Jean Trounstine : Texas Calls it 'Ad Seg' but Prisoners Call It Torture

Image of life in solitary via Buried Alive in Texas Prisons.

Solitary confinement:
Texas calls it 'Ad Seg' but
prisoners call it torture

A recent conference on solitary confinement at Harvard University prompted prisoners at Between the Bars to tell their side of the story. Here’s what they say about being caged within a cage.

By Jean Trounstine /The Rag Blog / March 19, 2013

This past February 25th, a panel of experts on solitary confinement converged at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to discuss the horrendous practice in our U.S. prisons that many call “cruel and unusual punishment.”

While the panel detailed the disastrous effects such isolation causes, the legal challenges through the years and the “judicial and institutional apathy” towards our 80,000 people in solitary confinement nationwide -- as of 2012, 8,100 of those in Texas alone -- what was most intriguing to me was the response to the panel by the real experts -- prisoners.

You can read their words at Between the Bars, which describes itself as “a weblog platform for people in prison, through which the 1% of Americans who are in prison can tell their stories.” Prisoners from across the country have created over 5,000 documents for BTB since the site began in 2008. Before the panel was held, Massachusetts Institute of Technology whiz kid Charlie Tarr and assistants, Carl McLaren and Benjamin Sugar, who maintain the site, put out a call to hundreds of prisoners telling them about the conference.

While I’ve written about Between the Bars before (see "Behind Bars and Blogging for Human Rights"), this time prisoners were asked to share their experience with solitary confinement through their blogs. Documents were posted online where anyone could post a response. The responses were then mailed to the prisoners who have a chance to reply. The circle continues: prisoners’ thoughts get voice; they have access to the online world; they become part of the conversation.

Texas prisoner, Guy S. Alexander, described his recent stay at the Allen B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston before his sentence of death was overturned in May 2012. Polunsky, he wrote, takes away “more of your dignity than anything... mental and long-term isolation of human contact... We had no television, or group recs, no contact visits ….a small narrow window at the top back of the cells... they made a day feel horrible… the so called paranoid rules.”

Alexander, who was in solitary at Polunsky for 12 years, is now in the Harris County Jail, close to his home in Houston. But he is still “in a cell 24 hours a day and it's bad, they don't even have air here… no circulation vents... I do have a TV and it helps, but a person needs input, friends to write and see and talk to.” On his profile page, Alexander wrote “I’m locked up but my soul and heart aren’t. I’m lonely and alone… an open book, not a monster.”

Jeremy Pinson, who made substantial threats against the government, is housed in a Colorado federal prison in solitary confinement in spite of the fact that he was diagnosed as mentally ill -- which he writes about in his over 77 blogs. Sadly, this is not uncommon. According to Solitary Watch, as of 2012, more than 2,000 Texas prisoners in Ad Seg were diagnosed with a “serious mental illness or a developmental disability.”

Obviously bright, obviously tormented, Pinson wrote:

For 943 days I have eaten meals alone. For 943 days I have watched men's minds break down in a painfully slow process. First they become eccentric. Then they become antisocial and belligerent. Next comes anger and they lash out at their captors only to be pepper sprayed and beaten into submission. Next comes despair as they realize that they are utterly helpless. For many the next step involves a noose, a bottle of pills, or a razor blade. For a few their misery ends in death. For 943 days I have wanted to and even tried to die... How many shattered minds, bodies and souls will it take before this practice, this cruelty, this barbaric evil is ended?

About solitary-confinement, Pinson wrote a series of questions for the panel, which included: Dr. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who has extensively researched the psychological effects of solitary confinement; Professor Jules Lobel, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights; Mikail DeVeaux, himself a former prisoner who experienced solitary and who is now executive director and founder of Citizens Against Recidivism, an NYC advocacy group; and Bobby Dellelo, an activist working for the American Friends Service Committee who spent five years in solitary -- or what he calls the “monster factory” -- at Walpole Prison in Massachusetts.

Hopefully, Pinson will receive responses to questions such as “Why do civil rights groups allow mentally ill inmates to be kept in solitary confinement?” and “How can individual inmates in solitary effectively challenge their abuse and that which they witness?”

L. Samuel Capers, a prisoner on Death Row in California’s San Quentin Prison, wrote of the smell of the ocean so close to their walls as “torture... We look at dirty tan brick walls, razor wire and guns all day. We breathe in frustration, we eat anger, we walk in despair.” He asked in his blog why so few people know what solitary can do to prisoners, “especially when they are returned back to society without the proper psychological treatment.”

This past September, Grits for Breakfast reported on the perils of reentry following solitary. The Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee was told that in 2011, 878 prisoners who'd been locked in Ad Seg “were released directly to the streets without parole supervision of any type after finishing out their full sentence.” Another “469 were paroled directly” from Ad Seg.

