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Thread: Department of Corrections

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Department of Corrections


    High Court Orders Release of California Inmates

    The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a lower-court order that could require California to release tens of thousands of inmates, a last-ditch remedy after the state failed to correct "serious constitutional violations" in its prison system.

    The court split along its ideological divide, with four liberals joining Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion upholding a special three-judge district court that has been overseeing California prison litigation for years.

    The suit, which traces to 1990, alleged that California prisons were denying inmates the minimally required level of mental-health treatment. The state acknowledged that its prison mental-health care was so poor it violated the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The district court found none of its efforts to cure the problems sufficient, because of severe overcrowding that has seen its penitentiaries swell to nearly double their intended capacity of 80,000.

    Although California has toughened its sentences with such laws as "three strikes and you're out," it hasn't added prison cells to meet the growing number of convicts.

    When the district court ordered the state to reduce its prison population to 137.5% of its designed capacity, California appealed to the Supreme Court.

    Justice Kennedy wrote that the state was free to ask the district court to modify the prisoner-release order should conditions improve. But, meanwhile, "this extensive and ongoing constitutional violation requires a remedy, and a remedy will not be achieved without a reduction in overcrowding," he wrote. "The state shall implement the order without delay."

    Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority.

    Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

    Justice Scalia called the district court order "perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history: an order requiring California to release the staggering number of 46,000 convicted criminals."

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000....com%3A+Law%29

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    CA to release 10,000 inmates by November

    SACRAMENTO, CA-The clock is ticking. Per a federal court order California must release 10,000 prison inmates by November, and 33,000 over the next two years. But the question has long been: who? Well, there's growing evidence of public support for releasing some of those convicted under the once feared three strikes Law.

    Three Strikes was built for violent criminals like Richard Alan Davis. Davis was a career criminal, repeatedly convicted of violent crimes when he kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Polly Klass in late 1993.

    But for every Richard Alan Davis there are dozens of people sent to prison for life whose second or even third strike was a non-violent crime like shoplifting, auto theft or burglary. As inmates these people cost California $50,000 a year.

    Tara Porter is the mother of a one year old daughter and a 10-year-old son. "It's a waste of taxpayer's money to keep someone in prison for their life for a 3rd offense that's something that's non-violent," she said.

    According to a poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California, 62% of the registered voters surveyed support reducing life sentences for three strikes offenders. And, 69% favor the early release of low level, non-violence criminals. Former Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinnis was dialed into this subject back in June when the talk was about outlawing the costly death penalty. "Old age is the leading cause of death on death row. And, the taxpayers are spending extraordinary amounts of money to keep people alive on death row," he said.

    $184,000 a year is the price tag on death Row. But even inmates in the general population, like three strikes offenders, become more expensive once they hit 55-years-old where the cost triples to $150,000 a year.

    The alternative is: build more prisons. But Nils Walker of Sacramento is like most people; he doesn't like that option; plus there's no money to build prisons.

    "I don't see why I should be paying for them to be staying and eating for free. They need to get out here and get a job just like the rest of us."

    There was a time when public safety was priority number one; and many a politician rode that mantra to victory on Election Day. But these days the ailing economy far outweighs any worries about crime; which probably explains why many people are changing their minds about the three strikes law.

    http://www.kpax.com/news/ca-to-relea...s-by-november/

  3. #3
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Judges tell California to cut prisoner count by 10,000

    A panel of federal judges ordered California on Thursday to ease overcrowding in state prisons by reducing the number of inmates by about 10,000 this year, and criticized what they described as foot-dragging in dealing with the matter.

    California has been under court orders to reduce the population in its 33-prison system since 2009, when the same three-judge panel ordered it to relieve overcrowding that has caused inadequate medical and mental healthcare.

    Earlier this year, the judges rebuffed a request by California Governor Jerry Brown to vacate the 2009 order that had argued that the state had fixed the crowding problem and that further prisoner releases would harm public safety.

    The judges said if current efforts to reduce overcrowding does not result in the state reaching a prison population target of 137.5 percent of capacity by the end of the year, the state must then release prisoners from a list of inmates at low-risk of recidivism.

    "Failure to take such steps or to report on such steps every two weeks shall constitute an act of contempt," the judges said in their ruling.

    Don Specter, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, said the ruling would mean cutting the prison population to around 109,000 inmates from about 119,000 currently.

    "The ruling is absolutely essential in order for prisoners to be safe and to get adequate healthcare," Specter said.

    Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement that the state would seek an immediate stay of what he termed an "unprecedented order to release almost 10,000 inmates by the end of this year."

