LEWISBURG CREW

PURPOSE STATEMENT

[No one was injured during the making of this video]

(... after viewing it I take that back, I think my ego was bruised...)

JUNK BOMB

     "Hey Ma." "Hello Son" " What's Up?"  "Your father and I are in Washington for Cousin Reese's funeral."  "Oh yeah, I forgot.  Sorry they wouldn't let me out for that."  Reese, who was quite a bit older and like my 10th Cousin had risen to a top government position and recently died of a gum infection.   "Your Cousin was a brilliant man, you know that.  They are having a huge ceremony down here for him."   "Yeah, he was a real genius.  But Ma, I still can't understand why he just couldn't have brushed his teeth?"

     I remember, as a young boy Reese would excuse himself early from the holiday dinner table, returning to his room to study.  "See that,” my father would say, "it's that kind of hard work and dedication to the books that you’re going to need if you ever hope to amount to anything." These words stuck with me on that long road through higher education.  But my most vivid memory of Reese was the time when I'd finished stuffing myself and walked into his bedroom unannounced to find him hunched over a magazine with a bottle of lotion in one hand and all his hard work in the other.

      "Will you fit into a 44 regular."  "Why are you whispering Ma, where are you?"  "In your cousin’s closet.  He has all these expensive suits.  It would be a sin to let them go to waste."  "... Sure, I'm a 44 short but that’s close enough.  How many can you stuff in your suitcase?   Did you check the pockets yet?  When are you guys coming home?"  "Our plane comes in at 3:00 Sunday afternoon."  "Good.  I'll still be home on a weekend pass."  "Great honey, how is everything else going."  ”? Ok... but I’m a little bummed out, do you remember my friend Jimmy Petrocelli?  He left Lewisburg for the halfway house the same day I was released."  "Is he the one you said looks like Shrek?  And his Cousin Tony just got picked up again for extortion?" (My mother is almost 72 and sharp as the frigging day is long).  "Yup, that's him.  He just told me they got him on a hot urine for coke.  He's going back."  "Oh my God, didn't he do the RDAP with you?"  "Yeah and the Feds don't play with that, if you did the drug program it's zero tolerance.  Imagine doing nine months, 500 hours on top of his ten year sentence and going back for a couple of lines."  "That's terrible.  Jimmy you... you don't get tempted like that do you?"  "Come on Ma, are you kidding – no - not a chance."  "Well what makes him go back to that stuff after all he's been through?"  "You know Ma, because he is a Junkie.  An honest to god, life long, junk bomb.  People don't understand how hard it is to beat."  "Well I'm going to pray for him."  "No Ma, your not!  Just keep praying for me."  "You know I already do that."  "Yes but Ma there are only so many hour in a day and when your praying for Petrocelli, I’m not covered.  Listen, the lord gave you one son, and it is not Jimmy Petrocelli!   So Ma, please, concentrate on praying for me, your flesh and blood, your first born only son and undeniably favorite child and let Mrs. Petrocelli worry about her junk-bomb!"

Postscript: My mother is not only a Saint; she's a sneak.  I have no doubt she prayed for JP behind my back because as of this writing he is miraculously still in the halfway house.

UPDATE:  On Tuesday of this week Jimmy’s brother died of cancer.  He requested to go to the wake.  His request was denied.  Last night, three days before Christmas, Federal Marshals ascended on the 1/2 way house in Boston to bring him back to prison.  "Ok Ma, go ahead, Jimmy needs your prayers now more than I do."

COMBUSTION

     “That case is a slam dunk - they caught the guy coming out of his house with a bloody mattress for godssake - you’d have to be asleep… or retarded to loose.”  “Listen, I even heard the defendant was on the phone from lock-up and admitted he just lost it - on a taped line!”  Yeah it’s one of those cases where there’s so much evidence if you win well so what – how could you loose, but if you loose then good luck finding a new profession.”  “You’re right, you’d never out live that loss.”  “ And now it’s Tamagini’s problem.”  “Ha, ha, ha…” “Ha, ha, ha…”

 “ Hey fellas, what’s my problem?”  I’d paused outside the office law library, my hands balled tight, taking this in.  “Umm, there’s no problem…”   “ - Yeah, no problem – we were just saying how you’ll have no problem putting that bastard from Reading away for the rest of his life.”