While parole has proven to be more successful than direct release to the streets, under the best of situations it still is a recipe for disaster to send someone who has lived in solitary directly to the free world. Without time in lower security where he or she can do programs, prepare a home plan, and try to get job leads, a person is almost bound to return to captivity.

A Wisconsin prisoner, La Ron McKinley-Bey, an artist on BTB who has his artwork posted online, theorized what many others have written about -- that prison rehab is difficult when over 2.5 million people crowd our prisons. He wrote about people going to solitary as “those who couldn't adapt or conform to the structured demands of the prison environment,” and pointed out why we’ve confined so many to solitary:

Prison officials, having given up on the concept of rehabilitation, without resources or experience on how to effectively treat the mentally ill or the drug addicted, consigned many to languish in solitary confinement with the rest of the undesirables, and to add more chaos to that environment.

While excellent websites like Solitary Watch take apart the destructive practices in prisons that these prisoners have lived through (See "Texas Lockdown: Solitary Confinement in the Lonestar State"), it is the voices of those behind bars that give us the truest picture of a practice that we must work to change, the cage within the cage.

[Jean Trounstine is an author/editor of five published books and many articles, professor at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, and a prison activist. For 10 years, she worked at Framingham Women's Prison and directed eight plays, publishing Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison about that work. She blogs for Boston Magazine and takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick at jeantrounstine.com where she blogs weekly at "Justice with Jean." Find her contributions to The Rag Blog here.]

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Jean Trounstine : Behind Bars and Blogging for Human Rights

Texas born, Johnny E. Mahaffey’s profile page at betweenthebars.org. Image from Between the Bars.
Behind bars and 
blogging for human rights

Martin Luther King Day reminds us about fighting for human rights. It might seem like an oxymoron, convicted criminals blogging for dignity, equality, and inalienable rights, but here’s why it’s not.

By Jean Trounstine / The Rag Blog / January 21, 2013

For some prisoners, blogging is a lifeline to the world. It is the chance to weigh in on the issues of the day and on the particular concerns of those locked up -- often unseen and unheard. It also allows them to learn about social media for the eventuality when 95% will return to their communities.

Prisoners send letters with prose, poetry, and art to blogs; those on the outside comment; replies are then mailed to the prisoners who have the opportunity to respond with new posts. Thus, they see that their ideas matter.

Between the Bars.org (BTB), managed by MIT co-creator and Phd candidate Charlie DeTar, has allowed more than 5,000 prisoners to find voice online. This is a significant number, but DeTar reminds us on BTB that it’s still only 1% of the 2.2 million housed in U.S. prisons and jails.

Joining the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, California, this past December 10, BTB honored the anniversary of the worldwide adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They aimed to give prisoners the chance to bring attention to human rights abuses within the walls of the world's largest incarceration system. The Ella Baker Center, named after Civil Rights heroine, Ella Baker, is dedicated to reducing the U.S. incarceration rate by 50% over the next 10 years.

More than 300 BTB authors and artists participated along with other individuals and groups from across the country. Some of the topics that prisoners blogged about for Human Rights Day included: business and job security; human rights violations behind bars; the inhumanity of solitary confinement; the travesty of juveniles in adult prisons; suppression of dissent from prisoners; electronic intrusions at all hours; the high suicide rate in U.S. prison, and the idea that “there can never be justice on stolen land.”

Johnny E. Mahaffey, born in Texas and currently incarcerated in South Carolina, answered the call to discuss human rights in a piece he titles his “Essayistic Ponderings ”

There are those who believe that prisoners should be removed not only from society, but life itself -- all death-penalty arguments aside -- into a state of out-of- sight and out-of-mind... and it is this non-existence they seek to impose upon inmates dwelling within the walls of confinement, already removed from their family, and life that they once had -- and it is this state of non-existence that contradicts the very thought of "human rights..." Throwing away the key is not an answer to crime, it's just a lazy way to deal with it...

Mahaffey also says in the same piece that blogging for him is a way to connect with his five children:

Though this blog, they will know always that they were loved, thought of constantly, and that they themselves are in no way to blame for their father's situation. I may not live long enough to ever see them -- prison is dangerous -- and these words I type on my typewriter to be mailed out for my blog, could be all that's left of me.”

Tim Muise, incarcerated at MCI Shirley in Massachusetts, takes on treatment of those behind bars who are gravely ill and near death in a devastating critique, “The Death Chamber -- 'Shirley Style'.” He writes, “Here at the Hospital Unit (HSU), you will see examples of a 'slow death penalty... feces left in an adult diaper for over 36 hours... Ants were found... maggots...”

A man Muise calls “WB,” was beaten at age 72, thrown into HSU, and Muise maintains, was denied his life-saving medication. “This brought on six separate major heart episodes which required outside hospital attention and major surgeries.”

Maisha Mahalia Durham was one of the few women who responded to the call-out for human rights. Of the nearly 1.5 million housed in state prisons, only 200,000 are women, but there is a considerable body of literature on the particular issues for women behind bars.

