Several months ago, a fellow prisoner shook him by the hand while he was being walked to his cell – it was the first time Russell had been touched for almost a decade.
From The Guardian
What savagery did this man commit that we would in turn be so monstrous? Not a human touch in ten years? Solitary confinement for 23 hours a day? For how long? 144 years. Because you and I are savages. Because we are not worthy of even contempt. Because all the while we sing our glorious praises and erect our monuments and cathedrals and weep at the great costumed dramas, and twinge with humanistic delight at “The King’s Speech” and “The Blind Side” and “Freedom Writers”… we are really no better than incestuous cannibal chimps. We lock up people for 144 years. We lock them up in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. We deny them any human contact at all. We approve of this because this is what our leaders have given us in response to our passionate tinkly delight in “law and order” and “tough on crime”.
What Steven Russell did was con people out of lots of money.
But, far worse, in the eyes of the government– he humiliated the administration of then governor George W. Bush by making the Department of Corrections look like fools. The same George W. Bush who conned America out of $1 trillion to prevent Iraq from using the weapons of mass destruction they did not possess.
The secret: they are fools. They let him walk out of prison after dying his clothes green with magic markers diluted in toilet water. They let him con them into believing he was, over the phone, a judge, or a lawyer, or a state corrections official. They never checked.
The point is, he has never been charged with hitting or beating anyone, or threatening their lives, or any other crime of violence. Those people only get five, ten, maybe twenty years, and they have contact with fellow prisoners. No, no, no.
He got 144 years.
He never caused anyone to lose his life’s savings or his home or his job. Those people got bonuses.
He never murdered hundreds of civilian villagers in a foreign country. Those people got house arrest for a couple of years.
He never tricked us into spending billions of dollars and hundreds of lives on a war against a foreign despot, or caused the deaths of 100,000 people. Those people got re-elected.
The important thing: I don’t think most Americans even have any idea of why they should even give him a thought. It’s justice. Or maybe not, but why should anyone care? He’s a loser. What’s wrong with being psycho? We’re all psycho.
He’s a loser.