     I’d been walking into awkward behind-my-backs like that in the office and courthouses in both Lowell and Cambridge since discovering Elaine’s body.  A missing persons case was one thing, but giving me a high profile murder prosecution didn’t sit well with some who’d been prosecutors much longer than I had.   The truth was they were right; being the underdog carried a lot less pressure.

     In my first homicide the defendant ran over the victim while she crossed Market Street eating cheese curls.  Mark Russell was charged with causing the death of Deborah Jean Sweeny negligently while drunk driving.  It was a strong case that if left alone would have ended in a guilty plea, but I didn’t leave it alone.   While out chatting up servers trying to figure out just how plastered Russell was that night I stumbled upon a bartender who mentioned Russell and Sweeny in the same sentence. “Wait a minute, they were in here together?”  “Well Deborah Jean was at one end of the bar and Mark was at the other snarling...”  “Snarling?”  “Yeah, well maybe sneering, Debbie used to go out with his uncle you know, who over-dosed on heroin a while back, and they blamed her so there was a lot of animosity…” - wait a second; how often do you accidently run someone over who you know?

     More leg-work turned up a witness who’d seen Russell drive pass Sweeny, bang a u-turn up on the sidewalk striking her, sending the cheese curls flying, before driving off and another who saw Russell return and attempt to throw Sweeny’s body in the trunk before the cops arrived.  In the interest of full disclosure I should tell you these witnesses were not without credibility issues; one had recently beat a murder charge for setting a homeless man on fire and the other had a long record but lets face it I’m not going to find civic leaders and parish priests hanging out in front of the Olympia after two in the morning.

     Because of my snooping instead of a simple motor vehicle homicide I now had a complicated second- degree murder case, but next to no pressure.  The facts were clustered, the witness list looked like America’s Most Wanted and more tumble weeds than mourner blew through Debora Jean’s funeral.  No one cared if I won, and the Vega’s odds were ten to one against a win, but when the verdict came back guilty Mark caught life with the possibility for parole in fifteen and I had to catch a ride back to the office after leaving court to find my car smashed up.  I was wrong; someone did care if I won.

     Another low-expectation case was one where a pipe bomb was found under the car of the boyfriend of a local fireman’s daughter.  Rumor had it Daddy was unhappy with his teenager princess’s unplanned pregnancy.  But rumors and an undetonated pipe bomb don’t get prosecutors lining up outside their supervisor’s office for assignment of the case.  I’m uncertain how many older ADAs handled this investigation with little success before it landed on my desk but I do know the last one was O’Malley, Kelly’s best friend and the prosecutor who lost the case against my witness in the Russell homicide who charred the homeless man to a crisp.  Again it took some legwork but armed with a picture of the bomb, which I thrust under the nose of as many of the daughter’s friends as I could find, and a few threats of perjury and each kid independently admitted seeing what we called an “infernal machine” in various phases of construction in the fireman’s basement workshop while they were downstairs visiting his daughter and playing pool.  This was enough to get an indictment but I give credit for the conviction to the defendant himself who took the witness stand and tried blowing so much smoke up the jury’s ass they smelt a four-alarm fire, saddling him with a ten piece in state prison.

     These are but two examples of my cases that went to trial state courts.  Unlike the feds who have the luxury of a 97% conviction rate because they only indict ironclad cases we handled whatever garbage the local and state cops come up with.  Otherwise the scumbags would run rampant on our streets.   The defense only goes to trial when they believe they can win, otherwise they workout a plea deal.  First-degree murder cases are the exception because even a plea gets you life in prison.  Donohue was admitting he murdered his wife but asserting he suffered from a dissociative disorder causing him to lack the substantial capacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law. This was a lot of mumbo jumbo that translated to nothing but a boatload of pressure for me.

LAST DAY ON THE COMPOUND

GOOD BY USP LEWISBURG

IT'S OFFICIAL

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Name Register # Age-Race-Sex Release Date Location 1. JAMES TAMAGINI 03569-049 47-White-M 04-12-2011 RELEASED