Durham, incarcerated in Georgia, is president of a writing group at Pulaski State Prison called “Inkspills” for others like herself, yearning to write. Her blog post for human rights is about the devastating parole system which she has seen keep many prisoners from returning to their communities -- in spite of transformation of attitudes and behavior.

She wrote that “When the Judicial System stops looking at the nature of the crime and starts evaluating the nature of the person, justice can be served.”

While Durham joins a notable group of men and women who seek to publish their words in articles and books, blogging gives her immediacy. Prison bloggers can also earn respect for their ideas and position themselves as knowledgeable, as well as reconnect with a community that has, by and large, abandoned them. One blogger poignantly makes this point on BTB by opening up his post with the words, “Hello World.”

[Jean Trounstine is an author/editor of five published books and many articles, professor at Middlesex Community College, and a prison activist. For 10 years, she worked at Framingham Women's Prison and directed eight plays, publishing Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison about that work. She blogs for Boston Magazine and takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick at jeantrounstine.com where she blogs weekly at "Justice with Jean." ]

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Steve Russell : In Memory of Jay Spotted Elk

In memory of Jay Spotted Elk

It became possible to prove that Jay Spotted Elk’s last night on earth was not unusual in the history of Sheridan County, Nebraska.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / August 9, 2010

In my time as a trial judge, I’ve learned that often when a litigant says it’s not about the money it is in fact about the money. You can’t tell at the beginning of a case but you can tell at the end. In this case, it was not about the money.

An Indian hanging himself in the drunk tank is seldom big news in Indian country except to his relatives. When Jay Spotted Elk hung himself while facing misdemeanor charges in Sheridan County, Nebraska, his mother decided not to stand for it. Arlyn Eastman/Broken Nose sued the county and several individuals who might have been able to prevent the suicide if they had been properly trained and motivated.

Any lawsuit is difficult, and this one much more so. In the wake of the civil rights movement, there was a time when the courts seemed generally sympathetic to claims by the powerless against the powerful. As a result, the Republican Party took on the reorientation of the federal courts as a project that continues to this day.

This year saw the racial attacks on Sonia Sotomayor and the recent hearing on the appointment of Elena Kagan that left the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee praising Kagan’s qualifications and personality while still resolved to vote against her (excepting Lindsey Graham, who seems to find good government more important than party discipline).

In all GOP administrations since Nixon, most nominees have been very young and very conservative. Young because federal judgeships are lifetime appointments and conservative to get the law back into what they choose to call the mainstream, where you can tell the winners largely by race and by class.

At this time, as at the beginning of the Clinton administration, there are no American Indians serving on federal courts, which is where Indian interests are normally adjudicated. As bad, the influx of judges with a political agenda has had approximately 40 years to work its magic, since the Democrats in power during that time have been centrists who would correctly claim that stacking courts is bad government and refrain from fighting fire with fire.

I was educated in the legal landscape peopled by Thurgood Marshall (demonized in the first day of the Kagan hearings), William O. Douglas, William Brennan, and judges like Hugo Black, who wrote the words that Indian lawyers call the all-purpose Indian law dissent: “Great nations, like great men, should keep their word.” I doubt that I would have become a lawyer had Thurgood Marshall not existed and I was reluctant to wash my hand again after William O. Douglas shook it.

In modern times, the “liberals” are conservative appointees who were enlightened by their experiences on the court like Harry Blackmun or David Souter. The “center” has been moved by political calculation. As a result, people without power have a set of problems that go far beyond the fact that they often don’t know lawyers and that lawsuits cost a lot of money.

Should she find a lawyer to work on a “contingent fee” (no pay unless you win), Spotted Elk’s mother would have to contend with the social fact of suing a local government (the law enforcement part, no less) and with the legal fact that if there is one class of litigants that has less success than American Indians it would have to be prisoners.

The courts, since the heyday of civil rights lawsuits, have made it harder to sue local governments for damages. It’s not enough that law enforcement officers violate your rights and they work for the city or the county you want to sue. To hold the local government responsible, you must prove that they did or failed to do something in particular. Most common is a failure to properly train or supervise the officers, but this has to be a pattern. One bad outcome is not enough, even if somebody is killed.

The lawyer who took on this case, Maren Chaloupka, hit a mother lode of evidence that was good for the lawsuit but bad for the Indian community in Nebraska:

• Twelve inmates had attempted suicide in the same jail, all but one Indian.
• The inmates had attempted suicide repeatedly.
• One inmate literally killed himself the day after he told corrections officers that he no longer wanted to live.

When nothing was done in the face of all this, it was bad for the Indians who might be in the jail from time to time but it made proving that the county had failed to take suicide precautions the proverbial slam dunk.

It became possible to prove that Jay Spotted Elk’s last night on earth was not unusual in the history of Sheridan County, Nebraska. According to a report in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald, Spotted Elk threatened suicide before he even got to the jail. Yet his belt was not removed and he was not closely watched.

