Apeal for Help Part 2 & 3 by Karl Chanberlaine

In late 1991 and early 1992, I had several close brushes with suicide. After I quit drinking and drugs, I had nothing to help numb the pain. There was nothing to help me forget the horror of my youth or, worse, the terrible guilt I carried by passing along that pain. The confusion and agony of realizing I had become the very "beast" I so hated and feared crushed my heart, and I longed to die.

More than once I found myself with my lips around the barrel of the same gun used for this crime. I can still remember the cool, sweet taste of metal and oil. Wouldn't that have been a fitting, poetic end? Many nights I couldn't sleep, and even after I gave the gun away, there were too many sharp objects in my house to give me peace... sometimes I would drive for hours, and found myself pulling my car into the parking lot of the spiritual group I attended. Somehow, if I pulled my car alongside the building, I felt safe. I felt "home", and complete. But even driving wasn't safe. I remember the feel of my eyes longingly caressing those concrete pillars under major bridges...oh yes, I can STILL feel it - it would be so easy to die. So WHY live?!

First, my legal point is this - these are just a couple of small, insignificant events in my life which were never heard by a jury. But it's something that might be "mitigating."

My Judge wanted it over fast, so after the Prosecuting attorneys had their lengthy say, my lawyers routinely refused to ask pertinent questions of defense witnesses. My family and friends begged them to ask certain questions, which they would not; my lawyers did cursory cross-examinations, and would not ask many questions which I begged them to ask. They further refused to put me on the stand, and enlisted my father and mother to coerce, or convince, me. Almost NO evidence of my life was put forth by the defense, and even less about how or why I chose to live. No juror realized how I had changed my life utterly in late 1991, much less WHY. WHY did I choose to live? WHY did I choose to change?

Does it really matter? From a certain perspective I am sure it doesn’t matter. No evidence could ever erase the wrong's I've done. Many people blithely quote "an eye for an eye" and feel they would be satisfied in their vengeance.

I can feel and understand this explicitly, for most of my life I felt like the people I trusted and most loved murdered the child I was. I was raped, beaten, molested, abused, neglected and beaten again at any astonishing excuse and with such creativity that is impossible to describe. I became like a hurt animal with its leg caught in a trap. My whole world was swollen and hurt with fear. I could not trust or love or learn... not even to save my own life.

I have one more question to ask you and then I'll go. This comes from one of the oldest stories in the world, full of spiritual and moral truth. The question I have to ask is; "Why kill? Why are we so eager to kill and destroy?" And the story is about two brothers, Cain and Abel.

"Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.

The Lord looked with favor upon Abel but upon Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, win you not be rewarded? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you but you must master it."

Now Cain said to his brother Abel "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother and killed him.

Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know', he replied, "Am I my brother's keeper?" "

A lot of people take this story further, and try to make a point that we have a "right" to life because God Himself doesn't kill Cain... but I am more interested in our actions and choices, and why are we so eager to kill?

I read how God looked upon Abel with favor but ignored Cain. I recall the unfairness, the abuse and neglect, of my youth. But then God says, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be rewarded?"

I began to understand that it was my own choice to remain a victim. Yes, sometimes children are truly helpless victims, but I felt so hurt that I did not talk to anyone about these things for years. Sometimes I tried, but it was easier to hold onto my pain. It was easier to blame other people for my suffering, my problems.

No, it wasn't fair, it wasn't "right' that I was punched and kicked and spat on and beaten bloody as a child; it is terribly wrong to be so used, hurt and neglected by all those who might have helped or protected me. But by blaming them, I chose to remain a victim. I refused to grow up and accept life as it is, and I "gave" others the power to hurt me.

The point of all this is simply to show that there is another way. I have learned a better way. By the grace of God, for "God is so good He teaches sinners His ways."

I have learned to forgive, and to do what is right as best I can. With the help of many good-hearted caring friends, I have learned to accept responsibility for my own actions, and not to blame anything on others. When I choose to react, even to someone's provocation, I often choose wrong.

