Orange County sheriff lets jail gangs control bail bond referrals, claim alleges

Three bondsmen say their businesses are losing $100 million a year because of the scheme, in which inmates are coerced to use certain agencies.

By Christine Hanley

February 28, 2009

Three veteran bail bond agents have filed a legal claim against Orange County alleging that the Sheriff’s Department allows gangs inside the jails to steer inmates to certain bail companies in exchange for kickbacks to the gangs.

In their claim, typically a first step to a lawsuit, the agents estimate that their businesses are losing $100 million a year because of the scheme, which is known in law enforcement circles as “capping.”

“It’s impacting my business and there’s illegal activities going on inside the jails . . . to the detriment to the people who are playing by the rules,” Bob Drake, one of the bondsmen who filed the claim, said Friday. “We suspect several companies. I don’t know the exact number. That’s not as important as the Sheriff’s Department not going after and stopping the activity from occurring in the jails.”

According to the bondsmen’s attorney, Richard P. Herman, former Sheriff Michael S. Carona allowed his top lieutenant, former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo, to initiate the scheme, and current Sheriff Sandra Hutchens has allowed it to continue.

In a statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it is in regular contact with leaders of the bail bond industry and will review the claims to determine if an investigation is warranted.

“If we are made aware of any illegal activity in our jails, we will take all appropriate action to see that it is stopped and those responsible are prosecuted,” the statement reads.

SOURCE: LA TIMES

For teens in prison, life sentence means no parole

By Meg Laughlin, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, March 1, 2009

The retired judge lives in the deep woods southeast of Tampa, a quarter-mile down a narrow dirt road. Late in the afternoon, J. Rogers Padgett is brooding on how much he misses the courtroom.

He’s heard hundreds upon hundreds of cases over the years, so it’s a long shot when he’s asked if he recalls an armed robbery case from eight years ago. The defendant was a kid named Kenneth Young.

Yes, the judge says, he remembers it well. Young was all of 14 when he helped a 25-year-old crack dealer pull armed robberies of hotels around Tampa Bay. Young would take down the video surveillance cameras and grab the cash while the boss held a gun on the clerks and barked orders. No shots were ever fired.

Padgett remembers the address of one of the hotels, the pile of video cameras in the back seat of the crack dealer’s car when he and Young were arrested, Young’s annoying courtroom behavior as he tried to avoid trial. And he remembers sentencing Young to life in prison.

What he does not remember is that it was life in prison with no chance of ever getting out. Padgett ruminates on it a minute and volunteers something extraordinary:

He says he made a mistake. He never meant to send Young away forever.

“I didn’t think when I gave Kenneth Young life that it was life without parole,” said Padgett. “At this point, I’d sign a clemency petition for him to be considered for release.”

The judge’s words are like manna from heaven when they are relayed to Young’s attorney, Paolo Annino.

A law professor at Florida State University’s Public Interest Law Center, Annino and some of his students have crafted a legislative bill that could help Young and about 300 more Florida inmates who got life or hefty sentences when they were kids.

Called the Second Chance Act for Children in Prison of 2009, the bill says that those who were 15 or younger and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison without parole should be considered for release if they’ve committed no other crime, shown remorse, stayed out of trouble in prison and participated in educational programs.

Kenneth Young is their poster child.

“Remember,” Annino says, “this bill is for inmates like Kenneth to be considered for release, not necessarily released.”

The bill favors children who were “an accomplice to the offense or a relatively minor participant … or acting under extreme duress or domination of another person.”

The testimony in Young’s case made it clear that the crack dealer was running the show, with Young in a subservient role. For his part in the robberies, Young got $50 cash, a pair of Air Jordans and a six-pack of Heineken.

Former hotel night clerk Michael Traupmann told the St. Petersburg Times that it always bothered him that “the boy” got such a harsh sentence. “He was pretty harmless,” said Traupmann. “If I could help him, I would.”

Now, so would Padgett.

• • •

A few weeks ago, as the sun set behind oaks in the judge’s yard, he said that when he came to the bench in the 1970s, a life sentence didn’t necessarily mean life. Inmates routinely were granted early release. It was that way through the ’80s.

Padgett said he knew that a change in the ’90s meant that a life sentence for first-degree murder and sexual battery truly meant life. But he said he thought it was for capital crimes only; he didn’t realize it applied when he sentenced Young to life for armed robbery.

“I didn’t know he was stuck,” the judge said. “I thought corrections officials had the latitude to look at his record down the road and let him out if he did well in prison, which is how it should be.”

As it turns out, Young has done well in prison. In eight years, he has stayed out of trouble, cared for sick inmates and taken every class available to him.

Sgt. Kimberly Engleking at Lake Correctional Institution, where Young is incarcerated, described him as “well-behaved, polite, quiet and respectful — never a problem.”

The only negative mark in his prison file came on a Sunday morning two years ago, when he didn’t make his bed one time. He said he didn’t think he was required to on a weekend and was not disciplined.

Annino said he can understand how Padgett missed the change in sentencing guidelines that affected Young. “There wasn’t a lot of education going on about parole being abolished for crimes that weren’t capital crimes,” he said.

“But it takes someone with Padgett’s character to admit what he didn’t know.”

• • •

The Florida Legislature is conservative, not customarily generous with prison inmates of any age.

The bill Annino and his law students were pushing died in a legislative committee last year. But Annino says increased support of Republicans makes him think the bill will fare better this year.