ACTUAL COURT TRANSCRIPT

 
Dr. Ablow testified to the following:  “[W]hat happens is on that morning he tells me his wife had worked until about [7 P.M.] the night before, had gone to bed at eight.   She was sleeping a little bit late.   He usually rises early.   He was getting the kids ready for school and did so.“They left.   He walked past his office.   In the office he noticed a bat.   He went in, he picked up the bat.   He walked upstairs, standing outside the bedroom.   His wife was inside sleeping, in the bedroom.“He says that for thirty minutes to an hour he stood outside the room with the impulse, you have to do it, the strong thought, the impulse, you have to do it, seizing him at the same time as he responded, you can't do it.   You have to do it, you can't do it.“This builds, and he stands there for thirty minutes.   He then goes numb.   Hits the wife with the bat, is surprised not only by the event but how much damage he has caused, how bloody it is, says, ‘I could not have done that,’ to himself, ‘I could not have done that’ and then in a sequence separated perhaps by ten or fifteen minutes, cleans the bat and noticing that his wife is suffering, he delivers an additional or additional blows in order, he says, for her suffering to end.   And he prays to God to take his wife.   And that's what he says happened.”

LATENT MALICE

  “She was defenseless,” I reminded them,  “ Elaine was sleeping soundly when her husband killed her…  consider the force with which he swung the bat, striking her head repeatedly; casting blood in an arc across the ceiling and walls behind him… the sound it must have made… Attorney Kelly would have you believe that only a mentally incompetent man could be capable of such atrocity with his children sleeping feet away in their rooms but you know otherwise. You know beyond any doubt that the defendant’s actions were calculated, performed with a full appreciation of their wrongfulness.  The evidence has proven this to you…”

     No one blinked.  They sat on the edges of their seats without moving.  I took this as a good sign.  I’d lost juries that looked away when I made a salient point or their eyes told me: “nice suit buddy but it’s not your day.”   In the past nine years I’d waited on hundreds of verdicts; for hours, some took days, and from them collectively I learned the trick to guessing what a jury will do is very simple: never try.  No matter how good I felt, this one was no different

     The afternoon I met Donahue we were investigating the disappearance of Elaine.  He reported her missing after she failed to return from her night shift as a delivery room nurse at a local hospital.  All her belongings seemed to be in place, credit cards and bank accounts remained inactive, friends and extended family hadn’t heard a word from her.  The couple’s three children were at school while myself, two State Police Detectives and a third from the town of Reading sat in the Donahue’s kitchen listening to Ed drone on about the strength of their marriage.

     Honestly, I wasn’t into it.  Either Elaine took off or Ed here killed her.  At the moment it was a coin toss.  This had the trappings for being an enormous case and I was using every fiber of my being to focus but the truth was I had something I simply couldn’t get off my mind; I thought I might be in love.

     This is embarrassing, but I suppose the fact it’s bothersome speaks volumes about me: I met the girl of my dreams the night of a “Best Chest” contest at the Blue Shamrock.  It was my first time visiting Lowell’s hot, new establishment.   When I arrived attendance was at capacity.  The stereo system blared early 90’s top forty. Conversation was difficult over Goldfinger’s Mable.  I’d gone out that evening with a couple of off duty Lowell cops.  One bought a round of shots and the moment he reached out with mine I saw her through the crowd.  She was one of the four females tending bar.  I’ve been accused of exaggeration but can assert with clear conscience this quartette would’ve rivaled the beauty found behind the bar of any watering hole on the planet.  Paralyzed, the glass slipped through my fingers, bouncing with a thud off the hardwood floor.  Praying she didn’t notice my clumsiness I unclenched my eyelids to see her smile.

     I’d seen that smile before, in Boston, at a nightclub.  From the balcony I watched her and her friends with every intention of approaching to offer a drink or to dance.  Those with her were attention seekers, putting on airs, while she seemed to dance for the sake of it, for herself.  When a high roller invaded their circle, the way she handled his intrusion, with tact and a shoulder, made me smile.  And when another approached to offer them drinks and a table in the VIP section, with a sweeping hand she took charge: “No – thank you, but we’re having too much fun dancing!”

     She seemed to possess a confidence so unique I couldn’t pinpoint its origin; extreme beauty, magnetic personality and an air of independence seemingly impossible to tame.  Watching her I felt more alive than I could recall… and intimidated.   Four feet is as close as I could get before sweat slicked my palms and I felt like I swallowed a golf ball.   Talking to strangers is what I did for a living but this felt like waiting in line for a firing squad.  Finding her working here tonight provided the miracle of a second chance.

