50 Va inmates in segregation over grooming policy

RICHMOND, VA. — Nearly 50 Virginia prisoners are being held in perpetual isolation because they refuse to cut their hair.

Following an Associated Press story about 10 Rastafarian inmates who had been in segregation for 10 years for ignoring the state’s grooming policy, Secretary of Public Safety Marla Decker ordered a count of the inmates who were being held in isolation because of the policy.

The review found 48 inmates were being held in segregation for refusing to follow the policy, which calls for hair to be kept above the shirt collar and bans beards. Of those, 13 were Rastafarians, who view growing their hair as a tenet of their religion.

Officials say the review does not mean the policy will change. Civil rights and religious advocates say it violates the prisoners’ freedom to worship.

Source: Washington Examiner

The Case for Treating Drug Addicts in Prison

Treatment for drug addiction works better and costs less than imprisonment alone. So why are states abandoning it?

Scott Olson / Getty ImagesPhotos: Drug rehab a rare commodity in prison

Drug Rehab a Rare Commodity in Prison

For the last 16 years, Dr. Josiah Rich has gone weekly to prisons in or near Providence, R.I., to treat people being held there for drug-related offenses. Each time, he has wrestled with an ethical conundrum: not the issue of whether the offenders have done something wrong, but whether the American prison system is doing something worse. “What I see is not bad people,” he says. “Predominantly, I see people with a disease.”

Of the 2.3 million inmates in the U.S., more than half have a history of substance abuse and addiction. Not all those inmates are imprisoned on drug-related charges (although drug arrests have been rising steadily since the early 1990s; there were 195,700 arrests in 2007). But in many cases, their crimes, such as burglary, have been committed in the service of feeding their addictions. Rich, a professor of medicine and community health at Brown University, is worried that, by refusing or neglecting to provide treatment to these addicts, many U.S. prisons are missing the best chance to cure them—and in the process to cut down on future crime. Treatment can reduce recidivism rates from 50 percent to something more like 20 percent, according to the DEA. Yet it is not widely provided. “Our system has taken the highest-risk and most ill people and put them in a place where they have constitutionally mandated health care,“ Rich says. “What a great opportunity to make a difference. Are we just trying to punish people? Or are we trying to rehabilitate people? What do we want out of this?”

Looking at the way prisons currently deal with drug addiction, the answer to Rich’s question is unclear. Over the last few years, some in the justice system have warmed to the idea of treating drug addicts in addition to (or instead of) incarcerating them. In some states, most notably Ohio, almost all first-time drug offenders and many second-timers are offered treatment. That is by no means the case nationally. According to a report released last year by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, just one fifth of inmates get some form of treatment. That number may be lower in the near future: tight budgets are forcing many states to cut back or close down their existing treatment programs. Kansas and Pennsylvania have already done so; California and Texas may follow suit in the next few months.

The irony here is that by lowering recidivism, the programs themselves save money in the long run. The NIDA report released last year cited a remarkable statistic: heroin addicts who received no treatment in jail were seven times as likely as treated inmates to become re-addicted, and three times as likely to end up in prison again. For every dollar spent, the programs save $2 to $6 by reducing the costs of re-incarceration, according to Human Rights Watch. Looked at another way, the programs can save the justice system about $47,000 per inmate.

So why would prisons target their own treatment programs in an effort to cut costs? Part of the reason is that pharmacological treatment—such as giving heroin addicts methadone to help them through withdrawal—requires a lot of regulation, and thus it’s expensive in the short run. Pharmacological treatment isn’t the only way of helping addicts—the White House’s drug-policy arm has a good list of other options—but in many cases it’s the most effective. Unfortunately, it’s also very tricky. It can be undermined by the fact that addicts can easily relapse behind bars; a Human Rights Watch report last year claimed that “drugs are as available in prison as in the street,” often getting to inmates via the mail. (Reliable statistics on inmate drug use are understandably hard to come by, since prisoners have no reason to fess up to using.) There are other challenges, too, particularly in treating addicts with methadone. “People are loath to provide methadone because it poses some security risk,” says Dr. Amy Nunn, also a professor of medicine at Brown. “It could be diverted or sold on the black market, or someone might rob the dispensary.” When methadone is given, it’s usually with strict oversight at a medical center, not as a matter of course in the correctional facility. That takes money. Buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid addicts, is a little easier for prisons to deal with because it’s “harder to divert,” Nunn adds. The medication has an additive that prevents it from being crushed up and inhaled. But it is not widely used either. Only half of all states and prisons provide any form of methadone or buprenorphine treatment, and those that do make use of the drugs do so in a limited fashion, even though the WHO has both medications on a list of drugs that should be available to all prisoners at any time.

