Christopher Graham, who said police hit his head against the wall while frisking him, in the neighborhood near the 46th Precinct in New York, August 5, 2012. (Photo: Victor J. Blue / The New York Times)
The death of Jim Crow laws in 1965 was supposed to mean the end of government persecution of African-Americans, while a scathing new report and data from a growing chorus of experts say otherwise.
This is not hyperbole. The problem is real, and systemic, and a new report out this month confirms it.
Terror is terror, and it often ends in incarcerating the innocent – or worse.
Domestic terror against blacks includes a death count at the hands of “police, security guards and vigilantes,” resulting in the fatality of an African-American every 28 hours.
That calculation comes from new research by Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a nonprofit that has chapters in Atlanta, Oakland, New Orleans, Detroit and elsewhere.
Entitled “Operation Ghetto Storm,” MXGM’s report is detailed and extensive in its findings and includes abundant annotations for the 313 wrongful deaths that they cite. “The practice of executing Black people without pretense of a trial, jury or judge is an integral part of the government’s current overall strategy of containing the Black community in a state of perpetual colonial subjugation and exploitation,” reads part of its preface, and one of the most horrifying aspects revealed by the report is that 66 percent of the “extrajudicial killings” were of individuals between the ages of 2 and 31.
Formerly Incarcerated People, Their Families, Friends, Allies and Comrades
We are seeking your participation in a very unusual event – a day-long grassroots lobbying visit to the California State Capitol led by formerly incarcerated people. As formerly incarcerated people we have been told on more than one occasion: “you have the right to remain silent!” However, when the suffering becomes too unbearable and negatively impacts all aspects of our personal, professional, family and community life, we have an obligation to speak up. The need to speak up is especially acute when it appears that this suffering has been designed to outlast our jail or prison sentences.
On May 13, 2013, we invite our brothers and sisters, supporters, allies, friends and comrades to join us and support the formerly incarcerated members of our community who have been rendered silent.
On several occasions we have been asked, why this year? Why not go to Sacramento some other time? Here’s why THIS time is an opportune time. There are currently a number of bills being considered that directly relate to our capacity to thrive as human beings. The stakes are high: our right to vote, our right to work, our right not to languish in a gang-database for the rest of our lives, and our ability to seek expungement relief – all these issues are being considered. We are witnessing the greatest change in the criminal injustice system in over 50 years. If this is not the time, then when?
We are just now beginning to secure support for the buses that will be rolling out of both Northern and Southern California. We are lining up various legislators to support this effort. We are beginning to contact the various caucuses in the State House for support.
If you are formerly incarcerated – Please join us! And to all other people of good will, please come out and support formerly incarcerated people in our fight for inclusion. Come out and support us speaking in our own voice. Help us speak truth to power and regain our dignity.
Concertina razor wire at a prison (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Contributed By:
Christie Thompson
In several men’s prisons across California, colored signs hang above cell doors: blue for black inmates, white for white, red, green or pink for Hispanic, yellow for everyone else.
On any given day, the color of a sign could mean the difference between an inmate exercising in the prison yard or being confined to their cell. When prisoners attack guards or other inmates, California allows its corrections officers to restrict all prisoners of that same race or ethnicity to prevent further violence.
Prison officials have said such moves can be necessary in a system plagued by some of the worst race-based gang violence in the country. Just last week, at least four inmates were taken to the hospital after a fight broke out between over 60 black and Hispanic inmates in a Los Angeles jail.
But legal advocates say such practices are deeply problematic. “I haven’t seen anything like it since the days of segregation, when you had colored drinking fountains,” said Rebekah Evenson, an attorney with the nonprofit Prison Law Office.
A federal class-action lawsuit filed in 2011 by the Prison Law Office says race-based restrictions are an ineffective and unjust way of keeping prisoners safe. “Rather than targeting actual gang members, they assume every person is a gang member based on the color of their skin,” said Evenson, one of the lead lawyers in the case. According to the ACLU National Prison Project, California is the only state known to use race-based lockdowns.
State and federal courts have ruled against the practice multiple times. One state court judge concluded in 2002 that “managing inmates on the basis of ethnicity” was counterproductive, and instead increased hostilities among prisoners.
A recent review of corrections department reports, done for the Prison Law Office, suggests it’s still common practice. The analysis found that nearly half the 1,445 security-based lockdowns between January 2010 and November 2012 affected specific racial or ethnic groups. Inmates labeled as Hispanic were the most common targets, while inmates identified as “other,” (anyone not labeled black, white or Hispanic) were the least likely to be restricted.
