CT prisoner Bill Coleman being Forcefed since 2008

Guards from Camp 5 at Joint Task Force Guantanamo escort a detainee from his cell to a recreational facility within the camp. (Flickr/Kilho Park)

By Ann Neumann

I know a hunger-striking prisoner who hasn’t eaten solid food in more than five years. He is being force-fed by the medical staff where he’s incarcerated. Starving himself, he told me during one of our biweekly phone calls last year, is the only way he has to exercise his first amendment rights and to protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act.

The prisoner has lost half his body weight and four teeth to malnutrition. He and his lawyer have gone to court to stop the force-feedings, but a judge ruled against him in March. If I asked you to guess where Coleman is being held, you’d likely say Guantánamo — “America’s offshore war-on-terror camp” — where a mass hunger strike of 100 prisoners has brought the ethics of force-feeding to American newspapers, if not American consciences. Twenty-five of those prisoners are now being manually fed with tubes.

But William Coleman is not at Guantánamo. He’s in Connecticut. The prison medical staff force-feeding him are on contract from the University of Connecticut, not the U.S. Navy. Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners — who are on U.S. soil and not an inaccessible island military base — are routinely and systematically force-fed every day.

The accounts of force-feeding coming out of Guantánamo, including Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s “Gitmo is Killing Me” in The New York Times two weeks ago, are consistent with how Coleman has described the process to me — and to the Supreme Court of Connecticut.

On Oct. 23, 2008, medical staff and corrections officers first strapped Coleman at four points to a vinyl medical table and snaked a rubber tube up his nose, down his throat and into his stomach. When the tube kinked, they thought his reaction to the pain was resistance and tied him across the chest with mesh straps. They reinserted the tube and Coleman gagged as they drained Ensure, a nutrient drink, into it. He continued to gag. He bled. He vomited. He felt violated, not medically treated. Coleman is still being force-fed; sometimes the staff put a semi-permanent tube up his nose, sometimes they don’t. They no longer strap him down. He knows the staff. They are, he says, following orders.

Continue Reading @ Waging NonViolence

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• Guantánamo is not an anomaly – prisoners in the US are force-fed every day – Waging Nonviolence (aboriginalpress.wordpress.com)
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On Mothers, Mothering and Mass Incarceration

In this Mother’s Day tribute, law professor and advocate Sheila Bedi learns how “having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body.”

By Sheila Bedi , Truthout

(Image: Hand holding fence via Shutterstock)

 

 

When I was a teenager, my mother posted this quote on her mirror: “having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body.” Back then, the sentiment made me roll my eyes, but even then I knew I had an exceptional mother. She is fierce, yet gentle, demanding, supportive and self-sacrificing. My mother taught me to feel deeply, think rigorously and to find my own voice and use it loudly. I’ve carried a piece of my mother and her teachings into my work as an attorney and activist who works with and for people caught up in the criminal justice system. And I recognize my own mother’s fierceness and love in so many of the mothers I have worked with over the years – the mothers of children and young people who are imprisoned in this country’s prisons and jails.

I’m talking about mothers like Mrs. W. I represented her fifteen year old son, who was locked up in a maximum security adult prison. One day she and I drove together to the prison to meet with the Warden to discuss her son’s education. Once we arrived, the security staff wanted to shake her down – remove her head scarf, shake out her bra. I tried to put a stop to the intrusive and humiliating search, but Mrs. W. told me to fall back – she told me that the prison staff had her baby’s life in their hands and she wasn’t about to piss them off over her head scarf and a pat down. She directed me to save my fire for what mattered – protecting her son.

Mothers like Mrs. G., who testified before the state legislature about seeing the light going out in her fourteen year old son’s eyes after he spent months in solitary confinement. She told lawmakers about the pain and powerlessness she felt as she watched her son endure tortuous conditions in a juvenile prison. She channeled her pain into working to protect other children who were imprisoned in abusive prisons.

Let’s be clear about who these mothers’ children are. The vast majority of young people who end up behind bars are there because of non-violent offenses. They are overwhelming poor and come from communities of color. Communities where schools look more and more like jails. Communities targeted by prisons run on the cheap by corporations that exist solely to enrich shareholders.

