Chapters
The chapters of “Prisoner in the Enemy Camp” progress in chronological order, beginning with the boating accident and a vivid description of the fight for my life. The course of the manuscript runs through my arrest, bail, trial, incarceration, appeal, and eventual release. Read Chapter One, Chapter Nine and part of Chapter Ten for free right here. If you are intrigued you will be able to access the entire book online in the future. Come ride with me if you dare.
This chapter describes the boating accident itself and my initial contact with the boat’s infuriated owner.
This describes in detail the verbal and physical confrontation that followed the accident.
Immediate aftermath of being severely beaten by a lunatic with a rowing oar and have to injure him in self-defense.
The reaction of the police after pulling alongside my boat on the water. My attempts to have my attacker Matt arrested and the attempted interrogation by the malevolent cop Joe. This chapter also describes first contact by paramedics.
My positive interactions settings in the back of the ambulance trip for the hospital. In the emergency room my contacts with shifty cop Joe, a jerk for a nurse, and my severe injuries are discussed and treated by a kind doctor.
My discovery of cop Joe hidden in the closet violating my confidential conversation with the emergency room doctor. Also my arrest at the hospital on simple battery and ride to the police station.
A description of the booking process and the people I met. My reaction to seeing my battered face for the first time in the mirror.
The continuance of the process to get me ready for misdemeanor stockade. Also includes my interactions with other inmates and my first lesson on the black culture in incarceration.
My transportation chained and shackled to the stockade and a description of the inmates and conditions there. The first homosexual inmate comes on to me, and I witness the terrifying beating of a white inmate by a black gang over a candy bar.
After learning I am being reclassified with felony charges of aggravated battery and two counts of attempted burglary of a conveyance, I am both angry and confused as I am transported up to the felony holding block of the Lee County Jail. There are also descriptions of the one day spent in the cesspool of violent criminals and a huge black man threatens to rape me.
My bailing out of jail and spending the next fifteen months of freedom and getting back on track in another town. Included also is my fight against the charges with a lawyer and hearing a completely different story from my attacker and his friend a bogus witness. The two attempted burglaries are dropped and a bogus battery charge added.
A brief description of my two day trial as perjury and manufactured evidence are brought against me.
Reactions of the devastating decisions of guilty from the evil three against me, my family and the fools of the jury. I have been found guilty of one count of aggravated battery and not guilty of the one count of simple battery.
My first hours of felony lockup as shock, disappointment and despair set in. Fearful of my safety and peace of Mind, I call on my faith through prayer.
After twelve days in felony lockup I'm assaulted by six black men at once and hold my own at first. The cops finally respond only after I am beaten down. While most inmates cheered on, the fight is finally stopped by the cops and my new roommate George. The intentions of my attackers were the theft of my canteen and sexual assault.
After being taken to medical and treated I am not in my right mind. Shaken and badly beaten, I am taken to a glass cell and put under suicide watch.
I am placed in administrative confinement and moved to a tiny cell holding two other inmates. I sink into a deep depression amid the banging on steel doors and other twenty-four hour noise that keeps me awake and miserable as I await my sentencing. My cellmates are exact opposites one good and one evil.
Back before the judge in the court room I receive a heavy blow as right before my family and friends I am sentenced to four years in prison with five years of probation. My family is despondent as I stand in denial and dumbness. After what I have just been through it seems like a death sentence. For I am fingerprinted and led away I look at the smile on the face of the freak that tried to kill me with and oar.
My constitution shattered, I am at the bottom of my depression. My irrational mind makes the ultimate choice of death over the rape and slavery of prison. I saw at my wrists for a while with a broken plastic cup and then a broken metal frame from a pair of glasses. I can’t keep the bleeding going as, blood all over my sheets, a cool rage brings me to my senses and I get help. I will survive, I will fight to the end.
I spend a week in the psychiatric ward. I witness a fight in my cell and the guards' sadistic remedy for breaking up a fight will shock and sadden you. If felony was purgatory then the crazy house was hell. After my attempted suicide I saw three of my family and was strengthened back to sanity. It's a good thing because of the things I saw and heard in the week in the land of the lost was on the edge of the outer limits.
After being moved back to the general population in a housing block heading for prison, things were calmer but still dangerous as my new cell block. The goal of these people was to get to prison as soon as possible, and the level of their behavior was not as bad as the fourth floor. Seeing that I had already been beaten and had stitched wrists they left me alone after some verbal harassment. I saw one fight.