In these rare cases when there’s a good chance of prevailing in a trial, there comes a time when you know why the lawsuit was filed. Everybody knows that going to trial is a crapshoot, but there is something to negotiate about if the lawyer on the other side is sane. If the case settles, that’s when you learn why the case was brought.

Chaloupka, of Scottsbluff and her co-counsel, Robin Zephier of the Abourezk Law Firm in Rapid City, got $100,000 paid to Jay Spotted Elk’s estate, managed by his mother. If that was all, it would be better than not placing any cost on Indian lives, but it is unlikely that I would be writing about it. The rest of the settlement requires the county to:

• Have all employees of the sheriff and jail trained in suicide prevention.
• Make efforts to contact the tribal suicide prevention program for any Indian who expresses ideas of suicide.
• Post the contact information for suicide prevention at Pine Ridge and Rosebud at the booking desk and keep a log of calls made to those programs.
• Notify the closest tribal suicide prevention program in cases where no program can be reached for the inmate’s tribe.
• Allow a representative of the tribal suicide prevention program to speak to the inmate by telephone or in person and document the reason why any recommendation by the tribal suicide prevention program is not followed.
• Provide a written report on compliance with the agreement every year until 2015, after which Spotted Elk’s mother retains the right to inspect the records.

This is what civil rights lawyers can do now and then even when the courts are so stacked against them, and local officials would plainly not care to spend money protecting Indians if they had a choice. In this case, we won’t know exactly whose life was saved but it is safe to say that saving lives will be the result. It’s for that result we should remember the life of Jay Spotted Elk.

[Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, lives in Sun City, Texas, near Austin. He is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. Steve was an activist in Austin in the Sixties and Seventies, and wrote for Austin’s underground paper, The Rag. Steve is also a columnist for Indian Country Today, where this article first appeared. He can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu.]

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Prisoner Tortured to Death in Arizona

In this undated photo released by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Marcia Powell, 48, is seen. Powell died Wednesday, May 19, 2009 at a hospital after spending four hours in a holding cell the day before at Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville in Goodyear, Ariz. Department of Corrections officials did not immediately explain why Powell was placed in the holding cell. Photo: AP.
Details emerge in inmate's heat-related death: Report describes miscommunications, policy violations
By Casey Newton / September 24, 2009

Disturbing new details emerged Wednesday in the death of Marcia Powell, an Arizona state prison inmate who died of heat-related causes after being left in an outdoor cage for hours.

The Arizona Department of Corrections' internal investigation of Powell's death on May 20 runs about 3,000 pages. The department announced this week that it has disciplined 16 people in connection with the incident, with five employees fired or forced to resign. A criminal investigation is ongoing.

Interviews with prison staff members, inmates and medical personnel illustrate how a series of policy violations and miscommunications led to Powell's collapse at Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville in Goodyear. She later died at West Valley Hospital.

Among the report's findings:

• Powell passed out in her cell on the morning of May 19. A few minutes before, she had announced she was suicidal. She was taken to an outdoor cage to await transfer to a psychiatric unit. But the sergeant who saw Powell lose consciousness never reported the incident to supervisors, despite the fact that Powell said she was having trouble breathing.
• At least 20 inmates told investigators that Powell was denied water for most or all of the time she was in her cage, despite regular requests. Corrections officers said Powell was given water.
• Powell was taking psychotropic medications that made her particularly sensitive to the heat, but medical personnel did not convey that fact to corrections officers.
• After more than two hours in the sun, Powell requested to be taken back to her indoor cell. Her request was denied.
• Powell was apparently denied a request to use the restroom and defecated in the cage. A corrections officer discovered that Powell had soiled herself but left her where she was. Medical personnel would later discover feces underneath her fingernails and all over her back.
• The psychiatric unit to which Powell was awaiting transport should have accepted her hours before she died, the report found, but a series of miscommunications prevented her from being taken in.

Powell, who was serving a sentence for prostitution, said she felt suicidal at 11 a.m. on May 19 and was escorted to the outdoor cage to await transportation for psychiatric care at the prison complex detention unit.

Officers seeking to move Powell to the unit were first told that it did not have available beds. Later, another inmate in the unit refused to put handcuffs on to be taken back to her cell, causing the staff to trigger its incident command system. The incident took more than 90 minutes to resolve, during which time no other inmates were brought into the unit.

Officers monitoring Powell were wary of asking psychiatric-unit staffers to accept another inmate during the standoff, even though three beds had become available. But investigators said it would have been possible to transfer Powell, since the uncooperative inmate was locked in a secure cell.

Prison policy calls for inmates to be kept in outdoor cells for a maximum of two hours. The cells had no shade, and on the day Powell died, temperatures hit 107.5 degrees.

Officers did not properly log Powell's time in the outdoor cell or when they checked on her. When she collapsed, no one could say for certain how long she had been there.

Doctors on the scene said Powell's body temperature was at least 108 degrees but may have been higher, since their thermometers topped out at 108.

