Looking for redemption

To the editor:
In 2008 a jury convicted me of armed robbery in your city. I was the guy who claimed he knew nothing and was parked down the street. I was sentenced to a 12-year (do six) sentence. Right now, I have 3 ½ years in.
In the upcoming weeks I’ll be filing a motion with the courts. I’m not asking to be set free. I’m pleading to be put to some kind of use by being placed in the county jail or some type of halfway house facility to where I can get a job and give back to your community by volunteering myself for community service or whatever I am found to be of good use.
During my stay in your jail from September 2007 to April 2008 I had to go to the hospital. I was looking like someone you see in a fugitive movie with handcuffs, shackles and an armed police escort sitting next to me in the waiting room. Never in my life have I ever felt so embarrassed and uncomfortable at the same time.
Everyone treated me like a human being and talked to me, regardless of what I looked like or was wearing. I specifically remember a mother and son. He played basketball with the officer’s son at school. They were very nice and never looked down on me (if you are reading this, thank you). They were good people and made me feel like a human being in the aftermath of what I have done.
Because of them I want to leave Indiana on good terms. I’m looking for the chance to show your community that I’m a good person, too. I just fouled up and don’t want to be remembered for my misdoings.
Shane Slagel
Plainfield Correctional Facility

No convention
To the editor:
Some things just aren’t worthy of your trust. A constitutional convention is like an iceberg. A berth on the Titanic would be far less tragic than to give birth to a United States Constitutional Convention.
It will be very difficult to sell a re-write of the constitution to the American people, who have a deep-seated reverence for the constitution, which is difficult to amend the constitutional way. The normal amendment process, used for all 26 existing amendments, requires passage by two-thirds of each House of Congress and ratification by 38 state legislatures.
The other amendment procedure prescribed in Article V has never before been used successfully. The process requires 34 states calling for a Constitutional Convention. In 1987, 32 states had passed resolutions calling for a Constitutional Convention to consider a balanced budget amendment.
If two more states had done likewise, Article V would have required Congress to call such a Constitutional Convention.
At that point, the United States Constitution would be up for grabs and open to any and all changes. We can assume that there are those ready and waiting with the packages, containing their goals of restructuring the American government under Article V of the constitution.
If the governors and state legislators involved were sincere in reinstating states’ rights under the constitution, they would merely involve the current 10th Amendment (Right of States or Citizens). “The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states respectively.”
The states should refuse to obey mandates issued by the federal government that are out of bounds with the 10th Amendment. The problem is when the states take federal monies, they take federal control.
We need to keep abreast of this calling for a Constitutional Convention. The legislators must get involved to make sure that the states and people’s freedoms are fully protected by keeping the constitution’s doors locked.
Thank you very much. As I see it.
Paul F. Double
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