Heavily shackled and chained I am transported in a stiflingly hot overcrowded van to the Central Florida Reception Center in Orlando. The guards end up getting lost in Orlando turning a two-hour trip into a five-hour ordeal.
One of the great processing prisons for an inmate's entry into the system. A boot camp atmosphere here is incorporated in four weeks of medical, drug and psychological screening. I spend four weeks here.
This is the holding prison for inmates waiting to be transferred. I am having some problems with guards and inmates. I am here five more weeks. I begin to get acclimated slowly to prison.
Sights and sounds of a prison bus trip to my new camp.
I spend eight months in this educational and confrontational program. These programs are designed to create intentional stress and conflict between inmates and counselors. The theory is to improve coping skills but in a prison this proves to be a dangerous tactic. I am staffed out after eight months of problems with inmates holding power in the program.
My first experiences on a prison work squad outside the gate.
The process of transfer and the trip to my new prison in Ocala. Fights break out all over the Brooksville camp.
One of the toughest drug treatment programs in the country, I am forced into this by the doc. This program's controversial methods have caused inmates to commit suicide. Bizarre learning contracts and intentional deceit by both counselors and inmates are par for this course from hell.
I am staffed out again due to my firm stance on Christian morality. I expose a sexual predator in the upper levels of the program angering the demagogic program director.
The restricted labor squad is the program's method of breaking one's spirit. I am working all day in handcuffs and heavy shackles after I go from minimum to maximum custody due to the program director's manipulations of the system. Heavy labor, intense heat, and shotguns are the order of the day.
After being stalked and harassed by a black sexual predator named Scrap. Again my courage is tested in combat.
After sixty days of RLS I return and graduate Tier Four after four more months of harassment. I end up with over 4,000 hours between the two programs. Some inmates respect me for knocking Scrap out and others are resentful. Scrap loses face in the prison.
I am moved into a non-treatment dorm and put on a landscaping crew. My public defender expresses hope I might be able to get time off my sentence or a retrial.
I am transferred to a work camp and put on public works squad. I have many different jobs under this one description. Various inmates in this new camp harass me. Pressure mounts as word gets out I am to go back to court to be released.
I return to the sentenced block at the Lee County Jail. I am there for four weeks, we hear a huge fight break out on the fourth floor above us. Before my family and friends the judge reduces my sentence to a maximum of forty months under my new guidelines. My family is angry as the judge has the power to release me but leaves me with thirteen months on my sentence and two and a half years of probation.
A long week and a half of waiting to go back to prison. Upon returning a punk convict takes a swing at me and I am in another fight.
I have been placed in a small cell for investigation and charged with unarmed assault on an inmate. My attacker is not charged with anything due to his friendship with a Lieutenant. After twelve days I attend a DOC kangaroo court and am sentenced to fifteen days in the hole and loss of thirty days of good gain time.
I spend fifteen days in a cold tiny cell with bad food, noise and a cellmate with a bad gas problem. The guard allows the inmates across the hall to throw urine and feces into our cell. The only things to do are workout and read religious materials. I strengthen my faith.
Transfer back to the Marion Work Camp, I enjoy a drop in harassment and new respect in the chain gang. I work at a variety of different jobs.
After two months of peace another black convict targets me. I ignore him for a couple of weeks then end up in another fight out on a work crew. I am injured this time.
After nine days in administrative confinement and false testimony by a guard and another convict I am sentenced to thirty days in the hole and lose thirty more days of gain time. I spend Christmas and New Years 2000 alone in a darkened cell. I see a real vision of faith in my depression. I begin to write the manuscript for "Prisoner in the Enemy Camp."
Back on Public Works again at the work camp, I am six weeks away from release as an old convict gets into my face on the top a dump truck's pile of dirt. My growing faith and daily study of self-esteem books enables me to back down without a fight. I am tried the next few days by verbal harassment from this old black convict. I ignore him completely.
I spend the next four weeks working and keeping to myself studying and writing as much as possible. The cons know I am going home and new kind of respect emerges as I don't feed into any more garbage. I have found a determination and a peace as I get closer to going home.
After going back and fourth with a troublesome classification officer, I am finally awarded my thirty days of gain time. A series of final callouts get me ready to go.
My last night and day in prison. Only my closest friend Oliver knows of my release in the morning. At last freedom is at hand.
I find a court reporters mistake leaves me with five years probation instead of two and a half. After serving half my five years on probation the judge releases me.
My final thoughts and feelings of lessons learned in the Chain Gang. Also a few final statistics on what is happening in our country as far as the increasing incarceration of our citizens and the deterioration of the American Justice System.