Reggie needs your help. Reggie's letter and the response from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections are printed below. The issue at stake is Reggie's very ability to defend himself. Please write letters of protest and support to the following addresses:

• Jeffrey A. Beard: Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, 2520 Lisburn Road, Camp Hill, PA, 17001-0598. Write and ask him to personally review the volume of grievances, complaints, and U.S. Postal laws violated by the racist Kim Ulisny, Mailroom Supervisor at Graterford Prison. Demand that she be fired, and for an overhaul of the segregated mailroom, as well as implement the recommendations in Reggie's letter to him.
• Office of Professional Responsibility: Director, Clifford O'Hara, P.O. Box 598, Camp Hill, PA, 17001-0598. Please ask that the OPR thoroughly investigate the postal mail violations, theft, tampering, and illegal copying, withholding, and destruction of incoming mail from attorney's, clergy, activists, patrons, and supporters.

September 6th, 2005

Jeffrey A. Beard, Ph.D.

Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

2520 Lisburn Road, P.O. Box 598

Camp Hill, Pennsylvania 17001-0598

...The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty...

--Article 1, Section 7, Declaration Of Rights, Constitution of Pennsylvania

Dear Mr. Jeffrey A. Beard, Ph.D.;

Respectfully, I am Pennsylvania Death Row inmate Reginald S. Lewis, Number AY2902. In good faith this letter addresses claims that officials at SCI-Graterford, acting in concert with other known or unknown employees in the Central office of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, continue to violate First, Sixth, Eight, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and policy number DC-ADM 803 .Inmate Mail and Incoming Publications,. and DC-ADM 001, including state and federal laws by imposing a "Mail Watch" by illegally copying, logging, monitoring, distributing, and withholding my outgoing and incoming mail in the furtherance of an ongoing conspiracy to disrupt, sabotage, and cut off my communications from the outside world solely because I am a gifted Black American Writer.

Sir, as you're well aware, my writing experience is extensive. And in the 23 long, harrowing years of my confinement I've self-taught myself to write poems, plays, short stories, book reviews, and essays that have appeared in countless publications and several countries abroad. Two of my children's plays were professionally produced. My work has garnered three P.E.N. American Center Writing awards for prisoners - including writing prizes in mainstream competitions. I've honed my skills under the most grueling conditions. I self-published two collections of poems entitled "Leaving Death Row" (www.authorhouse.com) and "Inside My Head" (www.iuniverse.com) which were received with acclaim. These two books earned me the title "The Poet Laureate of Death Row". My new book, "Where I'm Writing From: Essays from Pennsylvania's Death Row," was released July 6th, 2005 by PublishAmerica.

However, my aforementioned literary accomplishments certainly pale in comparison to your esteemed background in Academia, your prestigious degrees in Psychology, Counseling, Treatment, as well as your ascension through the ranks of Corrections. I merely offer them as a testament to how the redeeming power of art and education and creative writing transforms the character of a man sentenced to the most severe punishment the law can administer - DEATH.

Sir, obviously grievance number 95962, filed on 09/16/04, while I was housed at SCI-Greene (which employed Corporal Charles Graner, the now convicted ring leader in the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq), is still unresolved long after being transferred on 12/08/04 to the Capital Case Unit at SCI-Graterford, a hulking, medieval structure, built in 1929. On August 19th, 2005 I filed grievance number 127174 on the same mail tampering issue, far more extensive. I am not afforded the basic right to use the United States Postal Service. Tragically, in a state founded on the principles of Billy Penn and the Quakers, home to a democratically elected Jewish-American Governor, Edward G. Rendell, a former Mayor of Philadelphia, the birth place of the American Constitution, which now has a democratically elected African-American Mayor, John Street, whose intellectual and business acumen spearheaded the greatest economic boom in the history of the city.

In Graterford prison the mailroom supervisor is accountable to no one. A "quota system" has seemingly been imposed on how many pieces of mail I'm allowed to receive each day even though policy DC-ADM 803, VI.2, states "there shall be no limit to the number of correspondents to whom an inmate may send or from whom an inmate may receive mail." Letters from patrons, supporters, activists, bookstores, libraries, universities, anti-death penalty organizations, and members of the clergy are withheld or are purposely destroyed.

In my grievance I asked, respectfully, for the following changes to be immediately implemented by the Department of Corrections. These changes would significantly reduce the opportunities for state employees harboring a personal, racial, or vindictive agenda to purposely tamper with inmate mail.

1) All Pennsylvania D.O.C. staff and officers should be videotaped while handling and sorting inmate personal and legal mail.

2) The outside of each envelope, newspaper, magazine, and package received should bear a heavy ink stamp in numerical order according to the day it was received. Example #1 of 3, 6 of 9, 10 of 15, 1 of 1, etc.

I spend an enormous amount on postage fees to mail out copies of my new book to book reviewers who claim my books never reached their desks. More egregiously, I've written to twenty or more practicing attorneys seeking assistance on various legal matters. Their confidential "Legal Mail" never reached me. One attorney is a well known advocate for "prisoner's rights" who also represents a member of my family. Preliminary findings by an investigator are disturbing. Five out of twenty attorneys interviewed so far told the investigator that they never received my letter. This is despite the fact that procedure at Graterford requires the officer collecting the mail to record and log the exact number of outgoing letters and packages picked up from individual inmates, Monday through Friday, excluding Holidays.

Apparently it is not enough that I was tried by the notoriously racist Philly hanging-judge Albert F. Sabo who sent more poor Black defendants to death row than any other judge in the United States. It is not enough that the prosecutor struck every potential African-American juror, and empanelled an illegal all-white jury, who sent me to Pennsylvania's Death Row. It isn't enough that my body is exiled, inviolably segregated, locked down hard, in the small cramped space of a dark, dank cell for 24 hours (unless I choose to exercise for two hours in the wire-mesh dog cage or go to the sparsely stocked mini law library).

As a condemned Black man in America I am being denied access to lawyers and the courts, the basic fundamental constitutional right to consult and communicate with the Attorney's of my choosing. This illegal "mail watch" is designed to slowly, systematically decimate my morale, spiritual, and financial well being. The psychological torture far surpasses the brutal tactics of the Gestapo. The punitive interference is antithetical to the epigraph inscribed at the beginning of this letter - and Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections own mission statement:

Our mission is to protect the public by confining persons committed to our custody in safe, secure facilities, and to provide opportunities for inmates to acquire the skills and values necessary to become productive law-abiding citizens.

Why am I, then, Secretary Beard, being penalized for acquiring a skill, given to me by none other than Almighty God? Why are the fruits of my good work condemned rather than applauded? Why is it unconstitutional for me to dream?

Sir, if you.ll just take the time to read my books, and gaze longingly into the crucible of my soul, you'll find that I am not some Herculean specimen powerful enough to burst through steel and concrete and bullet-proof glass. I do not possess Anthropomorphic qualities. THE FACULTIES OF MY INTELLIGENCE ARE NOT PRETERNATURAL. Nor am I some big macho Black male threat to the order and security of the institution.

I am not a TERRORIST!

I am Human.

I am part of Creation and the Universe.

I AM, INDEED, AN AMERICAN WRITER!

Respectfully submitted

Reginald S. Lewis