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Tekashi 6ix9ine Is Afraid of Dying from Coronavirus in Prison, and He's Not Alone.

Healthcare professionals say that nonviolent and at-risk prisoners must released from facilities ASAP.

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UPDATE: Tekashi 6ix9ine was released from prison this week. He will serve the rest of his sentence on house arrest.

The rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, was incarcerated in December 2019 for involvement in a violent street gang. His lawyer, Lance Lazzarro, has called for his immediate release due to the fact that Hernandez suffers from asthma, a vulnerability that puts him at risk from coronavirus. Hernandez was also hospitalized last year for bronchitis and sinusitis, and he has been suffering from shortness of breath, one of the main symptoms of COVID-19.

"Mr. Hernandez has been complaining to prison officials this week of shortness of breath, but apparently the warden of his facility will not allow Mr. Hernandez to go to the hospital despite the recommendation of the facility's medical director that Mr. Hernandez be treated by a doctor at a hospital," Lazzaro said.

In Britain, Julian Assange's lawyers are also requesting the WikiLeaks founder's release on the basis of health risks. He will make an application for bail on Wednesday.

Tekashi 6ix9ine Isn't the Only Immunocompromised Prisoner—Most Just Don't Have Lawyers

Tekashi 6ix9ine and Julian Assange are a few of the many current prison inmates facing profound risks from coronavirus. Even if you dislike them personally, their desperate pleas should raise the alarm about the state of prisons on the whole in light of our global pandemic.

As the rest of the world self-isolates and as New York City shuts down, inmates remain in close quarters, making prisoners extremely vulnerable to exposure—and most of them don't have access to a lawyer and press coverage.

Prisons and coronavirus is a particularly dangerous combination, one that could lead to disaster. "Jails and prisons are often dirty and have really very little in the way of infection control," said Homer Venters, former chief medical officer at Rikers' Island. "There are lots of people using a small number of bathrooms. Many of the sinks are broken or not in use. You may have access to water, but nothing to wipe your hands off with, or no access to soap."

Inside prisons, it may be nearly impossible to successfully separate sick patients from well patients. Outbreaks are inevitable, and healthcare in prisons is often lacking to begin with.

Because of this, most public health officials are arguing that the best solution to the problem is mass release. According to the Marshall Project, Mark Stern, the former Assistant Secretary for the Washington State Department of Corrections, has suggested "downsizing" prison populations in order to ensure inmate and staff health and safety. Downsizing might involve releasing low-risk prisoners and proposing alternatives to arrest for certain crimes.

David Falthi, director of the ACLU's National Prison Project, puts it more succinctly. "The only effective response is to reduce the population density by releasing people," Fathi says, "starting with those who are most at risk of severe injury or death if they were to contract the virus." In particular, people who suffer from preexisting health conditions, like Tekashi 6ix9ine, and other vulnerable populations like older people, ought to be sent back to their families where they can isolate and be taken care of.

"Across the U.S. we have built a system of punishment that is traumatic, and this is only increased with the coronavirus," said Becca Fealk, an organizer with the American Friends Service Committee of Arizona. "ADC must do more than just provide soap to reduce the chance of an outbreak. They need to release people, including older/aging adults who can be cared for by their loved ones."

Many prison administrations have insisted that they're complying with the CDC's guidelines with regards to their incarcerated populations, but if prisons aren't providing inmates with basic human rights and living supplies—and if even Tekashi 6ix9ine can't get to a doctor—how can we expect them to take care of people during an outbreak?

Prisons Begin Releasing Inmates—But Is It Enough?

Faced with a public health crisis that could lead to mass deaths, prisons all around the nation and the world are taking note. Alameda County plans to release 250 inmates, per NPR, and Los Angeles jails have also begun releasing nonviolent inmates. In New Jersey, up to 1,000 inmates will be released this Thursday, including those serving for parole violations and those serving municipal court convictions. In some places, prisons and law enforcement are coming together to reduce their inmate population. France has delayed or suspended short-term sentences, reducing daily prison admissions from 200 to 30.

These actions garnered support from Senator Kamala Harris, who tweeted that the Bureau of Prisons should release "all low-risk inmates, including those who are in pretrial detention because they can't afford to make bail."

Some jails are also beginning to waive copays in an effort to make sure their incarcerated populations receive healthcare.

"The state's decision to temporarily suspend the $4 copay — the equivalent of a week's worth of work at the prisoner minimum wage of 10 cents an hour — for people reporting cold and flu-like symptoms is a step in the right direction," said Prison Law Office attorney Corene Kendrick, "but it exposes how counterproductive it is to have such a barrier to seeking care. Unfortunately, prior to the COVID-19 crisis," she added, "We regularly heard from incarcerated people that there were shortages of hygiene supplies such as toilet paper and menstrual products." Many incarcerated people's families wind up paying for their hygiene and healthcare.

