Harold Hempstead believes in honouring the truth.
He's a man who will not be silenced until the truth bears fruit - the fruit of justice. This is a rare man with an incredible story to tell and I feel honoured to be working with him. Please hear his story with an open mind, reflect on what you've read and be ready to take action to help the cause of truth, justice and human rights.
"The amount of witnesses and evidence that exist
proves Ofc. Clark was torturing mentally disabled inmates and that he murdered
Rainey. Affiant cannot think of any
reason why an arrest and prosecution hasn’t been instituted against Ofc. Clark
and etc. since June 23, 2012 with as much witnesses and evidence existing that
proves Rainey’s murder. Affiant prays
that the Rainey’s murder hasn’t been receiving the treatment that it has
received because Rainey was a poor, black mentally disabled, Muslim, prisoner
and his life did not matter. Affiant
prays that the U.S. Department of Justice and State of Florida will not let
Rainey’s killers get away with murder, and that they make a public statement
that Rainey’s life and the lives of all poor people, all black people, all
mentally disabled people, all Muslims, and all prisoners matter by arresting
and prosecuting Raineys killers."
From a sworn affidavit by Harold Hempstead to Ms
Vanita Gupta, Assistant U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, 5th May, 2016.
You can read the complete document here:
Darren Rainey
INTERVIEW
WITH HAROLD HEMPSTEAD,
MURDER-WITNESS.
Jeremy Schanche: Now
Harold, I’d like to introduce you to some folks in my country of Cornwall and all around this old world, readers of
The Limpet newspaper. First of all, if I
may, I’d like to start by asking you your full name, date of birth and
nationality.
Harold Hempstead: My full name is Harold William Joseph Hempstead. I’m
known by family and friends by a short version of my middle name which is “Joe.”
I was born March 5, 1976, in St.Petersburg Florida, and I’m American.
JS: And would you tell us where you live please
Harold?
HH: I’m currently incarcerated at Martin Correctional
Institution which is in Indiantown, Florida, in the United States of America.
JS: And how do you come to be in such a
place?
HH: I was placed in prison when two people told the police that
I told them to burglarize several houses, and pawn stolen property. In
Florida, if anybody tells the police that you told them to commit a crime, you
can be incarcerated like you committed the crime. The foregoing led to me
being placed in prison on thirty-four counts of burglary and one count of
dealing in stolen property.
JS: Now, would you
please tell us when you were first imprisoned on these charges?
HH: I was arrested March 23, 1999, and I’ve been incarcerated
since.
JS: And when are you
due for release?
HH: I was sentenced
in April 2000 to 165 years in the Florida Department of Corrections
JS: Could you repeat
that please?
HH: I was sentenced
in April 2000 to a hundred and sixty-five years in FDC.
JS: You mean to say you got 165 years for
allegedly telling others to rob some houses?
HH: Yes.
JS: That’s absolutely
insane! I live in Great Britain, and I
estimate that over here, a case like yours would carry a maximum sentence of
three or four years actual time served at the very most, possibly less. Effectively you’ve been given a
life-sentence for your alleged involvement in a cluster of non-violent
robberies then, is that so?
HH: Yes. I’m
convicted under an aidder and abettor theory which means I’m convicted for
crimes others committed. Also when they committed the crimes nobody was
home and nobody was hurt.
JS: Well, it certainly
is a draconian sentence, I’m sure it’s hard for a lot of readers out there to
believe that such a thing could happen in a country like the U.S.A. But then again, you have been a
model-prisoner so surely you must be eligible for parole at some point?
HH: The parole system
was abolished in Florida in the early eighties.
JS: You mean to tell me that the State of Florida has no parole-system whatsoever?
HH: Correct.
JS: This just gets
more and more surreal! Now Harold, until
not so long ago you were just another ‘forgotten’ prisoner languishing in the
vast American prison system, but now stories about you and another prisoner
have appeared in The Miami Herald, The New Yorker and The Guardian (from over
here in Britain), as well as CBS Miami Local, Fox News, The New York Daily News
etc.. Why is your name popping up more
and more in global media, what event triggered this media interest in your
case?
