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Chapter19
Captain Henderson moved me into my little space between the bars and the outside door, and closed the outer door. I did not hear the lock being turned, but I was too well trained now as a convict to think that anything but bad would come if I pushed on that door and moved out into the cell beyond.
My decision proved the right one, as about the time I stopped hearing Jim's footsteps outside the door, I heard footsteps from more than one person coming toward my cell. After a moment the door opened.
"Well, I think our offender may be learning his place after all, don't you think Paul?"
"Yes. Let's get him put away."
"Right."
"Offender Cox, do you think that if we took you back to that lovely large cell in segregation you could get with the program, and not try sneaking around and breaking the rules?"
"BOSS, YES, BOSS!" I actually almost yelled. I did want back from this cold, dark, uncomfortable, and hellish HOLE.
"Well, it won't be now convict. Get inside the cage."
I moved past the bars and they closed and locked the barred part of my cell, and then turned, closed and locked the outer steel door.
I sat down on the cold concrete. I looked at myself and my surroundings. I was locked in a cell, separated from almost all human contact. I was naked. I was reduced to shitting and pissing into a hole in the floor, and then whatever I deposited into the hole stayed there until some unknown entity caused water to rush through the channel and move my waste someplace else. I was reduced to trying to think of every lecture I had ever made just to try to keep some semblance of sanity in this environment of pain and deprivation. And I was helpless to change any part of my existence. I was totally and completely powerless. I was nothing, and those who controlled me were everything. I suddenly realized that if my owners desired, I could just be left here. Who would hear my cries for help? Who would come to my rescue? Who would mourn or
note Jim Cox's passing? I cried. I shivered and cried. I wanted to scream, but was afraid. I had been told not to talk and make noise. Every time I had thought that the free people who owned and controlled me had done their worst, they had shown me that they did know how to make my life even more miserable, AND they had shown me that they had the power and the will to do whatever it would take to make me do as told. I hit my head against the concrete of the back wall of the cell.
"CONVICT!" an officer yelled. I thought they had all left long ago. Then I noticed something that I had never noticed before. In the ceiling by the lights was a small speaker cover. Officers could hear whatever was said in the Hole. Clearly they could also send instructions to an offender in the Hole. Mine came almost immediately.
"Convict spread and stand at the wall. Now."
I stood and assumed the "X" formation against the back wall. I heard the sound of more than one set of boots coming down the stairs and down the hallway to the steel door of my cell. Then I heard not the sound of a key in the steel outer door, but the sound of something scraping along the hallway. Finally I heard the key open the outer door. I did not have to scramble to get into position. I was there, and trembling. I had come to have a convict's fear of something new. I had pretty much accepted that if something new was going to be done to me, it probably will be even worse than whatever was already happening to me.
The door opened, and then I heard the key go into the door to the inner bar wall.
"All right convict. We heard you hit your head on the wall. Apparently you need a reminder that offenders who have earned time in the Hole are not allowed to make noise." The officer paused.
"Come out of spread, back up slowly toward us, with your hand grasping elbows behind your back."
I took my arms down from the spread position, brought my legs closer together and folded my hands behind my back firmly grasping my elbows. Slowing I began inching backwards toward the voice of command.
There was not much distance to cover in my little home in the Hole. Soon, I felt
my wrists grasped, and then I was turned into the hallway.
I was bent over with one officer holding my hands.
The other officer came in front of me and showed me a thick and wide frat paddle type paddle.
"Count, offender!" was the order as the paddle disappeared.
Soon I felt its smooth broad flat side gently rubbing my butt. I felt it move side to side lightly.
Then it moved away. I waited for the first stinging blow.
The pain in my butt registered at least a nine or ten on a scale of speed and pain when the flat paddle made contact with me. I screamed the scream of an animal, not a man.
"Sound off, convict!" I heard through my scream.
"One, Sir! Thank you, Sir! May I have another, Sir?" I knew my lines in this punishment party. I received ten good blows, but many more light taps, and gentle caresses. I never knew what my butt would receive. Would it be a tender tap or a thundering blister- raising blow from hell.
