Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

Several other inmates, speaking on condition of anonymity, also voiced their support for inmate Slinger.

SUPPORT FOR DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT GEDGE

Lieutenant VALERIE Y. MARGRAVINE testified that the Deputy Superintendent was well respected among her fellow Corrections Officers for her attention to discipline and detail.

Several Corrections Officers stated that Deputy Superintendent Gedge is a devout Christian and a lay minister who presides over services of worship in the institution’s chapel on Sundays and other days.

OTHER FACTORS

Inmate Slinger is a high-profile individual whose original conviction attracted substantial media attention, as did the subsequent overturning of that conviction by the Appeal Court. She remains a newsworthy individual.

Any similar media attention in regard to this procedure would be undesirable. The department therefore believes a quick and final resolution to be in the interests of all parties.

Inmate Slinger has signed a confidentiality agreement preventing her from disclosing details of this investigation and hearing to the press, on condition that Deputy Superintendent Gedge receives appropriate punishment.

Deputy Superintendent Gedge has also been the subject of previous complaints from inmates (see cases T637-02, T432-00, T198-96, T791-89).

VERDICT

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections? code of conduct expressly and absolutely forbids all corrections officers from conducting sexual or intimate relationships with inmates.

Irrespective of the validity of the other allegations, Deputy Superintendent Gedge’s maintenance of a relationship with inmate Slinger qualifies as gross misconduct and is by itself grounds for immediate dismissal.

Consequently, Deputy Superintendent Gedge is dismissed from her post with immediate effect, and is disqualified from holding any other position within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for a period of no less than ten years.

Signed

Anderson M. Thornhill

Anderson M. Thornhill

Governor, SCI Muncy

When Jesslyn pulled in at the truck stop just outside DuBois on I-80, she realized with a start that she could hardly remember a thing about the last hour or so she’d been driving. She’d been operating the car on instinct and muscle memory alone, while her thoughts chased themselves into rolling, tumbling tendrils of confusion.

Her career was over. That much – that alone – she knew. She believed in punishment, and retribution; that was why she’d sought a vocation in corrections. Taking that from her, and in a way which meant she’d never find work in that sector again, was more than she could bear. It was as though Mara Slinger had first led her into evil, then cut her heart out. Here, truly, was the devil.

She wondered whether she should buy a razor here, open the arteries in her wrists, and be done with it all; and even as the thought came to her, she stamped on it with frantic fury, as though trying to beat down a grass fire.

Just the fact that she could entertain such a notion was a deep, shaming sin; 1 Corinthians 3: 16 said: ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.’

She’d preached that passage repeatedly in the Muncy chapel, knowing that barely a week went past without an inmate trying to take her own life.

Jesslyn stopped her car, a silver Toyota Camry she’d had for a few years, and walked across the parking lot to the restaurant building.

She hadn’t eaten all day. She’d been too nervous to eat breakfast this morning, knowing that today her fate would be decided one way or another, and afterwards she’d been given half an hour to pack up all her belongings, hand in her credentials, and get out. No time to say her goodbyes, let alone get some food.

Twenty years’ hard work, ripped from her in a flash.

The burger bar smelt like all burger bars do; of cooking oil, sweat and resentment.

Jesslyn walked up to the counter, where a Hispanic-looking woman whose nameplate read ‘Esmerelda’, and who was too young to be as overweight as she was, regarded the world without enthusiasm.

‘Help you?’ Esmerelda asked, her tone so polite as to be insolent.

Jesslyn mumbled her order and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter.

Fat fingers handed her change and food oozing grease through its wrappers.

Jesslyn went to the far corner of the room, past an EMPLOYEES WANTED sign and a couple of truckers with baseball caps trailing raggedy ponytails.

She was halfway through her burger when the tears came, hot with anger and self-pity. She pressed her hands to her face, not to staunch the flood but in the illogical, childish belief that if she couldn’t see the other diners, they couldn’t see her.

Through the hot rising of mucus in her throat, she repeated silently to herself the words of Lamentations 2: 18. ‘Their heart cried out to the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night; give thyself no rest, nor let the apple of thine eye cease.’

Jesslyn left early the next morning, as though she was going to work as usual.

She’d told Mark – Mark Beradino, her partner – nothing. It helped that she liked to keep her work and home lives separate – whatever Mark knew of her job was what she chose to tell him, or not tell him – but still…How could she explain it all to him? Where would she even begin?

She had no idea; and, until she did, she figured it was best to keep quiet, and somehow square the silence up between herself and God.

What she did know was that the longer she left it, the harder it would be. Every secret she kept from Mark made keeping the next one both easier and necessary.

She hadn’t told him about her affair with Mara, so she hadn’t been able to tell him about Mara’s complaints, so she hadn’t been able to tell him about yesterday’s tribunal, so she hadn’t been able to tell him she’d been dismissed, so she had to go off today to keep the pretence that everything was normal.

And going off today meant she’d have to go off tomorrow, and the next time.

She couldn’t keep doing that indefinitely; at least, not without somewhere to go and something that would pay her, because corrections didn’t pay like Wall Street in the first place, and she didn’t have much in the way of savings.

So she needed a job. Not just any job – a job which offered shifts. Prison work wasn’t nine to five; like the police, prison officers worked eight-hour shifts, sometimes on the night watch. She couldn’t keep up the pretence for long if she took employment as an office clerk.

It didn’t have to be a great job. In fact, it almost certainly wouldn’t be.

But as long as it paid, and got her out of the house, it would do, at least until something better came along. And she could pass the time by savoring the righteous anger which burned within her. She’d given her life to her vocation, and she’d been cast aside like a piece of flotsam.

That wasn’t the way you treated people. There would be retribution; that was not only her right, but her duty too.

She recited to herself the words of Exodus 21: 23. ‘And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’

Burning for burning. Stripe for stripe.

Jesslyn realized she was heading towards Muncy; reflex, perhaps, or providence. Ahead, she saw signs to the DuBois travel plaza, where she’d stopped yesterday.