The Senate sponsor is Jim King, a former Senate president and one-time House GOP leader who knows how to get things done in the Legislature.

Serving on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee the past few years, King says he’s been bothered by several laws that inhibit the rehabilitation of inmates. He says the bill has a good chance to pass because many lawmakers feel the current system wastes lives.

“A kid under 15 who has been sent to prison could and probably would be a totally different person than they were when they first got sentenced,” King said. “This would give them a shot at living a normal life.”

The House sponsor is Mike Weinstein, a freshman Republican who has been a prosecutor in Jacksonville for 15 years.

Weinstein says he “thought deeply about it” before he decided to get behind the bill. What made him decide to commit to it was the age of the kids. “If we can’t rehabilitate a percentage of kids who were 15 or younger when they committed a crime, we have to ask ourselves if we can rehabilitate anyone,” he said.

The bill says that if adolescent offenders are granted parole, they have to complete a two-year re-entry program before being fully released.

Annino and his law students are also working on a clemency petition for Young.

“In a lot of ways, prison has been good for me,” Young wrote in a letter a few months ago. “As a kid locked up with a bunch of adult men, I quickly learned what it feels like to be a victim, which made me really understand how the hotel victims felt.”

• • •

When Young was to be sentenced for armed robbery in 2001, prosecutor Curtis Allen told Padgett that Young could be sentenced anywhere from 51 months to life. Allen asked for life.

Young’s attorney, Mark Reinhold, asked Padgett to sentence Young as a juvenile, to seven years, because of his age, because he had no prior criminal history and because of his secondary role.

Padgett sided with the prosecutor. “I feel you’re dangerous,” he told Young. “I’m going to take you out of circulation for the rest of your natural life.”

Reinhold says that as he and Young left the courtroom, his client asked him what that meant. “I had to tell him he was going to die in prison,” Reinhold says, “which made him scream and cry like the child he was.”

Now, Padgett says he was talking tough that day to scare Young, but he didn’t think he was sending him away to die in prison. He hopes either the legislative bill or a clemency hearing will give Young a second chance.

Said the judge: “Just tell me where to sign.”

SOURCE:TAMPABAY.COM

Prison Nation

Extreme overcrowding in California’s prison system, the nation’s largest, led a panel of three federal judges in early February to call for reducing the state’s prison population by a third. The prison system holds twice the number it was designed for, with tiered bunks filling gyms and classrooms. The judges were especially alarmed by the effects of the crowding, which has led to deterioration in mental and physical health care, preventable deaths and suicides at the rate of one a month—a situation so dire they called it a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. A primary cause of the crowding is mandatory minimum sentencing policies, which essentially tie judges’ hands in meting out sentences, especially regarding drug offenses, which are common. California has made extensive use of such sentences and also the so-called “three strikes laws,” which require sentences of 25 years to life for third-time felony offenders, no matter what the third offense is.

California’s incarceration problems, however, are simply outsized reflections of what is happening around the country. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in December that the nation’s prison population continues to rise, with almost 2.5 million people behind bars. Many prisons are managed privately by groups like the Corrections Corporation of America. In the United States the overall cost of incarceration exceeds $60 billion a year.

Sentencing practices in Europe, by contrast, tend to be far more conducive to rehabilitation. In Norway, for example, few prisoners serve more than 14 years, even for such a serious crime as murder. In many cases prisoners receive weekend parole after they have served seven years. This allows them to maintain contact with their families, which has long been recognized as a key factor in lowering recidivism rates. In Italy, after serving 10 years a prisoner may be permitted to work in the community during the day.

The situation of some children in correctional facilities in the United States also cries out for change. Prosecuted as adults, many children as young as 13 are serving life sentences in adult facilities, where abuse is common. A related issue concerns an increase in the number of incarcerated parents. According to the nonprofit Sentencing Project, 1.7 million children have a parent in prison, an increase of over 80 percent since 1981. Most such parents live in prisons that are more than 100 miles from their homes, and as a consequence half never receive visits from their children. That situation is counterproductive, since strong family and community relationships increase the chances of a successful transition back into the community. (When those with felony drug convictions are eventually paroled, their transition is made still more difficult because they are banned specifically from receiving welfare and food stamps.)

The judges in California suggest sensible steps to reduce prison crowding without endangering public safety. One is to improve the parole procedures that currently contribute to the high rates of recidivism. In California and other states, one in three prisoners released on parole is incarcerated again within three years because of inadequate supportive planning. Also, sentences should be shortened for nonviolent offenders. And more offenders ought to be enrolled in local programs, like addiction-control programs, that would keep them close to their communities. Steps like these could remove from the United States its embarrassing title as world leader in the percentage of its population behind bars.

A few states have already taken steps in the right direction. A bipartisan group of legislators in Virginia, for instance, has suggested releasing early some nonviolent offenders, including those convicted of drug possession, who would be sent to mandatory treatment programs early in their sentences rather than toward the end. Lawmakers in Washington State allow early release for up to half of all nonviolent offenders.

Although it might be tempting in a time of rising unemployment for states to build more prisons, such an approach is no remedy. Ryan King, a policy analyst at the Sentencing Project, told America that the problems at the root of the overcrowding—hasty parole revocations, mandatory sentence laws and lack of re-entry planning—would remain in an expanded prison system, with the same nonviolent offenders cycling through and filling the prisons. What is needed is a humane and cost-effective restructuring of key aspects of the criminal justice system, like those suggested by the California judges. State legislators can and should make structural changes that would reduce the severe overcrowding in prison facilities around the country. Addressing draconian sentencing policies would be a good place to start.

