Ani has been busy. He asked me to put some of what he wrote in letters to me from segregation on his blog. First, I think I need to give the reader a little background. In early March, 2013, he was getting used to his promotion from his job in the kitchen to a maintenance crew and anticipating the “4 rating” pay from 24 cents an hour to 42 cents an hour that accompanied the new job. All of a sudden I found him back in segregation. This is always an anxiety-provoking discovery for me. Sometimes he has just done something stupid - which is bad enough - and pays the price himself, but sometimes his bad decisions turn into really awful consequences for not only himself but others too. This time it was amazingly neither one.
My first goal was to find out what happened, but it is always difficult to find out what happened from Ani. His memory of events is stored in a jumbled way, full of holes and neither sequential nor connected. So his memory of “what happened” often doesn’t stick together in any way that makes sense to him or to others. Until we figured out that his brain was causing the problem, his accounts of things he experienced could sound like the worst lies you ever heard and my frustration with his crazy stories and his anxiety over not being able to answer questions often turned into some nasty arguments. This time, things were a bit easier as Ani had found himself in a seg unit near to a friend – a native brother. While in segregation, inmates are rarely taken out of their cells – and if they are taken out they are shackled hands and feet. However they do get one hour of outside “rec” a day. This consists of being put into a small individual wire cage. Each inmate is in his own cage, but the cages are in a row so it is possible to have a conversation with another inmate during this time which is how Ani came to be able to talk to someone. Ani’s friend also happened to be a self-taught legal specialist in institutional policies and procedures which is a sort of career someone can take up in the institution. Thus, his friend helped him to sort through his memory of the recent events by listening and being patient and interested enough to hear them over and over until the two of them had put the events together in a sequenced chain and discussed the connections between them. It is only because of this patient friend and their conversations through the cage walls that Ani could tell me what happened in a way that gave me a somewhat coherent picture and so I can now recount to you what Ani told me.
On the day he was put into segregation, the institution staged a surprise institution-wide “sweep search” of cells to look for contraband. Ani said that a search this big had not been done in the 11 years he had been at WCI. Since a search this size required more man/womanpower than the institution was able to support, they brought in new recruits to help out with the job. First thing in the morning, Ani was taken out of his cell and chained to the railing right outside his cell. He watched as two recruits searched his cell and found several non-punishable items which they confiscated. They gave him a paper listing what they had taken and told him to sign it. They then put him back into his cell and went on to the next. Later that day, someone came to get him and took him to segregation. When he asked what he had done, he was told they had found contraband in his cell. He was puzzled about what it was since he had seen what they had taken before and nothing on the list was a punishable offense. Several days later, he received his “ticket” which included a list of the items that were supposedly found in his cell. The ticked was signed by an officer who he knew and who was not there when his cell was searched. Ani has sent me the ticket and it says they found 10 porn pictures, 2 strikers (paper clips which are used to short circuit an electric cord and heat water), and 27 matches. Ani says none of those things were his and he did not have any of them in his cell. He says he thinks that in the confusion of such a large search things got mixed up.
Ani had only been in segregation about 10 days and was planning to contest his first ticket when he got a second ticket. This ticket was for possession of a credit card. The ticket said that he had written the numbers of his bank account debit card on a donation card for the Disabled American Veterans when attempting to give them a donation of $10. Possession of money in the institution is another contraband offense. Ani contested both tickets but was found guilty and received 90 days in segregation as punishment for them. He decided to appeal both tickets. This can be quite a lengthy and somewhat expensive process even when done pro se (without an attorney). You have to appeal up the chain of command within the Department of Corrections and then if that is not successful, you have to pay to file a Writ of Certiorari in a Circuit Court. Ani also has had to pay for a sheriff to serve the papers to the Warden. I know nothing about these things, but Ani has been helped by inmates who know how to do these things and by books he bought that explain the rights of inmates and how to do this. I have helped him by making copies of documents and then mailing them to the Circuit Court and then delivering them to the Sheriff’s office. Little things like finding out the correct address with a phone call or writing a check (I have POA on his bank account and can transfer money to myself to pay me back), make this something that almost requires that an inmate have someone on the outside to help. I have also helped by listening to his plan and then reminding him from time to time of what he said he wanted to do next, just to keep him on track. This will likely take at least 6 months of filing papers and writing briefs so it is on-going.
Doing this, and keeping the details of what he needs to do straight in his head, is very taxing for Ani and uses up much of his mental energy. He got out of segregation in June and had to wait 3 months before he could get a job again. At the end of September he started back in the kitchen and now he has to get up at 4 AM every other day. He has managed to do several new drawings during this time which will soon be posted on his other blog, “Banished Art.” He wants to start to sell some of his work on E-Bay so we are trying to figure out how to do that.
Now that you have some of the background, I will post below selections from letters he wrote to me during this time.
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