"Okay." "You can come in." "I'm sorry, I was just sound checking the microphone here." "You guys must be all set." "Has he eaten?" "Yes." "Okay." "If he needs to go to the bathroom, do I just wave my hands at someone?" "Let me just finish setting this up and then I'll explain what's going on." "Mark, he was only 19 years old and he didn't understand a lot of things." "DeFriest cap letter Mike dash." "D-E-F-R-I-E-S-T." "Cap interview" "His dad died and evidently the dad had told him that he could have certain tools." "Had told him that he could have certain tools." "No." "Apparently Mark didn't understand about probate, and he took the tools and then his stepmother called the police and had him arrested for that." "He was in there for four years for taking, well, not even taking his father's tools." "Well, not even taking his father's tools." "Okay." "I don't know if you remember me." "We met back in 1981." "I was a lot younger then." "I remember you." "Are you okay talking with me?" "Sure." "Okay." "And you really think all this going to help, huh?" "I suspect that I may be able to make your life a lot better." "You know, if I was just a rapist or a murderer or something, they'd let me out." "I'm the idiot that made them look like idiots." "I'm the idiot that made them look like idiots." "He became Houdini." "So he could escape." "He could take a piece of paper and make a key out of it." "He'd get out of anything." "Mark DeFriest." "Yeah, that's who it was." "Mark DeFriest." "Yeah, that's who it was." "He's smarter than all the rest of them that's in there." "That creates a problem because they're scared of him." "He was in the worst wing." "Lived in total darkness in a small cell." "No electricity." "His water had been cut off." "There were stabbings, murder, and mayhem." "There were stabbings, murder, and mayhem." "Someone who came into the prison system having never committed a violent crime of any type." "I don't think they'll ever let him out." "Mark DeFriest's entire history should be examined." "Can you imagine what that brain could have done?" "Can you imagine what that brain could have done?" "Now, you see, that thing," "Now, you see, that thing, that's a real fighting machine there." "That's that fast shooting one." "Spitting out thousands of rounds a minute." "If you had Mark here, we could get that going in a couple weeks easily." "This wrench right here belonged to Mark DeFriest." "And we worked on a Lark with it down at Apalachicola." "Down at Apalachicola." "He was doing something all the time." "And he was a whiz at mechanicing everything." "That's Mark." "There he is right there up here on the Lark." "I believe that's Brenda." "I believe that's his wife right there." "This was in '79." "I was working at a restaurant." "Mark and his father were in Chattahoochee doing some work on that bridge." "They were doing some welding on the bridge." "They were doing some welding on the bridge." "He was blonde, blue eyes, young, funny." "I guess that was what attracted me to him at the time." "At that point we were married." "His truck, the love of his life." "His truck, the love of his life." "The back of it was like a traveling garage." "It was immaculate." "His tools were as-- you could eat off his tools, they were so clean." "We traveled out west, and the way he paid for it was vehicles broken down along the road all the way along, and he would stop and he would help those people and then they would pay." "I mean, he could fix anything." "Anything." "It feels like that was the best time of your life in a way." "Yeah, it was fun." "Yeah, it was fun." "Yeah, it was cool." "Could it have kept going?" "I don't see why not." "My dad died and that's what screwed it up." "I went down to Florida." "I should have stayed the fuck away from that place." "I can't remember how he found out about his father being in the hospital because we did make it to the hospital before his father died." "But when we were going to go see his father again, we found out he was dead." "No one had told him his dad was dead." "His dad died, and it appeared that he was here, around here." "His dad died, and it appeared that he was here, around here." "And evidently the dad had told him that he could have certain tools and stuff." "I knew he wanted me to have all his tools and stuff from a shop he had from a joint business we used to do, and I picked the stuff up before the will was probated, because it was my understanding" "that the tools and stuff would go to me and all the insurance policies and money went to my stepmother." "He was only 19 years old and he didn't understand." "He was only 19 years old and he didn't understand about probate." "And they took the tools and then his stepmother called the police and had him arrested for that." "They come to pick him up and the sheriff told me his self, and I think he told Cooper, too" "I was, you know he said" "See, the sheriff come to pick him up and he just wanted to talk to them about the situation, see?" "But Mark broke and run from the trailer." "But Mark broke and run from the trailer and it all started from there." "Just where they captured him at," "I don't remember and everything." "He had four years and that whole situation sucked because he was in there for four years for taking, well, not even taking his father's tools." "The Florida Division of Corrections protects the public." "Society rightfully expects that." "At the same time, it's committed to help the people within these walls return to society as valuable citizens." "That commitment requires a staff with special skills." "Thoroughly trained, dedicated people." "Thoroughly trained, dedicated people who look forward to expanding the correctional horizons." "I went to visit him every weekend." "It was only about five miles across the bridge." "I'm not using to being around those kind of people, and I hate to be stereotypical, but you know what kind of people are usually in prison, and you know what kind of people usually visit them, and I felt way out" "of people usually visit them, and I felt way out of my league there." "Not that I'm better than anybody, but I am better than that." "All of a sudden I'm around a bunch of these fucking idiots that think they're fucking Einstein of criminal behavior and whatever." "Think they're real dangerous people." "And you got guards trying to seduce you, you know, saying if you'll have sex with me" "I'll pull a favor for Mark, or stuff like that." "It's a nasty world." "Four years, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am." "Four years, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am." "Have a nice day." "How am I supposed to feel?" "How would you feel?" "Go, go, go!" "Another guy, half of them got hung up on a fence on the razor wire shit, he was screaming," ""DeFriest, wait up for me!"" "I'm, like, what the fuck is wrong with you people, man?" "There's an art to everything." "My dad taught me how to deal with stuff like that." "So he taught you how to cheat razor wire?" "Well, not that particular brand of it, but, I mean, infiltration is part but, I mean, infiltration is part of fucking military training, man." "Sabotage and counterintelligence." "That's all stuff you learned?" "Yeah." "It's part of war." "I was trained from age six guerilla warfare, guns, explosives, bombs, anti-tank rockets." "My father, he was in the OSS during World War II." "He was into that whole fifties and sixties thing about the fucking Reds were coming and shit." "Now, that was really a whole culture thing back then." "That fucking dude was nuts." "He really was." "I never saw a Russian yet." "We went to one of my old friend's house." "They had a Ford pickup truck." "They had a Ford pickup truck." "Hotwired the truck, we back out, voom, and took off." "We was in Tallahassee and then we got caught in that fucking motel and all that other bullshit." "It turned into the crime of the century." "You know me, just one problem after the next." "He even said to me, when he was in ACI." "He even said to me, when he was in ACI before he escaped, you know, you should move on because when I get out of here," "I'm going to be so screwed up in the head it's not even going to be worth your time, and he was right." "Because, you know, he said he was being," "I guess, raped in the prison, and he was having to fight because, you know, blonde and blue eyes in prison, not good." "Yeah, so they sent me to the nuthouse for a psychological evaluation." "They thought you were crazy?" "Yeah." "Why?" "I have no idea." "Do I seem crazy?" "Can we have an honest opinion from the peanut gallery?" "Do I seem crazy?" "The Florida State Hospital Forensic Services, a secure facility with mental health treatment inside." "People are committed by the criminal courts from all over the state of Florida to the hospital." "This is our carpentry vocational training program." "This is our carpentry vocational training program here at Florida State Hospital." "This is one of our six vocational training areas." "We have educational programs from preschool through junior