SOURCE: AMERICA|THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY

Most prison inmates with HIV do not receive appropriate treatment immediately following release

Approximately 80 percent of HIV-infected Texas prison inmates did not fill an initial prescription for antiretroviral therapy within 30 days of their release from prison, potentially increasing their risk for harmful health consequences because of an interruption of treatment, according to a study in the February 25 issue of JAMA.

“The U.S. prison system has become an important front in the effort to treat and control the spread of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, serving as the principal screening and treatment venue for thousands of individuals with or at high risk for HIV infection who have limited access to community-based health care. Many inmates are offered HIV testing for the first time while incarcerated, and three-quarters of inmates with HIV infection initiate treatment during incarceration,” the authors write.

Because the majority of former inmates are without private or public health insurance for the first several months after release, accessing antiretroviral therapy (ART) in a timely manner represents a challenge. “Those who discontinue ART at this time are at increased risk of developing a higher viral burden, resulting in greater infectiousness and higher levels of drug resistance, potentially creating reservoirs of drug-resistant HIV in the general community,” they add. The extent to which HIV-infected inmates experience ART interruption following release from prison is unknown.

Jacques Baillargeon, Ph.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and colleagues conducted a study in the nation’s largest state prison system to determine the proportion of HIV-infected inmates who filled a prescription for ART medication within 60 days following their release from prison. The study included all 2,115 HIV-infected inmates released from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison system between January 2004 and December 2007 who were receiving ART before release.

Among the entire study group, an initial prescription for ART medication was filled by 115 (5.4 percent) of the former inmates within 10 days of release, by 375 (17.7 percent) within 30 days, and by 634 (30.0 percent) within 60 days. The authors found that Hispanic and African American inmates were less likely to fill a prescription within 10 days and 30 days compared with non-Hispanic whites. Inmates with an undetectable viral load were more likely to fill a prescription than inmates with a detectable viral load at release. Inmates released on parole were more likely to fill a prescription within 30 days and 60 days than inmates with a standard, unsupervised release. Inmates who received formal assistance in completing an AIDS Drug Assistance Program application were more likely to fill a prescription than inmates who received no such assistance.

“In this 4-year study of HIV-infected inmates released from the nation’s largest state prison system, we found that only 5 percent of released inmates filled a prescription for ART medications soon enough (i.e., within 10 days after release) to avoid treatment interruption,” the authors write. In all of the subgroups examined, at least 90 percent of the former inmates experienced a treatment interruption; more than 70 percent had a treatment interruption that lasted at least 30 days, and more than 60 percent had a treatment interruption that lasted at least 60 days.

“These exceedingly high rates of treatment interruption suggest that most inmates face significant administrative, socioeconomic, or personal barriers to accessing ART when they return to their communities. Future prospective and in-depth qualitative studies are needed to more rigorously examine these barriers. Adequately addressing a public health crisis of this scale and complexity will require carefully coordinated efforts between academic institutions, the criminal justice system, and public health agencies,” the researchers write. “In particular, greater coordination between state and local agencies, health care institutions, and community-based organizations is needed to reduce this high rate of treatment interruption among newly released inmates.”

Source: JAMA and Archives Journals

The traps of early release

As California faces an order to reduce its prison population by more than 55,000, an expert talks about what the state should do before opening the cell doors.

