Why did you die when I killed you? (The Jeffery Asbury story)

There I was in a pod cell waiting to be transferred to a prison cell, where never it in a million years would I have ever guessed that one day at fifty years old that I’d be housed alongside some of the state’s most notorious murderers, killers, rapist and thieves (on all levels) to-which there were certain one’s of them that I’ve met and talked to; who lived under their own curriculum of having nothing to lose.

In the very beginning through my own naive understanding of the true criminal prison system, I thought it was somewhat unfair for me, or anyone else for that matter, who found themselves in a similar situation to have to serve out a meager prison sentence for a probation violation among such a wide variety of hardened forevermore criminals. Where one would figure that by me being a first time offender in prison, that there should’ve been certain levels of minimum confinement areas for short timers, especially when it came to their own personal safety and well being, well I’m here to say that unfortunately, that’s not the case here. Yet it only took me witnessing a couple of bloody beat downs, a stomping, three stabbings, two suicides, an escape, and a small riot along with more than a few head to head verbal confrontations for me to realize that if I didn’t wear my eyes in the back of my head, and kept my ears to the ground, that I could’ve easily became a victim of a murder or a suspect in a murder case. Fights in general happen all the time in jail, and or prison on a regular daily basis; for reasons being family and friends of victims, personal grudges, rivals, and or vendetta’s against a person who got mixed-up in something that person did while on the outside, or inside, or simply they had a price on their heads, and sooner or later they all come to be housed alongside those who thought that they were safe and untouchable while in the company of the so-called trained armed guards, or under the watchful eyes of the closed-circuit closely monitored televisions, or better yet out of population, or locked away in solitary confinement, and after calculating all these risk factors I’ve come to conclude that the U.S. prison system was systemically, racially and constitutionally flawed in favor of all the money generated. And let it not be said; that if you have lots of money and or prestigious connections as a prisoner you can pretty-much write your own ticket.

Thru the prisons racial makeup balance, it was hard for anyone with seeing eye to not notice much like I did, that black males made up about 39% and those of color males made up around 42% both English and non-speaking alike, while white males only pooled in at a lousy 29% and those numbers should be hard for anybody to ignore.

But it was on this one particular day in question on march 11^th at 6:00 p.m. while I waited on the dinner signal along with the other restless inmates who gathered among themselves in their own individual clans, gangs or clicks; did I happened to catch a late breaking news report out of the corner of my eye as it drew me over closer to the TV in order to get a better understanding of what disaster was happening in our fair city. And as I stood there underneath the TV. listening for further developments, I wondered much like the intrigued audience that looked on in real time about the mortified transparency in the face of the pristine young reporter as she stood there in the grips of some sort of domestic horror story ready to give all the details of her findings to an inquisitive audience.

And once she began, it was the magnitude of her opening headline that raked over the conscious thoughts of the captured audience as they took-in a deep breath while sitting on pins and needles as they waited to hear the details of this mind-numbing story to unfold.