This morning, after my exercise, I took an opportunity to access the prison email system here at the Atwater Federal Prison Camp. Since I do not have access to the Internet, my wife, Carole, monitors my online presence. Sometimes she passes along messages from readers and she asks that I respond. Today I received a [...]
The federal criminal code empowers prosecutors in ways that few citizens understand. The code has grown to such an extent that business people can become ensnared in problems with the criminal justice system despite having no criminal intent, or even knowledge that their actions broke criminal laws. As John R. Emshwiller and Gary Fields reported [...]
Newspapers reported on some action in the Supreme Court last week. As a prisoner, I have some thoughts. On Wednesday, 3/21/2012, Justice Kennedy authored an opinion concerning defendants’ rights to effective counsel during plea negotiations, and Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan joined him to make the decision law. The far right faction of the [...]
Michael has a new article on the Huffington Post: I Want My Human Rights Too! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-santos/i-want-my-human-rights-to_b_1376951.html Print PDF
A case manager at the Atwater Federal Prison Camp told me that the system worked. He said that my having “worked my way down” from a United States Penitentiary, to medium-security prisons, to low-security prisons, to federal prison camps proved that it could be done. I told him that I didn’t agree with his assessment. [...]
Citizens from numerous other countries frequently write to Michael to voice their opinions of the U.S. prison system as it compares to the justice/prison system in their home countries. The overwhelming message conveyed by these global citizens is that America’s love affair with long-term, mass incarceration of its population is disgraceful. Here’s an interesting review [...]
Dear Friends, Top members of Congress are secretly meeting now to try to figure out how to jam through a dangerous bill before Christmas. Their main focus? Legislation authorizing this president and all future presidents to order the U.S. military to pick up and imprison people, including U.S. citizens — without charging them or putting [...]
My sister relayed news to me that President Obama commuted the sentence of one federal prisoner. I’m happy for the woman who soon will return to her family. As far as I know, the woman would have been the first prison sentence that the president has commuted since he took office. With regard to the [...]
For the first time in all the years that I’ve been incarcerated, I saw guards randomly interrupt visits in order to search the vehicles that visitors drove. It was a very strange sight. My wife told me that each time she visits she signs a form that gives consent to have her vehicle searched. Still, [...]
Original article at HuffingtonPost.com I was extremely disappointed to read that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of my friend, Greg Reyes. We became friends while he served his sentence inside the federal prison camp in Taft, California. For 11 months, we spent a portion of every day talking and I learned a great [...]
