The savagery of Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentencing

by Zaharibu

Originally posted in the SF Bayview of August 2021, and on their site here, on 25th July 2021.

What specifically has been problematic about my situation is that I did not commit the crime that I am imprisoned for. I was not convicted for killing the victim in this case. I was acquitted on the charge that I personally used a weapon in the commission of the crime.

Nothing at all has been fair or just about the prison experience. I do assume responsibility for the mistakes that I have made in my life and during my incarceration. 

Rehabilitation has everything to do with a person wanting to fix himself. The tools needed to give the people who are constantly working on themselves simply do not exist in prison.

There must be a clear and firm commitment by legislators and CDCR to provide the incarcerated population with the tools that are needed to contribute to the maturation process inside. Tools that include housing people in prisons closer to their families and loved ones, an increase in pay for workers, technological training, expanding the makeup of the board of prison terms to include members of the community that the person will be paroling to as well as psychologists and psychiatrists who are not employed by the state, as many of them write incredibly biased reports.

A lot of the people who come to prison come as children, psychologically.

Along with the self-help programs that are available in only some prisons, a lot of the people who come to prison come as children, psychologically. We develop this warped sense of what manhood is – and there are no programs available in prison. There was and still is a program in Solano prison, MANUP, that focused on the development of manhood. In my opinion, it was a very effective program.

There must be a recognition that in order to know if we have learned, we must be put in positions to practice what we have learned. If prison is about rehabilitation, once we have started to engage in the life-long process of working on ourselves and fixing ourselves – becoming productive members of society – at that point and in that moment we have outgrown the prison experience. 

There is nothing left for us to learn in prison. From that point on, our being in prison is just about punishment. To the extent that we are willing to do so, politics should be removed from the equation of who is released. 

Prisoners and their families should be allowed to provide testimony.

There are people who were found to be not suitable for reasons that are highly politicized. And, as a result, legislators should not make it a discretionary choice for courts to resentence prisoners.

I was found guilty of first-degree murder, but the jury found the personal use of the weapons allegation to be not true. The jury did not find that I was the actual killer or shooter. 

In spite of this, none of the recently enacted new laws are being applied to me. I have been consistently told that I do not qualify for any of the relief offered in these new laws.

Hearings should be held and prisoners and their families should be allowed to provide testimony of their stories. That record would be valuable in crafting legislation that would remedy those injustices.

In closing, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the efforts to create a just and humane approach for how crime and punishment is administered.

Please know that the work that you do is crucial to our fulfilling our democratic potential.

Send our brother some love and light: Michael Reed Dorrough, D83611, SATF, B3-6-4L, P.O. Box 5248, Corcoran, CA 93212. Supporters have a website for him at: Zaharibu.org.

New Fundraiser for Justice for Michael Reed Dorrough launched

Michael in October of 2018

Dear friends, supporters of Michael Reed Dorrough and Justice,

It has been nearly 35 years since Michael was falsely arrested, charged and sentenced to Life Without Parole (LWOP).

In Michael’s own words:

I was tried separately from my co-defendants.

The jury found me guilt of first degree murder, but, they found that I did not personally use a weapon in the commission of the crime.

The jury did not consider me to have been the actual shooter or killer.

The trial jury could not agree on punishment during my penalty trial, and a hung jury was declared.

A second penalty trial jury was impaneld and this jury recommended that I be sentenced to life without parole.

Some of the jurors said that they only recommended this sentence because they did not have any other choice. They said that if they could have recommended a sentence less than that, they would have.

On the day that one of the prosecution’s witnesses claims I was at her apartment in Los Angeles, I was in San Diego, CA, visiting friends, and I had been there for a few days. March 6th is the birthday of my youngest son. And March 5th, 1985, was his one year birthday. I could not be with him on this day because I could not make it back from San Diego in time. I did call his Mother to make her aware of this. And I spoke to my son on his birthday.

The people I was visiting in San Diego had a brother who was incarcerated at the time, and he called while I was at the home of his sister, whom I was visiting, on his birthday. His birthday was also on March 6th.