college." "Students seem to like it because of the immediate response that they get." "Yeah." "I was quite young when I started there." "I think I was about 29." "I found that the people I worked with on the wards were local people who that was the economy there." "And I always said if there were a meat-processing factory, they'd all be processing meat." "I worked there at the time." "That sucked." "Because I was a social worker there and I had patients that were looking up to me as their social worker and then I was trying to help and give them advice and I've got this husband over there in Forensic Services." "He made these recently." "He made these chairs." "He cut the strips from the inside lining of potato chip bags." "That's what this metallic foil is." "That's what this metallic foil is." "It's the lining of potato chip bags." "The clown in a straight jacket." "Sort of himself he feels, I think." "Well, I'm Mark's wife, the most important person in his life, and he feels the love of his life as he is mine, and we've been married for almost 14 years this month." "This is a special album that I made." "This is a special album that I made just for Mark and me." "I hope he gets a chance to see it someday." "It's called "Our Love Book."" "This was on our very first visit." "He looks so happy there." "We were--we had just been married a week by proxy when I went down to visit him and met him in person for the first time." "He's just got so many aspects to his personality." "He's just got so many aspects to his personality." "Great sense of humor." "He's creative, very artistic." "Not autistic, but artistic." "Very good with his hands." "He draws well." "These are cards that he made from start to finish." "They're braced behind with strips of cardboard." "Gives it lots of dimension." "Mark and Bonnie DeFriest, KT95, The Dark Side of the Moon." "If he had just accepted his first brief sentence." "If he had just accepted his first brief sentence of four years, he probably would have gotten out, but his personality didn't allow him to do that." "I think the only way we're going to be able to get him out is to prove that he has some mental problems and that he never should have been incarcerated." "Hi, this is John Middleton." "Hi, Mr. Middleton." "This is Bonnie." "I haven't talked to you for ages." "That's true." "How are you doing?" "Fine." "How are you?" "Fine." "How are you?" "Oh, just fine." "What's going on with Mark?" "Well, I think, you know, right now" "Mark needs some hope that he can hang onto." "What I hope to do, if possible, because of, you know, of mental problems," "I hope to get him released for time served." "Well, the only two avenues of relief for him is either clemency or the Florida Parole Commission." "The way that you would go about pursuing either of those two avenues would be to get him psychiatrically evaluated." "Mm-hmm." "Would be to get him psychiatrically evaluated." "Mm-hmm." "I agree with that." "Yeah." "That's the start." "Good." "I just felt it's time for a change." "This has gone on long enough and if possible," "I want to talk to Mr. Middleton and see if we can get him out." "I met Mark about 30 years ago." "Of anybody that I know of in prison," "Mark is probably short of a death row inmate, one of the hardest people to get out because Mark has put himself in about as deep a hole as you can get." "His parole date is well beyond the expiration of his sentence, which is an indication usually that the Parole Commission doesn't want to let you out of prison." "The Commission has got a man who is a notorious prisoner." "The Commission has got a man who is a notorious prisoner in the State of Florida and probably a notorious prisoner across the country." "And the only way he's ever going to get out is, in my opinion, because of his mental health status and that finally society, including the Parole Commission, starts to address the issues of the mentally ill in prison." "I have to review all that in order to put it together for the Commission so they understand the... for the Commission so they understand the... they understand how Mark ended up where he is." "I was a wild child, you know." "They tried to get me interact with other people and children, and I was more interested in how things worked." "I'd spend days down in there." "I'd spend days down in there." "They thought I was crazy with my electronics and chemicals and all this crap." "Couple times I blew myself up." "It got kind of weird." "I started working with my father at an early age." "We had a real close relationship." "There was a definitely a father-son bond there." "Everett was like a... to me, Everett was always like an Indiana Jones." "To me, Everett was always like an Indiana Jones." "I mean, I loved Everett." "You know, if it could be done, Everett could do it." "And so I think that's where Mark gets that." "Marilyn, his mother, we'd hear her scream about him and scream at him." "I'd see the stuff laid out on the table, you know." "Like, what kind of stuff?" "Like clocks." "He loved to take clocks apart." "Loved to." "I only met his mother twice." "I thought she was a cold bitch." "I thought that she didn't really care for Mark." "I saw no love." "I saw no hugs." "I saw no, I love you." "I saw nothing of that nature with her." "His mother told me that when his parents were divorced and he was sent to a school for boys who were disruptive, I think that's how she phrased it, and he ran away from there." "And he ran away from there." "And because of having been an escaper early in his incarceration, he has turned the whole system against himself." "Most people in jail, even the mentally ill ones, recognize that you don't tick off the jailers." "He didn't get that." "He didn't get that." "I was going over there on my breaks and then someone had something to say about that because they don't like that." "But I had been over to see him, and he just wanted me to hurry up and leave because, see, he had a plan." "Basically, our carpentry training program here consists of woodworking." "As you can see here, the class has just finished a wood bench." "They sent me to arts and craft school." "They sent me to arts and craft school and they got these rolled up copper sheets." "I'm just looking at it and looking at them thinking... they really don't want me to stay here." "It's all fucked up." "And then all the nuts in there, they were all laughing at me like it was a big fucking joke or something." "Then everybody goes, ooh." "And just my luck, I'm looking for somebody driving by who would be happy enough to donate their car to a worthy cause and there was nobody convenient." "There was no traffic." "There was no traffic." "So I said, oh, well, backup plan two, so I head for the swamp because I've already been in there." "I know that." "At some point was it, like, oh, my God, you're married to" "Satan." "Satan." "Mm-hmm." "He escaped there-- From there, and come out here, but he broke two or three bolt cutters but he broke two or three bolt cutters trying to get out of the handcuffs we figured." "And that's when they told me that he had made some kind of little old cap pistol, you know, out of some match heads or something like that and of course, they put it up as a big, big thing, you know." "To Mark it wasn't anything at all." "I loved him." "I loved him with all my heart," "I loved him with all my heart, and he broke it... into many pieces." "You go to a hospital where they think they can help you and you make a gun and you try to run away and just keep getting into trouble, more trouble, more trouble, more years, more years." "How long you think I'm going to sit here and wait for you?" "That's when I said forget this." "I just, you know, screwed it up." "Got in a bad situation where I needed a car real quick and got fucking jammed up and caught by the police." "He wasn't out there shooting people or anything of that nature." "I don't think his crimes involved pulling a gun and stealing a car, if I recall correctly." "And stealing a car, if I recall correctly." "If you did that in Miami, they'd give you a medal for not shooting somebody." "But I think what happened is is that the hospital probably didn't want him back either." "And then came the Bay County Jail bullshit." "And here we go again." "We had a war going on, a war of irritation." "Mark DeFriest reacts and that's what he has done through his entire prison life." "And when you react in the prison system, you get squashed down." "Proper intelligence training teaches you how to deal with all that crap." "I just tore the place down, literally." "Then they put me in another cell, but I smashed the light out and got in" "You could actually climb in a pipe galley and get all kind of metals." "I got these big long crowbars, so I just bam, and just rolled the door down like a can of sardines." "Yeah, you've read all the newspaper articles and all that crazy shit?" "I had them going there for awhile." "Dr. Berland was appointed by the court to determine whether or not Mr. DeFriest was competent at the time the