Speaker 1 0:00
This is Prison Radio, and my name is Carol Seligman. Today we speak with Kenneth E. Hartman, Executive Director of The Other Death Penalty Project, and editor of the forthcoming book, “Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough”. Currently a resident of the California State Prison at Lancaster, he has served 19 years of a life sentence without possibility of parole. Kenneth, you write about accepting deserved punishment for the murder you were responsible for. Please explain how the state is now practicing an ex post facto enhancement of the original sentence.
Kenneth E. Hartman 0:48
Right. Well, I think fundamentally, it probably breaks down to two things. When I was originally sentenced in 1980 the assumption was that life without parole really meant a seven to life sentence plus a five year enhancement. And toward that end, they had a place in the law where there was a 12 year board date. After 12 years of prison, you would go to the board and they would determine whether you had been rehabilitated and that sort of thing. And then you would go to the board every three years thereafter, until such time as you were released, and then as politics in California and nationally changed, particularly through the 90s, they did away with that. They decided that life without parole actually really meant life without parole, and they decided that all the people that had been sentenced to life without parole in California, essentially, were sentenced to die in prison, and they turned it into the other death penalty, and that’s and I think that there is an ex post facto quality to that, because it certainly wasn’t the intention when the law was put in place, nor when I was sentenced.
Speaker 1 1:55
Why did you get that maximum sentence possible in the first place.
Kenneth E. Hartman 2:01
Well, in a nutshell, I killed a man in a fist fight, drunken fist fight, two o’clock in the morning. I was 19 years old, after the man was down and unconscious, and I did not know he was dead. I was in a fit of rage. I grabbed his property and I threw it all over the place, just basically, I like, because I was acting like an idiot, and they called that an attempted robbery, murder. And that’s pretty much that was the special circumstance was attempted robbery, and because I was, unfortunately, had a public defender and had no resources to mount any kind of adequate defense. The entire trial, from picking the jury to the verdict, lasted two days, and that’s pretty much it. I- you know, I mean, in my opinion, you know that’s that’s why I ended up with life without parole.
Speaker 1 2:59
In one of your essays, you say that prisoners have relied too much on the courts to come to your rescue, and that this over reliance is irrational. Can you explain what you mean by this, and talk about what alternatives there are to this approach of over-reliance on the courts?
Kenneth E. Hartman 3:20
Oh, definitely. I think, probably, I think it comes from in the 60s and the 70s, there were a series of, you know, profound liberal decisions in the courts that rectified what had been, you know, truly horrific, brutal conditions in the prisons in America, you know, the just the kind of things that nowadays people just find almost, you know, unbelievable type of stuff. I mean, people were being strapped to do an implement in the prison in the south called Red Hannah, and being whipped, literally. And that was happening, you know, in as late as the 60s. So, there were a series of these tremendous liberal decisions that granted prisoners a lot of rights that they never even imagined having prior to that. And then I think kind of what happened was, is, because of these tremendous decisions, guys in prison sort of got it in their head that there was going to be this never ending series of federal court interventions to rectify all the wrongs of prison. And while that would be wonderful if that really happened, you know, America unfortunately turned from, you know, kind of a progressive, quasi Western European state to something else. And we had a series of conservative presidents, and even people, people who called themselves liberals in America really are basically conservatives everywhere else. And we ended up with a lot of judges that really have no interest in that type of thing. And then the flip side of that is, is, and I say this as someone who has fought most of my sentence to try to make things better for prisoners, you know, I think that it’s easy to wait for someone to come and rescue you. You know, to kind of say it’s this is not really my responsibility. You know, someone will come and help me and, you know, show me the light and get me out and all that. And I think it’s incumbent upon prisoners to take positive, affirmative steps to to rectify their own situations. And by that, I mean there’s been an assault on prisoners. The prison industrial complex, its various minions, have created this idea in the public that prisoners are basically a bunch of, you know, monsters, for lack of a better word, and the way that you fix that is, is by not being monsters and by engaging in positive steps to help the community, to try to do things better for the world. And we all know that these things are not going to immediately fix things. It’s not like if prisoners start donating to local charities and start, you know, work making toys for tots and fixing bikes and making correcting eye glasses for poor kids and various other things that prisoners in California prisons and I’m sure many other states do many other things, probably better, but that’s not going to change people’s minds overnight, but long term, it’s a way for us to say to the rest of society that A, we’re not monsters, and B, we recognize that for the vast majority of us, have in fact, harmed the community, and we’re willing to work to make things better and to earn our way back into a place of acceptance by the rest of society.
Speaker 1 6:51
I have a related question. You say that prisoners can fall into the trap of being so focused on not making waves that they fail to stand up for their own humanity. What do you mean by this? And how do you advocate standing up for your humanity if it’s more than what you said in answer to the last question?
Kenneth E. Hartman 7:15
Well, I think there’s a and that’s sort of the, you know, the fine line that’s a really complicated thing to skate on for a prisoner, particularly for life prisoners, you know? The truth is, I think any rational human being who’s imprisoned wants to be out of prison, you know, and you don’t want to get in trouble. You figure, if I act right, I don’t do anything wrong, I’ll, you know, I’ll get out at some point, which that isn’t necessarily true for those of us with the other death penalty, but for most life prisoners that you know that’s a factual statement. But there’s a line that you can reach where all you’re doing is kowtowing and, you know, and begging for mercy. And I don’t, I don’t think what I’m advocating is that. I think what I’m advocating is that we become self reliant, that we become assertive in our desire to do better, to become better human beings. And that is not in any way in the interest of the prison industrial complex. In fact, it’s completely opposed to their interest. They like it when we’re monster. The best thing we can possibly do to help the prison industrial complex is to stab each other. I mean, I sometimes think they all go out to the parking lot to high five each other when we do something idiotic like that. So in my mind, it’s a fine line between, you know, being a groveling, begging, sniveling, you know, and being affirmative in your desire to do better. The two are not the same.