Charles Ryan, corrections department director, called Powell's death "unconscionable" and "an absolute failure."

The most bitterly disputed aspect of the case concerns whether Powell was denied water.

Nearly all of the inmates interviewed by investigators reported that Powell screamed out for water regularly but was repeatedly denied. Others said she was granted water only once or twice in nearly four hours.

"I need some water - just a drop," one inmate overheard Powell tell a corrections officer, who reportedly ignored her.

Another inmate reported that a corrections officer mockingly repeated Powell's requests for water back to her, without giving her any.

All of the corrections officers interviewed for the report said Powell had been given water throughout her outdoor confinement.

Both inmates and staff members said Powell's history of mental illness and frequent erratic behavior meant that some of her requests were not taken seriously. She did not get the staff's undivided attention until she collapsed at 2:40 p.m.

Timothy Johnson, a physician's assistant who attempted to revive Powell, swore repeatedly at investigators when asked about Powell's death.

"This should not have happened," he said.

Source / Arizona Republic

Thanks to Peggy Plews / The Rag Blog

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New Abu Ghraib Photos Said to Depict Graphic Rape Scenes

Previously released photo from Abu Ghraib prison. The new photos, many reportedly depicting sexual abuse, are said to be much worse. Photo from Telegraph, U.K.
Photographs which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

By Duncan Gardham and Paul Cruickshank / May 28, 2009

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Source / Telegraph, U.K.

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'America's Toughest Sheriff' : Arizona's Joe Arpaio Finally Called to Account

Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio: such a lovely fellow. Dennis Gilman /Adolfo Maldonado / Phoenix New Times.
'It is high time that somebody on the national scene notice, and the Federal government take action on, the egregious and violative conduct of [Arizona Sheriff] Joe Arpaio.'

By Emptywheel / February 14, 2009.

The House Judiciary Committee made a critical and public step to rein in a terrible Arizona "lawman."

You have probably heard of the shamelessly self professed "Toughest Sheriff in America", Maricopa County Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. For years he has been making a PR spectacle of himself, all the while running an unconstitutionally deplorable jail system, letting inmates die under tortuous conditions, and violating the civil rights and liberties of everybody in sight, especially minorities. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee made public a critical and public step to rein in the Most Abusive Sheriff In America.

From the HJC statement:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), and Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate allegations of misconduct by Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the rights of Hispanics in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Under the guise of immigration enforcement, his staff has conducted raids in residential neighborhoods in a manner condemned by the community as racial profiling. On February 4, 2009, Arpaio invited the media to view the transfer of immigrant detainees to a segregated area of his "tent city" jail, subjecting the detainees to public display and "ritual humiliation." Persistent actions such as these have resulted in numerous lawsuits; while Arpaio spends time and energy on publicity and his reality television show, "Smile… You're Under Arrest!", Maricopa County has paid millions of dollars in settlements involving dead or injured inmates.
[...]
It is time for the federal government to step in and uphold the rule of law in this country, even in Maricopa County."

"Law enforcement is not a game or a reality show, it is a public trust," said Scott. "There is no excuse for callous indifference to the rights of the residents of Arizona, whether in their neighborhoods or as pretrial detainees."

The full official text of the letter to Napolitano and Holder is here.

It is high time that somebody on the national scene notice, and the Federal government take action on, the egregious and violative conduct of Joe Arpaio.

Joe Arpaio is a two bit carnival barker and huckster, not a dedicated law enforcement official. The opportunistic man came into office running against a fellow Republican and incumbent Maricopa County Sheriff, Tom Agnos, by bad mouthing Agnos and arguing that the entire Maricopa County Sheriff's Department needed to be cleaned up. In fact, Arpaio's winning campaign was predicated upon his willingness to mock the very department he was running to lead and promise to expose the dirty laundry of Agnos and the Sheriff's Department for its involvement in the infamous Buddhist Temple Murder case (link is a fascinating three part story), a seminal case in textbooks on coerced confessions (from the fact that four separate coerced false confessions were obtained to a single crime). Arpaio promised to restore honor to the department, and also swore he would serve only one term in office. Five terms and seventeen years later, Arpaio has failed miserably on both promises.

The upshot of the House Judiciary Committee's missive to Attorney General Holder and DHS Secretary Napolitano is that Arpaio's:

...repeated course of conduct, which values publicity opportunities over the civil rights of residents of Arizona, is too disturbing to leave enforcement of the civil rights laws to private litigants. There are several tools at the federal government's disposal to address these allegations, and we urge their prompt consideration and application.

In short, the HJC is demanding that a full panoply of federal civil and criminal laws and remedies be brought to bear by the arms of federal law enforcement. One of the grounds for the HJC demand is Arpaio's acts earlier this month, described in the letter as follows:

Most recently, on February 4, after making sure to alert the media, Arpaio reportedly paraded approximately 200 suspected illegal immigrants in shackles to a segregated area of his "tent city" county facility, where they will supposedly remain until they are adjudicated and have served any sentences they face for local violations. The New York Times described this conduct as "ritual humiliation." The men who Arpaio is displaying like trophies are reportedly in pretrial detention, not having been convicted of any crime.

