Guards Shown Watching Inmate Attack

by The Associated Press

Associated Press In this June 15, 2010 file photo, the Idaho Correctional Center is shown south of Boise, Idaho. Lawsuits from inmates contend the company that runs the prison, the Corrections Corporation of America, denies prisoners medical treatment as a way of covering up assaults. They have dubbed the Idaho lockup “gladiator school” because it is so violent.

Associated Press In this July 26, 2010 photo, former inmate Hanni Elabed is shown during an interview with The Associated Press in Boise, Idaho. Elabed suffered brain damage and persistent short-term memory loss after he was beaten by another inmate while multiple guards watched at the Idaho prison operated by Corrections Corporation of America.

BOISE, Idaho

The surveillance video from the overhead cameras shows Hanni Elabed being beaten by a fellow inmate in an Idaho prison, managing to bang on a prison guard station window, pleading for help. Behind the glass, correctional officers look on, but no one intervenes when Elabed is knocked unconscious.

No one steps into the cellblock when the attacker sits down to rest, and no one stops him when he resumes the beating.

Videos of the attack obtained by The Associated Press show officers watching the beating for several minutes. The footage is a key piece of evidence for critics who claim the privately run Idaho Correctional Center uses inmate-on-inmate violence to force prisoners to snitch on their cellmates or risk being moved to extremely violent units.

On Tuesday, hours after the AP published the video, the top federal prosecutor in Idaho told the AP that the FBI has been investigating whether guards violated the civil rights of inmates at the prison, which is run by the Corrections Corporation of America.

The investigation concerns the prison’s rate of violence and covers multiple assaults between inmates, including the attack on Elabed, U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson said.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen said the company is cooperating with federal agents, as it has with other law enforcement overseeing the prisons.

Lawsuits from inmates contend the company denies prisoners medical treatment as a way of covering up the assaults. They have dubbed the Idaho lockup “gladiator school” because it is so violent.

The AP initially sought a copy of the videos shot on Jan. 18 from state court, but Idaho 4th District Judge Patrick Owen denied that request. The AP had already obtained a copy and decided to publish the videos after a person familiar with the case verified their authenticity.

The videos show at least three guards watching as Elabed was stomped on a dozen times. At no time during the recorded sequence did anyone try to pull away James Haver, a short, slight man.

About two minutes after Haver stopped the beating of his own accord, the metal cellblock door was unlocked. Haver was handcuffed and Elabed was examined for signs of life. He bled inside his skull and would spend three days in a coma.

CCA, the nation’s largest private prison company, said it was “highly disappointed and deeply concerned” over AP’s decision to release the videos.

“Public release of the video poses an unnecessary security risk to our staff, the inmates entrusted to our care, and ultimately to the public,” the prison company said in a statement.

Violence behind bars and misconduct by guards is common, regardless of whether prisons are run by the government or private companies. CCA, which oversees some 75,000 inmates in more than 60 facilities under contracts with the federal government, 19 states and the District of Columbia, is no exception.

A year ago, CCA and another company, Dominion Correctional Services LLC, agreed to pay $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit in which the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission claimed male officers at a prison in Colorado forced female workers to perform sex acts to keep their jobs.

In January, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear ordered some 400 female inmates transferred to a state-run prison after more than a dozen reports of sexual misconduct by male guards employed by CCA. Inmates from Hawaii at the CCA-run Kentucky prison made similar accusations and Hawaii later removed them. In May, agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed CCA on probation and launched an investigation of whether a guard at a central Texas detention facility sexually assaulted women on their way to being deported.

Olson said the investigation is focused solely on the Idaho prison and not any of the other prisons operated by CCA.

Before the Idaho attack, Elabed tried to get help from prison staffers, telling them that he had been threatened and giving them details about drug trafficking between inmates and staffers that he had witnessed, according to his lawsuit. He was put in solitary confinement for his protection but was later returned to the same unit with the inmates he snitched on, his lawsuit said. He was on the cellblock only six minutes before he was attacked.

Steven Pevar, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in 34 years of suing more than 100 prisons and jails, the Idaho lockup is the most violent he has seen.

“This isn’t even what we know of as a prison — this is a gulag,” Pevar said.

Pevar blames the violence on CCA and the former warden, Phillip Valdez, who was head of the prison when Elabed was attacked. Valdez was later transferred to another CCA prison in Kansas. The company refused to disclose its reason for moving him.

CCA officials maintain the prison is safe and run according to state and federal standards. But at least some of those standards appear to be violated in the video — including a requirement that emergency care arrive within four minutes of a disturbance. It took medical workers nearly six minutes to get to Elabed — a delay that can be life-threatening in serious injuries, according to state prisons officials.

