Gangster Redemption

by Larry Lawton

  “No one knew it, but the inmate who jacked the food chute been storing up feces, urine and sour milk. On this day the unit manager making the rounds came from the adjacent camp, and he was being a real jerk saying things like ‘You deserve to be in prison. You’re an asshole, and ‘your wife is out fucking around.’ He wanted to piss everyone off. Who knows why? I think he just liked the power.

  “All of a sudden I heard the unit manager make a loud scream. I could see the guy running past my cell. His suit was covered with a disgusting mixture of piss, shit, and curdled milk. It was disgusting. The smell on the tier was almost unbearable.

  “The crazy guy who jacked the chute had thrown this concoction all over this guy. I will never forget that smell. Everyone was cheering because everyone hated this guy. The orderlies had to clean that up.

  “A few hours later we could hear the doors open at the end of the tier. A bunch of people started coming down the tier, and they start covering the windows of everyone’s cells, which is what they do when they don’t want anyone seeing what’s going on.

  “They ordered this guy to cuff-up. I knew he was going to get a serious beating.

  I had gone through this a bunch of times, and my stomach started getting knots.

  “There are a lot of crazy people in prison, and I often wonder why some of them aren’t in a mental hospital or a medical prison. Another guy in the hole wrote messages on the wall and drew pictures using his own feces. That is so crazy. He was a mental case and the system isn’t built for them.”

  *

  On Sept. 27, 2004, Lawton had seen more abuse of inmates – himself included -- than he could stand, and he decided to do something about it. He wrote to the Justice Department, President Bush, Sen. Ernest Hollings, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Senator Chris Dodd, and Robert Stock of the Bureau of Prisons Internal Affairs. In it he charged that the medical staff of Edgefield prison was conspiring to withhold proper medical treatment as punishment for his letter writing.

  “I feel this prison administration is out to retaliate against me,” he wrote.

  After spending 62 days in the hole, Lawton finally received some relief on Oct. 5, 2004. Dr. Serrano and Dr. Blocker told him surgery probably wouldn’t make the pain go away, and they gave him a cane, soft shoes, new medications, and they promised they would send him to a pain specialist.

  *

  Lawton, who could never forgive the prison for the death of James Arch, continued writing. On January 15, 2005, he wrote to Florida Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, complaining about his treatment and the treatment of other prisoners.

  On May 13, 2005, Warden LaManna wrote to Congressman Wasserman-Schultz, explaining that his condition had been thoroughly evaluated and appropriate medication had been prescribed. He told her their orthopedist soon would perform a special procedure to manage his pain. He denied that putting Lawton in the hole was a punishment but was richly deserved, and he assured her his staff at Edgefield was doing all it could to provide “a safe and secure environment for staff and inmates alike.”

  Despite all the letters, no investigation took place.

  Lawton’s letter-writing campaign was a real threat to warden LaManna, who decided the only way to silence him, was through intimidation. He did his best to break Lawton. LaManna sent four burly guards – the goon squad – into his cell.

  “Cuff up,” they ordered. Lawton refused.

  “What did I do? Fuck you.”

  The four gorillas opened the cell door and charged at him. They jumped him, beat him, and broke his ribs. Blood streamed from his mouth. While they were sitting on him, Lawton was having trouble breathing. He thought he was going to die.

  Despite the brutal beatings Lawton’s letter-writing continued.

  On June 8, 2005, he wrote to attorney general Alberto Gonzalez, saying he had been thrown in the hole for five months for complaining about the medical treatment. He told Gonzalez about “the gruesome deaths” at the prison. He asked that the retaliation against him stop along with the lying and doctoring of records.

  The next time the goons were even more violent and sadistic.

  “After they beat me they carried me out to a room,” said Lawton, “stripped me naked, strapped me down in a four-point position so I was spread-eagled, and they cuffed each leg and arm to a post.

  “A white guard stood over my head. I was looking up, my eyes half-closed from the beating. He zipped down his fly, took out his dick, and he peed in my face.

  “As he was peeing, he was saying, ‘Lawton, you keep writing senators. You think you’re going anywhere?’ Lawton closed his eyes, and he could feel the pee running down his face. One of the guards then spit on him as they walked past, a big gob of spittle, and they told him, “You think you’re bad. Keep writing senators.”

  This may well have been the lowest point of Lawton’s life.

  “The taste of pee is salt, and it was in my face and mouth,” said Lawton. “And my heartbeat must have been going 170 beats a minute. I was livid. There’s no worse feeling in the world than being strapped down like that. And that was for writing senators and exposing the abuses of the prison.”

  Lawton came to and was carried back to his cell. Was he dreaming? Of course not. He was aching and still smelled the urine. They tried to break him, and Lawton was more determined than ever to fight the abuses of the prison. Instead of breaking him, they made him stronger.

  *

  On June 14, he wrote to Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. In it he said that the warden had lied in an earlier letter when he said Lawton was getting proper medical care. He said he was in terrible pain, he hadn’t seen a prison doctor in nine months, and all nurses would proscribe was ibuprofen. He again charged that prisoners were dying because of the lack of proper medical care. He called for an independent investigation.