The mother of my youngest son, as well as the people that I was visiting in San Diego, and the brother whom I spoke to on the phone while in San Diego, were all willing to come to court to testify to this. I also have affidavits from them.

None of them were called to testify on my behalf.

We have a Legal Fund now so that we all can contribute to/donate to hire a lawyer for Michael, so that he can eventually go back to court. Michael’s own alibi’s have not been heard.

Please donate whatever you can, and share this link:

https://fundrazr.com/91arq4?ref=ab_a7DYLe

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Michael was moved to CSP-Sacramento

Please write to Michael, he needs our support:

Michael Reed Dorrough, D83611
CSP-Sacramento STRH – G 178L
P.O. Box 290066,
Represa, CA 95671

Thank you so much!

One of the first photo’s after Michael was allowed to have a picture taken (once a year that was in 2014)

About Zaharibu (Michael Reed Dorrough)

Zaharibu, or Michael Reed Dorrough, is held a prisoner at the California State Prison – Corcoran Secure Housing Unit (SHU). He was falsely arrested in 1985. He has spent more than 24 years in solitary confinement.

With this website we, Friends of Zaharibu, show our support for his case for innocence.

Also, we want to highlight the torturous conditions inside California’s solitary confinement units: locked in a very small cell for 24 hours a day, with only yardtime a few hours a week; no telephone calls ever; one hour visits behind glass; never being able to touch one’s family/loved ones; one photo a year they had to fight for to get; inadequate food and clothing, etc. Zaharibu needs to be heard and released.

We have also created a Facebook profile page for Zaharibu that we manage to keep in contact more easily with his family and friends, supporters.

Note: “Being validated” does not mean a lot, it is the terminology of the California dept. of Corrections (CDCR). The term is being used not only for gang members but also to lock-in solitary people who adhere to authors, political programs, etc. that are classified by CDCR as undesirable in their views. Making these prisoners political or politicised prisoners.

This comes from SolitaryWatch and SF Bay View: (Sept. 24th 2012)

Michael Dorrough, an inmate at California State Prison, Corcoran, who has spent 24 years in the SHU after being  validated as a member of the Black Guerilla Family in 1988, is skeptical of any talk of reforms:

It is virtually impossible to figure out or believe anything you might hear regarding the step down program. It’s supposed to be revised again. This will be the sixth revision. In all honesty I would not want to be included in it. Aside from those privileges that have been outlined in each of the draft proposals, you have no idea what the expectations are. And it is stated that there are expectations. There is a contract that you must sign stipulating that you agree with whatever the expectations are. No one knows what the contract looks like and that’s usually the best indication that something is wrong.

Dorrough, who has been held in all three of California’s SHUs, writes of psychological struggles as a result of his prolonged isolation:

I know that, psychologically, damage has been done. I don’t just talk to myself, I curse myself out. Sometimes I’ll drop something, a piece of paper, a spoon, and I’ll get mad at whatever I’ve dropped. I’ll snatch it off the floor with the intention of harming it.

You can actually feel yourself disconnecting. And I ask myself from what? You really have been cut off from everything. This is it.

And here we are only allowed out to the yard cages once, maybe twice a week. We are confined to the cells 24 hours a day, five or six days a week. I have developed a condition in which I bite down on my back teeth constantly. It’s been happening for a couple of years. And the only thing I have been told is that it’s all in my mind.

“Isolation can really crush your spirit,” he writes.

Address:

Michael Zaharibu Dorrough
D-83611,
CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B-1L-43
P.O. Box 3481,
Corcoran, CA 93212

(Zaharibu was forcibly removed from 4B to 4A during the July 2013 hunger strike)

Zaharibu’s first Photo in many years

Zaharibu sent us this picture of him taken in 2012.  He is now allowed to have one picture per year taken. 

For years he and the others inside the SHU never had the opportunity to have their picture taken, something which is so simple and humane for their families, loved ones, and for themselves, to see a picture of their own face. It took hunger strikes to get some of these basic things.  

How much longer will those inside California’s SHU’s and ASU’s (prison control units, solitary confinement, 23 or 24 hours a day in lock-up) be tortured and forced to snitch to get to general population?

Especially people like Zaharibu, who has been in solitary for 24 years!!