If you want to understand the true extent of Sheriff Joe's war on brown people, the Phoenix New Times' expose "Guadalupe Made It Clear That Joe Arpaio’s Attacking Anyone With Brown Skin" is an absolute must read. Seriously, it is a long piece, but to call it chilling and important would be an understatement, and it is superb start to finish. Here is a taste:

With spirited protesters and helmeted deputies on horseback, the night of April 3 in Guadalupe was like some historical reenactment, albeit in miniature, of a late-'60s anti-war melee. You know, the kind chronicled by Norman Mailer in one of his seminal "non-fiction novels" of the era, such as Miami and the Siege of Chicago or The Armies of the Night.
[...]
Following up on his criticism of Arpaio during a César Chávez luncheon in March, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon addressed a letter to the U.S. Justice Department asking for an investigation of the sheriff. The letter was dated April 4, the second day of the MCSO's Guadalupe sweep, and the MCSO's actions in Guadalupe figured prominently in the missive.

Egregious to be sure, but hardly the only such acts by Arpaio, and certainly not the worst. Let's go through some of the others alluded to in the letter, although not described in detail.

Arpaio was little more than halfway through his first term in office when his policies and jail conditions first came under investigation for abuse by the US Department of Justice. Shortly after that, and still during his first term in office, young Scott Norberg died in Arpaio's jail as a result of said policies:

[Norberg] was in Arpaio's jail just 15 hours before he was handcuffed by guards, kicked, stomped on, and then strapped into a restraint chair. There, guards held a towel over his head, literally suffocating him. Medical records later revealed that he had been shot with a stun gun at least 14 times and beaten so badly that his larynx cracked.

That one cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County $8.25 million, but did not deter the Most Abusive Sheriff in America; instead, he seemed to get off on the notoriety. There were more unnatural deaths in Arpaio's jails, from a variety of causes, after Norberg. The belligerent Arpaio finally stopped the deplorable use of the restraint chair in 2006 after fighting demands by citizens and federal overseers on the issue for nearly a decade.

What caused Arpaio to finally give up his demonic obsession with the restraint chair that killed Scott Norberg? Ah, glad you asked:

On March 29, 2006, a $9 million court judgment was leveled against Arpaio and the county in the beating and restraint-chair death of inmate Charles Agster III.

Agster, 33 and mentally retarded, was arrested for trespassing on August 6, 2001. Detention officers at the Madison Street Jail pulled a hood over his head and slammed him into a medieval-looking restraint chair. The hood around Agster's throat smothered him to the point that he became brain dead. He was pronounced legally dead three days later on August 9, 2001.

Agster's death should have been prevented. Two years before he was killed, the county had paid $8.25 million to settle the Norberg suffocation suit.

There was at least one more death at the restraints of Arpaio's cherished chair, Clint Yarborough in 2005. It should be noted that neither Norberg, Agster, nor Yarbrough were ever tried or convicted for the charges they were arrested on; none of them lived to see their first court date and died innocent men under the law. Those are just the deaths associated with the medieval restraint chair, there have been numerous deaths from improper or complete lack of medical care, neglect and other perils.

One of the other examples of the decrepit conditions Arpaio presided over is that of Kathleen Carey:

Like most attorneys, Kathleen Carey leads a busy life. So she didn't take much time to examine what looked like a pimple on her arm. Twelve days later, Carey's arm had ballooned to nearly twice its normal size, and pus was oozing from a boil where the zit had been.

After $180,000 in medical bills, four doctors, and two hospitals, Carey learned that the supposed pimple was actually the flesh-eating "superbug" bacteria commonly known as MRSA staph infection. You may recognize MRSA from recent news reports, following a study concluding that more Americans die each year from antibiotic-resistant MRSA infections than from HIV/AIDS.

MRSA commonly spreads through hospitals, but Carey hadn't been to a hospital or doctor for months before her infection. So where did she get the potentially fatal infection?

Carey says she knows exactly where she got it -- the Maricopa County Jail. She wasn't there as an inmate, but as an attorney visiting her client.
[...]
Carey is one of many Maricopa County residents who've never been booked into Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jails but who are paying dearly for conditions inside his lockups.

Vermin, filth, medical care suggestive of POW camps, chronic mismanagement, the wanton destruction of records, and a steady parade of corpses in Maricopa County jails have cost taxpayers an astonishing -- and until now, undisclosed -- 41.4 million dollars.

Don't know if you caught that or not, but that is nearly $42 million dollars (and that was as of over a year ago, the figure is now higher) that Maricopa County has paid out due to the Most Abusive Sheriff in America's detention policies and procedures. Want to know how that compares to other big municipalities? Get a load of this:

There simply isn't another jail system in America with this history of taxpayer-financed litigation.

