You guys know how I feel about Roddy Pippin, so for something a little different, I’d like to use today’s blog post to demonstrate how others view Roddy.
Below, is an email exchange between Phillip Baker and Scott Williamson. Phillip is a retired Physician Assistant with extensive experience working with inmates. He, just like me, has been trying to raise awareness of and bring attention to Roddy’s circumstances. Phillip, is very passionate about Roddy, and he knows that Roddy’s situation is extremely atypical.
Scott Williamson is a mouthpiece for the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA). They are the group who are behind Roddy’s continued incarceration. They are the law in this part of Texas, and defying them is tantamount to political suicide.
This is a long exchange, but I urge you to read it in its entirety. Phillip has addressed many of the key issues that I have not.
************************************************************************************
From: Phillip Baker
Date: February 10, 2010 3:06:10 PM CST
To: ewhite@texascattleraisers.org
Subject: Shame!
I write to deplore your association’s continued persecution of Mr. Roddy Pippin. Yes, at age 19 he did steal cattle and other items. But when caught, he cooperated fully with law enforcement, even telling them of thefts they had not discovered. And this is no longer the 19th century, when stealing cattle, often the lifeblood of struggling farmers and ranchers, was considered a “hanging offense”. We have, most of us, moved to a greater level of civilization long since. Yet your association has pushed the local officials to enforce a draconian punishment on this young man.
I have no illusions of appealing to your better nature in this matter. My recent trip through Quanah and that area of Texas disabused me of any notion that compassion, forgiveness, and plain human decency are prominent characteristics of the population. You all seem to take a very unforgiving stance on these matters.
But Roddy Pippin has had from age 6 a severe and rare form on diabetes. Several specialists have worked hard to help him control it. He committed his crimes in an effort to pay for his own medical costs. He had spent years losing job after job because of his disease, and his mother had borne the costs. He just wanted to pay his own way. His choices were stupid, and he fully accepted responsibility. Your association’s insistence on his receiving four, 2 year state jail terms, served consecutively has now caused this man to serve over five years on his sentence. The second term was a form of probation. The doctor at the state jail where he spent the first two years testified that he could not manage Roddy’s diabetes in state jail and doubted any such place could. Despite being 15 months into this third term of 2 years, and serving flawlessly according to his probation officer, the DA not only denied him this further probation, but refused to credit him for the 15 months served in confinement at his mother’s home. I understand that a contingent of cattlemen sat in that court to watch as he was denied relief.
This young man, now just barely 26, is now in a state prison, because the DA claimed he would receive “excellent medical care” around the clock. The facts are that by the time he arrived at Jester III, his blood sugars were wildly out of control. The medical staff there has been unable to accomplish control. Within a month, he could no longer feel his feet and lower legs due to nerve damage from the extremely high blood sugars. Shortly after that, he began experiencing the symptoms that indicate retinal damage from hemorrhaging and his kidney function had declined. His blood sugars fluctuate widely throughout the day. Within hours he will go from extreme high levels to deadly lows.
Let me paint you a picture of what this information means to living man. When his blood glucose levels are very high, his mental functioning goes awry. His mind is clouded, he often becomes very irritable, he begins to vomit constantly. He shakes all over and cannot muster enough strength to stand. Eventually he falls into a diabetic ketoacidosis-induced coma. He was rushed to a free world hospital within a month of arrival and saved from death at the last moment. Yet his sugars remain daily at horribly high levels. When his sugars fall to very deep lows, his behavior can become very agitated, even combative. He has been beaten to a pulp several times by prison guards while he has been in state custody. But the beatings are not the real danger. He has been housed in solitary confinement- they call is “medical isolation” – for months now. He is often – almost daily- unconscious and in seizure on the floor of his cell. He has to have glucose gel forced between his teeth to revive him and bring his sugar level up enough for his brain to function. A few days ago, he was found face down in a pool of his own blood, unconscious. During his seizure he had possibly broken his nose, deeply lacerated his forehead, and caused multiple bruises on his arms, face and body. He was revived with difficulty. Had someone not discovered him at that moment, he would have died.
The roller coaster of these symptoms make his life hell. Not only is he terribly sick all day, but he is absolutely alone with nobody to call to for help. The nurses usually ignore his call bell for a very long time. According to the prison system and the doctor there, he is “fine” and receiving “excellent medical care- with insulin adjustments far better than he could do on his own in the free world! His greatest terror is that he will die blind behind those walls.
I am assured by people who know cattlemen in your organization that none of you care one whit if this man loses his feet, eyes, kidneys, or even his life. After all, your own investigator stated at Roddy’s trial that should he die in prison, that’s just tough. He stole cattle, he deserves to die. But I want you, personally, to have to know the human consequences to your hardnosed approach to this man’s offenses as a teen. I doubt you have the conscience to care about Roddy’s plight nor your complicity in it. Indeed, I fully expect you and your cronies will pass this email around, all having a good laugh at your success in crushing this young man.
