by Howard Marks
Judge Robert Bonner, the head of the DEA, visited London. In response to questions asked about my 25-year sentence, the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying: ‘I don’t know how we keep people like Marks out of drug trading unless you put people like him in the slammer. I’m not troubled by the length of the sentence. He should serve it.’
The Daily Telegraph also made reference to a report that I had £50 million tucked away. I wrote to the editor:
It was such a wonderful and much needed Christmas surprise to read in your columns that I am the owner of £50 million concealed in Caribbean and/or Eastern bloc bank accounts. I was totally unaware that I had this loot. All they say about the damaging effects of cannabis on the memory must be true.
Federal Bureau of Prison rules preclude my sensibly and responsibly using this money. Providing, therefore, you undertake to pay my federally imposed fine, settle my wife’s mortgage, keep my family from starving, and pay for my children’s school fees, I would be delighted to transfer these funds to any purpose you choose.
Please let me know whether or not you are interested. If so, I will send you a duly notarised power of attorney form granting you access to any and all funds of mine held in any bank account in any country.
Incidentally, there were a couple of errors in your report. I am incarcerated in a federal penitentiary, which is in Indiana not Florida. Also I was fined $50,000 not £100,000. Still, that’s all the more for you if you take advantage of my offer. Trusting and hoping these were the only inaccuracies. Howard Marks.
My letter was published, but no one took up my offer. Things looked up for a while when Bill Clinton announced he was standing for office. An Oxford-educated, dope-taking, philandering, draft-dodging leader was just what this ridiculous country needed. Then he said he stuck joints in his mouth but didn’t inhale them and that he definitely wouldn’t legalise any dope. The Mail on Sunday came to interview me. They said they had proof I lived with Clinton in Oxford. (Maybe he was just a passive stoner.) I didn’t remember living with Clinton anywhere, but I didn’t deny it. Perhaps one day I could use this strange rumour to my advantage. I declined to answer any questions about my old mate Bill. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Clinton had been at University College, Oxford, failing his B.Phil. when I was doing postgraduate work at Balliol and living at Garsington. I never met anyone who smoked joints without inhaling.
Much was made plain to me during the same year (1991), all thoroughly depressing. My assumption that I would be released on parole as soon as I was eligible (November 1996) provided I behaved myself was totally wrong. Whether or not one is granted release on parole in the United States is not determined by one’s institutional conduct, as it is in the British parole system, but by the current political perception of the offence committed. I didn’t know this. I had not met anyone who had been granted parole. Drug smuggling was considered to be responsible for all of America’s worst problems. Large-scale smugglers of any drug didn’t get parole. The news hit me hard. Instead of release in 1996, I had to get used to the idea of getting released a few years into the next century. I checked the law books on parole cases. Parole had been refused to marijuana smugglers on the basis of the excessive quantities involved, the unusual sophistication of the scam committed, the seniority of the particular parole applicant within the scam, the number of people to whom he gave orders, its international character, and the case’s notoriety. I wasn’t optimistic. In the law library, I also discovered a Parole Commission policy statement taking an official stance of discouraging prisoners from pursuing careers in law. Such plans for release would be unfavourably reviewed. I dropped out of the University of London’s external law degree course.
Also incorrect was my assumption that I would be smoothly transferred to a British prison. At first my application was lost for several months, then resubmitted, then rejected on the basis that my offence was too serious. This didn’t make much sense. Murderers and heroin smugglers had already been transferred to or from the United States. I was sure Lovato was behind these refusals, but I had no proof, yet.
The governing body of USP Terre Haute could see I was not US penitentiary material. They recommended to their national superiors that I be transferred to a less stringent facility with greater opportunity for education. The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ bosses said no. Again I suspected Lovato’s sadistic hand. Again I had no proof, yet.
Lovato formally requested the British authorities that Judy’s flat in Chelsea be confiscated. British law prevented further proceedings. Lovato then requested the Spanish authorities that our home in La Vileta be confiscated. The DEA’s justification was not that the house had been purchased with the proceeds of dope money. It hadn’t been, and that was easily proven. It was because I had used the home telephone, thereby rendering the house as an instrument of my racketeering enterprise and as such forfeitable to the United States and/or Spain. An embargo was placed on the property and remained there for four years, after which time even the routinely accommodating Spanish authorities couldn’t bring themselves to throw Judy and the children on to the streets because her husband had used the phone.
But the worst thing that happened to me that year was the news that my four-year-old son, Patrick, had jumped off the roof of a tall building. The impact of his little body hitting the concrete floor shattered both his legs. No one knew why he did it. Did he think he was Superman? Was he trying to fly? Did he throw himself into the jaws of death to resolve some indescribable inner torment? Was he trying to do himself in because he had no dad? The hard reality of being a prisoner hit me like never before. I couldn’t be there to help absorb Patrick’s pain. By the time I got out, he wouldn’t need a dad. How many more accidents and tragedies to my dear family would I be unable to prevent? Please God, no more.