"Stan, that was awesome," one of the officers said to the other.
"I like to think that I can give the offender what he wants."
"Right," the other officer replied. "Now let's put him back in his cell."
Inside my door, inside my bars, both locked shut, I carefully sat down on the floor, and quickly turned to my side to allow my butt to throb.
Exhausted, I lay on my side and went to sleep.
I do not know how long I slept. In the hole time really has no meaning. However, my brain had become conditioned by pain to let me know when the sound of the lock on the outer door was being opened. I heard them slide the food tray through the opening at the bottom of the barred door. I looked at the food. It was not different from most meals I had received in the hole. It was peanut butter spread over two halves of one slice of bread, and the bread was usually hard, like it was a day or so old. It was food, and I welcomed it as food. I knew only too well that if the state, thorough its employees at Princeton Penitentiary wanted to, I could be left with only water, or just left. I was no longer suffering from any illusions that a prisoner really had any rights.
After my meal, I went to sleep again. It seemed like I had just dropped off to sleep when I heard the outer door being opened again. I did not feel rested, and yet my conditioning kicked in and I roused myself and was almost correctly spread-eagled when the door opened.
"Turn!" was the order.
I turned and was amazed to see that a set of black and white stripes had been dumped on the floor. I did not move and then the other officer dumped my boots,and boxers on the floor.
"Suit up!"
My boxers felt strange. How long had I been naked? I had been allowed to shave three times, but I was not at all sure that I had been allowed to shave once a day. I put on my socks, then pulled on my stripes. Mine—yes, they were my own, showing my number 117213. They were not just a set of prisoner stripes, they were actually my own set of stripes. Now, for the first time since I had arrived at the Hole, I was clothed. Then I was shackled and cuffed, and finally my hood was placed back over my head, and I began my walk out of the Hole. We went up some stairs, and we walked through some doors that had to be unlocked to let us through. It seemed at least as long as it had been, coming to the Hole. Again I thought, from the lack of heat coming onto my body from the cool
atmosphere, that I was traveling across the yard at night.
Soon I heard the sound of double doors, and after my hood was removed I knew that I was back in segregation. Cell door 16 started sliding open for me, and I was deposited, uncuffed, and allowed to go to back to my sleeping shelf. After the hole, segregation seemed pretty nice to this convict.
The next four days were both routine and different. I knew that my hearing was coming up, so in the hours between my routine breaks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and periodic cell inspections, I was furiously writing down all the laws and precedents I could remember to fortify my position that I (as Cox) had not deliberately neglected to inform the court in my declaration of guilt. On the fifth day I received a copy of the amended complaint against me from the prosecutor's office. I noted that the case was theft and malicious mischief and that there had been a major discussion in the prosecutor's office at the time whether the 17 year old Cox should be charged as a juvenile or be waved into
adult court. As it turned out, the case began in juvenile court, then half way through it was moved by the judge into adult court. In all this movement, some of the records had failed to make their way into the computers, and so it was that a preliminary search for other priors for Jim Cox had not produced a comeback, as the charges were not originally filed in adult court.
I was busily formulating a defense that as a dumb teen I had not really
understood that when I was moved from one judge to another that this change was also a movement into adult court. As a juvenile, my court records would not have followed me to adult trials, and so I could make a somewhat reasonable argument that I did not really understand the movement, and so did not deliberately mislead the court when I failed to note the arrest and trial on my official declaration of priors that was demanded, and checked for the sentencing as Cox for his most recent run-in with the law.
I was beginning to feel that I could actually pull off the role of a dumb teen, and now more knowledgeable adult offender, and plead ignorance and ask for no additional sentence or at the most some sort of very short or even concurrent sentence that might be added to my six months.
On my sixth day back in segregation, I knew something was afoot. After breakfast I was taken down to the showers and allowed to wash myself all over, and shave with a real, large mirror.