The coronavirus crisis is exposing the flaws in many institutions, and mass incarceration is just one of them. All these revelations beg deeper questions about why inmates weren't given these supplies or opportunities in the first place. Activists have been asking these questions for years, and the tragedy of the American carceral system has come to the fore in the case of migrants enclosed on the U.S.-Mexico border and in ICE facilities across the nation.

In three ICE detention centers in New Jersey, prisoners are currently on hunger strike in protest of poor conditions and coronavirus risks. One detainee told Vice that his fellow inmates are being kept in a small room without access to soap or even cleaning supplies.

"They say they are locking us in so we can be protected," said a current hunger striker named Olisa Uzoegwu. "But they don't do anything different. The cells stink. The toilets don't flush. There's never enough soap. They give out soap once a week. One bar of soap a week. How does that make any sense?"

This week, hundreds of doctors and thousands of activist organizations expressed this concern about these issues, flooding ICE with letters demanding that they release their overcrowded detention centers. The only crime committed by inmates in these facilities is usually non-sanctioned entry to the United States. Despite all this, ICE is still making arrests. Agents were spotted tracking down undocumented immigrants in San Francisco the day of the state's lockdown.

A Global Issue and a Gathering Storm: Colombia, France, Iran, and the US Grapple with Prison Risks

But the coronavirus pandemic is a global issue, and prisons all around the world are facing questions about how to handle incarcerated populations and prison employees. In some cases, inmates are taking things into their own hands. In Colombia, a prison riot left 23 inmates dead. Prisoners were rioting in protest of overcrowding and poor health services that they felt left them at an extreme risk. Riots have also broken out in prisons in Brazil and Italy.

The largest prison coronavirus outbreak in the nation is in New York City, with 38 inmates at the Rikers' Island prison testing positive; 20 have been released, and 200 more will be tested today. In As Mayor Bill DeBlasio considers whether to release 200 more people, 551 people serving "city sentences" for minor offenses and another 666 serving for technical parole or probation violations (like missing a drug test or a parole check-in) are trapped in Rikers alone. These are nonviolent offenders who do not deserve to be exposed to a potentially deadly virus. Still, the New York Police Chief has said that his officers will not cease making arrests, even though 70 officers have tested positive for COVID-19.

All across the nation and the world, jails are releasing inmates. Why they—especially nonviolent offenders—were there in the first place begs a different question. For now, the most important thing is to open the jails and let the people go. Short of mass release, prisons should not be arresting new inmates outside of extreme circumstances; they need to take more precautionary measures, institute comprehensive testing and quarantine, and follow protocols like those called for by the Federal Defenders of New York.

"A storm is coming," wrote Ross MacDonald, the chief physician at Rikers. "We have told you who is at risk. Please let as many out as you possibly can."

How to Help

In the meantime, anyone concerned can make a call to their state representative and inquiring about their current efforts; calling airports and prisons using this script from the New Sanctuary Coalition; participating in actions and protests like those being hosted by the Never Again Action, donating to the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other similar organizations.



New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez

Photo by Debby Wong (Shutterstock)

"What is your definition of being happy?"

In the second episode of Netflix's latest true crime docuseries, Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, Stephen Ziogas, Aaron Hernandez's childhood friend, can't imagine what drove his friend to commit first-degree murder. He says, "I think the biggest misconception is he was someone who had everything and threw it all away. From what we know now, can you ever really define that he was happy?" In June 2013, the New England Patriots tight end had fame, wealth, a devoted fiancee, and his first child on the way. Looking back on what followed, Ziogas adds, "He did everything that, in that storybook setting, would make you happy, but obviously he was still hurting."

The three episodes of Killer Inside create a rare, objective look at Hernandez's life, mostly built from audio recordings of Hernandez's phone calls while in prison, security footage from his own home, testimonies from his criminal trial, and interviews with his close friends and former teammates. While those close to him describe him as playful, teasing, and full of life, they also discuss his childhood traumas from his physically abusive father, his long history of anger issues and violent outbursts, and his struggles with his sexuality.

In June 2013, the body of Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old semi-professional football player, was found in the street with wounds from six gunshots. In what was described as a particularly messy crime, Hernandez murdered Lloyd with motives that are unclear to this day. At the time of his trial in 2015, prosecutors argued that Lloyd was targeted because he'd spoken to people disliked by Hernandez while at a bar in Boston. But friends and photographs paint a friendly relationship between Lloyd and Hernandez, who were respectively dating sisters Shayanna and Shaneah Jenkins. The men bonded over their love of video games and smoking (Lloyd's nickname was the "blunt master").

Why did the beloved New England Patriot murder Lloyd, who was set to become his brother-in-law? The docuseries doesn't offer a clear answer, because those answers ultimately died with Hernandez when he hanged himself in his jail cell in 2017. Hernandez killed himself with his prison bed sheet on the same day his former NFL team visited the White House to celebrate their fifth Super Bowl win.

