Prisons

Edgar Smith

Edgar Smith, with William F. Buckley Jr. blithely playing his stooge, wrote his way to freedom from the Death House in Trenton State Prison in 1971, becoming the most famous death-row prisoner of his time. Fourteen and-a-half years earlier, Smith -- at age 23 -- had bludgeoned to death 15-year-old Vickie Zielinski in Mahwah, N.J. Less than five years after his release from prison, Smith kidnapped a petite but scrappy young mother who miraculously managed to escape from Smith's car with a knife stuck in her side.

by Lona Manning

Sixty-nine year-old Edgar Smith lives an anonymous existence as one of almost 160,000 inmates in the California penal system. At one time, however, he was the most famous prisoner in the United States. His story begins on the other side of the country and almost half a century ago, in the peaceful town of Mahwah, N.J. In 1957, Smith was sentenced to die in the electric chair for the murder of Vickie Zielinski, a pretty young cheerleader whose savagely bludgeoned body was found in a sandpit. The crime and the trial drew national attention. Smith claimed he was innocent and named another man as the killer, but he was found guilty and sent to the Death House in Trenton State Prison. From his prison cell, Smith managed to stave off execution with a series of appeals, and even wrote a book giving his version of the case. He began to correspond with columnist William F. Buckley Jr., who helped him overturn his conviction and negotiate a plea bargain instead of a second trial. At the time of his release in December 1971, he was the longest-serving prisoner on death row in the United States. 

Smith's successful transition to the world outside the 20-foot walls of Trenton State Prison lasted only as long as his fame. By 1976 he was in California, broke and drinking too much. That's when a woman named Lefteriya Ozbun discovered the real Edgar Smith, and miraculously lived to tell about it.

The true story of a young black man who was executed for murder and an old gangster who wasn't.  You decide who got the better of it.

by J.J. Maloney

When I got to work that evening, in 1967, the ward was empty except for old Tony, who hadn't spoken an intelligible word for 21 years.

Tony was lying in bed staring vacuously at the ceiling, the flesh of his face sagging in tired folds. I'd fallen into the habit of stopping to watch his chest, to see if he were still breathing. Tony was the type who might lay there dead for hours before anyone realized that he was dead.

I discretely checked Tony's bed to see if he had messed it. He had, so I helped him out of bed and helped him out of his obscenely-soiled gown. With my head spinning from the odor, I stripped the sheets and blanket, wiped the rubber-coated mattress and went off in search of clean linen.

James Earl Ray

From the viewpoint of a man who served time with Ray in prison, then went on to become a journalist, and continued to follow the case, with some emphasis on Ray's mentality, how he escaped from prison, and why there is reason to believe white supremacists may have been behind King's murder.

by J. J. Maloney

The first time I saw James Earl Ray, he had just arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Charley McCracken, a friend from the St. Louis City Jail, pointed him out to me in H-Hall, where the newly arriving convicts at the maximum-security penitentiary were oriented.

The first year and a half I paid little or no attention to Ray. He was a loner. Most of my friends were people I'd known in reform school, or people I'd met through them. Although Ray had been sentenced from St. Louis, he was not part of the St. Louis "crowd."

In September 1961, I tried to escape and pulled six months in E-Hall, a 100-year-old building whose third floor was for solitary confinement.

About two months later, Ray tried to escape, and he came to E-Hall. We had no contact, however, since he was on the other side of the building.

Albert Bradford: a/k/a Malik Hakim

The story of Albert Bradford, a talented and charismatic man who went to prison at the age of 17 with three life sentences for rape, transformed himself into an artist of note and a leader of men -- then committed his most heinous crime of all and beat the system.

by J. J. Maloney

(Ed. Note: One would think that Albert Bradford would be high up on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, but it never happened – even though he owes the state of Missouri the balance of three life sentences, and is wanted for trial in a crime more shocking and brutal than the ones that earned him those life sentences. It is a strange and fascinating tale of how this man beat the system.)

On March 12, 1951, 17-year-old Albert Bradford entered the courtroom of Judge Harry F. Russell in St. Louis, Missouri. He was charged with two counts of rape and two counts of armed robbery. One of the two women raped by Bradford was white. Bradford might have expected a sentence of five, or even ten years, which at that time would be normal for a teenaged first offender.

When Judge Russell announced a sentence of life imprisonment, Bradford cried out, "Judge, have mercy on me!" while his mother and other female relatives began screaming. During the ensuing melee that broke out, with Bradford’s hysterical mother being ordered out of the courtroom, someone split the cheek of deputy constable Venable Slater.

Finally subdued, Bradford was sentenced to a second term of life imprisonment, at which point he cried out, "Oh, god!" and fainted. Bradford was still in a faint when the third life sentence was imposed.

April 5, 2009

Mumia Abu-Jamal's 27 years on Death Row for a murder he did not commit would have turned almost anyone else into an embittered, defeated man. Instead, he has remained what he always was, "the voice of the voiceless," as he demonstrates yet again in his most recent book, Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A. (City Lights Books, 2009.)

 by J. Patrick O'Connor

Through hundreds of essays, radio commentaries and now six well-written, meticulously researched books, he has defied the walls that encase him to speak out against oppression. His voice his heard weekly throughout the United States on Pacifica Radio and his writings are read and admired throughout much of the world. From the bowels of Death Row, where 3,600 others languish in the United States, Abu-Jamal presses on for justice, day after day, year after year.

Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A. opens a tightly shut door into the operations of the U.S. penal system by chronicling the exploits of dozens of jailhouse lawyers – both men and women – who have fought the injustices the courts and the prisons have dealt them and their fellow prisoners. Their accomplishments, against all odds, have been incredible. Their story is a story never before told.

For the vast majority of the 2.3 million prisoners in the United States and for Abu-Jamal himself, the overriding, inescapable reality about the U.S. justice system is that the law is only what a judge says it is.