a word of this carefully manipulated story, and the video is pure propagandist bullshit. This is really a story about the silencing and concealment of real facts about offenders and crimes by the Marshall Project -- not dangerous felons petting little froggies and kissing mommy.
I bet it wasn't "impressionistic" what he did to his victims. This is just sick, low-rent propaganda by powerful organizations unleashing dangerous felons back onto our streets by planting completely dishonest stories and systematically disappearing crime and prosecution information. I used to fight it but gave up. Amazing that intelligent people fall for this. Even I can't access the facts of his cases unless I spent months going courtroom to courtroom, and I used to do all that on the internet.
You should read the book Victim, by Gary Kinder, or The Spider and the Fly. Even the latter is sympathetic to this sicko who played with his victims' heads in a children's pool.
But don't bother looking for ... facts. With the recent SCOTUS Conception decision, chances are now much higher that you can meet one of these fine rehabilitated citizens in person.
Too old to turn into a Jack Henry Abbott? Fingers crossed.
This from a recent option of a Federal district judge:
I. BACKGROUND
Defendant is John Jay Powers, an individual who has been convicted of multiple crimes and sentenced by courts in multiple jurisdictions. First, Defendant was convicted of possession of a stolen motor vehicle, robbery, and criminal contempt in the Middle District of Florida. (Doc. 158, United States' Opposition to Defendant's Motions to Settle the Record and For Compassionate Release, "Opp." at 3.) Defendant was sentenced to a term of 254 months' imprisonment for the first two charges and a separate 5 and a half months' imprisonment for the criminal contempt charge. (Id.) Second, Defendant was convicted of bank robbery in the Southern District of Indiana and was sentenced to 66 months' imprisonment, to run consecutive to the sentences from the Middle District of Florida. (Id. at 4.)
While Defendant was serving these sentences at FCI Fairton, Defendant escaped from custody. (Id.) Defendant was captured and convicted of transportation of a stolen vehicle and escape from a correctional facility in the District of New Jersey. (Id. at 4-5.) Judge Irenas presided over Defendant's sentencing hearing, which occurred over the course of two separate days: September 10, 2001 and October 1, 2001. (Id. at 5.) A transcript is available for the first hearing, however, neither party has been able to locate a transcript for the October 1, 2001 hearing. The September 10 transcript indicates that Judge Irenas was aware of Defendants convictions and sentences in both the Middle District of Florida and the Southern District of Indiana. (Doc. 158, Ex. C "Sept. 10 Tr." at 47, 50, 59.) On October 1, 2001, Judge Irenas orally sentenced Defendant to 45 months' imprisonment. (Opp. at 6.) The written judgment reflecting the oral sentence provided that the sentence should run consecutive to the sentences from the Middle District of Florida. (See Doc. 120 "Judgment.") However, the Judgment was silent as to whether the sentence would run concurrent with or consecutive to the sentence from the Southern District of Indiana. (See id.) In light of the silence, the Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") ran the sentences consecutively to both the Middle District of Florida and the Southern District of Indiana sentences. (Opp. at 6.) While serving his various sentences in the United States Penitentiary in Arizona, Defendant assaulted a staff member. In 2015, he pled guilty to assault on a federal officer. (Id. at 7.) Defendant was sentenced to 33 months' imprisonment for this charge. (Id.)
He's a beauty.
- Krumhorn
That swim would've been cold, given that forsythia are blooming.
Barry Dauphin said...
Now that he’s out of prison, I wonder if it might actually be easier for the gangs to get him.
That was my first thought.
Part and parcel with why we have the crime problems we do.
First off, why is this loser being lionized? He's a criminal; he was in prison for crimes he committed.
You keep idolizing these losers, you are simply encouraging others.
The biggest failure in our so-called "justice system" is that it does not serve to modify behavior, at all. You want to have criminals? This is how you get more of them. It's like leaving sugar out for ants.