    A spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation declined to provide immediate comment.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...95J17W20130620

  4. #4
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    July 4, 2013

    Judges reject state's request for more time on prisoner release

    By Sam Stanton and David Siders The Sacramento Bee

    A panel of three federal judges overseeing California's prison overcrowding case on Wednesday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown's request for a stay of their order that the state immediately begin reducing its inmate population.

    The state had asked for a stay of the June 20 order that it cut the inmate population by nearly 10,000 prisoners by the end of the year, seeking a delay while it pursued an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    But the three-judge panel rejected the request, reiterating its earlier finding that California has defied orders to reduce its inmate population to 137.5 percent of capacity by the end of this year.

    The current population is about 149.2 percent of capacity, or about 119,000 inmates, and the court order requires that to be cut to about 110,000.

    The judges noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 upheld their finding that inmate populations had to be reduced to afford inmates proper access to health care and mental health services.

    "After this long history of defendants' noncompliance, this court cannot in good conscience grant a stay that would allow defendants to both not satisfy the Population Reduction Order and re-litigate the Supreme Court's emphatic decision in the very case before us," the order concluded.

    The state immediately signaled that it plans to continue its fight.

    "We will seek a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court," corrections spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said in a statement. "In the meantime, our appeal of the three-judge court's unprecedented order to release nearly 10,000 inmates by the end of this year is in progress, and we look forward to making our case to the Supreme Court justices that no further reduction in the prison population is needed."

    But the judges' order was praised by the director of the Prison Law Office, which represents the inmates in the cases.

    "The state has had four years to comply with this order," Donald Spector said. "The court's most recent order means they can't get away with not doing (it). … They have to comply now."

    The judges noted that the cases which led to the inmate reduction order have been pending for 23 years and 12 years, respectively, and that more than 150 orders seeking state compliance have been issued in the matter.

    The panel – U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton in Sacramento, U.S. District Judge Thelton E. Henderson in San Francisco and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – concluded that granting a stay while the issue went to the nation's highest court would extend the overcrowding well past the end of the year.

    The judges also noted that it is unlikely the Supreme Court would reverse its own conclusion from 2011 that the prisons are dangerously overcrowded.

    Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/07/04/554...#storylink=cpy

  5. #5
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    All three judges on the California special panel are Carter appointees, including Reinhardt! How does he always seem to manage to get involved in so many important criminal-type cases?

  6. #6
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    Lead CA prison critic is an inmate who killed another inmate

    I wonder if Californians have had a rather relaxed attitude about Gov. Jerry Brown’s plans to reduce the state inmate population – and the courts’ actions to further pare down the number of California inmates — in part because the death penalty in California has been stalled since February 2006. As a result, voters have not been deluged with the delusional justifications which the pro-killer lobby used to make as activists denounced the death penalty as barbaric while overlooking the crimes of stone cold killers. I refer to the defenders of such violent notables as Stanley Tookie Williams, Kevin Cooper and Michael Morales.

    With the movement to brand California prisons’ Security Housing Units as “solitary confinement” and “torture,” the campaign to end the SHU feels like a bad flashback. In this case, the thug-huggers want the state to release the most dangerous inmates back into the general prison population — with little regard to the consequences to less dangerous inmates. Yes,these are the folks who are supposed to really care about human rights.

    It’s amazing how the folks who consider the SHU to be torture aren’t bothered with the records of the four inmates who head the Short Corridor Collective. They’re all convicted murderers. The leader of the group, Todd Ashker, killed another inmate in prison.

    For my column on the California prison strike, you can click here.

    Leaders of the pack

    These four convicted killers call themselves the Short Corridor Collective, which is spearheading the hunger strike in California prisons:

    Todd Ashker is serving 21 years to life for the stabbing murder of a fellow inmate and member of the Aryan Brotherhood in 1987.

    Antonio “Chuco” Guillen began serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for murder in 2000.

    Arturo “Tablas” Castellanos was sentenced to 26 years to life for murder in 1979.

    Ron Dewberry, also known as Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, is serving 25 years to life for murder.

    http://blog.sfgate.com/djsaunders/20...nother-inmate/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Dying man ordered freed after 41 years in solitary

    NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- A 71-year-old Louisiana prisoner who spent 41 years in solitary confinement and is now dying of cancer was ordered released Tuesday by a federal judge who also ordered a new trial because women were unconstitutionally excluded from the grand jury that indicted the man in a prison guard's slaying.

    U.S. District Chief Judge Brian Jackson in Baton Rouge overturned Herman Wallace's 1974 murder conviction in the death of Angola guard Brent Miller.

