California bill lets death row inmate help authorities find victims
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to allow a death-row inmate to help authorities search for the remains of his long-dead victims, the governor's office announced Tuesday.
The governor signed AB2357 by Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, D-Tracy, which gives California's corrections secretary the authority to let convicted serial killer Wesley Shermantine help investigators search for more bodies.
Shermantine and a friend were known as the "Speed Freak Killers" for their drug-induced killing spree in the 1980s and 1990s. The other man, Loren Herzog, hanged himself earlier this year after learning that Shermantine provided crude maps to lead authorities to the remains of four of their victims.
Shermantine is currently awaiting execution in San Quentin prison for four murders. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Inmates who escaped Kansas jail face new charges
TOPEKA,
Kan. (AP) — Three of the four inmates who broke out of a north-central Kansas
jail in April face new charges related to their escape.
Kansas
Attorney General Derek
Schmidt has charged Santos
M. Carrera-Morales, 22, Drew
Edward Wade, 23, and Alberto
Jon Barraza-Lujan, 23, with aggravated escape from custody and aggravated
battery of a law enforcement officer in connection from their April escape from
the Ottawa
County Jail in Minneapolis, about 120 miles west of Topeka. The three have
court dates scheduled in August and September to hear the new charges.
Schmidt's spokesman, Jeff
Wagaman, said Monday that charges are still being reviewed for a fourth
inmate, Eric
James, 22.
The
inmates were among 22 from the Ellsworth
Correctional Facility who were being housed at the county jail in an effort
to relieve overcrowding at the state prison. The arrangement was part of a
contract the Department
of Corrections had with a handful of county facilities.
Barraza-Lujan was serving time for attempted aggravated
assault on a law enforcement officer in 2011. He was recaptured in Ottawa County
shortly after the escape.
Wade,
who turned himself over to law enforcement in North Platte, Neb., had been
serving time for robbery and aggravated battery. Authorities said Wade was
driving a stolen tan 2005 Chevrolet Venture minivan when he turned
himself in. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Low-IQ inmate set for death
— Twenty-four years after Georgia became the first in the nation to ban the execution of the mentally disabled, the state is scheduled to put to death a man deemed so by a judge.
Warren Lee Hill is set to die by lethal injection Wednesday for fatally bludgeoning a fellow prison inmate with a nail-studded, 2-by-6 wooden board. At the time, Hill was serving a life sentence at a southwest Georgia prison for killing his 18-year-old girlfriend.
Georgia enacted the groundbreaking law banning the execution of those who meet the legal criteria for mental retardation in 1988, more than a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited the practice nationwide.
Hill's problem is that a judge found him more likely than not to be mentally disabled. Georgia's law requires capital defendants to clear a far more difficult legal threshold --- proving it beyond a reasonable doubt.
The State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hear Hill's clemency request Friday for a sentence of life in prison without parole. Meanwhile, state and national advocacy groups for people with developmental disabilities are urging the board to commute his death sentence.
"As Georgia has recognized for almost a quarter of a century, it would be inhumane to execute Warren Hill," Rita Young and Lesa Hope, from All About Developmental Disabilities in Decatur, wrote the board.
In their own letter to the parole board, former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, said Hill's execution "would undermine the state of Georgia's historic leadership in promoting the rights of the developmentally challenged." More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
LA County may ship jail inmates to Central Calif.
LOS ANGELES -- The burgeoning Los Angeles County jail population is forcing the sheriff to consider shipping inmates to jails in San Joaquin Valley to ease crowding.
State prison realignment has shifted more than 5,000 inmates to Los Angeles County jails since fall and sheriff's officials say space will likely run out by Christmas. There are now 18,600 inmates in the jail system.
The Los Angeles Times ( http://lat.ms/NhgoFB) says the Sheriff's Department is in discussions with the Kern County cities of Taft and Shafter to use their currently empty jails to house up to 1,000 low-level offenders. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Protesters demand Georgia prison reform
About 40 demonstrators gathered outside the state
Capitol in Atlanta on Monday to express support for Georgia prison inmates who
have reportedly been on a hunger strike for nearly a month.
The protesters, including members of the Occupy
Atlanta movement, also demanded that the state enact prison reform. They were
brought together by the family of an inmate who has allegedly been kept in
solitary confinement for 18 months.