Speaker 1 8:50
Kenneth, do you have any perspective on the recent call for a cessation of hostilities in the California prisons and nationally from men in the secure housing unit in Pelican Bay?
Kenneth E. Hartman 9:08
Right. Well, I have no direct connection to any of the men that are advocating for that, but I can certainly I, I agree completely, 100% unreservedly. It’s what we need to do. We prisoners spend an awful lot of time harming ourselves, both literally and metaphorically. And the racial stuff is just, I mean, it’s utterly self defeating and completely ridiculous, and I’m totally opposed to it. And everything I’ve worked for, whether it’s the Other Death Penalty Project or trying to work on the Honor Program at this prison, the idea is to get prisoners to, you know, act like civilized human beings and the internecine warfare that we’ve engaged in for as long as I’ve been in prison is totally counterproductive, and I support a cessation to all that. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 10:05
Kenneth, what is your personal view of restorative justice? What is it? And what do you think about it?
Kenneth E. Hartman 10:13
Well, I think restorative justice is basically what we’ve been talking about. I think it’s fundamentally it’s about a person who has harmed the community, working to restore themselves to a place of equality, a place of acceptance, a place of respect within the community. And I think fundamentally, the way that a prisoner, an offender, whatever word you want to put on it. The way that is done is it’s, you know, it’s, in many ways, it’s kind of an old Catholic idea, you know, it’s about good works. It’s about doing things that make the community whole. It’s about taking responsibility for what you have done wrong, and it’s about trying to make it right. And granted, there are all kinds of different levels where this takes place, and there’s a lot of, there are some things that are very difficult to, you know, to restore and to make whole, and there’s some things that can’t be made whole. But I think fundamentally, the idea is, and it gets back to what I’ve been talking about is we as prisoners, we have to do things to try to repair the damage that we’ve done, and not wait for someone to come do it for us, not wait for someone to come and, you know, and bless us, and say, you’re fine. You know, it’s all like nothing happened, because that’s not real. That isn’t a real thing, you know, that’s magic. The real thing is, if I, if I punched a hole in your fence, I should go over and fix your fence. You know, if I punched a hole in your life, I should do everything I can to help you restore your life. And I think that’s basically what it’s about.
Speaker 1 11:56
Thank you. Can you tell something about the project that you’re working on and the book that you are about to publish?
Kenneth E. Hartman 12:06
Right. The title of the book is “Too Cruel, Not Unusual Enough”, and it refers to the idea of life without the possibility of parole, being used way, far too extensively, and the fact that life without parole is often advocated by people who are opposed to the death penalty as a supposedly reasonable alternative. And The Other Death Penalty Project, which I’m the Executive Director, is comprised of prisoners who are serving life without the possibility of parole. We have roughly 8,000 members throughout the country, in virtually every state, and are fundamentally what we believe is, is that life without the possibility of parole is merely another method of execution. So it is, in fact, the death penalty, which is why we call it ‘The Other Death Penalty Project’. And we believe, and the position of the project is, is that everyone who comes to prison should have the ability to earn their way back out of prison. And that doesn’t mean that everyone necessarily will get out. There may be some people who are never able to come to, you know, the means to earn their way back out, but everyone should have the possibility of doing that. We don’t believe, and I certainly don’t believe, that you can predict what someone is going to be like, you know, 15, 25, 30 years later. I’m certainly not the same person I was 33 years ago when I came to prison. And I, you know, I’m surrounded by a lot of middle aged and, you know, getting slightly older men who are not the young men they were when they first came to prison. So, the idea is, is that we, we thought that we try to collect stories of men and women. There are, there are several women represented in the book as well, who are serving life without the possibility of parole around the country, and collect their stories into one anthology. And the idea is, is that we’re going to send this anthology to policy makers, people involved in the death penalty abolition movement, other people that are in positions of influence throughout society. We believe that the best way to try to change this is to allow us a position where we can kind of help to re-humanize the people that are serving life without the possibility of parole. We, toward that end, in the not too distant future, probably within the next few weeks, I’m guessing, in the month of February, possibly late January, there’ll be the beginning of an Indiegogo campaign where people will be allowed able to donate money towards the production and distribution costs of the anthology. So that’s that’s pretty much where we’re at. We, and we hope that that people will take the time to read these stories. Some of them are truly profound and moving stories. I edited the anthology, and I’ve read every story many times, and some of them literally had me in tears, and I lived this life, so I, so I’m I think people are going to read this anthology, and I think they’re going to hopefully sit back and rethink their position, particularly our friends on the left, who I think unknowingly advocate for life without parole, and don’t really fully get that they’re just sending people to a different death row. So that’s that’s pretty much where we’re at with that.
Speaker 1 15:58
Well, I can’t wait to read the book, and I want to thank you very much, Mr. Hartman for sharing your ideas and experience with Prison Radio. My name is Carol Seligman for Prison Radio.
