A Proxy Loss

I spent months watching Rodney Carr's case, before a judge this week shot down his claim of actual innocence. The decision came as a blow for Rodney and his legal team, of course, but even I, from my slight remove as Rodney's former coworker and close acquaintance, experienced the ruling as a gut punch.

Rodney was convicted of capital murder in connection with the death of a guard during a 1983 prison riot, but the consensus among others who were confined to Moberly Correctional Center at the time was that Rodney wasn't involved. He was in for stealing a car. He ran with a bad crowd, yes, but he was no killer. Guys he associated with did the deed while Rodney himself was reportedly elsewhere. This didn't stop officials from gathering false statements (which they later recanted) to engineer all the convictions they could and ensure that the unspoken message was widely received: This is what happens when one of you fucks with one of us.

Other than sharing similar charges and sentences, my case is almost nothing like Rodney's. I do believe that we're both innocent of the crimes we were convicted of. And for that reason, it's only been natural to talk with Rodney about our respective progress on the rough and winding road to justice. Who else could understand being wrongfully convicted, save someone who's living it?

Rodney has a good team of lawyers. (We even share one in common.) They've worked on his case for years. Monday's ruling came as a heavy blow for them as well. All those sleepless nights and early mornings spent reading, traveling, investigating, writing—all to end in a ruling seemingly cut and pasted from what the attorney general filed. I can't know how that feels.

What I do know is, on the verge of filing my own habeas corpus petition, arguing the minutiae of claims that the state withheld evidence, suborned perjury, and so much more, I am profoundly invested. I fear that, if Rodney couldn't win back his freedom even with newly discovered evidence, witness recantations, and proof of prosecutors' Brady violations, what might my own odds be? Do I have a chance, or is all this pining and striving for freedom a futile endeavor?

It's a dark thought. And it's a thought that, I remind myself, is ultimately meaningless. I am not Rodney Carr. His case is not my case. Rosy ideals of precedent notwithstanding, each decision made by the courts exists in a vacuum defined by particularities and unique circumstance. I have seen all-but-identical cases decided in vastly different ways, depending on (one may assume) whether or not a judge ate lunch before reaching their decision.

Justice truly is blind. She often can't see the facts when they're held right up to her face. But good reasons for hope still exist.

I have a team of lawyers working dedicatedly for my release from this unjust confinement. Nonprofit organizations have paid for experts to review evidence and examine new issues. Evidence that proves my innocence is mounting, and the legal mechanisms we can use to establish the truth are relatively clear. What happened in Rodney's case has no bearing on mine. I need to remember that.

Stranger in a Strange Land: A Dream for the Future

Completely stopped on the freeway during rush hour, I put the car in park, take out my phone, and begin recording a TikTok video. I talk into the camera about the happiness this standstill inspires in me. I explain that, in prison, I would yearn to have exactly this sort of moment to myself, and how being in my own vehicle now—although momentarily kept from going anywhere in it—represents such a wonderful level of freedom that I'm compelled to express my joy in a video.

After I get home, I use the subject of my TikTok video as a jumping-off point for a bonus episode of my podcast. Some of the episodes are topical, addressing the challenges I face as a retuning citizen, but what I most enjoy is recontextualizing mundane experiences and everyday nuisances. I like sowing in listeners (I hope) the seeds of gratitude for our astonishing, precious lives.

Before the day is out, I edit and upload the podcast. I see that my rush-hour TikTok video has seven heart reactions and a thumbs-up emoji. It's a start. It's also purely theoretical.

No, you haven't missed any big news; I'm still in prison. The scenario described above is pure imagination. It's something I've considered for a while. I often think about how to make the most of my wrongful imprisonment after I'm finally exonerated. People who engage with the formerly imprisoned have told me that the people who most successfully reintegrate are the ones who lean in to their experiences, openly sharing what their time in the system taught them. It makes sense. That's how I arrived at this social media concept I call "Stranger in a Strange Land."

I envision it as a series of videos and writings that document my return to society after more than two decades. The thinking goes like this: if I can synthesize the lessons of my twenty-odd years of imprisonment into a public-facing platform, my story can be of benefit to others. I could share how I found purpose, meaning, and deep happiness despite terrible circumstances. I could offer people perspective. I might even spark inspiration in the process.

The world looks today very much like what British wordsmith William Burgess had in mind when he wrote A Clockwork Orange. One term he used in that book, "real horrorshow," could substitute for any news headline, any day of the week. That's the view from where I sit, anyway. More than a few people agree. I suspect, though, that despite the attachment people feel to their doomscrolling and hyperbolic echo chambers, it might be worthwhile to buck the trend by creating alternate narratives. That's how I envision "Stranger in a Strange Land": a possible antidote to the hatemongering and hyperactivity that seem to dominate contemporary society.

In addition to being a therapeutic outlet, I see potential here for an extension of my Zen practice. My camera could linger in moments of mundane beauty—an iridescent puddle on the sidewalk, a caterpillar climbing a tree, the sinuous curves of a snowbank, water circling the sink drain—either accompanied by commentary or silently meditative. The feed would offer prompts for everyday awe, and highlight things I missed during my decades of imprisonment. In this way, I might expose people to otherwise invisible reasons for gratitude.

And of course all of this would tie in with my desire to speak to audiences about thriving amid life's travails. Monologues and interesting, intelligent conversations with thoughtful guests (I'm thinking here of writers, philosophers, meditators, other former prisoners, and more) would help to elevate the podcast above so much of what's out there.

Post-release video content can find popularity. Just look at the accounts of ex-prisoners like Keri Blakinger, Dontrell Britton, or Morgan Godvin. Each has a unique style and focus, and there are quite a few others putting stuff online these days. Some are earnest, some are serious, but all of them did time and now use the experience to engage with people in a positive way. I'd love for "Stranger in a Strange Land" to be an extension of that. A guy can dream, can't he?

Another Degree of Infamy

Another podcast addressed the death of Anastasia WitbolsFeugen last week. It went up on YouTube a few days later. Unlike last time, I had nothing to do with this one—Crime Junkie—because my legal team doesn't want any distractions as we prepare for a major court filing. I'm told that the Crime Junkie people did a fair job of discussing the case, considering they only had an hour-long episode. Just the same, I'm glad I didn't have to hear or see it.

As infrequently as I speak about my case, or about the senseless pair of deaths that preceded it, I feel that it's been more than enough. I'm tired of rehashing the same events, answering the same questions, and changing nothing, least of all the minds of people who think fact is subordinate to feeling. Arguing against that kind of stubborn ignorance is utterly exhausting.

I know I'll have to speak again, maybe next time in court. When that happens, I imagine it will be a high-pressure experience—even more so than the first time, and accordingly nervewracking. But at least it should be for a judge who won't be as easily swayed as some people by my onetime girlfriend's incoherent fictions. At least it should require no speculation. At least it should lead to something valuable—more so, anyway, than vacuous publicity.

As "The Real Killer"'s Third Season Comes to an End, I Have Some Thoughts

Attention being drawn to my case by The Real Killer is, arguably, a good thing. Continued interest at least hints at a reason for hope. The way Leah Rothman's been setting out the facts seems a little scattershot, but the Jackson County Sheriff's Department investigation lasted almost four years, the facts do tend to sprawl.

I've always preferred putting everything on the table and letting people decide for themselves whether mine is a cause worth getting involved with. That is basically what The Real Killer has been doing over the past thirteen weeks. Messy? Sure, but at least it's honest.

Comparatively, people who believe (or desperately want to believe) that I'm guilty take the opposite tack when it comes to their argument strategy. The anti-Byrons call up the worst aspects of my polarizing teenage personality, cite out-of-context case document excerpts, invent unsubstantiated and often outlandish "facts," then wave it all around like a bloody handkerchief, shouting to all the world that their case against me is airtight.