Demonstrators said that inmate Miguel Jackson was
beaten by prison guards at Smith State Prison in December 2010. Jackson,
imprisoned for armed robbery since 1996, was transferred in 2011 to the Georgia
Classification & Diagnostic Prison, where he currently resides.
There, according to his wife Delma Jackson, Miguel
Jackson and nine other inmates started a hunger strike on June 10 to protest
prison conditions.
"Miguel and other inmates at Georgia Diagnostics
have been denied access to proper hygiene [and] medical treatment for their
numerous and severe injuries, many of which were inflicted 18 months ago," she
wrote in a Change.org petition.
The protesters Monday called on the state to change
the way it treats all prisoners, particularly its use of solitary
confinement.
In the online petition, the Jackson family also
demanded that Georgia provide prisoners like Miguel Jackson with "status reviews
every 30 days as [required by Georgia procedure], restoration of their visiting
and communications rights, and access to their meager personal property." More PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Chicago man who spent 30 years behind bars leaves prison after murder case dropped
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A Chicago man who spent more than 30 years behind bars before DNA evidence helped overturn his conviction in the rape and killing of a 3-year-old girl was released from prison late Friday, just hours after prosecutors dropped the case against him.
An Illinois appeals court in March had ordered a new trial for 50-year-old Andre Davis after tests found that DNA taken from the scene of the 1980 killing of Brianna Stickle wasn't his. The girl was attacked in Rantoul, about 20 miles north of Champaign.
Davis was released from the super-maximum security prison in Tamms in far southern Illinois around 7:30 p.m., said Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kayce Ataiyero. Champaign County State's Attorney Julia Rietz had decided earlier in the day not to pursue charges against him.
Judy Royal of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, which represented Davis, said he was the longest-serving of the 42 people exonerated by DNA evidence in Illinois. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Inside Scott Peterson's life on California's death row
Fox News Channel San Francisco bureau correspondent Claudia Cowan and producer Mike Lundin recently submitted a list of questions to San Quentin prison on inmate Scott Peterson.
Peterson, who remains on death row for the murder of his wife Laci and unborn child, was a much celebrated suspect and defendant. Initially, after being found guilty, Peterson had pictures of his wife on the walls of his cell and was known in the tabloids as "Scotty Too Hotty" for all the letters he was getting in prison from women around the country. Prison spokesman Samuel Robinson supplied the answers to the questions about the latest on the life of Peterson on death row.
He is allowed 5 hours of out of cell activities, which primarily consist of outside recreational activities (basketball, jogging, walking, and board games). Outside of the outdoor recreational activities, he is confined to his cell where he also consumes his meals.
There is nothing out of the ordinary in his cell. All inmates housed in California institutions are allowed 6 cubic feet of personal property. This can include legal documents, photos, letters, and items that they are allowed to purchase at the canteen (hygiene and allowable food items)
He has never had a job assignment since his arrival here at San Quentin. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Prison guards' use of force rises with overcrowding
The use of tear gas, pepper spray, guns and physical restraint is on the rise in Canada’s prisons to defuse violence — an upward trend linked to a more aggressive, gang-affiliated inmate population and overcrowded conditions.
Documents obtained by CBC News Network's Power & Politics under Access to Information show security incidents where use of force was applied against federal offenders have increased by 37 per cent in the last five years — to 1,339 in 2011-12 from 975 incidents in 2007-08.
Records also reveal an increased use of tear gas and pepper spray to stop acts of violence or self-harm; use of tear gas nearly tripled to 292 times from 96 five years ago, while use of pepper spray more than doubled to 400 last year from 186 five years ago. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Conn. Inmate Saw Oysters as Way out From Death Row
A Connecticut man on death row for the killings of a mother and her two daughters in a 2007 home invasion says he came up with a bizarre plan to end his own life by lying about killing others in a spree of violence.
In an interview with The Hartford Courant ( http://cour.at/N1Ykj5 ), Steven Hayes said he fabricated claims in letters last year that he killed 17 people and committed dozens of drugged date rapes. He had hoped prison authorities would notify police and that he could trade information for food, including oysters to which he is deathly allergic.
"I planned to eat them and have them find me dead in my cell the next morning," he said.
Hayes' desire to die has been a theme of his defense since the July 23, 2007, killings.
He raped and strangled Jennifer Hawke-Petit. Her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, died of smoke inhalation after they were doused with gasoline and the house was set on fire.
