Shannon Nyamodi wrote to his attorney, Maitri (Mike) Klinkosum, and fired him. He filed the letter with the court. He and his mother felt that their nightmare of apparent collusion between Klinkosum, the sheriff and the prosecutor was over. They believed that without Klinkosum acting as Nyamodi's attorney, they could finally get a new lawyer who would really work on Shannon's defense. But this was not to be. Shannon's exoneration through trial was never the plan.
After a month in the new facility, Shannon was suddenly moved back to Franklin County Jail without warning. He found himself right back in the solitary confinement cell and at the mercy of Sheriff Jerry Jones. Shannon knew about police arresting and brutalizing his mother. He knew all of the hard work Elizabeth Crudup had done to win his RIGHT to a fair trail. He also knew it had done no good. The young man was back in solitary in a cell where he had already spent two years in torture, denied a trial. Being SHOCKED by his removal back to the hole was the last straw.
Klinkosum ignored Shannon's letter of termination that had been filed with the court. He again went to Shannon's solitary jail cell at Franklin County Jail and again offered Shannon the opportunity to sign a plea deal. We may never know what was said to Shannon that night. We don't know if Shannon was threatened or if his family was threatened. Klinkosum had reportedly previously threatened Shannon, saying that if Shannon fired him, then he would work with the prosecutor and have Shannon sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. Shannon was basically a child with no knowledge of the legal process. His mother is a foreign-born woman without much knowledge of America's justice system. Other attorneys, although aware of what they endured, said they could not help until Klinkosum was off the case, and Klinkosum would not accept firing.
This time, whatever Klinkosum said to the tortured young man worked. Shannon Nyamodi apparently signed the plea bargain and was sentenced to 10 years for a crime he did not do. It took two years of torture in isolation, deprivation of phone, mail, and visiting privileges, and many sessions with his attorney, who worked against his interests. But the smartest thing North Carolina did was to remove Shannon from solitary torture for a month's period and let him see that "prison doesn't have to be all bad" like he had endured in solitary. Whoever thought of that, congratulations. You have saved the white youths who witnesses say they saw running from the robbery victim's home, and you now have another innocent black man imprisoned who North Carolina taxpayers will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to incarcerate.
All it took to induce Shannon's plea bargain was denying Shannon Nyamodi's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy, fair, public trial by jury with competent legal counsel representing him while he was tortured in solitary confinement for two years. Shannon never got the opportunity to prove that he had not schemed with a white woman's daughter to shoot and rob her. He never got the chance to present evidence that he had never even corresponded with the woman's daughter or a white boy who claimed falsely that Shannon talked to him on Facebook about buying a gun. No jury would ever see the statement by a North Carolina investigator who examined Facebook records and found that there was no such correspondence and never had been. Shannon was not allowed to present witnesses who said they saw a white man running from the scene of the robbery. Shannon never got to finish his electrical training program or join the military, as he planned. The young black man is just another wrongfully convicted person in a country that has from 5,000 to 10,000 wrongful convictions a year that routinely denies defendants their constitutional rights to enslave them. Congratulations, officers of the court and justice officials. Your great grandfathers would be proud of you.
Paragraph 1 repeated: AFTER TWO YEARS IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT TORTURE WITH TRIAL DENIED, SHANNON NYAMODI PLEA BARGAINED. Officials moved Shannon Nyamodi from his solitary prison cell torture for a period of one month. He was moved by the NC DOC to another prison, where he was allowed to visit with his family, meet and talk with other inmates, make phone calls, and receive and send mail. Compared to what Shannon had endured for two years, from age 18 to 20, being an inmate in the general population at a prison where he had contact with other human beings and his family was a huge improvement. However, this too as a part of his torture meant to force the innocent young man into making a false confession.
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