    "The record in this case makes clear that Mr. Wallace's grand jury was improperly chosen in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of `the equal protection of the laws' ... and that the Louisiana courts, when presented with the opportunity to correct this error, failed to do so," Jackson wrote.

    He added, "Our Constitution requires this result even where, as here, it means overturning Mr. Wallace's conviction nearly forty years after it was entered."

    A lawyer for Wallace said the decision gives his client "some measure of justice after a lifetime of injustice," but his response was tempered by the grim outlook for Wallace's health.

    "He's pleased," Kendall said of Wallace's reaction after hearing of Tuesday's ruling, "but he's quite ill."

    Wallace, whose birthday is Oct. 13, has been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. Kendall said he "ceased receiving treatment a couple of weeks ago."

    Despite Jackson's order to "immediately release" Wallace, Kendall said his client remained in custody late Tuesday. He said the state had filed notice it would appeal the judge's ruling.

    A telephone message left with East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III's office was not immediately returned. The state Department of Public Safety and Corrections referred all questions to Moore's office.

    Wallace and two other inmates convicted in the 23-year-old guard's slaying came to be known as the "Angola 3."

    Wallace, of New Orleans, was serving a 50-year armed robbery sentence when Miller was fatally stabbed in 1972. Wallace and the two others convicted in Miller's death were moved to isolation at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. In 2009, Wallace was moved to "closed-cell restriction" at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel and recently was taken to the prison's hospital unit.

    Kendall said his client has asked that, after his demise, they continue to press the lawsuit challenging Wallace's "unconstitutional confinement in solitary confinement for four decades."

    "It is Mr. Wallace's hope that this litigation will help ensure that others, including his lifelong friend and fellow `Angola 3' member, Albert Woodfox, do not continue to suffer such cruel and unusual confinement even after Mr. Wallace is gone," his legal team said in a written statement.

    Kendalll said Woodfox won full habeas relief last year but the state has appealed that as well. The case is pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    In 2010, Woodfox was moved to the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer, where he remains in custody.

    Woodfox and Wallace have continued to deny involvement in Miller's killing and say they were targeted because they helped establish a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party at the Angola prison in 1971, set up demonstrations and organized strikes for better conditions in the prison.

    Amnesty International last year delivered a petition to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's office, containing 65,000 signatures from people around the world who called the men's solitary confinement inhuman and degrading.

    The third man, Robert King, was released after 29 years in solitary confinement. King, convicted of killing a fellow inmate in 1973, was released in 2001 after his conviction was reversed and he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...ISONER_RELEASE

  8. #8
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Dying ex-Black Panther freed after 40 years in solitary

    A terminally ill former Black Panther, who spent 40 years in solitary confinement for murder, was set free Tuesday after a judge reversed his controversial 1974 conviction for murder.

    Judge Brian Jackson on Tuesday "ordered that the state immediately release Mr. (Herman) Wallace from custody," according to a copy of the decision obtained by AFP.

    He left the prison in an ambulance at 7:30 pm (0030 GMT), and now "will be able to receive the medical care that his advanced liver cancer requires," his lawyers said.

    Wallace, 72, who is dying from liver cancer, is one of the "Angola three," named after a notorious prison where they were held, built on the site of a former plantation worked by slaves from Africa.

    The three embraced the Black Panther movement -- a black, revolutionary socialist organization -- while already in prison for lesser crimes.

    They were active in organizing sit-ins and other protests to demand desegregation and better protection of inmates against abuses.

    At the time, the prison had no black guards and a reputation as one of the most violent in the United States.

    Wallace, who was behind bars for armed robbery, and fellow Panther Albert Woodfox, were sentenced to life after being convicted of stabbing a white prison guard to death in 1972.

    A third, Robert King, was never charged but blamed for the murder nonetheless and, like Wallace and Woodfox, placed in solitary confinement. He was released after 29 years.

    According to Wallace's defense counsel, the charges against him rested on the "incoherent" testimony of four prisoners who later retracted their statements.

    No fingerprints taken from the scene matched those of the men convicted of the crime, and witnesses said they were working in another part of the prison.

    With his health deteriorating, Wallace wrote in July to Judge Jackson to plead for an expedited review of his case, noting that it had been three and a half years since he had filed a habeas corpus petition and no action had been taken.

    On Tuesday, Jackson voided Wallace's "conviction and sentence, on the ground that systematic exclusion of women from the grand jury that indicted him violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws."

    Jackson also ordered Louisiana to decide within 30 days if it intends to reprosecute Wallace.

    Later Tuesday, the judge rejected an appeal from the prosecutor's office, ruling that Wallace has served four decades "under a conviction and sentence based on an unconstitutional indictment" and, given his age and poor health, was unlikely to be a "a flight risk or a danger to the public."