February 22, 2009

Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges issued a tentative ruling that California must reduce its state prison population by more than 55,000 to relieve intense overcrowding and poor medical and mental health care. If the order holds, the state will have to figure out how to release prisoners on a scale never before seen.Joan Petersilia, professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine and the author of “When Prisoners Come Home,” spoke about the ruling and its potential effects with Opinion page contributor Sara Catania. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Is there a precedent for an early release of this magnitude? Never on the scale we’re talking about here. The most dramatic example occurred in Illinois in the 1980s, when the state released 1,200 people early. Did crime increase as a result? No, but there are crucial differences in the circumstances of the Illinois release and the proposed California release. In Illinois, the total number of prisoners released was a fraction of what we’re looking at for California. The Illinois numbers were low enough that if all the released prisoners were rearrested, it probably wouldn’t affect the state’s overall reported crime rate. Illinois also had some ability to limit releases to lower-level offenders. Do you think early release can work in California? I’m in favor of early release at a lesser level. I think we could safely release 15,000 to 18,000 prisoners. That would include very low-level technical parole violators, the elderly and low-level drug offenders. Nearly everyone who has studied this issue recommends removing less serious parole violators from state prisons. How does the poor economy affect early release? In two primary ways. First of all, whether you are conservative or liberal, everyone agrees that we don’t want to be spending $46,000 a year to house a prisoner who represents no public safety risk when it takes about $12,000 a year to fund a really good community-based program for that person. Unfortunately, the services these former prisoners would need revolve primarily around substance-abuse treatment, and those are exactly the programs that are being cut. Limited early release is a good idea, but it could not be happening at a worse time. Just opening up prison doors and releasing 55,000 prisoners with no preparation is harsh to the offender and dangerous to the public. Is there an early release approach that might mitigate the fallout? Yes. In 1994, California’s Legislature created the Community-Based Punishment Act. It was never funded, but now people are talking about reactivating it. Under the act, if you’ve got prison-bound parole violators and you’re willing to keep them locally rather than sending them to state prison, you get a kickback from the state to pay for programs to ease their reentry into society. This approach could include short-term incarceration, intensive supervision, house arrest with electronic monitoring, enrollment in a work-release program, day reporting and mandatory substance-abuse treatment. In our prisons, the overcrowding crisis is caused by parole violators returning to prison. Every year, we send some 70,000 parolees back to prison, about 30,000 of those from L.A. County alone. Most serve two to three months. Everybody knows this revolving door does not protect the public and in fact puts it at greater risk. These are the lower-level people who may have been in drug treatment, may have found a job and housing. When you send them back to prison, you break those connections and destabilize them. A few months later, they’re back on the street and expected to start all over again. You recommend a far more limited early release than the one being proposed. Is it possible to do the release right with four times as many prisoners than you recommend? No, not with the way California currently operates its prison and parole system. If we start releasing prisoners in such high numbers, those who are released are bound to include prisoners with lengthy criminal histories and violence in their backgrounds. The best way we can reduce the risk these more serious prisoners represent is to transfer them from prison to intensive residential reentry facilities, or perhaps to electronic monitoring and house arrest. Once there, parole agents and community providers would need to closely monitor the prisoners’ behavior and try to interest them in rehabilitation and work training. Simply releasing this larger group of prisoners without the necessary housing and services is asking for more crime. Is anyone talking about how to pay for the community approach, or are already overworked probation and parole officers just going to have bigger caseloads? There is a lot of discussion going on in Sacramento about how to fund “intermediate sanctions” to be used instead of sending someone back to prison. If a prisoner who violates parole, for example, no longer returns to prison but remains in the community, who is responsible for his surveillance and services? We can’t ignore their parole failures because often those failures are a signal that the parolee is slipping. Other states have used intermediate sanctions, such as those described in the Community-Based Punishment Act. But in order to employ this model, we have to provide money to counties to expand these types of intermediate sanctions. If we can transfer the state prisoner to a community-based program, we save money — and perhaps more important, provide services that might actually help the prisoner stay out of crime in the long run — which, of course, saves even more money. Even if early release went according to the best possible plan, there will still be the same number of cells and the same level of administration. Will there really be much in the way of savings inside prisons? No, we won’t see any cost savings immediately. If prisoners are released, the remaining prisoners will simply spread out so as to not be as crowded, thereby satisfying the court’s requirements. Of the $46,000 we spend a year to house a prisoner in California, $2,500 goes to food and clothing, $9,000 goes to healthcare and $2,000 goes toward education and employment training to prepare the inmate for release. That’s a total of $13,500 per prisoner. More than two-thirds of the cost of housing an inmate in California goes toward security and operations, making the overall cost of housing a prisoner in California the highest in the nation. There are no plans to close prisons any time soon, so the cost of running the prison system will remain rather unchanged for quite some time. If the early release order is enacted on the scale proposed, there is a risk of a high level of recidivism, which carries a hefty price tag. In the end, will any money be saved? The key to all of this — the real money — is in the California prisons, to the tune of $10 billion a year. If we’re to solve the state’s prison crisis, we’ve got to figure out how to shift some of that away from state prisons and into local programs. If we don’t, we’re setting the system up for failure. Without sufficient financial support, we’re going to release these people and they’re going to fail. You’ll wind up with another victim, plus the cost of the prisoner’s reincarceration. If we don’t do this right, all of these people will be back in prison. We will have saved in the short term, but the long-term consequences will be huge.

SOURCE: LA TIMES

What You Voted For . . . Marsy’s Law

By Sara Olson

In the 2008 election in the United States, when a vote for Barack Obama for president meant a vote for change and, for many people, a vote for hope, the voters of California delivered the victory to Obama and LWOP (life without parole) sentences to lifers in the state’s prisons. Amid all the media hoopla about electing the nation’s first African-American president and, in California, outlawing court-legalized gay marriage, few noticed the passage of Proposition 9, a.k.a. Marsy’s Law.

California has a huge prison industry. More than 170,000 prisoners (a little more than 150,000 per mainstream figures) reside in the state’s hidden-away hell holes, most built in rural areas where average citizens, meaning average voters, never go. There are two current court challenges to the incompetently managed business of locking up predominantly poor people of color. The feds must address prison crises because the state has refused to do anything about wretchedly overcrowded conditions and substandard medical care in the places where only the powerless go.

Marsy’s Law is a disaster for lifers who must face the reactionary state parole board (Board of Parole Hearings, or BPH) in order to secure a parole date. While few lifers were given parole dates before Marsy’s Law, now lifer paroles could well become a relic of the past.

A lifer must appear many times before the BPH before a date is granted. Next, a prisoner must wait for one hundred fifty days to find out whether or not whoever the current governor is will block it, an inherently politicized decision. In between parole denials inmates get rollovers. A rollover is the time between one parole hearing and the next. Before, rollovers were for one to two years. They could be given for five years if a prisoner was convicted of first or second degree murder but that was not usual. Marsy’s Law allows for rollovers of up to fifteen years.