But Nunn says the real problem is an ideological one, not a practical one. “In spite of all of the proven clinical and social and economic benefits of pharmacological treatment, people really have a moral opposition to it,” she says. “They think if you’re providing people with treatment, you’re not addressing their addiction in an appropriate way. They think people who have addictions deserve what they get, and that the only way to treat addiction is abstinence, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

Steven Belenko, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University, adds that people who work in prisons don’t necessarily think that way: “Correctional professionals recognize the importance of these types of services,” he says. Bob May, associate director of the Association of State Correctional Administrators, agrees. He says people who work in the system “acknowledge the value of the programs. There was a time, years ago, when that wasn’t the case. People weren’t convinced that the programs were effective, or even cost-effective. When I was working as chief of detectives in a sheriff’s department, I didn’t believe in these programs, either. My job was to put people away. You know, you think it’s just some bleeding-heart liberal trying to make excuses for a crime. But I didn’t know that 75 to 80 percent of people I was arresting for other crimes had an abuse problem.” Now, he adds, “we know from the research that with people who go through drug treatment, even if they still use drugs afterwards, their crimes are less violent and less frequent. Even if it’s not a 100 percent change, it’s a good thing.” The public doesn’t necessarily think treatment is bad, either; a recent poll found that more than two thirds of Americans would support state laws requiring treatment—not jail time—for first- and second-time drug offenders.

But politicians may oppose treatment (at least publicly), especially if they’re worried about being seen as soft on crime. And even if they support the idea, with state budgets under a crunch, treatment can start to look expendable. “It’s the legislators who are funding or not funding these types of things,” Belenko says. “So even when prison systems are very open and supportive of treatment, they face a bunch of administrative constraints and cost constraints. They don’t have enough funds to do this.”

Grace before dying: A hospice program at Louisiana’s maximum-security prison in Angola. Click on photo above to view gallery.

That’s been the case as long as treatment programs have been around, judging by a 1991 government report, which showed that only a fifth of drug-addicted inmates who needed treatment were able to get it. But the current economy has made things worse. In Florida, for instance, corrections secretary Walter McNeil recently suggested—“reluctantly,” according to the St. Petersburg Times—a $36 million budget cut that would close “most of the state’s publicly funded treatment centers.”

Then there’s Texas. In 2003 the state government (largely led by Republicans) started to whittle away at treatment programs. Four years later, thanks to efforts led by State Sen. John Whitmire, it changed course, putting more money into them, rather than less, and adding 6,000 “beds” available to treat nonviolent prisoners who have substance-abuse issues. Whitmire, who had been robbed at gunpoint by a cocaine addict, says that sometimes convincing fellow legislators of the value of more treatment was a “hard sell,” but he told them this was a public-safety issue: “I’ve begged for my life once from someone addicted to cocaine,” he says. “I would much rather spend money on his addiction than face that gun again. This isn’t about being soft on crime. It’s about being tough, but also smart.”

His initiative saw positive results initially: the prison population, predicted to climb by more than 5,000 by the end of 2008, grew by only a 10th of that. Public and political opinion, even among Republicans, started to turn in favor of treatment—until earlier this year, when Gov. Rick Perry asked each state agency to slash 5 percent from their budgets. Once again, treatment ended up on the chopping block. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice proposed to slash $23 million from treatment programs. Whitmire argued successfully against that proposal, but now the system faces an even larger pending cut of 10 percent.

According to a report commissioned by the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments, “Of the proposed $124.3 million FY 2010–11 reduction [in Texas], $109.4 million, or 88 percent, will be reductions in probation and parole supervision, alternatives to incarceration, mental health services, substance abuse treatment, halfway houses, and intermediate sanction facilities.” Tony Fabelo, director of research at the CSG and a coauthor of the report, says “the only way to save money,” at least in the short term, “is shutting down programs or shutting down prisons. And if there were an outcry about shutting down programs, there would be a bigger one about shutting down prisons. So those are the dynamics where we are trapped.”

