Tab for wrongful convictions in Texas: $65 million and counting

English: Huntsville Unit, Huntsville, TX Español: Unidad de Huntsville, Huntsville, TX (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

State is the most generous in compensating exonerees; legislators ponder changes to safeguard against future false convictions.

By Mike Ward

American-Statesman Staff

For a state perhaps best known as the leader in executing murderers, Texas now has another distinction: It is the most generous in compensating those who were wrongly locked up.

In all, the state has paid more than $65 million to 89 wrongfully convicted people since 1992, according to updated state figures.

And if legislation being discussed at the Texas Capitol becomes law, that tab could soon grow.

“The justice system in Texas had fundamental flaws, and this is the result,” said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a longtime champion of the falsely imprisoned. “At this point, I don’t think anyone can seriously doubt that we had a problem — a big problem.”

For a hint of how off-track Texas’ justice system once was, and how expensive those mistakes have become for taxpayers, consider the case of Michael Morton, the exonerated former Austin-area resident who served 25 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. A Williamson County court convicted him in 1987 of killing his wife Christine.

Morton, who was 57 when he was freed from prison in 2011, so far has received $1.96 million for his mistaken imprisonment, state records show.

Under a law signed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2009, some exonerees will receive $80,000 each year for the rest of their lives and are eligible for the same health insurance as employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, where the ex-prisoners did their time.

Twenty-six other states and the District of Columbia also provide compensation to exonerees — but they pay less, according to statistics compiled by the Innocence Project, a privately funded national initiative that works on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. Currently, Ellis, D-Houston, serves as its board chairman.

Since the first wrongful conviction through DNA was logged in 1989, 65 percent of exonerees nationally have received some form of compensation, according to the Innocence Project.

Continue Reading @ Statesman.com

 

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• Innocent of Crime, Tainted by Time: Exonorees Struggle (citylimits.org)
• Wrongfully Accused; Wrongly Judged; Wrongfully Imprisoned (deafinprison.wordpress.com)
• Texas Leads U.S. in Executions, Payments to Exonerated Inmates (bloomberg.com)

Cleve Foster has seen death’s door and lived to tell about it

What Cleve Foster remembers most about his recent brushes with death is the steel door, the last one condemned Texas inmates typically walk through before their execution.

“You can’t take your eyes off that door,” he said

By Michael Graczyk

AP

 

But twice over the past year and a half, Foster has come within moments of being escorted through the door, only to be told that the U.S. Supreme Court had halted his scheduled punishment.

On Tuesday, Foster, 48, is scheduled for yet another trip to the death house for participating in the abduction and slaying of a 30-year-old Sudanese woman, Nyaneur Pal, a decade ago near Fort Worth.

It takes just under an hour to drive west from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit, where the state’s male Death Row inmates are housed, to the Huntsville Unit, where condemned Texas prisoners have been put to death for nearly a century. The last 485 have been by lethal injection; the first 361, from 1924 through 1964, from the electric chair.

On execution day, the condemned inmate waits, usually for about four hours, in a tiny cell a few steps from the steel door to the death chamber.

Foster, a former Army recruiter known to his Death Row colleagues as “Sarge,” denies his role in the murder. Prosecutors say DNA ties him to the killing and that he gave contradictory stories when questioned about Pal’s death.

“I did not do it,” he insisted recently from a tiny visiting cage outside Death Row.

Appeals again were pending in the courts, focusing on what his lawyers argued was poor legal help both at his 2004 trial in Fort Worth and by attorneys early in the appeals process. Similar appeals resulted in the three previous reprieves the courts subsequently have lifted, but his lawyers argue his case should get another look because the legal landscape has changed in death penalty cases.

“I don’t want to sound vain, but I have confidence in my attorney and confidence in my God,” he said. “I can win either way.”

Execution day

Pal’s relatives haven’t spoken publicly about their experiences of going to the prison to watch Foster die, only to be told the punishment has been delayed. An uncle previously on the witness list didn’t return a phone call from The Associated Press.

