The Petty "Theft" Of A Green Plant

Today I asked someone I work with who she was voting for. She doesn't keep up with politics she said, and then added, quietly, that she couldn't vote because she had a criminal record.

I looked at her. Everyone who works with this woman knows she is a hard worker and that she bends over backwards to make people happy. "What kind of crime?" I asked, because I couldn't imagine her committing any crime at all. She said she'd been charged with a "Class C" "theft" and convicted. She said she had taken a plant from an apartment that she was told had been abandoned. She told me she didn't know the place was NOT abandoned, and so, she said, because she took the plant, she had "stolen" a plant.

She said she admitted to "stealing" a plant. I said, "But you didn't know that you were 'stealing' right? I mean, you'd been told they had moved out and this was leftover stuff right?" She said yes, but that her Public Defender told her she'd get more time if she didn't do a plea bargain. She told me if she hadn't had a Public Defender, she would have just plead "Guilty" to the judge, whatever they'd want.

As a result of this horrific crime, she cannot 1. VOTE, 2. Leave the country (banned from Canada forever), and she 3., Cannot own a gun.

This woman is the same one I wrote about in the past, whose kids were taken from her when she was a teen, having been an abused and battered woman, and taking drugs after coercion by the state.

I asked her if she'd had any prior charges. She said no, and then said yes, that she'd been charged with "assault" after her abusive boyfriend tried to get into the house where she was hiding, and she closed the window on his arm, or hit him. He went to police and she was arrested. He continued to abuse her, and police had record he was an abuser prior to this incident, but they told her that because she had admitted to injuring his arm, they had to arrest her. He always had a private defender, and she got the PDs. She said she thought they dropped this charge.

She admitted to one other indiscretion, that she was given some kind of ticket for using cigarettes underage, one week before her 18th birthday.

This woman comes from a poor family, and is submissive and quiet, and has only a high school education. She writes on a note for the other workers: "I stalked the shelves already". I remember looking at that for awhile: "stalked".

The very kind of person who should be voting, and has a right to make a difference and get excited about "change" cannot even vote. Which reminded me, of course, of all the others in jail, who have been charged with crimes they didn't commit, or who had lousy representation. This nation has the highest rate of incarceration and has proven it cannot and does not meet the burden and responsibility for providing legal public defense. Crappy defense is not public defense. It's a slam-dunk for the prosecution, period. The kind of people this is happening to is people like my friend N., who has been screwed more than one time, by the justice system, and went along with whatever she was told, because she didn't know anything different.

I said to her, "Why do you say you "stole" this plant when you didn't steal it?" She said that's what they called it. Stealing. She said the police found a trail of leaves to her door. Leaves she hadn't bothered to cover up because she never thought she was doing anything wrong. The people had already moved out and left some things behind, and she had been told they wouldn't be back.

This girl never should have been convicted. She never should have been coerced into signing away her parental rights either. But because she didn't KNOW, and didn't have anyone defending her and standing up for her rights, she is now among the walking dead in our Country, who roam prison hallways insisting they are innocent or were framed, and who work in low-paying jobs and have lost almost all of the basic rights which one should have as a citizen to begin with. She doesn't even have the right to own a gun, which could come in handy, when the father of her kids is violent and regularly came after her until he was convicted and sent to prison for 7 years.

This is so wrong.