Thus, a lifer can be sent to prison when in her early twenties. She has her first parole hearing at forty years old and she is rolled over for fifteen years. At fifty-five, she gets rolled over for fifteen years once again. True, Marsy’s law allows for rollovers from three to fifteen years, but prisoners and prison advocates know in which direction the pendulum swings.

The United States exports its mass incarceration policies and the commercial sales pitches that obscure these practices in plain sight to a world market. Isolation prisons and the policies followed within them in the U.S. have produced the gruesome operations of indiscriminate arrests of the innocent or guilty, extraordinary rendition and torture that are hallmarks of the War on Terror. California’s prison industry is the jewel of America’s prison business. While the U.S. has a thriving private industry, policies that lock up millions of its people are those of government, state and federal.

These policies encourage states to impose harsh penalties, chiefly via the War on Drugs, on greater and greater numbers of people. In California, prisons are isolated by location. Within them, prisoners are isolated by a hopelessness intrinsic in a system that is set up for a recidivism rate of 70 percent, with increasing numbers of LWOP sentences and lifer sentences that now, with Prop. 9 — Marsy’s Law, convert lifers to LWOP.

In November 2008, radio station KPFA in Berkeley (KFCF, 88.1 in Fresno) broadcast the program, “Without Walls.” Karen Shain from San Francisco’s Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and Keith Wattley from Oakland’s Uncommon Law, both attorneys, were interviewed about Marsy’s Law. They said that it’s a disaster for prisoners, especially lifers.

They pointed out that Prop. 9’s passage will affect rehabilitation programs in prisons for the worse. it eliminates hope and removes all incentive to rehabilitate. The potential for fifteen-year rollovers tells inmates’ families, “They’re never coming home.” It destroys family ties.

Shain and Wattley said that Marsy’s Law states that the Department of Corrections cannot reduce sentences or call for early release of prisoners to reduce overcrowding. Governor Schwarzenneger had floated early release as a possibility to deflect the federal court challenge to do something about unconstitutional levels of overcrowding in the state prisons. He never implemented it. He and the state legislators decided to increase bed capacity in existing prisons instead. Now, due to budget woes, no additional beds can be added. There’s no money but neither can any prisoner get an early release. The three-judge panel of the federal court is not bound by Prop. 9 restrictions. Its final decision, per Shain and Wattley, could be more far-reaching and costly to the state than if Schwarzenegger had had the courage to act preemptively.

Both Shain and Wattley noted that ordinary people need to begin to organize to act against the long-term effects of Marsy’s Law. It needs to be overturned. People will be sent to prison with no hope of release. Other countries do not do this to their citizens, particularly in such massive numbers. It is costly to taxpayers, it doesn’t make them safer and it is morally unredemptive. Prisoners’ families must do something.

In the lead-up to elections, Prop. 9 was presented as a victim’s rights law. It didn’t so much expand victim’s rights as it solidified them. It does require that a notice of parole hearings be sent to any victim of any felony for which the prisoner has been convicted, including any crime leading to the life term as well as any other felonies. It increases the number of victim’s affiliates permitted to attend parole consideration hearings, eliminating the previous requirement that representatives have a specified relationship to the victim of the crime.

Besides allowing the BPH to extend rollovers for as long as fifteen years, Prop. 9 sets strict standards in order to shorten the denial period. There must be “clear and convincing evidence” to prevent a judgment that fifteen years more of the prisoner’s life are necessary for public safety. If so decided, the Board can require a rollover of only three (highly unlikely) to five, seven, or ten years.

Prop. 9 limits parolees’ rights, too. According to a Fresno Bee (12-14-08) article, “A federal judge has blocked enforcement of portions of . . . Proposition 9 (that) amends the Penal Code to restrict or eliminate rights gained in a 14-year-old class-action lawsuit in Sacramento federal court.” Attorneys for parolees filed a motion to stop implementation of portions of Marsy’s Law, saying it “purports to eliminate nearly all due process rights of parolees and directly conflicts with the protections put in place by the injunction and established constitutional law.” Lawyers argued that California declared its intention “to immediately put into practice the parole revocation provisions of Proposition 9 despite 200 years of precedent that precludes such action.” The motion states that Prop 9 “eliminates a parolees’ guarantee of counsel except in narrow circumstances, eliminates the ability to confront certain witnesses at parole hearings, and restricts consideration of alternatives to prison.”

Marsy’s Law was bankrolled to the tune of five million dollars by high tech industry billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III. It was named for his sister Marsy, who was murdered years ago. Nicholas funded the television ads in the 2004 election that led to the defeat of Proposition 66, a three-strikes reform bill, that was winning until his admittedly deceptive ads turned the tide.

In spring 2008 Nicholas was indicted by a federal grand jury for backdating stock options. According to the Sentinel (all articles in the Sentinel are written by Keith Chandler), a newsletter published by Sanders & Associates in Sacramento, California:

• This is the largest scam among more than 200 companies whose options practices have come under legal scrutiny. (He) . . . is also accused of supplying customers with prostitutes and drugs and slipping Ecstasy into the drinks of executives without their knowledge. A second indictment accuses him of maintaining properties for the “purpose of using and distributing controlled substances” which he apparently called “party favors.” The indictment details Nicholas’ use and distribution of drugs, including coke and crank. (He) . . . is alleged to have used death threats and payoffs to conceal his activities. It is alleged that in 2002 he reached a $1-million settlement agreement with an unnamed employee who knew about his drug activities.