“Nurses and medical professionals believe you need to get a heart beating and breathing started within four minutes or the person’s going to die,” Idaho Department of Correction spokesman Jeff Ray said.

CCA spokesman Owen said employees receive training and supervision designed to protect both themselves and the inmates.

“As Mr. Haver’s wanton attack illustrates, correctional and medical personnel must often respond to render aid in dangerous situations, not knowing the extent of the risk they may face when they do,” Owen said.

Owen also condemned the attack and said the surveillance videos were key to Haver’s guilty plea in the beating. CCA was unable to answer additional questions surrounding the circumstances of the attack due to pending litigation, he said.

Elabed’s family learned through medical records that CCA officials pulled him out of the hospital before he could get significant treatment and against his doctor’s advice, in order to treat him at the cheaper in-prison facility, the family said.

Elabed, who was originally sentenced to two to 12 years for robbery, was ultimately released on a medical parole because he was too badly injured to be cared for in prison.

A slew of federal lawsuits detail beatings behind prison walls and long waits for medical care at CCA-run prisons in Idaho. Inmate Todd Butters said in his lawsuit he was denied X-rays after he was severely beaten by gang members on his cellblock for refusing to pay $5 a week in “rent.” The Idaho Supreme Court threw out the case after finding Butters didn’t take the necessary steps to try to solve the problem with prison officials before suing.

In another attack, inmate Daniel Dixon said he was denied X-rays and a doctor’s visit after he claimed other inmates beat him until he had broken ribs and facial bones and other injuries.

State officials have long been aware of allegations of mistreatment and poor management at the Idaho Correctional Center, the state’s largest prison. A review of hundreds of public records by AP found in 2008 that ICC had a violence rate three times as high as other Idaho prisons.

The AP found in a follow-up investigation that ICC had only marginally improved its violence rate and that inspectors were still finding rampant gang violence and extortion. State auditors have also found widespread problems keeping medical charts updated, excessive wait times for medical care and other problems with treatment.

Even though Idaho Department of Correction officials have increased oversight and top department leaders have spoken out about their concern over the medical issues, state lawmakers have renewed the company’s multimillion-dollar contract with Nashville, Tenn.-based CCA and added 600 beds to the prison.

Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke said in a statement that he couldn’t talk about the video because of pending litigation, but said the eight state-run prisons his agency operates are among the safest and most efficient in the country.

Reinke also said his department began beefing up oversight at the private prison three years ago.

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California’s attempt to halt a mass prisoner release gets skeptical hearing at Supreme Court

A majority of the justices say the state has failed to remedy the problem of severe prison overcrowding, despite decades of lawsuits. But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. warns that releasing 40,000 prisoners will bring more crime to California.

Bunks are placed in open areas at Mule Creek State Prison. California is fighting an order from a federal court to release 40,000 prisoners from the state’s crowded prison system. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times / June 3, 2010)

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

12:04 PM PST, November 30, 2010

WASHINGTON — California’s bid to block a court order that would require the state to release or transfer more than 40,000 inmates from its prisons ran into sharp and skeptical questioning at the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

A majority of the justices said the state had failed to remedy the severe overcrowding problem, despite decades of lawsuits and promises from the governor’s office.

“How much longer do we have to wait — another 20 years?” asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was reacting to the state lawyer’s contention that it was “premature” for a three-judge panel to order the state to reduce its prison population by one-fourth in two years.

“At some point, the court [in California] has to say, ‘You have been given enough time…. It’s now time for a remedy,’ ” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who grew up in Sacramento. That “seems to me perfectly reasonable,” he said.

Since 1990, the state has faced lawsuits contending that the prisons are not providing humane care for sick and mentally ill prisoners, and that severe overcrowding is the main cause of the problem.

But not all the justices were in agreement that releasing prisoners is the right remedy.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said releasing more prisoners will mean more crime on the streets of California. “If I were a citizen of California, I would be concerned about the release of 40,000 prisoners,” he said, noting that mass releases of prisoners in other states has led to an increase in rapes, robberies and murders.

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Argument recap: Jousting over prisoner release

Today’s transcripts

Posted: 30 Nov 2010 11:23 AM PST

transcript of the oral argument in Schwarzenegger v. Plata is available here.