offenses were committed was competent at the time the offenses were committed and competent to stand trial." "Competency requires you have a factual appreciation of the nature of the proceedings against you." "That means, do you know what all the different roles and procedures are in the court system." "You know what a judge does, you know what a prosecutor does, you know how a plea bargain works." "If I recall correctly, there was some... animosity between Dr. Berland and Mr. DeFriest." "And I say animosity that only Dr. Berland liked Mark DeFriest." "Whether or not that affected his evaluation, I don't know." "He was very clever." "He was very clever." "In all of his escapes, he was very clever, very controlled, very planful." "He made working guns from materials he could assemble in his cell in jail." "He was not confused." "He could follow a long conversation and stay on topic." "No bizarre statements or actions." "He knew what was going on around him." "And... four of the five jailers, they had seen no evidence four of the five jailers, they had seen no evidence of behavior suggesting the presence of delusions and hallucinations, major thinking disturbance, or despondency." "The fifth jailer, only recently hired, describes periods of strange behavior by the defendant during which he would appear to lose contact with his surroundings, eat bugs and stomp around in his cell area for no apparent reason." "You could imagine what kind of story the officers at the jail are going to give concerning Mark." "They're going to sit there, you know, if it's a thumbs up and a thumbs down, they're going to go, does it mean him going to trial?" "They're going to go, does it mean him going to trial?" "Yeah, he's competent." "And there are actually six psychologists or psychiatrists who have done evaluations on Mark, four of which found him to be incompetent and only one of the six had--determined him to be competent to stand trial." "I offered an opinion in writing and I said he was competent and malingering." "Malingering is the outright faking of symptoms you don't have at all." "You know how you go through phases in life?" "I was in my gunsmith phase where I could make a gun out of anything." "You see this?" "You see that's a toothpaste tube if you look at it closely." "It's handled like a gun, and it's not loaded, don't worry." "They'd jack it up a level and I'd jack it up some more." "Fuck them, they can't take a joke." "Okay, did you make an escape from that cell?" "Yeah." "I was in that cell that they had specially custom designed for me." "Where'd you get the stuff to make that last gun?" "What do you want, the whole low down." "What do you want, the whole low down on how all this shit happened, is that it?" "Yeah." "When we-- Through the hall, man, one of these dudes says his damn mother and shit's out there and he wants to go back." "And he wasn't much help to you then, huh?" "No, I says, holy shit, man." "I really got me a couple of real, real good ones here." "Did you shoot at Crews?" "I wasn't shooting at Crews." "You didn't shoot at him?" "What's the purpose of it?" "He's done." "He's hidden anyway." "How could I shoot the son of a bitch?" "And the only reason I shot the gun off was because Charlie says, just check and see what the gun really does." "So I aimed at some plastic fucking thing on the wall and I struck and it went poof." "And I struck and it went poof." "And then the goon squad come in and they beat the fuck out of me." "You're lucky you weren't still holding a gun." "Yeah, so they tell me." "Really, they'd have killed you." "That's what they said." "Okay." "So it is your contention that you were not trying to kill Crews?" "Hell no, man." "You can ask any of them dudes up there." "They charged him with attempted murder." "They charged him with attempted murder." "He was placed in solitary confinement, lived in total darkness in a small cell, was not allowed to communicate." "There were post orders, and in the post orders it states," ""No clothes for prisoner." "No mattress or sheets." "No matches, cigarettes, et cetera." "Conversation limited to business only."" "Mr. DeFriest was deprived of all toiletries, was deprived of toilet paper, soap, tissue, toothpaste." "Was deprived of toilet paper, soap, tissue, toothpaste." "The water was turned off at his cell." "He could not flush his toilet." "He could not bathe or shower." "He had to eat without utensils and in the darkness." "Yeah, they tried to torture me." "Yeah, they tried to torture me." "They were spraying all them fire hoses and water and all that bullshit in there on me, fucking trying to kill me." "So you have basically a 10-day period, 11-day period of time where Mark had all this trouble." "You have him being evaluated by Dr. Berland," "You have him being evaluated by Dr. Berland, and you've got an escape attempt, and I'm not so certain that a single human being can take all of that at once." "They walked me across the courthouse, said, plead guilty to life and we'll drop all these other cases we're charging you you picked up in jail." "Man, I didn't give a shit." "I just wanted to get out of that jail," "I just wanted to get out of that jail, whatever it took." "At sentencing, this judge, quote," ""Now, have you been mistreated in any manner by any person?" "Defendant, "I guess you could--" I guess you could call the way I'm being treated now mistreated." "The defense counsel said you had some comments, you wanted to make at this point." "Put it on the record." "Let's hear it." "Put it on the record." "Let's hear it." ""Well, I'm being held over there in a hell's hole right now, naked." "Look, I just want them to do something about it, you know." "Give me a mattress or some clothes."" "I don't run the jail, but I can suggest to the jailers that if you can't give him a mattress and some clothes, why don't you drive him on down to Lake Butler today?" "Ain't no way you can make them give me a mattress?" "Let me visit my wife?" "We can sometimes talk to the sheriff, but I think he wants you out of there," "Mr. DeFriest, just as bad as you want to leave." "Let's hope so." "Buddy, call and see if I sentence Mr. DeFriest today, fingerprint him today and he waives PSI" "Fingerprint him today and he waives PSI" "See if they'll drive him down to Lake Butler today." "That was it." "You have a psychological report dated August 3rd." "By August 14th he's pled and he's out of here." "Pled to a life sentence." "Now, I'm not certain that that's due process." "Quick process, I don't know if it's due process." "Quick process, I don't know if it's due process." "But the bottom line is, the amount of time this man received is ridiculous compared to most people in the state prison system." "And I've been going in prisons 30 years, so I've seen a lot." "Oh, you got the Christmas card?" "Well, I ain't got the card." "The letter's in here." "Not the card." "What's he say?" "He says about faithful friends here." ""Hello, my beloved friends." "Sorry I haven't wrote much this year." "I keep hoping and praying for good news so I can write a letter of good cheer, so I can write a letter of good cheer, but nothing much ever happens of a non-depressive nature." "Life just seems to roll on, on, and on, stuck in a quagmire of stone and steel." "27 and 3/4 years now, and no end in sight." "Though I have tried my best to mind my own business and keep to myself, out of trouble, hoping to make Level 3." "The plan had some poignant moments as I was abducted by aliens as I was abducted by aliens and locked up in a solitary confinement for two months over the summer." "So, my friends, that's the situation update." "Please pray for me as I often do for you folks." "I want you to send this letter with a Christmas card and note from Bonnie to wish you all a happy holiday season." "Please write soon." "In light, love, and blessing, Mark." "20 years, look at that, a lifetime's work." "20 years, look at that, a lifetime's work." "He could be outside producing things, you know, doing things." ""I'm here, you're there." "Any idea what that means?" "One of us is in the wrong place."" "He was offered a plea bargain, and being young and not legally wise, he accepted it." "He got screwed over." "I remember Mark DeFriest." "I was the warden at Florida State Prison, the worst of the worst." "It's the prison that houses death row and the death chamber." "And it was regarded as the hell hole of this earth." "And it was regarded as the hell hole of this earth." "It was a place that if you just mentioned FSP to any offender anywhere in the state of Florida, you'd get his instant cooperation because nobody wanted to be sent to Florida State Prison." "And that was often done as punishment to prisoners around the state." "If you couldn't control them, if disciplinary measures didn't help, then you would bag them up, put them on a bus and send them to Florida State Prison and they'd come back with their tail between their legs." "There's no TVs." "There's no radios." "There's no nothing." "There's nothing but death and drama and all the bullshit