Private prison companies only make money when they ensure that the revolving door to and from prison remains well-greased. Mass incarceration and the war on drugs have ravaged many of the communities these mothers and their children came from. But even in the face of these realities, many of these communities have developed strength and resilience: a deep faith, a strong sense of interconnectedness and family. My experience has been that when one looks to find the source of this strength – it’s the mothers. Watching each other’s children, attending a know-your-rights meeting in between working all day and getting dinner on the table, calling 100 phone numbers to find an advocate who can help her help her child. It’s the mothers who end up holding it all together.

After well over ten years of representing people who are locked up, I have had the privilege to know many mothers who move heaven and earth to fight for their children. Too often these mothers must fight against a criminal justice system that targets black and brown youth. Mothers who save and scrimp and travel hundreds of miles to visit their children behind bars for an hour a week. Mothers who endure in the face of learning that their children survived the unspeakable abuse that is endemic to our nation’s prisons and jails: sexual violence, prolonged shackling, months in solitary confinement, beatings, stabbings. I could go on and on listing the tortuous conditions that exist in this nation’s prisons and jails. Much of that story has already been told in lawsuits and consent decrees. What remains untold and largely ignored, is the strength and resilience of the people who lived through these abuses – the children and young people, their families and communities. And the mothers. Especially the mothers.

After spending over a decade working with mothers like Mrs. G. and Mrs. W. and after having many conversations with my own mother about the pain and the joy of mothering, I thought I had an understanding about what it meant to be a mother. And then a year ago, I became a mother myself. And I realized that I had no idea. None.

Motherhood is hard and wonderful and terrifying and humbling. During this past year, I’ve struggled to become the kind of mother my son deserves, I’ve thought often about the mothers I’ve known. The best part of my day is when I rock my baby boy to sleep, and I whisper to him: you are safe, you are loved, and I can’t wait to see how you’re going to love the world back. I simply do not know how I could keep breathing if he wasn’t safe. If he ever had to endure the conditions endured by the imprisoned children I’ve worked with and for. Yet, because of the United States’ addiction to incarceration, millions of mothers do it every day. They not only keep breathing – but they keep fighting. These mothers leave me in awe.

Continue Reading @ TruthOut

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• U.S. v. My Mommy: Evaluation of Prison Nurseries as a Solution for Children of Incarcerated Women (socialchangenyu.com)
• How prison keeps many Americans locked into poverty (tv.msnbc.com)
• Bonding Through Bars: The Health And Human Rights Of Incarcerated Women by Samantha Sarra (zcommunications.org)
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Willie Manning deserves DNA testing before May 7 execution

by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld

Last week the Mississippi Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision denied Willie Manning the opportunity to do DNA testing that could prove he is innocent of the crime that landed him on death row. Tragically, Manning is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday and may never get the opportunity to do the testing that could prove whether he is innocent as he has always maintained.

We urge Gov. Phil Bryant to issue a stay so the testing can be done. While people can differ on whether the death penalty is an appropriate form of punishment, nearly everyone would agree that it should be used only in those cases where we are certain of guilt. DNA testing could provide that certainty or prove, as Manning insists, that he is innocent. It could also, as the Mississippi Supreme Court judges noted in their dissent, provide the identity of alleged second perpetrator who has never been caught.

Eighteen people who served time on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence since it became available two decades ago. One of those men, Kennedy Brewer, was convicted in Mississippi. Like Manning, Brewer was convicted based on circumstantial evidence and unvalidated forensic science. In Brewer’s case, the prosecution relied on widely discredited bite mark testimony, and in Manning’s case the prosecution presented hair microscopy, which because of its unreliability will be subject to a recently announced FBI nationwide review. The DNA evidence in Brewer’s case proved his innocence and identified the real perpetrator who confessed to the crime and another murder for which someone had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life. Fortunately, that man, Levon Brooks, was also exonerated.