Babies behind bars: An Indiana prison keeps inmates and their children together. Click on photo above to view gallery.

That is deeply concerning to Whitmire. “If we do not continue these programs, people will re-offend, recidivism rates will rise, and it will be a danger to the public,” he says. “You either pay now, or pay later—and you pay a lot more later.”

What happens to addicts who don’t get treatment in prison? Often they return to their addiction upon their release. “When somebody’s addicted to heroin and they don’t get treatment, they’re [likely] to get addicted to heroin again,” says Rich. “The drug has biologically changed their brains. You can tie someone down and make sure they don’t use any opiates and you can keep them there for years, and the day they walk out, they [can] get opiates.”

And then they’re likely to wind up back in the prison system. That’s bad news for the inmates, the prisons, and the taxpayers, since, as Rich puts it, treatment is “certainly cheaper than the gobs of money we’re spending to keep locking people up.”

In other words, no matter how you feel about drug-addicted inmates, you’re going to pay for dealing with their addiction. So why aren’t we choosing the cheaper—and arguably more humane—option?

Source: Newsweek

Cut This: The Death Penalty

Classrooms or Prison Cells?

State spending on prisons has been growing and eating away at other priorities, like higher education. Now that’s beginning to change.

David McNew / Getty ImagesUniversity of California students and their supporters confront campus police on Nov. 19, 2008, during a protest over a 32 percent tuition increase

Faced with a $19 billion budget deficit this spring, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was taking a cleaver to state health and welfare programs for the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. And rather than removing another slice from the state’s vaunted higher education system—which had already experienced years of reductions in state aid, ensuing tuition hikes, and student protests in response—budget cutters took more than $1 billion out of the state corrections programs, particularly prison health care.

It may seem odd that state funding for college kids often competes with money for prisoners, but if you track spending in California over the past 30 years, you’ll see evidence of a long-standing tug of war between these two very different constituencies. Over much of the past decade, funding for corrections has gone steadily up, while spending on state colleges has tumbled. “The state seems to be saying we have more of a future in prisons than in universities,” University of California president Mark Yudof said in a recent speech.

Following months of protests by students, parents, and colleges, Schwarzenegger urged the California legislature to pass a constitutional amendment earlier this year that would require the state to spend more on college classrooms than prison cells. “What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns?” Schwarzenegger said, adding that “30 years ago, 10 percent of the general fund went to higher education and 3 percent went to prisons. Today, almost 11 percent goes to prisons and only 7.5 percent goes to higher education. Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future.” The state’s priorities, he added, “have become out of whack.”

While his proposal hasn’t succeeded in securing serious political traction, Schwarzenegger’s words are clearly having an impact on voters. When the Public Policy Institute of California recently conducted a poll asking where state government should be trimmed, most respondents said no to more cuts for higher education, and overwhelmingly said yes to trimming the corrections budget. But maybe that was because all the talk about prisons versus colleges confused voters, says Thad Kousser, an associate professor of political science at UC San Diego. The PPI study also found that 49 percent of those polled had the mistaken impression that California was spending more on corrections than anything else. “Prisons are not this mammoth thing that is eating up the rest of the budget,” he says.

The 11 percent that California is spending on corrections is higher than the national state average of 7 percent, and the Golden State’s university system is one of the most extensive in the country. So it may not be surprising that nowhere else in the country is the faceoff between prisons and higher education so stark. However, it is also true that 30 states have already slashed their higher-education budgets in response to recessionary pressure, and there’s every reason to think more cuts will be coming. (A recent report by the National Governors Association [NGA] predicts that states may not regain their fiscal footing until the end of the decade.)

Most states have a commission or committee looking for ways to reduce their budgets, and there’s not much maneuvering room, partly because of rising corrections and health-care costs. Those two, says John Thomasian, director of the NGA’s Center for Best Practices, are “sucking the wind out of any discretionary funding” states had. Most states spend most of their money on K–12 education, but that’s also the least popular place to cut, he says.

