Authors: Anthony Papa Anne Mini Shaun Attwood
‘How does Arpaio get away with these jail conditions?’ I asked a guard.
His reply, ‘The world has no idea what really goes on in here,’ made me want to tell the world. But how? I was limited to describing the conditions in the letters I wrote to my family and friends.
My mother wrote to a Member of Parliament about the conditions, requesting he demand a resolution to my case. He said that if you commit a crime in another country, you have to abide by their rules. She wrote to Amnesty International, who said they were documenting the human-rights abuses but powerless to do anything about my situation.
Around the same time, my father read
The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi
by Salam Pax. It contained the blog entries Pax wrote as the bombs rained down on Baghdad and described what it was like during the early days of the war. My father thought it would be a good idea to post my descriptions on the Internet as a blog. He sent me a copy of Pax’s book. I read it and agreed to the idea. (The prisoner who read the book next was an ex-pilot of Saddam Hussein’s who lived below me.) Prior to my arrest, my knowledge of blogs was limited to one written by Claudia’s friend Samantha. Blogging had seemed trivial, but Pax proved it could be newsworthy.
My mother had seen some of the news stories about Arpaio’s guards being responsible for the deaths of Charles Agster and Scott Norberg, so she was worried about reprisals against me for exposing the conditions. With things deteriorating for me on the legal front, I didn’t want to put anything online that might hurt my case either. My father suggested we start the blog under a pseudonym. He googled for prison blogs and discovered there was only one in existence – also set up anonymously. My parents – brainstorming in the computer room that was my old bedroom – came up with the title ‘Jon’s Jail Journal’. Jon because the Irish spelling of Shaun means John. And Jail Journal tacked on for alliteration.
The riskiest part for me was getting what I wrote out of the jail undetected. If the mail officer opened my letters, I would be discovered. My aunt Ann was still visiting every weekend, so I figured I could stash my blogs in the personal property I released to her. A few sheets of paper among many would probably get through unnoticed. After sharpening my golf pencil on the wall, I started writing.
19 Feb 04
The toilet I sleep next to is full of sewage. We’ve had no running water for three days. Yesterday, I knew we were in trouble when the mound in our steel throne peaked above sea level.
Inmates often display remarkable ingenuity during difficult occasions and this crisis has resulted in a number of my neighbours defecating in the plastic bags the mouldy breakfast bread is served in. For hours they kept those bags in their cells, then disposed of them downstairs when allowed out for showers. As I write, inmates brandishing plastic bags are going from cell door to door proudly displaying their accomplishments.
The whole building reeks like a giant Portaloo. Putting a towel over the toilet in our tiny cell offers little reprieve. My neighbour, Eduardo, is suffering diarrhoea. I can’t imagine how bad his cell stinks.
I am hearing that the local Health Department has been contacted. Hopefully they will come to our rescue soon.
I received a card from Claudia saying she is going to stick with me no matter what happens. Through her brother, Jay, I was able to coordinate a delivery of roses for her on Valentine’s Day.
20 Feb 04
My cellmate couldn’t hold his in any longer. He pinched his nose and lifted the towel from the toilet. Repulsed by the mound, he said, ‘There’s way too much crap to crap on, dawg. I’m gonna use a bag.’ So, as jail etiquette demands in these situations, I rolled over on my bunk and faced the wall. I heard something hit the rim of the seatless toilet and him say, ‘Damn! I missed some!’ When he was done, he put the finished product by the door and the stink doubled. He had no water to clean where the errant piece had fallen on the toilet, so it remained, forming a crustation on the rim. We were hoping to be allowed out to dispose of the bag until a guard announced, ‘There will be no one coming out for showers and phone calls, as we have to get 120 inmates water from an emergency container!’
The water came back on in stages. In our toilet, its level slowly rose.
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘It’s about to overflow, and we’ll be stuck in here with sewage all over the floor.’
‘One of us needs to stick his hand in the crap to let the water through,’ my cellmate said. ‘And you’re the closest.’
The brown soup was threatening to spill from the bowl, so I put a sandwich bag on my hand. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ I said, plunging my hand into the mound. The mound took the bag from my hand. Almost up to my elbow in sewage, I dug until the water level sank.
‘I owe you one, dawg,’ my cellmate said.
‘It’s your turn next time,’ I said.
Because the tap water hadn’t come back on, I couldn’t wash my arm. Not wanting to contaminate anything in the cell, I sat on the stool until a guard let us out for showers hours later.
