Hello.

My name is Mandingo.  I am 38 years old (August 7th, 2000).  I have been labelled Black Muslim, Revolutionist, Political Agitator, Brigand, troublemaking extremist, murderer and I have been slated for death.  For 17 plus years I have been a political prisoner here on Florida's Death Row.  My mighty spirit is presently distraught.  With the precarious nature of my current state of being, it is impossible for it not to be.   A bloodthirsty government with the blessing of an unjust judicial system is trying to murder me.  Sadists in uniforms canvas the halls both here at this concentration camp and the Department of Corrections in the State Capitol, with the sole purpose of discovering new and additional ways to cause me physical and mental anguish and despair.  I bear the awesome weight of my own impending state- sanctioned murder upon my broad but steadily sagging shoulders.  I have no caring family members left.  TheCreator saw that it wasn't good for man to be alone and created woman to be his helpmate; his partner in life.  I am living against the laws of nature, I am a man without a woman.  For over 17 years, almost half of my life, this has been my existence.  This can't possibly be right or just, I know that it isn't.  Every day I experience another loss of some kind.  Every single day I think of my freedom and my life.  I don't have anyone to help me reclaim my freedom and take back my life.  It HURTS and it hurts bad.  I am a good man.  I don't profess sainthood but I have never done anything to hurt anyone who didn't hurt or try to hurt me first.  I am a selfless man, I care about other people a great deal and try to show it by my actions.  Now I wonder why I am here alone.  I am also beginning to realize that my number one priority has to be reclaiming my freedom and taking my life back from these people.  If I am dead what else could possibly matter ?  I've heard it said that 'a friend in need is a friend indeed.'  I have to be the greatest friend on earth :-)  I need all the help I can get.  I need your help.  Are you going to come to my aid ?   I desperately need help and I need it now !  THAT is my reality.

AT WAR,
Mandingo
 

DERRICK T. SMITH  # 490606
PO Box 221 (A-1)
Raiford, Florida
32083 USA

    
          Writings By Derrick Smith
                            - originally printed in the Quaker's newsletter Peace Seeds.-

Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Months 1998  Vol.10, No.3
Peace Seeds
Quaker Lake Friends Meeting
Rt. 2, Box 112N
Keysville, VA 23947
 

Life on Death Row: A Personal Journey Towards Wholeness
                                                                                                        by Derrick Smith

For a while now I've been asked about my personal journey.  How did I go from being a confused, violent accused murderer to being a selfless, peaceful man of compassion?
In essence, how did I find light in the darkness that is death row?

I have never attempted to articulate it until now. How do you adequately express moments of grace? It's taken me two years to even try. We humans naturally look for happiness and understanding to bring light into our lives and hearts. Often we look to the future or to some set of ideals, searching for the key to our wholeness and happiness as if it were somewhere else. Yet the place to find wholeness, light, and well-being is here and now, even in the midst of our difficulties.

Being on death row is the darkness that fills the personal world of anyone burdened with the prospect of state-sanctioned murder. This moment of pitch-black darkness came to me at age twenty. A sense of my own vulnerability left me feeling overwhelmed and powerless. The insecurity born of those feelings then led me to anger, blaming self-protection, and hostility. I even attempted to anesthetize myself to life's experience, and in that numbness my isolation and pain increased.

As I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I found myself longing for an ideal future or seeking miraculous formulas to protect me from pain and conflict.  It wasn't easy for me to accept that there is no cure for living on death row. By seeking a perfection that conformed to the images in my imaginatton, I missed the perfection and the mystery that is here before me every day-the rising sun, the beating of my heart, the changing of the seasons, the miracle of human speech.

There is an art to learning how to live with life's challenges and hardships, to discovering light amid darkness, and to healing ourselves and the world around us. Like any other art, the art of living in peace calls for both great love and discipline. I had to be willing not to turn away from or shun the shadows in my life but to turn toward them. This was the first and most significant step, for in turning, I began to cast away my fears, despair, and self-doubt. It wasn't darkness that was my opponent but my rejection and denial of it. It was in my greatest difficulty that I found the world's everlasting, unquenchable light. As St. John of the Cross said, "If a person wishes to be sure of the road they tread upon, they must close their eyes and walk in the dark." There I found true compassion and greatness of spirit.

As I turned toward the "shadow of death" with an open heart and a clear and focused mind, I ceased resisting and began to understand and to heal. In order to do this, I had to learn
to feel deeply, not so much opening my eyes as openiAg the inmer senses of my body and heart. This meant listening closely to the mystery that is right in front of me rather than the ideas I had about things. This listening and opening set my life free. Learning to listen with sensitivity, I discovered new depths of calmness, new resources of energy and effectiveness. The shadows I had regarded as adversaries then became my most profound teachers. I learned to meet them with grace and serenity.

In that calmness I began to understand that peace is not the opposite of challenge and hardship. I understood that the presence of light is not a result of darkness ending. Peace was found not in the absence of challenge but in my own capacity to be with hardship without judgment, prejudice or resistance. I discovered that I have the energy and the faith to heal myself, and the world, through an openheartedness in this moment. I discovered that all things are illuminated by an inner light, that they exude a radiance, and that in a most fundamental way, what we are is light. My true nature, my basic goodness shone forth when I stopped looking elsewhere and discovered that what I sought had been here all along.