As a result, higher education is the budget item that ends up being particularly vulnerable. “When times are good, states put more money into it, because they know it’s their economic engine,” says Thomasian. “But there is no constitutional requirement to fund higher ed.” Governors and legislatures know that they can “let tuition make up the difference” so they treat their state colleges and universities as “a fiscal balance wheel,” acknowledges Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education. It doesn’t help, adds Thomasian, that many state leaders think university systems aren’t managed as efficiently as they should be. “They are not viewed as one of the most productive areas of our economy,” he says. “More money doesn’t produce better students or higher graduation rates.”

Grace before dying: A hospice program at Louisiana’s maximum-security prison in Angola. Click on photo above to view gallery.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t pressure building in many states to find smarter ways to cut corrections costs. In California, for instance, two thirds of state-prison admissions are related to technical parole violations, Thomasian says. Yet research shows that parole compliance is better when convicts are hit with immediate sanctions (like a weekend in a local jail) than if they are eventually sent back to prison. Electronic monitoring devices, which restrict convicts’ geographic movements, are also getting more consideration. Both ideas require more state investment in parole and probation supervision, but in the long run, Thomasian says, they will save money and lives. “When people are behind bars, they are not paying child support or paying taxes,” he says. “It’s also a fact that after someone spends two years in prison, they are lost, even if they came in as a nonviolent offender. Total immersion in that kind of culture leaves its mark.”

Imprisonment is also very expensive. In California, the cost of keeping an inmate behind bars for a year is about $52,000, similar to the cost of tuition, room, and board at Stanford University. Among the reasons for that high price tag: California has the best-paid prison guards in the country and their union’s political muscle has helped ensure that corrections jobs kept growing over the past three decades. As the state budget crisis has escalated, however, there’s been more of a push by reformers to consider ways to whittle down the prison population by reducing sentences, easing penalties for parole violations, or releasing some prisoners (particularly the elderly and sick) early. But experts say such proposals are politically risky.

Continue Reading…..

Illinois Inmate died in agony while pleading for help

By DAVID MERCER (AP) – June 27, 2010

PEKIN, Ill. — For days before he died in a federal prison, Adam Montoya pleaded with guards to be taken to a doctor, pressing a panic button in his cell over and over to summon help that never came.

An autopsy concluded that the 36-year-old inmate suffered from no fewer than three serious illnesses — cancer, hepatitis and HIV. The cancer ultimately killed him, causing his spleen to burst. Montoya bled to death internally.

But the coroner and a pathologist were more stunned by another finding: The only medication in his system was a trace of over-the-counter pain reliever.

That means Montoya, imprisoned for a passing counterfeit checks, had been given nothing to ease the excruciating pain that no doubt wracked his body for days or weeks before death.

“He shouldn’t have died in agony like that,” Coroner Dennis Conover said. “He had been out there long enough that he should have at least died in the hospital.”

The FBI recently completed an investigation into Montoya’s death and gave its findings to the Justice Department, which is reviewing the case. If federal prosecutors conclude that Montoya’s civil rights were violated, they could take action against the prison, its guards, or both. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, saying that the matter was still being investigated.

The coroner said guards should have been aware that something was seriously wrong with the inmate. And outside experts agree that the symptoms of cancer and hepatitis would have been hard to miss: dramatic weight loss, a swollen abdomen, yellow eyes.

During Montoya’s final days, he “consistently made requests to the prison for medical attention, and they wouldn’t give it to him,” said his father, Juan Montoya, who described how his son repeatedly punched the panic button. Three inmates corroborated that account in interviews with The Associated Press.

The younger Montoya was taken to the prison clinic one day for “maybe five, 10 minutes,” his father said. “And they gave him Tylenol, and that was it. He suffered a lot.”

The federal prison in Pekin will not discuss Montoya’s death. Prison spokesman Jay Henderson referred questions to the Bureau of Prisons, which denied an AP request for information on Montoya’s medical condition, citing privacy laws.

It isn’t clear whether the prison system, relatives or even Montoya himself knew the full extent of his illness. Montoya’s father had no idea his son had cancer or hepatitis. Inmates who knew him said he told them he had cancer, but they knew nothing of his HIV.

According to its website, the Bureau of Prisons tries to screen the health of new inmates within 24 hours of their arrival. A closer examination within two weeks is required for prisoners with serious, long-term illnesses. But officials have not said whether Montoya was given any kind of exam or whether his medical records made it to Pekin.