Foster, however, shared his thoughts of going through the mechanics of facing execution in Texas — and living to talk about it.

The process shifts into high gear at noon on the scheduled execution day when a four-hour-long visit with friends or relatives ends at the Polunsky Unit outside Livingston.

“That last visit, that’s the only thing that bothers me,” he said. “The 12 o’clock-hour hits. A dozen or so guards come to escort you.”

By Foster’s count, it’s 111 steps to the prison gate and an area known as the box cage. That’s where he’s secured to a chair for electronic scrutiny to detect whether he has any metal objects hidden on his body.

It’s the legacy of inmate Ponchai Wilkerson. Wilkerson, asked by the warden if he had a final statement after he was strapped to the death chamber gurney for execution in 2000, defiantly spit out a handcuff key he had concealed in his mouth.

“You’re in handcuffs, you’re chained at the ankles, they give you cloth shoes, and you have to shuffle to keep them on,” Foster said.

As he waddles the 111 steps, he gets acknowledgement from fellow prisoners who tap on the glass of their cells.

Continue Reading @ Star Telegram

Sign Sarge’s Petition click here: http://www.change.org/petitions/governor-of-the-state-of-texas-stop-the-execution-of-cleve-foster

 

 

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• Texas inmate prepares for 3rd trip death house (utsandiego.com)

New execution date set for Hank Skinner; Civil case pending in federal district court

Death date is set

Former county man on death row in Texas

Henry Skinner Friday, August 5, 2011 By AMANDA BUCK – Bulletin Staff Writer A new execution date has been set for a former Henry County man who is on death row in Texas. Henry Watkins “Hank” Skinner, 49, was sentenced to the death penalty in 1995 for the murder of his girlfriend and her two adult sons in their home in Pampa, Texas. According to the website of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Skinner is set to be executed Nov. 9 for those crimes. This is not the first execution date for Skinner, who attended Fieldale-Collinsville High School. He was less than an hour away from execution in March 2010 when the U.S. Supreme Court halted the sentence and agreed to hear a matter in Skinner’s case. In March of this year, the justices ruled that Skinner had the right to sue a Texas district attorney under a federal civil rights law for refusing to allow him access to evidence for DNA testing. Skinner has sought to have several items that were gathered at the scene of the crime tested for DNA evidence, which his attorneys say could exonerate him. The district attorney, Lynn Switzer, has refused. Skinner’s trial attorney decided not to test the evidence because he feared it would further incriminate Skinner, according to Associated Press reports. Although the Supreme Court’s ruling meant Skinner’s civil suit could move forward, the court did not rule on whether he should be given access to the evidence. That decision has not yet been made. According to one of Skinner’s attorneys, Washington, D.C.-based Douglas Robinson, the civil case still is pending in federal court in the Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division. Robinson said Switzer has asked the court to dismiss the case on different grounds, but the court has not yet ruled on that request. Robinson said he believes the new execution date is “an effort to put pressure on the federal court to act quickly.” Skinner was convicted in the New Year’s Eve 1993 slaying of Twila Jean Busby, who was choked and struck in the head with an ax handle, according to information on the Texas criminal justice department’s website. Busby’s two sons, Elwin Caler, 22, and Randy Busby, 20, were stabbed with a kitchen knife, the document says. Martinsville Bulletin

Death Penalty Updates….

Animal euthanasia more regulated than human execution, ACLU of Texas says

By DIANE JENNINGS 

A report released Sunday by the ACLU of Texas says procedures for euthanizing animals in the state are more regulated than the protocol for executing inmates on death row.

Regulating Death in the Lone Star State: Texas Law Protects Lizards From Needless Suffering, but not Human Beings says the state has a “lax attitude regarding the taking of human life,” compared to detailed regulations that govern euthanizing animals.

The report comes about two weeks after Texas prison officials announced a switch to a new drug, pentobarbital, in the mixture used for lethal injection. Last week, two inmates filed a lawsuit claiming the new procedure is invalid because the change was made without public input. One of the inmates, Cleve Foster of Tarrant County, is scheduled to die Tuesday.