that went along with it." "It was a really depressing place." "Solitary confinement in a prison cell, books and magazines are contraband." "Do anything wrong and they put you on the consolidated security list, you don't get your one hour of yard per week." "Not a day, a week." "So you can go two, three, four, five, six, seven years, and never see the yard." "There's just no way that this endless punishment is ever going to make him behave." "He's just not that kind of a person." "He doesn't react to that." "He's intelligent." "He recognizes abuse on the part." "He recognizes abuse on the part of the criminal justice system." "He fights back against it." "Cuff up, DeFriest." "I know a lot of secret prison crafts." "Weapons, locks and keys, stashes, all sorts of bizarre shit." "My prison file is two-and-a-half feet thick and it reads like a 007 James Bond spy novel." "And it reads like a 007 James Bond spy novel." "State of Florida Department Corrections Disciplinary Report." "Possession of escape paraphernalia." "Found a homemade handcuff key in inmate DeFriest's front pocket." "Gain time loss, 45 days." "X-rays showed clearly that the key was in DeFriest's mouth." "Possession of a weapon, piece of hacksaw blade concealed between the lining and sole of inmate DeFriest's right shoe." "Fuck it." "Write a DR." "Department of Corrections Disciplinary Report." "Failure to comply with count procedure." "Inmate DeFriest answered master count by saying" "James Bond 007." "Gain time loss, 90 days." "Inmate DeFriest broke the ratchet end of the handcuffs." "Inmate DeFriest broke the ratchet end of the handcuffs." "Destruction of state property." "Subject to reimburse the State in the amount of $18.90 for the handcuffs." "DeFriest said" " Fuck that shit." "Possession of a weapon, a homemade knife." "Possession of contraband." "Double twisted piece of wire." "Piece of ink pen tubing." "Gain time loss, 45 days." "One homemade ice pick, 12 inches in length." "Five .22 caliber bullets inside a black sandal under the bed." "When asked for any statement he would like to make, inmate DeFriest stated-- I'm James Bond 007." "Aluminum handcuff keys, seven hacksaw blades, razor blades." "Where there's a will there's a way, and I'm not sure exactly what all those keys fit." "We caution our officers when they're wearing their keys, you know how you wear them on your belt?" "We make sure-- They should be putting them in their pocket because if you wear them in their pocket because if you wear them around and they're hanging out where they can see them, that's how this inmate, we got one particular inmate" "who's really good at looking at the key cuts and memorizing it and then figuring out some way to make something, a key that would actually work." "Mark DeFriest." "That's who it was." "It just so happens that the trays that they were using at the time were 3/16th of an inch thick, and so you can slice them up and make the teeth out of that." "So I made keys that fit every prison lock in America." "So I made keys that fit every prison lock in America." "We didn't give him much opportunity to do that in a long time." "Looking over this brings back memories here." "Dr. Berland's report is right here, if I recall correctly." "Is that Berland?" "That's Dr. Berland's report." "That document right there is what was sent to the judge." "The commission is either going to be open to what we're trying to do, or they're just going to what we're trying to do, or they're just going to slam the door in our face." "And I think you have to have something eye catching to take their eye off that file." "Something for them to look at Mark as a person and as a human being with a mental health issue as opposed to this inmate who is incorrigible and who gets more disciplinary reports than any other inmate, probably, in the prison system ever." "The plan is to try to get some legal help for him based upon the fact that he was originally sent to prison against the advice of certain psychiatrists who felt he shouldn't stand trial, or he wasn't capable of standing trial." "And based upon all of the evidence, of what this 28 years of prison has done to him." "Mark was in the place that they've changed" "Mark was in the place that they've changed the name several times to throw the media off, but it's been called Q wing and X wing and whatever." "I found that I had a goon squad that was beating inmates unmercifully." "I'd find inmates laying in their cells, eyes swollen shut." "It's always been my philosophy, and that of the people I trust, that convicted men and women are sent to prison that convicted men and women are sent to prison as punishment and not for punishment." "There's a big difference." "But at Florida State Prison, you'd continue to be punished day after day after day." "A lot of things were going on at Florida State Prison that most folks wouldn't believe." "I was wondering, can I talk to you about a problem I got?" "After years of silence, I really need to share it with someone." "After years of silence, I really need to share it with someone." "When I first came in here, I was brutally gang raped by 14 or 15 prisoners on J wing." "They hurt me so bad I needed surgery to put my body back together again." "At what point did you stop believing you would ever get out of prison?" "Right then and there." "There was no coming out of that shit." "Come on, man." "Come on, man." "Death was just a matter-- I'm already dead." "I was already dead." "I was a walking dead person." "Who gives a shit?" "Nothing counted." "Nothing counted." "Nothing mattered." "So I just did the best I could to stay alive and wage war." "For the last 16 years I've been a chain gang punk, and I confess I see more of a girl now than a man." "And I confess I see more of a girl now than a man." "I was a normal 19-year-old boy man with a wife I thought I loved." "I wasn't gay or a transvestite, but what's a poor girl to do dropped in the zoo in this role for as long as I'm in here." "I got this crazy Cuban husband or jock or protector or whatever you want to call him." "They call him Uno." "He's got all sorts of bizarre rules and as long as I follow those and behave like a lady and as long as I follow those and behave like a lady at all times, he treats me fairly well, I guess." "The whole prison leaves me totally alone being hooked up with him." "The problem is, I can never take a break from my role in the play as his woman, and we have problems when I grow tired of it." "This is my life as Miss Wendy Castro in the really dumb play called prison." "Dr. Berland." "Hi." "Bob Berland." "John Middleton." "Nice to meet you." "Glad to meet you finally." "How you doing?" "Come on back." "Thank you." "Let me tell you what I know of your history, Bob." "My understanding is that you saw Mark probably 1980ish, thereabouts." "I don't know exactly." "I think you were working in Chattahoochee or somewhere near there?" "Yes." "He had been sent there because he was found." "He had been sent there because he was found incompetent to stand trial, and you were the only one that found him to be competent, if I recall." "Is that right?" "I'll tell you right off, the report that I got was very persuasive to Judge Minor." "Oh, absolutely." "But I'm going to just say this," "I think I was wrong." "What?" "I've done this for over 30 years and I've learned a lot about mental illness." "And people can be manipulative looking and clever and they can think and plan and clever and they can think and plan and still be mentally ill." "And when I use the term "mentally ill,"" "I mean psychotic, biologically broken." "You step back and you look at the big picture." "This kid was doing things and not being anxious about doing them, that were clearly harmful to his legal situation even though he appeared to know they were harmful to his legal situation." "He was very talkative even in stressful situations, in interviews after arrests or attempted escapes." "In interviews after arrests or attempted escapes." "He laughed and joked and was talkative after trying to shoot people with zip guns." "He was loud and boisterous and rowdy and tore up his cell repeatedly." "Frequent complaints about headaches even at times when it would not affect evaluations." "That's an important one." "Even in my report somewhere I said that he was, you know, he used plans and he was organized, but people can be planful in the service of strange ideas." "But people can be planful in the service of strange ideas." "Well, let me-- And let me tell you my thoughts on where we're going as far as Mark is concerned." "Mark, you know, the Florida Parole Commission has the authority over Mark to release him over anybody else." "I have gotten people out that have done a lot worse things than Mark DeFriest has done." "But we're going to have to get the commission to parole him with the understanding that if he screws up, they can yank that parole." "If we mislead them into thinking they can deal with him rationally, then they work against us." "Well, I agree with that." "Absolutely." "Then they