To make matters even more depressing, the next year, 1992, got off to a very bad start. My father was rushed to hospital with severe bronchial pneumonia. God, I’d been dreading this: one of my parents getting seriously ill. God, please don’t let any of them die before I get out. The first and last verses of Dylan Thomas’s poem swam through my brain:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dad survived.
Outside my window, construction work had begun on the one and only federal Death Row. Although most individual states regularly electrocute, gas, and otherwise murder those convicted of particularly heinous crimes, the Federal Government has not executed anyone for a federal offence for decades. They just locked you up. That had changed with the Reagan/Bush federal death penalty for drug offences. Now eight people, all Black, had been sentenced to death by federal courts. There was nowhere specific to house them, and they were scattered all over the country. The US Government decided to build their very own execution chamber (lethal injection) and waiting rooms (Death Row). The location was Terre Haute. I could see it through my window. It brought me down.
It was a most heartbreaking day when I was informed that my dear friend Old John, within months of freeing himself from the clutches of the DEA, had been diagnosed as suffering from cancer. Before he became the scourge of the DEA and the world’s most honest dope smuggler, he had been an electrician. The asbestos that got to him then was slowly but surely killing him now. I felt so sad.
Doing time began to get hard. The absence of my family was tearing my heart out. I’d been down for four years, twice as long as last time. I had more than another twelve to do if, as seemed certain, I would be denied parole. Judy couldn’t wait for me that long; no one could. At the age of sixty, I would re-enter the world, skint, full of hate and completely unemployable and useless. No one would want to li
sten to my boring tales of woe, gore, violence, and depression. I’d be old and ugly. No one would want to shag me. And my dreams weren’t about sex; they were about prison. That’s when you know you are locked up: when you know you can’t escape by nodding off. When I get out my kids will all have left home and been replaced by my grandchildren. We’ll visit my parents’ graves. I’ll smile benignly at the children of Judy and her new husband when I pay them a social call after collecting my dole or my pension. I’ll walk past discos and try to remember when I last danced. Was it worth waiting for? I became ill. I caught shingles and had several bouts of ’flu. Smoke and phlegm filled my lungs. I couldn’t piss properly. I couldn’t bend my left leg. I had pains everywhere. Abscesses filled my gums. Eleven teeth were extracted. Any other dental treatment would have been deemed cosmetic rather than curative. An ill-fitting plastic denture plate dangled from my mouth. I needed glasses to read.
Whenever I get really down, I start getting religious. The American Christian Right had thrown me off Christianity. If God was a Republican, forget it. But for weeks I read the Bible and many works of other religions. I realised what I was doing wrong: I was taking myself too seriously. I should just help people as much as possible, keep fit and well, and take what comes. I can’t control what happens to me anyway. I can only control my attitude to it. So I spend the next decade in prison. Big deal. So what? What next?
I had my own cell now. Next to me on one side was Big Jim Nolan’s cell, on the other side lived Bear, another Outlaw. I gave up smoking after thirty-five years. Being constantly summoned for urine tests had frightened me off taking any kind of dope. A dirty urine meant more prison time. Marijuana stayed detectable in urine for thirty days, heroin for one day. There was no marijuana. There was lots of heroin. I looked forward to a big fat joint in twelve years’ time.
I got up every morning at five, did a series of dynamic yoga exercises followed by a callisthenics routine taught me by Daoud, drank fresh orange juice, read some religious writings, taught inner-city Blacks how to write for three hours, missed lunch, played tennis with Charlot for two hours, taught for another three hours, ate a healthy meal, played tennis again, walked for a few miles round the track, worked in the law library, did an hour of yoga and meditation, and read classical novels before going to sleep. I did that every day for over a thousand days. Charlot also worked at the Department of Education teaching mathematics to Hispanics. We persuaded the Head of Education to let us teach voluntary evening classes in French and philosophy. The Black Muslims appreciated hearing about how the Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averroës had preserved the Ancient Greek wisdom while the Europeans were busily being barbaric. The Italian gangsters loved hearing about how many of the Ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians, such as Pythagoras and Archimedes, would in fact have been modern Italian and that the Renaissance was definitely an Italian affair. Not only did they have the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, and the Mafia, they also had culture by the balls.
I was slim, fit, healthy, mellow, and seemed to be happy and enjoying life. I was like everyone else there. The minutes dragged, but the months and the years flew by. I was becoming institutionalised.
I realised this after I had been visited separately and successively by my parents, my daughter Myfanwy, and my two daughters Amber and Francesca during 1993. It was brought home to me what I had been missing. My father had resolved after his last illness to make the effort to cross the Atlantic come hell or high water. I had seven wonderful visits with him and my mother. Myfanwy wanted to share her 21st birthday with me. She did so in the Spartan confines of USP Terre Haute visitors’ room. When I finally saw Francesca, she looked like my memory of Myfanwy. I thought Amber was Judy. I had five days of heavenly visits. I loved them so much. Amber wrote this:
It was like reopening a wound,
As I sat there.
