Friday, April 9, 2010

#134 What if he WAS innocent?

What if he WAS innocent?

Today is a pretty cool day here, cloudy and a little rain…my kinda weather. Kinda like fall, even though we are in spring. The last couple of days was pretty warm, so today gives us a break.

After answering a few emails today, I thought about one I got from actually a couple of people, talking about how to deal with prison with a person that was unjustly sentenced.

Now, the first thing to come out of most people’s mouths is “yeah right”.

Two words for people like that… shut up.

It always bugs me when people make wholesale condemnations, especially when it comes to prison. People think that every single person in prison was guilty, with no exceptions. Now, I am not going to lie to you and say that everybody in prison is an angel, and was railroaded into prison…there certainly are a lot of guys that need to be there, but no human being, living or dead, can tell me that every person that was put in prison was guilty. If there is even ONE exception, then the idea is blown apart.

And we know there have been exceptions.

I blogged about a month ago about being at the mall, and in a conversation with a couple of guys, one guy talked about how some inmate was whining about how he should not be in prison. He was sarcastic in it and implied the old, “yeah right” remark. To him, an inmate saying he should not be in prison was a joke.

He didn’t know he was talking to an ex felon, and I felt that I needed to say something to defend the idea that there are innocent people in prison, without telling him that I myself was an inmate. So I mentioned to him about a case I read in the newspaper about a guy that did 30 years in prison before the found out that the DNA they convicted him of was WRONG!

Most guys in prison are there for a reason, I understand that, but there are situations where a person can be completely innocent, but still sent to prison. Justice may well be blind, but the humans that carry it out are often bent on greed and ignorance. The better your lawyer, and the more money you are willing the spend, the greater your chance of not going to prison. But this implies that justice isn’t the factor…it is money and influence. So indeed, an innocent man CAN be sent to prison.

So, what if YOUR loved one was innocent? What do you do?

I can probably write a lot on this, but I want to kinda keep it short for now, or at least my usual short. The idea here is, what do you do if your loved one was sent to prison and he was in fact innocent? This can get very complicated because obviously, this requires legal information, and to set the record right now, I am NOT a lawyer. Let’s make that clear so that you don’t send me 500 pages of your loved one’s case.

Don’t laugh, it has been done before.

Yet what I can talk about is the initial stages of how to get on that path. If your loved one is doing time unfairly, don’t think that there is nothing you can do about it. But to get something accomplished, you have to get in a positive frame of mind.

This is the hard part, because the shock or realization that your loved one was sent to the prison may destroy your faith in the law. When such a difficult situation hits, especially an unfair one, it can put you in a tail spin about what is truly fair. Your confidence and faith can be severely shaken and the only thing left to look at is the remains of the situation.

For many people this is where they remain. They know their loved one was done wrong, but they have no avenues to help him as he sits in prison. And of course, when you mention it to other people, they think in the back of their heads, “yeah right”.

So what do you do…what CAN you do?

The thing to do first is to grab ahold of yourself. In order for you to fix a problem, you have to be in your right frame of mind, and being depressed never helps. I know, it is hard to do, believe me, I know. But to find solutions, you have to abandon the idea that there is no hope.

Say your son got 20 years for a crime he did not commit…the shock of him going to prison can be immense, and rightfully so. And to be sure, you are going to spend a bit of time losing sleep, stressed, depressed and the like. This is human nature, but for you to help him, you have to do the superhuman…you have to find hope.

There has to be a determination that says, “I am going to find a way”, even if it takes years to do. Lots of people wish that if they just be positive, then maybe inside of a week, maybe a month, things will change and their loved one will be home.

Impossible? Not really, but the problem is our patience doesn’t work that way. Everybody wants change, but most of us want it NOW, while out internal patience isn’t set for that. Or, to put it another way, we don’t have the faith for a NOW change.

And that is where I am trying to lead some of you…to some faith. Sometimes when man screws up, we have to find a greater power to aid us. If you believe that our laws are perfect, you are fooling yourself. It works great, and for the most part it serves the purpose, but to say that every person convicted was guilty is absolutely wrong. Many people spent time in jail or prison that should have never been there.

When these things happen, you may have to change your venue of thinking to one that supports the idea that anything is possible, no matter how difficult. Trust me folks, I have been there more than once, and I can say as a fact that miracles DO happen. It’s not some fairy tale wish that you get only at Disneyland. Yet many times when we need a miracle, we start “wishing upon a star”.

Sadly, no star in space has an ounce of power to help you.

