He was guilty; so was the Maine Department of Corrections

Richard Stahursky is serving a life sentence due to a series of compounding factors, including a severely abusive childhood, untreated mental illness, and repeated failures by the criminal justice system to provide effective legal counsel and necessary mental healthcare. His story is told here by his fiancée, Arimela.

A man in chains converses with a woman by William Hamilton (London, 1751–1801).

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” 

As I read a letter from my fiancé Richard, with one of his favorite Oscar Wilde quotes, I ask myself: aren’t we all sinners? Another question pops into my mind: what’s the price of justice? Sometimes, I’m afraid the answer is a life. More specifically, our life. 

Richard Stahursky has been my fiancé for the past four-and-a-half years. He is my rock and my world. Richard was born in Connecticut to an extremely violent and abusive family. His mother, Virginia, had one other child, his half sister Dawn. He never knew who his father was. Both children were born out of wedlock. At age four, Richard’s life drastically changed when he met Frank Clements, also known as Butchy, who married his mother in 1986, becoming his step-father. 

Butchy was a drug addict and an alcoholic. When Richard would come home from school, he’d find his stepfather snorting cocaine on the table with his friends. He would savagely beat Richard, Dawn and their mother everyday. He taught him how to shoot heroin. For Christmas he sold their toys to buy drugs, while kicking both children out on the cold streets. He would lock Richard up in the shed for hours a day, an early taste of the solitary confinement he’d later be condemned to as an adult. When he asked his mother why she never stopped him, she would make excuses for him, “well, next time you need to listen to Frank and do better.” 

Richard’s mother never once contacted child protective services or any authority for help for her children’s dire situation. Not once did she take her children to a mental health professional. Adoption was out of the question, and she also refused to allow her older brother to take care of her children. At 12 years old Richard was kicked out of the house. At age 15, he was sent to Connecticut Junior Republic, a place where troubled teenagers would go to learn a trade and get an education. Richard dreaded returning home. His sister Dawn had left the house as a teenager as well. 

On the streets, Richard’s only means of survival was crime. By age 20 he was the father of two boys, both born to different mothers. He moved from Connecticut to Maine, hoping to start fresh. Richard  loved spending his free time bonding with his youngest son. Richard has not seen his first son since 2010, nor his second son since 2002, who he has a granddaughter through that he has never met. He says that, in hindsight, having children as a teenager was one of the hardest things he has ever had to do. He was a kid raising kids, trying to be the father he never had. 

In 2002, at age 23, while at a convenience store with Timothy, an acquaintance he hadn’t known for long, Richard’s life would change dramatically. Timothy had decided they were robbing the store, without ever actually telling Richard about his plan. Although no one came out injured, and Richard didn’t participate, he was arrested and charged with federal and state crimes. 

Confident in his innocence, he wanted to fight the charges. However, his attorney, who was assigned to him by the court, pressured him into taking a plea deal, saying he would receive a much harsher sentence otherwise. He received 19 years and 7 months of federal time and 8 years of state time, for a total of 28 years, all for a crime he was unwittingly thrust into. That day, Richard did not return home to his three-and-a-half year old son. He never even got to explain why he wouldn’t be coming home again. Timothy cooperated with authorities in exchange for a much more lenient sentence, and was later released. 

The only one who was there for Richard throughout his life was his sister Dawn. She was more of a mother to him than his actual mother. But that all changed on January 21st, 2003, when Dawn died of ovarian cancer at age 25. Richard wasn’t able to say goodbye to her, as by the time his family told him she was severely sick, she had already slipped into a coma. Without Richard being consulted, Dawn was taken off of life support. In a way, Richard felt like the plug had also been pulled on his will to live. He wasn’t allowed to attend his sister’s funeral. He felt as if he had nothing to live for. His two children were kept from him, his sister was gone, and the rest of his family had no sympathy for him.

