The Winds of Reform

Over the last few months, there has been a large outcry calling for change to the Federal Prison System of the United States. The charge is being led by people of influence such as Attorney General Eric Holder.  Michael Douglas is another leading activist.  He and more than 500 celebrities have signed a petition demanding reform and sent it to President Obama.  Signatures include those of Leonardo Dicaprio, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Robert Downey Jr. (who spent time in the Feds), Jay Z, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Scarlett Johansson, Justin Timberlake, to list a few.

Members of Congress are also finally waking to the drastic changes needed in the American prison system.  For the first time, bipartisan bills are being sponsored in both the House and Senate to grant more good time for non-violent offenders, whereby one could earn up to 35 percent off his or her sentence through good behavior.  This would apply to someone like me who has an exemplary conduct record.

Recently, Eric Holder gave a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, stressing reforms needed. "Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long and for no truly good law-enforcement reason," he said.  He went on to emphasize the need for returning nonviolent men back to their families and children who have suffered enough, who've paid for their crimes.  Of late, he continued his push for reform in a statement to USA Today, "New consideration should be given to the reinstatement of parole for federal offenders to help restore fairness in the criminal justice system and relieve overcrowding." 

If parole were to be reinstated, I'd be eligible for release within the next six months under the old federal parole law.  Presently, there is a grass roots movement among American citizens calling for the reinstatement of federal parole.  I ask you to join the throng by signing the Resurrect Federal Parole Proposal at:

http://www.petition2congress.com/11818/resurrect-parole-federal-prisoners

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but it has nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The U.S. leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment.  Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.  For instance, there are now over 2.3 million people behind bars in the U.S., more than any other nation, including China, whom the American Government accuses of human rights violations.  China, which is four times more populous than the U.S., has 1.6 million people in prison.  It's somewhat ironic that the United States, who purports to champion freedom and human rights, imprisons far more people than a country it accuses of violating those very same freedoms and rights. 

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the Prison Studies Center, the per capita rate of incarceration:  We have 751 people in prison for every 100,000 in population. (1 in 100 adults in the U.S. is locked up.)

The only other industrialized nation that comes even close is Russia, with 404 prisoners for every 100,000.  Again, Russia, like China, is hardly a standard bearer of human rights, and is notorious for punishing its citizens, as the recent case of the Russian oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky points out.  After 10 years in prison, Khodorkovsky was released last week, with the help of the German government.  Berlin had negotiated with Moscow for two years to secure his release. The former Yukos Chairman's first press conference was telling: "People talk about my release as being a Mandela moment; today without a doubt this is not so. Our society has not yet accumulated such a potential for protest that would allow one pebble to start an avalanche."

In other words, Putin is not unlike Lenin and Stalin.  The Kremlin remains largely unchanged.  And yet, America's per capita incarceration rate doubles that of a nation infamous for violating human rights.  The United States locks up nearly 100% more of its citizens than Russia does.  And lock up is hardly an understatement.  We literally sentence people to decades in prison and throw away the key.  Rarely do judges and prosecutors look at the merits of a case and take the time to evaluate all mitigating circumstances. We seem to be in the throes of a "more the merrier" approach to imprisonment, an assembly line model of sentencing, coercing individuals into plea deals to avoid trial, often using underhanded tactics to do so. The legal representation that defendants receive is often egregious and incompetent as the following example illustrates.

When a friend asked John Horner if he could buy some painkillers, the 46-year-old father of three didn't see a problem.  The Osceola County, Florida, resident had been taking prescribed painkillers for years after losing his eye in an accident, and agreed to sell his friend, "Matt," four unused bottles.  After the pills exchanged hands, Horner discovered that "Matt" was in fact a police informant, and he was charged with dealing drugs.  At the advice of his public defender, Horner pleaded guilty, and was later sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 25 years in prison.  He will be 72 by the time he is released, and his three young children will have grown up without him.  "Matt," who turned out to have a long history of drug offenses, was more fortunate; he received a reduced sentence of just 18 months after informing on Horner, and is now free. (This story was printed in The Week magazine, September 20, 2013).

If you think this story is an outlier, you're gravely wrong.  This tends to be the norm. I've seen it repeated hundreds of times in my study of the law these past four years.  I know dozens of individuals whose cases are similar to the Horner case.  The competence level of public defenders and many licensed attorneys is subpar at best. 