We don’t know what the DNA evidence will ultimately prove in Manning’s case, but there is a good chance that it will be highly probative — and much more reliable than the kind of evidence that was used to convict him of the 1992 murders of Pamela Tiffany Miller and Jon Stephan Steckler. The two students were kidnapped after leaving a party at Mississippi State University and were driven to a remote location and both were shot to death. At trial, there was no physical evidence linking Manning to the crime. The prosecution relied on circumstantial evidence. At one point the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned his conviction because Manning’s lawyers weren’t allowed to fully cross-examine the informant, but the court later reconsidered its decision and let the conviction stand.

Since 1994, Manning has been seeking DNA testing of the rape kit, fingernail scrapings that were recovered from both victims and hairs recovered from the scene. Rape kits and fingernail scrapings are routinely tested today because the testing can prove with near certainty who committed the crime. Before DNA evidence, prosecutors would often rely on hair microscopy to place a defendant at the scene even though the practice was never scientifically validated. After DNA evidence exonerated three people who had been wrongly convicted in part based on this type of evidence, the FBI announced this year that it would undertake a massive review of all cases in which one of its analysts testified about this type of evidence. Given that the FBI performed the hair microscopy in this case, it would seem that Manning’s case should be subject to this review — if he isn’t put to death first.

As the dissenters noted, given that it is alleged that two perpetrators committed the crime, it’s puzzling that the district attorney is so resistant to testing.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has said that the DNA testing is unnecessary because there is other overwhelming evidence of guilt. But appeals courts were also wrong in the cases of all 306 DNA exonerations, including the 18 who served time on death row. DNA testing has the potential to tell us once and for all who committed these two tragic murders, and that’s something we all should want.

- – - – -

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld are co-founders and co-directors of the Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent injustice.

Related articles

• Mississippi to Execute Man Without DNA Testing Crucial Evidence (prisonmovement.wordpress.com)
• Death Row Inmate To Die Tuesday After DNA Testing Denied (medicaldaily.com)
• A Stunning Error in Mississippi (takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Mississippi Denies Inmate DNA Test, Set to Execute Him on Tuesday (gawker.com)
• Willie Manning Will Die in Mississippi Unless YOU Ask for His DNA Test TODAY (badgals-radio.com)

From Oct22 Bay Area….Join us!

Tens of thousands of people imprisoned in the US are being subjected to torturous, inhumane conditions. 

 Many are:

 ·       Held in long term solitary confinement; locked in tiny, windowless, sometimes sound proof, cells; cut off from fresh air and sunlight for 22-24 hours every day and given small portions of food that lacks basic nutritional requirements. 

·       Denied human contact and violently taken from their cells for petty violations.

·       Put in solitary arbitrarily, often because of accusations of being members of prison gangs based on dubious evidence, and have no way to challenge the decisions of prison authorities to place them in solitary.

 

Many are forced to endure these conditions for months, years and even decades!  Mental anguish and trauma often results from being confined under these conditions.  Locking people down like this amounts to trying to strip them of their humanity.

 

These conditions fit the international definition of torture!  This is unjust, illegitimate and profoundly immoral.  WE MUST JOIN IN AN EFFORT TO STOP IT, NOW!

 

People imprisoned at Pelican Bay State Prison in California have called For a Nation-wide Hunger Strike to begin on July 8, 2013. They have also issued a call for unity among people from different racial groups, inside and outside the prisons.  People who are locked down in segregation units of this society’s prisons, condemned as the “worst of the worst,” are standing up against injustice, asserting their humanity in the process.  We must have the humanity to hear their call, and answer it with powerful support!

 

A Nation-wide and World-wide Struggle Needs to Be launched NOW to bring an End to this widespread Torture Before those in the Prisons Are Forced to Take the Desperate step of going on hunger strikes and putting their lives on the line!

                                                                                               

To the Government: We Demand an Immediate End to the Torture and Inhumanity of Prison House America – Immediately Disband All Torture Chambers.  Meet the demands of those you have locked down in your prisons!

 

To People in this Country and Around the World: We Cannot Accept, and We Should Not Tolerate This Torture.  Join The Struggle to End Torture in Prisons Now!

 

To Those Standing Up in Resistance Inside The Prisons: WE SUPPORT YOUR CALL FOR UNITY IN THIS FIGHT, AND WE WILL HAVE YOUR BACKS!