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell speaks of the universal significance of Jonah's
terrifying experience of being swallowed up in the belly of an enormous whale: "The belly is the dark place where digestion takes place and new energy is created. The story of Jonah in the whale is an example of a mythic theme that is practically universal, of the hero going into a fish's belly and ultimately coming out again, transformed...Psychologically, the whale represents the power of life ldcked in the unconscious. Metaphorically, water is the unconscious, and the creature in the water is the life or energy of the unconscious, which has overwhelmed the conscious personality and must be disempowered, overcome and controlled. In the first stage of this kind of adventure, the hero leaves the realm of the familiar, over which he has some measure of control, and comes to a threshold, let us say the edge of a lake or sea, where a monster of the abyss comes to meet him. In a story of the Jonah type, the hero is swallowed and taken into the abyss later to be resurrected-a variant of the eath -and -resurrection theme. The conscious personality here has come in touch with a charge of unconscious energy which it is unable to handle and must now suffer all the trials and revelations of a terrifying night-sea journey, while learning how to come to terms with this power of the dark and emerge, at last, to a new way of life."  This archetypal experience of meeting the darkness, the powerful unconscious in which the life force dwells, is indeed terrifying, as I found during my own descent into the belly df the beast!

I asked  myself these questions: who or what do I see as an adversary, an enemy in my life ? What obstacles or hardships am I struggling with. or denying? I looked at the darkest period of my life, the greatest difficulty I was currently facing, and asked: What have I resisted in that darkness or difficulty? what have I not accepted that is true? How might I discover the heart of Jesus or the wisdom of a Buddha if I could accept what is actually before me, difficult though it may be? what freedom and light could come to my spirit in the dark bowels of the beast?
Is there another way of being with darkness? How can I extend an openhearted welcome and grace? How can I see walking through the valley of the shadow of death anew, in the light of awareness and compassion?  It was in asking these questions that I began to heal.

(Dee is our friend on Florida's death row.) -

As the new year and millennium begin, I ponder what is in store for humanity. Will inhumane victimization end? I often think of politicians and such who profess to be acting on behalf of victims. I hear people embracing the idea of murder bringing closure for them. I listen to the rhetoric and wonder if people truly believe it? Surely they realize that every single person touched in any way by the madness of murder--whether murder by private individuals or murder by the state--is a victim! One can and probably should start with the initial murder victim and their family but at the same time acknowledge that a victim is a victim and all merit compassion and consideration.

The men, women, and children in the U.S. who carry the weight of state-sanctioned murder directly on their shoulders are victims of the first order, whether society wants to acknowledge it or not. In this classist society, those sentenced to die were almost always born into families at the bottom of the totem pole. Everyone already knows what that means: the poverty, illiteracy, abuse, violence, selfhatred, despair, mental illness, etc. that are common in the lower class of any society. Humanity must see these victims!

The children and family members of death-sentenced prisoners are totally innocent victims of capital punishment. Let me share what has happened to my own family. My brother became an alcoholic in an attempt to find solace from the pain of his older brother and only parental figure being on death row. Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers died from the stress of their grandson's impending death. My beautiful daughter, Sha'keyla, three weeks old when I was imprisoned,is now 17 years old. The psychological damage she has suffered growing up is
inhumane. Early on I had to make a decision to either stay out of my child's life completely or expose her to the evil of death by law. No man should ever have to make the choice I faced:
either allow my child to be fatherless or subject her to constantly wondering and worrying when the government was going to murder her Daddy. Humanity must see these victims.
Politicians, judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers are victimized by capital punishment, too. In fact, societies that practice capital punishment are victims of their own inhumanity. Politicians have lost their humanity in pursuit of political advancement. In the process of speeding up the machinery of death, they deny basic human rights. The more ardent they are in casting human beings to the bloodlusting beast, the more votes they get. Isn't that a direct reflection on society? Case in point: The probable next president of this country, George W. Bush, is a mass murderer by virtue of being directly involved in the premeditated and deliberate taking of so many lives in Texas [119 as of 2/4/2000]. For the sake of argument, I'll admit he's legally sanctioned murderer, but a mass murderer nevertheless. I'm not attempting to slander him. He's a victim himself. I'm just speaking the truth.

A judge's personal views on capital punishment are a determinative factor in his/her being considered competent to interpret the laws of this land. Any person who unequivocally opposes capital punishment won t be elected to the bench or if nominated, will not be confirmed regardless of his/her competence or experience. The most unjust, ridiculous, and arbitrary rulings are issued in capital cases. In a death case a justice of the highest court in the land issued a written opinion saying, in effect, that it didn t matter whether a defendant was guilty or innocent as long as he/she had a fair trial. Because their intelligence, sensitivity, and humanity have been severely compromised, judges have knowingly allowed innocent people to be murdered.

Prosecutors hide evidence beneficial to those they prosecute. Police and prosecutors sometimes manufacture evidence. They make deals with liars and they lie themselves, all in the name of seeing that justice is done.  What damage has been done to their humanity when they see their job as doing what it takes to bring a death sentence? Defense attorneys are overworked, underpaid, and their character is often attacked because of who they represent. How are their families affected? How are they affected when their client is murdered despite their herculean efforts against all odds?

Both proponents and opponents of the death penalty are victims, too. And what about the psyche of the person who professes to find closure in a state-sanctioned killing? I shudder to think that someone might actually find inner peace in murder!

Humanity is the manifest spirit of God on earth but that humanity is in ruins. No more is it evident than in this evil called capital punishment. Yes, I wonder what the millennium has in store for humanity.   Happy New Year!

                                                    
                    Derrick T. Smith #490606
                Union Correctional Institution
                          PO Box 221  (A-1)
                           Raiford, Florida
                               32083, USA

                  The CCADP offers free webpages to over 500 Death Row Prisoners
                                               Contact us for more information.
                                                   info@ccadp.org
            
                                                       "The Eyes Of The World Are Watching Now"

                                            The image below was deleted by NBCi in April 2001