My case is a further example of such incompetence.  I was promised/guaranteed a sentence and coerced into a plea deal that was disastrous, admitting to things that were not true.  Counsel not only mischaracterized my exposure, he completely misunderstood/misstated the law relevant to my case.  He utterly lacked a basic understanding of financial instruments, even more so, failed to investigate the very contract that every investor signed that lies at the heart of my case.

Most who are familiar with my case have heard that I was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme. (I wasn't. I involuntarily and unintelligently pled guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false income tax return).  Yet, the Ponzi scheme angle was spun to the media.  A Ponzi scheme has no underlying investment.  Bernard Madoff, the most famous schemer of all, did not make one single investment related to his fund, or one stock trade.  He ran a Ponzi scheme.  I traded close to one billion dollars worth of stock, held open positions daily in the market, and the fund was profitable at times, up over 50 percent through 2005, 24 percent through November of 2006. The fund had an underlying investment – stock holdings. Is that the mark of a Ponzi scheme?  No.  Yet, none of this was researched by counsel.  Had counsel investigated the contract signed by investors, a fiduciary agreement bound by law, it would have disproven most of the government's assertions. I was ignorant to this, having no understanding of the law at the time.  I was unable to aide my own defense as I was locked in a cell fighting my case with no access to the internet, law materials, relevant case law, nothing in which I could learn the law and mount an adequate defense. (This is a story for another time and only the tip of the iceberg.)  Even when I insisted that counsel argue certain issues, he refused to do so.  The result of this has been a nightmare experience I would not wish on anyone, a sentence of 19.8 years for a nonviolent crime.

While it's not a crime for people to lose money in the stock market, I feel for every person who did so under my management.  I am beyond grieved that individuals lost money under my watch.  My single focused goal is unyielding: to work relentlessly, as diligent as possible, to ensure that every single investor receives full recovery of their investment.  I know I will be able to achieve this goal, and would have already done so had I been in any other country but the United States.

People who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences.  The United States is, for instance, the only advanced country that incarcerates people for property crimes, and the only country with conspiracy laws.  But it's the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy.  "Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in a study of America's Criminal Justice System.  Prison sentences here have become "vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared."

Bernard Kerik, former NYPD Commissioner and former Homeland Security Director nominee under the Bush Administration, was just released from three years in federal prison. The man who had spent most of his once-distinguished career putting people in prison had this to say about the Federal Prison System: "You have to be on the other side of the bars.  You have to see what it's like to be a victim of the system, so to speak.  There's no way to do that from the other side.  If the American people and members of Congress saw what I saw, there would be anger, there would be outrage, and there would be change, because nobody would stand for it.  Our prison system is not benefitting society."

The questions need to be asked: Why are so many men, nonviolent offenders, being warehoused in prisons, being held for decades on mistakes made that could be corrected if these men were freed after reasonable punishment?  Why does America pursue a measure of justice uncommon to any other nation?  Long incarceration for nonviolent offenders destroys families, injures children, confines most families to a vicious cycle of poverty.  Fathers and husbands locked away for draconian periods of time are irreplaceable in a child's life, in a family's life.

Flowing from the honorable act of the pursuit of justice, has come a great miscarriage of justice, inhumane in scope, unparalleled in size, unseen in any other industrialized nation on earth: Mass incarceration of our nation's citizens.

In closing, I kindly ask you to make your voice known.  Please visit the websites below and follow the instructions to be included in a letter campaign to Congress that address the issues of prison reform, of doing away with draconian sentences.  Please promote this in your social media circles and forward to friends and constituents.

www.prisology.org/action

www.petition2congress.com/11818/resurrect-parole-federal-prisoners/.

Feeling Christmas

 Every Christmas the feeling returns, one I've felt since childhood.  As a young boy growing up in Germany, I went with my family to celebrate Christmas at my grandmother's house, which sits high on a hill in the town of my birth near the former East German border. My grandmother's home had splendid views of the scenic landscape. When the winter snow blankets the rolling hills, the scenery becomes dreamlike, as if living inside a snow globe.  Snowflakes twirl in the creamy light of the lampposts, the flurry of white flecks carpeting the countryside fairy-tale like.  Mounds of powder cover the streets and sidewalks near the home.  Down the hill sits a forest of pines and firs, thick, dense, the trees tall and stout, a formation of elegance, the branches laden with snow, bending.

