Lifers discuss views from inside

The rivers have flowed here since long before the prison was built, and they will be here… The rivers have flowed here since long before the prison was built, and they will be here long after it is dust. But that’s little consolation to the men spending the rest of their lives within walls topped with razor wire.

In Pennsylvania, criminal defendants convicted of a first- or second-degree murder, but not sentenced to death, automatically receive natural life sentences without the possibility of parole. Pennsylvania, Louisiana, South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa and Maine are currently the only states in the union where life truly must mean life.

If you’re a “lifer” in the State Correctional Institution at Pittsburgh, on the city’s North Side, and you’re lucky enough to be able to see the Ohio, the Allegheny, or the Monongahela, the view is not uplifting, and the days are not cinematic. They can’t be summed up with the unwavering hope of a “Shawshank Redemption” or the animalistic brutality of HBO’s “Oz.” Many a lifer will die after long decades, without their Hollywood ending.

But there are voices calling through the walls and fences — the voices of men serving life here who gather each week in a prison room to conduct meetings of the Lifers Association. Using the procedures of Roberts Rules of Order, these men use their voices each meeting to advocate for prison system reform and lifer freedom, and to use their actions as a stabilizing force in a place where hope can be hard to come by.

Association member James Ashanta Sullivan — age 59, 31 years served — can boil down a meeting.

“When it comes to the cats you see here tonight, in a nutshell, basically we’re the ones who didn’t go over the edge. A lot of the guys in here have got locked up in the hole forever and don’t ever come out,” he said.

According to Ed Logan — age 56, 33 years served — the psychological trauma of doing life in prison is just as hard on an inmate’s family. His siblings came to visit him in the beginning, but during his first decade of time served, their trips trickled away to nothing — an experience echoed by many other lifers and something he blames on the harsh stigma that comes with a relative serving time for a violent crime.

“[People] don’t realize that when a person goes to prison, you’re not only putting yourself in prison, but you’re putting your whole family and the people you’re associated with, because [of] guilt by association.”

This withering strain on family relationships is most evident in the bare confines of the visiting room. For Lifers Association President Richard Diggs, the structured visits, which are closely monitored by prison guards whose primary function is not to be sociable, can be emotionally devastating.

“When you’re sitting here, if you have, like in our cases as lifers, any of our family members that [have] stuck with us for 15 to 20 years, they’re just as hurt, just as tired, and just as frustrated. And sometimes they come down here and they just want to cry. And when you rub your hand on the back of their shoulder while they’re crying, your visit is subject to be terminated, depending on the officer,” Diggs said.

About 900 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, sitting on the muddy banks of the Mississippi River, are 18,000 acres of former slave plantation land in Louisiana known as “The Farm.” The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the largest state maximum-security prison in the country and, with roughly 85 percent of lifers dying within its walls, the best functioning example of enforcing sentences of life without parole.

For lifers in Pennsylvania, a pardon or commutation from the governor is the key to freedom. Since the 1979 departure of Governor Milton Shapp, who oversaw a relatively progressive era of pardoning lifers and prison reform, those keys have been used with increasing rarity. According to the Pennsylvania Prison Society, since former governor Robert Casey left office in 1995, only one person — out of a current state lifer population of about 3,900 — has had a sentence commuted.

“By mere fact of there only being [five] other states with that sentencing structure, it makes one wonder if there is different meaning of life in other states,” Diggs said. “I mean, why wouldn’t they have some universal code?”

As part of the quest for pardons or commutations of their sentences, lifers are subject to reviews, by a board, of their crimes, to see what they have done with their time while serving their sentences. According to Lifers Association members, even if they keep a clean record — while serving in an environment rife with violence and substance temptation — these reviews often focus on the violence of their crimes, rather than any attempt at self-improvement.

“The community wants to see some restitution for whatever the situation that they assume brought you here, but you never get a chance, because what happens is if you’re not just godly given, I mean the spirit is just really trying to be cool,” Sullivan said. “I’ve been here 31 years, and the last time I had a fight was 30 years ago, and I’ve been living in places where combat is, you know — this is gladiator school.”

