Most people are released from prison through a series of levels. This starts in the system. Over time, you earn lower levels of custody and more freedom. With the freedom, you have more requirements, but most are willing to jump through the necessary hoops for the ability to go to a store.

     The type of crime and court sanctions are generally reflected in the probationary period. I know several people that were released on probation, but the rules regarding their release are usually case specific. An entire book could be written on the how’s and whys.  Each crime has its own sanctions, but I will refrain from addressing them here. I will talk about my release issues and the emotional stumbling blocks that came out of not being a criminal.

     I won my appeal; I was not a felon. You are thinking, great. Nope, that means I did not qualify for any government programs. Remember, I told you the DV counselor said I did not qualify for assistance to leave the man that tried to rape and kill me. Now I again do not qualify for housing assistance, medical, job placement, or any other government services that a convicted felon would receive upon release.

     I had another issue as well. My divorce happened while I was in custody. I was denied my right to telephonic presence indirectly. My prison counselor had me set up, but the court would not let us connect for the actual hearing, so it happened without me.

     During the proceedings, I was awarded my personal belongings, something my husband refused to let me take when I tried leaving. I was in custody, so I gave Power of Attorney over to my family to get my things. They attempted on a few occasions to retrieve my belongings. Even though my ex-husband was home, he would not release anything.

     The DV counselor that I was seeing pretrial came to visit again when I was brought back to county jail. She had some major concerns. The counselor reminded me of how my ex had mentioned on multiple occasions during court that he did NOT want me going to prison. She felt it was because he knew he could not reach me in prison. Her training in DV cases told her that if he was still not releasing my belongings, he was not finished with me.

     Apparently going to trial exposed his history of violence against women and put his reputation in public view. This is an aggravating factor to wife beaters. She brought up that he likewise was injured in his assault on me, and that he was not likely to forgive me for that. Now I was about to be released. She believed I was still in danger. She wanted to put me in a safe house.

     I couldn’t do it. I sat there crying. I just lost years of my life and had to fight the justice system to gain my freedom, now she wanted me locked back up. She pressed that a safe house was my best option. My ex still had my address book. He knew where my loved ones lived and their phone numbers. She insisted that if I went back to my life, it could be a matter of days before he would find me.

     We struck a compromise. For my safety, I was not to live anywhere or attend family functions anywhere my ex-husband had been. I needed to keep out of all public records and practice deception when an address was needed. She kept reminding me that if he found me, he would kill me!

     I had to get resourceful and fast. Fortunately, I have a very large family. One of my relatives had just married, and the new mother-in-law understood my situation; she took me in.

     I had no money, ID, or credit, and was now prison brainwashed. I had no idea how I was going to survive. Then the phone rang. One of my aunts had remarried, and they bought a farm. She was wondering if I could work for them, and I could stay there too.

     At last, there was some mercy. It was a beautiful property and a lavender farm. I could not ask for a better place to recover. The farm was only open for the summer months, but when the lavender was in full bloom, it was breathtaking.

     I had noticed that I picked up some habits that would not be considered normal. In prison, you do not know when you will be locked down or for how long. I was in the habit of hoarding water and whatever food I could scavenge next to my bed. I continued this behavior for over a year. I was worried every night, hoarding snacks, and filling up water bottles, just in case.

     I would wake in the middle of the night not knowing where I was and waiting to wake from the dream. I would sneak to the bathroom, not wanting to make a sound, so I wouldn’t get caught. None of these things are practical for life in the real world, but in prison, they were necessities.

     I could not make day-to-day decisions. I could not answer simple questions like “What would you like to eat?” I was trained to just eat what I was served, both as a child and as an inmate. It would take me hours to go shopping for anything. I could not tell the difference between items.

     I remember being sent to the store for vanilla ice cream. I was not aware that there were so many different kinds. I started crying. I wanted to get the right one, but I did not know the difference in kinds. Eventually, I got a cell phone, and then I could call and ask people what to purchase, but it took years for me to find out what brands and products I preferred.