Rejecting an inmate’s complaint in 2010, one prison’s inmate appeals reviewer noted that the department’s “policy is that when there is an incident involving any race, all inmates of that race are locked up.” Another review cited the same policy.
California’s corrections department spokesperson Terry Thornton said that’s not department policy. Thornton said policy dictates that restrictions will not “target a specific racial or ethnic group unless there is a legitimate penological interest in doing so.”
Prisoner advocates say race-based lockdowns may be yet another consequence of California’s crowding crisis. In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld a federal court ruling that crowding in the state’s prisons was severe enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and required the state to cut its prison population.
It is obvious, if not platitudinous, that men and women who are abnormally aggressive and impulsive are especially likely to get into trouble with the law, and many of them will end up behind bars. Some of them will obey prison rules and regulations and stay out of any more trouble, at least until they are released from the “joint.”
Others will prove to suffer from schizophrenia, intellectual disabilities or traumatic brain injury and – judging from prevailing standards in present-day, punitive America – will languish untreated in their cells until they have served their time. That leaves a substantial proportion of psychiatrically challenged inmates with aggressive impulses that make them dangerous to other inmates, to prison guards, to themselves and to society (once they are released).
Thanks to the psychotropic drug revolution, inmates of our “correctional” institutions are being corrected with a plethora of drugs – antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, anticonvulsants, mood stabilizers, and other powerful mind-altering pharmaceuticals.
It is not the purpose of this article to deride the use of psychoactive drugs with prison inmates when there exists a psychiatrically or medically proper indication that such use will benefit the inmates or prevent harm to others. No one would deny that forensic psychopharmacology is a civilized alternative to the truncheon or the hole. Nevertheless, there is an important caveat, and that is the qualifier “proper.
Proper forensic psychopharmacology does not begin with a marginally trained prison employee popping a pill into an inmate’s mouth, although that is the rule rather than the exception in many if not most jurisdictions. American penology has largely given up on rehabilitation and cure in favor of retribution. That measure should be reserved for the very end of the process, except in situations where inmates become violently aggressive. Rather, the beginning of the process is – admittedly ideally in this world of budget-cutting – a thorough medical and psychiatric workup to identify conditions such as brain tumors, seizures, chronic schizophrenia and other disorders that might account for the main reason that prisoners are medicated: aggression. All too many prisoners with treatable illnesses languish untreated year after year because the state department of corrections did not budget for the most fundamental standard of humane care: a thorough workup.
Fortunately, solid case law has addressed the thorniest legal and ethical issues involved in medicating persons whose freedom is already circumscribed, i.e. the issue of informed consent and the right to say “no.” The Supreme Court set the “constitutional minimum” in the case of Washington v. Harper. This case gave much deference (as usual) to corrections administrators based on the governmental interest in keeping prisons “safe” – and there was discussion about how prison is inherently a dangerous place, and would be more so if it was made too difficult to medicate inmates who are acutely psychotic. The court held that due process was satisfied by conducting an intra-institutional hearing with a lawyer, psychiatrist and psychologist to make the decision.
States are able to enact more, but not less, stringent standards than the Supreme Court developed. One example of this is New York. The controlling case is Rivers v. Katz, which gives inmates the right to a full due process adversarial hearing if their psychiatrist wants to medicate over their objection. This can be a real protection: for example, in New York inmates get a Mental Hygiene Legal Services (MHLS) attorney who vigorously cross-examines the doctor, as, frequently, do the presiding judges. One author has been quite surprised over the seriousness with which the courts take medication over objection. In most Supreme Court of the State of New York cases dealing with the subject, the court does not use friendly language when considering antipsychotic medication.
These long-term, non-acute forms of involuntary medication must be distinguished from “emergency medications” – which can be given without legal oversight if the inmate suddenly becomes an acute danger to himself or others as a result of mental illness.
Consequently, once other causes have been ruled out, forensic psychopharmacology devolves around the management of aggression.
Acute aggression is a psychiatric emergency. One of us (JLK,IV) identifies two strategies. The first relies on antipsychotics, either the older first-generation (Haldol) drugs or the newer second-generation agents (Zyprexa, Geodon). The second alternates Haldol with Ativan, an anti-anxiety medication. The strategies work like this:
Haldol is administered in a dose of 5 to 10 milligrams and the patient is reassessed closely for the need for further dosing.
