----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 10:10 PM
Subject: Update 12-7-01 Patrick - they gave him a different mattress today
And now for another update....I just received a call from
Patrick's mother. She received another call from Patrick this afternoon
to tell her that they gave him another mattress in his lockup cell.
It's not great, but better than the other one, and after stomping on it
to get the bumps smoothed a bit, he can use it to sleep on instead of having
to sleep on the steel plate. We are grateful for this small token
of assistance from the prison. He still has not received his medication
yet though, but the message he gave to his mother to tell me is this:
"I'm surviving." She said he received a lot of cards in the mail and he
was thrilled about this. He wanted me to know that they require us
all to add something to his address: his bed number. So here is the correct
address for him:Patrick Swiney154406 Seg B-14P.O. Box 150Mt. Meigs, AL
36057 While the prison has told us that Patrick can only make one phone
call a month, he has been able to call his mother three times and that's
a good thing. He can only make calls during the daytime though, so
that means he cannot call me in the evening when I get home from work.
So, I call his mother every day or she calls me and that way I can stay
in touch. It is true that he can only have one visit per month on
the first Tuesday of the month from 9 am to 11 am which means it will be
difficult for me to arrange to visit him, but I will find a way....assuming
his visitors list is approved any time soon. They have already told
us that could take 6 weeks, so we don't know. This good and loving man
is in need of medical attention, even though he states he's surviving.
He is 57 years old and has had three heart attacks, suffers from emphysema
and has inflammatory spinal arthritis which is painful all the time.
Many of you care very much about Patrick, and some of you may not even
know him. He is a human being who has been continuously abused by
prison officials and the legal system. He is 100% innocent of the
crime for which he was convicted and we can prove that to anyone who wants
to look. So why is he there, going through all of this, you ask.
Because he is a political prisoner in the USA and as such, he's not going
to get anything that resembles fairness in the legal system, no matter
how much evidence of innocence we have at hand. He turned in a District
Attorney and a Chief Investigator for the Sheriff's office in Baldwin County,
for racketeering and drug smuggling at Gulf Shores, Alabama. The
man who prosecuted Patrick was having an affair with his wife at the time,
and that prosecutor is the one who said in court that he destroyed the
vaginal swab DNA evidence [the evidence that would have exonerated Patrick],
stating that this *standard* autopsy test was unimportant to the trial.
He was right. To him and the other framers, it was completely unimportant.
So unimportant that it had to be destroyed because if those DNA results
had been revealed to the jury, Patrick would not have been convicted.
In addition, that prosecutor had two other reports that were unimportant
to the trial: (1) the gun powder residue report that shows Patrick was
never near a fired weapon that night, and (2) the blood report that shows
Patrick didn't have any blood on him anywhere either. Had the jury
seen those reports,
Patrick would not have been convicted. OK! so show these things to the courts, and then everything will be fine, you say. We did exactly that and guess what? The courts denied on procedural bases, not on the merits of this evidence of innocence. So, you see? They want Patrick right where he is, to be punished continuously for what he did so long ago: doing his job as a police officer and not being afraid to tell the truth. This case has nothing at all to do with Law. It has everything to do with Outlaws in Alabama covering their tracks. End of story. So, if you want to help, I think the best thing anyone can do is to write to the press, to Law Schools, defenders of the wrongly convicted, and continue doing so until they pick it up and investigate the story themselves. The documented evidence is on our website for anyone to see, download or print and use as enclosures of facts. Meanwhile, I am trying to get relief for Patrick in the immediate and dangerous situation of him not receiving his medication. He tells me not to worry because he is surviving. It may be true that he *is* surviving and I am glad about that, versus him *not* surviving, but what kind of survival is this for any human being? We won't stand for this for the people who are on death row, guilty or innocent, because even the most guilty are still human beings.
Will we stand for this for any other prisoner, guilty or not? I don't think any of us will. I am always here to help anyone the best I can. That's why we have PATRICK CRUSADE www.patrickcrusade.org and that's why we support so many other human rights organizations across the country. Any time you call, I am there for you and I give it my all every time. So, I'm giving it my all this time for my husband, Patrick Swiney, and I ask you to join me in this fight for him, for what *should be* standard treatment for every prisoner in this country: proper medical care, reasonable comfort, and -- for Patrick -- eventual justice, so he can come home.
Love and Blessings,Sherry Swiney