I do wonder what conversation about the podcast has taken place in that camp. I hear occasional snippets of what passes for communication on The Real Killer's Instagram feed, and it seems like more of what it's always been: some people consider the facts and come away with the sense of my innocence; some watch video of my interviews and hiss, "He's got no soul!"

Everyone's got opinions, but the podcast itself keeps them to a merciful minimum. Anastasia's sisters said in a recent episode that they believe my accuser, in part, because she's stuck to the same story for twenty-four years. I have only this rebuttal: if time invested in maintaining a stance was the measure of its legitimacy, my innocence should be of no question. I've stuck with the truth since investigators first asked me if I was involved with Stasia's death. That was in October of 1997, three and a half years before Kelly Moffett made up her story. How could time convince you that Kelly's being truthful, but not that I am? This is the double standard I'm pitted against—another example of the injustice I've now fought more than half my life.

Listeners have been promised that the podcast's finale is coming soon, that The Real Killer is now taking a short break. What that last episode might be, I can only guess. I've been waiting for disappointment ever since I listened to the very first episode. Other shows' outcomes, even the half-hearted shrug that was MTV's Unlocking the Truth, have instilled in me a bit of pessimism. My approach with The Real Killer has been one of nonjudgment. Week after week, I refrained from guessing what direction the podcast was heading, the whole time half-expecting a hard left turn, as it veers away from Leah Rothman's relatively straightforward reportage.

At the moment I'm typing this, that turn has yet to come. While there are some small things about the podcast I take issue with, they're trifles, not important enough to speak out against or even mention here. Some of them are simply products of dramatic necessity. Leah's got to keep listener numbers up and her sponsors happy. The podcast is, after all, primarily a form of entertainment.

Like everyone who's faithfully listened every Thursday as new episodes drop, I'm waiting with anticipation to see how The Real Killer concludes. You could say I'm waiting for a miracle; I'm waiting for justice, after all.

Vision Quest

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's one of many things I remember learning in high school... which later came to be revealed as bullshit.

Okay, so it's true and accurate in the realm of Newtonian physics, the context in which it was taught. What I'm saying, though, is that the ratio of effort to outcome is almost never one-to-one.

We could strive for years and years, investing perhaps time, perhaps money, perhaps blood, sweat, and tears, and nevertheless meet meager rewards in the end. This is why I can't get behind the concept of "manifesting," which says a person must only visualize and focus sufficiently in order to realize their dreams. If you wind up with underwhelming results, the manifesting metaphysician will say that you just didn't want it enough.

But let's try something. Consider the failures, those who go to their deaths without realizing their lifelong dream: the father who works his ass off to leave a legacy for his kids, the restaurateur who labors night and day to keep her little bistro afloat, the writer who spends decades trying to get her novel published. Could you look any of these strivers in the eye, in their final moments, and tell them they just didn't want it enough? If so, you're not just naïve, you're also heartless. I suspect that the rest of us—even the manifesters—recognize a fundamental flaw in this logic of sufficient desire.

Venturing to achieve something, we ignore other necessary factors at our peril. Timing, some say, is everything. But obviously, you need more than just favorable moments. There's also means to consider. You've got to possess the mental, physical, economic, or spiritual capacity to achieve the goal. Motivation, ability, and circumstances have to coincide in that beautiful dance we call serendipity. Without all three elements, you're left flailing alone in a corner somewhere, likely the target of disapproving stares.

I've visualized my exoneration in dreams, in idle moments of mundane afternoons, in fraught periods of prison nonsense, and at a thousand other times, in almost as many different ways. I've envisioned innumerable variations of the moment when I exit the facility. I've pictured the countless potential lives into which I move afterward. I've thought about what I might wear. I've wondered whether I should abstain from drinking alcohol. I've imagined an altar in a home where a future me sits zazen every morning. I've ruminated over the feasibility of a modern life without a cellphone (or at least a smartphone). I have an active imagination. Still, I'm sure I haven't thought of everything.

Have I focused hard enough? Are my visualizations worthy of the dreams materializing? Is this what manifesting freedom looks like? Out of a purely contrarian spirit, I'm inclined to say I haven't, they aren't, and it isn't. I haven't even taken time to construct a vision board. Maybe the Missouri court system will overlook that and base its ruling on the facts of the case.

A New Hope

A motion to undo my wrongful conviction was filed in the Missouri Court of Appeals in December. Katie Moore, the reporter for The Kansas City Star who interviewed me for her article about the filing, wanted to know how it felt to have my case back in court for the first time in thirteen years. Was I hopeful, she wanted to know.

I'd begun the interview feeling prepared to answer any question she asked about my case. That question, though, caught me by surprise. Was I hopeful?

For a stretch of recent history, having hope has been considered a blessing. Philosophers and theologians in our modern age tend to believe that hope is a great virtue. But older cultures had a different view. The ancient Greeks, for instance, considered hope an especially nasty flavor of self-deception, a corrupting evil. That age-old story about Pandora opening the box containing all the world's woes? (It was actually a jar, not a box, but whatever.) Hope was in there, unloosed upon the earth thanks to Pandora's curiosity, to humanity's great torment. An Italian proverb holds that a person who "lives by hope will die by despair." Referencing this, Addison wrote, "If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is." Although a young Nietzsche wasn't too keen on hope, either, he did come around in his later years. By the end of his essay on the ultimate futility of life, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus accepted hope, but only begrudgingly. The biblical proverb about hope deferred could provide the basis to an argument against hope. A comparable notion can be found in Buddhist teachings, which hold that wishing circumstances be otherwise ignores reality, the opposite of an enlightened mindset. Although there's been a general shift toward the line that hope is a good thing, it's not without detractors. There's always a cynic somewhere. I know because I used to be one. "Byron the Black-Hearted, Dark Cliffs upon Which the Waves of Hope Break," one clever friend dubbed me. I'll just say, you don't get that kind of moniker bestowed on you for being fun at parties. If that was then, what am I now? I want out of prison, of course, but I no longer feel desperate for that outcome. It's been so long since I had a fighting chance at freedom. Since my lawyers' filed our motion to the court, a chance has presented itself. I feel like a dog with a grape in its mouth – Is it food or is it a toy? – and I don't really know what to do. The poet Marianne Moore wrote, "Hope isn't hope until all grounds to hope have vanished." (I've probably quoted that line on this blog before; what can I say except I like it that much?) I don't know what Moore intended by it, exactly, but her line nevertheless makes sense to me. You can't truly know hope until you've stared into the abyss – which, as Nietzsche famously wrote, stares also back into you – then continued moving forward anyway.

Right now, I'm just moving.

Back in Court, Back in the News

Before yesterday, the last media interview I did was with a podcaster, ten years ago, on the subject of my then-newly published book, The Pariah's Syntax (from which this blog takes its name). Then Monday rolled around, and I gave another.

Kansas City Star journalist Katie Moore got me on the phone to talk about the filing of a long-awaited motion by my lawyers, who've been working on the details of this 130-something-page document for months. In the motion they lay out evidence of the fraud that the Jackson County Prosecutors Office committed in order convict me of a murder that probably never happened, the 1997 death of my friend Anastasia WitbolsFeugen. We show how the state withheld evidence, conspired to falsify documents, suborned perjury, and more – all to close a case that authorities felt had remained open for too long.

Ms. Moore had questions to ask about the facts of the case, of course. It might sound weird, but these feel secondary to the reality of my imprisonment. The narrative of my case has been related again and again, in story after story, and seems at this point to have lost a lot of its former import. 22 October, 1997, exists in a past that's now over half of my lifetime away, so forgive me for feeling somewhat detached from it. Nevertheless, I trudged though yet another recitation of the facts. Where things got tough was in talking about my friends Anastasia and Justin, both of whom I lost in such a sudden, ugly way. My voice broke unexpectedly as I remembered them. My throat tightened. It's been so long, yet I still consider the months that I squandered in the company of those two kids as being among the happiest of my otherwise difficult teenage years. "Are you okay, Byron?" one of my lawyers asked. I wasn't sure then; I'm not sure now.