New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, for example, collectively housed more than 61,000 inmates per day last year. From 2004 through November of this year, these same county jails had a combined 43 prison-conditions lawsuits filed against them in federal courts.

In the very same three-year time frame, despite housing a mere 9,200 prisoners per day, Sheriff Arpaio was the target of a staggering 2,150 lawsuits in U.S. District Court and hundreds more in Maricopa County courts.

With a fraction of the inmate population, Arpaio has had 50 times as many lawsuits as the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston jail systems combined.

But Sheriff Joe's reign of terror does not end with the immigrant bashing and inhuman detention policies and facilities. When the Most Abusive Sheriff in America disagrees with colleagues, even fellow police officers, he attacks them with not only rhetoric, but the heavy dark hand of his department:

The sheriff raided municipal buildings in Mesa in what appeared to be nothing more than a blatant political maneuver against Arpaio's perceived enemy, Mesa Police Chief George Gascón.

As a public safety effort, the pre-dawn October 16 incursion into Mesa City Hall and its library was laughable — it netted just three undocumented workers. A couple of former county Superior Court judges criticized Arpaio's action in the East Valley Tribune, with former chief judge of the court Colin Campbell calling the raid "bizarre" and "extraordinary."

Last, but far from least, Sheriff Joe has waged a jihad against the local investigative weekly newspaper in Phoenix/Maricopa County, the Phoenix New Times. Arpaio long felt the New Times coverage of him was too strident; not content to address his concerns in the media and public sphere, Arpaio arrested the publishers, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, on trumped up asinine charges (that were almost immediately dismissed without ever seeing the light of a courtroom). However, if you cherish the First Amendment and the freedom of the press, Larkin and Lacey's arrests by Arpaio were not even the worst part.

In a breathtaking abuse of the United States Constitution, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and their increasingly unhinged cat's paw, special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik, used the grand jury to subpoena "all documents related to articles and other content published by Phoenix New Times newspaper in print and on the Phoenix New Times website, regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaio from January 1, 2004 to the present."

Every note, tape, and record from every story written about Sheriff Arpaio by every reporter over a period of years.

In addition to the omnibus subpoena, which referred to our writer Stephen Lemons directly, reporters John Dougherty and Paul Rubin were targeted with individual subpoenas.

More alarming still, Arpaio, Thomas, and Wilenchik subpoenaed detailed information on anyone who has looked at the New Times Web site since 2004.

Every individual who looked at any story, review, listing, classified, or retail ad over a period of years.

The article the passage immediately above was quoted from, "Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution", was written personally by the two publishers, Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin, and is as chilling as was Arpaio's attempt to silence them. Again, it is a feature length article, but a serious must read.

This post could easily be three or four times the already tedious length and still not have room to touch on the bill of craven particulars against the Most Abusive Sheriff in America, Joe Arpaio. But it is a start, and renders an idea as to why Chairman Conyers, Representative Nadler and the others on the House Judiciary Committee have requested the civil and criminal powers of the United States Government be brought to bear on Joe Arpaio. He isn't the toughest, he's the most abusive. It is imperative that Attorney General Holder and DHS Secretary Napolitano heed the call and address the long overdue matter. Secretary Napolitano, of all people, ought to understand the menace to society as a whole, and the citizenry of Maricopa County in particular, that Arpaio poses. It is time for it to be stopped.

Source / Firedoglake / AlterNet

Thanks to cloudy / The Rag Blog

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Texas : Arraignment Set for Cheney and Gonzales

Judge J. Manuel Banales has set arraignment for Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales in Raymondvill, TX.
Former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales and veep Dick Cheney shown at the White House in 2006. Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP.

The highest-profile indictment charges Cheney and Gonzales with engaging in organized criminal activity. It alleges that the men neglected federal prisoners and are responsible for assaults in the facilities.

By Christopher Sherman / November 19, 2008

RAYMONDVILLE, Texas — A Texas judge has set a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a state senator and others named in indictments accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a South Texas federal detention center.

Presiding Judge Manuel Banales said Wednesday he will allow them to waive arraignment or have their attorneys present rather than appear in person at the hearing.

Banales also said he would issue summonses rather than warrants for the indicted since all have served in some public capacity. That would allow them to avoid arrest and the need to post bond.

After the prosecutor who won the indictments, lame duck Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra, was a no-show in court, Banales ordered Texas Rangers to go to his house, check on his well-being and order him to court on Friday.

That was only the latest development in a situation that has lawyers from Texas to Washington, D.C., scratching their heads.

Half of the eight high-profile indictments returned Monday by a Willacy County grand jury are tied to privately-run federal detention centers in the sparsely populated South Texas county and the other half target judges and special prosecutors who played a role in an earlier investigation of Guerra.

"The state of Texas is not present, which is a rarity," Banales said Wednesday. "I will not have a hearing when one of the parties is not present."