work against us." "Well, I agree with that." "Absolutely." "Because you can sit there and say he can't help it, it's the way he is." "And that, you know, and there are" "And the downside to that is that they don't like the way he is." "I do think that Dr. Berland appears to be a very seasoned psychologist." "And when I say a seasoned psychologist," "I think he is a different psychologist today than he was when he first interviewed Mark many years ago." "And that happens to all of us." "I suspected from reading my old documents from 1981" "I suspected from reading my old documents from 1981 that he probably was mentally ill back then." "My problem is that right now I have yet to quantify it to find objective data that supported the day that have to be the final arbiter." "Okay." "You can come in." "I'm sorry." "I was just sound checking the microphone here." "You guys must be all set." "Has he eaten?" "Yes." "Okay." "If he needs to go to the bathroom, do I just wave my hands at someone?" "Yeah." "We're good." "Okay." "Thanks." "Let me just finish setting this up and then I'll explain what's going on and introduce myself again." "And introduce myself again." "Okay." "I don't know if you remember me." "We met back in 1981." "I was a lot younger then." "I remember you." "Let me just back up a little and start with why I'm even here today, lo these many years later, because I think it would help you understand where I'm coming from." "It was my opinion now that my opinion then was inaccurate." "There were things I didn't know then." "There were things I didn't know then that I know now that would have made me look at you differently." "Everything would have been different." "Are you okay talking with me?" "Sure." "Okay." "I'm going to read each of these sentences to you one at a time, and then you're going to tell me if it's true or false for you." "All right." "I like Mechanics magazines." "Is that true or false for you?" "True." "I have a good appetite." "I have a good appetite." "True." "I wake up fresh and rested most mornings." "False." "My daily life is full of things that keep my interested." "False." "I believe I am being followed." "Definitely." "I feel that I have often been punished without cause." "True." "True." "I love my father or if your father is dead," "I loved my father." "True." "I am sure I get a raw deal from life." "Yeah, that one's true." "That's true?" "Yeah." "Life sucks." "Much of the time my head seems to hurt all over." "True." "I have not lived the right kind of life." "True." "I often hear voices without knowing where they come from." "False." "My sex life is satisfactory." "False." "My sex life is satisfactory." "False." "Even when I'm with people" "I wish I were a child again." "When I get bored I like to stir up some excitement." "I often wish I were a girl." "I'm afraid of losing my mind." "Absolutely." "My mother is a good woman or if your mother is dead, my mother was a good woman." "True, I guess." "My soul sometimes leaves my body." "False, but I've been trying." "Lots of hallucinogenics." "I am certainly lacking in self confidence." "False." "I would like to be a florist." "Be a what?" "Florist." "Someone who works in a flower shop." "True." "Someone who works in a flower shop." "True." "That's it?" "Well, that's it for the test, yes." "I think we'll just end it for today and then we'll start up again tomorrow." "Do you have any questions?" "How is all this crap relevant to my mental state?" "Well, I suspect if I am right about what I think may be wrong with you, that I may be able to make your life a lot better." "That I may be able to make your life a lot better." "Well, it was nice to see you again, Dr. Berland." "You're a gentleman to even say it, but yeah, I'm" "Yeah." "You said I was-- What was it?" "You said I was a malingering idiot?" "Well, what can I say?" "There are things that you do and say when you're young that you then decide later were wrong." "But where's the fairness in all this crap?" "I mean, for real." "But where's the fairness in all this crap?" "I mean, for real." "I went to prison when I was, what, 20 for doing a bunch of stupid shit." "I ain't never hurt nobody, and here I am still." "I've done 30 years and got 30 more to go." "Well, ain't that nice." "This is his MMPI profile from today." "This scale measures all kinds of symptoms." "This scale measures all kinds of symptoms of mental illnesses of all different types." "Everything below this line is the normal range essentially." "It's 90 percent of the people who get those scores are considered normal." "So when it falls above the score, it's proven to be clinically useful as a tool." "This score here on Scale L, if he had had everything else in the normal range, that score alone would have told us that score alone would have told us he had delusional paranoid thinking." "Especially somebody this paranoid tends to do the preemptive strike thing." "I'm going to get you before you get me." "Because he wants to feel like he's in control in a setting where everything tells you you're not in control." "Hello?" "John?" "Yes." "Hey, it's Bob Berland." "I'm sorry to bother you." "Can you talk a minute?" "Sure." "You're not bothering me at all." "I saw Mark DeFriest today, and we know from the MMPI there's something out there." "There's something out there." "We're not just spitting in the wind here." "He really, this is a good MMPI and he's really mentally ill, and now I've got to develop it, and I don't want to just go in there with one source of data because they're not going" "to believe me." "I think that at least, in part, his problems stem from brain injury, but I still have to prove that." "At this point, a lot of what I have other than the fact that he's genuinely psychotic is intuitive and that isn't going to stand up anywhere." "Is intuitive and that isn't going to stand up anywhere." "Hi, doctor, how are you?" "Bob Berland." "Glad to meet you." "Good to see you." "Hi." "Hi." "Barbie Taylor, nice to meet you." "Glad to meet you." "Come on in." "Have a seat." "Thank you." "I get collateral data." "I like to get information besides what I get" "I like to get information besides what I get from the defendant themselves because decision makers prefer to hear it and it helps give me a check on truthfulness and sometimes the mentally ill people don't want to admit to what's wrong with them, so I have to go around them." "You shouldn't be intimidated." "There's no right answer." "I don't expect you to remember things you can't remember." "What kind of things did he do to earn disciplinary reports?" "I would say that a number of the disciplinary reports" "I would say that a number of the disciplinary reports that were filed against Mark DeFriest were false accusations." "By staff?" "By certain staff." "Were there substantiated complaints against him as well?" "At times." "They were minor." "Okay." "It was things like the kind of language that he might use when he was being interviewed by a correctional officer." "He talks about having killed the president and that's why he's in there." "And he makes a joke of that all the time." "And he makes a joke of that all the time." "Okay." "And that's kind of an odd thing to say." "Why do you-- do you have any sense of why he says that?" "I think he's just being funny and he's using one last vestige of humor, you know, where he finds it." "I don't know." "All right, gentlemen, I agree, I admit it." "I shot Lincoln." "All right then." "I'm going to ask you some questions today." "What I need to do is get other data so that I can make a good case to whoever is going to listen to this, whether it's in Florida in the parole board or the medical staff here." "This evaluation is about finding out the truth." "I told you the truth." "What I do to survive is considered unacceptable behavior." "Is considered unacceptable behavior." "So now we're at this point in reality where it really doesn't matter anymore." "So I'm just more interested in what you've got to say." "Well" " From a scientific point of view." "You know I'm a scientist, right?" "I didn't, but" "He'll tell you, man." "I've done a lot of firsts in prison." "You do know that he played with a lot of electricity." "No, I didn't know that." "Okay." "He played with electricity a lot." "I mean, to the point where he would, you know, rewire things, make things." "Rewire things, make things." "Sony built the Walkman." "I built the Buttman in 1989." "The what?" "The Buttman." "I'm not even going to go there." "You know, nowadays they got all kind of little micro radio, MP3 players and all," "I mean, real small shit, right?" "There's all kind of problems associated with first off, making a radio small enough to keep it in your ass." "And then the sound, man, you want" "You want something that sounds decent, at least a graphic equalizer and everything else, right?" "I mean, I put the whole radio together." "It was about that big, about the size of a big cigarette lighter." "Of a big cigarette lighter." "And like I said, Sony made the first Walkman, but I made the