This is from the diehard. We'd be deeply obliged if you decided to post it.
mark
*****
This is my last-ditch request for
everyone's help. I've spent over a hundred days in unadulterated
hell,
and I've given up hope for anything short of
drastic action to get me out with my mind, not to mention
any semblance of health. I am not exaggerating
the psychological torment. I can't go into it here without
breaking down and risking even worse torture.
Their method of "calming inmates down" would be banned
by the Geneva Convention.
Please I'm begging for a few minutes of your time and a few stamps. It may do no good. But it's my only remaining chance.
Please write a letter containing
the information below, in your own words, and send it to the following
addresses.
After your signature, include a few words about
your own profession, community standing, bona fides, whatever.
If you care to pass it on, feel free. Just
don't tell me that concrete walls and steel doors "do not a prison
make".
The people who have died in here say otherwise.
To:
The Honorable W. David Dugan
Moore Justice Center
2325 Judge Fran Jamison Way
Viera, FL 32940
The Honorable Bill Nelson
US Senate
225 E. Robinson St., 410
Orlando, FL 32801
The Honorable Bob Graham
625 E. Twiggs St.
Ste 500
Tampa, FL 33602
Personal information on Ms. Hardison and her situation:
Dian Hardison is an honorably discharged
former Naval officer and NASA
engineer, with 17 years at Kennedy Space Center.
Among her commendations
is NASA's highest honor, the Exceptional Achievement
Medal. She is an
outspoken activist for environmental and civil
rights issues. Her services
to the community include the volunteer Emergency
Response Team, has
supplied drives to elder care and shut-ins, foster
parenting, tutoring,
animal protection, service on community and county
citizen advisory boards,
and voter registration. She has a Master's degree
and has presented
technical papers to symposiums such the the Space
Congress. She is a
Senior Life Member of the Society of Women Engineers.
She is also currently incarcerated
in the infamous Brevard County
Detention Center, sentenced to a year in jail
under a peculiar Florida law
making a felony to "use, or threaten to use a
hoax weapon of mass
destruction." Based on nothing more than the
word of an "off and on" mail
clerk at the Cocoa Water Department, who claimed
to have found white powder
in her water bill payment, Ms. Hardison was railroaded
into a guilty plea
by an incompetent lawyer and a politically ambitious
judge. Damning
statements that could most politely be described
as oversimplified to the
point of non-factuality were made by the Cocoa
city police to the media.
Ms. Hardison's side of the story was never told,
not to the court and not
by the media. She maintains that she does not
know of there being any
powder in any envelopes, most certainly did not
make any threats, and does
not believe she would ever even be tempted to
include any material which
might be construed as suspicious in an envelope
containing her signed,
personalized check.
While locked in an overcrowded and
dangerously mismanaged jail (famous
mostly for its suicide rate), Ms. Hardison has
continued to try to be of service,
gaining trustee and cell block representative
status, tutoring inmates in remedial
math, science, and reading skills towards their
GED (which should be, but is not,
offered by the jail). But neither society nor
justice is being served by locking up
a valued and productive member of the community
for reasons that clearly have
nothing to do with punishing nor deterring 'terrorism,".
Note that dozens of actual
hoax threats have never been pursued, and the
real "anthrax killer" never caught.
Transcribed by mark
Transcriber's note:
I've attempted to find out just
how many people have been charged or
convicted under the statute Ms. Hardison has
been convicted under (FL
790.166(3)), to no avail, though I once found,
and promptly lost the URL,
of something that seemed to suggest two or three
total, including her. On
the other hand, there have *certainly* been other
definite hoaxes - two
that come to mind are some teenagers who misspelled
"ANTRAX" in white
powder on the table in their motel room for the
maids to find, and some
Florida medical organization that sent plastic
petri dishes to state
legislators with a letter about bio terrorism.
Needless to say, in neither
of those cases was anyone charged.