I remember days of running with laughter, crisp, clean air surging through my lungs, the clear winter blue of the sky, my feet rising and falling in the white frost.  A feeling would envelop me, occupying the innocence of my childlike wonder, even as the iciness of the Cold War intensified in the backdrop of my world.  I could not explain the feeling or describe it.  I understood little about the emotion, except that it felt good, right, always surfacing at Christmas, a sensation part hope, part peace, feeling miraculous and timeless, returning year after year, at Christmas.

Across the years, I've found myself in numerous cities throughout the world during the Christmas season.  No matter where I've been, I always felt the feeling.  I recall a time in Munich ambling through the Christmas market – an annual event held in most German cities.  The market was teeming with booths offering everything seasonal.  Outdoor chandeliers, large and bright, hung suspended in the air spanning the Marienplatz, Munich's famed pedestrian zone.  The chandeliers were in the shapes of angels, bells, trees, wreaths, lighting up the night with thousands of white Christmas lights, transforming the city square into an imaginary wonderland.  Orchestras and choirs filled the air with Christmas music, as horse drawn carriages glided near with lovers snuggled tight.  Children stood in frozen wonder in front of stalls peddling teddy bears, toy Santas, hot cocoa, and holiday candy.  The scent of pine mingled with mulled wine vapors; the char of roasting chestnuts with bratwurst sizzling on griddles.  Stands sold fried potato pancakes, pretzel-shaped glazed doughnuts the size of the Berlin Wall.  Dozens of kiosks were titillated with the most mouth-watering desserts, every type of chocolate and cake imaginable.  And of course there were the stalls selling Gluehwein, beer, and a dozen varieties of hot drink to keep you warm.  Yet, trumping all this was that intimate feeling of childhood, of Christmas, of something magical.  Even the weather conspired to endorse the miraculous feeling I felt as an armada of clouds appeared from nowhere, sprinkling a sweet dusting of snow onto the spires and medieval beer halls of Munich.

Around the world, Christmas is celebrated, on every continent, even in nations where it's illegal to practice Christianity.  Regardless of the environment, a subtle message is seen, a tinge of the miraculous felt, as the feeling of Christmas hovers in every land.  The world is conscious of the miracle child of Bethlehem, allowing thoughts of the miraculous to infiltrate the finite orbit of our lives, providing us with a sense of what can be, of impossibility occurring.  A feeling churns inside of us during the Christmas season, one uncommon at any other time of the year.  Even if you don't believe in the Christmas miracle, the divinity of Jesus, you remain conscious to the possibility of a God who exists.  Your spirit connects with that force of possibility, of something miraculous being available to you.

A miracle is the supernatural occurrence or intervention of God that transcends human or logical reasoning.  At different times in our lives, we require these supernatural manifestations.  When there's no way out, when human reasoning offers no hope, a miracle is needed.  And this is precisely the message found in Christmas, the feeling that seizes us.  Our hearts unite with a possibility of the miraculous occurring in our lives.  Feeling Christmas is feeling the miraculous, linking us to an act deemed impossible: A virgin giving birth.

The miracle of the first Christmas was not an end unto itself, nor was it temporal; it was a miracle of permanence, providing a foretaste of what God can do in our very lives.  Christmas reiterates the miraculous: God amongst us, His miraculous power available in every situation we face in life.  So even in prison, I encounter the feeling from my childhood at this Christmas season.  I feel it when I move, when I think. I feel it when I kneel, praying for those I love, my girls, my family, my friends.  I feel it when I stare at a razor-wired fence, holding onto promises spoken, the miracle God will provide.  I feel it at this very moment, in the stillness of the room in which I write. 

Night has fallen, bringing closure to another day.  Around me, the spirit of the season is on display. Snowflakes hang from pipes and light receptacles are masked in the colors of Christmas.  Hues of red and green fill the room.  Pillars are swathed in holiday gift-wrap, in loops of garland.  A fireplace sits in the corner, fabricated from cardboard, burning logs in the hearth.  The mantle bears stockings, the red bricked chimney stretches to the ceiling.  Along the far wall, window panes are colored in paintings.  Santa distributing toys.  Rudolph guiding a sled to earth.  Tweety Bird in a Santa hat.  Pooh Bear sledding down a hill.  Smurfs in green, aiding elves.  A Christmas tree twinkles nearby, branches bejeweled with ornaments, tinsel, multicolored lights draping the limbs.  Frosty the Snowman stands guard, button eyes, carrot nose, a broomstick in hand.  I wave. I think he waves back. A familiar feeling overtakes me. A miracle occurring.