“We’re just calling for the same kind of transparency and expert advice that’s used in a different context, the context of euthanizing animals,” said Lisa Graybill, legal director of the ACLU. The ACLU calls in the report for more public scrutiny of how the state manages executions.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice declined to comment. But a department handbook sets specific standards for training and rules for carrying out executions.

Death penalty supporter Dudley Sharp called the report “complete, utter nonsense” and said it is an effort by capital punishment opponents to try to stop or delay executions. Pentobarbital has been used in other states, he said, and lethal injection is “the most litigated method of putting people to death in the history of the United States.”

According to the ACLU report, when an animal is euthanized, several Texas laws regulate “everything from the lighting in the room to the dosage of the drugs.” In addition, animal euthanasia drugs are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which specifies the formula to be used and the amount, according to body weight.

But the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, the state law governing most justice procedures in Texas, simply states that executions shall be carried out “by intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death.”

The decision to switch to pentobarbital was a policy decision made by the director of the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, who has no medical training.

When pentobarbital is used to euthanize animals, it is used by itself, not in combination with other drugs, such as those used in Texas executions. The Texas lethal injection mixture includes two other drugs: pancuronium bromide to paralyze the muscles and potassium chloride to stop breathing.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20110403-animal-euthanasia-more-regulated-than-human-execution-aclu-of-texas-says.ece?action=reregister

04/01/11 | San Francisco Chronicle

Would disabled receive better care in prison?

Laura Repke

I’m beginning to hope my son will be sent to prison – perhaps Death Row.

Rob stands accused of no crime. And I am not an unloving mother. Let me explain: Rob has a developmental disability, and California is balancing its budget by gutting the services that keep him alive.

The situation is dire enough that I must wonder: Once Rob’s services are cut, will Death Row be a safer place for him?

I know that every program is getting cut. But the single largest budget cut just signed into law by the governor – $568.6 million – is for services for people with developmental disabilities.

For Rob, and 246,000 other Californians like him, that money went to get him to medical appointments, to manage his finances and – hopefully – to have someone look out for his safety after his father and I are no longer alive.

It is shameful that the most vulnerable citizens are receiving the largest share of the pain. Rob was born 31 years ago, legally blind, with cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities. Today he is healthy, employed, living with a roommate and paying his taxes. The essential programs that made this possible are supposedly guaranteed by legislation signed by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1969, the Lanterman Act. The law directs the state to provide people with disabilities like autism and Down syndrome with access to housing, health care and employment. For people with developmental disabilities, the Lanterman Act was equivalent to the Bill of Rights, except more important. Without its practical support, many could not survive outside of grim old-fashioned state institutions (which were vastly more expensive – and now mostly have closed).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/31/ED641IMQND.DTL#ixzz1IIAVWHPa

Texas death row inmate gets reprieve

AP – FILE – In this March 16, 2011 file photo, Texas death row inmate Cleve Foster talks on a phone

By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Tue Apr 5, 2:18 pm ET

HUNTSVILLE, Texas – The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the first scheduled execution of a Texas death row inmate using a new drug cocktail on Tuesday, although the proposed lethal mix was not mentioned in the court’s decision to reconsider the merits of the condemned man’s appeal.

Cleve Foster was to have been executed hours later for the 2002 slaying of a Sudanese woman in Fort Worth — the first Texas execution since the state switched to pentobarbital in its three-drug mixture. The sedative has already been used for executions in Oklahoma and Ohio.

On Tuesday morning, the high court agreed to reconsider its January order denying Foster’s appeal that raised claims of innocence and poor legal help during his trial and early stages of his appeals.

Foster’s lawyers also have argued that Texas prison officials violated administrative procedures last month when they announced the switch to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental, which is in short supply nationwide. Foster’s lawyers contend that the rules change in Texas required more time for public comment and review. Lower courts have rejected their appeals and attorneys had planned to take their case to the Texas Supreme Court.