When I returned to my cell, a clean set of stripes was on the bed, and I was instructed to get into them. I did so, under the scrutiny of a guard.
" Offender, get any materials you have prepared for the trial and put them on the sink."
"Boss yes Boss." I gathered my tablet in which I had outlined my plea and placed it on the sink.
"Turn and get on your knees."
I turned my back to the door, got on my knees, and felt the familiar snapping of the cuffs around my ankles. I was helped to my feet, then the belly chain was locked tightly around my waist, and my wrists were locked into the two cuffs dangling on the sides of the chain. My right hand was given my notebook to hold.
I was moved out of the door to the space outside the cells, then moved toward the doors which I knew led outside. We went through the double doors, and now were in the short hallway that led to the outdoor cages, or to other locations.
We paused at the next door, and I expected to hear the call from my escorts for someone to unlock it, when out strode Captain Jim Henderson in this formal full officer's uniform.
"I'll walk the offender over to the video courtroom," Henderson said with his usual calm, authoritative voice.
"Sir, prison rules require the offender to be escorted by CO's Sir."
"Very well. You two can hold his leash, and I'll walk along beside. This
offender is my collar, and I want to talk to him."
"Sir yes, Sir." One of them reattached the dog leash on my left side, and led me through the door.
Jim Henderson accompanied me, with his gorilla grip on my left elbow. We were walking around the green grassy area in the center of the Reformatory. I wondered again at the need for the chains and leash. Even if I would somehow wrestle myself free, where would I go? I might be outside a building, but I was still definitely and securely inside the walls. I couldn't see anything outside, much less get there. I smiled to myself. Yes, the public could live secure in the knowledge that the wild convict animal Jim Cox would not be running to their door with a story of stupidity and the resultant imprisoning of an innocent man.
Suddenly my inner dialog was interrupted by Captain Henderson whispering in my ear.
"Listen up! The television courtroom has a table at which you will be seated. The belly chains will be removed, but your leg shackle will be fastened to the floor. You will be able to hear the judge, see the judge, and speak to the judge. However, all the transmissions to the judge are on a time delay. If you try to make any wild accusations, before he can hear your words there will be a technical difficulty, and you will be made to understand in a painful way to keep your answers civil and brief. Civil and brief, and appropriate to the only defense you have--the idea that you did not deliberately mislead the court in your guilty plea. Understand?"
"Yes Sir" was my defeated reply. The professor I used to know almost as much as I know myself was not here, but in South America.
We traveled the rest of the way to the main building--an imposing five stories high, complete with a decorative roof of orange tiles, and two wings that were clearly the original cell houses. You could see the barred windows, marching along, evenly spaced for hundreds of feet. Probably it was under one of those old cell houses that the Hole would be.
They led me by my leash up the steps into the main building, then deep into the interior, where a last door was unlocked. Here there was no remote control but an officer with a ring of keys. Beyond the door was a courtroom, with a bench where a judge could sit. Instead of a human being, however, there was a TV camera dangling from the ceiling. Other cameras were pointing to the old wooden table toward which I was now being moved. Behind it were the old wooden armchairs you see in courtroom dramas, and I was escorted to one of them. As I stood there my leg shackles were locked to the floor with a clamp over the connecting chain, and my hands were unlocked from the cuffs. The belly chain however was not removed, and as I sat down on the chair, the empty cuffs clattering on the wood.
I placed my notebook in front of me on the table and gazed up at the empty judge's bench. Captain Henderson sat next to me. To my amazement the chair was not fastened to the floor, and I was able to scrunch my chair forward under the table. There was a blue curtain behind the judge's bench. I turned and saw that also a similar blue curtain obscured the concrete wall behind me. There were also two large flat screen TV screens flanking the judge's chair which now only showed an empty judge's bench somewhere far away. Would this hearing begin to bring me back from this too real reality experience, and to the rest of the world a return of the professor from his South American infatuation?
Suddenly I heard the familiar "All Rise," and I rose with the others.