        I close my eyes.  The room transforms itself into a classroom, my youngest daughter at my side, us united, hands clasped, together in the folds of Christmas, her face beaming with delight.  She leads me to her desk, her steps eager and jumpy, her heart drumming, picks up a gingerbread man and candy cane.

        "Look Daddy, I made these."

        I see the excitement in her eyes, the wonder of creation.  I feel the sensation she is feeling, flaunting her craftsmanship, her gaze alive with the miraculous, so proud, a thought becoming matter, an idea budding into a miracle.

        "Those are amazing, sweetie.  So amazing.  Wow."

        A bright smile adorns her face, and right there in that smile I see everything that is important in life, more important than anything in the world.  Her mother and grandparents applaud her efforts, sing her praises.  Her two older sisters come bursting into the classroom, dressed in layers, scarves draping necks, gloves warming hands, festive knit caps crowning their heads.  They scream with glee.

        "Shelby!"

        "Look at that amazing candy cane!"

        "That gingerbread man is awesome!"

        Shelby basks in the attention, the affirmation she is feeling, the goodness.  Her sisters embrace her achievement, sustaining her childlike thoughts, aiding her to believe she has just created the most remarkable gingerbread man and most beautiful candy cane in history.  She feels something she should feel, a feeling every child should feel.  Something miraculous.

        Loved.  Adored.  Special. Treasured.  Wonderful. 

        The Feeling of Christmas.

Gratitude

     I dreamt I went to heaven.

     An angel greeted me upon arrival, led me into a colossal sized structure near the gateway.  We walked side-by-side inside the vast edifice, a depository awash with angels.   On the wall in the entry area was a map detailing the layout of the structure.  Much of the building was sealed off, visitors confined to a long corridor leading to an array of rooms.  The angel led me down the corridor, pausing in front of the first room.

     "This is the receiving department.  All prayer petitions are collected here."

     The angel directed me through the doorway.  The room was immense, buzzing with activity, millions of angels sorting petitions written on voluminous amounts of paper arriving from all over the world.  Nothing was out of sorts.  No request left unattended.  I was astounded by the flow and function in the room, the great detail and care given to each sheet of paper.

     "No request goes unanswered," the angel said as he ushered me out of the room.

     We proceeded forward, moving down the long corridor.  Soon we entered another massive room.  The angel said to me, "This is the Distribution Department.  Here is where all prayer requests are processed.  The miracles, blessings, answers to prayer that people seek are acted upon here, then delivered to the recipients." I glanced around, noticed how busy the room was, angels working hard to meet every petition. Along the far wall sat mountains of packages, uncountable, all tightly bundled, ready to be delivered to Earth.  As soon as one mountain vanished, another emerged.

     "Every prayer is heard and delivered in a timely fashion," the angel said.

     We left the room, and pressed forward down the corridor, reaching yet another large room.  To my surprise, only one angel was at work, and he was hardly busy.  He sat there, idle, doing nothing.  I asked my guide about the purpose of this room. "This is the Acknowledgement Department," he said, somewhat embarrassed.

     "Why is there no activity here?" I asked, dumbfounded. 

     "So sad," the angel sighed, "After people receive the answers they've sought, very few respond with thankfulness.  Even fewer acknowledge or exhibit any gratitude for the many blessings that envelop their lives."

     This puzzled me, so I asked the angel another question.

     "How does one acknowledge God's blessings?"

     "Simple," the angel answered, "Just by saying 'Thank You, Lord.'"

     "What blessings should people acknowledge?"

     He paused for a moment, thinking, then answered, "All of them, of course."  He asked me to follow him to the end of the corridor.  We moved to a large glass wall that offered a panoramic view of Earth.  I stared in awe, in wonder, seeing for the first time how small Earth was in contrast to God's vast creation.  Even the universe I had come to know appeared like a grain of sand on a never-ending beach.  The vastness, the splendor, the detail of all that God had created jolted my senses with a newfound perspective, a viewpoint that made even the greatest miracle on earth appear to be a simple, childlike act.

     The angel tapped me. "Look closely at the Earth's radiance."