The second strategy alternates 5 mg of, typically, Haldol IM every 30 minutes with 1-2 mg of Ativan, also every 30 minutes, until the prisoner is calm. In some situations, the medication Benadryl is added, both for its sedating property, as well as its ability to counteract any untoward muscle stiffness resulting from the rapid dosing of Haldol.
The various drugs for managing acute aggression differ not only in potency (Haldol is roughly 100 times more potent than Thorazine) but also in their pharmacological “profiles.” For example, Thorazine can cause side effects such as dry mouth or even temporary urinary retention; such side effects are much rarer with Haldol, but the downside is that Haldol causes a much higher incidence of neuromuscular side effects, among them akathisia, a state of muscular and mental restlessness. Among the second generation antipsychotics, Geodon can be toxic to the heart; specifically, it prolongs the QTc interval, a period on the electrocardiogram that corresponds to the repolarization or “recharging” of the lower two chambers of the heart, namely the ventricles; rarely, it causes a sometimes-fatal condition called ventricular fibrillation, or extremely rapid beating of the lower chambers of the heart, leading to a loss of cardiac pumping ability. Persons at risk for this condition can be identified before Geodon is ever given by means of a routine EKG – but, tragically, such EKGs are rarely if ever administered during an aggressive episode that calls for the drug. Zyprexa is a heavily sedating antipsychotic; its steepest downside is that long-term use can cause diabetes – which is not a consideration in taming the fury of acute aggression.
What about Ativan? It is not an antipsychotic, but it has powerful calming properties – most of the time. Benzodiazepines (including Ativan) are widely used in human and veterinary medicine to control aggression. Rarely, Ativan or other benzodiazepines can cause an opposite effect – a paradoxical reaction [Veterinary Psychopharmacology; Crowell-Davis SL, Murray T; 2006 chapter 2] Paradoxical reactions have also been reported in humans. On the plus side, combining Ativan with Haldol attenuates the discomfort of akathisia, not only because the dose of Haldol is lower but because benzodiazepines are widely used for treating akathisia.
An attorney says Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel and the Oklahoma County board of commissioners are responsible for failure by the county jail‘s former medical contractor to provide medications and proper staffing.
why is this such a familiar issue to all of us? Because it happens way too often. We allow this to happen….silence is NOT golden. Who would you turn to if it were your loved one? The facility will not help you…what would you do?
In the days leading up to his death, Charles Holdstock and other inmates in need of medical attention often languished on the 13th floor of the Oklahoma County jail, waiting for assistance, court documents indicate.
Many sat handcuffed to a bar for hours, only to be returned to their cells without seeing a nurse or doctor, according to documents filed in connection with Holdstock’s May 15, 2009, death.
“I hear they got charged $15 to be taken up and seen by medical staff,” a physician assistant for the jail’s former medical provider testified in a sworn deposition. “We would never see them. They’d be sent back down, and they got charged.”
OklahomaHealth Department investigators found another seven men died while in jail custody during a year-and-a-half period before Holdstock’s death because they did not receive proper medical treatment.
Holdstock, 63, was in poor health and needed to get his pacemaker checked when he was brought to the jail’s medical floor in March 2009.
The physician assistant tried scheduling an appointment with an off-site cardiologist but the request was never carried out.
“I know that he was not seen because this man kept coming back, you know, kept putting in sick calls, which he paid for, to come back and see me just to ask to have his pacemaker checked,” said the assistant, who requested anonymity.
Less than two months later, Holdstock was dead.
Family files lawsuit
His three daughters sued Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel, county commissioners and the jail’s former medical provider, claiming their father was denied his constitutional right to adequate medical care while in custody.
Whetsel declined to comment on the Holdstock case, which is pending.
A judge blocked a trial, ruling the claims against Whetsel and the county lacked merit. The family settled out of court with the medical provider, Correctional Healthcare Management of Oklahoma.
An appeals court reinstated the case, citing years of warnings about serious jail deficiencies as their basis for reopening it.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded earlier this month that “a reasonable jury could find that Sheriff Whetsel and the County acted with deliberate indifference” to substandard jail conditions that may have caused Holdstock’s death.
If, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” then we are a nation of barbarians. Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states. Once you disappear behind prison walls you become prey. Rape. Torture. Beatings. Prolonged isolation. Sensory deprivation. Racial profiling. Chain gangs. Forced labor. Rancid food. Children imprisoned as adults. Prisoners forced to take medications to induce lethargy. Inadequate heating and ventilation. Poor health care. Draconian sentences for nonviolent crimes. Endemic violence.
Bonnie Kerness and Ojore Lutalo, both of whom I met in Newark, N.J., a few days ago at the office of American Friends Service Committee Prison Watch, have fought longer and harder than perhaps any others in the country against the expanding abuse of prisoners, especially the use of solitary confinement. Lutalo, once a member of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers, first wrote Kerness in 1986 while he was a prisoner at Trenton State Prison, now called New Jersey State Prison. He described to her the bleak and degrading world of solitary confinement, the world of the prisoners like him held in the so-called management control unit, which he called “a prison within a prison.” Before being released in 2009, Lutalo was in the management control unit for 22 of the 28 years he served for the second of two convictions—the first for a bank robbery and the second for a gun battle with a drug dealer. He kept his sanity, he told me, by following a strict regime of exercising in his tiny cell, writing, meditating and tearing up newspapers to make collages that portrayed his prison conditions.
“The guards in riot gear would suddenly wake you up at 1 a.m., force you to strip and make you grab all your things and move you to another cell just to harass you,” he said when we spoke in Newark. “They had attack dogs with them that were trained to go for your genitals. You spent 24 hours alone one day in your cell and 22 the next. If you do not have a strong sense of purpose you don’t survive psychologically. Isolation is designed to defeat prisoners mentally, and I saw a lot of prisoners defeated.”
Lutalo’s letter was Kerness’ first indication that the U.S. prison system was creating something new—special detention facilities that under international law are a form of torture. He wrote to her: “How does one go about articulating desperation to another who is not desperate? How does one go about articulating the psychological stress of knowing that people are waiting for me to self-destruct?”
One year ago, George Zimmerman shot and killed 17 year-old Trayvon Martin because he thought the young man looked suspicious.And one year later, what happened that night in Sanford, Florida still outrages us.
In a culture that inundates us with images of Black men as violent — not to be trusted, inherently criminal — we are continually reminded that something as simple as walking home from the corner store can draw unwanted attention that puts our very lives in danger.Black Americans face racial animosity every day, and far too often that animosity turns violent.
Today as we mourn, we must also acknowledge that if it weren’t for the hundreds of thousands of you who spoke up to demand basic dignity and justice, Trayvon Martin’s case would have been ignored — and George Zimmerman would have gone free.
Build the Movement towards Justice for Trayvon…take action here
California was placed under Federal Receivership because the overcrowding was affecting healthcare- not much has changed. Still overcrowded and still a lack of decent & timely healthcare.
In a federal brief filed Friday, federal receiver J. Clark Kelso argued that prison overcrowding in California is continuing to have a negative effect on health care. The brief included charts that show that prisons with the lowest medical care scores have average populations that are 55% above designed capacity, while prisons with the best medical scores have average populations that are 34% above capacity.
Federal receiver says prison crowding does matter
By Paige St. John
The federal receiver in charge of state prison healthcare has offered judges his own take on why crowding continues to be an issue.
In a federal brief filed Friday, J. Clark Kelso presented charts showing that prisons receiving the lowest scores in medical care from his office have average populations that are 55% above their designed capacity. Conversely, those with the best medical care scores averaged populations that were 34% over capacity.
“These numbers make it clear that overcrowding is still having a direct impact upon the ability to deliver quality healthcare,” Kelso wrote.
His renewed opposition to California’s quest for an end to prison population caps comes in response to the state’s own objections that Kelso had included such opinions in his prison medical care status report to the courts.
California contends that even at current populations, with prisons holding on average 50% more inmates than they were designed for, the state is now delivering adequate medical and psychiatric care. A panel of three federal judges is hearing the state’s request for an end to population caps, and one of them is presiding over California’s motion to terminate court oversight of psychiatric care.
While it withdrew personal criticisms of the federal overseer in that case, the state renewed objections to the amount of money the special master’s law firm receives as long as the 17-year case remains alive. “Since 2007, the state has paid the special master and his team an average of $380,000 a month, for a total amount of approximately $23.5 million during that time,” Katherine Tebrock, chief deputy general counsel for the corrections department, wrote in her affidavit.
What happened to Frank Valdes is what started my journey/advocacy in Prison Reform. I share with you now because we should never forget. I wont ever forget….and there are many more Frank Valdes’. Just because you dont hear about these atrocities, doesnt mean they are not happening-because they are.
