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Thirty Days in the Marianna Federal Correctional Institution Satellite Camp

De: Margo Anderson

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Mayor Margo Anderson was falsely charged and indicted on 64 counts by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Florida on August 19, 2020, after corrupt law enforcement investigators planted evidence against her when she went to the Sheriff of Bay County Florida, Tommy Ford, to report FEMA fraud in the city of Lynn Haven, Florida, by the City Manager, Michael White, and the contracted debris haulers, as they falsified invoices amounting to millions of dollars in federal funds which were reimbursed to the city and the county. After three years of fighting in federal court, and over a million dollars in attorney costs, the prosecutors indicted the Mayor four times, each time dropping more of the charges against her until she was facing trial in February 2023 on a conspiracy and bribery charge, known as "666", not requiring a quid pro quo. The assistant United States prosecutors in Tallahassee told the Mayor that if she would plead guilty to a "false statement to the FBI" they would ask for 0-6 months; they told her if she did not, that even if she were acquitted, that they would bring back previously dropped charges, indict her again and ask for 150-188 months in federal prison if she were convicted. She had no reason not to believe them. This is the story of thirty days in a minimum security federal prison camp to which the Federal Judge sentenced the Mayor, the stories of women she met there, the daily dreariness of the federal prison routine, harsh and cruel sentences of 10, 20, and even thirty years for non-violent crimes committed by women, many who went to trial rather than accept a plea deal and then were punished with sentences that separated them from their families, their small children for years, or even decades. The Mayor's story is a rare look from an insider's view of the life of an inmate in federal prison; the narrative is raw, filled with the hostility and anger of an innocent woman sentenced to thirty days in prison for a crime she did not commit, yet ashamed to admit she was there for only thirty days when her cellmate was serving thirty years. The names of the inmates and guards have been changed to protect the privacy of those who are incarcerated there, as well as those who are employed there as guards, administrators, counselors, chaplains, and teachers. The book is a recounting of how approximately 200 incarcerated women manage to live their lives, visit with their children and families on weekends, and still find moments of joy, all the while subjected to the prison's routines, terrible food, illness, poor sanitary conditions, daily work routines from mopping floors, working in the laundry or food services as they are paid literally pennies on the dollar for their labor, with most of it applied to fines imposed upon them by the Government. The Mayor was not assigned a job while she was incarcerated because the government employees there could not process her paperwork that quickly; therefore, she spent her hours there writing a daily journal, hoping that her story might be used for grand jury reform, for prison reform, especially for young mothers with children at home, and elderly women in their seventies, still with twenty years to go for non-violent, financial crimes in most cases, with many first time offenders. The journal is a snapshot of thirty days inside a federal prison camp; thirty days of anger, fear, boredom, surviving a Covid outbreak, and ultimately,learning a new walk of faith, forgiveness, and hope.