No Good Deeds: Episode 1 "Marines in the Family"

This episode is broadcast from John Stewart's yard in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he has created an amazing State park-like setting for his daughter Alison, who is online learning from home because of the Covid19 Pandemic. There is an herb garden, a salad garden and a greenhouse as well as a chicken coop and three hens, Dr. Anna Dixon, Zora Neale Hurston and Margaret. Alison has a well-trained three year old leopard-spotted Gecko named Gecky who goes to school online with her at home. They have a show dog Havanese, Niki, who is 12 pounds of fierce. They have a cat named Frye, who prefers his own company to anyone else's most of the time. There is camp for the hens (Camp Hen-derson) and a fire pit area camp for people who visit. We wear masks. John Stewart teaches his daughter about how to see the stars and this week she learns about the Great Conjunction. When she smells the rich burning embers of the fire pit, Elizabeth Boyle remembers a visit in June of 2018 to the Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, near Charleston. Then she plays the voice and singing of the Plantation Re-enactor she heard at The Gullah Theater on the grounds of the old slave plantation in the Palmetto Islands State Park. Then they talk about the historic origins of the Winter Solstice and the parallels today to the rich and the poor of our own time. They end by wishing everyone Happy Winter Holidays and the Best for the New Year, 2021.

Elizabeth and John start this episode with a reading from the Los Angeles Times Article "Cellphone call from a U.S. ambassador at a Kyiv restaurant could compound Trump's troubles" https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-14/cellphone-call-from-ukraine-could-compound-trumps-troubles. We talk about Ambassador Sondland's testimony in the Trump impeachment inquiry. Then we talk civics and history. The Founding Fathers weren't perfect. "We're in a Republic, not a democracy." George Washington warned his fellow countrymen about the dangers of competing political parties, a two (or more) party system would wreak havoc on the body civic. E Pluribis Unum. We talk about Colin Kaepernick and his speaking out against police brutality against minorities, people of color. Then we turn to the subject of expunging a criminal record: What do you have to do to get a case expunged and sealed in Florida? Elizabeth Boyle and John Stewart will discuss his experience getting his case expunged. What is the difference between Prison and Jail? Does it costs money to be locked up in Florida? What are the conditions like in Port Manatee Jail? We talk about the recent news stories of detainee abuse by deputies at Port Manatee Jail. We also talk about the deputies who stepped forward to report the abuse and about Whistleblower protections.

Honoring the Dead, Nolan's Gravesite and Dogtags: Elizabeth Boyle and John Stewart travel to the Mansion Memorial Park Cemetery in Ellenton, Florida, to check on Knowellan Kelly's gravesite. They meet the long-time manager and travel to the still unmarked gravesite. We said a prayer for Nolan while we were there. We talk about death and honoring the dead. We talk about the trend away from burial of the body. John talks about how he takes his daughter to the VA military cemetery to honor fallen soldiers. John talks about the new rules at military cemeteries. The conversation turns to Dogtags and John's life in the military as a Marine. The purpose of Dogtags is to identify a dead soldier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_tag. John has his dogtags and those of his grandfather he carries with him always.

John and Elizabeth talk frankly about John's interactions with the Court, his public defenders, and the state prosecutor. We talk about John's pro se motion to the court to have his public defender removed from the case (in Florida this is called a Nelson hearing) and how John felt like it was three against one, and he was on his own. The court granted his motion. We talked about the front page story that ran one Sunday in late May this year (May 26, 2019) in the Sarasota, Florida Herald Tribune, a newspaper which has recently won Pulitzer Prizes for its investigations of racism in criminal sentencing, and systemic abuses of the elderly in the Guardianship court. Billy Cox of the Herald Tribune spent six months researching the story, including interviewing the Coroner and State Attorney's office. https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20190526/long-ordeal-for-bradenton-man-accused-in-childs-death Billy Cox visited the child's (Knowellan "Nolan" Kelly) grave but discovered when he arrived at the Mansion Park Cemetery in Ellenton, Florida, that there was no grave marker on Nolan's grave. John and Elizabeth have been working on a solution to that sad situation and talk about their visit to the cemetery where Nolan is buried.

This episode starts with John Stewart's recitation of excerpts of environmental activist Greta Thunberg's Panic Speech. Tampa Bay Rays update by John, who is a big baseball fan. We continue telling John's story of being an innocent man caught up in the eating machine and runaway train that the criminal justice system so often is for people without financial resources. John talks more about the day he was arrested. We talk about the botched investigation and how the prosecutor doubled down on John as the perpetrator even though someone else had confessed within weeks of the child's death. Unfortunately, the fact of the confession by the grandfather Larry was hidden by the State, including the detective making a second reenactment tape with Larry. The grandfather Larry's confession did not align with the detective's tunnel vision bias against John. The detective followed an improper course which inflicted unimaginable damage on an innocent man and his loved ones. We talk about the prevalent yet extraordinarily unconstitutional cash bail system that society, and specifically the legal system, has numbly allowed to exist for so long even though it blatantly contravenes the United States Constitution. We talk about the under-funding of public defenders and state attorney's offices alike and how that leads to innocent people pleading guilty to crimes they have not committed. John talked about the job he got while out on bail as the 24/7 onsite manager at The Palm Bay, a large transient hotel off Highway 275 in St. Petersburg, a place frequented by some of the roughest trade in town.