Jerry Givens Is Dead, So

The embrace of the convicted and discredited dead ex-Virginia prison guard Jerry Givens who spent 4 years in prison for a slew of crimes including money laundering by certain anti-death penalty advocacy and abolitionist elements because of his revelation that he was a participant in Virginia's Death Penalty murder scheme and his subsequent idealistic criticism of it reveals and exposes a critical flaw in the prison and criminal justice reform movement and advocacy.

Just because Jerry Givens expressed criticism of his former function as a professional state executioner in Virginia's death penalty murder scheme absolves him of nothing. Because his criminality of murdering human beings was not his singular crime to be accountable for but is the collective responsibility of the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia in whose name Jerry Givens murdered people. So when opponents of Virginia's death penalty murder scheme memorialize Jerry Givens as a progressively-critical voice in the criminal justice reform movement, it ignores and glosses over the fact that Jerry Givens as a prison guard was not simply one who idealistically repudiated the death penalty. But one who embodied all that is wrong with the prison official. Jerry Givens as a prison guard in the 1980's at the Virginia State Penitentiary was a crooked corrupt and malfeasant guard who framed prisoners with phony, fake and contrived charges. He assaulted prisoners who were handcuffed and shackled. He was the typical prison official taking extra-judicial liberties, unaccountable.

It is understandable that anti-death penalty advocates would embrace Jerry Givens and his idealistic repudiation of the death penalty and opportunistically rehabilitate him despite the fact he was a self-confessed murderer of 67 human beings. Because it relatively envelopes opposition to the death penalty with the argument of the confessed ala Saul of the New Testament into eponymous Paul.

But the flaw of this line of thinking by anti-death penalty opposition to the death penalty as it exists in American politics, particularly the political-economics of the former Confederate states and their neo-formulated revisionist narrative, has nothing to do with biblical redemption and confessions and anticipating social-sympathies upon such is a fool's errand,

What anti-death penalty advocacy needs is a robust polemic and the Jerry Givens of history as all petty tyrannical state functionaries who later come to their senses on a speculated conversion cannot be messenger and medium for its practices. Not when proponents of the death penalty and the extra-judicial designs of prison are pushing their reactionary politics and the concurrent hypocrisies of justice as a deliberate and specific type of social control.

By William Thorpe

William Thorpe is held in Solitary Confinement at the Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

The Two Questions of Prison Reform By William Thorpe

If we are serious about prison reform then as activist we have to present society, the state and government two questions and provide what in our conclusions are correct responses to those questions and in the process of doing both we will subsequently expose, refute and repudiate the current conventional wisdom, underpinning the status quo of the justice system, law, and order and prison.

The two questions are: 

• Who is to be imprisoned
• And for how long, sentence and terms

On the first question: who is to be imprisoned. The justice system as presently exist subjects all felony and misdemeanor convictions to possible and potential detention and confinement in a 

prison       We don't debate this.

On the second question: The how long or length of sentence along with the condition of and treatment of the prisoner and the accountability of the prison official constitute the primary focus of the reform movement and what reform activist have to present to society and confront the state and government as equal participant in the social contract and compact is the conventional wisdom of what is contemporary just as prison sentence is not and cannot be defended regardless of the initial suppositions used to articulate it.

Confronting The State and Government

So we begin with abolishing the death penalty of state and government murder. Let's establish this: The revenge supposition has no place in a justice system. The state or government doesn't exist as a surrogate actor of revenge under prosecutorial jurisprudence within the social contract or compact. Because if justice as state or governmental action is reduced to the revenge suppositions and motive then it can only be justified as speech between perpetrator and victim or family. Meaning if citizen A kills citizen B or kills multiple citizens then the speech of justice only rests with the surviving family or friend of the deceased. The state or government as collective speech of society cannot assume dispension of what is justice as we now have. State or government adjudication of death as result of an interaction between citizens has nothing to do with the intimacies, it's nuances between people. Instead, it limits itself specifically to the criminal code definition of the death circumstances of the victim, So for example citizen A killed citizen B and C because he/she was slighted which is a normal and real human state and expression. If citizen A uses the speech of killing Citizen Band C. Society through its prosecutorial jurisprudence cannot sanction citizen A for the speech of killing anymore than it can sanction a citizen for being repulsively and revulsively ugly. What society does with its prosecutorial jurisprudence is it determines whether citizen A's actions violated the criminal code's definition of the death circumstance.

I have tackled the revenge suppositions as distinct within the status quo justice system. Because when we brush aside the feeble intellectual-liberalism basis of the other justice system, law, and order and prison suppositionary presumptions what society falls back on, it's default logic is the fundamental human impulse and state revenge.

