A Plea For Justice: Please Help Felix Garcia

A nurse – a nurse, in a medical facility – handed Felix Garcia a bed sheet, and told him, “you should kill yourself. You’d be better off if you killed yourself.” Felix was there to get batteries for his hearing aid. The hearing aid doesn’t help him with speech, but if he sleeps with his head against the steel door, it helps him to know if people are coming to hurt him. He needs his hearing aid to survive.

You see, where Felix Garcia lives, one needs things like hearing aids to survive.

Prison life is hard, and if you’re not prepared to do the time, you shouldn’t have done the crime. The thing is, though… Felix didn’t do the crime. Thirty years ago, his brother, Frank Garcia, and his sister’s boyfriend – a man named Ray – robbed one Joseph Tramontana, of some jewelry, and shot him. Frank, Ray and Tina – Felix’s sister – then set about framing Felix for the crime. Felix was Deaf, and the family knew he wouldn’t be able to defend himself in court.

In his 3 decades in some of Florida’s toughest prisons, Felix has been raped, beaten, starved, robbed – he has been denied medical care. He has been stripped of all clothing and left alone – naked – in a cell. He has been denied access to visitation, computers, and even reading material. TVs and radios – when available – are of no use to him.

Felix arrived in prison, Deaf. He could read lips, but got along primarily by smiling and nodding. This is something some Deaf do, to fit in. You laugh when everybody else laughs, even though you don’t get the joke. If someone asks you a question, you smile and nod. Many Deaf, smile and nod their way into false confessions. Felix smiled and nodded his way into a life sentence. When asked by the judge, “can you hear me?” Felix would smile and nod. He arrived in prison sub-lingual and illiterate. In prison – with the help of other inmates – he learned to Sign, and to read.  In prison libraries, Felix taught himself several obsolete computer programming languages, and has written a few programs, including a food-ordering database, in use by the Florida DOC, to this day.

His case, thanks in large part to DeafInPrison.com, has received some notoriety. He was first mentioned on the Internet, in a Dec. 2011 Mother Jones article by James Ridgeway. Since then, some petitions have popped up, but none of them very long-lived. In Sept. of 2012, DeafInPrison.com started an attempt at gaining 1000 signatures to send to Governor Rick Scott, Florida AG, Pam Bondi and two members of the Florida Cabinet. We have, as of the publication of this piece, 620 of those signatures. In June of 2011, Paralegal, Pat Bliss – who has worked on getting Felix his freedom, for the past 17 years – and James Ridgeway, interviewed Felix over the course of 2 days. The resulting video was captioned by me, and split into 8 segments on DeafInPrison.com. You can find them, here. Combined, they make for 2 hours of powerful and tragic viewing. Disturbing though they may be, they are well worth taking the time to watch.

Although there is compelling evidence as to his innocence, Florida has remained intransigent, refusing not only to release him – but also, to hear the evidence at all. A Florida judge even disallowed an actual confession by Frank Garcia, issued in 2006.

I’m writing today, to ask you for your help. Felix now has a pro-Bono clemency lawyer who is prepping a hearing. We would like to coincide our petition’s arrival with this hearing. We’re quickly running out of time. We need those remaining 400 signatures, desperately. Please take a moment to go to this Web site:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/453/783/026/felix-garcia-should-be-granted-a-full-pardon/. Please. A simple mouse-click might be the difference between full clemency for Felix – and ten more years of unjust suffering, followed by a long parole. One day is too much time for an innocent man to spend behind bars. Thirty years is a horror.  

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