HH: When I was
incarcerated at Dade Correctional Institution in the FDC, staff were torturing
and abusing mentally disabled inmates. Staff were starving them and
physically and psychologically abusing them. In January 2012 staff
started using a shower in the Transitional Care Unit (TCU) (which is like a
mental hospital) that reached temperatures in excess of 180 degrees as a
torturing device. They would place inmates in the shower and turn it on
full hot with no cold. It would get so hot in the shower the patients
would have to fight to breathe and not pass-out. Over a six-month period
staff placed five inmates in that shower as punishment. The fifth inmate
(Darren Rainey) was killed in the shower. When he passed out from heat
exhaustion, his body fell over the shower drain. Rainey’s body blocking
the drain caused the 183 degree shower water to rise over Rainey’s body, and
cook his body for approximately 18 minutes. The led to Rainey’s skin
suffering from a medical term called slippage which means Rainey’s skin was
slipping off his body.
For about two years, I submitted grievances and letters to
different people for help with bringing the staff to justice who were torturing
and abusing patients and who killed Rainey. Nobody wanted to help till I
brought the foregoing to The Miami Herald newspaper in Florida. I spoke
with The Miami Herald newspaper in April 2014, and in May 2014 The Herald wrote
their first story. Since then, the media and human rights groups across
Florida have been making an all-out effort to help in getting justice for the
Rainey murder, the torturing and abusing of the mentally disabled at Dade C.I.,
and in trying to make F.D.C. a safer place from the barbaric conditions and
abuses that are so prevalent.
JS: But how can you
die from overheating in a shower? Surely
they are only hot enough for normal washing purposes, aren’t they? Was anything unusual about this particular
shower at the Transitional Care Unit of Dade Correctional Institution in the
State of Florida?
HH: The shower Rainey
was killed in was rigged where only staff could control the hot and cold water
knobs, and the inmate in the shower had no ability to control the foregoing
knobs.
JS: But surely if the
shower was specially rigged up and the guards kept him in there for that long
at that temperature, they should have been charged with killing him, so what
happened to those guards?
HH: Darren Rainey’s
life was not of much value to a lot of people in Florida because he was a poor,
black, mentally disabled, Muslim prisoner. Because of the foregoing,
Rainey’s killers are still free.
JS: If you had not
persistently written to The Miami Herald this story would never have broken,
yet surely, when you live at the mercy of the guards, being a ‘whistle-blower’
must be taking a massive risk. What made
you risk your own safety to stand up for a man who was already dead?
HH: Right is right
and wrong is wrong. The staff who killed Rainey not only violated state
and federal law in murdering Rainey, they also violated the Sixth Commandment
in committing murder (Exodus 20:13). Rainey’s killers should be brought
to justice by our state and federal government for Rainey’s murder. If
they escape prosecution here on Earth, they will not escape prosecution with
God.
As a Christian I am commanded to not murder (Exodus
20:13). Just like the Sixth Commandment commands me to not murder, in the
positive I’m also commanded to protect life and to help the weak. I’m
also commanded to imitate Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:1; Ephesians 5:1) who
was a defender of the weak and of those who cannot help themselves.
All human life has value, which includes Darren
Rainey. In taking a stand asking for justice for the murder of Rainey,
I’m not only taking a stand for the value of his life, but for the value of all
human life.
JS: Would you please
tell us what were Darren Rainey’s race and religion, his age, diagnosis, crime
and sentence please?
HH: Rainey was a black male, he was a Muslim, he was in his
fifties, he was schizophrenic, and I believe he had two years for a drug
charge.
JS: So you believe all
humans have value? Why is that?
HH: Yes, I believe
that all human lives have value. The reason I believe this is if what
determines the value of life is subjective opinions then we can’t pose an
objection to abortion or the killing of any individual. Why?
Because if we object to any killing, we’re saying that there was a
standard that the killer should’ve followed and not committed the murder that
he did. If there’s a standard that should control people’s actions in not
committing murder or certain types of murders, then that standard would be
objective. If there’s an objective standard that controls the value of life,
then that means the value of life can’t be subjective. If it’s
subjective, it can’t also be objective; if it’s objective, it can’t also
be subjective.