Cease making a big deal out of these losers. Instead of articles and movies that make heroes out of them, they ought rightly to be utterly ignored. "Oh, you were a bank robber? You did time, because of that? Oh, well... Too bad."
I'd be more interested in the article detailing how his victims coped with it all, how they overcame the terror of what he did to persuade them to give up the bank's money. Nobody remembers the victims; it's always the criminals who get the romanticized movies and the book deals.
The wife of a friend of mine was a teller at a bank that got robbed. The manager got killed, supposedly "by accident", right in front of her. She got to spend 45 minutes trying to keep her alive, doing CPR and getting herself covered in blood. The trauma from that never left her, and played a large part in her divorce from my friend (she initiated it) and she eventually wound up killing herself with an overdose of the meds she'd been prescribed for dealing with the trauma. She couldn't get to sleep, you see... Until that last time, when she took the whole bottle of pills.
She was as much a victim of that bank robbery as the manager who died, but when the "justice system" finally caught the perpetrators, her death wasn't even mentioned. She wasn't really a victim of it, per the grand pronouncements of the law.
The fact that a "law professor" puts something like this up without even a hint of a mention of this asshole's victims? It's a sign of the moral degeneracy at the core of our system.
I suspect that any articles detailing the lives of his victims and the damage this asshole did to them as a criminal flew right under the radar of the "good professor", and likely wouldn't even register with her. The life and times of the criminal is far more important, far more worthy of her attention.
The law has a very loving relationship with the criminal, for without the criminal, the lawyers and the law professors would be out of jobs. This is why the victims are always left out, in any of the "deep thoughts" about crime these creatures have; they're really symbiotic twins, sociopathic to the core and entirely uninterested in the prosaic, drama-free lives of the usual run of humanity who they all see as their natural prey. Only an utter sociopath would ever think or say that a technicality of the law ought to let someone off from paying the price for a criminal act, but lawyers and legal scholars argue that very thing, every single day.
I really don't see that much difference between the criminal and the legalist, to be honest; neither really gives a rip about the lives of the victims. If they did, they'd likely be in different careers; both choices require an essential inhumanity in order to function.
He's in the parking lot of Clyde Peeling's Reptiland in the first scene. That's on US Route 15 in Allenwood, PA. I've driven that route many times on the way (eventually) to Rochester, NY. Also in Allenwood is a federal penitentiary. I wonder if that's where he was set free.
Unintended consequences of public policy. Aryan Brotherhood formed at San Quentin as white and black inmates were being de-segregated for the first time. It was a great opportunity for blacks to inflict violence on whites, no doubt with many genuine injustices in their minds. The whites fought back, and became the biggest gang, engaged in criminal enterprises inside and outside the walls.
The Atlantic piece is good, although of course it assumes we know what "mental illness" is, and what to do about it. No doubt we all feel we would go crazy in solitary, and many of those who spend time there show the symptoms. Maybe the benefit to society of keeping people in for a long time is that they "age out" of being any kind of criminal: they are too old to be part of a gang, they're not up to date on the tech, and so on. Maybe also mentally ill, and we hope that means basically harmless.
Catch 22. By escaping to get away with the Brotherhood he may have proved he was sane; but when the authorities catch him, his sentence is increased. Hard not to agree with Dauphin: might be easier for the gangs to get him on the outside.
How much does all of this overlap with drug use? There is a tendency to glorify the dangerous drugs, the dangerous lifestyles, the habitual criminal.
"I'm reminded of the great line delivered by Tommy Lee Jones to Harrison Ford in 'The Fugitive.'
'I don't care.'"
Tommy Lee Jones was the asshole who was in the wrong, if you recall.
"As he sits today in Supermax, Powers had amputated his fingers, a testicle, his scrotum and his earlobes, has cut his Achilles tendon, and had tried several times to kill himself. Those tattoos you see? Powers had none until 2009, when he started mutilating with a razor and carbon paper. He did much of this -- including biting off his pinkie and cutting skin off his face -- in the Control Unit at ADX while prison officials consistently refused to treat his diagnosed mental illness."