    Louisiana's governor's office and the state attorney general were unavailable for comment.

    Amnesty International, which had called for Wallace's release, cheered the decision even as it lamented that it came only as he "is dying from cancer with only days or hours left to live.

    "No ruling can erase the cruel, inhuman and degrading prison conditions he endured for more than 41 years -- confined alone to a tiny cell for 23 hours a day," the group's executive director, Steven Hawkins, said in a statement.

    Meanwhile, Wallace's defense team pledged that "litigation challenging Mr. Wallace's unconstitutional confinement in solitary confinement for four decades will continue in his name."

    http://news.yahoo.com/us-judge-order...193754933.html

  9. #9
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    Angola 3 member Herman Wallace died quietly in his sleep, friends say

    New Orleans native, former Black Panther and member of the Angola Three Herman Wallace died Thursday night because of complications from liver cancer, friends and counsel confirmed Friday morning.

    "He passed away in my home," said Ashley Wennerstrom, a long-time friend and program director at Tulane's School of Medicine. "He was surrounded by friends and family and love in his last few days."

    Among his last words were, "I am free. I am free," said Wallace's counsel, who added he had "no hate in his heart...despite the cruelty (he) was shown."

    Parnell Herbert, a Navy veteran who grew up with Wallace and has written a play documenting the story of the Angola Three, called Wallace "a phenomenal person" whose mission was to help people.

    "He completed that mission," said Herbert. "And he was able to see himself a free man. He passed away peacefully in his sleep."

    Wallace, 71, spent more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana's prisons, after being convicted of the 1972 murder of prison guard Brent Miller at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola or "The Farm."

    He maintained his innocence in the murder until his death late Thursday. Physical evidence in the case was scant and Miller's widow repeatedly questioned the court's findings, especially after Wallace said an inmate witness who testified against him was offered concessions by prison staff to do so.

    Wallace and fellow Angola Three member Albert Woodfox said they were only implicated because of their involvement with Angola's Black Panther chapter. While at Angola, Wallace and Woodfox started the chapter to fight against the culture of violence and rape pervasive there at the time.

    Herbert said Wallace also helped other inmates learn how to read and write, get their GEDs and prepare legal briefs.

    On Tuesday, a federal court judge in Baton Rouge overturned Wallace's grand jury indictment in Miller's death, saying he did not receive a fair hearing because the jury had no female members. Wallace was released from Elayn Hunt Correctional Center that evening, where he was being held in the hospital wing, and was transported to LSU Interim Hospital in New Orleans.

    Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours after Wallace had been transported into hospice care at Wennerstrom's home, a newly-convened grand jury in West Feliciana re-indicted Wallace on the murder charge.

    West Feliciana District Attorney Samuel D'Aquilla confirmed the reindictment Friday morning, saying the grand jury featured six women and at least one black member, an older man roughly Wallace's age.

    D'Aquilla said no court date would have been set until December, long after friends and family expected Wallace to live. But D'Aquilla denied the move was political, saying only "we just had concerns about compassion issues."

    D'Aquilla maintained his stance that Wallace was guilty of Miller's murder, however, saying the federal judge only overturned the grand jury indictment and not his 1974 conviction.

    Robert King, the third member of the Angola Three and who was convicted of killing a fellow inmate, was exonerated and released from prison in 2001 after 29 years in solitary.

    Woodfox remains incarcerated at David Wade Correctional Center in Homer and is appealing to the 5th Circuit Court for his release. He is also seeking a restraining order against the state for daily strip and cavity searches by guards at the facility.

    Nick Trenticosta, a member the Angola Three legal team, said Friday he feels confident in Woodfox's case going forward, adding, "we feel pretty good that we'll prevail."

    Amnesty International USA Executive Director Steven Hawkins also called attention to Woodfox's case in a statement release Friday morning.

    "Nothing can undo the authorities’ shocking treatment of (Wallace), which led more than 200,000 people to act on his behalf," Hawkins said, referring to an Amnesty petition calling for his release. "The state of Louisiana must now prevent further inhuman treatment by removing Wallace’s co-defendant Albert Woodfox from solitary confinement."

    Wennerstrom said she hopes Wallace's case will call attention to the wider problems in the state's penal system.

    "This was never just about Herman or just about Albert," she said. "This is about a much larger movement to make the criminal justice system actually just."

    http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-roug..._3_dies_d.html

  10. #10
    Senior Member Frequent Poster elsie's Avatar
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    I could say a lot on this, but Heidi would ban me for sure.

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