Due to potential legal representation, the CJRJ’s series of articles, Jermane Scott: Jumping the Gun will be put on hold for the time being.
Over the coming weeks and months, Jermane’s Journal will invite the reader to put themselves in the shoes of a man wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Jermane’s words are his own, unedited and unabashed. After 22 years, the stage is his.
July 23rd, 2018
As a wrongfully convicted human being, I can only describe this experience as an awakening of sorts. Better yet, let me just say this experience is an enigma.
For me, today I am more optimistic than ever. This never ending battle to obtain my freedom is filled with every range of emotion that one can think of. However, the one that remains is HOPE, and being on the wrong side of justice, it is imperative that I remain steadfast in HOPE.
I have my good days, and I have my bad days. Yet it’s what triggers the good days or the bad days that matters in this prison environment whilst fighting for my freedom. The most debilitating thing for me was being rejected by other wrongful conviction campaigns because my case was unknown. I never expected that to happen. I simply had the romantic notion that all of the wrongfully convicted prisoners and their loved ones would support each other due to having the commonality of being wrongfully convicted. I shan’t lie, it caused me some pain. Not only emotional pain for myself, but for the people who believe in my innocence.
I do want to share my entire journey, because the reality of this fight is rarely shared with complete transparency. I’m talking about the arguments with the closest people to you. The people who misrepresent themselves, and still today, the issues I have psychologically from the complete desertion of my relatives.
All of these things impact a prisoners fight for freedom. I have been blessed in this process to have been embraced by some very remarkable people that have shown me what LOVE, friendship and family is truly about. Otherwise I wouldn’t be capable of being able to share my vulnerabilities throughout the experience that I NEED to share with the public.
Follow this journey with me as I live and breathe it.
Jermane
July 30, 2018
For prisoners, every day is a challenge emotionally. In my case, I am, and have been for the past 22 years experiencing 2 different sides of the spectrum when it comes down to the bare facts.
I am wrongfully convicted, so justice reform is something I am a proponent of. Then put in the fact of being in solitary confinement for over a decade, and that puts me as a proponent of prison reform.
My purpose for writing about my experiences inside these prison walls is to give a a true perspective without any masks, so that the public can be re-introduced to the fact that I am human. Let’s just say that for seventeen and a half years of my incarceration I have lived a menial life.
I simply just wanted to survive the insanity/enigma of prison life.
My innocence has never been in doubt. However, nobody cares about your innocence in prison. So after so long, the innocent prisoner doesn’t either. His/her main focus is survival, and that is how ignorance, lack of education, lack of family support and lack of LOVE from someone, ultimately distracts prisoners to focus on that basic instinct to JUST SURVIVE.
To the ‘average’ person who has never been to prison, this may sound abnormal. And yet, that is the psychological damage prison inflicts on a person like myself. One begins to accept abnormal behaviour as normal until people from totally different walks of life, re-introduce prisoners back to normality.
I am going to be extremely candid in these writings as I am not going to waste the opportunity this platform has given me. I believe at the end of these writings, if any person is a prisoner advocate/friend, you will have a firm perspective on a prisoner’s daily struggles.
Jermane
—Header Pic: Jermane in happier times pictured with his brother Charles—
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