Tony Canales, an attorney speaking on behalf of attorneys for Cheney and Gonzales and representing private prison operator The GEO Group, subpoenaed Guerra's office manager to stand in for her boss.

Banales questioned Hilda Ramirez about her boss' whereabouts, but got nowhere.

"I have been calling Mr. Guerra all day. I have not had him answer," Ramirez told the judge. "I don't know what to do."

If Guerra does not appear Friday, Banales said he would likely appoint a temporary replacement.

The chance for further delay frustrated a courtroom packed with attorneys. Even though Banales said he would not hear their motions until Friday, they argued the indictments were improperly handled and the product of a vindictive prosecutor. All of the defendants had filed motions to dismiss indictments. They complained that Guerra had time to talk to the media about the indictments Tuesday, but did not show up for court Wednesday.

David Oliveira, Canales' partner, said after the hearing, "the news media told him there was a hearing today and he ran." Canales asked Banales to consider holding Guerra in contempt. Canales said if Guerra shows up Friday, he will put him on the stand.

The highest-profile indictment charges Cheney and Gonzales with engaging in organized criminal activity. It alleges that the men neglected federal prisoners and are responsible for assaults in the facilities.

The grand jury traced a sketchy line between Cheney's influence over the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, which oversees the county's federal immigrant detention center, and his substantial holdings in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies.

Combining those interests, the grand jury accused Cheney of a conflict of interest because the more the prison companies were paid to hold inmates, the better he did financially.

"It is appalling to find that numerous elected officials from different levels of our government throughout our country to our U.S. Vice President Richard B. Cheney, defendant, are profiting from depriving human beings of their liberty," the indictment said.

The indictment accuses Gonzales of stopping an investigation into abuses at the federal detention center.

Canales filed two motions Wednesday accusing Guerra of "prosecutorial vindictiveness" and of not presenting the indictments to the trial court.

In one motion, Canales said Guerra had hijacked "the grand jury process and disregarded the requirements of the Code of Criminal Procedure designed to protect defendants' due process rights."

T. Gerald Treece, a constitutional law specialist and professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, questioned Guerra's jurisdiction over federal officials and federally-run buildings.

"You can't have district attorneys across the country bringing charges against federal officials," Treece said. If there are issues at the federal detention centers, then Guerra should turn the investigation over to the federal government, he said.

And even in a federal probe, Cheney and Gonzales have a "qualified privilege" that would protect them so long as they were acting within their jobs, Treece said.

The attorney for state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., who was indicted on a charge of profiting from his position through his consulting work for private prison companies, said that on the chance the indictment was not dismissed he wanted to go to trial before Guerra's term ended this year. Banales set a Dec. 8 trial date, if necessary.

"I think it shows that this has just been a game," Michael Cowen, Lucio's attorney, said of Guerra's absence after the hearing.

At times Wednesday it did seem like a bizarre game.

Since District Clerk Gilbert Lozano is under indictment, Banales decided he needed to appoint a temporary replacement to handle the cases. He asked Lozano for a recommendation, but Lozano said his top deputy is a witness and his next choice was out of town. Banales instead turned to his left and gave the job to a clerk from the 197th district, whose boss District Judge Migdalia Lopez is also under indictment.

Some attorneys argued that Banales may not even have the authority to schedule an arraignment because the indictments before him were invalid. One lawyer said Guerra never should have been allowed to present the cases to the grand jury because at least four of the indictments deal with people who had some role in the investigation of his office last year.

"He is the witness, the victim and the prosecutor," said the attorney for Mervyn Mosbacker Jr., a former U.S. attorney who was appointed special prosecutor to investigate Guerra.

Lozano, the county clerk, District judges Janet Leal and Lopez, and special prosecutors Mosbacker and Gustavo Garza, a longtime political opponent of Guerra, were all indicted on charges of official abuse of official capacity and official oppression.

The grand jury tied all of their charges to an earlier investigation of Guerra's office.

Banales dismissed an indictment against Guerra last month charging him with extorting money from a bail bond company and using his office for personal business. An appeals court had earlier ruled that Garza was improperly appointed as special prosecutor to investigate Guerra.

After Guerra's office was raided as part of the investigation early last year, he camped outside the courthouse in a borrowed camper with a horse, three goats and a rooster. He threatened to dismiss hundreds of cases because he believed local law enforcement had aided the investigation against him.

Guerra has been in office nearly 20 years, but was defeated for re-election in the March Democratic primary.

© 2008 The Associated Press

Source / AP / Houston Chronicle

Also see Ritmo: Inhumane Texas Detention Center Should be a Crime. Cheney or No Cheney. by Will Bunch / The Rag Blog / Nov. 19, 2008

And Cheney and Gonzales Indicted in Texas : Abuse of Federal Prisoners / The Rag Blog / Nov. 18, 2008

Thanks to S. M. Wilhelm / The Rag Blog

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