That was 2012.
Jack is a manipulative lunatic who has been working and being worked by the media for years.
Which of you good, loving, conscientious people who felt your heart warmed by the video and the music are going to invite him to move in next door?
The video was filmed last year. What is Jack's status now?
"I'd be more interested in the article detailing how his victims coped with it all, how they overcame the terror of what he did to persuade them to give up the bank's money."
Bank tellers are instructed to hand over the cash without any hesitation or resistance when confronted by a bank robber. Most bank robbers commit their crimes without violence and sometimes without any actual weapons.
My sister-in-law was a bank teller many years ago and she had a bank robber come to her window and demand money. She didn't resist or argue or try to hit an alarm; she put the cash she had access to into a bag and gave it to him, upon which he fled. The dye pack she also put into the bag would have exploded and covered him and his clothing with the dye at some point. I believe he was caught not long after.
My sister-in-law never reported feeling "terrorized," though, of course, she had an adrenalin rush from it. I was held up at gunpoint at my job as a hotel night clerk nearly 40 years ago. I didn't feel terrorized either...it just seemed unreal. I complied and gave up my wallet and the night auditor gave them his wallet and the cash in the till, and they ran out. (My discarded wallet was found the next morning by a woman walking her dog. It had my hotel ID in it, so she called the hotel and I got my wallet back, missing only the cash it had held...which wasn't much.) The robbers had been on a spree earlier that day, (this was about 1:30 am), and had roughed up a couple of people who resisted. They were caught in a few days and I identified one of them in a line up. I was never called to testify in court, so I assume they took plea deals.
I think that there would be a difference between a person who spent two decades in solitary confinement and two decades alone, stranded by shipwreck on a desert island. The articles I have read about the guy say that he was perfectly sane before his prison ordeal, but from his rap sheet it looks like he had serious social pathologies going on before he was sent to prison.
The wife of a friend of mine was a teller at a bank that got robbed. The manager got killed, supposedly "by accident", right in front of her. She got to spend 45 minutes trying to keep her alive, doing CPR and getting herself covered in blood.
My oldest daughter was working as a bank teller while she waited for her bar results in CA. She was held up twice. Nobody was killed and she gave the robber the "bait pack" of money both times. It exploded outside the bank and covered him in Orange dye.
She went to the FBI academy soon after and has been an agent 20 years.
100% agreement with Tina Trent and takirks — this guy can fuck right off.
Temujin, I’m surprised at you.
I don't see what his crimes have to do with the video. One can sympathize with the man trying to reintegrate into a world that was non existent when he entered prison. One can sympathize with a mother who loves her son and is happy to see him again. His crimes seem irrelevant; he was in prison for 33 years. He paid the debt imposed and shouldn't be a pariah for the rest of his life.
I thought it was a beautiful film.
I don't see what his crimes have to do with the video. One can sympathize with the man trying to reintegrate into a world that was non existent when he entered prison. One can sympathize with a mother who loves her son and is happy to see him again. His crimes seem irrelevant; he was in prison for 33 years. He paid the debt imposed and shouldn't be a pariah for the rest of his life.
I thought it was a beautiful film.
Thanks, Krumhorn. I don't like to waste my husband's Lexis Nexus, so I'm a bit confused. In 2015, the NYT reported ("Inside America’s Toughest Federal Prison") that he escaped from the Atlanta Federal Pen, the same one where the Mariel Prison riots were held. So I'm not understanding the Indiana escape statement. Then again, many judges and NYT reporters are notoriously sloppy about this stuff. One judge in Atlanta didn't bother to even check the record of a violent assailant who said he was just a wedding dress designer. She spent substantial court time oohing and aahing over his dress website, released him, and he immediately assaulted and killed an Emory cancer researcher after pretending to be a potential buyer for her condo. Of course, it was someone else's wedding dress website.
