Last night I went to bed watching a podcast from Turning a Moment Into a Movement. The host, Jay Love, and panelist Trische Duckworth, Founder of Survivors Speak, were talking with Diane Butkowski, publisher of the independent online newspaper, Voice of Detroit. The panel were discussing the MDOC, and the plight of Krystal Clark #435064, who is a prisoner at Huron Valley Women’s (WHV) facility.
WHV was the focus of a recent Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing, where legislators, former MDOC staff, and a former prisoner gave damming testimony about the conditions inside of Michigan’s only prison for women. The testimony detailed problems with WHV’s infrastructure, poor ventilation, medical neglect, a lack of wheelchairs, and black mold in the shower and housing areas. As a result of the mold, Clark suffers from debilitating life threatening medical conditions that the MDOC dismisses or downplays.
As a result of the conditions at WHV, three prisoners–Paula Bailey, Krystal Clark, and Hope Zentz–filed a class-action lawsuit against the MDOC. That lawsuit, Bailey v. MDOC et al, reached a new milestone when District Judge Stephen J. Murphy III, in a recent ruling, denied qualified immunity to the MDOC, allowing the plaintiffs’ lawsuit to move forward. Judge Murphy found that the conditions at WHV were such that the plaintiffs’ had alleged claims of constitutional deprivations that the MDOC must now defend against at trial.
I was catching up watching Turning a Moment Into a Movement podcasts, and looking for inspiration to write a new post. I browsed Voice of Detroit’s website and found many other articles that Butkowski has published, and I was astounded by what I found. But before I get into that, I want to give a shout-out to Butkowski, who has been on the forefront of policing and corrections reform for decades. All hail, Miss Diane!
I was already aware of the Voice of Detroit, but I wasn’t familiar with either its history or founder, Butkowski. I did not know, for example, that Butkowski was a reporter for The Michigan Citizen. The Michigan Citizen was a newspaper that reported on topics relevant to Michigan’s Black community, and I remembered reading it as a juvenile while I was incarcerated at the W.J. Maxey Boys Training School (BTS) in Whitmore Lake, Michigan.
It all comes full-circle.
As I watched Turning a Moment Into a Movement podcasts, I browsed Voice of Detroit’s archives and came across an article about the Detroit Police Department and its infamous S.T.R.E.S.S. Unit. That’s when everything came full-circle for me.
I was incarcerated for 17-consecutive years in the MDOC. What most people don’t know, however, is that I got my A-prefix in 1995. I was sent to the State Prison of Southern Michigan, and from RG&C I was confined to Top-Six before being moved to administrative segregation at SMI. The reason for my placement in Top-Six and subsequent placement in ad seg was ostensibly for refusing medical testing in RG&C.
I never refused medical testing. I completed all required testing but a physician’s assistant ordered additional tests that I refused, so COs wrote me three bogus major misconduct reports for the express purpose of reclassifying me to ad seg. That was my first experience with the MDOC and its Bureau of Health Care Services.
The MDOC retaliated against me.
The notice to reclassify me to ad seg was not upheld, so I was released into GP. Eventually I was moved to Northside (SMN), but COs wrote me more bogus major misconducts reports and placed me back in ad seg. I stayed in ad seg up until my conviction and 6-month sentence were reversed on appeal in 1996, but even then the MDOC did not want to release me. Instead, COs told me they’ll make it so I don’t leave prison and a cell-extraction team came to my cell to restrain me. I fought back, so I was charged with two counts of assault on a corrections officer and transferred me to the Muskegon County Jail.
This all comes full-circle for me because while I was fighting my wrongful conviction, I was also writing grievances; writing to BHCS; writing to Keith Barber, the Legislative Corrections Ombudsman, whom was, and is, widely known as a worthless, lying, interference-running front-man for the MDOC; writing Attorney Sandra Girard and PLSM; writing to the Detroit News; and writing for The Egeler News.
Prisoner rallies for a support team.
The Egeler News (January/February 1996) published an article I wrote, Prisoner Rallies for a Support Team. The article was in response to the “Nevers & Budzyn Support Team” that the wives of former DPD police officers Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn–who were convicted of beating Malice Green to death–formed to have their husbands’ sentences commuted.
The Nevers/Budzyn Support Team wanted sympathy for their husbands, and recited the tough job they had as police officers, their age, and health issues like arthritis, as reasons why the two former police officers’ sentences should be commuted. I addressed classism, racism, and oppression in my article, and wondered how long I would serve in prison if I beat a police officer to death. Would anyone care to hear about my health problems, which were substantially more significant than arthritis?
Learning and writing.
In 1995, I was just beginning to learn the law and write about the double-standard society has for white police officers, and the MDOC’s a callous disregard for prisoners’ health. When I returned to prison in 1998, I was placed back in ad seg because that was my classification status when I left prison in 1996, and my learning and writing resumed. I learned about the secret “miscellaneous files” the DPD kept in collusion with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, and how the DPD and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy used coerced confessions to obtain wrongful convictions.
Q. How do you know when Keith Barber is lying?
Lately there has been a lot of attention on wrongful convictions, corrupt DPD police officers on a “do-not-call-to-testify” list, Kym Worthy, and the head of Wayne County’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), Attorney Valerie Newman. Newman, formerly worked at the State Appellate Defender Office, and was the attorney who sold me out on remand after I won my habeas case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [Dorn v. Lafler, 601 F.3d 439 (6th Cir. 2010)]. MDOC hitman Barber, who purportedly “investigated” numerous grievances I sent to him and found nothing improper with either the MDOC’s handling of my medical care or security classifications, is still spinning his lies for the MDOC, even after the MDOC settled my civil lawsuit over my medical and segregation claims for $150,000 [Dorn v. MDOC et al, 1:15-cv-00359-PLM].
A. Keith Barber’s lips are moving!
During the recent House Oversight Committee hearing legislators asked why Washington was not present, and Barber minimized the healthcare and mold problems within the MDOC. Since then, new calls were made to close WHV, and Washington announced an initiative to make prisons safer. Judge Murphy denied qualified immunity to the MDOC in the civil lawsuit over conditions at WHV. And a federal civil jury awarded a $307.6 million dollar verdict against the healthcare contractor, Corizon Health, that was responsible for MDOC healthcare during the years 2017-2019, in another civil lawsuit over medical neglect within the MDOC.
The definition of vanguard.
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition, 2020) describes a ‘vanguard’ as the troops moving at the head of an army, the forefront of an action or movement.
The MDOC prisoners before me who brought such notable cases as Hadix v. Johnson, Doe v. MDOC, and Cain v. MDOC, with Girard’s PLSM, were the old vanguard. Myself, Bailey, Clark, and Zentz, who fight the MDOC at all costs through civil lawsuits; Butkowski’s Voice of Detroit; Love’s Turning a Moment Into a Movement, and Duckworth’s Survivors Speak, are the new vanguard.
The Vanguard marches on.
About The Author