Waiting.
Knowing that any minute
I would see him again.
Him I hadn’t seen for so many years.
Him who meant the world to me.
I should have been happy,
But I could feel the tears brimming.
It had been so long.
I was beginning to feel the pains again.
No one could understand why I was crying.
I was about to see him.
I should be smiling.
The sorrow felt by his absence
Was creeping out from deep inside
In long-kept tears.
And then he came.
Like I’d seen him only yesterday.
That hug said nothing
Of the years I’d longed to hold him.
We sat down.
They chatted and laughed.
I was oblivious to the conversation.
I kept looking at that hand
That I hadn’t felt for so long.
And marvelling at the fact that it was in mine.
I remember leaving him,
Having to go, to say goodbye.
It was too much.
I’d turned my back,
Ashamed of the tears,
Trying, trying to control my pain,
Like I’d managed all those years.
But I couldn’t.
So I walked.
One last glance at the man I loved most in the world,
And quickly ran out.
I wanted to go back,
Hug one last time,
But the pain was too much.
Had to get out.
Control myself.
Re-bury those tears.
Hide the pain.
Forget the sorrow.
And later,
When I peered out of that aeroplane window,
And watched his world
Slip further away,
I looked down at my hand,
Where his had once been,
But now was gone,
And wondered
If I’d ever have it there again.
Julian Peto had so kindly brought Amber and Francesca over to see me in America. He is the most unfailing friend. Judy couldn’t come. Despite previous assurances to the contrary, the US Government refused to let her into the country because she had a conviction, the one she’d accepted in order to be reunited with her children four years ago.
What was I doing? I was clapping myself on the back for being able to survive contentedly in the world’s worst penitentiary while my real life was proceeding without me. And I was accepting it. The US Government was preventing my being transferred to a British prison and simultaneously preventing my wife from visiting me. They were going too far. Those evil bastards had already gone too far. Amber’s poem and Judy’s inability to see me for the next twelve years rekindled an almost dead fighting spirit. I had to get out of here.
I reasoned that despite some bureaucrat’s constant rejection of my application to be imprisoned in Europe, my best way out lay in that direction. By now I was receiving about fifty letters a week from family, friends, lawyers, journalists, those who wished me well, and those who had been interested in what they had read about me. I wrote letters to all of them. There was clearly a lot of support out there for me to be transferred to a British nick. Everyone thought that the Americans were being pigheadedly harsh on me. They collected signatures supporting my transfer application. My wife and children toured the schools and bars of Palma accumulating signatures. My parents went to almost every house in Kenfig Hill doing the same. Britain’s greatest champion of legalised marijuana, Danny Roche, got half of Liverpool to sign petitions begging for my return to England. My parents’ Labour Member of Parliament, Win Griffiths, took up the cause with a vengeance and worked unceasingly to obtain my transfer. The outstanding British charity organisation, Prisoners Abroad, whose admirable efforts to comfort those imprisoned overseas have saved lives and families, vigorously campaigned on my behalf. They were joined by the Prison Reform Trust, Release, Justice, and the Legalise Cannabis Campai
gn, all of whose support had been coordinated by a wonderful lady I have never met, Judy Yacoub from Lancashire. BBC Wales interviewed me and aired a sympathetic broadcast. Duncan Campbell wrote an equally sympathetic piece in the Guardian. Wales on Sunday carried the following editorial:
Time for Marks to return
HOWARD MARKS has been sitting in an American prison for over two years and could still be there in the year 2003. Because his wife has a drug conviction she is banned from re-entering the country and cannot visit him. Three times, applications have been made to let him complete his sentence in a British jail. Three times, the Justice Department has said no.
This newspaper does not condone what Howard Marks has done, but twelve years is a long time between visits. Surely the Americans, who put such great store in home, Mom and apple pie, could show a little compassion and allow the move to a country which his family can visit.
Even the British Home Office went so far as to formally request my repatriation. American organisations helped. Prisoner Visitation and Support, a multidenominational charity which had visited and comforted me and hundreds of other prisoners without visitors in US prisons, wrote compelling letters to the relevant government agencies. Families Against Mandatory Minimums, by far the most effective prison reform organisation in the US, did the same. Thousands and thousands of signatures piled up on Attorney General Janet Reno’s desk. Still no answer, but this time it was taking a long time for them to say no.
Balliol College, some of whose members hold high positions in the United States Government, had also made relentless and impassioned pleas to wherever they could. I had never expected Balliol to support me to the extent it did when I was in Terre Haute. Christopher Hill, the old Master, and John Jones, the current Dean of Balliol, regularly corresponded with me the entire time I was there. John had even attempted to get the prison authorities’ permission to allow me to proof-read the College Register before its publication. They refused.
