Sean wrote the following for the recent No More Locked Doors Conference in Oakland. A PDF of a zine of this and other writings by prisoners on solidarity is available here.

Sean Swain’s responses:
–TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR CASE.
I grew up in a lilly-white Detroit suburb, only son of an autoworker and a stay-home mom. After my mind was mismanaged by public schools I enlisted in the Army for more severe mismanagement. After discharge, I shared an apartment with my then-girlfriend and her two children from prior relationships. Her former boyfriend kicked in the apartment door when I was home alone, and in a panic I stabbed and killed him.
He was the nephew of the clerk of courts. I wasn’t.
Police concealed evidence, the prosecutor concealed witnes the court disallowed my experts. When my conviction was reversed, the court refused to follow the mandate of the higher court, and I remain captive for 24 years and counting without a legal conviction or sentence for a non-crime.
I was irregularly targeted and prosecuted not for any criminal conduct, but for the court to uphold the unwritten proposition that the system of injustice is a weapon to maintain the special privileges of the privileged few, while the poor have not even the right to defend our own lives. Continue reading →