California lawmakers act to repeal early-release law

The state Senate voted unanimously to roll back the program after lawmakers expressed concerns about its possible effect on public safety. The legislation now moves to the Assembly.

An inmate talks on a phone in Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A. The Legislature approved a plan last year to let counties release jail inmates early. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times / October 12, 2006)

The state Senate voted unanimously to roll back the program after lawmakers expressed concerns about its possible effect on public safety. The legislation now moves to the Assembly.

By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times

April 30, 2010

Reporting from Sacramento

State lawmakers moved Thursday to repeal much of a new program that allows the early release of county jail inmates.

The state Senate voted unanimously to roll back the program after lawmakers expressed concerns about its possible effect on public safety. They cited news reports of a Sacramento man who was arrested on suspicion of attempted rape within hours of his early release.

The provision for county inmates was one of many sweeping changes that lawmakers approved last year to save money and address overcrowding. It was put in place as California, under pressure from federal courts to reduce its prison population, began sending to county jails and local reentry programs thousands of offenders who would normally go to state prisons.

That created new overcrowding concerns for counties, so the Legislature passed a law allowing counties to increase early release for many inmates. It allows inmates to earn enough good-behavior credits to have their sentence reduced by half. Previously, credits earned could reduce sentences by a third.

On Thursday, the Senate voted to go back to the old system. The measure it passed, SB 1487, was supported by the California State Sheriffs Assn. and the Chief Probation Officers of California.

“Common sense needs to prevail,” said state Sen. Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach), who opposed the early-release plan when it was approved last year. “Never should we jeopardize our public safety requirements as legislators simply to balance our budget.”

Democrats also supported the measure, saying that the system had not worked as planned.

The legislation next goes to the Assembly, which is expected to pass it.

Lawmakers have not moved on any alternative plans for easing county jail overcrowding that could recur if SB 1487 becomes law.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

California loses fight to end prison oversight

The Associated Press

Published: Friday, Apr. 30, 2010 – 12:36 pm

SAN FRANCISCO — The Schwarzenegger administration lost a legal fight Friday to end oversight of California’s prison health care system.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal judge can continue with a court-appointed receiver to improve inmate medical care.

The appeals court also dismissed the administration’s request to stop the receiver’s construction plans to add medical beds.

Rachel Arrezola, a spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the state will appeal the entire ruling to a larger panel of the appeals court.

California has been trying to end federal oversight of the state’s prison system, largely because of the growing costs. The state is facing a projected $20 billion deficit through June 2011.

State officials argued the receiver in charge of making improvements had no right to order the construction of 10,000 new beds, which would cost about $6 billion.

The receiver has since responded with a more modest proposal to build two prison hospitals to house 3,400 inmates at a cost of $1.9 billion.

The appeals court upheld the district court’s authority to appoint a receiver, saying it was the least intrusive way to remedy prisoners’ rights.

The state did not oppose or appeal when the court appointed the receiver back in 2006 to improve care at the state’s 33 adult prisons.

“We are compelled to point out that … the state is in a poor position to assert this objection to the receivership,” the court panel wrote. “The receivership was imposed only after the state admitted its inability to comply with consent orders intended to remedy the constitutional violations in its prisons.”

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/04/30/2718274/california-loses-fight-to-end.html#mi_rss=AP%20State%20News#ixzz0mdGiR1zs

California revises execution guidelines- what happens next

Officials address concerns that the three-drug procedure may have constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Challenges may block executions for months or years.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

April 30, 2010

California moved a step closer to resuming executions Thursday when corrections officials announced new lethal injection procedures, beating a May 1 deadline by one day.

The proposed changes in the death chamber procedures, though mostly minor, are intended to address concerns expressed by a federal judge in 2006 that the state’s earlier three-drug sequence may have exposed some of those who were executed to unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Although the new procedures could get final approval by mid-June, executions are unlikely to resume soon because federal and state judges must first review the changes and decide whether they address the constitutional questions and procedural complaints brought by death penalty opponents. Those reviews are likely to extend at least through the end of the year, and other pending legal challenges could keep the current moratorium in effect for months or years.

The details of the execution procedures cover 42 pages and mostly deal with specific procedural questions, including who can serve on the execution team, where witnesses can be located and how to deal with potential mishaps during the process.