At the same time, defense lawyers sought a rehearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on the high court’s rejection of an appeal in January. At that time, it stopped Foster’s execution at the last moment, then rejected his claims a week later, clearing the way for Tarrant County authorities to schedule the execution for Tuesday.

In its brief ruling, the court gave prosecutors 30 days to respond to the defense petition, after which the Supreme Court will decide if the appeal has merit.

Foster’s defense team said they are encouraged by the ruling.

“It’s not a common procedural posture,” Maurie Levin, a University of Texas law professor and one of Foster’s attorneys, said. “We’re very happy for the stay and that the Supreme Court will be looking at important issues raised.”

The execution drug issue was not before the U.S. Supreme Court and the court’s order did not mention it.

The drug swap is the most significant change in the execution procedure in Texas since the state switched from the electric chair to lethal injection when it reinstated capital punishment in 1982. Pentobarbital is a sedative used in surgery and to euthanize animals.

Levin said the reprieve, while not related to the drug change, would allow for additional examination of the new execution procedure and “give Texas more time to do it right.”

Beginning in December 1982, Texas executed 466 inmates using a series of three drugs including sodium thiopental, an anesthetic. Two people have been put to death this year. At least six are set to die in the coming months, including one in May.

Foster, 47, blames his conviction on lawyers he didn’t trust, what he called false testimony from police and prosecutors he contends misled jurors.

“To me, they were pretty much pulling stuff out of their hats,” he told The Associated Press previously from death row.

Foster has long insisted that his friend, Sheldon Ward, was responsible for fatally shooting Nyaneur Pal, 30, in February 2002.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110405/ap_on_re_us/us_texas_execution

Complaint: Texas illegally acquiring lethal drugs

By Mike Ward

In a new challenge to Texas’ execution procedure, two condemned convicts complained to federal and state today alleging that state prison officials have been illegally obtaining the prescription drugs used in most of its 466 executions.

In a complaint delivered to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Cleve Foster and Humberto Leal contended that a DEA registration number used to purchase the three execution drugs is registered to a non-existent hospital — in possible violation of state and federal law.

A prescription written by a doctor is needed to obtain prescription drugs under federal and state law.

The complaint seeks investigations by DPS and the DEA to validate that Texas’ drug-procurement procedure for its lethal injections follows state and federal laws.

“The DEA registration number used by TDCJ was … obtained and/or retained through false pretenses,” because it is registered to the Huntsville Unit Hospital, which has been closed since approximately 1983, the complaint states.

Attorneys for Foster and Leal asked the Department of Justice and DPS to investigate TDCJ’s potential violations and “take appropriate steps if TDCJ has violated federal (or state) law.”

The letter to Holder also alleges that the drugs used by TDCJ to carry out executions “are neither kept by a pharmacy, hospital, or clinic, nor dispensed by an authorized practitioner through a prescription.”

Instead, the complaint alleges, the drugs are kept by prison officials, who are not authorized by law to possess or distribute controlled substances.

Continue Reading….

Hank Skinner’s New Hell Hole News #28

Friday March 4th, 2011

The latest news you can use about TX Death Row, where “State Officials” lunacy and idiocy reigns supreme and where the fun never ends!

About a month and a half ago my homeboy and good friend, fellow hillbilly Donald Keith Newberry aka Lizzerd, made himself some playtime “body armor’ outta cardboard, state shaving razors and handles.

Before I explain this, let me explain a little more about the man himself, Lizzerd. For the last year or so Lizzerd has been engaged in a sort of spittin’ contest with “unit officials”, aka Lil’ Tim Lester, Asst. Warden and Good Ol’ boy Joe Smith, Major. Lizzerd has a wild sense of humor and he delights in showing these two state clowns how he can outsmart them and defeat all their efforts to constrain him. Think the road runner vs Wylie coyote or Bo & Luke Duke vs Roscoe P. Coltrain (the Dukes of Hazzard TV show).