As a Christian I believe the standard that controls
the value of life is God’s word (The Bible). Since God is real His word
is real, and He has preserved His word throughout time. In Genesis 1:26,
27 it says that we were created in the image and likeness of God. Out of
all creation humans were the only thing created in God’s image and likeness.
This places us above the rest of God’s creation. Since we were
created in God’s image and likeness, to lower the value of any human life is to
lower the value of God and the value He placed on us. This is not what
God wants. That is why we are commanded to not murder (Exodus 20:13), and
that is why only second to loving God, the second greatest commandment is to
love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22: 36-40).
JS: Now I know yours is a complex case touching on
many related matters and I very much hope we can go into it in much more detail
in the near future, but could you please tell us whether abuse of inmates by
Florida prison guards is common, in your experience and knowledge, and if so,
what are the main forms it takes?
HH: Yes. The
abuse of inmates by guards in FDC is very common. The main types of abuse
that I’ve seen are staff physically beating up inmates; staff paying
inmates to physically or sexually batter inmates; staff starving inmates
by not feeding them; staff excessively spraying inmates with chemical
agent (mace); staff disposing of the personal property of inmates;
and it’s not uncommon for FDC staff to kill inmates.
JS: What you are describing sounds like a
wholesale failure of the penal-system in Florida. Human rights abuse of that scale and
magnitude is surely a matter of grave international concern. Are there any human rights organizations in
the States or abroad, investigating the things you have described?
HH: Yes.
Thirteen human rights organizations have asked the United States
Department of Justice to investigate the barbaric conditions, abuses, and
murders in FDC. Other than the foregoing, the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU), Amnesty International and Stop Prison Abuse Now have been doing a
lot to try and put a stop to the unconstitutional conditions in FDC.
JS: After the convict
Mark Joiner had collected up all the pieces of Darren Rainey’s skin from the
floor of the shower and the staircase, as ordered, what was he told to do with
it?
HH: Mark was told to
throw the skin that he’d found into the trash.
JS: Harold, before I
ask my last question, I’d like to give you my most sincere thanks for giving this
interview to The Limpet and I’d like to tell you that an increasing number of
people around the World are taking an interest in your case and the cause you
are promoting – Justice for the deceased Darren Rainey and justice for all the
inmates trying to survive one of the World’s most brutal prison regimes. I hope everyone who reads what you have told
us will feel moved to use their freedom wisely and be ready to do something to
help these unfortunate prisoners. Of
course, The Limpet has no objection to people being locked up if their crimes
genuinely necessitate it and obviously some criminals are far too dangerous to
be allowed to mix with free society. I
am not criticizing the rule of law itself, but the disgustingly inhumane,
illegal and wholly unacceptable manner in which it is being applied in
Florida. If Florida says it is not the
World’s business, then I say, when you cross a certain line, when you beat,
rape, starve, torture and murder your prisoners on a regular basis then you
have just made yourself the World’s business.
So finally Harold, would you mind telling us how new
arrivals were greeted when they were processed into the prison mental hospital
at Dade Correctional Institution, Florida?
HH: The Dade C.I.
Transitional Care Unit got so bad that in 2012 staff started welcoming the new
arrivals to the Transitional Care Unit by stating “welcome to Auschwitz.”
Notes:
Since conducting the interview, Harold Hempstead has been
transferred to a different prison in Florida.
Temperatures
stated are expressed in Fahrenheit. 183 Fahrenheit is 83.8 Centigrade.
Rainey’s
charge: Darren Rainey was incarcerated
for possession of less than two grammes of cocaine.
Mace is known in the U.K. as ‘pepper-spray’.
Biblical quotations:
Exodus 20:13: Thou shalt not
kill.
1
Corinthians 11:1: Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
Ephesians
5:1: Be ye therefore followers of God,
as dear children;
Genesis 1:26, 27: And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth. So God created man in
his own image, in the image of God
created he him; male and female created
he them.
Matthew
22: 36-40: Master, which is the great commandment in the
law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. On these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