  “Please send an investigator to see me,” he wrote. “We are a nation founded on compassion and fairness. Sometimes some people forget that.”

  The war on Larry Lawton was a relentless attempt by LaManna to break him. In addition to sending goons for periodic beatings, he was put in the hole by himself and subject to torture and humiliation. At times the guards would turn off the hot water so it would be freezing.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” said Lawton. “I could take that. What I couldn’t handle was them turning off the cold water, which made the water so scalding that you couldn’t take a shower. It was so hot you could actually put instant coffee in it and drink it. Or they would skip feeding me. Or they’d turn off the suction in my toilet so the waste wouldn’t go down and they made me beg to turn it on. And believe me, eventually you do beg.

  “When the guards delivered my food, I could see that someone had spit a big gob on my food. And I had to spoon it out and eat the food, because you had to eat. A person doesn’t know what he can take until he has to.

  ”But the toll on your psyche is terrible. I had thoughts of suicide. I even thought of a scenario where I would fight the bastards to my death. But my will to live was stronger than anything else.”

  *

  Lawton did what little he could to thwart the goons. He poured shampoo on the floor in an attempt to have them slip and fall. For his trouble the guards maced him in the eyes and face. He would be lying in a fetal position in his cell with snot coming out of his nose and his eyes burning from the mace when the goons would wail on him with their boots. Lawton, a tough man, cried like a baby.

  “They were protecting their jobs,” said Lawton. “They had families to feed. And they were sadists. They enjoyed beating me.”

  Deep down Lawton was sure they would kill him. The goons would tell him, “Nobody cares about you. You’re a lonely piece of shit.” He was beginning to believe them.

  But Lawton was lucky. In addition to the senators and congressman who resp
onded to his letters, he had friends on the outside like Joe Fraumeni, Louie Constantino, and Larry’s dad, David Lawton, who all wrote letters on his behalf. The letters let warden LaManna know that people cared and were watching.

  During his ordeal LaManna and his staff tried to silence him by stopping his letters from going out.

  “That’s a crime in itself,” said Lawton. “They have a right to look at my mail, but they have no right to stop it unless there’s something illegal about it. Through his dad he was able to contact the postmaster general and tell him what LaManna was doing.”

  Lawton sat in his cell when there was a knock on the steel door. It was Warden LaManna in person.

  “I’m a lowly inmate, and I have the warden at my door,” said Lawton, “and I could see he was mad.”

  “Lawton,” LaManna said, “I have a lieutenant here, and I’m here to tell you that your mail is going to go out. The lieutenant will be picking up your mail every day. Is that okay?”

  Said Lawton, “Once the postmaster got involved, every time I got a letter from a senator, I had to sign for it. The guards had to come to my cell, and I had to sign a book stating I got a letter from such and such person, and I had to sign for it. That way, they couldn’t fuck with me.”

  Lawton discovered he wasn’t alone in his quest for decency.

  “When I was in the hole, other guards would tell me, ‘Lawton, keep fighting. Don’t give up. Keep doing what you’re doing.’ The good guards saved my life.”

  One of those on his side was a man by the name of Butch Lewis, the head of safety at Edgefield. He said to Lawton, “‘Keep fighting. Ask your senators who’s guarding the hen house.”

  “If a prisoner dies,” said Lawton, “who do you think does the investigation? The prison itself. That prevents any abuses from being exposed. The guards are going to protect their own.”

  One of the guards who believed in decency was a Lieutenant Finnery. In the hole across the cell from Lawton was an inmate with no legs. The guards put the food in the chute, but often because he had no legs, he had no way to get to it. The guards saw this, but didn’t act. Because he had no mobility, he also peed and defecated all over himself. The poor guy was such a health hazard that the guards went into his cell with white surgical masks covering their faces. Lieutenant Finnery, who was in charge of the hole, tried without success to get him out of the SHU and transferred to a medical facility.

  As Lieutenant Finnery was filming the cell with the disabled man in it, he backed up to Lawton’s cell and said, “Lawton, if anybody ever saw this video, somebody would be in handcuffs.” Lawton took it to be LaManna.

  In subsequent letters Lawton wrote about the prisoner with no legs and no medical care.

  Only because the relentlessness of his letter writing, Lawton after eleven months was let out of the hole. Even so, every day Lawton walked on egg shells, continuing to fear for his life.

  His letter-writing campaign was teaching him a lesson that would affect him for the rest of his life.

  “I’m a physical man,” he said, “I’m not a lightweight, but I learned there you can never beat them with physical force. They were the ones beating me. But once I started writing letters and got the senators and congressmen involved, they understood I had people on the outside fighting for my rights.

  “The prison staff didn’t respect me when I put the shampoo on the floor, but I sure got their attention when I wrote those letters. I learned you can get more accomplished with intelligence and words than with physical force.”

  *

  In August one of the people Lawton wrote to was Greg Szymanski, the editor and producer of The Arctic Beacon, a radio and internet magazine which bills itself as “the last frontier of truth.”