  On a flight to Las Vegas aboard a private plane, the indictment alleges Nicholas used and distributed drugs, “causing marijuana smoke to enter the cockpit and requiring the pilot flying the plane to put on an oxygen mask.”

  . . . (Assemblyman Todd) Spitzer . . . took nearly ($)5 million in donations to help pass Marsy’s Law (Prop. 9) while (state Senator George) Runner . . . (took) over a million bucks to fund the signature drive that put Prop. 6 (Safe Neighborhoods Act: Protect Victims, Stop Gangs and Street Crime. It was defeated.) on the ballot. Neither of these Initiatives would have made the ballot without Nicholas’ tainted money which almost completely financed both operations.

When a friend of mine went to her first documentation hearing before the BPH, she underwent a telling incident. The documentation hearing isn’t a date-setting hearing. It’s a lifer’s first appearance before a commissioner who explains the function of the Board and tells her what will be expected of her for actual parole consideration. The commissioner looked at her Central File. In it, he found a 115 which is a disciplinary write-up. He asked her, “What’s this?” He was very concerned. So was she. She had never gotten a 115. Suddenly, she noticed that the name on the 115 wasn’t hers. She pointed this out to the commissioner. He then asked, “Wha – - ? How’d this get in your file?” Exactly.

Lifers say that attorneys’ attitudes are changing. They are giving up because of Marsy’s Law. Why try when nobody the state appoints them to represent before the Board will get a date? Prisoners with Board hearing dates come into the prison law library and ask, “How do I replace my state-appointed lawyer? He won’t help me. I can feel it.”

One lifer said that she heard an attorney say, “There’s no hope and the Board wants ‘good girl’ chronos (Chronology is like a resume, a timetable of the inmate’s activities. Prison slang) to show the prisoner joined prison organizations and participated in projects or showed up to work day after day, year after year. They want certificates of completion for vocations and educational classes, a GED, and on and on — all ‘pretend’ accomplishments, ‘pretend’ in the sense that the commissioners pretend they ever made a difference in granting a parole date. Soon there’ll be no AA or NA classes for lifers because they’re never getting out anyway but they’ll still be asked to do book reports from self-help books to prove that they’re sincere about rehabilitation.”

One lifer I know at CCWF wrote, after realizing how catastrophic Marsy’s Law will be for her chance to parole,

• “The Board wants you to prove you’re rehabilitated, to prove that you’re remorseful and to make amends. They want you to change. How can you now? The victim’s family will never change. They don’t care if you do because they get to be your judge, jury and executioner thanks to Prop. 9.”

Sara Olson W94197

506-10-04L CCWF

P.O. Box 1508

Chowchilla, CA 93610-1508

SOURCE: FRESNO ALLIANCE

3 years later, state executions still on hold

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, February 22, 2009

(02-21) 20:08 PST San Quentin State Prison — It’s been three years since the night a federal judge blocked an execution at San Quentin State Prison because of concerns that the state’s haphazard lethal injection methods could inflict prolonged and excruciating pain on a condemned inmate, violating the U.S. Constitution.

Today, the state is no closer to executing the Stockton murderer-rapist who was to have died that night, Michael Morales, or any of the other 679 prisoners on the nation’s largest death row. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration says it’s trying to break the logjam by agreeing to let the public comment on proposed new procedures for executing convicts, a concession that it opposed in court for more than two years.

“We believe this to be the most expeditious way to carry out the will of the people and allow California to resume capital punishment,” said Seth Unger, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Bradley Phillips, a lawyer for Morales and another condemned prisoner, said the state could have taken that step in 2006. That’s when Morales first sued in state court, arguing that prison officials couldn’t legally switch execution procedures without gathering public reaction.

Even if the state now moves quickly to evaluate public comment on the revamped injections, and rapidly persuades the federal courts that it’s solved the previous problems, executions are unlikely to resume in California for at least another year.

Support still strong

Surveys have consistently shown that most Californians support the death penalty, although that majority has been shrinking. The last statewide Field Poll in February 2006, the month Morales was to have been executed, found that 63 percent favored keeping the death penalty, 32 percent opposed it and 5 percent had no opinion. Twenty years earlier, the same polling organization found 83 percent support.

Lance Lindsey, executive director of the anti-capital punishment group Death Penalty Focus, acknowledged that California isn’t likely to repeal its death penalty law anytime soon. But he said there has been no recorded increase in violent crime during the moratorium, which he sees as evidence for opponents’ position that executions don’t promote public safety.

In light of a state commission’s recent assessment that capital punishment costs California $137 million a year, “this pause in executions has allowed for political leaders to scrutinize whether the state of California can afford the death penalty,” Lindsey said.

Family’s 28-year wait

But Brian Chalk of Sacramento, the younger brother of Morales’ murder victim, said he was more concerned about “the thousands and thousands of dollars we are paying every single year to keep these folks on Death Row nice and healthy and safe.”

“The bureaucracy needs to stop, and they should go ahead with all the executions that are on hold,” Chalk said. “That’s what the people voted for.”

Morales, now 49, raped and murdered 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi (San Joaquin County) in 1981, choking, hammering and stabbing her at the behest of his jealous cousin. He was scheduled to die at San Quentin on Feb. 21, 2006, five weeks after 76-year-old triple murderer Clarence Ray Allen, the last man to be executed in California, was rolled to the death chamber in a wheelchair.