Ms. Moore's story was published today. More importantly, my lawyers also filed their motion. At the time of this writing, I haven't read either one. I can't fathom the most likely outcome of either, but you can find the former online at kcstar.com.

Half Life

Not to say that I've dreaded it, but I have not looked forward to today. After this, the balance tips. A younger, more pessimistic version of myself might've offered up a grim little quip in response – something ironic like, "It's all downhill from here." My perspective now is a bit broader than it used to be. Still, by this time tomorrow, and for every day that follows, unless my circumstances drastically change, I will have spent more time in prison than I've spent free.

Forty-four years after my birth, and twenty-two after my wrongful arrest, today marks the midway point between two important dates – a mathematical truth with which I'm finding difficulty coming fully to terms. It seems only logical that someone who's spent the greater part of his adult life imprisoned would be substantially changed (not to say wounded; not to say stunted; not to say irreparably damaged) by the fact, but I'm less concerned with what effects such a long period of imprisonment has wrought than I am with how one should feel about crossing this particular threshold. That distinction is one of immediacy. I have the rest of my life to deal with results, but in the here and the now my mind is reeling with conflicting thoughts.

We humans are pattern-seeking creatures. In the absence of visible order, we endeavor to impose our own. The zodiac, numerology, the I Ching, Libertarianism, psychology, Freemasonry, and other disparate systems represent society's attempts to wrangle reality into a quantifiable order, to make predictable the apparent chaos of our universe. To what extent they succeed can (and will) be argued elsewhere, by someone else. My concern is what to do about 2 September.

Surely this date means something, or should mean something. An anniversary is observed with intent, but this isn't an anniversary. An expiration date serves to predict a product's usability, but I'm not expiring, and neither is my sentence of life without parole. What, then, does 2 September represent? What is its ultimate import, and what is the most healthy way to process something of that significance? And so, uncertainty.

Like California's electrical grid, I've been experiencing rolling periods of inactivity. For several days in a row, at times when I should be most active and alive, I've experienced the greatest strain. Motivation is low. There's a strong desire to sleep more. The tendency is to pessimism. On Wednesday, rather than risk irritation with my coworkers, I chose to take a half day off. I washed some laundry, read forty pages of a sociology text, then sat in meditation, hoping that by setting an intention to befriend, and thereby release, the worry, resentment, and inferiority that arise when I think about 2 September, I might go forward without its weight on my back, no longer moved to be surly and uncommunicative with people because of something I alone feel. I don't know if it helped or not.

Oftentimes, the only way out is through. There's no breath exercise that will blow this insidious feeling away. Like a storm, it probably just has to be weathered. That's cold comfort for a man out in the rain, but it is a truth. Tomorrow I'll wake up and see the world with eyes made new by the myriad subtle changes that happen in every moment, always. There's some solace in that and in the hope that it engenders – that the me who wakes up on 3 September easily finds the path forward and takes his step with grace and dignity.

What Future?

Maybes and what-ifs don't get us very far. While its possible to predict, to a limited degree, what'll happen in the next few minutes, at the end of the movie, or in tomorrow's Zoom meeting, what happens next is unknowable. Anxiety and expectation remove us from the here and now, transporting our minds to a realm of fantasy that we call the future. Tomorrow is an obscure subject, even less trustworthy than a dream. Even so, I can't help but let my thoughts run away with me as I prepare to file a habeas corpus petition in the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Habeas corpus (literally "have the body," from Latin) is a legal process in which, basically, a prisoner shows the court why no legal reason exists for them to be held. In my case there are several of these reasons, based on newly discovered evidence, that show my accuser's tale of murder to be the fabrication that it is. Since a blog post wouldn't be a prudent venue to divulge particulars, suffice it to say that my issues are significant. They could well get me out of prison.

While being mindful not to lose myself in fanciful ideas, I still find it hard not to think about how life would be if I were suddenly released. A life untethered! Free, after twenty-one years in captivity! What would that look like for me, now? Dare I even imagine it? Against my best judgment, I dare. Exactly where would I live? What would I do for work? What kind of schedule would I keep? Would writing still play a big role in my life? How involved might I get with a real-world Buddhist community? What kind of car would I drive? Would I consent to reconnecting with old friends who dropped out of contact during my decades in prison? How mindfully would I shop? Would I expose any of my day-to-day life on social media? From the crucial to the trivial, nothing escapes notice when you're thinking of how to create a fully fledged life from scratch. Without chastising myself for having these thoughts, I gently explore them, peering into their motivations and conditions, watch their rising and falling away. In thinking about these (largely material, often insignificant) matters, I smile generously at my own habitual grasping. I've said before that prison's what you make it. Anyone being intellectually honest has to agree that there are far worse places to be trapped. Naturally, the philosopher in me asks, "What's out there that you don't have here?" If you're shocked, you don't understand the question. It's rhetorical. This is not an effort to talk myself into or out of anything. I'm just challenging myself, offering up a test, checking up. It's not pass/fail, it's just the stuff of an examined life, the kind we're told is the best lived. I've said before that there isn't much else of use that this environment can teach me, and I still stand by that assessment. Of course, even with the most solidly ironclad evidence, filing for a writ of habeas corpus can be a crap shoot. I'm not building myself up to be knocked down – not again. This time, I'm looking as much at possible futures as I'm looking at the here and now. What can I do, today, in this moment, to reap the most benefit for everyone? Whatever the answer is in a given moment, that's what I do. And then I'll do something else. Then something else.

Driving down an unlit highway late at night, you can't see past the reach of the headlights, but you can make the entire journey that way. Our lives are like that, too, whether we're moving at 75 miles per hour or sitting in a concrete box.

The Difference Between Acceptance and Institutionalization (And Why I Still Want Out of Prison)

People first coming to prison enter a world of pain and anxiety. Even the biggest badass passes through the gates with a sense of trepidation, unsure about what, exactly, he's walking into. Will there be violence? (Answer: almost certainly.) Will personal dignity be threatened at every turn? (Without a doubt.) Will privacy become a dimly remembered vestige of a past life? (Do you really have to ask?) Depending on the kind of person you let prison mold you into, your fear will probably transmute as the years go by – into either get-them-before-they-get-you aggression or some species of outright paranoia. Neither is pretty, and neither serves very well the person feeling them. They're nothing more than survival tactics. I've said this many, many times before: survival is very different from living.

Anything can become a habit, and I'll venture to say that more destructive habits exist in the world than constructive ones. It's no different for prisoners. If anything, people in prison have a higher-than-average tendency to develop self-destructive, dangerous, or otherwise gross habits. Blame it on laziness, mental illness, poor coping skills, life experience, hopelessness, or any combination thereof. The walls and fences can't talk, but these environs seem to suggest, to all of us hemmed in by them, that operating from a continual state of desperation is a valid solution to our woes. Therefore we face a decision every time we wake to the sight of these concrete walls. The choice seems simple: succumb or resist. Although few consider it, there is a third option. When you're frazzled, at your wits' end, and nothing in the world seems to want to go your way, it's possible to make a conscious decision to be okay with it, to look at your situation with equanimity and say, "Well, this is how stuff is right now, so I'll ride it out." This isn't some next-level Buddha shit, but it is a tricky skill to develop. I started doing zazen (seated meditation) about three years ago, and I can't say whether it's made much difference in my patience. I certainly haven't become the embodiment of serenity or anything. For my ability to face with calm demeanor – even happiness – most of what the days subject me to, I attribute my broad perspective.

