Beyond The Wall

Request from Tom to His Supporters

The following is the most recent letter I have received from Tom. His case will be up for review by the Clemency Board, and he has been able to find an attorney who will represent him for a reduced fee. Please read his letter, and if you feel moved to contribute to his defense fund, you will find all contact information contained herein.

When we look at the light slap on the wrists major corporate criminals receive, the sentence that was given to Tom is horribly excessive. If we all put our strong intentions together for his release, prayers can work wonders. So, of course, can financial contributions.

Editor

July 4, 2007

Since I last wrote to you some things have happened that I’d like to share with you. It’s about the clemency hearing. Each morning I have declared my intention and given thanks in advance for a positive outcome.

From this, something amazing has happened, but before I tell you about it, I’ll review a little background. As you know, I’m 75 years old and have been in here for nine years. If I don’t try to have a hearing or if I am denied, I’ll have four more years to serve. I am guilty as charged of violating a trust with some funds, but that was long ago, and it certainly is not who I am today.

My record in here is excellent – the best that can be attained – and my sentence of 17 ¼ years (of which 13 must be served) for a first time, non-violent offense is certainly excessive.

In previous hearings, I prepared a very thorough information packet and sent a copy to each board member. It answered their questions and included support letters (yours was a part of it), diplomas, awards, etc. This didn’t help, though, so I realized I need to do something different this time.

Well, the “something different” has materialized. I have learned that my chance of getting a favorable response will be greatly increased if I have legal representation at the hearing. I haven’t had this before and didn’t know how to find a defense attorney who would represent me pro bono or at least at a reduced rate. A friend has now recommended one who has agreed to represent me for a reduced fee of $4,000. My case is rather involved so it will include considerable research and the necessary appearances before the board. It’s a three-part process. The first hearing is by phone, the second one is in person, and then it has to be signed by the governor.

I’ve always been independent, so it isn’t easy for me to ask for help, but that is where I am right now. I do need help in raising this legal fee. It will be done with a defense fund - a trust account - that will be set up as follows:

Checks should be payable to Dave Appelton, and in the memo write “Tom Brown Defense Fund”.

Checks should be sent to a mutual friend who will monitor it for him:
Averelle Levings
3421 N. 14th Pl.
Phoenix, AZ 85014

For any questions, the attorney can be reached at:
Dave Appleton, Attorney at Law
8711 E. Pinnacle Peak Rd., Suite 109
Scottsdale, AZ 85255

Phone: 480-473-2009
E-Mail: dappletonlaw@cox.net
Website: www.dappleton.com

If you and Steve can help out with this, I’ll be eternally grateful, and if not, I’ll understand. Do you think any of the bloggers would want to help?

I believe that the way that this is unfolding is truly an answer to prayers, and it will give me a good chance of getting a positive response.

I’ve always believed that if you’re going to dream, DREAM BIG! And that is what I’m doing! It takes me to that day when I’ll walk out of here and into a world of new possibilities, a world where I’ll be able to teach and write and help others in many new ways. It takes me to where I’ll be able to do the simple things I used to take for granted; things like sleeping on a comfortable bed, eating nutritional food, planting a garden, getting a dog, playing my guitar, wearing clothes that are not colored orange, etc. Ah…it is fun to dream, isn’t it?

And among the dreams that would mean the most to me would be the ability to call the   people who I have come to hold dear, and to have long chats, and meet and greet one another beyond the barriers of prison walls.

As long as dreams are present, we’ll always feel a candle burning within us that’s ready to light the world. May we keep that candle burning ever so brightly!

Celebrating Our Humanness

by Charles “Tom” Brown
Copyright 2007

We are both wonderful and difficult at the same time. We are flawed and stuck in old patterns, but it is by and through our humanness that we grow and change and transform. For without the places cracked and softened by experience and time, we remain too hard and fixed to be affected by life.

The first step in freeing ourselves from this burden is to acknowledge the hardening of the heart. Then, without judgment or rejection, we will uncover the great tenderness that resides at the very core of our humanness. Our beauty and our flawed self both arise from the same tenderness. If we can shine warmth and openness into the dark places where we don’t know we’re lovable, this starts to forge a marriage between our beauty and our wounded self.

This is, after all, the love we most long for – this embracing of our humanness, which lets us appreciate ourselves as the luminous beings we are, housed in a vulnerable, flickering form whose endless calling is to move from chrysalis to butterfly, from seed to new birth.

Being wholly and genuinely human means celebrating that we are both vulnerable and indestructible at the same time. I have been broken and failed so many times that my identity has sprouted and peeled like an onion. But because of this, I have lived more than my share of lives and feel both young and old at once. Though I still wonder if I will break, I somehow know it’s all a part of the rhythm of being alive.

Now I understand that as we listen beyond our small sense of things, we begin to see that perhaps it is our humanness that helps us find each other. Perhaps it is precisely because we are not perfect that we complete each other. We see that a magnificent light surrounds us, and no matter how we turn or are turned, the magnificence follows.