California has 702 inmates on death row. Despite having the nation’s largest population of condemned prisoners, there has not been an execution in the state since convicted killer Clarence Allen was put to death in January 2006.

At least six death row inmates have exhausted all appeals and could be scheduled for execution as soon as the legal reviews are completed, said Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation that supports the resumption of executions.

Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said Thursday’s submission of the protocols was the final step for the agency in the “rule-making process.” She declined to predict when executions might resume, noting the involvement of other state agencies and the courts.

Opponents of capital punishment accused the state of “tinkering with a broken system.” The Office of Administrative Law now reviewing the new protocols should reject them because they do not respect the religious rights of the inmates or the 1st Amendment rights of the press or the public, and continue to use the paralytic drug that has been blamed in botched executions, said Natasha Minsker, death penalty policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

A task force named by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger initially rewrote the procedures behind closed doors after U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose ruled that the state procedures were constitutionally flawed. He had heard testimony that some of those executed may not have been fully anesthetized by the first injection before receiving the second shot, the paralyzing agent, and the painful last dose that stops the heart.

Marin County Superior Court Judge Lynn O’Malley Taylor ruled that the task force recommendations were illegal for their failure to be presented to the public for comment and to the administrative law office for review. The corrections department opened the public review process May 1, 2009, and had a year to hold hearings and comb through about 20,000 e-mails and letters on the proposed revisions.

carol.williams@latimes.com

Ladies and Gentlemen: The U.S. (in)Justice System

By Mikhail Lyubansky, Prof. University of Illinois, Race-Talk contributor

I’ve been reading, talking, and thinking a lot about justice lately. And the deeper I get into it, the more evident it is that our justice system isn’t meeting our needs. What we want, I think, is a justice system that produces not just rehabilitation, but redemption. Is it any wonder that Shawshank speaks to us the way it does?

Redemption does happens in the real world. Consider the case of Wilbert Rideau, who in 1961 killed a bank teller during a botched robbery and served 44 years in prison (decades longer than others who had committed similar crimes) before finally being released. While in prison, Rideau not only “became rehabilitated” but started an all-Black magazine in the prison and, after mandatory desegregation laws were finally implemented (Rideau is Black), took over as the editor of the main prison publication, The Angolite. NPR summarized his next 25 years:

For 25 years, Rideau reported on events that were taking place within Angola’s walls — covering topics such as the mishandling of AIDS funds for prisoners, the brutality of electrocutions and the pervasive sexual violence inside the prison. During Rideau’s years as editor, The Angolite won the George Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award — and Rideau became a correspondent for Fresh Air, reporting on what it was like to live in solitary confinement and how prisoners feared for their safety on a daily basis.

Remarkably, considering the violence and inhumane treatment he describes, Rideau says that prison saved him by introducing him to reading and writing, which in turn gave his life meaning.

Rideau’s story is as inspiring as anything produced by Hollywood. Yet, had it not been for a fortuitous court ruling having nothing to do with him, Rideau’s redemption would not have happened at all. Rideau was sentenced to death for his crime and lived on death row until 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty (temporarily, it turned out), giving Rideau the second chance he needed.

Stories of redemption are, unfortunately, all too rare. However, despite the anti-segregation laws, much of the racial bias Rideau experienced continues to pervade the entire criminal justice system.

It starts with law enforcement

In the wake of Arizona’s new legislation permitting law enforcement officials to stop anyone suspected of being undocumented and to demand documentation of legal status, racial profiling is suddenly getting front page coverage. But though it might be a relatively new approach to controlling the border, perceptions of racially biased policing practices have been around for a long time.

For example, data from a national sample of 7,034 people stopped by police in previous 12 months indicate that
Black men are 35 percent more likely than white men to report being stopped by police for a traffic violation (Lundman & Kaufman, 2003).

Though this particular study examined perceptions rather than actual “objective” data, where available (not all states require police departments to report or even track racial information during stops), such data consistently support the perception of bias.

Consider some recent racial profiling data from my home state of Illinois, where the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has been compiling racial profiling data for almost 10 years. According to the 2008 data (the most recent available at the time of this writing), “minority drivers” were 13% more likely to be be stopped (after controlling for demographic differences in population) and more than twice as likely to have their car searched (this requires consent but consent is given more than 90% of the time).