Lizzerd likes to take advantage of all their lil’ “heightened security measures” and use ‘em to get loose or otherwise make ‘em look like fools, which ain’t hard, anyway. Then he highsides ‘em about it. Lizzerd holds the record for most gas used in a use of force (UOF). That used to be my record but I laid off doing run-ins due to health and age issues. I’m almost half a century old and I got high blood pressure and other age related health problems I won’t bore you with. Fightin’ five (5) or more swine at once while covered in “chemical agents” is a a youngster’s endeavor or, an idiot’s, whichever comes first. So I’m outta the crash test dummy business for good, I guess. I can do one good one if I need to; I just don’t need to, yet. After I almost died over in Huntsville on their lil’ horizontal cross 03.24.10, I came to see the folly and futility of so much these “TDCJ officials” do and say. Why cater to asswipes like that? Now I just laugh at ‘em. I do a lot of laughing, too!!

Back to Lizzerd. They’ve started getting real frustrated over the way he beats ‘em at every turn. For over a year they’ve had him isolated out on a section by himself. 14 cells going to waste for one man! Your tax dollars at work, folks! They think they’re going to break him. It ain’t worked out that way at all. Lizzerd, like me, prevails, perseveres, outlasts and overcomes all their foolery.

So they’re now down to just beating him up every time they get him in cuffs. In may views it takes a real special kind of coward to beat a man who’s in cuffs and defenseless.

So Lizzerd makes this body armor out of cardboard and embeds lil’ pieces of state razors in everywhere – these are disposable razors, the blades are just a lil’ ribbon of stainless steel an inch and a half long by three eights wide and .14000” thick. Too tiny and flimsy to cut anything but paper, outside the plastic body the come encased in. But they look good, stuck in these lil’ pasteboard arm guards, shin guard and chest protector. They say he drew designs on ‘em and dressed ‘em up – “TX death row” and ‘born to die”, etc. Lizzerd says he got the idea from a porcupine. Already I like hedgehogs and porcupines, cool lil’ creatures.

Lizzerd’s back up plan here is to black out his cell lights and let ‘em run-in on him and watch ‘em pull up short when they run up on him covered in razors. Whoa! WTF?!! It ain’t gonna do nothin’ but it’s a helluva gag. On first blush it looks dangerous as hell. The premise is “hey, don’t nobody touch me, won’t nobody get hurt”, Ha/Ha, Ha/Ha LMAO! So if you insist on calling it a “weapon”, it’s certainly a passive one.

Consider this in context of what the goon squad wears. Five (5) or seven (7) of ‘em: full coverage helmets with gas masks and wire cage face shield; stab proof flak vest with Revlar inserts and high padded neck brace; forearm guards, thigh and shin guards, black racing gloves with the rubberized rib guards, etc. Ever seen a hockey player being the goalie? There you go: Five (5) or seven (7) hockey goalies. Even if you got a pair of steel shanks taped to your hands with string and a bat, you can’t hurt ‘em. No way.

Speaking of this, it’s always interesting to watch these fools’ behavior. After a run-in, they take off their helmets and start whoopin’ and hollerin’, high fivin’ each other, like they really done som’, you know? I tell ‘em “wait a minute, wait a minute. It took seven of you silly fat fxxckers, wearin’ all that contraption, just to run-in on one prisoner standin’ there in his boxer shorts and flip-flops? You sprayed eight (8) cans of gas on this man and despite all this, 3 of you still got your asses whipped and two more almost, yet you feel like you won and really did som’? It takes all y’all and all that gear and all that gas to defeat just one barefoot, boxer wearin’ convict, yet you’re proud of yourselves?!?  You oughtta be standin’ behind Mama’s apron still, peepin’ out! Ha/Ha. You oughtta see the look on their faces when I tell them this. Everybody on the section is roaring laughing at these clowns; even the Lieutenant, Captain and camera operator.

So, when they run-in on a blacked-out cell they use a high powered spotlight called a Q-Beam – that intense light instantly reflects off the lil’ pieces in Lizzerd’s “armor”. Yeah, it’d be a real show stopper until they see what it really is. Ha/Ha.

