A day in the life, on Georgia's death row #4
I am sharing another important letter-writing day with you. It is obvious to me that the prison administration is well aware of the content of this letter via the governor's office. Perhaps you, my readers, can make its impact more positive by clipping it out of the newspaper (or printing it out from the Internet at )and sending it, along with your comments, to the governor again. Once it is apparent that enough people are watching, maybe the prison administration will see fit to take prisoners' mail more seriously. Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for caring.
The Honorable Roy E. Barnes, Governor
The State of Georgia
203 State Capitol, South West
Atlanta, Georgia 30334
August 7, 2000
Dear Governor Barnes:
I am a prisoner at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (GD&CP). For the past nine years I have written the "Looking out" column for the Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly (GLW), Australia's most widely read alternative newspaper. On some occasions I write about the blatant racism, nepotism, cronyism and other equally odious illegal activities that routinely take place at the GD&CP in particular, and/or at the Department of Correction (DOC) in general.
I do not write about the GD&CP or DOC often, but I have done so often enough that the GD&CP's administrators — and apparently their administrators in Atlanta — have seen fit to abridge or deny my constitutionally protected freedoms.
The process revolves around the "mail" as it is handled at the GD&CP (and by collusion of an individual who works at the United States Post Office in Jackson, Georgia).
The problem began well over a year ago when the GD&CP administrators placed an absurd restriction on the amount of stamps we are able to purchase from the prison store, per week. The highest denomination of stamp in the store is 60 cents. The 20-stamp limit makes purchasing more than $12.00 worth of stamps impossible; and while we are allowed to have $20.00 worth on our person, that privilege is meaningless if a prisoner needs — as I do — $30.00 worth per week.
When I went to then-Unit 1 Manager Claude McCann and tried to explain that sometimes I need to purchase 5-cent, 10-cent, 23-cent and even 1-cent stamps so as to put the correct amount of postage on a letter that might be a half ounce heavier than usual, he made a sarcastic remark. The next day he sent me a letter which, at the end, read: "Look at your correspondence list and make some judgment calls".
It was at that time when, in increments, the 50 or so letters that I had been getting each week for more than nine years ceased. Shortly thereafter I began to get, on average, two letters per week. I kept on writing my columns and correspondents, by purchasing personal items for my fellow prisoners who would, in exchange, purchase stamps for me. I still send out as many as 25 letters to US and overseas addresses a week. Yet, most of those addressees send word to me, by other communication means, asking (A) why they have not heard from me and/or (B) when am I going to answer the letters that they have sent me "months" or "weeks" ago. I do not get their letters.
Governor, even my magazine subscriptions arrive here only sporadically. Trustworthy sources have told me that a person who works at the US Post Office in the city of Jackson is part of a scheme hatched here at the GD&CP to end my correspondence.
Armed with this information, recently I asked my US editor, who forwards my column submissions to the GLW's Australian editor, to send all mail to me via certified return receipt mail. That mail is sent to me twice per week. Because the GD&CP has to sign for those communications, I have been getting those two communications — sometimes, I get them both in one week — but little if anything else.
Certified return receipt mail is extremely expensive, but it is the only way I can be fairly certain my letters get out or into the GD&CP — hence this certified return receipt letter to you. If I had used regular postal service I am certain you would never get this information. In fact, I once sent out a certified mail letter to the commissioner and it got mysteriously lost before it left the GD&CP.
I have made this problem and all of its many facets, some of which amount to matters of life and death, known in writing to the GD&CP administrators. I have sent certified return receipt letters to the old and new DOC commissioner. I have written the US Post Office. I get no response and/or the run-around.
I need you to know, too, that the GD&CP delays giving me et al. legal mail sometimes; and very often one prisoner is given another prisoner's mail. The GD&CP also opens "privileged correspondence" sometimes absent the addressee's presence. The mail at the GD&CP is treated with so little importance that any unbiased observer would see why and how it comes to be illegally handled — that is especially so regarding mail that originates in Australia and the United Kingdom. When you consider that my attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, is from the UK, any mishandling of my overseas mail is life threatening. For almost a year (about six years ago) no man or woman on death row in Georgia was allowed to write a letter to anyone who did not live in the US. The GD&CP administrators resent the anti-death penalty support the people in those countries give to us.
Because the GD&CP's historic responses to these matters are rooted in evasiveness, misinformation and untruths, I respectfully request that you do not bring any of these matters to their attention. They would only call me a chronic complainer, and then circle their wagons and cover their backside. Instead, I beg of you, please send an investigator to talk with me — an investigator who is not a DOC flunkey — so that I can give him or her the intricacies of these matters. Then install Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents at the GD&CP and the US Post Office in the city of Jackson. I have no doubt that the information they would collect within one week would assail your sense of law and order.
Any action less than that will allow the GD&CP officials, and the post office in Jackson, to continue to operate above the law. Please do not let that happen, Governor Barnes.
By Brandon Astor Jones
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns (include your name and full return address on the envelope, or prison authorities may refuse to deliver it). He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA, or email <BrandonAstorJones@hotmail.com>. You can visit the author's web site at .]