Friend,

When Marsha Mason visited her father at Alabama's Limestone
Correctional Facility in 2014, he had a seeping open wound on his
leg. 

At the time, Marsha was a newly licensed registered nurse. She wrote
up what she saw - "severe swelling," an
"inflamed, deep crack in his skin" with a "brownish
discharge" - in a letter to the warden. She wrote that
doctors prescribed for her father, Melvin Mason, only lotion and a
compression sock.

Worrying about her father's health was nothing new for Marsha.
He had been in prison for more than eight years already for attempted
murder. The wound was another ailment among many he had to treat or
manage in prison. The elder Mason also had sleep apnea, arthritis
pain, heart problems, and even two old bullets fired into his leg
decades ago and lodged there ever since. He needs a wheelchair to get
around.

Marsha often found there was little she could do to help him from her
home more than an hour away, near Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Once, Melvin
returned an expensive and finely tuned breathing machine that she had
bought for him to help manage his sleep apnea. It required purified
water and electrical outlets, which were scarce in prison. The prison
gave Melvin a different model, but it had problems, too.

"All this one does is pump air. It doesn't moisturize or
nothing," he told the Southern Poverty Law Center. "And
you got to do the best you can do with it. It's just awful how
they do you. I believe they want you to die."

In 2020, when Marsha began to see COVID-19 patients arrive at the
hospital where she works, she knew the coronavirus posed a huge risk
to her father. The virus began to infect incarcerated Alabamians in
April. Some died of COVID-19, often older men like Melvin, who is 76.

The situation faced by this father and daughter is one example of
Alabama's broken parole system, which denies release to people
despite advancing age and deteriorating health - even amid a
pandemic.

Confinement and coronavirus

Avoiding the virus in a packed prison dormitory would be difficult.
But the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles gave the Masons some
hope when it set a Sept. 10, 2020, parole hearing for Melvin, who
would be one of the oldest people to have a parole hearing that year.

On parole, Melvin planned to live with Marsha. As an experienced
nurse, she could care for her father. Marsha wrote a letter to the
parole board on his behalf on Sept. 2.

"While visiting with my father over the past 16 years, we had
several discussions [about] the crime committed," she wrote.
"He acknowledges, and more importantly is remorseful, for the
crime committed."

Prepared as the Masons were, when the day came, the board denied
Melvin parole.

Then things got frightening.
 
Read more here.

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In solidarity,
 
The Southern Poverty Law Center

 

 


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