Hi Dan!!

How's that gorgeous wife of yours? I've yet to meet her, but from what you've told me about her, she's a real gem. How are her screenplays coming?

Once I can travel, I would love to come to DC and take a paddleboat out to the Jefferson Memorial - an under-rated attraction if I ever saw one.

Life is beautiful, and the best is yet to come!

David

Why do you ask, KatieJo? (winkwink nudgenudge)

Seriously, though...we still maintain contact, albeit long distance. We could be together were it not for my probation officer. I can't travel to Florida, and she can't travel to Georgia as she is constantly working. For a short moment I considered violating my probation to go see her, but she said 'no, you'll just wind up in jail again, and you're more valuable to me in five months than you are for one week followed by another two years in jail'...and I quite agree with her. If I can survive Venezuela, I can survive petty bureaucratic nonsense for a few more months.

The above post is in reply to lovesthesea, but I goofed up and it seems to be drifting away from the original post...so sorry >abashedly blushing<

"Melvyn"? Haven't seen or heard from him since, which is probably just as well. I'm still not sure if he got suckered as badly as me, or if I was set up to fall as a decoy so another person on the same flight could make it. I lean toward this latter possibility, as I later found out the coke I was carrying was only 56% pure - not the quality one would expect coming from South America.

I know of no legal action against them, nor am I under any kind of protection now, aside from the laws that protect us all. One thing I found in my experience is that one simply cannot escape karma - it will catch up eventually, and time wounds all heels.

fenwaypark9-
I think you need to check your moral (not morale) compass again. How can you claim to be a person of faith...and be so hateful at the same time? I really respect David for bravely telling his story in an effort to keep other young people from making the same mistake.

You should be ashamed.

Fenway -

I, too, have been homeless, sleeping in my car for seven months. I state this as a fact, not for sympathy. The truth is, I would never have considered smuggling drugs had I not been approached. I was only a mule, I had no part in the purchase of the drugs, nor in the selling of them either. As far as that goes, what anyone does to their own body is their responsibility, not mine.

I am curious, though, as to why you feel I was portrayed as a victim. At no time in the show did I ask for pity; quite the contrary - I claim full responsibility for doing a very stupid thing, and I am paying the price for doing so.

As to your assertion that smuggling funds terrorists: what do you base this assumption on? The nationality of 'Melvyn'? Remember, you watched a re-enactment. That was only an actor playing a part. As I said to Callie elsewhere in this forum : reserve judgement until you are in full possession of the facts.

David Evans

The only answer t I have to that is that I wasn't thinking, obviously. And no, we have no idea what has become of 'Melvyn'.

Music is amazing, and has healing powers. It kept me sane through times of great mental anguish, and continues to be a blessing in my life.

Keep at the guitar, let it be an addiction, don't let a day go by that you don't pick it up, even if only to strum one quick chord as you run out the door into your busy life. The effort you put into it will be repaid exponentially.

Thank you for watching the show, and for your support. I'm glad I can be an inspiration in some small way.

David Evans

PianoMan99 -

Wow, lots of questions, and good ones too...I'll answer them in order.

1.Repatriation is when the American government carries out the remainder of the Venezuelan sentence. I am not resentenced in America, nor does a criminal record follow me here, but I am still listed with Interpol – I will probably be searched thoroughly whenever I cross an international border for the remainder of my life, for which I can hardly blame them. Within 72 hours of my arrest, Venezuela was required to notify the embassy, so that they might visit me and start the paperwork process. Paperwork is done by both governments, and usually takes 9 or 10 months. However, the Minister of Justice in Venezuela (the ninth they'd had in ten years) refused to sign any paperwork from January to July of 2007, despite the embassies of many countries pleading with him to do so.

2.Food – We were fed twice a day, when we were fed. Many was the time that they simply ran out of food to feed us, and even when it was there, it was very little, as the kitchen workers usually stole it all to resell to support their crack habit. It was small arapas corn flour biscuits for breakfast at 7AM, and rice or noodles with a tiny amount of chicken, sardines, or what I think was horsemeat at 5PM. It was all less than ideal food, and often times it was spoiled. Also given that the water was only on for a few hours a day, and the tank holding it often had dead animals floating in it, dysentery was rampant, and I lost 50 pounds during my time there.

3.Guards – Despite what you saw on the show, the guards only came into the cell block ('pavilion') only twice a day to count us, and even then, they were fully armed and wore bullet-proof vests. There are three kinds of guards: the greens ('verdes') or Guardia Nacional, who do the counting, whose main job is to surround the prison and shoot those who escape. Then there's the blues ('aquas') who are the administrators, the day-to-day workers in the prison, who were unarmed, and generally alright guys. Then there are the blacks ( with ERIC printed on their backs– I forget what the acronym stands for) who would come in every few months for 'raquetta', wherein they would break and ransack eveything in a search for guns, cell phones, and drugs, as well as anything else they could steal. Basically, the prisoners run the prisons, and the rules are basic – don't steal, don't look at others' visitors on visiting day, do what you're told, and pay your bills and rent on time.