first Buttman." "Saturday night." "They just counted and I ripped off my G.I. Joe action battle assault pipe, AC/DC rocking on Rock 105," ""Highway to Hell." I built a new micro." "Her name is Suzy Q in honor of" "Nazi motherfuckers murdered." "I doubled my workout to 500 jumping jacks," "I doubled my workout to 500 jumping jacks, 500 situps, 500 pushups, 250 knee bends, and I am running two hours." "I may need it to survive." "This place is a trip." "Flash to 9:24 P.M." "I set the radio up, Alice in Chains, "Man in a Box."" "Party tonight." "A bomb landed." "Four coffee bags, half ounce of weed, crime goes on." "G.I. Joe online." "10:02 P.M., yes, yes, yes, Gun N' Roses redoing." ""Knocking on Heaven's Door," one of my all-time favorite songs." "Sing it, Axl." "Favorite songs." "Sing it, Axl." "Lift off, lift off." "Daddy's online early." "Fuck it." "Eddie singing with David Lee Roth," "Van Halen, tripping." "I am drinking a hot cup of coffee." "Joy." "Now reloaded." "Pink Floyd, The Wall, locked and loaded, waiting on tray pickup." "They're starting showers on the first floor." "♪ My love opens the heart ♪" "♪ My love opens the door ♪" "Sing it." "Sing it." "♪ My love opens the door ♪" "Awesome." "Digital separation sound by the Kinks, 1982." "Saturday night madhouse, tripping." "Aliens plotting on me." "So sad." "Pink Floyd, lunatic, joy, Suzy Q in her place." ""Dark Side of the Moon."" "♪ I'll see you on the dark side of the moon ♪" "Mark was strongly disliked by the goon squads, and, of course, the more disciplinary reports you get, the more serious of a management problem you're considered, and thus the more severely you're treated." "I explained my suspected abuse by some correctional staff." "The psychological and psychiatric staff agreed with me." "They said that they had noticed numerous times that he had bruises or cuts and that each time that the staff and that each time that the staff had responded that Mark was abusive to himself." "That he had hurt himself." "And it was immediately laid out to me that there was nothing they could do for him." "Have you had periods of time not caused by drug use or alcohol use or sleep loss where you would just seem to feel unusually sluggish." "I'm trying to tell you about my headaches." "I told you I get real bad headaches." "I told you I get real bad headaches." "And when I get real bad headaches, like, yeah," "I guess you can say I get like that." "I want to make sure I've explored the headaches thoroughly." "Were they frequent or occasional but severe?" "I just remember him, as he got older, as always having headaches." "And I can't give you an age when I thought they started, but I always remember Mark and Excedrin." "Did they start at a certain point or did you have them for as long as you can possibly remember?" "Yeah." "That's the answer to that one." "Yeah." "That's the answer to that one." "Like, since I-- First conscious memory." "I always had headaches." "And do you wake up with them or do you" "Sometimes, yeah." "You know, I only sleep, like, two, three, four hours a day." "I sleep more than four hours and I wake up with a monstrous ass headache." "Are you aware of him having any major blows to the head at any point, even if you didn't witness it?" "I'm not aware of that." "Okay." "Okay." "What I am aware of is only a hearsay." "Okay." "That Everett, who was his father, would get home at night, and Marilyn, who was his mother, would have shaken him and said, you know, I've had it with this child, you know, and she would shake him." "I believe firmly in my heart, he was shaken a lot." "Have you ever heard of shaken baby syndrome?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Your brain sloshes around and it causes damage even though your head and it causes damage even though your head doesn't hit anything." "A lot of times when people have major falls, even if they don't hit their head, they suffer brain injury." "How about when I flew out of the Leon County Jail?" "I was on the third floor and some Klingons were pointing some guns at me and they said, "Stop or we'll shoot."" "I said, "Shoot, cocksucker" and jumped?" "Does that count?" "They put me in an all-black cell block." "There was 19 blacks in there, and I'm the only white guy," "There was 19 blacks in there, and I'm the only white guy, and they tell me, they said, listen, motherfucker, if this guy fucks up and does anything wrong, we're taking y'all's TV and canteen privileges." "He is very much a loner." "He wouldn't be comfortable in crowds." "He wouldn't be comfortable in a store." "He wouldn't be at all comfortable in a group." "I don't like being around people." "Okay." "But specifically" "I mean, a lot of people, you get perceptions" "I mean, a lot of people, you get perceptions of what people are going to do or thinking" "What kind of perceptions would you get?" "But most of the time I was right." "And I'm not disputing that." "I just--I'm trying to find out what" "What it felt like to you." "It just felt like they would, you know..." "Like they were a threat to you?" "Yeah." "But I knew one of the dudes in there." "He was a dude named Cecil Hunter, and he says, yeah, you know, we're trying to escape." "I said, that's a great idea." "What do you got?" "What are you doing?" "So they pull out these HS12 Remedy DuPont carbon chip diamond blades, right?" "I said, how long have you guys had these?" "I said, how long have you guys had these?" "Oh, we had them about a month." "I said, what are you still doing here?" "So I ripped the toilet off the wall, took the damn light fixtures apart, got some pipes and made a dope barrel zip gun." "So I started sawing the bars." "It takes eight hours to get through one cut, eight hours to get through another cut, and I got to admit, things were coming apart in there." "A lot of them just saying they were about to take that gun away from me and stick it in my ass." "So at 9:00 I made the move and Bob Seger was on the TV playing "Turn the Page."" "♪ Here I am on the road again ♪" "When you were escaping, were you doing it as much for entertainment or because you really thought you could get away?" "Coming to prison, you know, it's like a big game." "They say you can't, and I say I can, and it's kind of funny." "I landed in the girls' exercise yard." "I actually jumped up and I flipped myself up on the top of the razor wire, and I was so wired up, I was two miles down the jail before I even realized" "I had broke both feet and my wrists." "I got a truck going and it run through a roadblock." "This cop pulls up right behind me in a Ford Fairmont." "I just put the thing in reverse and the truck just climbed right up on top of the car and smashed the roof down." "And then they started to blast the truck out from under me, man." "I got down on the floor and hit the gas and it got stuck in somebody's living room." "So they were really, really upset, man." "The reason I ask all this is because you talk about you being a survivor, but it seems like the things that you think you've done to help you survive have caused you more trouble and that's what I'm trying to understand." "No, I'm still alive and lots of people I know ain't." "No, I'm still alive and lots of people I know ain't." "But if you had been able to not do some of these things that got you in trouble with the authorities, might you have been out on the street sooner?" "Yeah." "I'd been gone long ago." "You know, if I was just a rapist or a murderer or something, they'd let me out." "I'm the idiot that made them look like idiots." "Hello." "Hey." "How'd it go?" "It was good." "Very good." "Told them all about the assassination of President Lincoln." "I don't think he's where he should be." "I think he needs help and I don't think he's where he should be." "And I don't think he's going to get the help he needs where he is." "This is the Florida Parole Commission." "This is the Florida Parole Commission." "This is the Hearing Room A where three times a month hearings are conducted for persons, inmates incarcerated in Florida who are hoping to get paroled at some point in time." "The PPRD, that's the Presumptive Parole Release Date, and for this individual, it's currently set for August 13th, 2082." "And we are recommending, our parole examiner is recommending" "And we are recommending, our parole examiner is recommending" "They're requesting an extension of 60 months." "That is based on?" "His DRs." "Okay." "Those would be-- The DRs are the" "Disciplinary Reports." "Okay." "And how many are here in this" "I think we have a total of 25 from his last subsequent interview." "Okay, so those are the types of things that the Commissioners would be addressing tomorrow and making their decision based on the inmate's behavior." "After having read the file, it's quite interesting." "After having read the file, it's quite interesting." "Understatement." "This is really the first and only parole hearing that Mark has ever had." "In 29 years, no one has ever attended a parole hearing of his because Mark has never felt there was any possibility that he would