Argument recap: Jousting over prisoner release

Posted: 30 Nov 2010 10:28 AM

Analysis

In an argument that at times came close to being rowdy, the Supreme Court’s members jousted on Monday over whether to take on themselves the management of the way California provides medical care for some 140,000 prison inmates, or to leave that chore to a lower court that some Justices thought had done it right and some thought had botched the job.  In the end, the final choice seemed likely to reside with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who insisted that the lower court be left with a lot of discretion but who just as plainly showed he was not entirely satisfied with how it had used that leeway.

An argument that ran just a few minutes over the already expanded schedule of 80 minutes found Justices raising their voices and interrupting each other with some frequency as Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., tried only occasionally and gently to referee.  All of the Court’s members except Justice Clarence Thomas were warmly engaged, and seemed determined at times to drive the arguments of counsel in Schwarzenegger v., Plata, et al. (08-1233) — the first case to reach the Court on the power of the courts to order a release of thousands of inmates from over-crowded prisons under a 1996 federal law.

Both the Court and the two lawyers who argued were so locked into a review of the details of the actual release order issued by a three-judge District Court in the case that no one spent even a second of the lengthy hearing discussing procedural complications that might have kept the Justices from ever ruling on the validity of that order.  It appeared that the Court had silently accepted the notion that the entire case, with some parts of it stretching back 20 years, was before it for a definitive ruling.

The focus of attention shifted fully to Justice Kennedy, as the other Justices appeared very closely divided as they made clear where they stood for or against what the District Court had done in ordering that upwards of 35,000 inmates be turned loose in California over the next two years.  And, if what Kennedy said controls how he would be voting on the final outcome, it seemed that he would not be willing to overturn that release order in its entirety, but would find ways to indicate that the remedy had to be reshaped or pared down in its scope.  For example, Kennedy repeatedly suggested that the number released should be cut back by about 7.5 percent — meaning that about 24,000 would be sent home.

Even that number, it was plain, would be far too high for one of the Justices — Samuel A. Alito, Jr., who grew visibly aroused at the prospect of thousands of dangerous inmates roaming the streets of California and starting a new crime wave.  After a lawyer for California inmates tried to reassure Alito by suggesting that perhaps only 17 percent of those who would actually be released might commit new crimes, compared to an overall repeater rate in California of 70 percent, Alito was in no way comforted.  “That means 3,o00 are going to commit another crime,” the Justice said, doing a quick calculation.  “If this order goes into effect, we will see, the people of California will see, whether or not there is more crime,” he said ominously.

Justice Alito was the only member of the Court who made it obvious that he was convinced that no prisoner release order should have been issued in the California case.  He could not see, he suggested, how setting a limit of the total prison population would get at the problem of inadequate medical care for the inmates.   The solution that the District Court adopted, after concluding that nothing else would work to protect the health of the inmates and the prison staffs, was that the prison population must be cut down to 137.5 percent of design capacity within two years.  It is now somewhere around 195 percent of capacity.

The Chief Justice displayed considerable skepticism about the District Court’s approach, and Justice Antonin Scalia, who took comparatively little part in the exchanges, also was doubtful.  Since Justice Thomas said nothing, it is unclear how he would react, but the normal expectation would be that he would vote with the Court’s conservatives.

The three-judge District Court, and the two single District judges who had previously been handling the two overcrowding cases that are now combined, had quite conspicuous support Monday from Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.  Justice Ginsburg, now and then abandoning her usual gentle and understated manner, was energetic in her defense of the need for the courts to do something after the hazards to inmate health had been litigated for two decades.

The state of California’s lawyer, Washington attorney Carter G. Phillips, had barely opened his argument with a suggestion that the District Court’s prisoner release order was “extraordinarily premature,” when Ginsburg reminded him that one of the cases “has been pending for 20 years.”  One judge, she recalled, had issued 70 remedial orders.  “How much longer do we have to wait? Another 20 years?” she demanded.

And, within another minute or two, Justice Sotomayor was demanding that Phillips “slow down from the rhetoric” and focus very specifically on “the concrete details” of what California was actually doing to try to relieve the health hazards due to overcrowding.  When Sotomayor continued to press Phillips for details, Justice Scalia, with evident sarcasm and a taunt to Sotomayor, advised Phillips to answer without using rhetoric.

Phillips, a veteran advocate before the Court who is alternately demonstrative and tightly controlled, at times had no chance to finish some of his answers as another of the liberal Justices swooped down on his argument that, if California just had more time, it could solve the prison health crisis without a massive prisoner release.  Justices Sotomayor and Kagan sought to pin down the state’s lawyer on whether California could, in fact, solve the crisis within five years, as the state has sometimes suggested, instead of the two years mandated by the District Court.  And Kagan at one point accused Phillips of asking the Court “to re-find the facts” in litigation that had been underway for two decades.

