Voices from Solitary: A Sentence Worse Than Death
Reposted from Solitary Watch 3/11/13
“I’ve read of the studies done regarding the
effects of long-term isolation in solitary confinement on inmates, seen
how researchers say it can ruin a man’s mind, and I’ve watched with my
own eyes the slow descent of sane men into madness—sometimes not so
slow. What I’ve never seen the experts write about,
though, is what year after year of abject isolation can do to that
immaterial part in our middle where hopes survive or die and the spirit
resides.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
“You deserve an eternity in
hell,” Onondaga County Supreme Court judge Kevin Mulroy told me from his
bench as I stood before him for sentencing on July 10, 1987. Apparently
he had the idea that God was not the only one qualified to make such
judgment calls.
Judge Mulroy wanted to “pump six buck’s
worth of electricity into [my] body,” he also said, though I suggest
that it wouldn’t have taken six cent’s worth to get me good and dead. He
must have wanted to reduce me and The Chair to a pile of ashes. My
“friend” Governor Mario Cuomo wouldn’t allow him to do that, though, the
judge went on, bemoaning New York State’s lack of a death statute due
to the then-Governor’s repeated vetoes of death penalty bills that had
been approved by the state legislature. Governor Cuomo’s publicly
expressed dudgeon over being called a friend of mine by Judge Mulroy was
understandable, given the crimes that I had just been convicted of
committing. I didn’t care much for him either, truth be told. He built
too many new prisons in my opinion, and cut academic and vocational
programs in the prisons already standing.
Read the rest HERE.
This is an essay by William Blake, who has been held in solitary
confinement for nearly 26 years. Currently he is in administrative
segregation at Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum security facility
located in south central New York State. In 1987, Blake, then 23 and in
county court on a drug charge, murdered one deputy and wounded another
in a failed escape attempt. He was sentenced to 77 years to life.
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