     Dropping the shot wasn’t the source of my embarrassed, and neither was unexpectedly seeing her, it was because I came in second in the contest.   Not to make excuses but I was unaware of the event prior to venturing out so I went in cold: no fluid restriction, carbohydrate loading or pumping up.   In case you haven’t picked up on it, back then I didn’t conceal my narcissism.  When you’re successful everyone pretends to love you regardless.   She was the first to cripple my confidence this way but I vowed to get beyond this fear.

     The contest presented an additional dilemma; I might see half the intoxicated revelers in attendance the following morning in court.  When you hold a position of authority people tend to take you less seriously after seeing you half naked.  Placing this concern aside and throwing caution off the stage with my Diesel tee shirt I entered in a desperate attempt to capture her attention.  Whether or not I succeeded remained a mystery until much later. 

     The cops I’d come with knew the owner who allowed us to stay past closing.  By this time my confidence had risen in line with my blood alcohol level.  Introducing myself as she exited the ladies room, I’d already learned her name was Michelle from another waitress.  “Didn’t I see you at the Roxy a few weeks ago,” was my smooth icebreaker. “  She gave me a peculiar look and acknowledged she might have been there.  Then against every rule of non-pursuit I’d relied on to that point in my life I told her how beautiful she was, gave her my card from the DA’s office, and told her:  “I really hope you will call and let me take you out sometime… somewhere nice.”

     An hour and a half later I was home clumsily executing a search warrant on the refrigerator when a call came in.  “Hello?”  “If you really saw me at the Roxy two weeks ago what was I wearing?”  “…  You had on a black dress, short just above the knees - sleeveless with platinum sparkles… black pumps, high enough to accentuate your calves but not outrageous so you could dance.  Your hair was up… and your hoop earrings matched the sparkles on your dress… your watch, bracelet and clutch bag…” The pauses were all bullshit, for effect.  The image had played so many times in my head I recognized it like my refection.

     “R-r-r-ring… r-r-ring…” the sound interrupted Ed’s monolog and tossed a wet blanket on my daydream.  “R-r-r-ring… r-r-ring…”  “Aren’t you gonna get that?”  I asked,  “It might be her.” In another room the answering machine clicked on before Ed could reach it.  His lack of interest caused curious looks between the investigators and myself.  Quietly listening we could hear the caller was one of his relatives with nothing new to report.   Free from Ed’s watchful eye I rose for a look around.   The sink was full of breakfast dishes on top of others crusted with last night’s dinner; open counter space was limited by a cereal boxes, crumpled homework, crayons, artwork and then like a swollen thumb piles of smaller papers sat neatly stacked against the wall.   Hearing Ed’s muffled voice two rooms away inflated my balls enough to start shuffling through what were dozens of scratch, keno and lottery tickets.  Seeing they’d been purchased yesterday, last night and that morning produced an involuntary shiver that left me as fast as it came, taking with it any chance I would meet Mrs. Donahue.

      The prospect of this becoming a murder investigation was tremendous.  There was no honor higher in my office than being assigned a homicide.  But frankly it was something I didn’t deserve and would have never been considered for if anyone in had a glimpse into my private life, and I’m speaking now of the legal aspects.

     Lately I’d placed lunch with Michelle over anything to do with work.  On this day it wasn’t quite noon when I walked into the Shamrock.  The lunch crowd had yet to emerge from the surrounding office and municipal buildings.  At first the place looked empty, then I saw a little kid.  She had pulled out all the chairs and was playing underneath a table.  Michelle must be in the kitchen and the child’s parent is in the bathroom was as far as I’d thought when a rubber ball landed at my feet causing me to react, snatching it out of the air.  Slightly less than half the size of a baseball, one of the mysteries of my childhood remains how I could have lost a ball just likes it down Nana’s cellar.  Looking up into her breathless anticipation, it took some nerve to through it to a strange guy in a suit; my return throw unleashed joyous laughter and took sound coordination for her not to miss.  “Wanna play?” she asked without moving from her hiding spot.  “Well I thought I already was.”

     I was terrible at placing kids ages but if I had to guess I’d say she was about two; gorgeous, with blond pigtails and blue eyes that sparkled.

     Down on one knee I felt I could better gauge both velocity and trajectory, yet after a dozen or so tosses one took an awkward bounce off an uneven board sending her giggling back toward the kitchen.  I took this opportunity to stand and stretch and that’s when the train struck me.   Pushing through the swigging doors, it swept the kid off her feet and continued on in my direction. “ But Momma we’re playing!” 