This work does not critique the correctness of revenge.  What it does is state that the state or government cannot be a surrogate actor of revenge.

Secondly, we continue with life as sentence must be abolished. There is nothing in the objectivity of the human condition that can defend the colloquial suppositions exploited within prosecutorial jurisprudence for the imposition of life as sentence. Now if society, the state and government dare to indulge in a debate over this which will be nothing more than another idealistic exorcise, when what the human condition anticipates and expects is progress and it's intellectual-material correctness, we are more than able to confront its conservative reaction of whatever supposition dredged up by the tyranny and hypocrisies of the social contract and compact.

Thirdly the only debate to be had and it's correct state is what is a just sentence and term. Examining this we begin with what we recognize as the only correct analytical point which is what is a baseline of maturity of the citizen and the concurrent consciousness of the citizen's relationship within the social contract and compact. The operatives then are what are the citizen's obligations and to what extent is the relative accountability.

So, for example, this is what prosecutorial jurisprudence presents us within the contemporary social logic of social contract compact, a formulation and application of maturity which in the first place is an arbitrary exercise and social construct. So an 18-year-old citizen is mature to either be subjected to state or government murder of a life sentence or a 100-year sentence or some other imposition that literally makes a mockery of the sapient nature of human potential and enlightenment.

So the 18-year-old citizen is expected by prosecutorial jurisprudence and it's anticipation to not only have the concurrent consciousness of the citizen's relationship within the social contract and compact but also the obligations of relative accountability and the incorrectness of this existence enables the emergence of the cynical consequences on the social contract and compact. The social experience then becomes a tyrannical mechanism subjugating it's parts and "crime" becomes a self-fulling repetitive cycle. Thereby requiring new suppositionary-narratives akin to the convoluted logic of a Republican Gerrymandered district or better yet the realities of an Alice in Wonderland pocket watch toting rabbit      efforts at concealing the defacto relationships within the social contract and compact that are above the law, accountable and extra-judicial and the courts tasked with resolving the resulting social antagonisms become nothing more than reinforcing forums of the Alice in Wonderland narrative.

We Change The Contemporary Sentencing Scheme

What prison reform advocacy has to declare is the contemporary sentencing scheme distorts the social contract and compact into a relative war on its parts.

Our work and purpose are not to beseech, implore, and plead reason with the prosecutorial jurisprudence status quo      but to change it.

We are society, the state and government and if Abraham Lincoln contributed nothing to social progress and consciousness, he pulled back the curtain on the wizard a' la' Toto in Oz with his government is "of, by and for the people" so let's remember that we are also that which we are in opposition. Contrary to the beneficiaries of above the law, unaccountability and extra-judicial distortions, government is not the enemy, it's weaponization against its parts is and the sentencing scheme and its prison accountability is a prima facie indictment that prosecutorial jurisprudence status quo has weaponized government.

Society, the state and government has under the exegesis of the social contract and compact the logic of imprisonment, however and our contention is such imprisonment shall not exceed a flat year term irrespective of crime.

So now lets rally society for this. There are an estimated 113 million Americans who are intimately impacted by the justice system and the sentencing schemes or prosecutorial jurisprudence     lets find them and organize them so we vote those of us who will change the justice system and its prosecutorial jurisprudence into legislative power.

This work is not the final word on prison reform, nor the beginning, what I do intend this work does is sharpen the focus on going on the offensive against the suppositions and intellectual-liberalism that for too damn long has held captive and monopolize the narrative of what is social accountability and who is subject to it and sentencing scheme as punishment.

I also intend that others pick up on what I have put forth and a robust debate emerge which the mainstream baffoons cannot ignore     Lets get to work and organize.

William Thorpe, I'm detained in Solitary Confinement at the Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

We at VAPAC Acknowledge Inc. Magazines Response

In March/April 2020 issue of Inc. Magazine, we were reminded that as government is of, by, and for the people. Antagonisms within the social contract and compact are therefore expressions of the people and grasp of what it means to be held accountable.

Racism as an antagonistic fact of our social contract and compact was on full display in the emotion recognition submission of The Jargonator Feature of the Inc. Issue in question with the stereotype trope of black masculinity as criminal.

On April 20, 2020 VAPAC [Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee] notified Inc. Magazine of the offense and indefensible feature

On May 5, 2020, Editor in Chief Scott Omelianuk responded constructively.. We at VAPAC acknowledge Inc. Magazine's actions and we respect it. Particularly the declaration that.....

"As a staff, we are aware of the need to confront systemic racism in our work".