Meanwhile, I had to pay about $2,000 just to get partial court records from the time I was the victim of a (luckily) nascent (at the time) serial killer. Nobody helped me. I have given up trying to fight. Through Concepcion v. U.S., SCOTUS just destroyed 25 years of progress in keeping the worst of the worst behind bars. Our criminal justice system is now in the hands of radical empty-the-prisons groups that control the ABA, all law schools, many DA, Clerk, and Secretary of State offices, the entire corrections system, the media, academia, and most judges. Pretty soon, defense attorney may be our best bet in defending us from these animals: I've known some pretty scared defense attorneys -- scared of their clients ever getting out.
Criminals: Don't do the crime...
Journolists: Don't feed the animals.
It takes a lot to be sent to prison. It is, after all, a cost/benefit transaction.
Ever stare down a snub nose long enough to count the round nose bullets waiting for you? Guess not.
Birches: you are just mindlessly mouthing a meaningless aphorism. Nothing will "pay the debt" of what was done to me, to this man's victims, to the thousands of victims I've encountered and the millions who will never, ever forget the terror of 'a snub nose with round nose bullets waiting for you."
You're an idiot.
Robert Cook referenced a comment and then said: "I'd be more interested in the article detailing how his victims coped with it all, how they overcame the terror of what he did to persuade them to give up the bank's money."
Bank tellers are instructed to hand over the cash without any hesitation or resistance when confronted by a bank robber. Most bank robbers commit their crimes without violence and sometimes without any actual weapons.}}}}
So it's all good then? My husband has prosecuted many bank robbers and talked to dozens of bank employees. Some of these victims were mentally FUCKED UP years later. He remembers one man in particular who was made to get on his knees and have a gun jabbed in his face over and over. Making someone think they are going to die any moment so some jerk can get a little cash---that's what robbery is.
Tina Trent I love your passion and articulation of what's going on with the pro-criminal, anti-carceral movement. I can't get people to understand that powerful, rich, connected groups work tirelessly to free killers from jail regardless of whether they are "innocent" or not. They are true believers and will lie without compunction.
If you feel comfortable sharing I would be interested to know how you escaped a predator---in any case, glad you are still here.
Sorry Tina, people don't get to spend the rest of their lives in prison for robbing banks and getting Aryan Nation tattoos. That's insane. Thirty years satisfies justice, you'll need to seek healing and wholeness from Someone Else. He has that power exclusively.
I see a lot of the commenters are chumps. The phrase "who haven't been mugged yet" applies. Suburban kids say the darnedest things.
Not just an idiot, but a sanctimonious idiot.
Robert Cook said...
"I'd be more interested in the article detailing how his victims coped with it all, how they overcame the terror of what he did to persuade them to give up the bank's money."
Bank tellers are instructed to hand over the cash without any hesitation or resistance when confronted by a bank robber. Most bank robbers commit their crimes without violence and sometimes without any actual weapons.
*******************
You miserable clueless ASSHOLE. Robbery is itself a violent crime.
Birches said:
"Sorry Tina, people don't get to spend the rest of their lives in prison for robbing banks and getting Aryan Nation tattoos. That's insane. Thirty years satisfies justice, you'll need to seek healing and wholeness from Someone Else. He has that power exclusively."
Thus we demonstrate the fundamental idiocy of applying the idea of "justice" to criminal activity. You can't enact anything like "justice" as a mere human being; the most you can hope for is some sort of behavioral correction, such that the criminal ceases to predate upon the majority.
In that regard, our system fails all of us. We're immured in a criminal matrix because of the fallacious mindset brought on by too much "legalism"; because of legal technicalities and bad/ineffective law, we are doomed to deal with these creatures that won't stop predating on us.
Or, so the elites think. There are other solutions.
Solutions that won't involve the courts, the sanctimony of law, or professors of law pronouncing on the technicalities. None of that will be relevant, because it will have demonstrated utter failure in the face of rising criminality. When the denouement comes, the majority of the people engaged in this witless game will blink, amazed, at what happens when the mass has had enough and decides to deal with matters on their own. It might be mob violence, it might be Mob violence, or it might be a Committee of Vigilance come back to life. Whatever it is, you won't like it, it won't be fair, and it will be utterly inhumane.