26 Feb 04
At 7 a.m., I awoke to a cockroach tickling the palm of my hand. Like everyone else in the jail except for the staff, it was probably hungry. I flicked it towards the door. It took the hint and headed west.
The excursion of the week was to the Medical Unit for a ‘general wellness check-up’. Four of us were summoned from our pod. At the nurse’s desk, we were interviewed one after the other:
‘I slept with a woman from a trailer park just before I was arrested,’ said one of my embarrassed neighbours as the nurse diagnosed him with scabies.
Next up was our chow server. I was shocked to overhear that he has had infectious tuberculosis for the duration of his stay.
The third inmate complained that he had gone two days without his seizure medication and as a result was unable to sleep.
When it was my turn, the nurse insisted I should take a TB test. I protested that I had been tested twice already. She looked at my medical history, and snarled, ‘Well, you’ll have to take another test before June, so you might as well have it now.’
At least our water is flowing again. Inmates are still trading stories about defecating in plastic bags and urinating in pop bottles. The inmate the media has dubbed the ‘101 Slayer’ boasted he was able to hold his business in for the entire three-day outage. It was also his mum that called the Health Department and got the jail in trouble. Hopefully, our toilets will continue to function normally at least until we are moved to the new jail facility, which should be this summer.
I stashed these first few blog entries into a manila envelope containing mail I’d received. I sandwiched the manila envelope in-between more manila envelopes containing legal papers. Then I put five books onto the pile. I arrived at Visitation holding my property.
‘You gotta form approving that property release?’ the visitation guard barked.
‘Sure do,’ I said, waving the form at him.
He examined the form and took my property. He looked in each of the manila envelopes, pulling pieces of paper out here and there. The prospect of him discovering my blog entries made my heart beat irregularly. When he’d finished looking at my property, he put it on his desk.
The visit was from behind a Plexiglas screen, with me chained to a table speaking into a phone. While the guard kept my property, I talked to my aunt Ann for 30 minutes, the whole time worried the guard might go through my property again and find my blog entries. I was glad when he called the end of the visit. I reminded him about my property release. He met my aunt at a security door and handed her everything. She winked at me and left. Getting escorted back to my cell, I couldn’t stop smiling to myself as I imagined my aunt leaving the jail with my blog entries. I was full of excitement from getting one over on the system, and looking forward to exposing what was going on.
When Ann got home, she typed up the blog entries and emailed them to my parents. My parents posted them to ‘Jon’s Jail Journal’, which didn’t get many hits at the time as it was only read by family and friends.
Sadly, my aunt Ann died a few years later. She was alive, however, when
The Guardian
published excerpts from ‘Jon’s Jail Journal’. The blogs they chose were the early entries she’d smuggled out of the jail, which detailed my relations with the cockroaches.
The hardest part of being unsentenced is not knowing how many years you’re going to get. It is a stress like no other. It gnaws at you constantly, haunts your dreams and overwhelms you during moments of weakness to the point where you contemplate suicide as a quick exit from the situation. And there’s not much you can do about it. It’s not like work stress where you can change your job, or relationship stress where you can dump your partner. The decisions you made that put you in jail are irreversible, and now your fate is in the hands of people vested with the power to put you away for a long time. That so few people hold this power over you makes it all the more terrifying.
The prosecutor wanted me to get as much time as possible to advance her career. As did Detective Reid. All the better for them if I got a 100-year headline-making sentence. I was struggling to hold myself together mentally before the prosecutor obtained witnesses, but now the stakes were so high my mind was starting to snap.
In a courtroom conversation with her boss loud enough for me to overhear, the prosecutor rubbed in how much time I was facing.
‘Judge Watson just gave that Tucson drug dealer I prosecuted 200 years,’ her boss said, referring to my regular judge.
‘Why so many?’ the prosecutor asked.
‘He thought he was being a smart aleck taking it to trial. He lost at trial, and the judge stacked his charges.’ Meaning Judge Watson had sentenced him to consecutive terms for every single drug crime.
‘Attwood’s refusing to sign a plea bargain and demanding a trial,’ the prosecutor said.
‘How many charges?’ her boss asked.
‘Twenty-three, I believe.’
‘If he loses at trial and Judge Watson aggravates his sentence and stacks his charges, Attwood could easily get 200 years.’