When confronted with such data, police officers (and chiefs) usually respond that they are merely doing their job — that the racial discrepancy in stops and searches merely reflects group differences in criminal behavior. Yet, the city’s own data suggest otherwise. Those consensual searches? They yielded contraband (either weapons or drugs) for 15% of the “minority drivers” compared to almost 25% of “caucasian drivers (see arrows at bottom of table below). If there were true probably cause, that kind of difference wouldn’t happen.

Of course, law enforcement is just one half of the justice system. There is also the criminal trial and the appeals that often follow. Unfortunately, this part of the process is no less biased.

Incarceration

It’s relatively common knowledge that the U.S. prisons are filled primarily by people of color. What is less commonly known is how our prison population has skyrocketed in the past 30 years and that the growth is a direct function of the government’s War on Drugs. Michelle Alexander explains in the introduction of her provocative new book, The New Jim Crow:

The impact of the drug war has been astounding. In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase (Mauer, 2006). The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, even surpassing those in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the United States, the number is eight times that, or 750 per 100,000 (PEW Center, 2008).

Alexander goes on to point out that “the racial dimension of incarceration is its most striking feature” and that “in Washington, D.C….it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.” (Braman, 2004, citing D.C. Department of Corrections data from 2000). The racial comparisons are indeed striking, as evident in the national statistics below.

Even more remarkable than the racial discrepancy itself is that it cannot be explained by actual rates of drug crimes. Studies consistently show that people use and sell illegal drugs at highly similar rates (Alexander cites a dozen different studies). If anything, when race group differences in drug crimes emerge, it is white males who tend to be the highest perpetrators. Despite this, Alexander reports that in some states, black men have been incarcerated on drug charges at rates 20 to 50 times greater than white men.

The greatest crime of all

It gets worse. Seventy five percent of those convicted of participating in a Federal drug enterprise under the general provisions of SS 848 have been white and only about 24% of the defendants have been black. Yet, 78% of the defendants chosen for capital prosecution have been Black.

The same racial bias can be seen in other capital crimes. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, since 1930 nearly 90% of those executed for the crime of rape in this country were African-Americans.

The racial discrepancy in the application of the death penalty was so severe and so clearly biased that in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court placed a moratorium on the death penalty and converted the death sentences of hundreds of death row inmates to life in prison. Wilbert Rideau was among this lucky group. As part of the 5-4 majority, Justice William Douglas explained his reasoning:

“The discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty enables the penalty to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout, or if he is a member of a suspect and unpopular minority, and saving those who, by social position, may be in a more protected position.” Justice Douglas (1972, Furman v. Georgia).

The moratorium lasted a mere four years, ending in 1976 with Gregg v. Georgia. At that time, the Court was apparently convinced that the states had enacted legislation that would remove the bias and arbitrary imposition. Unfortunately, despite the Court’s conviction, the racial discrepancy began to emerge almost immediately upon reinstatement.

At the moment, it only seems to be getting worse. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that about 50% of those currently on the nation’s death rows are from racial minority populations, which represent about 20% of the country’s population.

Put another way: If he were on death row today, Wilbert Rideau would likely remain there until his execution. And the numbers in the prisons are still on the rise, even as violent crime has dropped off. It may not be coincidence.

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander asserts that the U.S. criminal justice system is currently functioning as a contemporary system of racial control, much like slavery and Jim Crow laws have in the past. She points out that though racial discrimination is no longer legal or socially acceptable, “discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public benefits; denial of the right to vote; and exclusion from jury service — are suddenly legal once you’re labeled a felon.”

Alexander argues that the fact that over 50% of the young black men in any large U.S. city are either under the control of the state or saddled with a criminal record is not just a function of poverty or poor choices but “evidence of a new racial caste system at work.”

If she is right, and the data certainly don’t contradict her position, there is no choice (for those interested in justice), but to mobilize for a new (and hopefully, final) civil rights movement.

For all the injustice we have wrought, there is still the opportunity for redemption.