Frank Valdez had broken ribs and boot prints on his body, a state attorney says.
By LUCY MORGAN, SYDNEY P. FREEDBERG and JO BECKER
St. Petersburg Times, published July 20, 1999
A death row inmate whose suspicious death has prompted a criminal investigation suffered broken ribs and boot marks on his upper body after a weekend confrontation with corrections officers at Florida State Prison, a prosecutor said Monday.
Gainesville area State Attorney Rod Smith said he also is looking into a reported delay of several hours between the time of the fight and the time prison authorities sought medical attention for inmate Frank Valdez.
“At first blush it appears that the cause of death had to do with the actions of one or more people in charge of the custody of this individual,” Smith said Monday night.
“I’m told the crap was beat out of him,” Smith said. “He died from blunt trauma—a beating in all likelihood.”
Nine prison guards have been placed on paid administrativeleave by the Department of Corrections. Smith said the guards, whose names were not disclosed, have hired lawyers and are refusing to talk.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is conducting a criminal investigation into the death. Smith said he has notified federal authorities and advised them that he will take the lead in handling the investigation.
The FDLE briefed Gov. Jeb Bush about the investigation Monday. State Corrections Secretary Michael Moore, whom Bush hired from the South Carolina prison system this year, also was present at Monday’s meeting with the governor.
“This is being taken very, very seriously,” said Bush spokesman Cory Tilley.
An attorney for the guards said Monday night that the incident occurred when officers tried to subdue Valdez after he threatened to kill a guard. “All of what was done was done in compliance with department rules and regulations,” said Gloria W. Fletcher, one of the officers’ lawyers.
Valdez, 36, was sentenced to death for killing corrections officer Fred Griffis in Palm Beach County in 1987. Valdez, 5 feet 8, 180 pounds, was an unruly inmate who frequently caused trouble with his guards, according to his lawyer and his ex-wife.
Ed O’Hara, the South Florida lawyer who represented Valdez, said his client had told him he was being “dogged” by guards because he killed a corrections officer.
“They would put him in areas they deemed punitive,” O’Hara said.
The lawyer quoted Valdez: “Whatever I do, they make things more difficult for me because they know I’ve been convicted of killing Griffis.”
A gap in time
The episode began late Saturday morning on X-Wing,
the solitary confinement unit that houses the most
disruptive inmates at Florida State Prison
Fletcher, the officers’ attorney, said the prison dispatched a five-member “extraction team” to Valdez’s cell because he had threatened an officer. They went to search his cell for contraband, but Valdez objected.
According to Fletcher, the officers sprayed a chemical agent at Valdez to get him out of his cell. He was taken to another cell. Officers filed what Bradford County Sheriff Bob Milner called a “use of force” report on the incident.
“When an officer did a routine check, he determined Mr. Valdez was in medical distress and he was taken immediately to the clinic,” Fletcher said.
Paramedics were called to Florida State Prison at 3:25 p.m. Valdez was pronounced dead at Shands Hospital in Starke about 4:18 p.m., according to State Attorney Smith.
Smith said he is trying to determine if there was a lapse between the time the altercation occurred and the time prison authorities sought medical attention for him.
“It is unclear,” Smith said. “But there was force used and reports of it were filed, minor injuries were reported and he was returned to his cell. I don’t know how much time elapsed, but when he was found for the last time around 3:15 p.m. Saturday, he was likely dead or dying.”
Bradford County authorities said two paramedics responded to a call of an inmate with a “respiratory problem.” The medics found Valdez in the prison clinic suffering from “a traumatic injury,” said Nelson Green, director of the Bradford County Department of Emergency Services.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was notified at 4:35 p.m., according to an agency spokeswoman. Bush’s office was not alerted until the next morning.
An agreement between the FDLE and the state
Department of Corrections mandates that the FDLE be notified any time a homicide, suicide, shooting death or any other suspicious death occurs in Florida’s prisons. The FDLE is also supposed to be notified of any life-threatening injuries in which “death is imminent.”
A long rap sheet
Valdez, who had a long rap sheet for burglary, drug
trafficking and assault on a police officer, was sent to death
row for gunning down corrections officer Fred Griffis, 40, a
highly decorated Vietnam veteran, in 1987. Griffis had just
retired from the Army two months before becoming an officer
Officers Griffis and Steve Turner were transporting a manacled prisoner, James O’Brien, to a doctor’s office when Valdez and an ex-prison pal, William Van Poyck, decided to spring O’Brien.