The bailiff intoned that the superior court of Marion County was now in session, Judge Martin Black presiding. The Judge assumed his chair in the TV screens, and we sat down also, in our own reality. The procedure was so familiar, and so very different.
"Mr. Cox," the Judge intoned, "I can see you there at the Reformatory and I assume you can see me also."
"Yes, Your Honor," I replied.
"Mr. Cox, the state is here petitioning that your sentence be reconsidered because you did not reveal a previous conviction which would have precluded your receiving a first-time-offender minimum sentence of six months. Further, the state contends that you did not disclose this previous conviction deliberately, in order to inappropriately receive this minimum sentence, and therefore urges that you be re-sentenced to a more appropriate term. Do you understand the charges, and are you ready to enter a plea?"
"Yes Your Honor, I understand the amended charges, and I enter my plea of Not Guilty, you Honor."
"Are you represented by counsel?"
"No, Your Honor."
There was a pause.
"Mr. Cox. You should have been advised of your rights to counsel, and, if you do not have counsel, then I believe I will suspend the trial and order the state to provide you with appropriate counsel."
"Your Honor," I began, "although I am not represented by counsel here at the table, I have studied my rights and I believe I am ready to be my own counsel, Your Honor."
There was a pause, and I felt Captain Henderson stiffening beside me. Under the table he grasped my leg firmly as a warning to watch what I was saying.
After what might have been just a few moments, but seemed longer, the Judge spoke again.
"Mr. Cox, I do see that Captain Henderson is at your side, and I know that Captain has taken a special interest in your case, and indeed petitioned the court to give you an extra week to prepare your case." (Yeah right, I thought... He needed a week for my time spent in the Hole.) "I am going to proceed with this hearing. However, if I detect that we are moving into issues which need actual counsel to be present beside you, I will suspend this trial, and will appoint you legal representation. However, I will now ask you one more time. Do you wish to proceed without legal counsel beside you?"
"Yes Your Honor."
There was a pause, and I could see the Judge was looking over materials.
"Prosecutor Bailey, you may proceed," he intoned.
"Your Honor, we have before us a case of a man knowing that he was guilty, having been apprehended almost in the act, and knowing also that he would surely be facing at least some time in prison. This man therefore deliberately, and with the intent to mislead the judge and the court, withheld information about his previous arrest and conviction. This obfuscation resulted in his sentence of six months to five years. The prosecution respectfully suggests that with conviction on the additional charges of perjury and lying to the police and prosecutor and also lying on the stand, and so obstructing justice, the offender be sentenced to fifteen years to 45 years of total time in the custody of the Department of Corrections as payment for his crime and as an example to others who might be tempted to lie their way out of just punishment for their crimes."
After this opening statement, the judge turned to me, and as the TV camera
focused on his face, sternly asked if I had a statement.
"Yes Your Honor. If it please the court."
He then directed the bailiff to read the oath, and I swore to it. I then
outlined "my" life as I had been able to figure its outline from the sentencing report. Apparently after Cox's juvenile incarceration of one year, he had been released, and had been a good citizen for the next fifteen years. I noted that I (Cox) had an excellent work attendance, and was awarded with three promotions in the ten years I had the same position in a warehouse. Indeed I had been a model citizen for those ten years. Then the warehouse lost several state and local tax breaks that it had been granted to lure it to the state and the city, and with just two weeks' notice had closed the warehouse and laid off all workers, myself
included.
In the economic conditions at the time of my layoff (or more accurate
characterization – being fired) I had not been able to secure any work, and finally in desperation I had indeed stolen some small items.
As I finished my explanation of my crime, I was just beginning to go into my appeal for the present sentence of six months to fifteen years be retained, the judge interrupted.
"I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with the mode in which these
proceedings are being carried out. I am therefore suspending this hearing until all parties can be present in person in the courtroom. I am aware of the security concerns that have been presented to me as a rationale for this tv situation, but I am convinced that sufficient security can be obtained in my courtroom. Also I am convinced that given the reasonably small distance between the reformatory and the court that you should be able to transport Mr. Cox to the court and keep Mr. Cox in the courthouse lock up prior to his appearance. "
"I will schedule a resumption of this hearing within two weeks from today."