The series taps into the power of personal testimony mixed with compelling video and audio evidence to unfold a mind-boggling backstory, including a second criminal charge Hernandez faced on top of first-degree murder. He was charged and tried for fatally shooting two men in a car outside of a nightclub in 2012; his lawyer, Jose Baez (noted for defending Casey Anthony), successfully cast doubt on his involvement, resulting in a not guilty verdict. In fact, Hernandez was described as having high spirits prior to his death, with the double-murder charges dropped and an appeal of his life sentence with no parole in the works.

In the larger picture, however, Hernandez was clearly at odds with his own identity, with jarring contradictions causing rifts in both his personal and professional lives. He complained that the Patriots organization "try to ruin all your fun because that want you to only be business [sic]," even asking to be traded in 2013 and struggling to bond with his teammates, who viewed him as impulsive and "immature." He idolized his abusive father, Dennis Hernandez, as "a good man" who was "also really wild," but he resented his mother, whom he felt abandoned him after his father's death. He makes a belligerent call from prison, yelling, "I was the happiest little kid in the world, and you f***ed me up. I had nobody. What'd you think I was going to do? Become a perfect angel?" He grew up attending a safe, "typical American high school" but fostered a bad boy image, keeping company with violent criminals while professing his love for the Harry Potter series to his fiancee and close friends.

And then two issues are weakly covered–disappointingly so–in the third episode of Killer Inside: Hernandez's sexual history, which involved allegations of childhood molestation and represssed homosexuality, and its connection to his perpetual anger; and Hernandez's confirmed brain damage incurred from playing in the NFL. The series' tepid handling of the issues create an abrupt ending, with more emphasis on humanizing Hernandez, a convicted murderer of at least one man, while giving incomplete consideration of how trauma impacted Hernandez's psychology.

Rumors about Hernandez's sexuality persisted both during and after his life, with one inmate coming forward after Hernandez's death to allege that they were lovers in prison (he is not interviewed in the series). One childhood friend recounts discovering his own bisexuality when he and Hernandez would sexually experiment in high school. He affirms, "He [Aaron] wasn't ashamed of who he was. Aaron was proud of his sexuality. It was just, he couldn't say anything—at the time, there was no one in the NFL that had ever broke this news."

However, throughout the docuseries, Dennis Hernandez's severe homophobia is starkly outlined next to his son's admiration of him, underlining the recurring theme of troubled and toxic masculinity in Hernanez's violent outbursts. Additionally, one of Hernandez's lawyers, George Leontire, says that Hernandez confided in him about being molested by a male babysitter as a child (his older brother, DJ Hernandez, has publicly corroborated the story of abuse). Leontire says that he, as a gay man, felt bad for his client: "Aaron asked me if I felt or believed that someone was born gay...Aaron had a belief that his abuse as a child impacted his sexuality. That was one of the things that he held onto as to why he, in his mind, has this aberrant behavior." And then, most egregiously, in 2017 one reporter named Michele McPhee published an unconfirmed story that Odin Lloyd was targeted because he'd caught Hernandez with a man. She was interviewed on a popular Boston sports radio show, where the hosts openly mocked Hernandez about being the Patriots' "tight end." Two days later, Hernandez hanged himself.

Aaron hernandezNetflix

In the last minutes of the Killer Mind, we learn that Hernandez's family donated his brain to science with shocking results. In 2017, the same year of Hernandez's death, former NFL player Fred McNeill became the first living patient to be accurately diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), a form of severe brain damage resulting from repeated head traumas. As the disease develops in four worsening stages, symptoms range from memory loss, confusion, depression, and dementia to violent mood swings and suicidal ideation. Shortly after Dr. Bennet Omalu first discovered the disease in professional football players, a study examined the brains of 111 deceased players; 110 were confirmed to have CTE. Examination of Aaron Hernandez's brain showed "the most severe case they had ever seen in someone of Aaron's age," with degeneration well into stage three, comparable to a player well into his 60s.

Hernandez's turmoil over his sexuality is not framed as an excuse for his actions, but overall, the series' tepid handling of the issue creates an abrupt end to the matter, with incomplete consideration of how this impacted Hernandez's psychology. In all likelihood, the combination of childhood trauma, internalized shame, and brain damage created the double loss of life surrounding the Aaron Hernandez case. Odin Lloyd's family has forgiven Hernandez, but the senselessness behind the crime makes its unsettling loss feel frozen in time. In a suicide letter addressed to his lawyer, Baez, Hernandez wrote, "Wrong or right — who knows — I just follow my natural instincts and how it guides me."

MUSIC

Famous Criminals Who Were More Loyal Than Tekashi 6ix9ine

While 6ix9ine sings like a canary on the witness stand, let's take a look at some of the most "loyal" criminals of all time.

Tekashi 6ix9ine at Trillerfest Miami at Miami Marine Stadium

Photo by Walik Goshorn - MediaPunch- Shutterstock

As Tekashi Snitch-Nine wraps up his first day of testimony against former gang members of Nine Trey Bloods, it's important to remember that other major criminals in history have done the same thing but should still be considered more loyal than Tekashi.

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