My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King by Reymundo Sanchez
Written under a pseudonym by “Reymundo Sanchez”, the book My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King” is an autobiography of a man who tells about his life of crime. The book became a medium of confession for a man who confirmed crimes such as robbery, rape, and murder.
Sanchez grew up in a life surrounded by violence and of being the victim before turning into the offender. At five, he was raped. At thirteen, he was introduced to sex by a junkie thrice his age. He grew up as a battered child by his mother and stepfather, where drugs and alcohol became his solace. It was during his teenage years when he started selling drugs and using sex as a trading instrument.
He eventually found himself joining the “Latin Kings” composed of mainly Puerto Rican members. They sell themselves as protectors of the Puerto Rican community, but ironically victimize mainly Puerto Ricans in the process.
Life as a Latin King
When Sanchez joined the gang, its founders and senior leaders were either dead or in prison. Left with other young members who came from the same poor, socially impaired and violent homes, he was exposed to a life without discipline and control. They lived by stealing and drug dealing, and where his lifestyle swung between the streets, the gang’s clubhouses, and the gangbangers’ apartments. This lifestyle meant that his existence revolved around drugs and a lot of violence.
Starting with membership, neophytes undergo a three-minute beating. More beatings follow after that, which happens for whatever excuse can be found to have them. Externally, there were gang wars to worry about, where anything can be a reason to start the fights. Spilling blood becomes something normal for them, where gang members cause ruckus in the neighborhood, whether they hit on enemies or innocents. The more violence caused, the more members were rewarded with notoriety, drugs and sex. Having committed crime prior to joining the gang, Sanchez did not have blood in his hands. His life of crime progressed after joining the gang, elaborated in the book “My Bloody Life”.
Joining the gang also meant that they left the personal life they once had, as well as the communities they were once a part of. The gang became all they had. This is the same reason why gang members becoming obsessed with their gang was almost a given. The more they cling to the gang, the more their desire to protect it became, and the more twisted their life became, shaping them into the gang members of today.
The Law of Conspiracy vs. Street Gangs
Given the details of Sanchez’s narration, law enforcement’s weapon against such happenings lie in the “law of conspiracy”, which anchors itself with the notion that criminals together are more dangerous than having them acting by themselves. This notion was affirmed in Sanchez’s book where his life was a telling evidence of how his life as a criminal worsened, as well as how gangs operate among themselves. Unlike organized crimes, gangs such as the Latin Kings hit where they feel like hitting. Most of the times without any rules and no justifiable reason. There is no fear of the law, where getting caught is nothing but normal.
Although the law of conspiracy can limit the growth of the gangs, the law is also limited where evidence of conspiracy is concerned. Law enforcement is unable to make a move for suspecting members in terms of crimes that have not yet been committed. Unless gang members plot and plan to do something illegal, they cannot be charged for breaking any law. In “My Bloody Life”, reasons to becoming a gang target is further elaborated, including trivial things such as hand gestures, the color of one’s clothing, etc. can become a reason to fear for one’s life. “My Bloody Life” explains the “what’s and why’s” of life in neighborhoods where gangs like the “Latin Kings” exist, and why people from these communities become endangered, whether they are merely surrounded by them, and more importantly, when they join a gang.
When Law Goes Pop Book Review: Intersection of Law & Pop Culture
When Law Goes Pop – The Vanishing Line Between Law and Popular Culture, by Professor Richard Sherwin, a professor at the New York Law School gives breaking revelations on how popular culture moulds law. Sherwin argues that the orthodox way of legal communication is slowly evolving into what is popular communication. Law, he says, has “[taken] root in a culture of spectacle” using public relations communication techniques and style.
Lawyers these days now use some popular fiction to ensure a successful persuasion. They use it to deal with the press and manipulate the information that comes out to their advantage, and into possibly ensuring a win. Even some courtrooms now allow cameras, which feeds people on what goes on to get the juicy bits from legal dramas.
According to Sherwin, pop culture and law won’t necessarily mesh well together in the long run. He suspects that the hype on law-as-entertainment will eventually subside. He focuses on the dangers involved in using the techniques and styles of public relations, since the results expected may not be delivered. Apart from public relations refocusing subjective truths towards what the public should believe from what the public should know, as originally aimed by law in order to ensure that justice prevails, it also emphasizes how their respective purposes cross each other most of the time.
