Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Every felony case is a minor legal saga, and every one is different, but one way or another you are going to have some period of time between your preliminary hearing and your trial, with various other hearings, appeals, motions, and grand jury appearances thrown in the mix. The state, depending on how they want to treat you, can take Surviving a Felony Triai ^^^ ^° ^^^^ incredibly quickly, or they can take an extraordinarily long time. Either way, S44 it's not too damn pleasant. Study your transcripts and the relevant case law until you

know everything forward and backward. If you are still locked up you should use the law library every second that you can. There is also an amazing amount of aggregate legal knowledge out there among prisoners and jailhouse lawyers that you can draw from. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt, but listen and learn nonetheless. This w\R all make it easier to deal with your lawyer. Again, though, when talking about your case to any inmate, never, ever, discuss what you "did" or "didn't do," only what is relevant to what is on the record from your preHminary hearing about what you "allegedly" did.

This wHl be a very dif&cult period of time. Remember who is there for you and who isn't, and never forget it. Do everything you can to improve your situation, but don't dwell on the fact that you're in it. Find something else to work on, not to the detriment of your case, but enough to keep the abyss from eating you alive.

You will be, by turns, extremely depressed and angry and in denial. You will, in fact, if you are lucky, pass roughly through the classic stages of grief between your arrest and your trial, with all of the madness that entails. You vvill be absolutely fucking terrified of going back to jail, or of going to prison if you are awaiting trial in county. You will contemplate being raped often. You will have nightmares. You vrill be an unholy pain in the ass to deal with for the people that love you most, and occasionally you will be completely off your rocker. You vidll resent everyone who has the privilege of forgetting, even for a second, that you have to think about it every minute of every day. You will feel like you have a terminal illness. You will meet people and talk to them and you won't know if they know. You will feel like a drain and a burden on everyone around you. You will find yourself trying to tie up every loose end in your life, and you will catch yourself wondering if this is the last time you will see your grandma, or this lake, or that tree. You will hate people that try to put a sunny face on and tell you that you everything will be all right.

If you are out on bail you will have two other options that will look at least somewhat surviving a Felony Trial attractive?going into hiding and kilUng yourself I will address them separately. I am 54s

not going to say that it never makes sense to run. Sometimes it does. If you are facing nasty felonies, and you know you are going to get convicted, and it's obvious that it's going to go badly sometimes it is best to get the hell out of Dodge. If you go that route, then my prayers are with you. There's no turning back, ever. Staying free won't be easy, or romantic, or safe, or fun. They will look for you, and if you sHp up they will find you. Please, only consider this in the direst of circumstances, and don't even think about it unless you have a specific, viable, concrete plan as to how exactly you are going to Hve on the lam for the rest of your life. I'd rather do five to ten years than have to hide forever. When you start talking ten to twenty and more is when I might start making other plans.

Concerning suicide, all I can say is that there were times when the one thought that sustained me was that the bastards who were doing this to me were trying to kill me, and that I would be damned if I would do the job for them. It's fucked up, but if you have to keep yourself alive out of sheer spite then that's what you've got to do.

Use the time before your trial to live so that you wdll have no regrets if you do go to jail. Be as good as you can to the ones you love. Find a way to stare down the barrel of the worst that can happen to you, and accept it. That way you can only be surprised for the better. Call on the spirits and give thanks before you go, if you can. I'm not too proud to admit that I did.