Hey James I hope all is well. I just sent you an email that you might want to read.
I write from yet another house-arrest, but I would like to talk to you about the “situation with the DA’s office in Wilmington”.
This time ten years ago I was in the middle of my “special internship” in the offices of District Attorney Ben David. On Tuesday, Mr. David resigned after ~20 years in office, during which only once was he challenged in an election (the first time, that is, in 2004).
By the end of the day Tuesday, the governor had appointed Rebecca Zimmer Donaldson, age 34 (I think), as his replacement, and she is the Democratic “nominee” in the “election” which is to be held on 5 November. She is currently an ADA and has been in the office for 9 years, prior to which she was a prosecutor in Brooklyn, NY. The Republican candidate is also an ADA, Jason Smith, and he has been in the office for 14 years, which means I know him from my “internship”. It all sounds so wholesome and respectable: our system is functioning properly, they say. Everything is normal and going according to plans and expectations.
Only problem is that on Tuesday morning, a woman at the New Hanover County Board of Elections told me “there was no filing period” for this “election”, and while I have since realized that the filing for District Attorney elections takes place at the SBE in Raleigh (where they don’t really answer the phone, and the Josh Stein supporters are thick on the ground), it remains the case that the statute (NCGS 163-10) does NOT say anything about the “party committees” which picked the candidates.
Amazingly, there are many other questions in play that might be more important than the “District Attorney succession crisis”, but then again, it might all hinge on whether one, or both, of these “candidates” is willing to consider “discretion”. We shall see. As I say, it would be nice to hear from you soon. Say what you will about me, but it does seem that my supposedly “psychotic” “course of conduct” has thrown light on fundamental questions of North Carolina law. Is it fair to say that was my “purpose”, indeed my “legitimate purpose”? I suppose that is known only to God, or Satan, whichever one is behind me.
Let’s see if we can treat a few more matters before I go out on the dock to play guitar with a lamp.
First, I have to repeat myself actually, as I have already addressed the next subject in a letter from jail in New Hanover, which I THOUGHT I had sent to “PO Drawer 1529” in Hillsborough. Silly me, I suppose there’s been some change in “policies”, or perhaps I am just under some new “status” which hasn’t been related to me. What I’m saying James is that “they stole my legal mail”, marked “LEGAL MAIL”, and addressed to “Samuel Coleman / James Rainsford”.
That is indeed disturbing, and of course it wasn’t just that “legal mail” that was interdicted, but yet another terrifying bundle of stolen letters, which was returned to me upon my “release” from custody on approximately 29 July.
What happened that day? Well, the nurse at the jail went to the magistrate as soon as she heard my bond had been posted, and took out 122C IVC papers, on the orders of the “tele-psychiatrist” Dr. Spells, who is an evil bitch; Stacy the nurse, however, was a quiet hero, since of course I know how to bounce back from a hospital commitment, and it was almost a relief after 4 months in the belly of the State. (New Hanover County’s jail is orders of magnitude more disturbing and oppressive than Orange. From county to county, the “law” rests in the hands of the guardians; the biggest problem in North Carolina is what disappears in the shadow cast by the courthouse over the jail (and vice versa).
But here is the good news: my “probation sentence” from Orange County, pursuant to this “plea arrangement” which you and Sam devised last December, was terminated in light of “time served prior to the entry of the plea”. While I was not present in the courtroom, Mr. Gooslby was in there on 26 June with a “brief” with the same argument as my “motion to terminate probation” filed in Orange County on 11 January 2024.
The motion which, had it been heard in Orange, and argued by me pro se, would likely have been denied, because Ms. Gauger would have been there. I am going to want to hear from Ms. Gauger on this point, however, because I said it was “time served” and “basic principles of due process and double jeopardy”, and I raised the question with Sam on the day of the plea deal. He didn’t sound quite sure of himself, though, when he told me that the “forfeiture” or “deletion” of my ‘jail credit” was what induced Kelley Gauger to concede the point of “misdemeanor plea” as opposed to a felony.
(But ah, didn’t she herself want the deal done and over with, as in “whatever, just get this tar-baby out of my office”? Yes, that would seem to be the case. I also understood that.)
Here is the beautiful part. On 26 June, as I sat in the holding cell with a bunch of black men from Wilmington, demonstrating my command of constitutional law etc, on the other side of the world Julian Assange was in the federal courthouse of the Northern Mariana Islands, also being “set free for time served on a charge of publishing an unlawful website”.
So that is good news indeed, that I am no longer on probation or under any sentence of any court. I am currently facing two counts of “felony stalking” as well as one count of “delivery of a schedule II controlled substance”, one count of “resisting arrest”, and two counts of “assault on a government official”.
What happened? As to the stalking charges, you are well aware that there is a “victim-witness conspiracy”, and that there seems to be some kind of “witch hunt” going on, with the “domestic violence” and “stalking” laws filling in for the “witch-craft statute” (enacted under the demonologist king, James I) which was used in Essex County, MA in the days of Massachusetts Bay colony. You know something about that don’t you? Turns out I do too, but wait for that.)
So how did I get charged with assault on a government official? What the hell, right? Well, the two civil process officers lied about having an arrest warrant, then jumped on me when I got a little closer, beat me, tazed me in the chest, I lost consciousness, thought I was going to die, and if I laid even a finger on either of these two white supremacist goons, it wouldn’t have been an assault: no so much “self-defense” as “automatism”, not so much “automatism” as “the officers made it up”. In any event, it will have to be “my word against theirs” or whatever, because they were NOT wearing body cameras!
Last thing. I found out that my ancestor John Gage of Ipswich was among the founders of Massachusetts. He sailed into Salem Harbor on 12 June 1630, and so his descendants, numbering several, also by the name of Gage, were in Essex County, MA in 1692 at the time of the “witchcraft delusion” and the infamous trials. I have studied the witch trials quite carefully, but not until a few days ago did I discover that several of my ancestors (or “dead relatives”) participated in the witch trials, and so the mark of “Salem Witchcraft” will therefore be upon me, and my descendants I suppose, until judgment day.
I learned this information from “Records of the Salem Witch Hunt”, where you can see the deposition of witnesses Thomas Gage, Sarah Gage, and Mary Gage, and also the mention of Josiah Gage serving as a juror in a witch trial. I do not believe in the paranormal, only in Spinoza’s deity and the Tao that Can’t Be Named, but there is no explanation of my predicament which does not refer to this history. That is surely the correct interpretation of my “delusions”.
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“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
—Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
“a coven of bracelets / a jury of necklaces”
—Dawson Gage, “In Mary’s Bedroom”, Christmas 2013
I wrote this poem in my cousin Mary’s bedroom, where I stayed when we went to Pittsford, NY the first Christmas after my brother died. Cousin Mary would go on to marry Matthew Schreiber, who is a lawyer, and who until a few weeks ago worked as a prosecutor in Essex County, MA. Thus with my poems do I channel the currents of history, such as they encompass me, and push them into time, thus impacting the future, and making the present somewhat more tolerable. Which is to say that my “delusions” are the source of my strength, and that is quite a revelation, one that gives me solace in the midst of tribulation. People used to predict the end of the world. I myself only aim to prevent it.
With that, I step away from the keyboard. Please get back to me by the start of next week if possible.
Dawson