So as: Government is of, by and for the people, we at VAPAC understand that individual accountable actions as Inc. Magazine's within our social contract and compact is also how we resolve systemic racism

By VAPAC

*NOTE*  "SALUTE" to VAPAC our grassroots committee for educating proactively in addressing racism 

Further Reading

•  Why we aren't working on June 19th        Inc.com

Whats Wrong With Dick-Sizemore, His Support For Covid-19 & The Politics of Prison & Death By William Thorpe

I want to begin asking Dick Hall -Sizemore's groupies on BaconsRebellion.com, LarryTheG,  Steve Haner, Nancy-Naive Acbar, Reed Falwell 3rd, TooManyTaxes, djrippert  to name a few. Have they ever experienced Dick Hall-Sizemore being anything else than a shill for the Virginia Department of Corrections? Has Hall Size-More spoke on the myriad documented and archived malfeasance and criminality by Virginia Prison officials?

So here we have Dick Hall-Sizemore in his April 11. 2020; Early Prisoners Release Will Not Help Much post on BaconsRebellion.com giving us another scratch your head moment.

Dick Hall-Sizemore begins his work with "Governor Ralph Northam has announced that he will ask the General Assembly for authority to release from prison those offenders with a year less to serve on their sentences in order to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in prison. He stressed that only those who have demonstrated good behavior and would not pose a threat to society would be eligible." And Dick Hall-Sizemore had so much of a problem with it that he took thirteen paragraphs stating such.

Again we have to move beyond head-scratching to head shaking, because didn't Hall Sizemore tell us that prisoners in question are those with a year or less to serve and have demonstrated good behavior? Let this sink in, "A year or less to serve." Meaning a prisoner could have served 44 years on a 45-year sentence with a year to go and Hall-Sizemore is telling us that 44 pounds of flesh years aren't enough on a 45-year sentence and if that prisoner hasn't been "corrected" and "rehabilitated" in Dick Hall-Sizemore's judgment and to his liking by his Confederates at the Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC] then release from prison in light of the COVID-19 pandemic is a nonstarter.

I responded to Dick Hall Sizemore, not because his 4/11/20 post is coherent, cogent with insight and enlightenment. But I respond to Dick Hall Sizemore in particular because for too damn long we have been subjected to the schizophrenic intellect of the Hall-Sizemore's of the land seizing the narrative and distorting it to suit and fit their idealistic and reactionary politics and his post is another pathetic exercise.

I begin with the only response the COVID-19 pandemic ask of government, the state and it's prison official is release       not of some prisoners as the toe testing politics of what is to be done with prisoners is cowardly being practiced by politicians and a sizable but miserable amount of prison reform advocates and activists         but release of all prisoners.

Imprisonment Is Conditional on Law and the Underpinning Politics

Imprisonment first and foremost is conditional because it is conditioned by its legality. There is nothing in the circumstance of the imprisonment of the prisoner that gives the prison official unconditional rein to hold in confinement and detention a prisoner unconditionally. Every class of prisoner from those sentenced to be murdered to those on house arrest, the imprisonment is subject to whether government, the state and it's prison officials have the legal right to detain the prisoner. The prisoner during the imprisonment discovers, new facts, new evidenced and presents such discovery to government, the state, its court, and judges either seeking release, a new trial of sentence reduction, a circumstance that can and will alter the condition of being imprisoned. So there is nothing in the imprisonment circumstance that implies, as soon as the prisoner is in the cluches of the prison officials     the seizure and condition is final. 

Secondly, the legality of the imprisonment is dependent on the viability of the politics underpinning the legal structure that imprisoned the prisoner. So for example and history is replete with examples of as soon as a political system is extinguished whether, by revolution or civil and external wars, prisoners are released from their imprisonment. i.e. America, France, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, all revolutions to name a few. The COVID-19 pandemic presents us with such a circumstance. Furthermore, we are informed by our pre-COVID-19 pandemic politics that the world as we knew it has changed. That there is an emergence of a new social compact, to wit new politics, which is underscored by the socialistic political-economy we are experiencing. From trillions being pumped into the economy by the federal government and the Federal Reserve Bank      to where society at large resembles prison even to the prison jargon of "lockdowns." And as a final nail in the legality coffin, there is nothing in U. S. Virginia, Texas law that asks a prisoner die during a pandemic as part of the terms of the sentence. As a matter of fact U.S. Virginia, Texas law prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, but the thrust of what I'm saying is the COVID-19 pandemic is one law and its political underpinning never factored or considered, therefore government, the state and it's prison officials lack any authority from the social-compact to maintain seizure of the prisoner under the illegal condition created by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Dick Hall-Sizemore Is Lawless With Reactionary Impulses

It isn't that Dick Hall-Sizemore is incapable of understanding the conditionality of imprisonment and the illegal circumstance the COVID-19 pandemic imposes on the condition. But the fact is Dick Hall Sizemore appraises law in a lawless extrajudicial manner specifically as a mechanism to be wielded in controlling the other. So therefore the extrajudicial expectations and logic of his 4/11/20; post is nothing less than it's continuation.