 

June 21, 22 and 23 Will Be Days of Solidarity With the Struggle to End Prison Torture!  There will be protests, cultural events, Evenings of Conscience, sermons in religious services, saturation of social media – all aimed at laying bare the ugly reality of wide spread torture in US prisons and challenging everyone to join in fighting to STOP it.

 

Send Your endorsements (name . and if you wish, organization and/or title,  to:

StopMassIncarcerationBayArea@gmail.com

 

 

For more information and to join in this struggle contact the Stop Mass Incarceration Network at:

http://www.stopmassincarceration.org/support-california-prison-hunger-strikers.html

 

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• The Horrifying Existence Of Solitary Confinement (asolitarytorture.wordpress.com)
• 9 Petitions Fighting Solitary Confinement (lockupreform.com)
• Support Pelican Bay SHU Prisoners’ Five Core Demands (hunger strike) (stopsolitary.wordpress.com)

Drugging Aggression Behind Bars

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.”

(Image: Prison bars via Shutterstock)

By James L Knoll IV and Robert Wilbur, Truthout

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.

Continue Reading @ Truthout

 

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The Concept of Prisons for Profit….

from our friends at Beyond Bars

AB423 Pulled!!!!-Torres receives Torrent of Opposition Pulls Bill

This just in from our friends at Friends Committee on Legislation California:
March 26.  KEEP YOUR OPPOSITION LETTERS GOING!!!

All,

We learned this morning that California AB 423, the terrible restitution bill, has been pulled by the author.  Of course, authors

usually ask for reconsideration and it is usually granted although that is a formality and the bill should not go anywhere

this year.  However, since this is year 1 of the new two year legislative session, the author can make it a two year bill and

bring it back in January, 2014, so letters are still important and should be sent even though the bill has been pulled from

Assembly Public Safety for now.

Dale

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Criminal justice system’s ‘dark secret’: Teenagers in solitary confinement

As more and more minors serve time in adult prisons, a growing number are placed in solitary confinement. Officials say it’s to protect the minors from the adult prison population. Some of those who served time in solitary as teens and their advocates say it’s a harmful practice and a dark secret of the criminal justice system.

By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News, and Deirdre Cohen and Sarah Koch, Rock Center

James Stewart, a 17-year-old from Denver who committed suicide while in solitary confinement, had never been to jail before August of 2008. That was when, under the influence of alcohol and marijuana, Stewart had gotten into a head-on car collision, killing a 32-year-old man.

Courtesy of the Stewart family

James Stewart, who was arrested after being charged with vehicular homicide when he was 17, is seen in an undated school photo.

 

Because of the severity of his crime, Stewart was charged with vehicular homicide – and charged as an adult. His family couldn’t make bail, so Stewart was placed in the Denver County Jail while he awaited his sentence.

There was just one problem: Since he was a minor, Stewart was ordered to be put in protective custody, separate from the adult prisoners— and the best protection the jail had to offer was solitary confinement.

Weeks later, the psychological impact was too much. After a brief reprieve from solitary to be in a shared cell with another juvenile offender, Stewart was sent back to isolation after a minor argument with his cellmate.  According to his older sister, Nicole Miera, Stewart took his own life after less than 10 minutes of being back in what inmates called “the hole.”

“It was stated that that when he got in there, he was pretty upset,” Miera told NBC’s Ted Koppel, her eyes filling with tears. “He had taken a sheet and he had wrapped around his neck and just twisted until he couldn’t twist anymore.”

Stewart was one of many juveniles who are in adult jails and prisons across America. Not all of their stories end as tragically as his, but the increasingly blurry line between juvenile offenders and adult correctional facilities have made many wonder if better solutions are needed for this growing population.

 

For each of the past five years, roughly 100,000 juveniles have been held in adult jails and prisons, according to data from the Department of Justice.

Defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Equal Justice Initiative, told NBC these youths are getting unfairly harsh treatment for the crimes they commit.

