Other essays on this theme

Essay: "Favorite Trip"

My favorite trip lasted over ten years before I decided to return. It began on a beautiful, chill spring day in April, 1985, before the insect population got too numerous. I was walking, alone, to work at the feed mill, being careful to maintain maximum separation between me and the dairy workers ahead, and the chicken-ranch people behind. The Path led off the dirt road between a tumbled-down mule barn and a vine-fouled fence. This momentary respite from inmate surveillance allowed me to quickly dive into some tall weeds to wait for dusk. Three days later I was in Dallas, Texas.

At the main library, a smart-looking young business woman picked me up. She was very sweet and generous, but didn't need me for very long. I'm amazed that she chose me at all. Slightly ahead of the game, I entered the underground, got some passable identification papers, then headed west. In Fort Worth I helped some college students with their tedious assignments: mostly English and science papers. They returned the favor in cash. I moved to Lubbock and traded a dope-loving Bureaucrat for some better identification papers.

This made me ironclad against police interference. Even so, I kept moving west, taking a very long vacation in the part of the country I like best: Santa Rosa, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Winslow, Los Angeles. A year or so later, it was time to get back to work. It was maddening be an anonymous Smith among thousands of other smiths when I was a member of a noble family with roots in medieval Saxony. A sleazy, pack of curs who ran Tulsa has stolen my good name; I was determined to get it back.

For the next few years my home was in Dallas. While working and raising a family there, I'd take weekend trips to Tulsa. There were records that hadn't been destroyed. Eventually I found them. The papers proved my innocence and their corruption. Now it was plain: the cops had tricked one witness, forced another to lie, then stole all the blood and fingerprints so I could not prove my innocence. (The law lies when it claims that targets do not have to prove their innocence. We do, else the cops and lawcrats engineer a conviction based solely on tricking a jury of twelve eager fools into agreeing with the prosecutor's clever speculations against us.)

Like any other honest citizen, I returned to prison to appeal. The lawcrats concocted new lies to keep me in prison, even going so far as to steal my escape trial to prevent a jury from seeing the police reports I'd dug out of their warehouses. Higher appeals court judges chose to go blind to the proof and simply parrot the declarations of the lowest appeal judge.

I was screwed again. Because I forgot the primary truth that prison teaches us: there I no rule of law, only the rule of lawyers. But I would not give up. And I was rewarded for my effort. The FBI sent a piece of paper that the evidence-stealing cop had written. It showed exactly how he and an anonymous FBI technician had conspired to make plenty of blood seem like "insufficient" blood. Their scheme is so transparent and bold that even a pack of lawcrats can lie their ways around it.

My favorite trip is about to be reborn, with me richer by millions. The best part of it will be me funding an organization to fund law clerks, captives and organization in all 50 states to do nothing but publicize and legally fight wardens, guards, cops, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, legislators, and politicians to make them clean out these sewers that they call "justice" and "corrections."

I hope all of you will join me in this and make it your favorite trip too.