      Recognizing the angles before they were revealed was my area of expertise.   Anticipating the unexpected, in or outside the courtroom, is how I made a living.  If I misses something important it could cost me a case, or in some situations much more.  This one got right passed.  The kid was so beautiful how did I miss it? 

     In those seconds I wondered how long Michelle had watched us from the kitchen and at the same time understood the source of her confidence and strength.  When She introduced Kyera as her daughter Michelle brimmed with pride but I could sense hyper-extended nerves.  The meaning of the introduction knocked the wind from me.  Blood and embarrassment filled my cheeks.  Have you lost your mind!  This is a little too big an issue to keep from me don’t you think?  You were that confident in our relationship… at this point, to spring it on me here today, likes this?   How did you know I wouldn’t take off out those doors? -  She didn’t, that was the point.   Accomplishing this feat required extraordinary effort, a number of accomplices and what I recognized above all else, decisive purpose.  Michelle had pulled it off masterfully.

     “Hi Kyera, I’m Jimmy.”  She looked back with a coy expression as though she knew exactly who I was.   Michelle put Kyera down and rose to meet me with a kiss.  I pulled her close and felt a racing heart slow beneath melting anxiety.   She released to check my expression and it must have provided assurance she’d done the right thing all these weeks.  Her lips curled to a smile and for the first time I saw dampness swell in her eyes.  I glanced down at Kyera who was staring straight up at us.  The shimmer in her eyes and the breadth of her smile had doubled.  In that instant my mind expanded and it all came together.  Going forward the three of us would be together and I couldn’t comprehend of anything changing this.

     By now Elaine had been missing for weeks without a sign.   I continued to plod along with investigators trying to turn up leads while Ed led marches, candlelight vigils and held news conferences pleading for his wife to come home.  Then one morning I dropped by the house with a Town Detective to pick up some life insurance information from Ed and saw something that changed everything.   He was seeing his three young children off to school when we pulled up.   They had stopped in the front walkway to hold hands in a circle and pray.  We watched for a moment then exited the car as Ed finished the prayer:  “and please God, keep Mommy safe and send her home to us unharmed very soon.”  To manage my sanity I tried to never let anything I saw or experienced on the job get to me, but the maliciousness underlying this scene clung to me.

     Without one solid piece of anything to implicate Donahue we refused to confirm to the media he wasn’t a suspect.  This angered him because it cast a shadow over all his efforts to appear as the grieving, abandoned spouse.  Finally the suggestion was made that if we were allowed to conduct a thorough search of his home using forensics and State Police Search Dogs we would go on record with our findings, and if there was nothing incriminating, he would be officially ruled out.  “But you searched the house the first day you were there,” was Ed’s initial objection.  “That wasn’t a search, we just walked through,” he was told.  “Nothing was touched, there was no one present from Crime Scene Services and certainly no dogs.”  “Well the kids are allergic to dogs,” came objection number two.  But Ed’s burning desire to be able to carry on in front of the cameras, out from under the cloud of suspicion, led him to reconsider and on a Tuesday he told us we could search the premises that Friday after the kids had left for school.

     From that moment Ed and his home were placed under surveillance, a task that turned out to be difficult to accomplish without being detected during the day.   Under the cover of darkness however, members of the State Police were able to take up positions in the woods behind the Donahue home without being noticed.  And the night before our scheduled search Ed did not disappoint.  Through the rear windows he was observed busily moving from one room to another, then carrying objects between the first and second floors and the basement.   Just passed midnight the door up to the backyard from the cellar opened and out he came with a large mattress.  Across the yard, over the three-foot stonewall and into the woods Ed labored; half carrying, half dragging until startled by the sharp glare of  State Police Maglites.  “Halt!  Lets see your hands!”  In complete shocked Ed dropped the bedding right where he stood.  Moving closer to examine troopers could clearly see it was heavily stained in a dark red substance later confirmed to be coagulated blood.

     After being paged with the news I raced through the night to the Donahue residence thinking the same thing as every investigator; things would coast down hill from here: draft a search warrant, get it signed by a judge, find Elaine, lock up Mr. Donahue.  As it turned out we could not have been more mistaken.