It was around this time Richard learned that his stepfather had sexually abused Dawn for years. This revelation, coupled with his Dawn’s death, sent Richard into a state of mental anguish that lead to self harm, suicide attempts, violence, and solitary confinement. Dawn never told Richard because out of fear he would be punished for it. Even still, he felt an unbearable guilt, convinced he could have protected his sister from their step-father’s abuse, had he just known. 

Richard began taking his anger and despair out on prisoners who had been convicted of sex crimes, particularly those whose victims were children. In doing so, he felt as though he was saving his sister and others. During his time at Maine State Prison, Richard spent years in solitary confinement. While confined, he would self harm by slashing his arms down to the bone, and then use the blood to write on his window. 

When does a man stop feeling like a man? For Richard the answer is when he feels like an animal. “An animal among other animals,” as was recorded in a documentary about solitary confinement filmed at the Maine State Prison between 2013 and 2016. 

The system justified Richard’s subjection to solitary confinement by citing his violent history, without acknowledging that his violent incidents were the result of their refusal to give him the help he needed, for problems stemming from the conditions they created. Richard has taken accountability for everything in his life, but the truth is, his violence was and is a desperate cry for help. Even the attorney who pressured him into pleading guilty admitted that Richard should be in a mental health institution, not prison.

In 2014, after years in isolation, Richard was thrown into general population with not a bit of help readjusting. He was disoriented, stressed out, and paranoid. Richard was given a job cleaning hallways and doing other prisoners’ laundry. Even though he shouldn’t have been, he was given access to tools such as screwdrivers, paint rollers, and other sharp objects despite his history. Richard was eventually fired from this job based on false accusations made by another prisoner. He later found out he had been doing the laundry of Micah Boland, a man convicted of sexually assaulting a 4 year old girl. 

During renovations of his pod, Richard was temporarily placed in a pod with sex offenders, despite his warning that he may become violent if housed among them. Although he begged and pleaded, and although they knew about his history of violence towards sex offenders, they did not listen. Richard found himself face-to-face with Micah Boland, and when Richard asked him about his crime, Boland admitted to it, saying he felt enticed by his victim. Richard, who had not been taking his prescribed mood stabilizers, thought of his sister, blacked out, and began stabbing Boland repeatedly. His intention was to teach him a lesson, not to kill him. Although two officers could hear the incident happening, they did not intervene, and instead called for backup. No one arrived at the scene until 19 minutes later. 

Richard, once again, could not afford an attorney, and was thus appointed one, Phil Cohen. Richard wanted to go to trial, but Cohen refused, saying it was too much work and he had no defense. But he did have a defense: Richard’s severely abusive childhood and involvement with the justice system had given him mental health conditions that continue to go untreated. Instead of arguing on Richard’s behalf, Cohen asked the court to impose a 35 year sentence, and allowed Richard to write and read an incendiary letter in court. 

An attorney’s job is to protect their client’s interests at all costs. Cohen, just like Richard’s first attorney, failed to do so. The judge gave him a life sentence in 2015. Cohen then promised Richard he was going to file an appeal and get him resentenced, a process he said would take years. Little did Richard know that in Maine an appeal has to be filed within 21 days. Cohen did know this, but he soon disappeared. Neither Cohen nor his law firm ever responded to Richard’s years worth of letters inquiring about the status of his appeal.

After I came into Richard’s life, I found out that Cohen had died in 2020, without Richard being notified. Immediately, Richard started researching cases. Since Richard still could not afford an attorney, and in Maine there is no right to court appointed attorneys for post-conviction, he filed a prose appeal. Richard argued he should be resentenced to 30 years, but the court dismissed the appeal for being past the 21 day mark. Richard asked the court to reconsider, as he was never informed of Cohen’s passing and had spent years under the impression that he was filing for an appeal. The court said it was out of their hands. 

This is the state of the criminal justice system in Maine. The courts leave you to fend for yourselves. Like many other prisoners, Richard has been the victim of a system that seeks to punish those who need help. Redemption is only be afforded to those deemed worthy. Who determines that worth? Aren’t we all worthy of a second chance?