Right now, I'm not in pain. I'm not crying with grief. I don't fear for my life. My stomach isn't growling with hunger. I'm not even all that warm, even though it's the middle of June. I'm sitting calmly, with a clear mind, things are pretty quiet, and I'm sharing with my fellow humans a bit of wisdom that I've realized. Things are okay. Let me say that again, so that the full meaning of this radical phrase can sink in. I'm in a maximum-security prison, and I'm telling you that I'm doing pretty good. You probably think I'm out of my mind. Far from it. Let me be clear about this. In my situation, radical acceptance does not equate to institutionalization. For a person to become institutionalized, they must forget how to function outside of prison, where "three hots and a cot" are guaranteed and you don't even need a job to get by. Institutionalization means that a person has given in, capitulated, allowed themselves to be reduced to the very thing that the system considers them – a convict, a number, a criminal. I don't think of myself as any of these things. They haven't broken me.

I look at the day and see promise. I laugh at the absurdities that make other prisoners so angry. I don't get wrapped up in gossip, which just fuels dissatisfaction. And I certainly don't follow the news, which basically guarantees you a miserable morning. I hardly watch TV anymore, in fact. A good movie will sometimes come on; otherwise, I stick with books and podcasts for my leisure-time enjoyments. If I got out of prison tomorrow (something I dearly want), I'd do fine. I'm driven, creative, responsible, and adaptable. I shine especially brightly when challenged. Even my social skills are better now than they were twenty-one years ago, when I was wrongfully arrested for a crime I never committed. Whatever livelihood I sought to undertake, I'd excel at it. Most importantly, I don't feel or think in any way that I belong here. These are not the traits of one who's institutionalized. The gray-faced men who call prison their home (as opposed to somewhere they just are) can't claim to feel the same way. These are the traits of someone dynamically alive, who's ready for the world. Don't you dare confuse the two.

After the Courtroom, the Storage Room

The rain is light but steady as a sergeant escorts me across the loading area behind the intake building. I'm pushing a canvas-sided laundry cart, the kind used by housekeeping staff deep in the bowels of hotels, where no guest ever sees. Sarge, at least, has a hat. Water beads on my bare scalp and trickles down my cheeks.

We pass behind dumpsters and storage sheds. He's telling me that today's his day to work 7-House, but he got a call to run this brief errand. Another guard is filling in while he's away from the post, he says. It's good for her, he says. A little rain never hurt anyone, he says. "Anyone," in this case, meaning "us," meaning "him." The benevolent lies we tell ourselves to get though the day.

He unlocks the back door to the prison's TCU, where ERDCC houses its would-be suicides, people recuperating from surgeries, and those at death's door. If hospitals seem dreary, the dim halls and scuffed linoleum floors of the TCU makes them look downright cheerful, bringing to mind the afterlife's teal waiting room in Beetlejuice. So why the hell am I here?

I have to pore over my legal files tomorrow. Since they're too copious and sensitive to keep in my cell, the property room at one institution or another has stored them in a reasonably secure location since 2002. As long as I give one week's advance notice, I can request to access them anytime I need.

At first the documents were just in a fat accordion folder. It was small enough, I could tuck it away in my footlocker, away from prying eyes. Nothing's ever truly private in prison, but we cling to the vestiges of personal space where they appear. Filled with photographs, letters, and personal records, my footlocker is like a vault that I'd like to think no one visits.

Guards searching my cell over the years have likely skimmed through bits and pieces of what I keep at hand. I think reading the particulars of prisoners' cases bores them. Cellmates, on the other hand, are often bored. More than a few probably constructed for themselves a decent outline of how I came to prison.

The sergeant leads me through the TCU, past doors with inkjet-printed signs warning, DO NOT GIVE HOT COFFEE TO OFFENDERS ON SUICIDE WATCH. No nurses or guards here make eye contact as we pass on another. When we come to the opposite side of the building, Sarge unlocks the unmarked black door to what looks like a utility closet. I spot a few cardboard boxes bearing paper labels of prisoners' names and DOC ID numbers.

"Hang out here a second, Case. I gotta find your stuff," he says before disappearing. I stand beside the damp laundry cart, debating what to do with my hands. I hear intermittent thumping from the little room, as if the sergeant's hurling boxes around just a little too zealously.

It occurs to me: this is an aspect of the legal system that no one sees, the underbelly of justice. The documents that could be key to determining my fate – whether I'll ever again eat at a restaurant, sleep in a real bed, travel, make love, fix a flat tire, peruse a wine list, fall asleep on a couch, surf the Web – these documents are kept here, in some damp spare room between a padded cell and a cart with someone's half-eaten soft taco laying on it.

The sergeant slides a navy blue Rubbermaid tote out the door. A square of paper stuck on the front bears my name. I open the container to count the folders. They've multiplied over the years. There are seven now. Each court filing I make, each Sunshine Law or Freedom of Information Act request I submit, each letter I get from a nonprofit or legal professional – they're all here, indexed and chronologically organized as best as my circumstances allow.

One of the folders has warped. I pull it out. A trail of confetti follows, a tiny ticker-tape parade in celebration of my return to legal practice. No, some pages have just been rodent-eaten. A small yellow piss stain mars the letterhead of a prominent Kansas City attorney I had to fire, whose letter expresses indignance at being let go. Obviously, the mouse sided with me in that matter.

The vaunted halls of justice are made of marble, but this humble mess is the reality. This is how people who've been wronged by the system get out of prison: we rifle though old paper and mouse piss, and we review the facts over and over and over again.

When I get back to the cell with my files, I pour the accumulated rainwater out of the lid and start to dig. Out of a folder labeled Legal Correspondence I pull a stack of letters from places with names like the Midwest Innocence Project, the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and Spence, Moriarty & Shockey. The first of these is dated November of 2002. It's hard to believe I've been chasing justice for that long, and longer.

It'll be longer yet before I'm done, but I'm nowhere near giving up. My fingertips are dry from shuffling paper. My back aches from digging through this tote. I feel closer to freedom now than I did yesterday, and that's no small thing.

Not the End

If loving parents, not well-to-do but rich in culture, take their young son backpacking through Europe and Mexico for thirty days at a stretch, if they tour the American South with him in a van, if the three spend a month in a tiny tent on a Jamaican beach, rising each morning at sunup to the calls of venders hawking peanuts, pastries, and fruits, what will that boy come to learn about life's bounty?
          If a mother nurtures her only child's inborn talents by keeping him out of public school and, instead, teaches him herself so his precocious mind can feed as avidly as it wants, on real-world exploration and studious reading alike, how wide will the son's knowledge about life grow?
          If a sensitive seven-year-old's pet hermit crab – a creature few might find lovable – dies in its terrarium overnight, what will the ensuing three days' crying jag do to bring the boy closer to grasping life's incomparable preciousness?
          If the same youth, a decade on, loses his two closest friends to gunshots, and his father to HIV sixty days later, how fervently will he then believe that life must be lived with urgency, since it could at any point end?


Whatever ideas I had about life by age twenty-two proved largely worthless after the third day of trial, when the judge pronounced my sentence: life without the possibility of parole. In the state of Missouri it means exactly what it sounds like, and it's mandatory in cases of first-degree murder when prosecutors decline to pursue execution. I hadn't killed anyone, and staunchly maintained my innocence, but this was beside the point.
          A prodigy, a skilled artist, a gifted writer. By the time I stood in the courtroom that nightmarish morning, I'd been called all these things. Joining the workforce hadn't been my only priority when I tested out of high school my freshman year. My motivations lay elsewhere. Reading science and philosophy texts, coding JavaScript applications in my bedroom, debating political theory at coffeehouses, and frequenting local art gallery openings are not the pastimes of your typical dropout. Up until that day before the judge, everyone – everyone – promised me a bright future, saying I had my whole life ahead of me.
          My whole life. Suddenly it felt like a threat.