Amid the liberals’ pummeling, Justice Kennedy started intervening, opening with a comment that “a some point, a court has to say you have been given enough time.  The constitutional violation persists, now it’s time for a remedy.  The court has to focus on remedy; that seems perfectly reasonable to me.”  In a few minutes, Kennedy added that there was “massive expert testimony to support the inmates” in their demands for a remedy to the overcrowding.

Justice Alito, who would save most of his questions and comments for the prisoners’ lawyer, did intervene when Phillips was the podium to complain that the court-appointed receiver working on a solution to the health crisis had improperly filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court to try to get evidence belatedly into the case.  Along with his later comments, Alito was making it plain that he could find no legitimacy in the process that had led to the prisoner release order.

When Berkeley lawyer Donald Specter rose to defend the District Court’s solution, it became the conservative Justices’ turn to mount a continuing challenge.  Justice Scalia began with a complaint that the District Court had cut off the admission of evidence, so that the state supposedly had been unable to show it was making progress without a prisoner release order.  The Chief Justice picked up on the point, too.  But it soon was Justice Alito’s turn, and he moved quickly to suggest that the 137.5 percent design capacity goal set by the three District judges simply did not fit the problem of health hazards behind the walls.  “It seems to me a disconnect,” he said, suggesting that a release order could not have been a “narrowly tailored” approach to the problem.

And, although Phillips’ argument had been using a 36,000 figure to estimate how many inmates would be set free under the District Court order, Justice Alito chose to talk of 46,000 — the number that was estimated earlier but that both sides in the case now concede would be lowered, perhaps by about 10,000.

As Alito and then the Chief Justice criticized the order, and openly wondered about the need for it,  Justice Kennedy and some of the more liberal Justices began offering suggestions for some modification of the District Court’s mandate.  Justice Kagan, for example, suggested that perhaps the state could be given five years instead of two to reach the prison population reduction.  And then Kennedy began a defense of a design capacity goal of 145 percent, instead of the District Court’s figure of 137.5 percent.  Some experts, he said, had endorsed the higher figure.  Specter, however, said that was a figure suggested by only one expert, a psychologist.  Kennedy did not seem dissuaded, however.  “I don’t see a finding [by the District Court] that 145 would not be an efficacious remedy.”

Specter, who at times seemed intimidated, had its greatest difficulty with Alito — over the threat to public safety from a large release — and with the Chief Justice — over how a state faced with multiple obligations to spend money was to make a choice.   Specter, in fact, seemed to irritate the Chief Justice when the lawyer, asked about budget priorities, said “I believe that state’s have an obligation to enforce constitutional rights.”  The Chief Justice shot back: “I believe that, too, counsel. But what is a state supposed to do?”

When Phillips returned to the lectern for a three-minute rebuttal, Justice Kagan used a good part of that time pressing him to commit to the proposition that the state could solve the prison health crisis in five years without any threat to the public safety.  Phillips would not make a flat commitment.

Source: SCOTUS Blog

The Nation is watching…and waiting….

California prison overcrowding case heads to Supreme Court

The state is appealing a 2009 federal judicial order to reduce the prison population by more than 40,000 in two years. Lawyers for 18 other states are backing the appeal.

John Meeks plays cards at a prison in Lancaster, which is at twice its capacity. California is appealing an order to release or transfer 40,000 inmates. (Gary Friedman, Los Angeles Times / June 9, 2010)

 

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles

The suicide rate in California’s overcrowded prisons is nearly twice the national average, and one inmate dies every eight days from inadequate medical care.

These are just two indicators cited in the 15-year legal battle over whether the state’s prisons are failing to provide humane medical care for the 165,000 inmates.

On Tuesday, the problems of California’s prisons will move to a national stage when the Supreme Court hears the state’s challenge to an extraordinary court order that would require the prison population to be reduced by about 25% in two years. That could mean releasing or transferring more than 40,000 inmates, state lawyers say.

The case is not just of interest to California.

Lawyers for 18 other states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania and Virginia, joined in support of California’s appeal, saying they feared a ruling upholding the prison release order could trigger similar moves across the nation. “Real world experience” suggests that releasing a large number of inmates would “inevitably place innocent citizens at much greater risk,” they said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials call the order from a panel of three federal judges “the most sweeping intrusion into a state’s management” of its prisons ever handed down by a court. They say the panel — composed of two federal district judges and a federal appeals judge — is “using the guise of providing healthcare” to order a restructuring of the state’s correctional system. They also argue that the forced release of prisoners would threaten public safety.