But... It will serve to modify criminal behavior. Perhaps through the extinction of those demonstrating the behavior, but it will be modified.
And, of course, when the inevitable happens, the happy-dappy legalists of our time will be out there decrying it all, bemoaning man's inhumanity to man, completely oblivious to the fact that they brought all of this on themselves.
I wish you all much joy of your brave new world. Few of you will heed warnings or learn through anything other than personal suffering, so I'll just continue to sit here on the sidelines of the decline into barbarism, observing. I imagine that this is much how Rome went, there at the end.
I'm very surprised to read such comments as, let's think first about his victims, or what did he do to end up in solitary confinement? I don't think this guy ever killed anybody, yes he was a bank robber and he was sentenced for that, but had he killed someone, he would have been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
When reading this article published in the Atlantic, I realized that what he did was helping someone who had been assaulted by members of the Aryan Brotherhood, then because of this he was threatened with retaliation and ended up trying to escape to avoid being killed. Instead, he ended up in solitary. There, his mental health rapidly degraded, until he would cut mutilate himself repeatedly. And what is even worse and even cruel on the part of the prison administration: while in solitary, he couldn't have access to any drug treatment for his diagnosed PTSD, because "psychotropic drugs are forbidden in SC"...
I wonder how a civilized country such as the US can be so callous... In Europe where I was born and still live, he would have been sentenced to 10 to 20 years, depending on the country and the circumstances of his crimes. And there is no such thing as solitary confinement there, and inmates with mental health issues are treated.
I'm very surprised to read such comments as, let's think first about his victims, or what did he do to end up in solitary confinement? I don't think this guy ever killed anybody, yes he was a bank robber and he was sentenced for that, but had he killed someone, he would have been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
When reading this article published in the Atlantic, I realized that what he did was helping someone who had been assaulted by members of the Aryan Brotherhood, then because of this he was threatened with retaliation and ended up trying to escape to avoid being killed. Instead, he ended up in solitary. There, his mental health rapidly degraded, until he would cut mutilate himself repeatedly. And what is even worse and even cruel on the part of the prison administration: while in solitary, he couldn't have access to any drug treatment for his diagnosed PTSD, because "psychotropic drugs are forbidden in SC"...
I wonder how a civilized country such as the US can be so callous... In Europe where I was born and still live, he would have been sentenced to 10 to 20 years, depending on the country and the circumstances of his crimes. And there is no such thing as solitary confinement there, and inmates with mental health issues are treated.
The beautiful pic you capture. I love it.
Achille Raumsog: yeah, I'm sure he's honest about all of that stuff. And the reporters aren't honest about his real record. He committed scores of violent crimes -- yes, a robbery is violent -- he was armed though claims he wasn't...and so on.
Do you bitch as much about the black and Hispanic gangs that actually dominate these prisons and cause far more bloodshed? I know several ex-prisoners because this was my work. None of them were racists: some had to join AB on the inside to keep from getting immediately killed. I don't believe a word of his story about "protecting" someone. Inter-racial gang warfare is predominantly black v. Hispanic, and it is tolerated and regulated very differently from AB acts because that sends shivers up dumb reporters' and lawyers' spines. Judges fall for this garbage every day because they're pals with the activist lawyers who shill it. They all think they're Atticus Finch. It stimulates them. 20 years in Atlanta observing the courts taught me that. You know nothing about our justice system. The Guardian is a bunch of fabulists.
These criminals are coached to tell sob stories like this one to attract pity from ignoramuses like you.
And no, killing people does not mean life without parole. LWOP has been eliminated for minors. And a life sentence without parole doesn't mean someone isn't going to walk. And it certainly didn't mean that when he was sentenced, pal. His full record has been officially disappeared, and you have no idea what you're talking about, but from what we can still see about it, he committed a multitude of violent crimes that are being lied about for audiences like you.