Morales’ last hope was a challenge to lethal injection, the subject of growing controversy since it became the primary method of execution in the United States in the 1990s.

Promoted as a humane alternative to the electric chair and the gas chamber, injections use a sequence of three drugs – an anesthetic, a paralytic and a heart-stopping chemical – to cause death with no sign of suffering.

But some witness accounts and medical studies have suggested that the process does not always work as intended. A 2005 article in the Lancet, a British medical journal, found signs of inadequate anesthesia in nearly half the executions it reviewed in four U.S. states – an indication that prisoners may have been conscious and in agony as they died.

In blocking Morales’ execution, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel cited evidence of possible problems at six lethal injections at San Quentin and said prison officials had to find someone with medical training to make sure the inmate was unconscious. Unable to enlist a doctor who would participate, the state put the execution on hold.

After medical experts and execution witnesses testified at a trial in Fogel’s San Jose courtroom, the judge halted all California executions in December 2006.

He said the state’s procedures were so badly flawed – with poorly trained staff working with unclear instructions and little monitoring in a dimly lit chamber – that they posed a risk of inflicting pain at levels that violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The moratorium has continued despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 2008 ruling in a Kentucky case that lethal injections are not inherently unconstitutional because the drugs do not create a substantial risk of severe pain.

Crawling through courts

The ruling left room for inmates to challenge lethal injections based on evidence of flaws in a state’s past executions or current policies. That issue remains in Fogel’s court, where Morales’ lawyers plan to argue that the proposed new procedures still contain inadequate safeguards.

But the judge says he can’t rule on California’s changes until the state complies with its own law, a process that has moved at a snail’s pace through state courts.

After Fogel blocked Morales’ execution, the state proposed injection methods that would include continuously infusing a sedative to keep the prisoner unconscious. Morales’ lawyers sued, arguing that execution procedures are state regulations that can’t be adopted without public input.

The suit was pending more than a year later when state officials, responding to Fogel’s December 2006 ruling halting all executions, presented a set of procedures that included altering chemical dosages, improving staff selection and training, and installing a new death chamber.

Defense lawyers renewed their regulatory challenge on behalf of Morales and Mitchell Sims, 49, a triple murderer who has been sentenced to death in both California and South Carolina. In December 2007, a Marin County judge ruled in their favor and invalidated the new procedures.

Administration gives up

The Schwarzenegger administration went to an appeals court, lost and decided not to press the issue before the state Supreme Court.

While fighting Morales’ suit, the Corrections Department could have simultaneously gathered public comment, but didn’t. Unger said the agency could issue its final regulations sometime this fall.

Meanwhile, Chalk, who was 9 when his sister was murdered, says the family is resigned to waiting.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. “The justice system is a joke.”

His sister “had everything, talent, beauty, soul,” Chalk said. Executing Morales “is not going to bring Terri back,” he said, but “it would definitely bring closure.”

Why Did the Government Wait Five Years to Release a Study on Suicides by Youth in Prison?

By A.C. Thompson, ProPublica

Posted on February 19, 2009

Earlier this month, with little fanfare, the U.S. Department of Justice released a new study on suicides in juvenile lock-ups — institutions ranging from county detention centers to state correctional facilities to privately run boot camps and ranches. Or, more accurately: DOJ released a 5-year-old study based on data dating back to the 1990s. The author of the study, which was commissioned by the DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, says federal officials allowed his work to gather dust for approximately a half decade before finally publishing it this month. “This was the first national study on juvenile suicide in confinement and it was important to get the data out,” said the author, Lindsay Hayes, a Massachusetts researcher and consultant who crafted the report as a contractor for DOJ.

Controversy over the report’s delay was first reported by Youth Today, a newspaper geared towards social workers and youth advocates. After scrutinizing 79 suicides that occurred between 1995 and 1999, Hayes came to several fairly startling conclusions, finding that 43 percent of the deaths happened in facilities “that did not provide any type of suicide prevention training” to frontline staffers, and that isolating teens in their rooms dramatically increased the risk of suicide. Hayes’ research also highlighted embarrassing gaps in government regulation.

Oversight agencies in several states didn’t even know about suicides that had transpired in county detention centers and private facilities and were not tracking deaths in such institutions. Hayes, who is angry that the study languished, says he delivered his 15-page report in February 2004. While government reports often go through a heavy editing and revising process, Hayes claims the final draft of “Characteristics of Juvenile Suicide in Confinement” is identical to the version he wrote up five years earlier, aside from some minor copyediting. “It’s exactly the same document. None of the data has been changed,” Hayes told us.

At Justice, a spokesperson said the department was investigating the delay but stressed that official reports are often years in the making. “We’re doing some investigation about why it took so long,” the spokesperson said. “That’s all I can say right now.” Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a San Francisco nonprofit, said the report would have made headlines had it been released in a timely fashion. “It would have been huge,” Macallair said. “It would have led to legislative hearings, newspaper articles … It would have sparked an outcry.” Over the years, Hayes said, the Justice Department vacillated on the status of the document, saying first that it was fast-tracked for publication and later that it had been rejected and “unapproved.”

Last fall, Hayes complained about the delay to J. Robert Flores, then-chief of DOJ’s juvenile justice office. “I wrote kind of a nasty letter to Mr. Flores saying I was extremely frustrated that this report didn’t come out — that there are youth dying,” recalled Hayes. The Obama administration recently replaced Flores with Jeff Slowikowski, a veteran staffer who is serving as the office’s acting administrator. This isn’t the first time controversy has found Flores, who has been the subject of congressional hearings.