Defenders of the judges’ order cite Schwarzenegger’s own words in 2006 declaring that California faced an overcrowding emergency in its prisons. They also say the state is exaggerating the possible effect of the order. California locks up many prisoners for repeat petty crimes or for technical parole violations, even though they are not considered dangerous or violent.

“California has people in prison who wouldn’t be in prison in any other state,” said former George W. Bush administration Solicitor Gen. Paul D. Clement, who represents one group of state prisoners. His brief cites comments from a former Texas prison director who said he was surprised and disturbed by the overcrowding in California’s prisons.

Supporters of the judges’ order also emphasize that it does not require a wholesale release of inmates. For example, the prisons could free up space by relocating some inmates to county jails, private prisons or out-of-state facilities. In addition, some nonviolent inmates could be released early.

“We’re sending 80,000 people to prison each year for two to three months — parole violators who are going from their home communities to sit in reception centers where there is no rehabilitation, no healthcare, no drug programs,” said Michael Bien, lead attorney in the case brought on behalf of prisoners deprived of mental healthcare.

“This is the kind of thing that everyone knows doesn’t do anything for public safety,” Bien added. “These men and women come back home after a couple of months having been exposed to much more dangerous people. If they weren’t dangerous before, they are now.”

The case began in the early 1990s with separate lawsuits contending that inmates who were mentally ill or had chronic health problems were suffering behind bars. The 8th Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment, and it has been read to mean prisoners cannot be denied needed medical care.

U.S. District Judges Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento and Thelton Henderson in San Francisco separately ruled that the prisoners were suffering from unconstitutional ill treatment, and they handed down at least 80 orders requiring state prisons to make improvements. Despite promises from prison authorities, the state did not comply with most of the orders.

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A Must Read for those concerned with CA prisons….

Image via Wikipedia

Lyle Denniston Reporter

Posted Sunday, November 28th

Argument preview: Crowded prisons, inmates’ rights

The Court on Tuesday will hold an extended hearing — 80 minutes long — on the power of federal courts to take steps to relieve overcrowding of the nation’s prisons and jails, including the outright release of inmates.

Case Pages

• Schwarzenegger v. Plata

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confronts its most significant prisoners’ rights case in years — a case that has grown so complicated that the Justices have expanded the oral argument time by a third, to 80 minutes.  The Court must get past two preliminary obstacles before it could rule directly on a remedy for prison overcrowding, in the case of Schwarzenegger, et al., v. Plata, et al. (09-1233),.

Arguing for the state of California at the 11 a.m. hearing will be Carter G. Phillips of SidleyAustin in Washington, and for the prisoners will be Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office in Berkeley — a non-profit law firm that pursues cases on the rights of inmates in California.

 

Background

America’s prisons now hold more than 2.3 million inmates, and many of the facilities are overcrowded, with serious implications for both health and safety.  In C alifornia, the states’ 33 prisons are operating at almost twice their design capacity — actually, 195 percent, meaning that two inmates have to occupy the space designed for one.

But what most concerned Congress, in 1996, was the crowding that it saw on the dockets of the federal courts, with prisoners’ lawsuits piling up and taking longer to decide.  The lawmakers’ response was two-fold.

First, to curtail the effotts by state inmates to repeatedly contest in federal habeas court their convictions and sentences, Congress enacted the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, setting up several new barriers to habeas challanges.  That act paralleled an effort in the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of habeas rights — most significantly, in the 1989 case of Teague v. Lane.

Second, Congress concluded that courts were being drawn too often into overseeing the day-to-day operations of prisons, with sometimes broad judicial decrees to remedy harsh conditions behind the walls.  The lawmakers enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act, with much of the limited debate preceding passage focusing on what the legislators thought were frivolous claims by inmates.  PLRA does not deal at all with inmates’ convictions or sentences, but only with the conditions of prison life.  It has clearly reached at least one of Congress’s goals: prisoners’ lawsuits have dropped by 60 percent since 1995.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled on the scope of the habeas restraints in AEDPA; in fact, an AEDPA case appears at least once in every Term on the Court’s docket.  It has had far fewer cases testing the civil lawsuits restrictions in PLRA.   The most significant of the PLRA cases has now reached the Court.

If the Justices work their way through to a final ruling on the merits, the case could be a landmark on the power of federal judges to simply send some inmates home from prison, as an ultimate means of reducing overcrowding and the health hazards that result, for inmates and for correctional staff members.

Before PLRA was enacted, federal courts relied on general principles of equity to adopt remedies for overcrowding.  The PLRA displaced that approach, with a comprehensive scheme to govern federal litigation over prison conditions.