     Time was also a huge problem. In prison, there are only certain things you could do at certain times of the day. Breaking the prison schedule was really hard for me. I was used to a count schedule. Four times a day, we were celled up and locked down for an hour or more while they checked to make sure everyone was still in prison. The people that go through the cycling-out processes had these count times weeded out as they were released. For me, it was a sudden change.

     Three of the four counts I never missed, but the one right after work and before dinner I sometimes wished was still a part of my life.

     Count in the medium security, I lived in, meant you were celled up and are required to stay put. There is no going to the bathroom, getting a drink of water, doing laundry, or any other activity.

     You are to sit on your bunk and wait to be counted. This became a break for me. I would journal and catch up on my day or read a book or take a nap. It was, in essence, my “time out.”

   I have often thought of implementing this hour out of my day, but there is always something that needs to be done.

     My loved ones would argue that I still have not mastered scheduling myself. I work all day at job sites, come home, and work more. It’s  like without the permission structure to stop, I can’t.

     The lavender farm was incredible, and I loved working there, but it was only open part of the year. I needed another job to get me through winter. Now I had a real problem. I spent years in custody. My last employer and last address was the Department of Corrections. The employer before had tried to rape and kill me and then perjured himself in court so he would not go to jail.

     I had to list something, or I would not even be given an interview. I was much too old to claim no work history, and that would have been a lie. Even with those issues, there was also the box!

     If you have filled out a job application, you know there is a little box that askes “Have you been convicted of a felony?” Legally for me, the answer is NO. The court proceedings were ruled a violation of my constitutional rights, and I am not a felon.

     They do not have a box for “Were you wrongfully convicted and had years of your life stripped away by an unjust court system?”

     Now my application reads that I am not a felon but lived in a prison for years. They give me maybe one line to explain the discrepancy. This was a problem.

     I filled out the application for a local restaurant and grabbed my court papers for the interview. The restaurant owner took pity on me and gave me the job. I still classify him as one of the best bosses in the world and eat there whenever I go through the area. I worked for him until I left for college.

     I was able to pick up a third job while still at the lavender farm. I had another wonderful boss, it was a fluke.

     I was sitting at the lavender farm table and told my boss that there were way too many horses in the area for me to not have any in my life. This was just an off-the-cuff remark. I picked up the local paper and opened it to an ad for stable help. I thought that this was a sign.

     I again grabbed my court papers with the judges’ decisions and my case record but left it in the car for the interview. While the owner was showing me around, and we were talking, he commented that the last person that applied just got out of prison.

     I bit my lip and grabbed my papers. I got the job. I stayed at all three jobs until the lavender farm closed. First thing in the morning, I would go clean stalls and take care of the animals. I would then go home and play in the lavender until they closed. At night, I would go to work at the restaurant. It was a very simple and peaceful life. I often miss those days.

     Most job applications only ask for three references. Now I had them. I also had an address that was not DOC based, so that helped too. When the decision to close the lavender farm came, I also decided to enroll in college. I found a community and university college set up that I liked and took the plunge.

     When I was in college, I made dean’s list and honor role. I should have been proud, but they posted it in the newspaper and on the Internet.

     I stayed hidden the best I could, but now my name and address were public information. I was terrified. Nightmares turned to night terrors. I kept picturing him putting a bullet through my head. He was a marksman shot, one of the reasons the DV counselor wanted to keep me hidden.

     Now I was exposed. I was doing well in school, volunteering, a pillar in the community but pissed as all hell that it was in the newspaper!

     I had spent years hiding; how dare they make me public. That was my world for 15 years. Hiding, doing whatever I could to keep the bullet out of my head.

     I told you in the beginning that it was while I was in school that the flashbacks started. There are four very notable events that took place during that time frame. The first was that I was now studying law, going over procedures, motions, case laws, and of course, I took a class on prisons.