Montoya pleaded guilty in May 2009 to counterfeiting commercial checks, credit cards and gift cards. Prosecutors will not say how much money was involved in the scheme, but Montoya was ordered to pay a little over $2,000 in restitution.

Montoya, who had a history of methamphetamine abuse, was released while awaiting sentencing and was ordered not to use drugs. At the time, he was living with his father and working for his father’s process-serving business, which delivers legal documents. His father said he was paying Montoya’s bills and paying him about $300 a week.

Then in mid-June, Adam Montoya was diagnosed with HIV.

“It hit him like a ton of bricks,” his father said.

After the diagnosis, Montoya retreated back into methamphetamine. Following a urine test, he admitted using the drug three times in a month, and he was locked up.

Montoya began taking antiviral drugs, so his father still had hope and tried to give his son a sense of the same. “I thought, ‘You’ll get out. You’ll get your probation, and you’ll have years of life,” the elder Montoya said.

In mid-October, Montoya was sentenced to two years and three months in prison. When he arrived at a federal prison transfer center in Oklahoma City, his medication was waiting for him. His father took that to mean that the prison system knew Montoya suffered from HIV.
Montoya arrived at the Pekin prison on Oct. 26. He lived just 18 more days. The inmates around him say he spent much of that time pleading for help from his cell.

Prison staff told Montoya he had the flu, according to Randy Rader, an inmate in the next cell who wrote letters to his mother about Montoya and discussed him in an e-mail interview with the AP.

“That man begged these people for nine days locked behind these doors,” Rader wrote to his mother on Nov. 14. The letter was first obtained by The Pekin Daily Times, which wrote about Montoya’s death earlier this year.

Rader has since been moved to a prison in California — far from his family in Michigan. He suspects the move was retaliation for speaking out about Montoya.

The last time a staff member visited Montoya, about 10 p.m. on Nov. 12, he reported having trouble breathing and complained that he could no longer feel his fingers, Rader said in the e-mail interview. The staff member told Montoya that he would try to get help the next day.
Around 6:30 a.m., prison officials found Montoya’s body in his cell.

The autopsy showed that Montoya’s spleen was almost 10 times the normal weight because it had been engulfed by a cancerous tumor, which was on its way to doing the same with his liver.

The pathologist who examined Montoya’s body said his eyes were also yellow — an unmistakable sign of hepatitis. Dr. John Ralston is reluctant to speculate whether treatment could have saved Montoya’s life by the time he reached Pekin. The doctor suspects he would have needed a liver transplant to have a chance.

That said, “You would think that he would have been feeling bad enough and complaining enough that somebody should have tried to get to the bottom of this,” Ralston said.

The AP sought opinions about Montoya’s condition from other doctors who did not examine him but were familiar with his diseases. They agreed he probably displayed obvious signs of distress.

Montoya would have had a swollen abdomen because of his spleen. At the same time, he probably was losing weight rapidly because the large tumor would have left little room in his belly for food, according to Dr. Krishna Rao, an assistant professor of oncology at Southern Illinois University Medical School in Springfield.

Someone in Montoya’s condition should have been taking heavy doses of chemotherapy for his cancer or receiving stem cell transplants, if he were healthy enough, said Dr. James Egner, an oncologist with the Carle Foundation Hospital in Champaign.

If the cancer was too advanced, Montoya should have at least been treated for pain with powerful drugs, possibly in a hospice, Egner said.
The president of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project said it isn’t uncommon for medical records not to arrive with a federal inmate.

“Sometimes it arrives late, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all,” said David Fathi, who has spent 15 years studying prison conditions. “That’s why it’s so critical that the new facilities do a medical screening” of new inmates.

Fahti said Montoya’s death “is really an egregious failure, of the kind that you wouldn’t expect from even a small county jail, let alone the largest prison system in the United States.”

After his son’s death, Juan Montoya wrote to the prison complaining about its medical care. Warden Richard Rios wrote back to defend his institution.

“I must respectfully disagree with your characterization of the medical care Adam received and want to assure you that we carefully monitored you son’s medical condition,” wrote Rios, who was not hired for the job until months after the death. He did not elaborate, writing that privacy laws limited what he could say.