     By the following afternoon Ed was still walking around a free man.  He and his children had gone to stay with relatives while every branch of the Local and State Police had gone to work on his house.  Once the cops have their hands on a warrant forget about the place being searched ever looking the same.  When I arrived floors were being ripped up and walls torn down.  Front, rear and side doors remained propped open to accommodate the endless parade of crime scene personnel.  The dogs had searched the interior and were now working outside.  By late afternoon news helicopters flew overhead broadcasting pictures of the scene that answered the question on everyone’s mind; if investigators were digging up the back yard, no one had found Elaine Donahue.

   Those close to the investigation had more insight.   At one point the crime scene analysts called me upstairs.  We’d been given a tour of the second floor the first afternoon we visited Ed and noticed nothing unusual.    Using a chemical procedure, members of the forensics unit now revealed latent blood splatters all over the ceiling and wall of the master bedroom.   Nevertheless, blood splatters and a missing wife didn’t make a strong case for murder.  The question was did it make one at all?  “Looks like we may have a ‘Webster’ situation on our hands.”   These were the first words I recall the District Attorney personally directing towards me besides cursory pleasantries while passing in a hallway.   “I suggest you get to some research so we can evaluate our options and varying strength of grand jury indictments.”  It was he and I and his deputy first assistant standing in the street outside the Donahue house and I remember asking myself what in the world he just said.  “ Sure, yes, of course sir, I’ll get right on it and report back to you with my findings.”

    Commonwealth v. John Webster, was an 1850 Massachusetts murder case in which investigators never found the body, just some body parts.  So far all we had was blood, and the prospect of finding more was beginning to look bleak.   I was driving to the law library and gotten all the way to the parking garage when my cell phone rang:  “Come on back – you won’t believe this,” the detective on the other end was so out of breath I could barely understand him.  “Tucked in a small pocket of Ed’s brief case we found three receipts for consecutive purchases made earlier this week: a department store for a padlock, a home goods store for a fifty gallon rubber container and one for a rental unit at E-Z Mini Storage yards from the office where he’s been working.”

     It took a few hours to draft an addendum to the search warrant, assemble everyone and get up to the storage facility.  When they severed the lock with bolt cutters and rolled up the garage door it was dark.  Not just outside where we looked into the unit using flashlights, but being in the presence of an act that was purely evil darkens your spirit.  The rancid stench; the sight of another person who I’d seen in pictures as beautiful and vibrant wrapped and stuffed as though melting into a rubber box.... the children.  True horror, you swear it won’t but just  being exposed to it changes something already hidden in you.
    Arresting Ed was the next priority.  Angered, terrified, but mostly confused by what I’d seen of all the things that’d changed in me maturity wasn’t one of them.  Making sure I was front and center when the State Troopers knocked on his brother’s front door, Ed appeared and they asked him to step out side.  Quietly he complied and was met by Miranda and handcuffs.  Conversely, I couldn’t resist: “That was the last step you will ever take as a free man,” I told him summonsing my most formidable tone.  But for the first time since I’d met him Ed remained silent, appearing unmoved by my words.  Frozen on the steps I looked on as they stuffed him in the rear of the cruiser and drove away.   Above everything else I remember standing there not feeling the least bit better.

"What is this I'm reading," you ask?   While I was in prison I spent a great deal of time writing.  In fact seven months of my bid was spent in solitary confinement where I did little else.  Ask anyone I was with in general population and they will tell you 90% of the time I was writing there as well.   I wrote about my past and present life, stories of others I met and the things going on around me.  When I arrived  home, and was editing in my spare time, I began posting portions of the manuscript on the advise of  my literary agent.   If you like what your reading let me know and I'll keep posting.  If you have questions about anything you read ask and I will answer.  If you like it tell others to spread the word.  The future looks bright and when I am published I will not forget those followers who were with me at he beginning.  Thanks for your support.   

100% Proof

Hellyestheyservebeerinprison began as a tongue-and-cheek name, a humorous way to trump the pathetic Tucker Max in the search engine wars.  However, recently with your help, I've come to see it as something more: true.  A follower of this blog and old friend from Lowell recently sent me this article from an Irish news paper:

The Irish have always had their partying down to a science but it says something special about a nationality when drinking and gambling are considered such inalienable rights that they provide social clubs in prison.  If this Department of Justice probe falls through, and they throw in brothels, count me in on the next Air Ireland flight to Dublin.

One way!  Until then I'll just kick back and read BEERINPRISON below.

(Disclaimer: to all supervising federal and state probation offices the above is for entertainment purposes, I would never, under any circumstances consider going to a brothel with out prior written approval)