They get Lizzerd’s armor and decide this is som’ real serious stuff! LOL. So they put Lizzerd on “razor restriction” and arbitrarily decide all the rest of us can no longer possess disposable shaving razors. In prison conditions law parlance, that’s what’s known as an “overreaching exaggerated response to legitimate penological needs”. “Prison officials can infringe ‘our’ constitutional rights only if it is absolutely necessary in furtherance of a legitimate penological goal or objective”. This is the U.S. Supreme Court case law I’m quoting here. If Lizzerd abused his razors, they can do something about that, with him; however it gives them no authority at all to punish the rest of us, or deprive us of items we’re permitted by policy to possess.

But wait! TDCJ has a strict grooming policy and they require you to be clean shaven. Yes, they are still enforcing that policy, too.

In your cell there is a sink and a mirror where you can shave. In the shower there is neither. So the Major arbitrarily decides no one can have a razor anymore except in the shower and “shave by feel”. Bullshit. Lil’ Lester tried this same thing when he was Major back here and everybody bucked and just quit shaving and “grooming” altogether.

TDCJ has no right to make anyone cut and disfigure themselves in order to comply with their “grooming standards”. That’s inevitably what happens when you’re forced to “shave by feel” in the shower.

Not only that but it creates an unacceptable risk of infection by blood-borne diseases like HIV, syphilis, herpes, hepatitis C and a myriad of other blood-borne pathogens. In 1998 TDCJ Officer Herbitch intentionally infected me with hepatits C. I successfully sued and won, forced them to give me a treatment (over a year’s worth of Interferon recombinant-A Roferon shots 3 times a week and 600mg Ribavirin twice a day). It happened in the shower. As part of the settlement of that suit, TDCJ agreed to do away with the razor boards where they hung all the razors on hooks and withheld them until a prisoner was in the shower. They agreed to give each individual prisoner his own razor and allow him to keep it on person. Slowly but surely since, lil’ Lester has eroded and violated that agreement by degrees – first he decided that Level III couldn’t have razors because they’re assaultive-aggressive; then he decided Level II couldn’t have ‘em for som’ other equally ridiculous reason. Lester’s favorite tactic was to withhold razors and then use it as an excuse to keep a prisoner on level for “refusing to groom”. All this totally overlooks the fact that TDCJ’s grooming policies have been found unconstitutional by a Federal Court and TDCJ prohibited from enforcing them. Lil’ Lester doesn’t care about anyone’s rights or TDCJ policy or anything else. He does what he wants. He’s above the law. Just ask him.

Now however, TDCJ/Lil’ Lester is courting a far different disaster: MRSA, which is running rampant in jails and prisons everywhere. MRSA is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

The other day I went to the shower behind one of these prisoners who’d “shaved by feel” and there was blood all over the floor and on the wall and door. That’s a biohazard, big time. If that blood contained HIV, Hep C or any other blood-borne pathogen and you have one lil’ open sore on your foot, a scratch, a cut and you come into contact with that blood, you’re infected.

They’re creating an environment ripe for transmission of MRSA. Now the Major is saying they’re going to start locking the bean holes on the showers when someone is in there and when the showers are not in use.

A bean hole, for those of you who don’t know, is a lil’ trap door portal at the same height as a mail slot on the door of a house – just above knee level. It’s a rectangle 5 ½ “ high by approx. 15” wide with a locking door on the outside. They use it to handcuff you before you come out and to unhandcuff you coming in. There’s one on the cell door as well, used for the same purpose, and to feed your trays through.

Currently with the bean hole open, we reach out and hang our boxers on the doorknob of the shower door – it don’t turn; the door is operated electrically from the picket to unlock it. The knob is only there to pull it open with. We hang our towel and boxers out there to keep them from getting wet.

The shower stall is like a small closet, three (3) feet wide by six (6) feet deep. The walls are slick. There’s no hooks, bolts, knobs or anything to hand something on. There’s no mirror. The way it’s arranged in relation to the showerhead, once you turn on the water, every surface inside it, floor to ceiling, gets soaking wet; even the ceiling, by rising steam/moisture.

