| Book: Guilty: America’s ConquestCritic: Dr Glenville AshbyNorman Garrett’s Guilty: America’s Conquest chronicles an incredulous tale of Governmental overreach and excess. The reader will bristle at a purported misdemeanor turned into an ugly case of personal vendetta, judicial improprieties and ethical obscenities.Garrett, a Guyanese national, recalls a regular day at his postal job that unexpectedly spiraled into a nightmare.Sustaining a debilitating leg injury that caused lingering musculoskeletal problems, Garrett is investigated for profiting from real estate dealings and failure to disclose a beach front property – charges that he called scurrilous. He argues: ”The government and the whole facility where I worked knew I was licensed in real estate. I negotiated contracts for some of its employees before and after the accident. Management at the postal service had an obligation to inform me if I was doing wrong. I was entrapped through audio-visual surveillance.”The book cover of GuiltySparing no effort to incarcerate him, the government begins relentless legal maneuvers that toss Garrett into a personal labyrinth leaving him financially, emotionally and physically scared.Garrett’s message is stark. The US government will use surreptitious and outright illegal ploys to ensnare its own citizenry.Sentenced to 12 months in Lexington, Kentucky at a prison hospital, Garrett lays bare the inhumane conditions of life behind bars.For a while he sidesteps his own quagmire and offers the reader a disturbing vista of prison life and the intriguing characters who became his acquaintances. Housed with legendary mobsters, hardened inmates and white collar criminals, Garrett is the round peg in a square hole.Garrett lives in a world – a labour camp – masquerading as a medical hospital where inmates “grasp” for medical attention.Psychological evaluations are commonplace and the fear of being committed weighs heavily on inmates. Equally disturbing is Garrett’s contention that the Bureau of Prisons is a money-generating industrial complex, managed by a federal agency called UNICORE.He describes a system of supply and demand, a lucrative manufacturing system that pays prisoners “pennies” for a day’s work.According to Garrett,nba jerseys discount, errant young men surrender their dignity and any chance of rehabilitation by unwittingly accepting plea deals from public defenders or “quislings” who work in tandem with the prosecution.“These young bucks were subjected to slave labor at the mercy of the federal government….prisons manufacture furniture,Cheap Jerseys From China, clothing, blankets, shoes and many other products and sell them at market price.”“Guilty” is a lesson on a legal system stacked against the unsuspecting and the disenfranchised. But Garrett fights back. He learns about US Jurisprudence, hires a new attorney, and gleans knowledge from Pete,Wholesale China NFL Jerseys, an inmate who serves as his de facto legal counsel. His constitutional rights were indeed violated, he discovers.The reader gets a glimpse into the complexities of legal system. “Did he read you your rights before the trial?”Pete asks. “What rights?” a naïve sounding Garrett retorts. “Your rights to be tried by a judge.”Absorbing “a thousand habeas corpus cases” Garrett realises that he was legally derailed. He discovers that his appeal should have been handled by a district judge “instead of the Court of Appeals in the third circuit,” a violation of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. He concludes, ”All my court appearances, imprisonment, including the decision of the appeal were all illegal.Further, that his motion “to stay out on bail, pending appeal” was rejected, only added fodder to his resentment of the federal government. He writes,Cheap Hockey Jerseys, “The rule of law clearly states that a court must state its reasons for a decision. The magistrate broke that rule and law.”But why would the government unremittingly persecute Garrett? It is a question that baffles everyone. Ronnie,Wholesale NFL Jerseys China, another inmate sees a gnawing racial bias, and offers the highly improbable explanation:”You were sent here because you tried to live like a white man…you know what else, you went and married a white woman and these are the reasons you are here not that little bit of money.”Later, Garret makes his own case for racial bias and the US legal system. “They were in a rush for their justice and to humiliate, malign and demagogue an American of colour. In America race and criminal justice are explicitly interrelated.”Although his conviction was overturned he is transported to numerous county jails, fingerprinted, searched and spread-eagled with little care for his disability. The Government needed to get the last word.Garrett is finally vindicated but he is battered.He later writes,Cheap NFL Jerseys Online, ”…a sixty-year-old white male and former state Democratic Party chairman was arrested outside a motel with possession of crack cocaine. He was released on $250 bail. He was allowed to attend a thirty-day in-patient program.” He continues, “I remember meeting this eighteen-year old black kid at the federal court holding cell,” who, “pleaded guilty to his first offence. He was facing fifteen years if convicted at trial and his mother was putting up her house for bail…”Garrett is also critical of what he calls “blackmail in the criminal system,” that allows even the most heinous defendants to plea on a lesser count for information to prosecute another individual.Clearly, Guilty: America’s Conquest gives the reader a bird’s eye view of the criminal justice system in the US. And it’s not a pretty picture. The law stands to be skewed and compromised by influential cliques of judges, prosecutors and public defenders who prosecute, imprison and wrestle away the rights of the vulnerable just to add another feather to their cap. It’s a frightening but a potentially real scenario.Guilty: America’s Conquest by Norman Garrett 2013Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc.Pennsylvania 15222ISBN: 978- 1-4349-1661-7Available: Amazon.comRating: Recommended |
