Free Four Feet Tall and Rising by Shorty Rossi

corrections officers and the deputy sheriffs treated me like shit ’cause I was with a black gang. It didn’t help that I was an asshole. I was so fucking rebellious. I was constantly getting flashlight therapy. There were cells that were broken or wider than usual and I could squeeze out and visit my friends. I got caught as I was trying to climb over a tier. It was two in the morning. They knotted me up, meaning they beat my head with flashlights, giving me knots all over my skull. They threw me in the hole. That was just hell. I was more scared of getting set up and killed by the deputies than by the inmates.
    I entered Men’s Central on January 8, 1988, and I was there until August of 1989, fighting my case in trial. It would turn out to be the hardest place I ever did time.

    For my first trial, they assigned me a dingbat lawyer who was a disaster waiting to happen. The trial ended in a mistrial on a technicality, mostly ’cause of her incompetence. Then I was assigned Carol Telfer as my lawyer. She was behind me one hundred percent. The second trial resulted in a hung jury, so they brought me back for a third trial. For that trial, they hired a special gang prosecutor, Kevin McCormick, a super-smart son of a bitch. I didn’t like the guy, ’cause he was prosecutingme at the time, but I had to admit, he was good at his job and he wasn’t an asshole.
    Going to trial was one of the worst experiences of my life. Not ’cause of the trial itself, but ’cause of the logistics of getting to court every day. Pretrial proceedings could take up to two or three months. These were just the initial hearings and jury selection and setting dates or requests for delays. Every morning that I had to be in court, they’d wake me up at four o’clock in the morning to eat breakfast. The deputies would march me downstairs, where up to five thousand inmates would be heading to court. They’d sort us by gangs and put us on buses.
    Once we got to the courthouse, they’d sort us again, putting the gangbangers in separate holding tanks. And then … we’d sit there for hours. Finally, when it was your turn to appear before the judge, they’d walk you in and then the damn judge would ask for an extension for another day. That’s it. Then they’d march you back out. Stick you back in the holding tank and you’d sit and wait for hours for some other corrections officer to come pick you up. Then back on the buses, back to County, where you’d sit in another holding tank until they could get you back to your cell. By the time you got back to your bed, it was eleven or twelve o’clock at night. Next day, you’d start the whole process over again at four o’clock in the morning.
    This went on over and over and over again. Carol used to get so angry with me ’cause I’d fall asleep in front of the jury. I couldn’t help it. I was barely getting four hours of sleep a night for months on end. I couldn’t think in a straight line. I was so desperate to be done with the trial process, I told Carol just totake a deal so I wouldn’t have to go through the daily grind anymore. She didn’t listen to me.
    With each new trial, charges were dropped. The conspiracy charges and accessory charges fell away ’cause I could prove I was at work during those hours. But the attempted-murder charge against the innocent bystander was still standing. Out of the five of us that were arrested that night, I was the only one who faced a jury. Dante and Lewis ratted against me. They took deals to save their own asses. When they put T.J. and Bernard on the stand, they had nothing to say. Since they were juveniles, so they got a lot less time. As for the two Crips that were shot, they had, of course, not pressed charges against me, ’cause they had no intention of spending any more time in a courthouse, or with cops, than necessary. The only guy that showed up every day was the bystander. He was there for every session. He’d survived, but he had to