Storytelling by Gerry Pence: Popular Mythology Used In Court
Sherwin in When Law Goes Pop reveals the story of the techniques used by high-profile lawyers in criminal trials analyzing them in a sharp, smart and forthcoming manner.
He cited Gerry Spence’s use American mythology in order to give his final argument on Randy Weaver’s trial against offenses charged on the alleged killing of Ruby Ridge, a federal marshal in Idaho. He pleaded for the jury to do what Thomas Jefferson and John Adams did and “resist tyranny’s threat to freedom”. The attorney used literary references that led to the exoneration of Randy Weaver.
How Popular is Pop?
Although pop culture generally attracts the majority of audiences, this book targets legal practitioners. Although pop culture is increasingly relevant in law, Sherwin’s findings do not necessarily prove the effectiveness of such tactics.
Some of Sherwin’s analyses included film and T.V. such as The Thin Blue Line, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Red, and Phillip Haas’s The Music of Chance.
Caution: Sherwin Concludes on Storytelling in Law
Providing both commendation and condemnation, When Law Goes Pop reiterates the need for lawyers to be aware of what works best, combining the use of technique, style and technology, and that these added tools be included in law school curriculum. Furthermore, he presents the fact that it should also not be overused into tweaking the truth up to the point that it becomes unrecognizable anymore. Sherwin advises that utilizing pop culture could help legal professionals, but emphasizes users to make sure that law does not lose its essence.
Book Review: Newjack – Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover
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People’s perception of life in prison has always been different, in a way that it is viewed as a harsh and brutal environment. More so when looking at the individuals who work to guard them. It seems to imply that these individuals must be harder and more brutal than the ones they are guarding to be able to effectively do their jobs.
Ted Conover documents his life as a “newjack” or rookie prison guard in his book, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (New York: Random House 2000). This tell-all first hand research relates the life, the stresses, the disdain, the chaos, the distasteful working environment and facilities, and the politics that only one who worked in one can experience and tell about it. The book talked about the vicious life within those walls can become, and how both prisoners and guards become more and more callous each day they experience life within those walls.
In Conover’s experience, he talked about the people he worked with, coming from all walks of life having visions of an ideal jobs; those wanting to work in law enforcement, those being ex-military wanting to use their skills, and those only wanting to have a regular job that offer good benefits. Most of them sacrificing the long commute to work and spending life apart from their families to lock and unlock prison cells, move the prisoners while they get harassed in the process.
Prisoners practice their rights by hassling these officers into requesting things that are either against the rules, or tedious requests that takes a long time to grant, while they ignore orders and policies. It then seem that with the reputed discipline along with the compensation are the psychological effects that implode more violence within these walls caused by both prisoners and guards. Conover gives a disturbing image to correction professionals about the difference between life in training and life with inmates. In an ideal world, cooperation within those walls are said to be achieve by establishing communication, but in actuality, only few officers are able to achieve this cooperation and have fulfilling jobs.
As in any other job, good relationships with co-workers are essential, but unfortunately, this is also difficult to achieve in such an environment. This causes an uneven and inconsistent performance, as well as treatment of their charges resulting to a high turnover in staff in any given year.
Situations from prison-to-prison differ. The larger the facility, and the higher security risk the prison is, lessens the probability of a better working environment. Finding solutions in order to solve these issues in providing favorable work benefits for these officers can be resolved, in order to retain a good workforce to guard prisons, but are not addressed. As informative as Conover’s book might be with regards to the faults and flaws of life in prison, it lacks certain elements such as describing how the typical life in prison is like, roots of the problems that he described, and the details about the difficulties officers face in their line of work. To sum it all up, might have lacked the in-depth picture that readers would expect from a book wanting to present what is not known to people from outside those walls.
The book Newjack presents us with the confirmation of the hardships, the stresses and the chaos surrounding the job of officers, as well as how much these individuals are willing to sacrifice of themselves in order to gain a decent source of living. It also presents how prisoners are human beings who think and feel like any other human being would. In effect, it sometimes seem to present more about the life of the prisoners instead of presenting the life of the staff that it wants to give light to. Not giving a complete sense of what Ted Conover would like the world to see from his books only makes his book give a warning and that life should be better for both officers and prisoners alike.