But I promise you this. On blogs and websites across this globe, people are reading about Roddy Pippin’s nightmare, and when they see the influence of your business group, they are appalled. You have ridden your reputation worldwide into company with the likes of Dr. Kevorkian and the cruel and heartless Madame Lafarge of French Revolutionary infamy. People email me regularly to marvel at the unmitigated cruelty of “that cattlemens association in Texas”. You must be so proud. I only wonder though. Do you share these cruel actions with you wives and children, you staunch cattlemen of Texas? Or is this just a juicy secret pleasure amongst your friends and associates? However you justify your actions, I say shame on you all. There must surely be a deepest dungeon in Hell itself for men who actions are marked by such unconscionable cruelty, meanness, lack of compassion, and dearth of Christian values. I hope never to have to meet such people as you.
Sincerely, but with shame upon you all,
Phillip Baker, PA (ret)
***********************************************************************************
From: “Scott Williamson” <scottw513@srcaccess.net>
Date: February 11, 2010 11:25:29 AM CST
To: Phillip Baker
Cc: “Larry Gray” <lgray@texascattleraisers.org>
Subject: Pippin
In reference to your letter.
You are free to believe what you wish. Roddy stole for pleasure not to pay medical bills and remained healthy staying up all night stealing. We did not sentence him to death, he agreed to a plea bargain represented by his own attorney admitting that he stole everything he could get his hands on for the fun of it “in his statement”. Also it is not TSCRA blocking his sentence reduction, it is the legal system and the citizens of Texas that were offended. Have a great day.
Scott Williamson
Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association
Special Ranger District 8 / Supervisor Region 1
P.O. Box 488
Seymour Texas 76380
940-889-2269
scottw513@srcaccess.net
***********************************************************************************
From: Phillip Baker
Date: February 19, 2010 12:58:17 PM CST
To: ewhite@texascattleraisers.org
Subject: Response to Scott Williamson
Mr. White-
Since you did not have the gumption to reply to me directly, but delegated it to your attack dog, Williamson, I felt compelled to copy my reply to him to you.
Mr. Williamson and the TSCRA-
I must apologize for the delay in replying to your email. It was stuck in a “junk” folder of my mail system. How ironic!
The tone of your email remains rigidly self-righteous. Clearly you are not a man who ever allows himself to question your decisions or examine your personal or professional motivations. Despite that, I will answer your assertions nonetheless.
You have convinced yourself that Roddy Pippin was just a smart ass, unrepentant, calculating thief whose only motivations were greed and the thrill of stealing. You cite “his own statements” as proof. I know otherwise, but for the point of argument will allow your assessment. So what? He was 19 years old! We all know that teens often make really stupid errors of judgment. Did you never falter as a kid? I know my own teens wobbled a lot on their way to adulthood.
But do we, as supposedly civilized nation and one, according to folks in your area, based upon Christian values, impose upon a teenager who commits his first brush with the law a penalty that leads to dismemberment or death? If this same sentence were being carried out in some alien nation such as Iran, there would be nationwide anger and recrimination. An American citizen so brutalized in a foreign prison would bring official US government intervention. But this is just some obscure kid from an obscure region of Texas. No outrage, because it is kept secret behind the walls of our prison system. But that does not make it any less outrageous nor any less immoral.
Roddy Pippin was a teen when he went astray. But you, Mr. Williamson, are a grown man in full possession, presumably, of a moral guidance and conscience. You are fully accountable for your actions. Your won statements on the record are barbaric. When told Mr. Pippin had a life-threatening disease and likely would suffer serious injury or death in a state prison, you said, in effect, “So what? He stole cattle, so he deserves whatever he gets.” And when pressed, you repeatedly said he did not care if this young man died in prison. Civilized nations- and certainly Christian people- do not impose such draconian sentences upon first time, non-violent offenders. Yet you continue to justify this abhorrent sentence because he stole some cattle! You should look to your own conscience.
You like to stress that Pippin voluntarily took that strange plea bargain. In point of fact, he had had many brushes with death in that jail in Quanah, with several emergency hospitalizations. The local sheriff had just declared that he would not allow any further hospitalizations, because it was costing his department too much money. Roddy Pippin knows that without daily treatment he will die. That is no hyperbole, just fact. Despite the continued willful denial of the reality of the rare form Type 1 diabetes that burdens Mr. Pippin by you and your henchmen in the judicial system there, this is NOT the diabetes of your gramma. Adult onset diabetes is a different disease entity, treated completely differently than Type I, with Type 1 with Somogyi. You should look it up sometime and educate yourself. But Roddy Pippin believed he would be allowed to die in that jail, and in his desperation he took a plea he did not want to take.