“Ninety-one percent of the children who are serving time in adult jails and prisons are serving time in jails and prisons for crimes that are not murder, crimes that are not sex crimes,” he said. “Solitary confinement is pretty horrible for anybody, but it’s especially horrible for a child. It is psychological torture.”

‘The dark secret of the criminal justice system’
Data on how many of those young people nationwide are held in solitary confinement isn’t available, but a report published this past October by Human Rights Watch and The American Civil Liberties Union said the New York City Department of Corrections, for example, reported that in fiscal year 2012, 14 percent of all detained adolescents were held in solitary at least once.

“I spoke to kids. They talked about being in a cell alone, the size of a parking space, the size of an elevator,” said Ian Kysel, who authored the HRW/ACLU report. “This is sort of the dark secret of the criminal justice system. … Jails and prisons don’t make available their data on solitary confinement.”

At New York City’s Riker’s Island, the average length of solitary confinement for youths last year was 43 long, 23-hour days, according to Kysel’s report.

The catch-22 of being prosecuted as adults but segregated from the adult prison population because they are still minors is literally making young offenders go out of their minds — and many of them have mental health issues before they are put in isolation, according to the HRW/ACLU report.

Stuart Grassian, a Boston-based psychiatrist who is an expert on solitary confinement, cites CIA research done in the 1950s, which found solitary confinement made American prisoners of war in North Korea go psychotic.

“What was produced by that was a person who was so unhinged, he was confused, disoriented, disheveled,” he told NBC News, “They wouldn’t sometimes know who they were. They couldn’t think.”

Kysel, the author of the report on adolescents in adult prisons, has called for youth solitary confinement to be banned and for other punishments — such as taking away privileges — to be instituted instead. Grassian agrees that this is necessary.

“You have these kids getting more and more out of control, more and more impulsive, more and more emotionally out of control because they’re in solitary. It’s very likely that’s going to be a permanent impairment in their lives,” he said. “Well, guess what? Ninety-five percent of them are gonna get out back into your community. What do you want them to be like when they get out?”

Via NBC News/Rock News

 

Related articles

• The ‘Secret’ of US Prisons: Teens Thrown in Solitary (newser.com)
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• U.S. Bureau of Prisons to review solitary confinement (prisonmovement.wordpress.com)

Motion denied, Governor: Medical neglect is still killing prisoners

Gov. Brown has declared that the prison crisis that allowed prisoners to die is over and that prisoners are receiving good care. His words, not ours.

We know that is a HUGE LIE. CDCR still refuses to acknowledge there is an issue; they refuse to address the real issues…what is it going to take?

by Mutope Duguma, Sitawa N. Jamaa, Abdul O. Shakur and Sondai K. Dumisani

It is obvious that the governor has not produced any data that supports his claim. Furthermore, the governor is deliberately misinforming the public, because he and the officials of CDCr – the secretary and undersecretary – are arbitrarily choosing not to provide the public with adequate information that pertains to the incompetence that continues to endanger prisoners by murdering them through direct medical neglect and incompetence.

In this photo taken as part of federal litigation over California prison conditions, prisoners await a group therapy session at Mule Creek State Prison. How could being confined in tiny cages dissuade prisoners from committing suicide? – Photo filed in U.S. District Court briefings

We prisoners have read the Los Angeles Times article by Paige St. John, “California suppressed consultant’s report on inmate suicides,” dated Feb. 28, 2013, and we can only hope that justice will continue to prevail, by not only maintaining the oversight of CDCr’s “health care service,” as well as extend it to the very root of the problems that cause the very many deaths and suicides that are happening throughout CDCr.

Solitary confinement in California and throughout the United States is real. The lingering of human beings – i.e., prisoners – in these torture chambers (SHUs and Ad Segs) indefinitely has basically created the result that led to human beings dying unnecessarily inside these solitary confinement torture units.

Alex Machado, Christian Gomez, Armando Morales, John Owen Vick and Hozel Alonzo Blanchard are all men who should be alive, by all means, and the fact that the CDCr has reported 32 deaths by suicide in the year of 2012 alone should be more than enough reason for the oversight to be continued – and expanded as well. The CDCr’s own experts afforded them the procedures to follow in order to prevent such deaths. However, not only did the CDCr attempt to suppress this report and now the evidence in it, but the CDCr had the audacity to request that the United States District Court destroy that report.