     These things felt very natural to me because I worked at the law library for most of my prison stay. In and of themselves, I doubt that I would have had any problems.

     Another factor was that I had started dating again. I dated a very sweet man, and we still talk. He gave me permission to say whatever I wanted about him as long as I finally “Write that Book!” His ex-wife was also a nightmare but not in the same way. She kept hauling him back to court over custody issues.

     One of the many fights we had, was my prison record. He was afraid if she found out that I had been in prison, there could be problems for him. I did not take that well.

     I remember very clearly yelling at him. I said something along the lines of “Let me get this straight. If your ex-wife finds out that I did NOT die when my husband tried killing me—YOU might need to dump ME?” We separated for a while.

     This has been an ongoing problem with my love life. Men do not want anyone finding out that I have been in prison. I am not a felon for any legal documents. I can sit for the bar and hold government positions, but God forbid someone’s ex-wife finds out. Worse yet, their friends!

     What would people think if they found out that I lived through a deadly attack. I do understand the implications and I have, out of respect, kept things hidden, but this has been a triggering point that I will not tolerate any more.

     Probably the major instigator was a new bill passed in the state I was incarcerated in. The voters of that state agreed that wrongfully incarcerated individuals should be compensated.

     I was living day-to-day at whatever minimum wage job I could get with a non-felon prison record.

     I pulled all my court records back out. I contacted the Attorney General’s office in that state to verify the information, and it was true. Only, the AG was still “interpreting” what the voters meant by “wrongfully incarcerated.” I was told I had some time to file.

     I tried doing it myself, but I could not handle my own case. I was too attached and could not go through things without crying or getting mad; neither were productive.

     Initially, several attorneys were advertising that they would file for compensation on a contingency basis. That changed when they tried.

     The rules for filing, required an enormous amount of fees. Aside from all of the random costs, they required purchasing from the county certified records at an incredible cost per page, and then there was another charge to have them resubmitted back to the counties you bought the records from.

     This has always felt like bullshit to me. To file in court, you have to buy the records that they already own and then pay them again to resubmit their records back to them.

     In this case, the attorneys I talk to said it was just too expensive to file. You would need at least $100,000 to even start the process, and the state was not offering that much in compensation.

     Then the Attorney General decided that compensation would only be given to trials overturned with new evidence.

     For those of you unfamiliar, you have better odds of winning the lottery than you do of getting new evidence introduced at the appellate level.

     Most cases are handled like mine. They overturn the case, send it back, and then drop the charges. I wanted a new trial. It was kind of brushed off in court, but my ex said that I stabbed him from the back or from the front, as I walked by.

     The actual injury he received was a downward poke, between two of his ribs. That injury could not have happened if he were standing.

     It most certainly could not have happened while someone was “walking by.”

     The trajectory is a perfect line up for someone that is bent over someone else with their arms forward as if they were attacking. I tried like hell to get that in on appeal. An argument of ineffective counsel sometimes works, but in my case, my attorney was not given evidence until the day before trial. He had no way of getting an expert in time. I reluctantly allowed a short continuance, but that was another violation of my rights.

     For you attorneys, I did file on Hobbin’s Choice. That is an old precedent that says the state is not allowed to handicap the defense and then force them into wave their speedy trial rights. There were just so many violations in my case. The appellate court just picked one and said it wasn’t their problem anymore.

     Along with needing new evidence, the Attorney General added that it needed to be new DNA evidence, which also eliminates me from compensation. The voters of that state tend to be more on the liberal side. I do not believe when they voted, that they wanted to exclude 99% of the wrongful convictions from compensation. I also do not believe they intended for more money to go to the courts and the attorneys than to the people that lost years of their lives in an unjust system.

     The last straw for my already fractured brain was probably being in the newspaper. I am sure I spent nights before bed thinking. I am stuck in minimum wage jobs, I cannot date, and I will never get an apology or compensation for not dying. None of my hiding has done any good. I would be better off if he did just put a bullet in my head!

 Flashbacks…