  Lawton had written to members of the media for two years, and Szymanski was the first to publish Lawton’s charges and complaints. In the article Lawton was quoted as saying three inmates were dead because of improper medical treatment. Szymanski wrote that Lawton was “stuck in a federal pen worse than Abu Ghraib.”

  The article described the grisly death of inmate Shifflett, who died on March 25, 2005. Szymanski wrote how he was suffering from cancer, spit up blood and tissue for more than a week, and then was left unattended by prison authorities until he died in his cell. He also described the unnecessary death of James Arch on September 15, 2004. Finally, news of their untimely deaths reached the public.

  In the article Szymanski quoted Lawton as to how a third inmate, a man by the name of Harris, died in his cell after receiving inadequate treatment. And finally he told the story of the inmate with no legs who was left to sit in a pool of urine and feces.

  Concluded the article, “I want people in America to know that we have our own Abu Ghraib right here in our own backyard.”

  The article concluded with Lawton’s address in Edgefield.

  *

  After the publication of the article, Lawton became the talk of the prison, even by the guards. With the reputation of the prison at stake, in a last-ditch attempt to stop his letter writing, the prison staff tried bribery.

  One day Lawton was sitting on the yard smoking on a cigar when one of the prison administrators came up to him and asked him, “Why are you doing this? Why don’t you stop?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Lawton.

  “You keep writing these people.”

  “I’ll stop writing when you do your job right,” said Lawton.

  “Just stop writing,” said the administrator, “and we’ll give you your own cell in another prison. Anywhere you want. A single cell. We’ll even give you a get out of jail free card.” In other words, the next time Lawton was caught breaking prison rules, he’d get a free pass.

  “Just stop writing,” said the administrator.

  “Why are you coming to me?” asked Lawton. “I’m a lowly inmate. Why don’t you just answer those senators who are talking about me now?”

  On September 7, 2005 Lawton wrote to Sen. Graham about yet another death at the prison. John Moore died in the SHU at age 43. Lawton didn’t know why he died, but he requested an inquiry.

  On September 8, he wrote to Sen. Bill Nelson asking to see a prison doctor. He also said he found out the prison has egg-shell mattresses for prisoners with bad backs. But the prison had refused to give him one.

  In the letter he wrote, “A while back the executive assistant to the warden told me, ‘I don’t give a fuck who you write. Go write your senator. They never listen to inmates.’”

  He concluded, “I have two years left. Please hold someone accountable for the crimes being committed here.”

  *

  Once Lawton’s claims reached the public, the beatings stopped. The bad treatment stopped. Warden LaManna’s only remedy was to transfer him, which he did. LaManna sent Lawton to the medium security prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

  The policy was that an inmate was not supposed to be sent more than five hundred miles from their home. Longer than that was considered a hardship for relatives who might want to visit. Yet Yazoo was more than a thousand miles away from Lawton’s relatives in Florida.

  “I really thought I’d go to Yazoo and do my time quietly and get out,” said Lawton, “but LaManna figured out a way to continue to make my life miserable. He decided I needed to be fucked with a little longer, so Rick Brawley, the unit manager at Edgefield, got promoted to head of SIS at Yazoo.”

  Lawton, keeping his nose clean and minding his own business, was on the Yazoo yard for a month, when Brawley trumped up a charge and threw him in the hole.

  CHAPTER 13

  Yazoo and Forest City

  To get to Yazoo City, Mississippi from Edgefield, South Carolina, Lawton first had to travel to his former home, the Atlanta Penitentiary, where he wondered whether his harsh treatment would continue. He didn�
�t have long to find out. He was crowded into a two-man cell with five other prisoners. He had barely had time to get comfortable when a staff member barked at him, “Take that towel down.”

  The towel was lying on his bed. Apparently having a towel on the bed was against regulations.

  “Are you kidding me?” said Lawton. “You’re worried about that towel when we have five guys in a two-man cell?”

  The staff member called the guards.

  “Take him to the hole,” he ordered.

  Lawton was taken from his cell, not knowing whether he was going to the hold-over hole, or to the much more restrictive prison hole. When he got on an elevator, he knew he was in trouble. He was headed, he knew, for the prison’s hole.

  As a holdover inmate, Lawton was not supposed to go to Atlanta’s hole. Lawton was only a holdover prisoner, but Lawton was sure someone must have seen his record as being a troublemaker, and they put him in a cell by himself naked. The temperature hovered around 55 degrees. His teeth were chattering.

  Sure the goon squad was going to come in and beat him, he was filled with fright the entire time he was there. They never came.

  The next day he was relieved when he was put back into the holdover unit. A week later he was finally transferred to the prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi, a medium security facility.

  When Lawton arrived at Yazoo City, he became aware that gangs ran the place.

  “You always felt tension on the yard in Yazoo,” said Lawton, “because you never knew when something was going to jump off. You could feel the tension in the air. When you’re a convict you can feel something is going to go down. It’s like a sixth sense. You watch the way the inmates dress. If a guy usually wears flip flops at night, and all of a sudden one evening he’s wearing sneakers, look out. Or if he has two tee shirts on, maybe he’s hiding a magazine under there as body armor against getting stabbed.”