The Act takes two separate approaches.  It imposes one set of requirements on prisoner lawsuits that seek any kind of future relief in prison conditions.  A second part deals only with the requirements for a court order to actually release inmates from custody as a remedy — treated by the Act as “the remedy of last resort.”  Such a release order, Congress specified, could involve either reducing inmate population outright, or barring new admissions to prisons.  A cap on a facility’s total population is one of the options.

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“I dont need no warrant, Mother F*cker”……

Phoenix Cop Murders Unarmed Man and His Dog

the video is highly disturbing, and Frank Marino should be charged with obstruction of Justice!

What do police departments expect when they openly hire idiots? This man should be charged with two counts of murder. We need to get back to better times, times when police protected citizens instead of working for the corrupt federal government.

Officer Chrismans partner was actually one of the people who reported what actually happened. I would like to commend the sergent who stood up and told the truth about this vicious murder. He actually came out and said he did NOT feel threatened by the victim at any time!

The man that is defending this murder should be immediately fired. How can this man openly promote a murderer on National TV?

When the officers entered the home the twenty nine year old man told them to leave, saying they needed a warrant. Officer Chrisman then pulled out his gun, put it to the mans head and said, “I don’t need no warrant mother F*****” Then it turned in to a heated argument, the victim was tazed twice, shot and KILLED the family dog, then shot and killed the victim.

Source: Sott.Net

Warden in Pa. prison inmate beating case resigns

Thanks to Scott Binsack for the shout out & heads up….check his blog out!

scottbinsack.blogspot.com

 

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM
Associated Press

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) – A warden resigned Wednesday from a northeastern Pennsylvania lockup where a prisoner was beaten and stomped by another inmate last summer, while three prison guards and a supervisor who were on duty during the attack face discipline.

The Lackawanna County Prison Board met behind closed doors with Warden Janine Donate, then announced her resignation. The board also announced that due process hearings will be scheduled for guards Jason Talutto, Robert Jesso and Michael Mallick, and for Lt. Nancy Carroll.

The hearings are a prelude to possible disciplinary action.

Board solicitor David Solfanelli confirmed the hearings involve the Aug. 8 attack on Nicholas Pinto, an inmate at the prison in Scranton.

Donate, who became warden in 2005, could not be reached Wednesday at the prison. A man who answered the phone at her home said she was out.

Pinto, 29, was awaiting sentencing on a federal child pornography charge when he was ambushed by an inmate with a history of violence. Inmate Michael Simonson knocked Pinto to the floor and stomped on his head at least 15 times “with all his might,” according to a police report. His face was shattered, and he suffered brain injuries that left him comatose.

Pinto’s attorney, Patrick Rogan, said Wednesday that Pinto recently emerged from the coma and is communicating with his parents, though he suffers from “permanent neurological injury.”

After the beating, Simonson returned to his cell and used a cloth to wipe evidence from his sneakers, according to a police affidavit.

Pinto was being kept in protective custody at the time of the attack. Simonson, classified as a dangerous “administrative custody” inmate, was supposed to be locked in his cell as Pinto returned to the block from a recreation area, but was not.

Rogan, who is preparing a federal lawsuit against the county, applauded Donate’s resignation but said the problems are “more widespread than four individuals and the warden.”

Pinto claimed in his diary that he endured months of physical, sexual and mental abuse in prison.

Matt Balas, the guards’ union representative, declined comment on the actions of the guards but said the union has the option of filing a grievance if it believes they are being disciplined without just cause.

“I don’t know all the facts concerning our members. I know mistakes were made by prison management,” he said. “We had a labor-management meeting 10 days before this incident and we warned them about this exact situation. We warned them there was the potential for something to happen.”