MRSA thrives in wet areas. The showers have an exhaust vent but that vent cannot circulate air and cannot exhaust at all if the bean hole is shut because the shower is a solid metal door with only a plexiglass view port at face height. When the bean holes are locked, the shower never dries out after use and starts to smell like a wet, dead dog – moldy, rotten and mildewy.

They have a crew of prisoner workers out of population called support service inmates (SSI’s) who come around to sweep, mop and clean the showers. On each of six (6) pods there are six (6) sections of fourteen (14) cells arranged in a two-tiered configuration of seven (7) cells each, called one row and two row. On each row of a section is one shower stall shared by (7) ore more prisoners. I say “seven (7) or more” because if there are unshowered prisoners in other sections and all (7) are showered already in the next section, they will utilize the empty shower and bring prisoners over from the next section to shower.

When the SSI’s come to clean, they use the same brush and bucket of cleaning solution to clean all the showers on the whole pod, 12 showers total. So in actuality they’re just transferring whatever pathogens are present all around the whole pod. Even worse, I’ve seen them fill the shower bucket by dipping it into the mop water bucket they used to mop the floors all over the whole pod.

With this sort of pathogen transfer extant and the shower bean holes closed so the shower stall never fully dries out, it’s a recipe for disaster. The showers are not designed to be shaving in them. More so, there’s no place inside the shower you can hang you boxers and towel if the bean hole is locked. You’d just have to lay them on the floor.

Then there’s Lester’s Lil’ no clothesline rule. First he told us we couldn’t have a clothesline at all. So I filed a grievance on him, me and Todd Willingham did and won it. Lester couldn’t stand that so he made up all those other rules – you can only have a clothesline made of this certain material and you can only run it from here to here and you can only have it up from 6:00pm to 6:00am, blah, blah, blah. See, Lester is a micro-managing idiot in the first degree.

We don’t shower at night. Ha/Ha. We shower in the daytime, 6:30am-6:00pm on first shift. Our towels, boxers and other clothes, washrags, etc. are wet during that time and that’s when they need to be hung up.

The next ingredient in this recipe for disaster is that before we came over here, this whole building, all six (6) pods, 504 cells, was ad seg and they were all shit slingers. Once TDCJ started using pepper spray to subdue prisoners in ad seg, the prisoners started responding with liquefied feces. It got so bad at one point that officers could not come on a section unless they were wearing a face shield, a rain slicker and rubber hat. To this day, every time it rains and gets damp here, it reactivates the shit that is still in all the cracks and crevices of the cells, floors, outside walls, etc. So anytime it gets humid here, the faint (or sometimes very strong) scent of shit is in the air. Shit is 66% bacteria.

Then there’s the laundry. Ever since Tabler’s big escapade with Senator Whitmire, the population prisoners hate death row with a passion. They’re not washing the clothes but doing what they call “short runs” where they do not use enough Dejest (soap) to clean the poundage of clothes in the extractor (giant washer) and they cheat the cycle card it runs on, so that instead of two washes, spins, rinses and a sanitation cycle (utilizes a steam manifold and 180°-200°F water to disinfect the clothes), then final spin out, they use one 6 or 8 minute wash, one rinse, one spin and no sanitation cycle. That’s just enough to mix up the dirt and redistribute it evenly through the clothes – so now everybody gets some of everybody else’s pathogens. They they run it through the dryer at 300°F or more and cook it into the clothes. The result is that all the clothes, towels and sheets we get smell like B.O. and stinky feet; and are either dookie brown or sewage gray and not fit for human consumption, or use.

Finally is the new problem created by Capt Shannon Price. She tells the necessity officer he is not allowed to give us any state soap at all and the officers who pass it out to limit us to only five (5) bars a week, no more, no matter what. So, with no access to soap and bleach we’re forced to wear the clothes and use the sheets “as is”.

Incidentally, Shannon, aka  Sha-nae-nae, is no longer with us. She got busted for illicit drug use and dirty U.A. and terminated – escorted off the unit. Yay!! So at least one good thing happened, eh.