The initial years in prison were a hell. A nervous condition I developed made my legs itch so fiercely that I often went without sleep. The long stretches of inactivity were punctuated by periods of mortal dread, as I weathered the kind of storms all pretty boys encounter when they first come down.
          One night as I sat reading in my cell, a sexual predator barged through the door and grabbed my throat. "Fuck or fight," he hissed into my face. I dropped A Brief History of Time and obliged him with Option B, the first fight of my adult life. I came away with five pink crescents on my neck from his fingernails, but no significant physical wounds.
          Arguably, the tedium was more damaging. There are any number of ways to combat boredom, and I tried many of them. Crossword puzzles, drawing, writing letters to friends and my mother, watching TV, making tapes off the radio, playing SCRABBLE with my cellmate, sleeping long, and daydreaming about the reversal of my conviction that just had to be in store were enough to get by on. In the world of prison but not of it, I had no desire to join the drug or gambling circles, which felt beneath me. But my occupations were scarcely different from those, in principle. Everyone in prison is just looking for distraction, ignoring the fact that, even if we succeeded in passing today away, there would still be tomorrow to contend with. And what then? What was the point?
          The prison offered programs with names like Cognitive Thinking, Pathways to Change, Impact of Crime on Victims. All were insultingly remedial and lacking even a modicum of interest in participants' improvement. I vowed never to attend one. Surely I could do better on my own.
          Job opportunities were scant and, where available, often sad. Paying ones were rarer yet. And working as a line server in the chow hall, scrubbing shower stalls in the housing unit, or handing out sheets on laundry days were simply different meaningless preoccupations. When I took a position in the visiting room, snapping pictures of prisoners as they stood beside their loved ones, my twenty-five-dollar monthly paycheck bought some instant ramen and snack crackers from the canteen, but nothing meaningful or lasting.
          Patterns emerged in the pockmarked concrete ceiling above my bunk. My dreams took on unsettling vividness. I dwelled on memories of pleasures now denied. The people I love stared back from the pages of my photo album, untouchable and far, far away. Always something of a masochist, I held tightly to these moments of grief and near-madness. However bittersweet they tasted, they were unequivocally mine. No one could take them away.


The poet John Berryman, writing about the role of suffering in art, said that "the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business."
          I took my misery and turned it over and over, probing each crevice and raking every point of its topography. Prison, an environment like none I'd previously experienced, threw all distinctions into stark contrast. As an inveterate observer, I couldn't help but hone my perception to a razor sharpness. The edge of it cut through everything: priorities, expectations, delusions, certainties, desires, and all manner of bullshit. Gradually, I flensed away the superfluous, like a butcher removing fat from meat. I wanted to see how lean life could get.
          Spartan living became the norm. There was a petulance behind it, admittedly. I thought that this choosing to do without was how I loosened my captors' hold. But mostly the deprivation games were tests, challenges to myself. And to prove that what I wanted and what I needed weren't necessarily one and the same. I quit smoking, cold turkey. I gave up coffee for no other reason than to enjoy it more whenever my abstinence ended. I went on a multi-day fast, to see how long I could go without eating.
          Know thyself, says the ancient maxim. Prison offers more opportunity for this than anyone but the most obsessive ruminator might want. By experiencing pain and unease an introspective soul grows. With a deeper knowledge of myself came insights about the world.
          I committed almost all of mine to paper.


"How do I know what I think," asks one author, "until I've written it?" Ordering words to articulate thoughts leads to countless minute discoveries. The process is an intellectual delight even when the realizations are less than friendly.
          Unlike the Sisyphean effort of time-passing, the rewards of writing endure beyond the here and now. After the process of composition – which is, for me, always meditative – my essays, poems, fictions, and letters find their way into the world and are read. From this comes a sense of accomplishment, and, consequently, one of purpose.
          I could say that writing saved me, but oversimplifying my salvation that way would be as fatuous as it would be misleading. I saved myself. Writing is just a facet of who I am, inseparable from the whole. It's the outcome of long years of contemplation and suffering, testament to one man's journey through himself and the world that up to this point has helped shape him. It's also the product of that precocious youth's travels around the globe and his development of an early sense of value and discernment. It's both a distillation and an expansion, a means and an end.
          What will tomorrow bring? Will my wrongful conviction be overturned? If it is, what shape might my days take? How easily will I adapt to that brave new world? While these are natural questions to spring to mind, I'm not preoccupied by them, because they're pointless.
As a human being, all I can do is venture to stretch my limits a little each day and maybe help someone else do the same. If I get a tomorrow, I'll do it then, too. Ditto the day after that. Whatever comes, comes.
          I've got my whole life ahead of me. It feels like a promise.

Ten Years After Filing, My Application for Pardon Gets Shot Down

My hopes were never all that high. Governors, even when they do exercise their clemency privilege, rarely grant pardon. Why undo what the courts – those perfectly fair and just arbiters of truth – have done? Justice had its chance at trial. Still, this form letter on flimsy paper is a major letdown.

"Dear Offender Case," it begins.

My first thought was, Fuck you, you pompous twit. Would it have killed him to address me with a formulaic "Mr."? I envision a meeting of self-righteous DOC higher-ups, at which were discussed sundry ways of making sure the imprisoned feel good and low. I'm sure that suggesting the word "offender" won someone high praise. It succeeds in being simultaneously reductive and hyperbolic, a big, ugly brand on the neck of anyone who passes through the gates of a "correctional" center. Even if I were guilty of the crime that put me in prison, this designation would piss me off.

"This letter is in response to your application for Executive Clemency. I regret to inform you that the Governor has declined to grant clemency."

So that's that, then.

I filed my application for clemency in the fall of 2011, following months of research. Once I composed a straightforward narrative of my case and felt ready, I mailed my application form with a forty-one page summary of the case, a personal letter to then-incumbent Governor Jay Nixon, information relating to bipolar disorder (which Kelly Moffett was diagnosed with), a Kansas City Police officer's report, a copy of the 2007 book The Skeptical Juror and the Trial of Byron Case, an excerpt from a forensic study titled "Eye Changes After Death," and Jackson County Sheriff's Department interviews with Robert WitbolsFeugen and Betsy Owens, Anastasia WitbolsFeugen's parents.

A bunch of my friends and supporters wrote letters that pleaded for Mr. Nixon to give me my freedom. The Office of the Governor forwarded these to the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, which manages all clemency applications for the governor. For a while, P & P even forwarded me copies of its responses. They must have some rule about only answering constituents, because I never heard about anyone living outside of the state hearing back, but still, a nice gesture.

My mother started a petition online, collecting signatures in support of my release. John Allen, author of that Skeptical Juror book, wrote a whole series of mailings to Governor Nixon, which picked the case to bits. Both John and Mum traveled to Jefferson City, Missouri's capital, to meet and talk with two successive governors' legal counsel. All of this for naught.

I'm not complaining that Governor Parson shot me down (or not only that, anyway) but that the act took a full decade to carry out and ended with an insulting form letter. Insult to injury.

Oh, but FreeByronCase.com got a cool new look and layout last week. At the same time, Framed for Life, Volume 3 hit Amazon's shelves and some journalists took an interest. My lawyer has been quiet for a couple of months, which I can only hope means the species of busyness that yields progress. Dedicated supporters are putting forth more energy, all at once, than they have in a while. All of this imparts the sensation of building momentum – but is that really what it is? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, shame on you, Governor Parson, for rubber-stamping people's lives away.

Framed for Life

The latest bit of media about my case came out a few weeks ago – a four-volume book, titled Framed for Life. The author, John Allen, whom I now, in the decade since he published the first book about my case, think of as a good friend, hopes to influence a readership made up of politicians and investigative journalists.