4. US Prisons – We used to see the Guantanamo Bay prison cells on TV, and say “hey! Look what nice clean cells they have! Look! One toilet for two guys, clean running water, three nutritious meals a day – what are they complaining about?” Federal prison was like a paradise at first – it was nice to know I was safe, even if it took me three months or more to not flinch at the slightest sound. However, over time, I came to realize that the American prison system is meant to be demoralizing and demeaning. At least in Venezuela, you were considered a man, and expected to obey the rules, and if not, to accept the punching, kicking, stabbing or worse. In the Federal system, you were threatened with being written up, subject to being treated like a grade-schooler, and otherwise humiliated with no possibility of a fair redress of grievances. But that's a whole 'nother story.

5.My initial guitar, along with about fifteen harmonicas, five effects pedals, cords, microphones, a silver flute, all my clothes, notebooks, and too much else to mention, were all stolen by the National Guards who confiscated it at the airport. They make you write out a whole inventory of it, then they give it to you, have you sign the inventory saying they gave it back to you, then they take it again, with your signature on a piece of paper to guarantee that you have no legal recourse. Most of the things are replaceable, but the guitar had originally been the property of blues legend Mr. Frank Edwards, who died in 2002. That guitar is irreplaceable, and whomever has it now has no idea of the historical significance of it, and that just makes me sad – I had been planning to donate it to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

Sorry to have rambled on, but there is so much more story to tell, and I tell it every chance I get – it seems to get a little easier each time. Thank you for your interest in the show, and my story.

David Evans

Funny, I did the same thing! Yelling at the TV screen: "Stupid, stupid, stupid!!"

I am the first to stand up and say this, and as you saw on the show, yes, I felt pressure to go through with it, or else 'Melvyn' and his friends would come after me for the $800 airline ticket and the $1000 spending cash they gave me.

But it was stupid. I was under the gun (figuratively) to get to the airport; had I not been so short of time, I would have realized that aerosol cans can't be transported in the cargo bay of a plane...but of course, they didn't want me to think, they wanted me to get caught. As I've stated elsewhere in this forum: 56% purity? Not exactly grade-A narcotics, but if you're intending for the mule to get caught, you don't send him with the top-shelf stuff, you send him with sub-prime crap that isn't worth selling.

Yes, I've been recognized on the street from the show, but far more for the fact that I've been playing music in this town for the last fifteen years, so in a way I'm already a celebrity...but it's been said - 'there's no such thing as bad publicity'...

But that's not why I did this show; I did this show to keep others from making the same mistake I made. I hear that others have been approached in this town, and if my story can keep one other person from doing what I did and going through what I went through, it will all have been worth it. If this show had been on the air in early 2006, I would have never done what I did.

Now go get that last cat you need!

Ryan -
Thank you for defending me, but I must agree with npattis to some extent - it was a stupid thing to do. In fact, one of my friends now calls me the 'stupidest smart person' he knows.
But it wasn't done out of stupidness, it was done out of ignorance. I had no idea how bad conditions are down there, or indeed ANYTHING about South America. Even now I am shocked at how little we Americans know about an entire continent so close to us, or the political unrest there.
I am currently transcribing 700 handwritten pages of journal into the computer with an eye toward publishing it, editing it as I go along, and boy, is it a tough job! I haven't read this stuff since the day I wrote it, and it gets quite emotional at times...I often have to push away from the keyboard because I can no longer see it through the tears, and when the nightmares start to return at night, I have to stop transcribing for weeks at a time.
Thanks again, Ryan, for watching. If you go to the Forum section here, you will find my private e-mail address if you would like to talk some more, and a link to the myspace page where you can hear the full-length version of my song at the end of the episode - it's called 'Johnny Miller Said'.

David

Sarita-
Any foreign national that commits a crime in another country is, in most cases, eligible for repatriation to their native land. This goes for any crime, be it smuggling, murder, robbery - any crime. This is done under either the COE Convention (http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=112&CM=8&CL=ENG) or the OAS Convention (http://www.oas.org/juridico/English/treaties/a-57.html). This hardly qualifies as being 'bailed out', as it takes a long time for the paperwork to be compiled, during which time the offender is in sub-human conditions, followed by the remainder of the sentence being carried out in the home country.

As for 'complaining' about the prison conditions, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, along with many other agencies, are quite interested to know what the conditions are like, as in many cases there are basic human rights being violated - like the right to edible food, clean water, and medical attention, all of which I was denied.

I am also wondering if you saw the same show I saw. Please tell me, at what point did I 'complain' about the 'unfairness' of the sentence? I did the crime, and I served the time. However, the corruption in Venezuela is such that if I had pleaded 'not guilty', I would have been found guilty anyway and received a sentence of 15 years, rather than the 8 years I got.

Speak to any of your fellow countrymen who have served time in Venezuela, and you will find that, if anything, this show made Los Teques look much, much tamer than it actually was.

David

Fajah!!
Smashing to hear from you! So I guess you're out now too...if you found this forum, you found my Q&A - my e-mail address is there too - drop me a line, we must catch up...I ended up on Bravo and working in the law library, where I learned quite a few interesting things about FDC Miami. I should be off paper soon as well, once I petition the courts to be put on non-reporting status - there's no reason why I shouldn't be.

Drop me a line, OK?

David