At the Wrong Place. At the Wrong Time.
Explicit Content Warning | 18 + | For Mature Audience Only
August 19 2021 | Imran Siddiqui | Justice News
Trinity Matthisen has spent the last two decades of his life inside a prison. Right now he is somewhere in Michigan, behind bars, in a small, very uncomfortable cage, for something, he says, he did not do, for a crime, evidence may prove, he did not commit.
Can you imagine what I just said, does it sound so repetitive that it has become acceptable to hear this? Have we become accustomed to this, so used to it by now, is it something normal? We have been desensitized to the fact that we love to incarcerate people who probably are innocent of the crime for which they have been punished for, and punitively, unjustly, wrongly, wickedly punished and for what? Prison as Rehabilitation, Matthisen says, is a lie.
Trinity Milford Matthisen, originally from Colorado, is at Chippewa Correctional Facility in Kincheloe, Michigan doing time for convictions of assault with intent to murder, felon in possession of a firearm and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. He was sentenced as a third habitual offender to 40 to 70 years imprisonment for his assault conviction, 57 months to 120 years imprisonment for his felon in possession of a firearm conviction, and two years’ imprisonment for each felony-firearm conviction. The felony-firearm sentences run concurrently to each other, but consecutively to his other sentences. That sounds terrifying, in many ways, and especially when you hear the word felon, but you need to hold the judgements until you know both sides of the story and especially coming from someone who is actually living that kind of a reality. Matthisen is in for “at least 40 to 70 years”. In his own simple words, they have destroyed his life and he was railroaded by a few friends, the prosecutors and lies from false witness testimony.
But Trinity Matthisen is not giving up that easily, he argues that the obliteration of his rights, just because he had a prior record, is evident in his court records and you don't need much to find out how he was denied his basic constitutional rights even before his trial began and during it. He says, to get to that conclusion, all you have to do is go through his entire case files, and probe the police reports that are not publicly available, along with more than 30 eyewitness accounts that are missing or have been lost or hidden. He is also stunned at the jaw dropping denial of his FOIA requests. Trinity argues that evidence is being kept away from him, evidence that can potentially exonerate him and that he has enough material to push for a retrial of his case, as long as an attorney has the courage to seek the truth, without prejudice.
But what is there to hide? And how much truth is there in the online docs?
Late in the evening on March 7, 2003, Quincy Olds and his cousin, Deandro Sweet, went to Pablo’s Bar in Battle Creek. Mr. Olds met his friend, Paul Heise, at the bar, who invited Mr. Olds and Mr. Sweet to an after-hours party at his home. Mr. Olds and Mr. Sweet arrived shortly after 2:00 a.m. on March 8, and joined a party of twenty-five to thirty people in Mr. Heise’s living room. At some point, a fight erupted in which Trinity, a friend of the owner of the house, became involved to help his friend. And the rest is history.
Could this be a case of mistaken identity, screwed up eyewitness testimony resulting from actions that came about as an unconscious act of defense. This situation is complex and it cannot be understood just by going through the court documents or by listening to what the media says, judgements on scenarios like these can only be made when the entire case is reconstructed from the very beginning in order to understand what exactly happened. Here, out of the Who, What, When, Where and Why, we have answers to none except one, and that is where we begin as we unload the facts in this episode of FairPlay on Justice News.
| Imran Siddiqui is the managing editor at Justice News and the author of The JBlog. Imran's podcast FairPlay Challenging Wrongful Convictions on J107Justice Radio