The governor and the officials of CDCr are arbitrarily choosing not to provide the public with adequate information that pertains to the incompetence that continues to endanger prisoners by murdering them through direct medical neglect and incompetence.

Thankfully, for the lives of California prisoners, the judge refused to cooperate with such a conspiracy. Suppression of evidence like this is not an isolated act, because we prisoners know that the licensed vocational nurses and registered nurses and doctors do not responsibly oversee the CDCr health care services. Their actions are influenced by the local officials and officers who have total control over the prison.

Alex Machado, Christian Gomez, Armando Morales, John Owen Vick and Hozel Alonzo Blanchard are all men who should be alive, by all means, and the fact that the CDCr has reported 32 deaths by suicide in the year of 2012 alone should be more than enough reason for the oversight to be continued – and expanded as well.

Prison staff relationships are intermingled through personal relations – marriage, family, friendship – and are reflected by the transitions from health care services to corrections or vice versa. A good example as to how much the officials and officers control health care services can be seen in the two 2011 prisoner hunger strikes.

On July 2, 2011, prisoners held in solitary confinement in SHU and Ad Seg for years, subjected to torture and cruel and unusual punishment in violation of our U.S. constitutional rights, decided to go on a peaceful hunger strike, in which over 6,000 of us participated.

The only reason we received adequate health care services (medical treatment) during our July 1, 2011, hunger strike that lasted to July 20 is because the federal receivership oversaw the medical treatment; prisoners were weighed, vitals checked, vitamins provided daily. This prevented thousands of prisoners from suffering when many emergencies could have resulted in thousands of prisoners dying, due to CDCr Secretary Matthew Cate and Undersecretary Scott Kernan violating a verbal agreement to implement our reasonable Five Core Demands, an agreement that resulted in us ending our first hunger strike.

The only reason we received adequate health care services (medical treatment) during our July 1, 2011, hunger strike that lasted to July 20 is because the federal receivership oversaw the medical treatment.

Therefore, we decided to go back on our second hunger strike on Sept. 26, 2011, in which 12,000 prisoners participated throughout CDCr, clearly demonstrating that there is a widespread problem of deliberate medical neglect and torture inside CDCr solitary confinement units.

During our Sept. 26, 2011, hunger strike, which lasted to Oct. 13, 2011, the federal receivership allowed CDCr to oversee the health care services. The result of this action not only placed prisoners’ health at risk, but CDCr immediately implemented a policy protocol for overseeing the hunger strike that was catastrophic for prisoners: Thousands suffered and several died when CDCr was allowed to have control over the hunger strike, in which hunger strikers were denied medical treatment throughout the hunger strike.

The prison guards have no medical training yet were allowed to say to medical personnel that a prisoner was faking – “He’s not sick” – and oddly enough, the medical staff tended to allow this to be the authority on which they proceeded. Thousands of prisoners suffered behind this ill advised information. We received no daily checkups, no vitals checks, no vitamins, no weigh-ins conducted under CDCr medical supervision. Many times medical problems were treated too late and by this time the damage was done.

The conflict of interest lies in the relationships between the prison guards, who are responsible for providing security only, and those who are responsible for providing health care services, food and religious services etc. Unfortunately, the prison guards have structured the prison environment around the deprivation of the prisoners, simply to demonstrate its dominance over prisoners, which creates severe violation of prisoners’ constitutionally protected rights.

During our Sept. 26, 2011, hunger strike, which lasted to Oct. 13, 2011, thousands suffered and several died when CDCr was allowed to have control over the hunger strike, in which hunger strikers were denied medical treatment throughout the hunger strike.

The Bill of Rights’ 10 original amendments and Reconstruction amendments 11 through 27 of the Constitution – particularly important in respect to prisoners, the First, Fifth, Eighth and 14th Amendments – are deliberately violated routinely. The many settlements of prisoner lawsuits in years past speak volumes to this fact.