The elder Montoya is now waiting for his son’s medical records, but he doubts they will offer many clues. The family has hired lawyers but has not decided whether to file a lawsuit.

Montoya thinks a lot now about the assurances he offered his son as he headed for prison.

“Your time will go by fast, and you’ll get out, and we’ll get you a job and be part of the family,” Montoya recalls telling his son. “It never happened.”

Source: AP/Google News

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This post is off topic from my regular articles. I feel it is imperative that I share this news with you all; the ‘oil spill’ will be affecting each and everyone of us in so many ways for a long time coming….

Please join me and thousands of others who are supporting Kindra, her family and the families that are living in Venice LA and surrounding areas. Please watch her videos, as they are disappearing, being removed from You Tube. This brave young woman is standing up and speaking out against BP and the devastation that the oil spill disaster is causing.

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Witnessing an execution: It’s the media’s role in a democratic society

By Lisa Carricaburu

The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated Jun 26, 2010

A week ago, Utah made history.

It may not seem so to those of you who regarded the state’s execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner by firing squad with dismay or even disgust. In letters, phone calls, online comments and personal conversations, some of you questioned why Salt Lake Tribune reporter Nate Carlisle and colleagues representing eight other news organizations had to watch Gardner die and recount each detail. It was exploitive, you said. Ghoulish. “I don’t need or want to know every second of what happened in that execution chamber,” one reader said. “It’s just plain creepy.”

Those of us who have lived this story recognize it as all of those things. On April 23, Gardner announced he would die by firing squad, a decision that made him only the third man in the U.S. to be executed that way since 1977. From that moment, we saw our challenge.

Here’s why we chose to be there as the four bullets were fired: We believe strongly that if the law of the land calls for the state to execute a killer, the media must be there, no matter how distasteful the prospect.

In a democratic society, we are you. We witness your government at work and report to you how it functions so you can decide whether and how to change it.

Information is power. Just as we work on your behalf each day to ensure your access to public records and meetings where elected officials conduct your business, we bear witness as the state metes out the ultimate punishment to arm you with facts that inform discussions and if you deem it necessary, effect change.

Yes, sometimes you’d rather not know, and certainly, we want to hear from you when you don’t like what we do. We work for you.

But please hear us out on this one. Be assured we did not take this assignment lightly. The Tribune team formed to cover Gardner’s final days and his execution met frequently and talked at length and candidly about the gravity and historical importance of the story. Utah is the only state in the nation to have carried out firing squad executions since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 restored the death penalty as an option, and Gardner may be the last to die by that method.

We planned our coverage to capture the nationwide significance of — and worldwide interest in — the execution, but also to comprehensively explore how Gardner’s case and the quarter-century he spent on death row played into the national debate over capital punishment. Paramount in our coverage plan were the stories and reflections of those most deeply affected: the families and friends of Gardner’s victims, his own family and the killer himself.

Carlisle, a reporter on The Tribune’s justice team, thought long and hard before volunteering to witness the execution. In the end, “it was an important story and I became a journalist to tell important stories,” he said.

His frank account of what occurred at 12:17 a.m. June 18 answered questions many had: Did the sharpshooters hit the target? How quickly did Gardner die? Did the state carry out the spirit and the letter of the law?

Carlisle found it challenging to be the one to provide answers. He met with a counselor beforehand to prepare and will meet with her again to reflect. For a moment just as the execution was about to occur, he asked himself whether he had erred in volunteering.

But he did his job in representing you.

“Reporters and the public watch governments pass laws, build roads and fight wars,” he said. “For us not to attend and report on an execution would be incongruent with Democracy.”

Thomas Jefferson once said that “the theory of the free press is not that the truth will be presented completely or perfectly in any one instance, but that the truth will emerge from a free discussion.”

Hopefully, we can all agree that our account of Gardner’s execution helped inform a free discussion.

We believe we did our part by being there on your behalf to observe and report on your government at work.

Now it’s up to you.

Pair shares death row stories after being freed

//

Photo by Mike Spencer

Gary Drinkard (left) and Delbert Tibbs take questions from the audience after both men told their stories of being on deathrow and then being exonerated. Both Tibbs and Drinkard shared their stories as part of an eight-day tour across seven Eastern North Carolina cities.