In June he was questioned by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about millions of dollars in grant spending, with then-Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) describing Flores’ grant-making process as “neither fair nor transparent.” That same month, the Washington Post reported that Flores was the subject of a criminal probe into his “alleged use of government funds for personal travel expenses and his hiring of a politically well-connected contractor who allegedly performed little work in a high-paying job.”

Flores could not be reached for comment.

SOURCE: ALERNET.ORG

A message from Senator Sam Aanestad, CA; ” I am an Asshat”

Surely the Senator is joking to make such an uninformed, totally ignorant statement and to have it published? This guy is an ELECTED lame, a fear mongerer and his bitchassness  makes no sense!

Judges should not free criminals

The state refused to cough up $8 billion for their medical care.

Senator Sam Aanestad represents the 4th Senate District and is a member of the Senate Health Committee

Somewhere, convicted murderer Charles Manson is laughing at all of us. He’s laughing because about 50,000 of his buddies are about to become ex-cellmates, thanks to a three-judge panel that issues rules and mandates that don’t make sense even in the circus big top. If you missed the news, a federal judicial panel has ruled that California must start releasing thousands of car thieves, pimps, gang bangers and other assorted bad guys. Judges Thelton Henderson, Lawrence Karlton, and Stephen Reinhardt say they have no other option because they believe prisoners aren’t getting the constitutional level of medical care that California has to provide. It apparently doesn’t matter that the constitution is silent on this – these judges seem to know all – much like Carnac the Magnificent. This is their payback after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature refused to cough up roughly $8 billion to pay for a standard of medical care that most Californians will never see in 10 lifetimes. Gov. Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Jerry Brown and state legislators recently told this unelected panel of judges to go “pound sand” in response to this brazen, strong-armed holdup for $8 billion in taxpayer dollars. That is $8 billion, I might add, that California doesn’t have. In response, these unelected and unaccountable judges have issued a “tentative” ruling that could lead to the immediate release of 50,000 criminals. That’s akin to opening up the doors to about 10 California prisons. Are you worried yet? You should be. These felons may be released next door to you. Although these judges promise that the most hardened of criminals will not be released, who are they kidding? This only means that thousands of dangerous criminals will be released first. Feel better now? Party’s at your house. This panel of cronies should feel fortunate they never have to face voters at the ballot box, although they do have my vote to judge the next episode of American Idol, they swoon when the jailbirds sing. As terrible as this comedy of errors is, there is only one person who can put a stop to this travesty. His name is President Barack Obama, and by last count, about 20 million Californians voted to put him in the White House. Mr. President, the good people of California who voted overwhelmingly for change need you now. I guarantee you that this new “Gold Rush” of criminals wasn’t exactly the kind of “change” they had in mind last November. Rather than let this tragedy play out in court after court and in appeal after appeal, Mr. President, please create a new federal judicial circuit for these judges to administer, preferably as close to the North Pole as possible. Millions of Californians cannot afford or do not have access to the most basic of medical care. Hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens do not have access to medical specialists such as psychiatrists because few of them service rural areas like my Northern California district. Because these judges believe all prisoners should have 24-hour access to specialists and have hired them at upwards of $300,000 per year at taxpayer expense.

Charles Manson is laughing.

SOURCE: OC REGISTER

N.Y. plans to release more inmates from prisons

February 20, 2009
Michael Virtanen
The Associated Press

ALBANY – The Paterson administration has proposed further emptying New York’s prisons by releasing more inmates six months early for good behavior, putting middle-age convicts into shock camps and punishing technical parole violations with something short of prison.

Correction chief Brian Fischer said the measures, recommended this year by a special commission that included lawmakers, are based on past successes and would help the criminal justice system operate more rationally. They require the Legislature’s approval.

The three measures would remove an estimated 1,600 more inmates from prisons in a year. The population – which stood at 59,918 yesterday at 69 facilities – is down about 11,500 since its 1999 peak. Fischer cited a reduced crime rate and improved focus on helping convicts re-enter society.

“The point isn’t to empty the prisons,” correction spokesman Erik Kriss said, calling savings a side benefit. “The point is to build on stuff we’ve found works.”

Currently, 39 percent of inmates return within a three-year period, most for parole violations, Kriss said. Technical violations can include failing a drug test or missing curfew.

Parole Division spokeswoman Heather Groll said the division could proceed administratively if the bill isn’t passed.

The proposed expansion of the six-month military-style shock camp, begun in 1987 for inmates under age 24, would allow nonviolent offenders up to age 49 with less than three years left on their sentences to be admitted. Graduates’ recidivism rate is 20 percent lower than other inmates, Fischer said.

The credit time proposal for good behavior is a variation on Merit Time, which allows nonviolent offenders to earn reduced sentences for good behavior and program participation. Fischer said since it started in 1996, prisons have seen a 35 percent decline in assaults on staff and 60 percent drop in assaults on other inmates.

Janice Grieshaber, executive director of the Jenna Foundation for Non-Violence, said she was initially worried about the proposals but believes her concerns about violent offenders are being addressed.

“We need to keep the most violent and threatening people off the street. There are people who cannot be helped and they don’t want to be,” she said.

SOURCE: LoHud.Com