     I followed his instruction, and noticed a disparity in brightness.  Some areas of the surface emitted great light, others were murky and dim, even others, dark, a flicker here or there.

     "Do you notice the imbalance?"  The angel asked.

     "I do.  What does the lighting represent?"

     "Blessings.  The brighter the light, the greater the blessing in that area."

     I observed continents familiar to me were awash in light, bright, vivid, dazzling.  Other continents appeared shadowy, points of light cast about with no structured logic, a considerable distance between beams.  As I contemplated the great disparity, the angel nudged me, said it was time to make our way back.  Walking down the corridor he expounded on the light.

     "If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead, and a place to sleep, you're richer than 75% of the world's population. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, spare change in a dish, you're among the top 8% of the wealthiest people in the world."

     I listened quietly, absorbing the truth of his words.  He continued.

     "If you woke up this morning in a land with adequate healthcare, pharmacies, a way to battle your infirmities, you're more blessed than four billion people worldwide.  If you've never experienced the fear of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you're ahead of 700 million people in the world.  If you can attend church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you're more blessed than three billion people on earth."

     He grew quiet as we approached the entrance to the building.  He stood for a minute pondering, then asked two questions.  "Why is it that people rarely think about their blessings when they're surrounded by all that light?"  I had no answer.  He followed with his second question. "Do you know how to read?"

     "Of course, I know how to read," I said.

     "How about writing, do you know how to write?"

     "Absolutely."

     "Then write down this experience. Remind yourself and all those who can read and write to learn to give thanks.  Over two billion people on the earth live in areas where they have not been afforded the opportunity to learn how to read or write."

     I was stunned by his statement.  Then confused by his next.

     "Thankfulness leads to wholeness, the perfection of blessing that most never consider or receive."

     He guided me into a small room leading to the exit.  Before me was a large screen and one chair.  He instructed me to sit down.  He dimmed the lights.  The word "History" appeared on the screen, then faded.  A line appeared, splitting the screen in two halves. More words appeared. In the left panel, "What Was," the right panel, "What Was Planned."  Then a scene of history played in the left half, the "What Was" portion.

     Ten lepers stood at a distance as a man approached.  Their limbs were deformed, their skin hideous, revolting.  Shouts came from the ten. "Jesus, have mercy on us."  Jesus spoke, motioned with his hands, "Go show yourselves to the priest."

     The ten said nothing.  They turned and walked, headed for the town to find the priest.  Crowds along the dusty road dispersed.  People ran for cover, hiding behind trees, shrubs, sprinting for fields, everyone wanting to avoid contact with the dreadful, contagious disease.  The lepers pushed forward, their leprosy clearing the path of humanity.  Suddenly, one by one, the skin on their bodies changed, becoming new, the leprosy vanishing instantly.  Yet, the deformed limbs remained, covered now in perfect skin.

     The ten jumped for joy, celebrating, no longer outcasts.  They ran, hobbling toward the city, overcome by the miracle they had received.  One stopped, left the pack, returned to Jesus, fell to the ground in front of him, thanking him for his healing. 

     Jesus asked him a series of questions. "Didn't I heal ten men?  Where are the other nine?  Has no one returned to give God glory except this foreigner?"

     Jesus asked the man to stand, told him, "Your faith has made you whole."  As Jesus spoke, the man's deformed limbs became whole.  There was no hint, no physical sign that he had ever been stricken with leprosy.

     The left side of the screen went black as the right side lit up, the words "What Was Planned" reappearing.

     I watched the same scene being replayed, only this time all ten lepers returned, and all their limbs were made whole. The movie sped forward in high speed.  Raced through the years, slowing only to show the ten at various stages in life, happy, whole, fully restored, returned to a life of normalcy, living in the folds of blessing.  There was laughter and joy, children and grandchildren.  Lives that were made complete.  Then the movie suddenly reversed, jumped to the other side of the screen, the words "What Was" reappearing.  Now only one leper's limbs were whole.  The others were healed of their leprosy, but the wholeness of their limbs was not found.  Neither was the joy, the laughter, the children and grandchildren.  The healing felt incomplete.  Though cured of the disease, their lives were robbed of a greater blessing, a blessing planned, awaiting them, if only they had been thankful.

     The movie stopped.  Words appeared on the screen.

     Be grateful, in all things, greater blessing awaits, wholeness, the perfection of blessing unfolding in a life.