List of Terrible Things

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I'd really like to know how you got there and how you got out.  Sounds awful, and you don't sound insane.  What happened?

I can't give too many details, because my lawyer who is suing them has advised me not to talk about it, but I'll try to be as specific as I feel is safe.

I got there from the testimony of an ex-GF who had previously been a police informant, and knew that an accusation was often enough to land a person in jail. I doubt she intended for me to do that much time, but once you get the ball rolling, it's out of everyone's hands but the prosecutor's.

I was an advocate of medical Marijuana (back in the early 2000s, when only California was on the map for that subject), and they were able to twist her "testimony" about me being a drug dealer, along with mis-applied stuff from my articles and blog entries, to suggest to the jury that I was a major player. Lots of police officers (Drug Task Force people) testified that, "in [their] professional opinion" and "based on [their] training", my writings "indicated" that I was involved in such a trade, though none had any direct evidence of such. However, in American courtrooms, testimony is considered evidence.

When they failed to demonstrate that I had actual posession of large amounts and/or show anyone who could say they had bought from me, the judge simply removed the "with the intent to" element from the law's description handed to the jury, so the basis of conviction changed. He also forbade me from having access to her computer, which allowed them to enter into evidence printed copies of conversations I supposedly had with her that "admitted" to doing so, without me being able to cross-examine it on any serious basis other than asking her "did he really send you that" and me getting on the stand to say "nuh-uh!" The higher courts found this inadmissible, of course, and said I should have had access to the original records and not printed copies of the records, but the actual overturn came from the fact that the State simply did not prove the case or present any evidence necessary for the element that had been omitted.

My first Public Defender, whom I fired, waived my right to a speedy trial (they can do this without your permission, in Missouri), and so I was kept in isolation for about 2 1/2 years as a way to "break me" psychologically, so I would confess and save them the trouble of a trial by taking a plea bargain, which is how 95% of cases are resolved. They also believed I was a weed kingpin, so they wanted me to name names, like a scene out of a movie about the McCarthyist Red Scare, but of course there were no names to give them.

I lived with the ex for nearly 5 years, only to find out she had been cheating on me while I was out crawling around in river systems and sleeping in distant hotels across the state for my job, 3 days and 2 nights out of every week. I found photos of her literally having group sex with most of the college basketball team, one day, when she left hurriedly for work and missed clicking the "log off" button on her email account, on the computer that we shared in the living room of our house (used mainly as a router/server for our laptops). I threw her out, and when her mother, who loved me, called me to ask why oh why did I throw their daughter out, in a moment of bitterness, I emailed her mom the photos. What I didn't know is that the parents were racists who had told her that if she ever dated a black guy again, she'd be disowned... apparently a whole team was also off-limits, and they did. She spent quite a bit of time trying to convince me that I was the one at fault, because I knew she believed in polyamory but I didn't allow her to practice it (true) in our relationship, and how dare I claim to be a "freethinker" and a feminist, yet demand patriarchal submission/monogamy of a woman.

For a while, I tried to wrap my head around this concept, and we talked about the possibility of getting back together. However, I attended a speech by E. O. Wilson, a famous biologist, and in the hourlong line to get his book signed, I met a senior in biology at the university who turned out to be the most amazing woman I know, who is now my Beloved, fiancee, and the mother of my son. (We'd have been married long ago, but didn't want to do it wrong, since prison isn't a good place to get married, and she wants the whole kit-n-kaboodle ceremony.) She, and her constant love and faithfulness as well, are the reason I made it out of there with my sanity intact, despite the best attempts of the State to break me down.