Richard has been harshly judged and dismissed throughout his life by people that don’t even know him and don’t care to.But the founder of Society Impact, Mr. Frank Zarro, has listened to our story and offered to assist us in Richard’s case. When I spoke to Frank, I finally felt heard. I felt finally like Richard’s story mattered. What people don’t realize is that by loving him, I’m serving a life sentence, too. But I’m fighting for our freedom. 

About the author:

Arimela Shima is 30 years old and has been engaged to Richard Stahursky for four-and-a-half years. Richard was sentenced in Maine and later transferred to New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey in 2016. Born in Albania, she currently resides in Italy, where her parents moved to when she was five. She has a bachelor’s degree in law with a minor in criminology from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. During her studies, she decided to reach out to Richard to understand the impact of incarceration on real people. Their relationship blossomed from there. They didn’t predict back then that their lives would forever change. Her goal is to get justice for her fiancé Richard, to get him a second chance at life. She describes herself as “relentless, kind and fierce.”

Postscript:

Richard’s case presents a perfect storm of what happens when society punishes mental illness, neglect and deprivation with long prison sentences, when state governments deny low income criminal defendants constitutionally mandated effective assistance of conflict free counsel, when state correctional officials exacerbate and cause mental health complications with the imposition of cruel and unusual solitary confinement sanctions, and when state corrections officials remain unaccountable and eliminate the “care” from the “care, custody and control” mandate corrections officials are called upon to exercise. Richard was on the receiving end of cumulative denials of effective assistance of counsel. Richard and his sister were victims of early childhood abuse that never ended. He was subjected to extremely cruel, long term isolation, and then left without the necessary care and attention he needed to ensure the safety of others and himself. 

Maine does not have a public defense system. And no, the present attempts to rectify this unthinkable and blatant violation of core Sixth Amendment mandates by phasing in“pop up” defenders offices in parts of the state, and the continued reliance on “gig lawyers”, attorneys selected on an ad hoc basis to represent low income people, do not even come close to meeting constitutionally mandated requirements. Maine does not have parole, and continues to incarcerate people at alarming rates, to the point where they literally do not have enough beds to assign to prisoners entering the state system. Prison health and mental health services are sparse and inadequate, and specialized care is replaced with excessive and cruel isolation in solitary confinement.   

Richard’s case is tragic, and no rational person would even attempt to justify the violence that led to it. By the same standard, no reasonable view of the facts and circumstances in this case could ignore the state's complicity in what resulted. Yes, this is a very unattractive case, so much so that the three Maine post-conviction lawyers we contacted to consider interviewing Richard to potentially represent him never even replied. But every case is worthy of effective representation. John Adams represented the British soldiers who fired on colonists in Boston, and almost lost his law practice over it. But in his summation to the jury at the end of the case, he told the court that “facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” That did not happen in Richard’s case, and to this very day lawyers, and even some justice reform advocates, do not want to get involved.  

Former United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy once said that it was the role of the judiciary “impose order on a disordered reality.” Richard was born into a disordered reality. Lawyers take an oath to zealously defend their clients, but Richard’s first lawyer pressured him to plead to a crime he did not commit, with the false promise of a short sentence. Richard’s second lawyer, likewise, insisted on a plea, also with a false promise of a shorter sentence, and brought none of Richard’s childhood, the system’s exacerbation of the issues stemming from it, nor the circumstances surrounding the prison murder to the sentencing judge’s attention. Instead, with a shrug of the shoulders, the lawyer allowed Richard to read aloud a ranting letter directed to the judge, decrying the system and his own fate. The judge here, rather than to create order out of the obvious disorder in Richard’s life, and the system itself, compounded the disorder by sentencing him to life with no hope to ever be free again, even when he has managed to rehabilitate himself. 

Arimela and Richard have no illusions about the case, nor the odds that Richard can prevail on an ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing motion and have a second chance to explain himself to the sentencing judge. But they have hope, and they have love, and in the end that may just be enough. And it was in a scene from Shawshank Redemption, in a horrific Maine prison no less, where Andy Dufresne told his fellow prisoner, “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”