The gavel came down. He left the TV screens.
I sat there stunned, and noted all the others here were similarly speechless. However there was no doubt that I was going to court, not from inside, but closer to freedom than I had been in a long time. Well, it might have been only six weeks in an ordinary person's time, but in my convict life it has been a life-changing eternity.
"Clear!" came a comment from the officer who was at the back of the courtroom in a sort of control room for the cameras.
"Shit!" was officer Anderson's expletive as he slammed his hand down on the table that was before me, making my notes bounce on the table.
"I should have tried for another judge," the prosecutor said, "when I heard that that prick Black had been assigned to this retrial. Judge Fisher, damn him, bailed out on me."
"Well," said Jim Henderson, "we have no choice. Get this asshole back to
solitary."
I wondered why a captain in the city police would have this much authority in the prison, but those questions were for me to enjoy wondering about when I was safely locked back in Cell 16.
I felt the belly chain cuffs being locked around my wrists. My materials I kept in a death grip in my right hand.
I felt my shackles being unlocked from the floor clamp, and soon an officer grasped my left arm, and we began our trip back out of the building, across the center green and concrete space, and back to the much newer façade of the solitary confinement cells.
I once again enjoyed being outside and even being able to look at the sky and the surrounding interior court of the prison and not have to do so behind the bars and the steel mesh of the cage which was outdoor recreation for solitary confinement offenders. Nevertheless, I was almost dragged across the area, and several times got caught up in the shackles. I would have fallen, but with my elbow in Henderson's grip, I wasn't allowed to do so. I was just pulled upright and we continued on our dash to my cell.
Clearly someone had warned those in charge of the results of the trial, because as soon as Henderson pushed the button to notify those in the control room that someone wanted to enter the facility, there was an immediate response. Officer Henderson only got his name out before the buzzer signaled that the door was unlocked. I was thrust into the no-man's land between the two doors, and as soon as the outer door closed the inner door opened. I was almost dragged across the floor, and the door to my cell opened even as we approached it. Captain Henderson thrust me inside. "On your knees, shithead," he snarled.
I dropped to my knees without the preparation needed to do so without pain, and winced as my knees hit the concrete. My irons were removed. All other officers beside Captain Henderson left.
I stayed on my knees facing the back wall.
"You seem to have won the game today Cox, but when you return to court remember that I will be there, and other COs will be there to be sure that you remember that an offender is in the power of the facility. In the time from now until we arrange your little out-of-facility vacation, you can consider how you can make your appeal, but you should remember that unless you come out of the courtroom a free man, which is impossible, you WILL be back here. I guess you remember how much fun the Hole can be."
With that I sensed him turn, and heard the door close. Only after the door was completely closed, and I heard the lock clank into place did I move. I moved the hand that was clutching my legal work in front of me, and I noticed how bent and crumpled that dash across the yard and my crashing entrance to my cell had made my materials. "Oh well," I thought, "I have time, and in solitary confinement I have plenty of time, to rework my materials."
Well, there is no need to discuss the four days between my return and the
arrival at my door of an officer. Through my food slot, I was given a piece of paper.
I looked at the paper, and discovered that two days later I would be leaving the penitentiary early in the morning and traveling back to the courthouse in the center of the city in which I had lived, for my literal "day in court."
The night before, I was sitting on my concrete bed, going over the notes I had made for the first hearing, and making some additions I had thought of since. I had already returned my evening meal through the food slot, and thus was used to the time cycle of segregation. I knew that breakfast was around 5 am, lunch around 10 and dinner around 4. I have no idea how such strange hours became the pattern for the day, but my body had adjusted to it, and now it was normal.
