The Long, Newsless Wait

I apologize for not updating sooner, but we are now going into that period that occurs in most legal cases after all the initial hoopla, which is spent mostly just sitting around twiddling your thumbs and waiting for something to happen--the period between first-arrest publicity and trial. The ball is now in the government's court, which is where they like it.

This is generally a time when prisoners tend to disappear within the system, as the short American attention span kicks in and people wander off in search of new entertainment or the latest sensation. We need to make sure that doesn't happen with Ed Steele. We need to keep on trying to write to him even if they are sending the bulk of his mail back without adequate excuse or explanation.

Will there actually be a trial in August? We don't know yet.

Will Ed Steele crack and cop a plea, on some excuse of "sparing his family the ordeal of a trial?" I personally think he'd be stupid to do so. He is a 65 year old man with a serious heart condition. Any prison sentence is a death sentence for him, and even if he makes it through five years or whatever he might get on a plea bargain, he will come out of prison at age 70 with nothing but a Salvation Army homeless shelter staring him in the face, since the government has seized all his property and assets all ready.

Ed Steele's whole life has been laid in ruins by the government of the United States, motivated so far as I can see out of nothing more than pure vindictive personal hatred because he once dared to defend Aryan Nations.

His only hope for salvaging anything at all--as terribly, terribly slim as that is--is outright vindication in the courtroom. The minute he is pressured into uttering the word "guilty" to a single charge, Edgar Steele is done. He might as well be lying in his grave from then on, even if the feds do keep his still-shuffling empty shell in some box somewhere for a few years.

That's the question now: will whatever they're doing to Ed Steele in there in the Spokane County Jail break him?