Even though it was obvious they’d staged the conversation, I knew Judge Watson had sentenced that defendant to 200 years. It was a wiretap case like mine. The conversation rammed the possibility of never getting out to the forefront of my mind. By the time I got back to my cell, I wanted to smash my head against the cement-block wall until I could no longer think about it. For weeks, I fretted over the man sentenced to 200 years. I imagined him in a bare suicide-watch cell – the next stop for all prisoners after receiving such big sentences. I wondered what was going through his mind, the devastation he was feeling, and that of his loved ones. I feared that amount of pressure would surely kill me.
March 2004
Dear Love,
I can’t take it in here any more and I can’t take the uncertainty any more, so I told Alan I’ll probably sign a plea bargain. I am loath to slit my throat with my own hand, but it is my only option. If I get the nine-year minimum sentence stipulated, I’ll be out in just over three years’ time. My mum and dad and Alan do not want me to risk trial and a possible 25-year+ sentence.
I was moved. I am in hell again. No air is blowing. I keep passing out while reading and have to take a nap. The 101 Slayer grieved it, and the jail said they are not going to fix it! Cockroaches are everywhere. We are unable to hold them at bay. This pod is the worst yet. There are all kinds of freaks in this pod, including a white inmate with a heavily tattooed face. It looks like war paint.
Did my family send you my Internet journal info? I am not allowed to talk about it on the phone. It has all been created anonymously, so that I do not suffer any retribution.
I spoke to Cody, and I am happy that he got probation. He didn’t buy into the BS and obviously they had no case against him. I found out that Wild Woman’s mum recently died. I guess I must forgive her even though her agreement to testify added years to my sentence. It’s all my own fault for associating with a bunch of drug addicts. What was I thinking?
My new celly, Mark, is nice. He has conspiracy-to-murder charges. It sounds like BS, though. He has two red poodles and his mum has two.
Please write to me just one time.
Love ’n’ spoonage,
Shaun XXX
April 2004
Claudia,
When I call you and ask you how you feel or try to get some small talk out of you, you make me feel like I am trying to pull your teeth out. I just don’t get it. I understand what misery it must be to have a fiancé in jail and I sympathise with you deeply, but look at how hard it is for me as well, love. Please read my blog and you will understand more about the conditions I am in. I make every effort to be positive when talking to you because you have done so much for me. Our calls used to be the highlight of my day, and now they just seem to make me sad. I realise how stressed out you are, and that is why I never ask you for anything any more. I am a capable person, and my family have helped me out a lot recently. I’ve tried so desperately hard to understand you, but no matter what I’ve done it just seems so difficult these days. I am a prisoner, but you have put yourself in a mental prison. I love you more than anything, and we can have a good life together, and children as we planned, but if you still want that, you’re going to have to pull yourself together. For almost two years, we have had our heads above water holding each other up, but I feel that your head is slipping below water and because I am where I am I can’t rescue you.
Love,
Shaun X
P.S. I’ve had a good response to the blog, and I’ve received letters congratulating me on a writing ability I never knew I had.
In May, I went to court in two minds over whether to sign a plea bargain. Alan Simpson was one of the strongest trial attorneys in town, up against a much less experienced prosecutor, and the police still had little evidence against me. If I took the case to trial and won, I’d be released right away. On the other hand, if I lost at trial, I could get up to 200 years. As much as I believed in Alan Simpson, the chance of getting 200 years was making me sweat more at nights.
In the courtroom, my attorney presented the plea bargain to me long before the judge was due to show up.
‘I don’t know what to do, Alan. I’ve fought it this long, maybe if I continue to hold out, I’ll get a better plea bargain.’
Alan looked disappointed – he wanted my case done with. ‘It’s your decision. The prosecutor has indicated she will be preparing for trial if you don’t sign this plea bargain, and I believe she’s serious.’
‘If it goes to trial, what will the cost be to my parents?’ I asked, half hoping for a large number to put me off the idea.
‘It’s not about money. I’m defending you, so I have to represent you at trial whether they can pay me or not.’
‘Good. They’ve got no savings left ’cause of me.’
‘In that case, I’d have to do it for free.’
His answer drew me away from wanting to sign a plea bargain. I figured I could gesture that I wanted to take it to trial in the hope of getting a better plea bargain, and if that gamble ended up in a trial, there would be no financial burden on my parents.
‘I don’t think I want to sign the plea,’ I said.
Alan furrowed his brow. ‘You’re taking a very big risk at this stage of the game. If the judge sentences you to somewhere around ten years, which is near the minimum stipulated in this plea bargain, with the loophole for foreign citizens, you’d be out in just over three-and-a-half. If you lose at trial, you might never get out.’
