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Chapter 4 - Grieving Loss

Chapter 4    Grieving   I realized a day or so ago that I have been going through a lengthy period of mental misery which began at the start of the legal wrangle and eventual imprisonment of my son.   I had never thought of this process as “grief”, but it is, nonetheless.   I should have recognized this feeling…this “grief,” since it is so similar to what I felt when my 16-year-old son died, possibly by his own hand, many years ago.   Grief is an insidious thing….it hits hard…it niggles sneakily…it robs one of joy…it pushes toward depression, and it goes on and on.   This grief has been, first, the angry grief over realizing that my country’s justice system is broken and that I can’t fix it, that it will take decades for the U.S. to figure out what other countries, like Sweden and Norway have figured out, that punishment with no serious rehabilitation and reintroduction to society doesn’t work.   It only fills more and more jails and ...
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Chapter 3 - Held in the County Jail!

Chapter 3 -Held in the County Jail   Imagine your son or daughter being held with no bail for an accident.   Imagine you not being allowed to see your son or daughter in person for almost two years. Imagine you not being allowed to touch your son or daughter for almost two years. Imagine having every conversation you have with your son or daughter recorded and often intentionally misinterpreted and given to the prosecutors. Imagine having every letter to your son or daughter photocopied and given to the prosecution.   The list above is only a small part of the degradation that a person and his/her family has to endure in most of the county jails in the United States.   Even though a person is supposedly “innocent until proven guilty” , in almost all cases, that person and his/her family is treated as guilty from the beginning of a case.   I was so naïve about the imbedded systems of “justice” that every day brought the delivery s...
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Chapter 2 - Our First Three Weeks in the "Justice" System

Chapter 2 – Our First Three Weeks in the “Justice” System   In the last chapter, I had flown to Denver, arrived late at night, met with a bail bondsman, paid him $12,000 as his fee for covering the $100,000 bail, arrived at my sister's home, prayed and begged God for help, and tried to get some sleep.  That next morning, I met the bondsman at the _____County Jail.  One of Tim's good friends met me there and basically took care of seeing that I was OK throughout the day.  I was so grateful for this and will be forever indebted to him.   At this point, I was operating on pure adrenalin and courage scraped up from somewhere.   I was moving into a world that was totally foreign to me and had no “instruction manual” or “guide” to navigate. By the time the bond was posted, it was too late in the day for the sheriff's people to process Tim out, and I had to return the next morning to pick him up.  Meanwhile, I was trying to digest what I knew of th...
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The Nightmare Begins.....

Hello?   Is this Caroline S?   I write this blog for several reasons...It may help some other parent better navigate the justice system, the county jail system, and the prison system.  It also helps me to look back and reflect on what we did that was right and what we might have done better. Note :   I’ve changed names and declined to specify particular counties in order to avoid further injustice and/or retribution.   And that phone call is  how the nightmare began….   As I was sorting mail sitting on the sofa in the great room in the home I shared with my current husband in Wisconsin, the phone rang.   I answered and a male voice said, “Hello, Is this Caroline S?”   I replied, “Yes”.   He asked “Are you Tim O’Mally’s mom?”   Again, I replied in the affirmative.   The caller said that he was a detective with the _____ County District Attorney’s office in Colorado...
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