Source: WTOP

California prison case reaches U.S. Supreme Court

Image via Wikipedia

By Howard Mintz hmintz@mercurynews.com A federal court ruled that the state s prison problems,… (PATRICK TEHAN/MERCURY NEWS ARCHIVES ) For decades, California’s Legislature, governors and a parade of experts in managing state prisons have been unable to fix the state’s overgrown, bloated prison system. Now the U.S. Supreme Court must decide whether three federal judges have the power to do the fixing for them. In arguments set for Tuesday, the nation’s high court will review a federal court’s unprecedented ruling last year that required the state to shed nearly 40,000 inmates from its 33 prisons to relieve an overcrowding problem deemed so severe that it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Schwarzenegger administration appealed the ruling, setting up the final showdown in a long-running legal battle triggered by allegations that the overstuffed prisons are depriving inmates of adequate medical and mental health care. Conditions were deemed so bad that one of the federal judges found inmates were “dying needlessly” on a regular basis. The case also has sweeping ramifications for state prisons across the country, many of which are encountering similar problems at a time when state budgets are too tight to offer much relief. Eighteen states, from Massachusetts to Alaska, have joined California in the case, warning the Supreme Court in a brief that the federal court order “needlessly threatened public safety” and that such “orders inevitably place innocent citizens at much greater risk of victimization.” “The implications are huge not just for California, but for every state in the nation,” said Joan Petersilia, a Stanford University law professor and expert on prison issues. “California in many ways gets seen as the big kahuna, and kind of the worst in terms of prison crowding. But there are other states that are pretty close.”At its core, the case pits the ability of states such as California to rectify their own problems against the powers of federal judges who are forced to step in and order sweeping reforms when a prison system fails to address chronic shortcomings. The Supreme Court will be reviewing whether the three-judge panel overstepped its authority to order inmate releases under a 1996 federal law that in many ways restricted the federal courts’ ability to issue such orders. In last year’s ruling, the three-judge panel concluded that prison overcrowding is the root cause of inadequate medical and mental health care for inmates, and stressed that California prison officials and politicians had failed for years to devise their own solutions. The order required California to reduce its inmate population to 137 percent of prison capacity, which would call for ridding about a quarter of the inmates from the prison system through a variety of measures, including releasing low-level, nonviolent offenders early and sending more inmates to out-of-state prisons. At one point, the judges threatened Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger with contempt if he did not comply with the orders. The governor did devise a sweeping plan to reduce the inmate numbers, including some new prison construction, but at the same time appealed the order to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the inmates argue that the state cannot be trusted to carry out the needed reforms without the court-ordered deadline. “The prisons are still way overcrowded,” said Don Specter, one of the lead attorneys for inmates. “The state is arguing for an interpretation of the law which would make any kind of order impossible.” Both Schwarzenegger and Gov.-elect Jerry Brown have insisted that federal judges are trampling on the state’s right to take care of its prison overcrowding problem. And, Matthew Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, maintains that the judges aren’t giving the state time to follow through with many of the reforms that everyone agrees are needed and that have already slimmed the inmate population by about 8,000 since the system’s 2006 peak. “If we get a release order, we could find ourselves having a difficult time complying with that order without imperiling public safety,” Cate said in an interview last week. “Thirty-five thousand inmates is the equal of (emptying) seven prisons in a single day.” Legal experts predict the state may have a strong argument in the Supreme Court, which is decidedly more conservative on law-and-order issues than the three judges who issued the California order, 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, San Francisco Federal Judge Thelton Henderson and Sacramento Federal Judge Lawrence Karlton, all of whom are Carter appointees with liberal reputations. But Jonathan Simon, a UC Berkeley law professor following the case closely, said the justices may still be reluctant to tamper with the overall factual findings of the three-judge panel, although they may decide the courts need to give the state “more leeway” to comply with the orders. And, Stanford’s Petersilia added, the order has already served a purpose, given the decline in inmate population in recent years. “Without the court order, we wouldn’t have gotten here,” she said. “They weren’t getting it done to the extent they got it done the last two years.” Source: Mercury News

Life, without possibility

Darrell Lomax, an innocent man on California’s death row, responds to those who believe LWOP sentences are a “humane” alternative to the death penalty.

NOT LONG ago, I was invited to answer a question posed by someone out in the free world. The question was: “Is life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) a legitimate replacement for the death penalty, even if the only justification offered is to stop pending executions?”

My answer is a resounding “no.” A sentence of LWOP is, in essence, the very same sentence as the death penalty. The purpose of both of these sentences is to ensure that the fate of the prisoner is to be murdered–by lethal injection or by incarceration.

There is no such thing as dying of natural causes in prison, when incarceration is unnatural for humans to be subjected to. It appears that the state, with the support of those who are in favor of the death penalty, has no qualms killing any male or female member of humanity by lethal injection.

It feels as though if the state were forced to do away with the death penalty, the “eye for an eye” philosophy would mean they would be willing to settle for seeing people receive life without the possibility of parole–which actually equates to a death sentence since it demands that someone spend the rest of their life behind bars, away from family, friends and freedom.

The second part of the question “Is LWOP a legitimate replacement for the death penalty as a justification for stopping pending executions?” gets at another aspect we need to address. I’d like to remind people that I myself am an innocent man who has been wrongfully convicted by a dysfunctional and unreliable California justice system. I speak from the space of one voice of many who are in fact innocent and who face both the death penalty and life without possibility of parole.