Gov. Brown’s current changes have not rendered any justice or humane treatment of prisoners thus far, and the death count and the many prisoners held inside solitary confinement, who suffer from numerous ailments and torture, only seem to exacerbate this problem. Therefore, we prisoners can only hope, in the interest of our livelihood and humanity, that the courts expand their oversight and open up an independent investigation as to why prisoners are held unjustly in solitary confinement.

Send our brothers some love and light:

• Mutope Duguma (James Crawford), D-05596, D1-117 up, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Sitawa N. Jamaa (Ronnie Dewberry), C-35671, D1-117 low, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Abdul O. Shakur (James Harvey), C-48884, D1-119 low, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Sondai K. Dumisani (Randall Ellis), C-68764, D1-223 low, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532

Via SF Bay View

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Take Action After decades of injustice, let the Angola 3 ruling stand!

State of Louisiana Must Not Appeal Federal Ruling Overturning Conviction in Angola 3 Case

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, strimel@aiusa.org, 212-633-4150, @AIUSAmedia

After decades of injustice, let the Angola 3 ruling stand!

Amnesty International called on Louisiana Attorney General James Caldwell today not to appeal a federal court ruling overturning the conviction of Albert Woodfox of the ‘Angola 3’ for the second-degree murder of a prison guard in 1972. Amnesty International has raised serious human rights concerns over the case for many years.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Judge James Brady of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana found that racial discrimination lay behind the under-representation of African- Americans selected to serve as grand jury forepersons in the jurisdiction in which Woodfox, 66, who is African-American, was retried after his original conviction was overturned in 1992.

Judge Brady found that the state had failed to meet its burden “to dispel the inference of intentional discrimination” indicated by the statistical evidence covering a 13-year period from 1980 to 1993 presented by Albert Woodfox’s lawyers. The state, Judge Brady found, had failed to show “racially neutral” reasons to explain the under- representation of African-Americans selected as grand jury foreperson during this period.

Woodfox was convicted in 1973 along with a second prisoner, Herman Wallace, of the murder of Brent Miller. This conviction was overturned in 1992, but Woodfox was re-indicted by grand jury in 1993 and convicted again at a 1998 trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1999. In 2008, a U.S. District Court ruled that Woodfox had been denied his right to adequate assistance of counsel during the 1998 trial and should either be retried or set free. The court also found that evidence presented by Woodfox’s lawyers of discrimination in the selection of the grand jury foreperson warranted a federal evidentiary hearing. While the State appealed the District court for a retrial – and won – yesterday’s ruling from the evidentiary hearing, once again sees the conviction overturned.

Amnesty International has repeatedly expressed concern that many legal aspects of this case are troubling: no physical evidence links Woodfox and Wallace to the murder, potentially exculpatory DNA evidence was lost by the state, and their conviction was based on questionable testimony – much of which subsequently retracted by witnesses. In recent years, evidence has emerged that the main eyewitness was bribed by prison officials into giving statements against the men. Both men have robustly denied over the years any involvement in the murder.

Woodfox has been held since his conviction over 40 years ago in solitary confinement. The extremely harsh conditions he has endured, including being confined for 23 hours a day, inadequate access to exercise, social interaction and no access to work, education, or rehabilitation have had physical and psychological consequences. Throughout his incarceration, Woodfox has been denied any meaningful review of the reasons for being kept in isolation; and records indicate that he hasn’t committed any disciplinary infractions for decades, nor, according to prison mental health records, is he a threat to himself or others. Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the authorities that both he and Wallace be removed from such conditions which the organization believes can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.

“The fact that Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned again gives weight to Amnesty International’s longstanding concerns that the original legal process was flawed,” said Tessa Murphy, an Amnesty researcher.

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists, and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth, and dignity are denied.

Click here to take action now

 

Related articles

• Amnesty International Petition for Angola 3 Member (prisonmovement.wordpress.com)
• 41 Years Solitary Confinement!! (radicalglasgowblog.blogspot.com)
• Freedom for Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3, After 40 Years in Solitary Confinement? (indybay.org)
• Amnesty International urges the State to not appeal Albert Woodfox’s overturned conviction (indybay.org)
• Freedom After 40 Years in Solitary? (theroot.com)