With a scalpel, Allen's multi-part book dissects my wrongful conviction, showing how Jackson County, Missouri, prosecutors (now-disgraced Amy McGowan, in particular) committed fraud on the court in their efforts to convict me of murder. The books not only expose facts of my trial that were overlooked by virtually everyone, they're also a scathing indictment of what one judge called Jackson County's "culture of corruption." Or so I gather; I can't comprehend more than a few words of them, here and there.

I have copies of the volumes, generously furnished by the author, and I'm in the process of reviewing them. The thing is, this is stuff that I've been over and over and over a hundred times, and can barely assimilate any more. It's as though the parts of my mind where information about my case, the 1997 death of Anastasia WitbolsFeugen, is stored have reached maximum capacity. MEMORY FULL, my brain might as well be saying. I even have a hard time talking about it; it incites an insidious kind of stress, the physical tells of which are twitchy eyelids, jaw and neck tension, and the occasional headache.

Nevertheless, I'm currently picking my way through Volume One of Framed for Life. It's slow going. This isn't because the book's a mammoth tome (it's actually quite thin) but because I can only take so much at a stretch before my tolerance hits its limit and I overload, unable to take in any more about perjury, withheld documentation, and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.

It's interesting, if dismaying, to see old journal entries I made during the year I was held in the county jail before trial. I can still remember the splintery number-two pencil dancing uncomfortably in my hand, writing those thoughts in fear but under the somewhat protective spell of naivete. Those handwritten pages from half a lifetime ago – those I understand. Their language is unambiguous to me, the concepts they introduce are familiar in a visceral way.

I wish I could warn twenty-two-year-old Byron of the pitfalls awaiting him at trial, how stacked against him the deck is. But I can only sit reading, mute and impotent, as the travesty plays out on the page. Again.

How many more times will it, I wonder, before this is finally over. It gets so old. Or maybe that's just me, waiting for justice.

A Travesty at Twenty

The fact that I am a murderer is well established. You can learn from many sources about my three-day trial, about how a jury of my peers decided that I must be guilty of killing my friend Anastasia WitbolsFeugen, of shooting her in the head just to see what it felt like to end another person's life. Not just any murder, either. Those jurors found me guilty of murder in the first degree – a killing accomplished after some calculation, homicide committed after a period of cool deliberation. Those dozen people on my jury had the power, as all juries do, to define what thereafter is called the truth.

In the decades since, courts either found nothing procedurally unsound in my jury's verdict, or they otherwise declined to review my case. Because the courts didn't dispute it, the verdict stands. It follows, therefore, that the jury's opinion must be true. And here we are.

Saying "my jury" implies ownership. Nothing could be less accurate. I don't even remember "my" jurors' names. The same goes for "my" case. I lay no claim to the events leading to my imprisonment, and certainly not to the cause of Anastasia's death itself. The vast majority of those things happened without my participation, beyond my knowledge.

The Internet, the great democratizer, offers enough information on which to base an informed decision about everything from politicians to peanut butter brands, if you pick decent sources. Because such information is free, the group convinced of my innocence, the Free Byron Case campaign, is bigger than the group that believes I murdered my friend. Unfortunately, fifty thousand people could believe in my innocence; it wouldn't outweigh the hope of the handful who want me to die in prison. Nor would numbers below a certain threshold change the fact that a conviction – any conviction – is far easier to get than to shake off.

I've tried, believe me.

Wait, do you believe me? Check your preconceived ideas. Are you part of the "Keep Byron Case In Prison" group, hate-reading my blog because the all-consuming fires of righteous indignation in your heart are easier to stoke than your grief and guilt are to assuage? Emotion has to come out somehow. I forgive you your wrongs against me, but is this the healthiest way to live?

Even before my arrest and trial, you people just knew that I was guilty. And you refused to rest until my guilt was declared. A couple of you interviewed friends and acquaintances, searched my car in my driveway, took photographs of my vehicles, dug through my trash, pushed the case's investigators to more deeply scrutinize me, and probably took other steps that I'll never find out about. If not for you, the authorities might never have suspected me of anything but dressing oddly.

I write this in "my" cell in a maximum-security prison. The date listed for my earliest possible release, in the Missouri Department of Corrections database, is 99/99/9999. It might as well be the thirty-second of Octember. My sentence of life without parole will allow me to leave prison only on the day that employees of the county coroner wheel my corpse out on a gurney, bound for some cold storage vault, and points beyond. And although this is exactly what certain of you asked for, you remain restless and unsatisfied.

These words don't come from a place of malice; despite my reputation as a provocateur, in this post I want only to point things out and ask questions that spark radical honesty. I want you to consider what is meant by "fact," by "peers," by "truth." Certainty plays no part. Records of my case exists, but what do they say? Interpretation is required, but who can we trust to perform it? Contrary to the popular conception, justice isn't about right and wrong. It's about who can deploy a more convincing argument. If we dispute one court's ruling, which court do we trust to decide otherwise? And what do we do when that court's rulings are questioned?

Who thinks of corporations as people, following the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, which gave corporations the same rights as individuals? If I were exonerated tomorrow, cleared of wrongdoing by a court of law, I'd be released from prison and the fact of my conviction would be removed – stricken, erased, undone. It will be as though it never happened. Would my memories of these lost decades be wrong? And who'd accept my new status? Would your mind change about me, based on that decision? If you say yes, isn't that just letting others do the thinking for you? If you say no, then what would it take to change your mind? If you know, why wait? What's stopping you from changing it now? How committed are you to your ideas? From where do your thoughts about my guilt or innocence arise?

These aren't easy questions. What makes life most worth living doesn't benefit from asking easy questions. The hard ones are another story, and the ones you can't answer at all are the ones that best define you.

I'm an innocent man who's been locked in prison for twenty years. I was twenty-two on the day armed men in black body armor thundered into my bedroom to take me away at gunpoint. I haven't been home since. I'm now forty-three. Despite years and years of emotional trauma, I have neither nightmares nor panic attacks, lasting depression nor crying jags, disruptive compulsions nor fixed obsessions, outbursts of rage nor periods of withdrawal. I doubt anyone would fault me if I did. But in reality my mental health is quite good.

I wake up in the morning and make my bed. I dress. I meditate. I make a cup of black coffee. I eat breakfast in a loud dining hall, surrounded by myriad human beings, some of whom don't bathe, many of whom are ignorant of inside voices, and I don't hate them. At 8 o'clock I go to work. I love my job; I like my coworkers. We laugh a lot together and do good things that affect a lot of people, whether they recognize it or not. When I'm not at my job in the Media Center, I'm reading or writing. The people I love keep in regular contact. I'm very fortunate to have a lot of good, caring people in my life.

If you think I killed Anastasia WitbolsFeugen, you're mistaken. Yet I'm also unequivocally guilty. I'm a murderer who didn't kill anyone. Am I making myself understood? If so, how can you stand it? Answer the question!

The Eighty-Fourth Problem

A friend I've known for more than ten years remarked on the lightening he recently noticed in my overall perspective. He attributed the shift to Buddhism, which I started practicing a couple of years ago. I didn't argue, even though adopting the label "Buddhist" was only a recent formalization of ideals and precepts that evolved from a decades-long chain of life events. I might not have been reading sutras, sitting zazen, or reciting mantras, but practicing mindfulness, mental discipline, and moderation has carried me through twenty years' imprisonment pretty well.

The question comes often enough: How do I cope? You won't understand unless you live it, and even if you did (which I hope never, ever happens), that understanding will be yours, not mine. Only certain mundane similarities between them will exist. So, what possible answer can I provide, except to say that I just do. The way out is through.

There's an old folk tale about the Buddha traveling with his followers to a farming village. He was sought out by a farmer there, who asked him about some personal problems. The farmer complained that whenever he wanted to plant, the rains fell without end, and when he finally did sow his crops there wasn't enough rain.