The prospect of never getting out pulled me back towards signing a plea bargain. But I was still unsure. For the rest of my life, I would have to live with the consequences of what I decided today. The decision was so hard to make, I couldn’t make it at all. But I knew I had to do something. I was filled with a sense that my case was drawing to a conclusion whether I signed a plea bargain or not. A conclusion I wouldn’t like.
Just then, Ray, the attorney I’d relied on prior to my arrest, showed up. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘He doesn’t want to sign the plea bargain,’ Alan said.
‘Why?’ Ray asked, shaking his head.
‘I don’t think they have much of a case or they would have taken me to trial already,’ I said. ‘I don’t see the prosecutor wanting to go up against Alan at trial. They’ve got to come at me with a better plea bargain.’
‘No, they don’t!’ Ray yelled. ‘Look, you’ve got one of the best legal minds in town, why don’t you just listen to him?’
‘He won’t listen to me,’ Alan said.
‘Fucking listen to him, or you’ll be sorry!’ Ray threw his hands up in the air and marched out.
My mind was so suspicious of anything involving attorneys that I assumed Alan had arranged that little charade with Ray. But what Ray had said rang true, and the forceful way he’d said it convinced me to go with the plea bargain. After signing an unknown chunk of my life away, my focus shifted to getting the minimum sentence of nine years. I knew I had to put on a good show with the help of my family at the sentencing hearing. I also feared that somehow I wouldn’t be eligible for the loophole Alan had mentioned.
May 2004
Dear Claudia,
I signed a plea bargain! If all goes well at my sentencing, I’ll be out of prison in late 2007. I’m sure the time will go fast, plus we’ll have a visitation relationship again. I am to be sentenced in the last week of June. I’ll be meeting the pre-sentence reporter in one week.
I feel that we kind of saved each other from ourselves when we first met, but unfortunately I couldn’t quite kick my old lifestyle and friends. A very expensive mistake indeed! I have learnt a lot, and I will never make such mistakes again.
Sorry that I don’t write to you more often, but I am trying to live off $10 a week, and I also used up all the postcards I bought from Chicken Wing. I hope that you don’t think I love you any less because I am not sending you daily letters. I am also starting to feel lovesick because we haven’t spoken in so long.
Forever yours,
Shaun
Mum and Dad,
I am very excited about your visit and can’t wait to see everyone. I am very nervous about speaking to the judge at the sentencing hearing, and I am currently bandying ideas around about what to say. A fellow in here recently returned from his sentencing. He’d fully expected two years’ probation, and the judge gave him fifteen years’ prison time because of an allegation by the prosecutor that his family members jeered at the victim in his case in the courtroom. The judge said that neither he nor his family had shown any REMORSE! The remorseless ones, especially people protesting their innocence like Dr Ross, get hung. I also fully expect the prosecutor to paint me out to be a demon and Detective Reid to be pushing for a harsh sentence.
Ann said that the blog about inmate sexual gratification was quite shocking and sickening, but she appreciated I was just ‘telling it like it is’. Karen wrote that she and her friends like the more disturbing stuff. I had that in mind when I wrote about Yum-Yum. Yum-Yum brought half of the pod out of the closet. Even my anti-gay cellmate said, ‘I guess if I was to sleep with a guy, I’d at least want him to look like Yum-Yum.’ This place has a strange effect on people. The abnormal slowly seems normal. Frankie, a Mexican Mafia hit man, is leading the pack and desperately trying to get the guards to move Yum-Yum into his cell. Frankie is the greatest thing to happen to my chess game, as he is the best opponent I’ve ever played.
Claudia said that Karen is more than welcome to stay with her if there is overcrowding at Ann’s. I’m hoping Claudia will tough it out till I’m moved to the prison system. The visits there are contact, one hug and kiss are allowed, and they are hours long. I think that will make a world of difference. Right now, I’m just a voice on the phone to her or a letter here and there. She told me she has to drink to get to sleep and has uncontrollable trembling and anxiety. I feel so helpless in that I can’t comfort her and help her.
I have enjoyed the Hemingway stories that I have read thus far. I was quite pleased at his ability to put someone at ease and then for something particularly nasty to happen. His short, monotonous sentences lead up to enjoyable unexpected twists. It’s a good style. I am guessing he was a strange man, but I know nothing about him.
Love you loads! See you soon!
Shaun