Source: AlertNet

Unsolved Homicides: A Public Safety Crisis

By Aqeela Sherrills
California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
On January 10th, 2004, my world turned upside down.  At 11:45pm, I got a call from my son Terrell’s friend Eric stating that he had been shot.  I rushed to the scene and was met by a cop who said that it didn’t look good; the paramedic was transporting him to UCLA.  Terrell, a 19-years-old freshman at Humboldt State University, died that night.
Although there were close to 50 people out there the night he was murdered, no one was willing to come forward and say what they saw.  With no witnesses and no murder weapon recovered, the police never identified Terrell’s murderer.  My family and I were left without justice, wondering, each day, why this tragic incident occurred….while the killer walks free.
Unfortunately, my story isn’t uncommon.  According to a recent report by California Crime Victims for Alternative to the Death Penalty, The Silent Crisis in California: Unsolved Homicides, 1,000 murders go unsolved each year in California.  In Los Angeles County, 54% of murders are unsolved.
We have a public safety crisis on our hands.
Part of it can be blamed on a culture of not “snitching” because of fear of retaliation.  But a large part can be blamed on a lack of resources for law enforcement to investigate and find witnesses who are willing to come forward.
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the LAPD is forcing its officers to put cases on hold and take days, even weeks off due to overtime cuts.  Detective Nate Kouri, one of the LAPD’s most productive homicide investigators, was unable to work on any cases, old and new, for six weeks.
Yet, while we watch police officers forced to sit idle because of budget cuts, rape kits left untested, and state crime labs close, we continue to throw hundreds of millions of dollars away on a death penalty that everyone agrees is broken.
We currently spend $137 million per year on the 700 inmates on death row.  If we converted these sentences to permanent imprisonment, we would save $1 billion in just 5 years.
Permanent imprisonment is a safe, swift, cost-effective alternative to the death penalty.  Not only does it get killers off of our streets forever, it frees up valuable resources for solving murders and imprisoning tens of thousands of killers.
Although there have been many studies on the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent, the results have been inconclusive.  We do know, however, that catching killers is the best deterrent.  Those who get away with murder learn that they can.
By shifting limited public safety resources away from the death penalty and towards solving every murder, we can achieve justice for all crime victims.  Not just symbolism for a few.
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~
Aqeela Sherrills is the Southern California Outreach Coordinator for the California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Source: California Progress Report

House for convicted female drug addicts closing

By Karen Kucher, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.

K.C. Alfred / Union-Tribune

Resident Linda Baldwin says Freedom House “is like a total safe environment. They tell us they love us until we can love ourselves. It makes all the difference.”

Photo by K.C. Alfred – Union-Tribune

Freedom House program coordinator Valerie Medina looks at a vacant room Tuesday. The facility has led more than 2,000 women away from prison and drug addiction.

RECIDIVISM RATES BY THE NUMBERS

Female parolees who return to prison within the first year of release:

30.1% of women in the general population.

8.8% of women who finished drug-treatment programs.

Within two years:

43.7% without treatment

16.5% with treatment

Source: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (2005-06 study)

SAN DIEGO — When Freedom House closes its doors Friday, the facility in Lincoln Park will end a 20-year run of helping women in the criminal justice system kick drug addictions.

And Claudia Lidrazzah knows she’ll be in tears.

Not only did Lidrazzah go through the program 19 years ago, but she now works as a director for Community Connection Resource Center, the nonprofit that runs the transition home. She proudly wears a gold “FH” medallion around her neck that women receive when they graduate.

“On Friday I’m going to cry all day,” she said. “It’s devastating for me, and I think of all the women who could keep coming here.”

More than 2,000 women went through the house, a former doctor’s office, which helped women move from prison and drug addiction to healthy lives in the community. During stays that lasted up to six months, women would attend treatment sessions, do chores, look for jobs or attend classes.

But steep cuts in California’s funding for drug-treatment programs for inmates and parolees — $250 million this year — have left Freedom House with too many empty beds.

Administrators say a decline in the number of referrals that began last fall only got worse, and by March, administrators knew they would have to close the two-story facility on Imperial Avenue.

“It is the funding that is inadequate,” said Anita Paredes, Community Connection’s executive director. “The priorities shifted. Right now, treatment is taking a back seat.”

State funding for substance-abuse programs serving adult offenders was cut by nearly 40 percent this fiscal year, said Peggy Bengs, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The number of substance-abuse programs in California prisons dropped from 44 at 21 correctional facilities to 13 programs at 13 facilities, while the number of treatment slots dropped from 12,200 to 2,400.

Freedom House was the only program in San Diego County that took in female prison inmates under a state drug-treatment furlough program, which allowed inmates to finish the last four months of their sentences at the house.

