like, i wasn t crying or anything, i just told him, stop, that s enough. i ve been here, what, seven months. enough is enough. two months later, william bernard would no longer have to worry about defending himself in jail. his judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity. but the legal definition is different than it sounds. the judge says he was competent to stand trial but not in a proper state of mind on the night he had the conflict with his father that led to his arrest. he was remanded to the state department of health, who will monitor him and he must report to the court every six months for the same period of time he would have gotten in prison had he been convicted. in bernard s case, that s 20 years.
nonconfrontational as much as possible. it s not what i prefer, but, unfortunately, i m put in i m put into a situation that there s really not too much i can do. from what i understand, inmate rivera and inmate polanco believed inmate bernard was working with some sort of police agency. since they thought he was snitching, they decided to assault him. both the inmates who attacked bernard were placed in disciplinary segregation. one of them, rafael riviera, says bernard, whose nickname is whitey, had it coming. let me tell you something. whitey don t have no friends. because he s a [ bleep ] snitch. working for the police. because he working for the police, every spot that he s going, he going to get [ bleep ] up. and i bet you that [ bleep ] is going to happen. people don t play no game. whoever is [ bleep ] with us,
so you re done. good to go. all right. i felt like just cooperating. i don t know. just seemed like the better thing to do at the time. my bunky. i m done with him. we can t associate anymore. while battaglia s relationships in jail might have landed him in segregation, william bernard s have resulted in violence. he was recently assaulted in his housing unit. what happened was an inmate polanco and rivera assaulted inmate bernard as he walked up the stairs. they got him at the first couple stairs. bernard was already on the ground. definitely was out of it. once it was called out, we were probably inside less than a minute after the fight was called out. bernard was laying on or sitting on the ground, looked dazed. once the officer saw it, they both ran away. gomez polanco ran to a cell that wasn t his, inmate rivera ran to his cell. it was a little chaotic. for the most part i tried to be
life inside the bergen county jail has been tough enough for william bernard. he says fights and harassment by other inmates has caused his stutter to worsen and sent him into panic attacks. he believes frequent visits to medical for anxiety treatments have led some inmates to believe he s an informant. now charged with threatening to kill his father and assaulting the police officers who came to arrest him, he s consumed by thoughts of spending up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. i m just afraid my father will get on the stand and testify against me. i think that would be a really strong point in a case, especially with a jury. and just just that thought alone that i can get a ridiculous amount of time for something that i didn t do really, really just that thought throws me almost completely over over the edge.
heart, but nick gets it done. some people, i think, i m like, you know, he s a good guy, just let him go with that. but nick likes to charge everybody for everything. no matter what it is. something simple, give me a snack. sometimes i don t mind doing favors. but nick s good about it, though. we re going to go broke if we don t don t charge for everything. got to look out for me. got to make money. in the end, it s jail, so it s all about me. battaglia got his new position when the inmate who held it prior to him got into trouble. i replaced bernard. he got caught tattooing. they moved him to s-2 now. william bernard had already given himself a new hairstyle. he got into trouble when staff also noticed a freshly made inmate tattoo on his wrist. since tattooing violates jail rules, bernard is confined to a