ever get paroled." "That he would ever get paroled." "But this time, Dr. Berland, he has the information to really try to help Mark, and it's time to get him out." "Tomorrow is a ten-minute presentation." "I'll take up about two or three, you can take up three or four, and you can take up a couple." "The bottom line is, what they would normally do looking at Mark's file as it sits right now, they've got DRs there where he's threatened to firebomb an officer and do all kinds of things." "They've got DRs of that nature." "They've got DRs of that nature." "They generally would at least extend him 16 months, if not, 120 months." "I mean, they'd take him into the next century, you know, based upon his record." "Our plan is to ask for your interview." "Our plan is to ask for a recommendation for a psychological counseling and medication as directed by the counselors as well as hopefully monitoring by you, Dr. Berland, as far as his prognosis." "And, also, hopefully they will knock off." "And, also, hopefully they will knock off some time to give, to give Mark a sign." "Yeah." "He's without hope at this point, totally." "Well, I'm optimistic of getting something." "The perfect things I told you the other day would get a parole date down to 2015, give him a year interview, and if that occurs, and Mark doesn't accept that sign or olive branch, whatever, if that doesn't happen after medication," "we can't really do anything more." "I'm Tena Pate and I'm a parole commissioner for the state of Florida." "I serve as the vice chair on the commission." "I do tons of research on my cases." "Mr. DeFriest, the offense that he has committed, offenses he has committed, he may well have been paroled long before now." "I mean, we don't have sex assaults, we don't have homicides." "We don't have homicides." "We don't have a lot of the other violent crimes that really, you know, are difficult to parole on." "But, I mean, he has thousands of entries in his record." "Like, got 120 month extension one year, 240 months another time." "And we're in control of it." "We can extend the date at some point if we need to based on additional behaviors, or we can reduce that date." "Good morning, everyone." "Good morning." "Welcome to this meeting of the Florida Parole Commission." "Before we begin, I'm going to ask Chaplain Alex Taylor from the Department of Corrections to lead us in an invocation, if you'd please stand." "Thank you." "Let us pray." "Justice is a very high and lofty goal." "Mercy is sometimes very risky." "But the lives of men and women wounded by crime are very precious and dear to us all." "We ask that mercy and justice stand close by in our midst to guide stand close by in our midst to guide each decision rendered by the Commission today so that hope is not defeated, and the citizens of Florida are well served." "This is our prayer." "Amen." "Amen." "I'm Commissioner Fred Dunphy." "I'll be serving as the Chair of the panel this morning, and the panel consists of Commissioners Tena Pate and Monica David." "If for some reason they are unable to agree, the case will be referred to me as chair of the panel." "Commissioners, are we ready to being?" "Absolutely." "Commissioners, the first case." "Commissioners, the first case" "I'd like to take is just one case out of turn, and we'll call the case of Mark DeFriest." "It's on page 131." "This is a subsequent interview that occurred on September the 22nd of '08 at an undisclosed location." "The examiner is recommending an extension of 16 months based on the receipt of numerous process disciplinary reports." "We'll be glad to hear what you have to say." "Thank you, Commissioners." "This is a very difficult case." "This is a very difficult case." "I've represented Mark DeFriest since he was 23 years old." "He's now 49 years old." "Since I've represented him, I've had two children." "One's in college, and all this time" "Mark has sat in prison for crimes that normally a person would not spend that much time in prison." "And because of his behavior, he has remained in prison." "But what I do think, Commissioners, is that Mark can do what's necessary of him to at least be considered for parole and he has not been able to do that in the past." "I recognize that, and I'm not here to even talk about his prison record to even talk about his prison record because that would be silly for me to do so." "Mark, when he pled many years ago, there was a question about his competency, and what's unusual is the gentleman sitting back to the right of me is the person whose reports the court relied upon in finding him competent." "Dr. Berland would like to say a few words for you if he could." "I originally saw him in 1981 and at the time thought he was pretending to be incompetent, and because of that, I thought he was also not mentally ill." "And because of that, I thought he was also not mentally ill." "And when I say mentally ill, I mean psychotic." "I evaluated him again in 2009 with testing and interview and both independently indicated a severe psychotic disturbance." "Psychosis is the result of a biological malfunction in the brain, most often from brain injury or inherited disorder or as I think in his case, some combination of the two." "I believe his bad behavior in lockup from '81 to the present has been largely the result to the present has been largely the result of this psychotic disturbance, especially the manic paranoid part." "There is no reason not to try medicating him and see if he acts better, including in a less closely confined setting in prison." "I think I've said everything I need to." "Thank you." "I'm Bonnie DeFriest." "I'm Mark DeFriest's wife." "For the 15 years that we've been married," "I've been Mark's closest confidante and support person, his lifeline, so to speak." "He tells me if it wasn't for me he would have gone over the edge long ago." "We have a solid relationship." "We have a solid relationship throughout which I have shown him a deep personal commitment based on a profound soul level, love unconditionally, and my entire focus and purpose has been to help him heal, mentally, emotionally, and physically." "Because make no mistake about it," "Mark's incarceration itself has added to whatever psychiatric problems he came in with." "People were dying all around me, man." "The goon squad was killing people off the books." "The State was killing people legally, or so-called legally." "43 people died when I was in that special cell, one woman and 42 men." "Ronald Straight, Danny Remeta," "G. Stano, James Bundy was my neighbor for a long time." "I was in the cell right above him when they barbecued his dumb ass." "It was just like the Wild Wild West of Corrections." "It was just like the Wild Wild West of Corrections." "It was a sad place." "And it was just as I thought that I might have the goods on this goon squad and stop some of the beatings that were going on, I get this announcement that I'm going to be moved to Orlando." "And I know that if things are really hot in Florida State Prison, it wasn't a question of if an inmate was going to be killed, but only when would it happen." ""Saturday, July 17th, 1999." "My dear honey, they're gassing Frank right now." "The exhaust fans just went off and they locked all the doors." "Frank is the one on my left shoulder in the X wing photo in the orange shirt." "They're getting really wild about their beatings these days." "With Captain Thornton on set, they may beat him to death." "That cracker is crazy." "Poor Frank." "10:03, no action." "All is quiet." "10:03, no action." "All is quiet." "10:11 A.M. No action." "Don't know what's going on." "10:13, flash, here they come." "Aliens on two west floor." "I heard Thornton say, are you ready to come out?" "And he got a 'Suck my dick, fuckboy.'" "So they went in and I hear them beating the shit of him." "He's fighting them hard." "They got him in the hallway beating on him still." "Jumping up and down on him now." "They killed him." "Poor Frank." "Poor man." "Shiteaters beat him to death." "It could have just as easily been me." "If you get this, it'll be a miracle." "I send all my love, Mark."" "It needs to be recognized that the Florida Department of Corrections took a low-level, non-violent prisoner and turned him into what Mark DeFriest became and turned him into what Mark DeFriest became in the Florida prison system." "We failed Mark DeFriest." "Now that reliable professional opinion has been brought to the forefront, we can finally begin to help Mark change his behavior and his life in a realistic way." "Thank you." "Thank you, Commissioners." "I think that this case is a little bit different than some of the others." "Different than some of the others." "And certainly under normal circumstances" "I would ask for extension of his date, but because his date is already so high, based on his age and his tentative release date, I think that I could make no change." "And then I would be willing to recommend to the Department of Corrections that they evaluate him for mental health counseling that they evaluate him for mental