Its budget for the fiscal year ending in June 2009 was $573,000.

State parole agent Linda Yost, who worked the past three years with parolees at the house, said the women could “unplug from being institutionalized.”

“By the end, you could see the difference,” Yost said. “They’d land jobs, they maybe had a car, they were able to stand on their own two feet.”

But when the state did away with the furlough program last fall, Freedom House was unable to attract enough referrals.

“There aren’t as many individuals completing in-prison treatment, so not as many are eligible for post-prison continuing care,” said David Conn, a senior vice president with Mental Health Systems, a San Diego-based nonprofit that operates the case-management referral system for parolees in Southern California.

There were about 1,200 clients in treatment a year ago in Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, but now there are 400, Conn said.

Freedom House was dependent on drug-treatment furlough referrals, so “they were hit a little harder and quicker than most providers,” Conn said. But other treatment programs in the region also are struggling.

North County Serenity House in Escondido is converting a residence for female parolees to a sober-living facility, while Health Care Services closed its Ohana House in San Diego, which served parolees, Conn said.

Losing residential facilities is significant because the process is long for new programs to secure conditional-use permits.

“When these programs close, it is a lost resource for a very long period of time,” Conn said.

By this week, just a half-dozen women were still living at Freedom House and only a few staffers were still on the payroll. Gathered on couches in an upstairs living room, several of the women almost broke down in tears as they talked about how the loving support of staffers and peers helped them stay off heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs.

“I finally started getting my bearings. I should still have three more months here,” said Linda Baldwin, 45. “This is like a total safe environment. They tell us they love us until we can love ourselves. It makes all the difference.”

Most of the women will move to other drug-treatment facilities in the region, while at least one plans to stay with some friends.

Lacicia Daymon, 33, recently started a job cleaning hospital rooms and is working on getting her high school equivalency diploma. She said her two months at Freedom House made a difference.

“When I got here, I got the hope back,” she said.

Source: Sign On San Diego

CA Prison Hospice Helps Inmates and Care-Givers

Inside prison walls, Gary Rubenstein is facing a death sentence, but one not imposed by a judge or jury. He has terminal lung cancer and has stopped treatment, saving the state expensive end-of-life medical care in a futile attempt to keep him alive. “I said, ‘For what? I’m in prison,’” said Rubenstein. “There’s really no light at the end of my tunnel.”

Rubenstein has spent almost half his 53 years in prison and 16 years served so far this time for his third strike, a conviction for attempted strong arm robbery.

The talented pen-and-ink/tattoo artist is spending his last days in prison at the end of Vacaville’s X-corridor in a hospice, the nation’s first.

“It sounded like a good place to be,” said Rubenstein.

With an aging prison population and more than 350 inmates dying in California’s prisons each year, there’s always an inmate wanting one of the 17 beds. Here, other prisoners volunteer to care for them and promise they will not die alone and will die with dignity, with as little pain as possible.

But one question hospice officials are often asked: Why should criminals get compassion when they didn’t give it to their victims?

“We have an inmate who’s a ward of the state,” said Rev. Keith Knauf. “We can’t be like the murderer. We can’t be like the rapist or the child molester. We have to treat each one like a human being and these people who have done these things are broken.”

The California Medical Facility in Vacaville, where Rubenstein lives and Knauf works, was the first licensed hospice in any prison anywhere in the world and that was back in 1996.

But the caring for those in their last days started much earlier, with hospice pioneer and psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and a Berkeley couple Robert and Nancy Alexander during the aids epidemic in the mid-80’s.

So many inmates volunteer to be caregivers here, the rejection rate for applicants is higher than for elite colleges about 40 to 1.

“We have a lot of applicants that want to be in the program, some with good motives, some with bad motives,” said Knauf.

The chaplain says he looks for prisoners with compassion in their hearts, even if they don’t know it yet. Inmates like Sean Reece, who’s been behind bars 13 years.

“One guy told me, ‘You know when they pass away we help put them in the bag, the body bag’ and I said, ‘Time out, hold on, wait a minute, put ‘em in the what?’” said Reece. “That’s up close and personal with something I myself had a problem with, death.”

But Reece persevered. He and others picked for the program start training by viewing 50 videos, then moved to one-on-one care-giving, cleaning bed pans, washing patients, holding their hands and those hardened hearts begin to soften.

