Accidental Felons: And Then They Came For Us

Daniel Horne
Fat Bellied Laughing Buddha (2009)
ISBN 9780982063408
Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (8/09)


“What happened? I asked.

“You crossed the road sir and hit another car head on. Sir, have you been drinking?”

Daniel Horne and his wife Becky were getting settled in their new home in the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona, where Dan was employed as chief financial officer by a defense contractor in nearby Mesa.

Unexplained blackouts, insomnia, an extended happy hour, and an automobile accident are just the beginning of the problems which faced Daniel Horne as he tangled with Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas of Maricopa County, Arizona.  “Accidental Felons” is Horne’s story.

Charged with drunk driving and aggravated assault Dan was considered a violent felon in Maricopa County. After months of waiting and after paying thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees Dan was given the option of plea bargaining or pleading guilty to the one charge of drunk a driving. If he chose to plea bargain the aggravated assault charge would be dropped. He would then be under the one year mandatory minimum sentence law where he would be locked up in the county jail. His other option was a jury trial with the possibility of getting a prison sentence of up to thirty years if the jury found him guilty.

Even after learning he was being charged with a felony and the horrible conditions of Sheriff Arpaio’s notorious Tent City, Dan chose to plea bargain for the sake of his young family. He relates the experiences of acclimating to life in jail: sleep deprivation, being exhausted to the point of mental and physical collapse, drained to a level where his brain would not function and results of disregarded illness. He tells the stories of fellow inmates, of the injustice of their sentences, of the abuse and mistreatment of the detention officers, and of exposure to the extremes of the hot and cold temperatures with the minimum of consideration for the prisoner.

Dan describes how inhumane treatment of the prisoner, a politically manufactured violence, and a normal human response are used to create public fear to create a fiction for the need of more laws and to reinforce the importance of harsher sentencing guidelines. He maintains that by incarcerating large numbers of victims through mandated minimum sentence laws, unemployment statistics are reduced which mislead the true state of the economy.

Horne writes with intensity and passion as he tells of strained family and marriage relationships as families and loved ones of prisoners become the victims and suffer the most. They are the ones who become “accidental felons.”

“Accidental Felons” by Daniel Horne is written as a wake-up call to Americans. Horne passionately informs the reader of the abuse within the criminal justice system. The book is a call for the reader to join in an effort to break the chains of injustice and to expose political exploitation and the unfair practices which undermine our individual freedom.

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