"I can't help you with that," the Buddha said.

The farmer realized that the Enlightened One might not control the weather, but other problems should be possible to get help with. So he said to the Buddha, "Other things have been bothering me, too – my wife, for one. She complains all the time. I feel like nothing I do is ever good enough for her. And my kids, they're too lazy to work in the fields. And my son drinks too much. And I have a neighbor who's making threats because my cows get into his fields all the time."

Gently, the Buddha held up a hand to silence him. He said, "I can't help you with any of those things."

"Well, what good are you, then?" the farmer spat.

The Buddha replied, "Everyone has eighty-three problems. When one of them gets better, another gets worse. It goes on and on like this forever. You haven't even mentioned that you're going to die someday and your land will go to your troublesome children. Everything you have ever worked for will be lost. Those are your eighty-three problems."

"Can't you help me with any of them?"

"I might be able to help you with the eighty-fourth problem."

"What's that?" the farmer begged.

The Buddha gazed with perfect equanimity. "The eighty-fourth problem is that you want not to have any problems."

This equivalent to a Buddha mike-drop ends many popular Buddhist stories.

I consider institutionalization a dirty word. For the same reasons as I refuse to call my housing unit "home," or to rely on the prison to provide me everything, I reject any suggestion that I'm less than vigilant against becoming institutionalized. It takes tremendous, continual effort not to let imprisonment define me. Still, by seeming not to let being locked away trouble me, by refusing lease to bitterness, by not letting myself get mired in self-pity, I defy people's expectations of how an innocent person in prison acts. My thinking is simply that, wrongful conviction or not, I'm here. Why make it worse by stewing over the hand I've drawn?

There's another Buddhist tidbit – this a little more official – in a Pali text called the Sallatha Sutta ("The Arrow," or "The Dart," as English translations have it). In it, the Buddha's speaking to his followers about how pleasant, neutral, and painful feelings are all felt by the untaught layperson and the well-taught disciple alike.

"When an untaught worldling is touched by a painful feeling, he worries, he grieves, he laments, he beats his breast, he weeps, distraught. He thus experiences two kinds of feelings, a bodily and a mental feeling. It's as if a man was pierced by an arrow and following the first piercing, he is hit by a second arrow."

He goes on to say that the well-taught follower of the Noble Eightfold Path, given the same circumstances, won't fall into throes of woe.

"It is one kind of feeling he experiences, a bodily one but not a mental feeling. It is as if a man were pierced by an arrow who was not hit by the second one, following the first."

This sutra is also sometimes called the Sutra of the Second Arrow, and it's a prime example of what Buddhism teaches: shit's bad enough without us making it worse by dwelling on it. It's not about indifference or being callous, just about acceptance – which is not the same thing as surrender. These are fine distinctions to make, but I trust that you have at least an inkling of what I'm trying to get across.

Problems are going to come along, no matter who you are. That's living. There will be arrows shot at us. Some will pierce their targets, while others will miss. When they hit us, it'll hurt. Paying attention to how we respond to that pain, realizing that we have some choice of how we react, can be life-altering, which is precisely what my friend believed he saw at work in me.

The Ohio Risk-Assessment System Doesn't Work on the Innocent

The wing's loudspeaker blares, "Byron Case, bravo two-oh-seven, report to the caseworker's office." However much I'd like to ignore the interruption or put it off awhile, I drop the book I'm reading and go. It's just downstairs, after all, and shouldn't take but a minute.

Being called to the housing unit's caseworker's office isn't unusual. Caseworkers in prison wear many hats. Privileged mail, what comes from lawyers or the courts, gets shunted straight to the caseworker offices, to be opened and its contents verified in the presence of the addressee. The caseworkers' duties also include witnessing signatures and fingerprints on the appropriate form when a prisoner sends money from his institutional account – for mail ordering books, buying art supplies, paying court costs, making child support payments, et cetera.

The page this time is not for me to pick up a letter or sign a check but to take a questionnaire.

"Have a seat," the man says as I enter his tiny office. I note the Millennium Falcon poster hiding a couple of square feet of one pitted, gray concrete-block wall. Something tells me I won't get out of here any quicker if I weigh in on the perennial Star Wars debate over whether Han shot first. He squints at the packet of about twenty stapled-together pages in his hands. "This is gonna take us a while."

He tells me that the Missouri Department of Corrections is implementing the Ohio Risk-Assessment System, which the packet concerns, as part of its parole assessments. "Bear with me," he says, slipping his reading glasses on. "You're the first person I'm doing this with."

Parole assessments? Someone must've made a mistake. Because I have a first-degree murder sentence, I'm not eligible for parole. I volunteer what should be obvious: "Um, I've got life without."

He sighs, "Yeah, I know. They're making us do these on everybody."

Pages riffle. Someone recently burned popcorn in the office microwave. It's not even 10 AM; who the hell brunches on popcorn?

"Okay, tell me about your crime."

"What do you mean?" I don't want to be doing this in the first place. The presumption of guilt just adds to its offensive nature.

The caseworker's hand swivels on his wrist, as if he's loosening up for a video game tournament. "Just tell me how the crime took place."

"How much room have you got?"

"Summarize," he says, in a tone that sounds, surprisingly, like one of patience.

I give him the facts: that my girlfriend and I were hanging out with my friend Justin; that we went to pick up another friend, Justin's girlfriend, Anastasia; that Justin and Anastasia had been arguing a lot and resumed arguing the moment we picked her up; that Anastasia got out of the car while we were stopped at an intersection; that I never saw Anastasia again, but that after Justin later left our company he went back to meet her; and that the next morning a sheriff's deputy found Anastasia's body lying in a cemetery, shot in the face.

The caseworker has been scribbling notes in pencil while I talk. At no point does he show surprise, nor particular interest.

"How have you taken responsibility for your crime?"

"It's wasn't my crime, so I haven't."

"Okay...." He scribbles some more, then asks, "What steps have you taken to rehabilitate yourself during your incarceration?"

"I don't know about rehabilitation, since I don't think I was dehabilitated to begin with, but I'm always working to improve myself. I do a lot of writing, reading, mindfulness practice. I'm an analytical person by nature – you know, reflective. I think a lot about the kind of person I want to be in the world. I recently started daily meditation."

He looks up. "No programs?"

I know how remedial the DOC's programs tend to be, designed as they are around getting through to the uneducated, selfish, and hardheaded... when they're properly administered at all. A neighbor once took Anger Management and came back with a sheet of rebuses he said they'd been making the class do for weeks:

Years later, I signed up for a class that might actually teach me something. It didn't. I got a certificate for a class they never finished teaching. (I blogged about the tremendous disappointment of Mindfulness Training in 2015.) So I meet the caseworker's gaze, keeping in mind that he's just doing his job, operating under a particular limited mindset, not deliberately working to offend me, and answer him.

"No programs."

Scribble, scribble.

It goes on like this for a half hour. For years, I've said that I'm almost glad, in a perverted way, not to have a paroleable sentence, since it means I'll never be confronted by a panel of antagonistic board members who think they know the truth and are capable of accurately judging people's character. This ordeal of undergoing the Ohio Risk-Assessment System feels nearly as bad as I always believed seeing the parole board would. Will I have to do this all again next year? Shit, I hope not.

New Year, New Start

In the year 2020....

Some sci-fi masterwork of yore probably began with these words, then delved into a fantastical far-flung future featuring rocket cars, condominiums on the moon, and food in capsule form. The reality of this date, we all recognize, is a whole lot messier, but here we are, living the dream, one full week into the future.