“Oh, I don’t trust anybody but these guys are different because they’re sick,” said Reece.

He figures it was divine guidance that brought him here.

“I was put here for a reason, I don’t know why, I’m going to stay and find out,” said Reece. “Because I think the more you deal with death the more you understand life.”

Roman Galafate has spent 21 years here for killing a man. The former army medic said he regrets it every time he helps someone die.

“I hurts, it hurts, it’s like I relive a crime, I relive it each time I watch them take their last breath,” said Galafate.

With six years as a caregiver, he’s relived it many times, having seen an estimated 100 deaths. But he and the other inmates say helping other people die changes the way they live.

“In that sense, a prison hospice is not a place of death but a place of healing and closure,” said Knauf.

The final closure comes when the caregiver washes the dead inmate’s body, including the ink from the required postmortem fingerprinting, and zips the body bag.

“We have a form we fill out when somebody passes,” said Reece. “On everybody’s form I write may the creator see this man’s heart was good and judge him accordingly. That’s what it’s all about.”

Source: KTVU2

Va. OKs bill to let violent crime victims meet with death row inmates

Lorraine Whoberry tried for years to meet face-to-face with her daughter’s killer before he was executed last month. She was repeatedly denied.

So the day after she witnessed his execution, Whoberry sat down with Gov. Bob McDonnell and asked for his help. A bill was making its way through the Virginia General Assembly that would allow victims of violent crime to meet with the perpetrators, but it excluded those on death row and juveniles.

McDonnell amended the bill to allow victims to meet with inmates on death row. On Wednesday, the General Assembly unanimously approved the change.

Although more than half of the states have victim-offender mediation programs, advocates said Virginia would be one of the first to cement it in state law. Virginia also becomes one of only a handful that allow meetings with death row inmates.

“Even though it’s not going to affect us, at least we’ve got something done,” Whoberry said when told about the change.

Even in states that offer victim-offender meetings, “there are a thousand bureaucratic road blocks put in the way,” said Pat Nolan, vice president of Prison Fellowship, a national prison ministry.

“The system has a paternalistic view that they know better than the victim, they’re trying to protect the victim,” he said. “In most cases, the victims have great difficulty getting in to see the offenders.”

Virginia’s Department of Corrections routinely refuses to allow victims to meet with their attackers. A department spokesman refused to comment on the legislation, saying only that the agency supported the governor.

Currently, victims must request a meeting in writing, and requests are approved or rejected based on the type of crime committed, the inmate’s behavior and security level, mental health issues and the reason for the visit. On average, the department receives 10 to 15 such requests a year, and half are approved.

But meetings with condemned inmates are forbidden.

That came as a shock to Whoberry when she was denied after her daughter’s killer, Paul Warner Powell, agreed to meet with her. Powell attempted to rape her 16-year-old daughter, Stacie Reed, and then stabbed her when she fought him off in 1999. He waited for her 14-year-old sister to come home and then raped and stabbed her, but she lived.

“I was under the impression I had rights,” she said. “But I keep finding out I don’t. The offender has more rights than we do.”

Powell’s attorney, Jonathan Sheldon, tried to arrange a meeting, but also was denied. In the end — a day before Powell died by electrocution March 18 — Sheldon arranged to have Whoberry and her family come to his office and talk to Powell for more than two hours over the phone.

For Whoberry, “it brought that monster into being a human being,” she said.

They talked about his newfound faith, his life in prison and how he dealt with what he had done. The family asked questions, and Whoberry said she left with a feeling of peace that had avoided her in the 11 years since her daughter Stacie’s murder.

“As a victim and survivor there’s things you want to say to them that only you can say to them, and they need to hear it,” Whoberry said. “They need to hear it from you.” The more serious or violent the crime, the more the victims benefit from meeting with the offender, Nolan said. Often, criminals take plea bargains. Even if they go to trial, victims often never really get their questions answered.

Supporters, including McDonnell, said the meetings could be restorative and therapeutic for both the victim and the offender.

“I think in those rare handful of cases where both agree, I think we ought to let them do it and I think it could be a good outcome,” McDonnell said.

Whoberry said the meetings are not for everyone, but that it should be an option if both the victim and the offender agree.

