Emanuel Lutchman (Part 12)

Fragments of a future narrative

Emanuel was sentenced on January 26, 2017. His release is scheduled for 2034. Another decade of fear, paranoia. 

In one email, he’d suddenly realized “HOW POLITICALLY DANGEROUS IT CAN BECOME FOR ME BY THE TELLING THE TRUTH AND WRITING IT.” 

Another: “i read that there are studies and many methodology that are being used against us as prisoners’ that are similar to the mice’s/apes they subject such creatures to many experiments about socials relations and conditioning….”

When he called earlier this year—he hasn’t emailed since November 2022; I suspect Bureau of Prisons officials have taken or curbed his Internet privileges—he told me he’d been stabbed in USP McCreary, and relocated to USP Beaumont.

“Exposure to violence in prisons and jails can exacerbate existing mental health disorders,” the Prison Policy Initiative writes. A criminological study, from 2009, found that prison crime victims—violent crime victims—“showed the poorest adjustment post-release.”

I think back to Jason Ludke. To his year outside, after a material support conviction and earlier bids. Like Emanuel. Like Emanuel, he was—he says—attacked in prison. He also suffers from mental illness, though it’s less severe. Now he survives on service work. Could Emanuel? From what experience?

“He is so severely mentally ill and regardless of what happens they continue to deny him real treatment,” Melonie Varnell, a contact in western Oklahoma, lamented. “Poor Emanuel.”

She would know. Her son is schizotypal. And he’s in prison for, the FBI says, attempting to bomb the BancFirst Tower in Oklahoma City.