“Virginia DOC Due Process Violations And Other Fraud,” recorded on April 14, 2026.
There is no end to the inequities of the Virginia DOC. Staff abuse, deliberate denial of medical care, a dangerous lack of mental health care, and dangerously toxic environments. The Virginia DOC is a pit of human destruction. Recently, it has been reported that even more diabolical acts designed to rob captives of their rights and freedom are in play. Specifically, taking away good behavior credits without any legitimate justification and no due process. In some cases mere days before a captive’s release date. This throws both captives and their families into total disarray as plans laid months in advance are wrecked in a moment by arbitrary Virginia DOC decisions.
Captives in the Virginia DOC are governed by a point system regarding their security and good time earned levels. This system is a network, a web work of back and forth points added and subtracted, that, according to most staff, makes no sense. It is admittedly 40 years old, and it has not been accurately updated in about as long, and does not portray a captive’s situation in any true picture. Assessments are often missing key sections of questionnaires, leaving ample room for staff tampering, which includes vindictive overrides of scores, or just the opposite when an override is appropriate. For example, a recent annual assessment suggested that I take the Virginia DOC substance abuse program based solely on a 1993 marijuana misdemeanor in New Jersey.
When the Haynesville Institutional Program Manager [IPM} was challenged by me and properly ridiculed for her idiocy at such a suggestion she, “found a drug charge against me from my very first day in a receiving unit in 2018.” There is, of course, no lab result pending or available for this charge, and it was apparently signed and accepted when I was accepting and signing hundreds of pages during the actual intake process. The IPM was informed that she can either produce a lab result for a urine test, which the Virginia DOC, as I have stated, does not have, or acknowledge a long history of documented targeted abuse. She was probably informed that I will file suit and expose her to the public as the fraud that she is.
By the way, all of Haynesville Correctional is higher than the moon, excepting the few of us who have no interest in smoking staff-supplied rat poison, known as deuce. It is also increasingly documented that hearings officers are also violating due process precedents upheld by the courts when adjudicating institutional infractions. They are on record ignoring exculpatory evidence, often claiming such evidence is irrelevant. I have two personal cases on record, one here at Haynesville and one at Lawrenceville. The latter of the two is now part of a federal lawsuit. These violations are contrary to court orders in numerous cases, including Landman v. Royster and Wolff v. McDonnell, as an example. Here at Haynesville, we have at least two captives who should have exited weeks and longer ago. Instead, the Virginia DOC, without a hearing of any kind and without any reason provided, changed their exit dates. This gross refusal to abide by the law warrants a mass investigation, as well as the rounding up for accountability Virginia DOC administrative staff.
The lawlessness of IPMs, hearing officers, and others in administrative positions goes even further. Here at Haynesville, there is a captive whose sentence order states that his sentence is to be served concurrently, essentially all at one time. The Virginia DOC has decided that the court order means nothing and is, of their own volition, running his sentence consecutively. He should have been home a year ago. And recently in the case Custis v. Hess, the federal court determined that staff at Hainesville were interfering with legal bail sent to captives, a federal crime, however small, and another due process violation, one of too many to count. Adding these hundreds and more cases to the already national high wrongful conviction rate of 20% according to recent surveys, including a Pew survey, you get a staggering number of illegal captives. Many of these staff will claim that they are “ just doing their jobs,” a defense that led to a lot of hangings at Nuremberg about 80 years ago.
All of this lawlessness by Virginia DOC staff impacts thousands upon thousands of humans held captive, and tens of thousands more by extension, families and friends. The excessive harm of abusive and dishonest staff and toxic environments is creating severe psychological damages and compounds everything. Sic semper tyrannis: “thus always to tyrants” is the motto of Virginia on its state flag. I agree, and the most important tyrants to address and eliminate are the Virginia DOC. So, sic semper tyrannis.
My name is David Annarelli, contributing writer at prisonjournalismproject.org, davidannarelli.wordpress.com, can find me at minutesbeforesix.com, prisonwriters.com, justiceartscoalition.org, and anywhere else via Google. Thank you very much.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