Captain Patrick Dickens replaced Sha-nae-nae. We’ll see what he says about all this, as I’m about to bring it to him.

We crush up this soap and use it to wash our clothes, linens and towels. It works really great for that. To give you the proper perspective on the soap, consider this: the bars TDCJ makes are lye soap from rendered fat they get for free and prisoners produce it so the cost is in negligible. The soap is “one use” bars, 1 ½ “ wide, 2 ½ “ Long and ¼ “ thick – enough for one shower if you use it sparingly.

Some of you may say “why don’t you buy soap from the commissary?” The answer is that only level I prisoners can buy unrestricted soap from the commissary. Level II & III can buy only five (5) small “personal use” bars of Dial soap from commissary every two (2) weeks and, if you’re on commissary restriction, as most of us are, you can buy only five (5) bars a month. Yes, I know that’s crazy. Dial contains triclosan, which is an anti-bacterial agent and, while it’s good for washing your body, it’s no good at all for washing clothes, linens and towels. The TDCY lye soap disinfects. Dial doesn’t. And, finally, not every prisoner here has $ with which to buy soap.

In a place like prison, where so many men are confined in such a small place, where pathogens run rampant and infections spread so quickly; in the age of MRSA running rampant in jails and prisons across the nation, you gotta wonder what on earth these “prison officials” must be thinking? Lil’ Lester Pester says it’s to cut down on “trafficking and trading” is why they’re denying us access to soap and bleach. So, um, to keep one prisoner from giving soap to another one is more important than keeping your prisoners clean and preventing the spread of disease?

Two prisoners here, that I know of, have suffered serious staph infections due to these filthy sheets – Jeff Pribble and Brent Ripkowsky. I’m sure there are probably others.

I myself have some kind of chronic skin infection on my ankles and legs, my sides and the backs of my arms that I’ve had for over 6 years now. The doctor here, D.O. Alan Zond, does not know how to cure it, yet he refuses to give me a referral to a dermatologist so I can get treatment. Consequently the infection is disfiguring me on a daily basis. I have scars and discoloration all over, where I’m infected. All Zond will do is give me triamcinolone cream – an anti-inflammatory, anti-itch medication, to mask the symptoms.

While I’m on that issue, medical care here now is non-existent. I have prescription eyeglasses. Policy says we’re allowed to renew our prescriptions and update via eye exam every two years. Mine have not been done in over six (6) years now. I put in for update and eye exam for the 8th time back in April 2010 and they gold me they’d take me to Estelle Unit to get my glasses done. That was 11 months ago. My eyeglasses are in four (4) separate pieces because the goon squad crushed ‘em in the repeated run-ins I suffered at the hands of Lil’ Lester Pester.

Back to the disaster in the making. It’s a lethal recipe, as I said: transmission of biohazards and blood-borne pathogens; inadequately washed, unsanitized clothes, undergarments and linens/towels; perpetually wet showers and towels; state created denial of adequate access to soap, bleach, Bippy scouring power and other hygiene sundries: forcing prisoners to “shave by feel” in showers not equipped nor designed for such activities, resulting in hazardous exposure of prisoners to blood, etc.

I cannot imagine the kind of idiot who, in a prison setting, would want to restrict prisoner access to soap, bleach and Bippy scouring powder. That is beyond insane.

Sorry this one got a little longwinded but this is a convoluted issue with many facets interrelated but separate issues; To any D.R. prisoner who becomes infected and wants to sue, have your attorney contact me. I’ll provide all the information and documentation needed to win the suit.

That’s it for this time, but wait ‘til you read the next one!

Best regards,

Hank

999143 Polunsky Unit
H W Hank Skinner
3872 FM 350 South
Livingston TX 77351-8580

h.w.skinner@gmail.com

http://www.hankskinner.org

For those of you who use JPay to write, don’t forget to always include your postal address and your e-mail address after your signature, so I can reply. http://www.jpay.com don’t forget to enter my TDC number as an 8-digit number: 00999143.