Son of Solomon
by: Johnnie Bunting
Chapter 1
David Solomon sat in his seat and stared out the window as the van sped down the highway. He would not be permitted to eat anything until he reached Sing Sing Correctional Facility because the Correction Officers transporting him were instructed not to remove the mask off his face for security reasons.
David chuckled to himself as he thought of his appearance. He looked like a regular Hannibal Cannibal. Not only did he have a mask on his face, he had the regular handcuffs with a waist chain on and the Correction Officers put a pair of "Big Boy" handcuffs on his ankles instead of shackles so he had no mobility of his legs. The Correction Officers at Attica had to strap him to a hand truck to transfer him from the box to the receiving room, and then strapped him down in a wheelchair before moving him into the van down the wheelchair ramp.
It started raining outside and the drops of water hitting the window brought David out of his thoughts. Attica was a f***** up prison. He tried to make a difference. At least they'd remember his name.
When he arrived at Attica, the first thing he noticed was the attitude of the staff. They tried to intimidate everything immediately with the threat of violence. When David went to the mess hall, he noticed CO's with their batons out with the screw faces like they were killers. He heard stories of abuse and assaults by these CO's and figured it was time to do something about it. In his years of incarceration he learned law. He felt it necessary to help out the brothers by placing a class action suit against the Superintendent of Attica for failure to train the staff properly, which resulted in a host of cases of excessive use of force, in violation of the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
David considered himself a political prisoner. Though he was in prison for murder, he strived to go against "the man" in all of his efforts. He wrote plenty of complaints on staff and was constantly in litigation on lawsuits for himself as well as others.
He won a few lawsuits, none of which made him a millionaire, but he got them for two G's here, five G's there. His largest settlement was for 18 G's and his largest Jury Verdict was for 35 G's. Because of this, he was well recognized as a true litigator and was often sought after, and paid, for his help.
He got himself settled, ran for the Inmate Liaison Committee, and won. He got the chairman spot of the ILC and started his paperwork. That's when the trouble began.
The Federal Marshals came to the facility and served Superintendent Hayes with a summons that said he was being sued for failure to train his staff. The actual complaint was detailed and explained a host of situations in which staff brutally beat a prisoner. The Superintendent was furious about his lawsuit. The summons noted that the plaintiff was "David Solomon, et al." He called his secretary, Karen, and asked her to find out who David Solomon was and what his program was. She checked the database on her computer, then turned and said, "He's the ILC Chairman, and you have a meeting with them this afternoon". At the meeting Superintendent Hayes looked at him with a different eye. Before the summons he thought of him as a highly intelligent exceptionally business like inmate. Now, he looked at him as a sneaky conniving snake. David sat in silence and kept looking at his watch while Vice-Chairman David did most of the talking. Midway through the meeting Karen came and needed to speak with the Superintendent. After a few words, the Superintendent turned beet red and told the ILC, "Due to an unexpected emergency, this meeting is now concluded". Superintendent Hayes and his staff left hastily.
Word spread through the prison that the Feds came to the prison and arrested 18 correction officers and five sergeants for Civil Rights Violation under Title 18 of the United States Code, Sections 241 and 242 for the assaults of five individuals which had recently occurred. Somehow the word got out that David Solomon was teaching fellow inmates how to file charges on the officers for excessive force. David was locked down under investigation several times, harassed by staff and searched regularly. The officers always found a reason to pat frisk, strip frisk, or to frisk his cell.
One night, during the 11 PM - 7 AM shift, at about 1 o'clock in the morning, David finished his law work for the night and was about to go to bed. He heard steps on the company and he stuck his mirror out through the bars and saw two officers on the company. Since only one officer made rounds, he found this odd and quickly turned out his light and laid on the bed fully dressed with his boots on. The footsteps ceased. He didn't see them but he knew they were only a cell or two away from him. His cell door popped open and the two officers ran in expecting to catch David fast asleep of half-asleep and disoriented. What the officers didn't expect was an alert warrior ready to fight. The first officer was kicked in the nuts. As he folded, he was then hit in the midsection and had the wind knocked out of him as he fell forward. The second officer caught a double jab to his nose, which broke with a crunch. A right cross to his eye and a right hook to his jaw sent him backward out of the cell. He ran holding his broken nose and jaw to seek help. David then turned his attention back to the first officer. It didn't matter that the light in his cell was off. The night-lights on the company provided sufficient light for the ass whooping that was about to be given.
As the officers staggered to his feet, David hit him with eight body shots, four of them in the ribs on the right and four to the ribs on the left. As he started to fall forward and grad David, he was hit in the chin and given an upper cut that snapped his head back and sent him falling backwards toward the toilet where he hit his head and was knocked unconscious. David then jumped on top of him and continued to beat him within an inch of his life. David even managed to bit a chunk of flesh from the officer's cheek and when help finally arrived, they had to wrestle David off the fallen officer. David managed to bit another officer before it was all over.
David was given two years in the box as a result of the incident, but no criminal charges were filed against him because the correction officers weren't justified in going into his cell.
David sat in his seat while nodding and chuckling as he thought to himself. The van finally arrived at Sing Sing and David was loaded out of the van. He still chuckled as he was wheeled into prison intake.
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