health counseling and also recommend, you know, any psychotropic medications as needed." "So I think that would be my vote." "I will agree with you to make no change." "I am pleased to see that he has not had any disciplinary reports since April of '08," "I believe, but I understand he's doing this without medication." "You might have had a good talk with him to tell him not to engage in these behaviors again, which is telling for me." "Which is telling for me." "So I don't doubt at all that he has mental health issues." "Whether or not they are psychotic in nature is another issue." "So because of his extensive record," "I would like a two-year review." "Give him more time to show us that he has changed because we have such an incredible record of DRs." "I don't think one year is going to be enough for me." "That's probably going to be in y'all's best interest, too." "I know you don't want to hear that," "I know you don't want to hear that, but I'm okay with the two-year review because, you know, bureaucracy is bureaucracy, and I don't know that we can accomplish what we want to accomplish in this case within a year." "Right." "So I think Commissioner Pate's right." "And, I mean, I think for him, just getting a no change with all those DRs is something." "Exactly." "Thank you, Commissioners, for the time." "We appreciate it." "Thank you very much." "Thank you all." "Hey, Mark." "How you doing, man?" "All right." "Have a seat, buddy." "Still alive." "I can see that." "How you been?" "I just made Level 3 in the system." "I just made Level 3 in the system." "I just got here last month." "Is that the lowest level here?" "Yeah, there's a lot of freedom here." "They needed somebody to paint their cellblock in the south unit up there, A3, and I volunteered and they gave me a job painting." "They let me run a crew and I recruited two other guys and we painted the whole place for them." "And you were commended by your classification officer, right, how well you did?" "Yeah." "He said I did a real good job." "Basically they gave me a pizza party." "Basically they gave me a pizza party." "Okay, Mark." "How come you've cut down this DR pattern that you have?" "Well, I never thought I was ever getting out of prison." "So, I mean, what is there but to live for the moment?" "But there is some difference now." "It matters." "I mean, you've given me the first glimpse of, you know, having some sort of normal life, you know?" "Getting out of here." "Getting out of here and watching the sun set." "You understand you can't use an inmate's PIN number." "You understand you can't use an inmate's PIN number to make a phone call to call your wife." "Absolutely." "And you understand that you can't have apple juice in a Suave bottle." "You can't do anything." "Do you understand that?" "Yeah." "I can't get any disciplinary report." "You can't get any disciplinary reports." "Are you willing to commit to the commission that you will do that and absolutely understand that you can no longer just exist for today, that you have to exist for tomorrow and plan?" "Can you do that?" "Yeah, I think I can." "Good morning, everyone." "Good morning." "We're glad you're with us today on this nice cold morning in Tallahassee." "The first case is Item 1, Page 1." "Mark DeFriest." "Good morning, Mr. Middleton." "Good morning, Commissioners." "How are you?" "Welcome." "The examiner is recommending an extension of 60 months due to process disciplinary reports." "For the record, Commissioners, the last time this case came up, he had 25 process DRs." "He had 25 process DRs." "That's what he had, and they were serious DRs." "They weren't telephone violations or anything of that nature." "And what's happened, Commissioners, it's this commission's actions that has caused this change in behavior for Mr. DeFriest." "Right now his parole date is at 2082." "This commission can take action in this case to encourage him to continue on his path of good behavior." "He's trying to send you a message." "Why don't you send him one back and say we appreciate what you" "You're trying to do." "It won't hurt the commission at all." "It won't hurt the commission at all." "You know, I got to tell you." "You know, Mr. Middleton says that, you know, he's sending a message." "Boy, that's a funny message to send, getting DRs." "Look, this case is very frustrating for everybody, and, you know, I heard of Mr. DeFriest the first time I took a tour, before I even heard the case out of Florida State Prison when I first got up here." "He's infamous, you know, as an escape artist and all this kind of stuff." "What-- If you want" "I just can't get past the fact that we" "That what we did--we said we'll take a pause, see what you can do and he comes back with this kind of behavior." "The" "With this kind of behavior." "The" "It's not changing." "It has changed, Commissioner." "Okay." "We're going to, we're going to extend his date by 12 months." "All right, Commissioners." "The next case" "I always said he was born at the wrong time." "I always said he should have been born in the Wild ld West days where they shoot 'em up, in the Wild ld West days where they shoot 'em up, and I always thought that when he died" "he would go out shooting." "I just wish... that things could have been different and that he could have, you know, been exposed to school and been exposed to computers as they came out and" "And to everything that's happened in 27 and 3/4 years, like he said." "Can you imagine what that brain could have done?" "Can you imagine what that brain could have done?" "♪ Knocking on heaven's door ♪" "♪ Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door ♪" "It happened a long time ago, but I still feel sorry for the kid, you know?" "And he's no kid no more." "I was a young dumb kid when I came to prison." "You couldn't really talk to me or tell me anything, you know." "I didn't-- I wasn't willing to listen." "I didn't-- I wasn't willing to listen." "But look at me now." "I'm old." "I've got gray hair and wrinkles and hearing aids and, you know?" "I've been in prison 30 years." "I'm tired." "I want to just be left alone." "Go somewhere and get a job, take care of my wife." "Live with some semblance of a normal life." "♪ That cold black cloud is coming down ♪" "♪ I feel I'm knocking on heaven's door ♪" "For more, we're joined now by the film's director," "Gabriel London." "We've had a chance to tour around with the film particularly in Florida." "This is the ballot box that asked audiences whether he should have conditional parole release." "♪ Never thought I'd get caught and wind up in prison ♪" "♪ Chalk it up to youth, but young age I ain't dissin' ♪" "♪ Chalk it up to youth, but young age I ain't dissin' ♪" "♪ I guess I just had to get it out of my system ♪" "♪ Out of my system ♪" "The commissioners have all seen the film and they've decided to meet again." "In just a couple of weeks." "To consider an early parole date for Mark DeFriest." "Good morning, everyone." "We're glad you're with us today." "We have some high-profile cases on the docket." "It is my position that Mr. DeFriest is a prisoner of his own making is a prisoner of his own making so my vote here would be to make no change to the PPRD of August 13, 2085." "My vote is to reduce his date by 845 months for a PPRD of March 13, 2015." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thank you." "Thanks." "Mark DeFriest was 19 when he was sent to jail." "On Wednesday, the commission on offender review cut his release date from 2085 to next year." "Cut his release date from 2085 to next year." "It's a good day." "It's a good day in Florida." "Yes, it is." "♪ If you don't live now ♪" "♪ You ain't even trying ♪" "♪ Then you're on your way to a midlife crisis ♪" "♪ Living it out any way you feel ♪" "♪ You can feel it in your bones but try to deny it ♪" "♪ Wipe it off your face, but your eyes won't hide it ♪" "♪ You knew it all along but never made it clear ♪" "♪ You knew it all along but never made it clear ♪" "♪ They told me not to steal cars ♪" "♪ Said I'd wind up in prison ♪" "♪ Thought I knew it all, yeah, I wouldn't listen ♪" "♪ Chalk it up to young age, but youth I ain't dissin' ♪" "♪ I guess I just had to get it out of my system ♪" "♪ Out of my system ♪" "♪ Oh, out of my system ♪" "♪ I'm glad I did it all then ♪" "♪ I'm glad I did it all then ♪" "♪ I know what I ain't missing' ♪" "♪ Glad I went and got it all out of my system ♪" "♪ I'm glad I did it all then ♪" "♪ I know what I ain't missing' ♪" "♪ Glad I went and got it all out of my system ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ I'm glad I did it all then ♪" "♪ I'm glad I did it all then ♪" "♪ I know what I ain't missing' ♪" "♪ Glad I went and got it all out of my system ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "♪ Oh ♪" "Mark DeFriest, evidently he is living with his" "With his Las Misrabels." "How does that" "What is that movie?" "Le--the" ""Les Miserables."" "Yeah, right." "You know it." "Yeah, right." "You know it." "Now, he had a hell of time, didn't he?" "But he lived through it."