Naturally, Hall-Sizemore can only support the COVID-19 pandemic and its death by default as an anticipation of his idealistic and reactionary politics of prison and death. Sizemore closes his post with, "To be fair to the Governor, however, he cannot just practically throw the prison gates open as some are advocating" reveals Dick Hall-Sizemore's lawless and reactionary impulses, because unless Hall-Sizemore is suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't introduced an illegal condition upon imprisonment which I have shown that it has, then the only cause of action for government and the state is to "throw the prison gates open" and release all prisoners.

William Thorpe is in Solitary Confinement at Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections

Related 

• A State-By-State Look at COVID-19 in prisons  (The Marshall Project)
• Virginia Department of Corrections clears 230 prisoners for early release - Virginia Mercury 

• "People are dying" : Concern over COVID-19 sparks push for prison release

• Race, Power and Policy:Dismantling Structural Racism

What Covid-19 Presents Within The Prison Setting Is Something More Fundamental & Basic By William Thorpe

Okay, good old Virginia exiled me to Texas so it took a few stops for the old pony express to drop off the April 5, 2020 Bacons Rebellion: Virginia Jails and Prisons Brace for Pandemic post by Anonymous.

The post adds nothing nor does it obfuscate. Because the question is not about governmental behavior during a circumstance, [pandemic] that imposes unlawful and illegal conditions on "lawfully" imprisoned persons. That question is already settled. The U.S. Constitution 8th amendment and its jurisprudence are clear, Government cannot subject prisoners to conditions that mortally impact life     yet every single aspect of prison pre-COVID-19 and post does and will, due to the lack of accountability.

Nor does COVID-19 present a novel question within state-organized violence of prison and it's administration despite its novel Corona designation. The issue at hand is simple:

• Under what circumstance are prisoners released
• Under what circumstance are prisoners treated with the same rationality of law that transformed them into prisoners,
• And under what circumstance will speculators and speculations on prison and prisoners set aside colloquial impulses and come to terms with the fact contradictions ignored mature into antagonisms of hypocrisies and delusions mocking the social contract and its politic-law underpining.

What COVID-19 presents and does within the prison setting is something more fundamental and basic       it exposes the irrationality of governments anticipations as prison officials who are no more experts on anything, despite their idealistic pronouncements conjured whole cloth, hocus pocus like, for example, designations like, "the criminal mind of the prisoner" shibboleth intended as expertise to justify their existence, when confronted with the fact that prison as a lawful and legal construct has no basis to maintain detention of prisoners who were not sent to prison to be harmed of killed whether extrajudicial or by Ribonucleic Acid elements. So the question is simple how does law address the condition of the human being transformed into prisoner by its dictates during an epochal emergence that considers nothing than its cataclysmic logic, as COVID-19 does?

Consider this: A prisoner having served 20 of a 30-year sentence for armed robbery and COVID-19 happens. So lawfully and within the social contract, there can only be one action and
response      release. Because there isn't a governmental action that guarantees that the lawfulness that resulted the detention will assure the prisoner and the community that he will remain uninfected and unimpacted by COVID-19. The Prisoner wasn't sent to prison to die and COVID-19's default action is killing. COVID-19 is a condition no law or social-contract can ask a human to its subject. Yet discussions of what is government to do during the COVID-19 Pandemic within the prison setting as the April 5. 2020 Virginia Jails and Prisons Brace for Pandemic post speculates are indulged in as if the prisoner is an unconditional property and possession of government and its organized violence and that is not so.

The COVID-19 Pandemic presents prisoners, families, allies, advocates and the taxpaying citizenry including victims of crime [because victims of crime should stand shoulder to shoulder with the advocacy that government, its prison officials are not up and above law and its politics] with the opportunity to unequivocally and unambiguously confront that governmental presumption of unconditional seizure and possession of the prisoner      when no such condition of absolute possession within the human condition exist and not even the politics of death and prison can distort it.

There is only one action for government during the COVID-19 Pandemic relative to the prisoner and prison and that is       release.

William Thorpe is at Eastham Unit in Texas in Solitary Confinement since 1996, Virginia exiled him in 2019 to Texas