Suddenly my peace was shattered when I heard my door lock click unlocked and the door begin its slow, clanking opening. I was instantly very scared. I had already discovered that a change in routine usually meant that something bad was about to happen to me. I immediately assumed the required stance, standing with my heels touching the concrete of the sleeping shelf, as close as I could make it to being in the middle of the length of the shelf, with my hands behind my back, grasping the opposite elbow, and looking down, about four feet in front of me. I could feel my breathing accelerate, and my heart beat faster. When the door opened I was not made less fearful when I saw two sets of shiny black guard
shoes standing in the opening.
"Inmate Cox."
I knew that if not asked a question I was not to speak, but I was now allowed to look up from the floor.
"SIR yes SIR."
"We are leaving you a clean set of stripes for your court appearance. We are also leaving you a plastic envelope. It would not be possible for you to keep your papers in your hand on the trip to court. That's what the envelope's for."
He paused. I was not sure what to do. I decided to chance a response not
explicitly asked for.
"SIR thank you SIR."
"It wasn't our idea. Judge ordered it. In addition, we will be photographing you from this time until the trial to document your treatment. We don't want to tempt you to lie to the judge just to get out of prison early."
With that I was instructed to stand in the center of the cell in my old stripes, holding the bundle of clothing I had just been given. Lights flashed. I was photographed. My estimation of the judge was going up exponentially. After the photographs I carefully placed the new clothes on the floor, and then started to turn to go to the sleeping shelf to go to bed. I wanted to be fully rested for the trial tomorrow. I then removed my striped shirt, pants, and undershirt, folding and placing them on the floor next to the new set for the trial. I spread my blanket and went to sleep. In my mind just a second later, but in fact several hours later, I heard the food slot open.
"Inmate Cox!" a very irritated but authoritarian voice yelled into the cell. "Assemble your shower shoes, towel, and soap. You are to have a shower before transport."
I hastily gathered my shower items, and a few minutes later, two officers
arrived with a third following behind. The last one was recording all the events on a video camera. I was led down to the shower—uncuffed and unshackled.
I was shocked. On all my previous trips to the shower (a distance of probably twenty feet) I had been shackled and cuffed. In solitary you did not shower in private. The door to the shower was not solid but was steel and at least one officer monitored your ablutions. After my first shower, I had written a small reflection contrasting my solitary life in segregation until I was allowed to shower which was done under observation.
My observation was that life in prison was exactly the opposite of the outside world. If something was private in the real world, in prison it was public and vice-versa. I had planned to expand this observation that life in prison was not life but existence. A prisoner existed, but had no life as anyone on the outside would consider living.
This time, I walked without the clanking of chains. After the door to the shower was unlocked, I was allowed inside, and given my soap, washcloth... except these items were NOT my soap or washcloth. The soap was a full size bar of Irish Spring, and the washcloth was close to the normal sized item that most persons have at home. Since I was being filmed, I momentarily thought about asking to whom these items belonged, as they were not mine. But I decided that this momentary victory would undoubtedly be severely punished once I returned from the trial... as I knew I would be... and one trip to the Hole was enough for me.
Instead I just soaped up and washed myself. I had become accepting (since I had no choice) that when I wanted to wash my butt and privates in a shower I did so for an audience, and this morning for the camera.
After my shower...and oh yes... this time without the mesh door being closed and locking me in... I was returned to my cell, told to dress in my new striped prisoner clothing, and ordered to kneel down to be shackled and cuffed (behind my back). Finally the plastic envelope with my notes was placed around my neck, and we were on our way out of the unit.
I now made a reversed trip back from my segregation unit to the building that I traveled through when I entered this place of punishment. When I emerged on the other side, there waiting for me was another white prison van, just like the one in which I had arrived here. Now the door opened for me to enter the mobile prison once again.
There were no other guests on this exclusive bus trip. I was taken half way back and again thrust through the open cage door. Again my leg shackles were locked to the steel plate of the floor. Again my hands were released from the belly chain only to be re-locked into cuffs that were also chained to the floor of the van. Finally I was again strapped in by a seatbelt that ensured I had been rendered into a fixture of the bus. All this trip had been without comment to me or about me. All the guards were aware of the video being made.