O’Brien had served previous stretches in Florida prisons with Valdez and Van Poyck.
Griffis was shot three times in the head after he refused to give Valdez and Van Poyck the keys to the van O’Brien was locked in and threw the keys in the bushes.
After arriving on death row in 1990, Valdez and Van Poyck had a series of run-ins with officers, which repeatedly landed both men in the toughest disciplinary units of Florida State Prison. The prison, in rural north central Florida, is home of the electric chair and widely regarded as the most maximum security prison in Florida.
In 1993, Van Poyck challenged what he called overly harsh conditions in solitary confinement, suing the Department of Corrections, said his former lawyer, Randall Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice Institute in Miami.
“The conditions were atrocious,” said Berg, adding that Valdez planned to be a witness at Van Poyck’s court showdown.
Berg said neither man had to testify because the
Corrections Department, rather than risk a court battle, agreed to settle with Van Poyck for what the lawyer said was about $45,000 to $50,000.
“The entire way Van Poyck was treated was based on who he allegedly murdered,” Berg contended.
Little information released
Susan Cary, a Gainesville attorney for death row inmates, said that in the past year she has received complaints from inmates of beatings on X-Wing, the solitary confinement unit where prison officials send the hardest disciplinary cases, including Valdez.
About a year ago, she said, she turned over some complaint letters to federal authorities, but she’s not sure what happened. “It’s really a no man’s land,” she said of the prison.
On Monday, corrections officials refused to talk about the wing, Valdez or the prison. They said they did not want to jeopardize an ongoing investigation.
“Until the investigation is completed, we cannot comment further on this matter,” corrections spokesman C.J. Drake said in a news release.
Department officials would not say whether any of the suspended guards had been disciplined previously. They also refused to make public the initial report filed after the incident, even though an assistant attorney general said the report should be public.
Pat Gleason, an assistant for Attorney General Bob Butterworth who specializes in Florida’s public record law, said police agencies must release copies of initial incident reports even when a criminal investigation is ongoing.
She pointed to a 1996 opinion written for St. Petersburg police Chief Darrel Stephens. In that opinion, Butterworth said initial incident reports are generally considered to be open to public inspection and are not considered criminal intelligence.
The Murdering of Mr. Valdes
The Story
Frank Valdes was beaten for being human: for loosing it after helplessly listening to a week long series of savage attacks being committed on other inmates.The man closest to him had been targeted for punishment.. Seems several inmates at Hamilton “C”I. had caused a rucus and had been moved to FSP for punishment. The guards had reportedly been literally hanging up the inmates, putting cloth around their heads, and beating them viciously day after day most of the week. Good old boys just having a little fun.
The screams were disturbing to other inmates, and Frank grew desperate as the days went by, until One day he couldn’t take it any longer. He began to scream at the guards to quit, that he was going to tell the outside world about them.
That got their attention alright, and on July 16th, C/O Montres Lucas reportedly beat Frank Valdes severely enough to leave him lying on the floor with a broken jaw. The next day, on July 17th, nine guards, according to most reports, entered Mr. Valdes’ cell early in the morning, woke him, handcuffed him and slowly and methodically beat him to death.
The coronor’s report says all Frank’s ribs were crushed, boot prints were imbedded in his chest, and his testicles were swollen to the size of a man’s head! I got reports from others that when the guards first saw his body it was black from bruising. How did this happen? The guards were asked. “He threw himself off the top bunk over and over, until he did this to himself!”
That’s the DOC’s Story and they’re stickin’ to it!
Yes you read this correctly, Barrett Brown is facing 100 YEARS in prison for sharing a link, hiding his laptop, and expressing his First Amendmentright to free speech. Is this right? Is this JUSTICE? I think not….the Government is clearly afraid of those of who share information and knowledge. Be afraid, Be very afraid……we are NOT Terrorists!!!
The United States Criminal Justice System is flawed, broken, yet fixable; Prison Reform and Sentencing Reform should be major agenda's for each state- we need to stop warehousing prisoners and ready those who are going to parole.
Inmate rehabilitation improves public safety and lowers prison costs.
“We have to care because we can't afford not to".
Posts here are NOT my work, unless noted as such. See my disclaimer in the 'about' section. This blog serves as a Public Service Announcement.