And frankly, yes, let's think of the victims. I guess you live in one of those countries where women are asking to be raped if they're out after dark.
He also did receive mental health treatment. This entire story is a lie.
"My husband has prosecuted many bank robbers and talked to dozens of bank employees. Some of these victims were mentally FUCKED UP years later. He remembers one man in particular who was made to get on his knees and have a gun jabbed in his face over and over. Making someone think they are going to die any moment so some jerk can get a little cash---that's what robbery is."
Some, even many, robberies may be like that. Not all are. My sister-in-law's experience was not that way, and neither was my own experience being held up at gun point. I had no expectation of being harmed if I complied, and I was not "haunted" by the experience later.
There are many reports of bank robberies where the robbers make their demand, take their money, and flee as swiftly as they can. Lingering to inflict injury or humiliation on persons in the bank complicates the quick and easy execution of the robbery and successful escape.
Achille Raumsog said:
"I wonder how a civilized country such as the US can be so callous... In Europe where I was born and still live, he would have been sentenced to 10 to 20 years, depending on the country and the circumstances of his crimes. And there is no such thing as solitary confinement there, and inmates with mental health issues are treated."
I dunno. When I was stationed in Germany back during the mid-1980s, there were two cases that went on around me that I observed and led me to question the "civilization" then prevalent in Germany and indeed, Europe.
On the one hand, we had a case where a twenty-something male kidnapped, raped, and murdered a young female hitchhiker. He got caught, tried, and sentenced to something like ten years in prison, with the expectation that he'd be out in less than seven years.
On the other hand, we saw a case where a vintner adulterated wine with glycol, a common additive in other countries where wine is an industrial product and not subject to the Reinheitsgebot-adjacent food safety rules Germany loves. He got, as I recall, 20 to 30 years, and had no hope of early release. Nearly every German I talked to about these cases looked at me like I was crazy for saying that the rapist murderer should have gotten the death penalty, and the vintner should have been fined.
To me, the actual facts are demonstrative that Germany does not value human life, and is not a "civilized country". It's fairly obvious what the priorities are, and how little value is placed on the sanctity of life, and the value placed on a young woman's life. I suspect that because she was hitchhiking and "not of our type" while the POS rapist was blond-haired and blue-eyed Germanic in appearance and name played a role, as well.
I don't take claims to "civilization" by a country that does such things at all seriously. Indeed, I believe that such a nation is actually far less civilized than the ones that place value on human life, and actually do what is necessary to ensure that killers and rapists don't get an opportunity to victimize anyone else, once caught. That ain't most of Europe.
Rigeldog: I was lucky. He was young, like me, and was just practicing his catch strangle, rape, and release -- working himself up to worse. So he caught and released me for hours.
He was cut loose early for increasingly serious sex crimes five times (I obtained his sealed juvie records). Liked to torture elderly women. Fist raped a cancer patient into an early grave and finally got a life sentence. The ACLU got it overturned on a paperwork technicality, so he'll probably walk someday. Police found trophies from missing women in his apartment but the courts couldn't be bothered to prosecute. Too many rapists operating to "afford" to try more cases. The probability is that he had hundreds of victims. Now that SCOTUS has decimated minimum mandatories, some leftist judge will probably release him. Maybe he can make a weepy video and Birches' mommy can put him up. As it were.
That's the reality of our criminal justice system on the ground. My case was no anomaly. More lawyers should know this sort of thing.
My wife worked in a bank branch in SF in the 1980s and had a gun held to her head by the robber. She still can’t watch any kind of crime movie without a panic attack.
My wife worked in a bank branch in SF in the 1980s and had a gun held to her head by the robber. She still can’t watch any kind of crime movie without a panic attack.
I think Jack Powers has a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/Time.Tracker
I think Jack Powers has a YouTube channel called Time.Tracker
Jack Powers has a YouTube channel named Time.Tracker
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