By Michelle Cerulli
Michelle.Cerulli@StarNewsOnline.com

Published: Wednesday, June 23, 2010

In a purple button-down polo shirt and orange baseball cap, Delbert Tibbs looked like everyone else gathered in the John H. McCoy Auditorium on Wednesday morning. But aside from fellow guest speaker, Gary Drinkard, Tibbs was not like everyone else. He served years on death row for the rape of a woman and the murder of her friend: crimes the court later found he did not commit.

The two former death row inmates spoke to roughly 100 people as part of an eight-day tour across eastern North Carolina sponsored by non-profits People of Faith Against the Death Penalty (PFADP) and Witness to Innocence, which work to fight for the rights of death row prisoners.

There are currently 176 death row inmates in North Carolina, three of whom are women.

For an hour, the two men recreated their conviction stories and shared their beliefs about the death penalty before taking questions, of which there were many. Wilmington was the fifth stop on the tour, which ends with a conversation over brunch for clergy and religious leaders in Elizabeth City on Saturday.

“We hope to give you something to think about,” said Tibbs, who said he believes God sent him to death row to become a witness to the injustices of the capital punishment system and bring that awareness to others.

Tibbs was born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago with his mother at age 12. He said he entered a seminary in his late twenties to become part of the solution to some of our country’s problems, but became disillusioned and left school to explore the country.

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Introducing: 4 Justice Now -Social Networking Site

You can click our logo to visit our parent organization The Action Committee for Women In Prison! www.acwip.net

4justicenow is the Florida and NY/NJ Chapter of ACWIP a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization.

It is our mission to protect the rights of women in Florida state prisons, cooperatively working for justice to improve the conditions of confinement, to free those wrongly convicted and to work with attorneys that specialize in clemency and parole for those who deserve their freedom. We are a grassroots organization mobilizing to change the criminal justice system in the United States however we are not lawyers and we are not qualified to provide direct legal assistance.

Initially, we are focusing our efforts in helping Florida female inmates and their families because of our founder’s personal experience within FDOC and for the women she left behind. We will look to expand our efforts nationwide as possible. Ultimately, we want to END violence against women everywhere. Although women are the fastest growing segment of the inmate population, they are still outnumbered by about 10-1 by males and need our voice.

We are looking for people who support our cause by helping with requests from inmates and their families, and by taking an active role in responding to those requests, signing petitions, writing letters, making phone calls and helping us to change laws. Our organization is also reaching out to law students, schools and practicing attorneys to review and take on cases. We believe that when you hear the stories of these women you will be compelled to help them.

http://4justicenow.wackwall.com/index

National Call-In Day: Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Tell Congress to pass the National Criminal Justice Commission Act National Call-In Day: Wednesday, June 23, 2010

BACKGROUND INFO: In 2009, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) and 15 bipartisan cosponsors introduced the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, S. 714 , legislation that would create a bipartisan Commission to review and identify effective criminal justice policies and make recommendations for reform. The Senate Judiciary Committee has reviewed and favorably passed the bill and it is now awaiting passage out of the United States Senate. We need your help urging Senate Leadership to prioritize and pass this important legislation!

ACTION NEEDED: On Wednesday, June 23rd, individuals nationwide will urge passage of this legislation by calling Senate Leadership to ask them to prioritize and support Senate passage of the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, S. 714. We hope that you will join us by making these critical calls!

Please call the following Senators to ask them to prioritize and support Senate passage of this legislation:

• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), 202-224-5556
• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 202-224-3135
• Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), 202-224-9447

RSVP to our Facebook Event for this day of action to receive updates and communicate with other participants.

MESSAGE: I am calling to ask the Senator to prioritize and support immediate Senate passage of S. 714, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, because:

• Having a transparent and bipartisan Commission review and identify effective criminal justice policies would increase public safety.

• The increase in incarceration over the past twenty years has stretched the system beyond its limits.  These high costs to taxpayers are unsustainable, especially during these times of economic downturn.

• The proposed commission would conduct a comprehensive national review – not audits of individual state systems – and would issue recommendations – not mandates – for consideration.

If you have any questions about the Wednesday, June 23rd National Call-In Day, please contact your regional outreach director – Amber Langston , Stacia Cosner or Jon Perri .Thank you so much in advance for your help!

Students for Sensible Drug Policy

http://ssdp.org/cjreform/