I've started jotting some decidedly un-science fictional ideas in a composition notebook that hadn't been getting any use. Another book project bubbling up from the creative depths — or wherever such ideas come from — surprised me this past weekend. At this early stage, I'm not altogether sure I know how to classify it. "Speculative fiction" seems too vague; "horror" isn't it at all; "fantasy" involves too much whimsy. My elevator pitch would begin, So it's David Lynch meets Franz Kafka....

Last year saw me finish my first novel, a ten-part collection of interwoven narratives about the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. (It has yet to be published. I can only do so much to push this process along.) Finishing that methodical work took a lot out of me. So much research! So many delays! I honestly wasn't sure when or if I'd write long-term fiction again. Now, unexpected but welcome, the Muse reappears. She looks different than when I last saw her. There's a wild look in her eyes, and I know that this one's going to be a much more frenzied, inspired affair than my last effort.

My sangha chose for our January theme "New Year, New Start." Like a mantra, we've been repeating it to each other at times when our adherence to Buddhism's precepts seems most strenuously tested. It's like advising our Buddhist brethren (and ourselves) to be mindful: "Hey, remember your practice." But it also serves as a source of inspiration. Every breath, every moment, every hour, every day is a rebirth. We are continually in this state of flux and therefore capable of an infinite range of changes.

According to Writing in Flow, one of the last books I read last season, falling into the deepest possible state of engagement with your writing project often demands that you perceive it as a challenge. Well, here's a fresh puzzle for my mind to work out — a weird new world for me to discover, with myself being remade in the process.

Beginning afresh can be intimidating. We humans are such creatures of habit. The familiar, the tried and true, the relatable — these comfort us but can also hinder our growth and leave us stagnant. I have the benefit of seeing the same gray concrete walls day in, day out. There's no way out. This sameness makes it essential for me to stretch my mind through the cracks, out into realms of thought and fancy to which reality sometimes pales in comparison.

This strange new book is going to be like nothing I've tried writing before. This year is going to be like none I've lived before. The two are connected, but there's more to it than just the imaginative journey I'm about to embark on. Other good things are happening. The world is constantly changing. We're constantly changing. Look around: we're already living a speculative-fiction future. This is amazing stuff.

A Freshly Scribbled Personal Poem with Nowhere Else to Go

"When I Was Young…"

The words slipped out before their import struck.
Further utterance obstructed, I clutched my face and slumped.
A low groan deeper than any half-assed laugh
Rose as camouflage.

There it is, I thought, cradling my skull.
Embodied gray in one point five kilograms,
Almost four decades a little more tattered
By every peek, reconfigured subtly by the act of reference.

Mutti, did you really used to call me Kleiner Mann,
Or was it someone else who aged me prematurely?
To a lover, once, who declared that mine
Was an old soul, it's true I offered a bag of prunes.

The boy with his slippers and robe, and his
Antiquarian collection of fossils and rocks,
Used to shred bread for ducks at the park.
He had in mind a future as an Egyptologist.

In mummification the brain was the first thing to go
Because ancient Egyptians believed it served no purpose.
Other organs were preserved in jars for the soul's journey.
Anubis, jackal-headed assayist, weighed one's vital baggage.

Immortal at sixteen, I dressed and rimmed my eyes in black,
I kept, as a pet, a rat. Rattus rattus was once deified,
Symbolic to the Egyptians as representing wise judgment and,
Further reading in adulthood reveals, also utter destruction.

* * * * *

The seed from which this poem grew was a conversation I had, sitting at the Old-Man Table. The topic that day is irrelevant. What matters is that I began a sentence with the four words that became this poem's title. There was no turning back; once you acknowledge that you're no longer young, it's all downhill. And so this poetic tumble through weedy memory, flowery patches of erstwhile interests, and past-life brambles, ending in the discovery, at the bottom, of a happenstantial connection that won't completely make sense unless you understand how I was wrongfully convicted of murder.

Predicting the future is largely impossible, but scouring the past for signs of a now-inevitable present can be all too tempting. There is nothing to stem our sense that we're onto the true reasons for everything that came to pass. As if we humans need something else to think we've got all figured out!

A Call for Inaction, Following Robert WitbolsFeugen's Indictment

According to MissouriCaseNet, Anastasia WitbolsFeugen's father, Robert WitbolsFeugen, is facing charges for statutory sodomy in Jackson County, Missouri. The incident these charges stem from allegedly took place in 2015. A lot of people in the Free Byron Case camp have believed for a long time that he has a history of child sexual abuse and are now relieved that "he finally got caught." My own opinion is different, and because it concerns a relevant, topical issue I'm dispensing with my usual policy of avoiding legal matters in blog posts. I want my supporters, the general public, and those "Keep Byron Case in Prison" people to know where I stand.

A friend recently called me the least angry person he knew, with the best reason to be angry. Of course this referred to my wrongful conviction for murder and how I move through life without the caustic bitterness that might eat a less levelheaded person alive. Kelly Moffett, the ex-girlfriend whose lie let prosecutors close a pesky three-and-a-half-year-old case, may deserve my hatred for the damage she's done, but I have (I might as well be blunt) nobler ideals. Kelly is mentally ill. The extent of her illness isn't for me to diagnose or discuss here, but it's an irrefutable fact, based on documentation and anecdotal evidence, that she's a sick woman. My belief is that Kelly should have intensive psychiatric treatment on an inpatient basis, as she's a danger to those around her and, as her behavior over the past decades has shown, to herself.

But what's Kelly Moffett got to do with Robert WitbolsFeugen's criminal charges? you ask.

Robert is unquestionably one of the reasons that I'm typing this post in a prison cell. It was Robert who harassed the Jackson County Sheriff's Department to close the case, then, when no immediate results materialized, started pointing the finger at me and my friends, whose goth mien — black clothes and hair, pale skin, makeup, and piercings — made us seem like potential subjects of interest in a case whose principals hung out in cemeteries, coffeehouses, and (maybe most pernicious) video rental stores. It was Robert who invented theories of cultish goings-on, to pique investigators' interest. It was Robert who hounded county and state officials well beyond a job offer from the Jackson County Legislature and the passage of Interim Senate Resolution Number CL3777, which begins, "WHEREAS it is with heavy hearts that the members of the Missouri Senate pause to recognize the life and lifetime achievements of a remarkable young woman, Anastasia Elizabeth WitbolsFeugen of Independence, Missouri." It was Robert who forced authorities into an apparent ethical bind over the case and engineered the political pressure to close the fucking thing ASAP.

I have every reason to want both Kelly Moffett and Robert WitbolsFeugen to suffer the kind of torture that's been inflicted on me because of their actions…but I don't.

I especially don't share the notion that Robert's criminal charges are anything more than a curiosity at this point. There was a lot of scuttlebutt about allegations of child sexual abuse — of neighbor kids, of Robert's own daughters — sparked by statements made during the Sheriff's Department investigation. Any truth in these allegations would slightly bolster the already-established belief that Anastasia was suicidal, the whole week before her death, in that breaking up with Justin Bruton forced her to move back in with the man who may have molested her for years — but this is speculative at best. Besides, the man hasn't even had his pretrial hearing yet, at which the admissible evidence will be discussed in court. With what I'm big enough to admit is my own smug piety, I want everyone who reads this to know that I believe Robert deserves the benefit of the doubt. He crusaded against it for me, but our criminal justice system is based on certain principles, one of which is the presumption of innocence. A person who stands accused of a crime must be considered innocent of that crime unless sufficient evidence is presented by the prosecution to eliminate all reasonable doubt. I believe in this right even more fervently because it was denied me and led to my being imprisoned for the rest of my life simply because I befriended two kids my own age whose problems were beyond their abilities to grow beyond.

Robert WitbolsFeugen is a profoundly damaged human being who's done despicable things. He's also, presumably, innocent. Please, everyone, let the justice system grind its way to a conclusion in this matter without interference. Overemotional activism has led to enough injustice already.