I do not see LWOP as a legitimate replacement for the death penalty even if it stops pending executions. By saying this, I want to emphasize that it is not my intention to come across as if I am casting any hope-filled counter-spell against those who have exhausted their appeals and are facing an execution.

One of the reasons I am opposed to LWOP is that when someone is given a death sentence, they are entitled to a mandatory appeal and will be given a court-appointed attorney to appeal their conviction.

With a sentence of LWOP, however, a person is not entitled to an appellate attorney. While the wait for such an attorney for death row prisoners can be as long as six years after a conviction, and over 10 years for a habeas appeal attorney, it is still a mandatory part of the process.

I have been waiting nearly 16 years for my habeas attorney. I am not saying that, because of the mandatory appeals and attorneys, a death sentence is better than LWOP. However, it is critical that those who are wrongfully convicted get a chance to seek justice for themselves.

We live in a very sad world when getting a death sentence means you actually have a better chance of getting your case reviewed and overturning the conviction of an innocent person.

 

Source: Socialist Worker

Rampant homelessness in former foster children yet to be addressed

So many of these children are ending up in the Criminal Justice system…..we are failing these at risk kids, prevention, intervention and education are the keys….

State fails to keep data on youths‘ outcomes

By Bethania Palma Markus, Staff Writer

Steven Navarrette was nearly 18 when he became homeless.

The now-20-year-old was a foster child who had no one to turn to after being forced out of the child welfare system.

“My mom made it very clear she didn’t want me and couldn’t take care of me. I didn’t have a place to live. I was homeless,” he said.

Navarrette’s case isn’t unique.

The state foster care system has been criticized for high rates of homelessness and incarceration among former foster children. Studies show roughly 20 percent of youths become homeless and 40 percent get arrested or go to prison after aging out of the system at 18.

But currently the state doesn’t keep data about how many live on the streets or go to prison, according to DCFS and state prison officials. Critics said the state can’t address a problem it doesn’t monitor.

“Any type of organization has to know the effect of its programming to improve or adjust it,” said Amy Lemley, policy director for John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes. “To date we’ve largely been flying blind.”

An L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services official said child welfare workers are aware of trends but have no authority over foster children once they’re adults.

“While they’re with us as youths, that’s generally the length of time we maintain legal jurisdiction,” said Harvey Kawasaki, youth development services division chief for DCFS. “The problem is once they

terminate they become legal adults, so we don’t have the ability to really force or require tracking of them.”Last month, a federal regulation passed requiring all states to track “independent living services” received by former foster children. But experts said it’s too soon to know whether new database will reach youths who live on the streets.

“Data is important, but with some of the things these young people are dealing with, homelessness is a predictable outcome,” said Elizabeth Calvin, senior advocate for international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch.

Calvin authored a 70-page study detailing the plight of California’s former foster children who became homeless upon emancipation.

The study found that the state is aware of the rampant homelessness in former foster children but fails to prepare them to live on their own.

The vast majority of the former foster youths she encountered said they had no source of income when they aged out of the system and no adult to turn to, she said.

“What we need is a system that is going to ensure that young people are supported as they enter early adulthood, just like most people from intact homes are supported,” Calvin said.

There could be signs of improvement on the horizon, some said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed into law AB 12, allowing foster children to remain in their placements until the age of 21.

And if states are pressured to implement the new federal regulation well, better data collection on post-foster-care youths could be possible, Lemley said.

But AB 12 doesn’t go into effect until 2012, meaning foster children who age out this year or next are at risk of being homeless, Lemley said.

Experts estimate, about 800 of the 4,000 California foster children who turn 18 every year go homeless. While the system provides transitional housing, need far outweighs supply.

Only one in five of emancipating foster children who face imminent homelessness have access to state-funded housing, Lemley said.

Problems facing foster children come down to funding and prioritizing, she said.

The state is facing a $19 billion budget shortfall and shortly after signing AB 12 into law, Schwarzenegger cut millions from the child welfare system.

“This is a public system that’s dramatically overburdened,” Lemley said. “They have to prioritize where they put their effort.”

When even frontline services like removing children from abusive or dangerous situations are sometimes neglected, other aspects of foster care are placed on the back burner.

But Calvin said when the state takes custody of children it takes on the role of parent. And besides sheltering and feeding youngsters, parents play a key role in preparing them for independence and supporting them as they strike out on their own.

Read more: Rampant homelessness in former foster children yet to be addressed – Whittier Daily News http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_16725153#ixzz16ah3eDyU