I would guess by the time I was safely locked and chained in the prison bus it was probably about 6:00 to 6:30 am. Since it was toward the end of summer, however, the sun was already above the horizon, and after we went through the three gates, and the van had been inspected from its undercarriage to its roof, three times, I was once again able to see countryside that stretched for miles, and not terminated by walls and buildings, all of whose doors and windows were locked and barred.
We rolled out on the driveway that circles the whole perimeter of the prison, but instead of making the circle we turned, bounced over a set of railroad tracks and onto a state highway to begin our trip west into the city. We soon passed two other prisons that had been built next to my prison. Both of these were the modern design with several small buildings and surrounded not with a tall solid wall but three or more fences with razor wire and warnings that the land between a couple of them had explosives. It was a maze of cages, creeping across the landscape.
But soon, beyond, I could once again see fields, homes, people moving freely in cars and on foot in the several little towns we traveled
through. We were not alone on the highway, but we were not in rush hour heavy traffic yet either.
Eventually we came closer to the city, and the two-lane road became four lanes. Our van, which was traveling the speed limit, began to be passed by many cars. I would look down from the height of the van, and see passengers look up at me. I was aware that seeing a bald head and perhaps even a little bit of my black and white stripes was to those people a bit like seeing some animal in the zoo. I was a curiosity, and I was something that these passengers only felt safe being around when they knew I was caged so securely that I could not do to them
whatever horrible crime had landed this specimen into this cage.
Soon we moved from four lanes on a highway where at stoplights I could be stared at more thoroughly, to the interstate system, and again in traffic, but not yet in rush hour traffic, I was brought quickly downtown to the tower that housed the courts and the police. Down into the underground garage we turned, and the sun and sky again were left behind so I could be transferred from my mobile prison into a place where I would have no chance to escape in those moments between leaving the van and going through the locked doors into the building where I would be brought to trial.
I was led through a series of basement corridors and finally into an elevator. I knew this elevator was only for prisoners, as it was steel and rivets from floor to ceiling. When I left the elevator, I knew from the woodwork that I must be near the courts. Then we turned a corner and I saw the heavy wooden bench firmly attached to the wall, and a long chain with handcuffs attached at regular intervals on which I had sat following my previous court appearance. The connecting chain went through the thick steel braces which held the bench to the wall. I was sat down and my wrists were released from the belly chain and immediately attached to a set of handcuffs on the chain.
When I looked up, I was facing a cement block wall, painted an institutional yellowish green, on which in very large letters was painted that warning I remembered "PRISONERS WILL REMAIN QUIET WHILE AWAITING TRANSPORT." I was locked once again in the hallway outside the courtroom where I had been sentenced. I looked sideways and saw that I had once again been joined by my photo-biographer.
I was now a disciplined offender and sat quietly awaiting when officers would take me into the courtroom. I had no idea how long I waited, but suddenly there were three of them – two from the prison who had come down with me in the van, except they had ridden in the front, free, while I had ridden in the back, chained and caged. Their seats had been soft and leather. Mine had been hard and steel. Well, no matter; they now un-cuffed me, and together we went into the courtroom.
The courtroom was the same. There were no windows, and there were no other persons awaiting their time. I knew that the hour was very early for court sessions, and that the doors to the freepersons' halls were probably locked. I was seated, and my belly chain was removed, and I was free above my waist, but the ankle shackles remain locked onto me. My plastic envelope was removed. Then I heard the doors at the back of the courtroom being unlocked, and soon I was joined by Captain Henderson and the team from the Prosecutor's Office. The doors were then closed and relocked, and we all sat silently awaiting the judge.
After a few minutes, the bailiff intoned his notice that the court was now in session and the Honorable Judge Martin Black was presiding.
The Judge looked down at me and my table and then over at the prosecutor's table, and looking at that table announced. "You may proceed."