Two years ago, state Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, introduced a resolution in the state Senate that would form a task force to study future health care cost alternatives for the Pennsylvania prison population, which is among the nation’s oldest. He put the cost to the state of housing older inmates in the system at between $75 and $80 thousand per person, per year. In 2002, state prisons held almost 1900 inmates between the ages of 55 and 92, according to a public statement by Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard.

Financial motivation, according to Diggs, plays a large part in Pennsylvania’s membership in the six-state no-parole group.

“There’s an economic value behind this in Pennsylvania, unfortunately, that people get caught up into with the politics of it,” he said. “For a prisoner, the economic value is anywhere from $26 to $32 thousand and, in most instances behind the lifer situation, I believe they can run as high as $96 thousand per year in hospital care, medication treatment, and so forth. This is borne upon the taxpayers, of which our families, the vast majority of us, having working members.”

According to PPS Director of Volunteer Services Jim Smith, the way state prison money is spent has changed over the past few decades. He said a “building spree” of prisons during the 1980s, with a renewed focus on high security, played a large part in the decrease or outright elimination of vocational training and educational programs for lifers. He commented that, while it was “good for safety, it was bad for programming,” since lifer inmates had fewer and fewer productive activities to occupy their time.

When he came to prison in 1968, David Myrick — age 53, 36 years served — had access to vocational training in a welding or carpentry shop and the possibility of earning his college degree. Today, younger lifers like Bryan Turton (29, 7 years served) say that even if he was pardoned, because of the lack of training opportunities for lifers, simply “pushing a mop” during his years inside would ill prepare him for maintaining a productive life in the outside world.

“Sometimes people lose focus to how can any one of us men ever get to show we’re remorseful for what we’ve done,” Turton said. “I’m repenting in the best way available to us in this institution, which isn’t much, because when they came, they had the opportunity to go to college. I didn’t have none. No [general equivalency diploma] or nothing, and that’s it.”

According to Diggs, it’s no coincidence that the prison system is populated, by and large, by undereducated and financially poor individuals — and that it’s no mystery why they remain there.

“For the vast majority of us, we had public defenders,” he said. “You’re looking at the results, because of lack of preparation, lack of defense and lack of money to compete with the prosecution.”

“The average one of us has some gist of the law some ten years later, with regard to what was done to us and how to go about it, and we are denied access to courts,” he added.

For Kurt Grubschmidt, a local attorney who attends Lifers Association meetings, a system set up to make freedom for Pennsylvania lifers nearly impossible may make some people sleep better at night.

But, he says, those same people should be wary.

“Well, they’d rather jail 10 innocents than let one guilty go free,” he said. “That fear that you’ll have another ‘Mud Man,’ that you’ll let someone out and he’ll kill someone, it’s just hobbled process,” he said.

“You know, my sister is a corporate lawyer, and when I was first getting into law, she gave me a good piece of advice. She said, ‘Those doors to your rights swing in two directions, and some day you might end up on the wrong side, and you want those doors to work,'” he added.

For lifers like Sullivan, maintaining hope that one day he may walk free beyond those doors keeps him focused and, more importantly, sane.

“The only hope that a lifer has in Pennsylvania is that he stays healthy,” he said. “That’s the only hope he has. Outside of that, legislators and all of this, they have a lot of window dressing, but almost after Milton Shapp left, it seemed like all hope left. Hopefully, Rendell will open the door again.”

“Lifers really are the backbone here,” he added. “This probably stretches across this state, but I know in here, if it don’t be for some of the older guys talking to some of the younger guys, this joint would be under just total chaos.”

For Diggs, outsiders should take this positive social role for lifers within the prison into consideration, instead of dismissing all lifers as inherently violent and unworthy of their freedom.

“You ask most anybody in the [Department of Corrections] or [who has] worked around prisoners for any length of time, and they will tell you lifers are the stabilizing force in prison,” he said.

“Now, has it really gotten to the point where you would really rather have the lifers do the guards’ job? Because if that’s the case, why not put them out there, so they can raise and change some of these kids on the streets.”

Soon, because of state budget cuts, facility age and overcrowding, SCI Pittsburgh will close, and many inmates will probably be transferred to a new 672,000-square foot, 2,000- inmate SCI-facility overlooking the Monongahela River in Luzerne, Fayette County. For lifers, it will be a bus trip to continue a long wait within new razor-wire-topped walls by the shores of the river.