Your harp on about his voluntarily taking this plea. however, I have read over the Theft Reports that are posted online by your organization regularly. What strikes me is the fact that many cases are settled with deferred adjudication. I also am aware of the case of that son of a cattleman who stole far more cattle, yet got only a light sentence. Those folks committed the same, allegedly unforgivable sin of stealing cattle, and yet they get deferred adjudication and probation? Why? All I know is that it makes Roddy Pippin’s treatment by you and your organization stand out in stark contrast. What it shows is that you, Mr. Williamson, seem to have taken this case quite personally and used that personal animus to exact a very personal and savage revenge. Therefore, you bear the greater moral responsibility for the consequences of what is happening.
Do not even try to tell me that TSCRA is not behind this continued persecution. Cattlemen sat prominently placed in the courtroom when he pled for his life, in a show to your lapdog DA. How many DA’s have now ridden the Roddy Pippin career ladder to judgeships? For you to suggest that in cattle country the TSCRA is pure as the driven snow and has not exercised its influence behind the scenes is risible. Roddy Pippin is a personal grudge you all hold, and you are using that grudge to judicially murder him. That is the perception. That is your shame.
Pippin is housed in a solitary confinement cell in the infirmary of Jester III. Supposedly Jester can and will provide “excellent medical care around the clock”, according to DA Heatly. And yet Roddy was rushed to a freeworld hospital within the first few weeks there, saved from death only by the skills of the doctors at that hospital. The physician at Jester is a Pakistani-educated man who failed to recognize the obvious signs of diabetic ketoacidosis until his patient was near death. Meanwhile, every day Pippin continues to suffer extremely high levels of blood sugar, followed by dangerously low levels. High levels cause mental clouding, nausea, vomiting, extreme weakness, and sense of dying. Very low levels are worse. Most type 1 diabetics will actually keep their glucose level a little too high, just to avoid the awful symptoms of low sugar. With low sugars, he feels extremely weak, he shakes all over. His mental functioning goes awry. He feels as if death is imminent, yet he cannot manage enough energy to get up. Reaching a call button for the nurses is impossible. his vision begins to fail, the weakness and shaking increase, and finally, as his brain begins to malfunction, he goes in seizure. Unless someone forces glucose into his body with a very short time, HE WILL DIE.
But, of course, you have publicly stated that you do not care is Pippin dies as the result of his mistakes at 19. You have publicly stated that he deserves anything that happens to him. As the spokesman for TSCRA, I find it amazing that your masters allowed such an unvarnished, barbaric truth to be stated so blatantly and publicly. Clearly the arrogance of power of TSCRA leadership has caused them to think they can get away with such barbaric, unChristian, and unAmerican thinking. Williamson, perhaps nobody has noticed this up in that benighted area of Texas, but we are well into the 21st century! Such attitudes are no longer acceptable among civilized peoples.
In the final analysis, TCSRA and you, Mr. Williamson particularly, bear the moral responsibility for your actions. You clearly guided this special attention to this case. You exercise undue influence over the local “justice” system, including a compliant DA and judge. Don’t try to deny it. This was a teenager who made seriously bad choices, who took full responsibility when arrested, who offered restitution, yet that was not enough. Even after serving two years in a state jail, where the medical director testified they could not give him adequate medical care and during which he developed serious complications from lack of care, still your organization acted to deny him a compassionate release to probation. He served fifteen months of further incarceration, and then was given hose arrest. He served that probation flawlessly, as testified to by his Probation Officer. Yet he was not allowed credit for that fifteen months of actual cell time! Despite his exemplary record on probation, your DA opposed further probation, and he is back in a state prison. Not the state jail he was sentenced to, but state prison. There he daily endures the roller coaster of his blood sugars. He is transported back and forth to specialist appointments by full ambulance, costing between $2000-4000 a trip. His hospitalization alone cost tens of thousands of our tax dollars. The lawsuit that will follow should he die will cost taxpayers millions. All this to satisfy your own personal pride and vengeance. I cannot imagine such blind self-righteousness and cruelty. Look to your own soul, sir.
And yes, I will have a great day. My heart has compassion and mercy. For you and your TSCRA, I have nothing but pity. For me, I will do every thing I can to let the world know how craven and barbaric you and TSCRA are. This is not about “the people of Texas” being offended. It is a simple, ugly vendetta by rich and arrogant cattlemen against one young man. SHAME! If you want to clear your reputation, then contact your DA and the judge immediately and weigh in on his pending decision to release Pippin on medical grounds. He has suffered far too much. Roddy Pippin should not have to pay with his life for your pride and self-righteousness.
Phillip Baker, PA(ret)
Comments (0) 
Here in Texas, the good people in power are captive to the self-serving special interest crowd. Others in power believe what they want to believe, and do not seek out facts – they will not challenge those who they know are lying, they look for the easy way out. Texas Department of Criminal Justice and University of Texas Medical Branch have learned how to accommodate very, very well.
Themocracy