Excerpt

Part I

I was living in Ohio when I heard what happened to Adam. That fateful evening, Dorothy, his wife, wanted him to go with her to her mothers house. Though he did not want to go there, he reluctantly agreed and went with her. While Adam stood talking to her mother, another man came up to the car and started talking to Mamie. Adam saw the man putting his hands on her, which made him jealous and angry. He came up to the man and told him to move in a nasty way. When the man didnt like the way Adam talked to him and wouldnt move, Adam opened the trunk of their car and pulled out a gun. He went back to the man and shot him without giving him a chance to run away. The man fell down, still alive. The man begged Adam not to shoot him again. The last words the man heard were from Adam yelling, Die, you motherfucker! Adam fired his gun a second time. In two shots, he had killed the man.

I dont know if he knew the man or not, but I knew Adam could get very jealous. The man should have walked away, knowing that Adam represented the jealous husband. Those two shots took Adam from living a normal life to a life based on violence and guns as a way to solve his problems, following in the footsteps of his father. Michael had killed a man over a dime and Adam had killed a man over jealousy.

1971

Adam was taken from the jail to the penitentiary in Alabama. He spent a short time in Brices, a mental institution, in Alabama because the prison authorities thought something was mentally wrong with him. After an evaluation, the doctors found nothing wrong, so he went back to the penitentiary.

At that time, inmates on good behavior were allowed to come home on the weekends. Adam behaved well in the penitentiary, so Momma arranged to pick him up, bring him home to her house for the weekends, and take him back on Sundays to the penitentiary.

Before the shooting, Adam, Mamie, and their first daughter, Faye, lived in a farmhouse provided by his boss. After Adam went to jail, Mamie had to move out, so she, Faye and her son and daughter from her previous boyfriends all moved in to live with Momma.

While Adam did time in jail waiting for his trial, Mamie had conjugal visits with Adam and she ended up getting pregnant by Adam again. In 1972, she gave birth to their second daughter, Cynthia.

Part II

INTRODUCTION

Adam Robbins had been sentenced to life in prison for killing a man in Alabama. During his time in prison in the 1980s and the 1990s, he wanted to warn any person thinking of committing a crime: prison is a hell-on-earth, and not worth being there one day.

Unfortunately, Adam Robbins died before he could get his message out.

We hope especially that young people will read this book and heed its warnings by avoiding a life of crime and risking imprisonment.

The book begins by informing the average people about their legal rights. In addition, the book exposes illegal acts in the judicial system: how the police may try to illegally secure a conviction; how district attorneys and judges secure a conviction; how lawyers will trick clients into pleading guilty; and how prison officials will violate prisoners rights.

Life in prison remains the same and can still have deadly consequences.

If this book has helped you or someone you know to avoid committing a crime, we would like to hear from you as we collect stories for a sequel. Information can be sent to the following address in New York City: Donald MacLaren, 2021 46th Street, Astoria, NY 11105.

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There are too many young men going to prison. In Alabama, most of these young men are poor black and white men between the ages of seventeen to twenty-four. They are only children who really dont even know what lifes about.

Everyone has an excuse or blames someone else why the young men are in prison, but instead of making excuses or blaming someone else, somebodys got to do something. These kids need help, not prison.

Mothers and fathers are gong to have to stop and take the time to raise their children. Single parents have got to put away their differences for the sake of their children. There is no excuse for parents ever turning their backs on their own.

Once a man or woman is put in prison, eighty-five percent return to prison within three years from being released. The reason for this is simple: these men and women are not supported by or given a fair chance in their communities.

Once a young person is put in prison, the only thing he learns is how to commit more crimes. And the harsh environment of prison teaches him how to hate any type of authority. Being around the worst criminals in society during their prison sentences encourages the young inmates to commit worse crimes when they get out.

Hopefully, this book will reach the mothers and teach them to take time with their children or help a young man who needs money and cant find a job, or the father who hasnt seen his daughter in awhile, or the young girl who wants that fourteen karat gold necklace, but doesnt have the money to buy it.

Listen, prison is real. Its hard. Its hopeless. And its the worst place on earth. Dont do something stupid and wind up in prison. Prison is worse than death because, at least, in death you have peace and you do not have to do time.

Its a free country and the choice is yours. Understand, if you make the choice to commit a crime, you are gong to have to face the deadly consequences.