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Deane R. Brown
October 18, 2006 Warden Jeffrey Merrill
Dear Warden Merrill, This is in response to your letter dated October 17, 2006 hand-delivered to me on this date. Please allow me to begin by asking if you recall some months ago a demonstration on the State House grounds of a group of people staging a mock funeral, where the deceased was our Constitution? Apparently, the lesson of that demonstration has not been learned by you. However, I assure you that you will learn a valuable lesson if you continue to trample and disregard my constitutional rights. You will be paying me cash from both of your double-dipping accounts, not from the I.B.F. if you force me to file suit. You accuse me of disclosing confidential information. May I inform you that no information has been provided to me in confidence? Under the first amendment I have the right to free speech. Nowhere in this document have I been able to locate any indication that the Founding Fathers intended to even remotely bestow upon you the authority to dictate to whom these "inalienable" rights apply. I am a correspondent with WRFR. WRFR, The Portland Phoenix and myself also enjoy the freedom of the press. Or, at least, we are meant to. So, please try to understand why I am offended by your threats to persecute me, as a member of the press, for exercising my right to the press and to speak freely. I try to provide only accurate material to the media. Sometimes I can not get the truth from you or your administration, and I can only provide what I am told. This will explain why I often report that I do not know something first hand. Often I ask the public and the media to force you to provide the truth, to hte extent that you are capable. I know that this is sometimes awkward for you. Ryan Rideout's family will authorize you to publicly announce that Dr. Ravanno (proper spelling unknown) did, as a matter of fact, ban this boy from the mental health unit. You and I both know that this is an irrefutable fact. It does not matter how I know. Now explain how you permit this practice and the practice of dumping the mentally ill in the S.M.U. Naturally, you won't. Please explain why three mentally ill boys in your custody Ryan Rideout, Adam Dupuis and James Thomas, each having their psychiatric medications taken away abruptly, killed themselves in your supermax with only a few months remaining on their sentences. Please tell me how many people need to die before you recognize my right and, indeed, my moral obligation to bring your incompetence to the attention of the public, in the hope of soliciting help from society to end a reign of abuse and corruption heaped upon the staff and prisoners alike of this prison by an administration so morally defunct that even you must bow before them? You have the unmitigated audacity to assert that the information I have provided "..would be extremely upsetting to them." (Referring to the family of Ryan Rideout). Just how upset do you suppose they are about the truths that I have revealed: The facts leading up to and culminating in his death? Or the deaths and attempted suicides of others? My actions and intentions are for Justice. I owe, at the very least, this to society and to the men who constitute a large part of what little I am privileged to think of as my family. So, please don't be surprised to find this letter on the Penobscot Bay Watch website, reprinted (with permission) in any of many publications, and, especially, read live over the air at WRFR. I have tried and will certainly continue to try, to provide only accurate information to the public and media. I point out to you that the terminology you employ in your letter "...legally confidential information..." is, in my humble opinion, a term which applies to persons in official capacities wherein they are privy to information they are entrusted to keep in confidence. I am aware of no law or other provision precluding me from acting under hte protection the U.S. Whistleblower Act or my rights to free speech and freedom of the press. However, in the interests of civility, I will inquire of my attorneys the legality of my actions, and act accordingly. If I am correct in my assessment of my rights, I will insist that you and your ensemble take you feet off my Constitution. If you proceed with your threat to transfer me out of state in in retaliation for exercising my Constitutional rights I will sue for that as well. P.S. You still owe me approximately $267.40 per month for seventeen months for a total of approximately $4,545.80 in lost wages while out of work due to the documented false statements of O'Farrell and Cutler. I am willing to settle that claim for $2,000 if you return adequate toothbrushes to the poor folks on "B" side of S.M.U. Sincerely Deane Rowland Brown cc:
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