“I continue to be Stacie’s voice,” Whoberry said. “And this time Stacie was heard.”

– Associated Press

Condemned Utah killer could face firing squad

A condemned murderer could become the third person to be executed by firing squad in the US in more than three decades, a move likely to ignite protests over a Wild West style of justice.

Ronnie Lee Gardner killed a man 25 years ago. Utah’s state law allows Gardner, 49, to decide whether he will be killed by lethal injection or be shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that recalls the state’s territorial history.

Of the 35 states with the death penalty on the books, Utah is the only one to have used the firing squad as a method of execution since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

Two men have died in a hail of bullets since that decision: Gary Gilmore, on Jan 17, 1977 – after famously uttering the last words, “Let’s do it” – and John Albert Taylor on Jan 26, 1996.

Oklahoma is the only other state that considers a firing squad an acceptable method of execution, but by law would only use it if lethal injection was deemed unconstitutional. The state has never used the method.

Utah’s death row inmates were for decades allowed to choose how they wanted to die. State lawmakers removed that choice in 2004, and made lethal injection the default method, but inmates sentenced before then still have a choice.

The repeal of the firing squad was not tied to discomfort with the method itself. Rather, state lawmakers disliked the heaps of negative media attention that firing squads focused on the state, according to state lawmaker Sheryl Allen, who twice carried legislation to change the law.

In 1996, more than 150 media outlets descended on Utah to cover Taylor’s execution, painting the firing squad as an “Old West” style of justice that allows killers to go out in a blaze of glory.

At least four of the 10 men on Utah’s death row, including Gardner, have said they want to die by firing squad.

A judge was due on Friday to decide whether to sign a warrant of execution.

Source: Telegraph UK

Court upholds governor’s right to deny parole to murderers

The U.S. 9th Circuit says nothing in federal or constitutional law entitles a prisoner serving a life term to parole in the absence of signs that he or she remains dangerous.

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles TimesApril 23, 2010

In a decision nearly two years in the making, the full U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld the California governor’s right to deny parole to a murderer serving a life term even when there hasn’t been fresh evidence for decades that the prisoner poses a risk to society if released.

The appeals court ruling on a challenge brought by lifer Ronald Hayward to his repeated denials of parole for the 1978 murder of a man who attacked his girlfriend said that nothing in federal or constitutional law entitles a prisoner to parole in the absence of signs he or she remains dangerous.

The ruling by an 11-judge panel overturned a January 2008 decision by three 9th Circuit judges that Hayward’s constitutional right to due process had been violated because then-Gov. Gray Davis failed to cite any evidence that the prisoner continued to pose a threat to public safety.

Two California Supreme Court rulings in August 2008 established that “some evidence” of persistent danger must be present to deny parole. But the federal appeals court said there was no such federal right by extension.

The ruling is likely to be gravely disappointing to many of the 23,000-plus state prisoners serving life sentences who are technically eligible for parole and had been watching the case, Hayward vs. Marshall, brought by the inmate against the warden of the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. An additional 4,000 inmates are serving sentences of life without parole and more than 700 death row prisoners can never be considered for release.

In a parallel decision, the appeals court also set a higher standard for lifers to petition federal courts for release, requiring them to get a “certificate of appealability” from the federal bench that would be granted only if the prisoner’s treatment appeared to involve a constitutional violation.

Four of the 11 judges on the “en banc” review panel dissented in part from the majority’s ruling, saying its rationale was “replete with errors and misdirection.” The dissenters, all appointees of Democratic presidents, also disagreed with the majority that prisoners have no established “liberty interest” in obtaining parole even if they serve their minimum sentences without disciplinary problems and appear rehabilitated.

The majority’s ruling, written by Circuit Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld, an appointee of President George H. W. Bush, served to exonerate a virtual no-parole-for-murderers policy practiced by California governors for the last quarter of a century.

In 1983, Gov. George Deukmejian invoked what was then a rarely used 1913 law to overrule the parole board decision to free murderer William Archie Fain after a public outcry in the town where his crimes were committed. His successor, Gov. Pete Wilson, reversed murderers’ parole grants with regularity, freeing only six during his tenure — five of them female victims of domestic abuse.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has granted parole to only four murderers, although he has allowed more than 300 parole board decisions to free apparently reformed killers to go through without his review or intervention.

Source: LA Times