The point is that we, as human beings, as civil society, have the responsibility to protect all people equally. That is "justice" at its best, both discipline and mercy. By placing blame and punishment, by condemning even the least among us, we betray our own humanity. We believe the easy, self-gratifying lie that destruction is more powerful than creation; that hatred is more powerful than forgiveness or love.

WE choose to condemn the least among us, often people who have been more hurt and abused than I, to die. We kill these immature, hurt "children" that are often trapped inside adult bodies. We pass along the pain.

Furthermore, by focusing on our own hurt, by focusing on the crime, we make ourselves victims! We are the authors of our own suffering because we encourage an unhealthy sensational fixation on the "problem rather than opening up to look for another choice, another solution. We teach, encourage and manipulate people into believing that execution can be a healing thing!

This is why, to me, it is SO wrong to focus on "crime and punishment", in supporting harsh punishment and vengeance, rather than containment, rehabilitation or reconciliation and restorative justice, we condemn ourselves! We put the power of our lives on to ‘them' instead of looking for a solution!

Why are we miserable, afraid and angry? Why are we unsatisfied and "downcast? Because we are our brother's murderer rather than his keeper. Because we cry for a "culture of life' and surround ourselves with death.

Because with each judgment, with each condemnation, we give away our power of life, we betray our humanity, and for those who are believers, we sacrifice our God to an idol. Go to a courtroom, go to an execution, and you'll see the face of America’s faith. It is the face on our television screens~ and "America's Most Wanted". Believe me, my friends, it is not MY face any less than it is yours. The gleeful hatred found on the faces at the Coliseum watching gladiators and slaves die in the pits of the arena, is the same face in every house in America that hovers over the TV.

I digress but I will finish my point Why do we need this sensational gore? Why do we need the vicarious terror and thrill to distract us from life? Because our neglect is murdering the world. One life at a time... and again my friends, I don't mean my life, but YOURS.

There are thousands of "murderers" that go into prison population for life. Why are we, on death row, singled out to die? If it wasn't just a political choice, masked by sloppy jurisprudence, I could perhaps understand... but our system makes a farce and a fraud out of the last two "safeguards."

"Future dangerousness" and "Mitigating circumstance" are supposed to be considered in any capital trial. However, while this door was open for the Prosecution to allege that joyriding in my stepmother’s car while they were on vacation was "grand theft of an automobile", and to imply that keeping a few naughty magazines as a teen was "possession of hardcore S & M pornography", all with no evidence except hearsay of one, bitterly misguided woman years after the fact, they neglected to allow me a reply, a rebuttal, or anything like the 'truth.'

They neglected to allow me to tell MY side of the story; I could not stand up and tell the jury about my life and the mitigating circumstances of my childhood so now I am telling YOU. I could not tell the jury about the changes I began to make in late 1991 - changes which have taken root in my life. I could not tell them how I quit drinking and drugs, how I sought psychiatric and spiritual help, so now I’m telling you. I could not tell them how I left behind all that criminal insanity, nor how I lived free and reasonably responsible for five years, nor how I even went to High Schools to talk to the kids about the danger of drug and alcohol abuse.

I tried to help everyone I could – strangers, neighbors even alcoholics on the street. I am all too keenly aware that there is nothing I can do to take away the wrongs I’ve done. There is nothing I can do to take back my most terrible mistakes, but even within this terrible place even within such isolation and degrading circumstances, I TRY. I try to do some small good each day. And I’d like to ask for your help...

For me, to die without a fight seems too close to the ease of suicide. Life may be the harder choice, but perhaps death is too easy. So I want to continue to reach out. I want to continue to speak against the wrongs I see done, and, for abused kids trapped in adult bodies who never had a chance at life, those who never had a sense of worth much less humanity, who go down to that gurney and die.

And for America, and the world, it seems evident that now is the time to learn to face this fear, or die trying.

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