Disabled Issues

The West Memphis There are three young men, two of whom are in prison for life, one of whom is waiting on death row, who were accused of murdering three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas.

There is plenty of evidence to provide, at a minimum, reasonable doubt as to whether these young men committed these heinous acts.

In order to convict these young men, the police forced one of them, who is on the borderline of mental retardation, into confessing, by grilling him without a break for twelve hours. This confession is filled with numerous errors as to the crime itself and the crime scene, and should never have been accepted in a court of law, as it simply did not fit the forensic facts of the case.

Questionable police practices during the interrogation of this young man included his being given (and PASSING) a lie detector test, but being told that he had failed it. Recordings of the questioning show that what little testimony he gave that was correct was, in fact, led by the police.

The fact that the police coerced a confession out of a mentally disabled young person which resulted in one young man facing death and the other two with life in prison should cause alarm bells to ring throughout the disabled community. The fact that they did this at all should have all of society screaming for these convictions to be overturned.

To learn more about the WM3, please visit Learning_To_Fly's very informative lens, The West Memhis Three.

Three years ago I married an amazing guy, Sam. Sam is a widower with four sons who, at the time of our marriage, were 5, 8, 11 and 14. Currently they are 9, 12, 14 and 17. (Two just had birthdays and two have birthdays upcoming, so thus the strangeness in age differences.) One of our sons lives with his dead mother's parents. The three younger boys live with Sam and I.

Sean, Ian and Evan all have pretty severe ADHD. And not one of them is medicated for it. They were, until we stopped getting medicaid for them because we didn't want the government interfering and telling us we had to give our kids amphetamines. This is also a primary reason we homeschool the boys. Well, that, and they're several grade levels ahead of age-group, and were bored stiff. And then there's the Asperger's Syndrome.

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I have severe, crippling osteo-arthritis, diabetes, a progressive back injury, and hypothyroidism. As a result of this my mobility has decreased over the years since I was 17, when I was severely injured in a car wreck that started this whole mess.

For the first few years after the wreck, I was fine. The occasional backache, the occasional knee twinge, but I was able to work a demanding job as a waitress and get up the stairs to my fifth floor walkup apartment.

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Disabled people are often thought to be incapable of participating in athletic activity. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Whatever your disability, whether physical or developmental, there is a sporting venue for you.

It goes without saying, but I will say it anyways, that before beginning any sort of sporting activity or physical fitness program, you should speak to your doctor.

Perhaps the most well known sporting events for disabled persons...

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