But there is such a thing as a greater power. It is perhaps from there you need to start. But this often requires a strong training of faith and patience, and many of us just don’t have it in the fashion we would like.

If it was possible that you can help your loved one get out of prison with faith, it would indeed sound foolish to 99% of the people reading this blog…because to them, they don’t care about YOUR loved one, and to them, he had to have been guilty, since the court of law does not make mistakes.

But what if it was YOUR son…or YOUR husband?

I am no man of the cloth, and I don’t have a halo around my head. I am an ex felon trying to help those with loved ones in prison, and with enough support, maybe make a living doing this. But I can say with all my heart that there IS such a thing as miracles, and faith plays a major part in that. Patience also has a big part to play as well.

But understand that this isn’t like taking care of a headache. You don’t just “take two of these” and wait a few hours. This requires a more extended period of time and effort.

I have a friend who reads my blogs that is worried about going to prison, I have readers who have a loved one in prison but worry about them. I have friends who read my blogs and have a loved one in prison that was innocent. To help each of them, I have to sit here and write based on my faith, and my experience. The easy thing to say to them is, “sorry to hear about your problem, I hope things get better for you”. Anybody can say that.

But to believe that things can change for the better…it either takes a FOOL, or someone with courage and faith….I am still not sure which I would be. Some would say that it is not right to “build up someone’s hopes”. Mankind has often relied on that when they are too carnal to ask for help, or believe in miracles.

Believe me folks…we can get REALLY deep with this and talk about having faith to help a loved one in prison. And I say that with confusion to myself, because although I have written many posts about faith in God, there have been times that I have fallen flat on my face while writing these blogs.

In fact, just this morning I woke up about 6am, and sat up in my bed. Sometimes I get kinda frustrated when things aren’t going as I had wanted. Sure, I am slowly getting more readers, more emails, comments and even support, but I still have not “turned that corner”. I wasn’t where I wanted to be financially, and it was frustrating.

This morning I sat up in my bed and whispered to myself, “what am I doing wrong”? “Why wasn’t I where I wanted to be”?. I have been writing prison blogs and posts for years, with the idea that maybe I can get enough support to do even greater things. Surely God Himself cannot say that what I am doing is wrong, if I have done so much to help others.

I felt that for some reason, God hates me, because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get to that next level. Did I truly believe He hates me, or am I looking at this the wrong way…I don’t know.

I remember thinking on that bed how ironic it can be that some of the richest people in this country may not pay a dime in tithes, nor support the gospel, yet so many Christians sitting in church every Sunday are living virtually paycheck to paycheck. Its almost like if you believe in God, you are doomed to struggle financially, while those who don’t care much about God will be the wealthy ones.

I know, wrong thinking but sometimes when you are frustrated and stressed you see things in different lights.

But I said to myself, if God hates me, then why did I get those miracles that I prayed for…and if God hates me, how is it that I have written thousands of pages of prison issues to help those that are looking for it? To be sure, what I do ISN’T common at all.

Anybody can write a few pages and stop, but I have been writing for years…this isn’t possible unless I had a very strong desire to help…or unless God wanted me to do this. And trust me folks, writing prison issues was NOT what I intended to do when I got out in 2001.

So although I struggle with it from time to time, I know there is a God, and I have to believe that He is One that wants to help us. Its not about what man thinks about you, its about what you ask God for.

And this is where we often miss it, we keep thinking that our value is based on what some jerk who knows nothing says. If your loved one is in prison, don’t let somebody else place a value on him, if they don’t know him. Society often likes to make it easy to put people in groups, and then judge them. Many think that every ex felon is a con man…something I just blogged about the other day. But it is you that has to believe what your loved one is.

That value is what you start with when dealing with a loved one in prison that is innocent. You start there, KNOWING who your loved one is, and believing that God sees in people what a million people cannot see. This is your starting point, and it starts with faith and patience.

All the legal advice in the world won’t help you unless you have a venue to a miracle…I mean, if the law was enough, then only guilty people would be in jails and prisons anyway…and we know that isn’t true.

So start your road to a miracle with those thoughts. I said many times and I will say this again; if I had never received a miracle in my life, then I may well be filling your head with wishful thinking…but I have received a few miracles, so I know they exist, and I have never been to Disneyland.

I urge you, stay in faith, or settle down and build some. Find people with faith and talk to them to help you build some in yourself. But don’t give up on this, your loved one may well be counting on you to help them in this difficult time. Nothing is impossible folks, at least to those that believe. Until then….

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