Joshua Komisarjevsky also was convicted and sentenced to death for the killings. In an interview with The Associated Press in May, Komisarjevsky declined an opportunity to express remorse. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Conn. allows some inmates to go to nursing home
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut's sickest state prison inmates will be released and moved to a nursing home early next year in an effort that state officials say will save millions of dollars in health care costs.
As part of its wide-ranging state budget legislation signed into law in June, state lawmakers gave Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone the discretion to release severely incapacitated inmates from custody for "palliative and end-of-life" care.
Opponents of the plan had expressed concern about potentially violent inmates being placed in public nursing homes.
But department spokesman Brian Garnett says the inmates will be going to a nursing home that will be used solely by forensic patients of the state Departments of Correction, Social Services, Mental Health and Addiction Services and Public Health. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Federal prison guard in Philadelphia gets 32 months for forcing inmate into oral sex
As a senior corrections officer at the Federal Detention Center, Richard
Spisak had a predilection for preying on inmates, using his position to coerce
male inmates into having oral sex with him, federal prosecutors said.
He even went so far as to reorganize his office, strategically aligning filing cabinets and placing papers — including prison rules and regulations — on the windows to block the view of the chair that he told one inmate would be his "assigned chair."
Spisak, 33, of Warminster, was sentenced to 32 months in a federal lockup Thursday for forcing a male inmate identified as J.W. to perform oral sex on him in January 2010. U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond ordered that Spisak, who had been free under house arrest with electronic monitoring, be taken from the courtroom in handcuffs.
Diamond, who found that Spisak also had "inappropriate sexual contact" with two other male inmates, said the former correction officer's conduct was "appalling." The sentence was twice what the high end of the sentencing guidelines recommended.
Spisak pleaded guilty in March to one count of engaging in a sexual act with a ward.
J.W. testified that after he had been transferred to the FDC in 2009, Spisak saw him every day the corrections officer worked and repeatedly "made advances" on him and threatened him if he didn't cooperate with Spisak's sexual demands.
On Jan. 5, 2010, J.W. said Spisak took him into his office and said he would set off his body alarm and tell authorities J.W. tried to assault him unless he performed oral sex.
According to court testimony, J.W. spit onto his own T-shirt after Spisak ejaculated then covered it with his overalls. DNA tests subsequently matched the stained shirt to Spisak. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
He even went so far as to reorganize his office, strategically aligning filing cabinets and placing papers — including prison rules and regulations — on the windows to block the view of the chair that he told one inmate would be his "assigned chair."
Spisak, 33, of Warminster, was sentenced to 32 months in a federal lockup Thursday for forcing a male inmate identified as J.W. to perform oral sex on him in January 2010. U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond ordered that Spisak, who had been free under house arrest with electronic monitoring, be taken from the courtroom in handcuffs.
Diamond, who found that Spisak also had "inappropriate sexual contact" with two other male inmates, said the former correction officer's conduct was "appalling." The sentence was twice what the high end of the sentencing guidelines recommended.
Spisak pleaded guilty in March to one count of engaging in a sexual act with a ward.
J.W. testified that after he had been transferred to the FDC in 2009, Spisak saw him every day the corrections officer worked and repeatedly "made advances" on him and threatened him if he didn't cooperate with Spisak's sexual demands.
On Jan. 5, 2010, J.W. said Spisak took him into his office and said he would set off his body alarm and tell authorities J.W. tried to assault him unless he performed oral sex.
According to court testimony, J.W. spit onto his own T-shirt after Spisak ejaculated then covered it with his overalls. DNA tests subsequently matched the stained shirt to Spisak. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today Discount Magazine Subscriptions
Jail cleared in inmate hanging
The State Attorney’s Office has reviewed a Florida Department of Law
Enforcement report and determined there were no criminal violations in the death
of a 37-year-old Marion County Jail inmate who hung himself inside his
cell.
Assistant State Attorney Bill Gladson said his
agency’s role was only to determine “whether there are any criminal law
violations.”
Gladson
said the facts were “straight forward.” A security video clearly shows that on
May 7, Frederick Charles Kimball entered C Pod and went to his cell, located in
section D, room 129.
Not long
after Kimball entered the cell, the video shows movement. But from the time he
entered until corrections officers arrived and discovered him, “no other inmates
or guards had contact with Kimball,” according to a report.
The
video, Gladson wrote, shows Kimball opened the cell door, placed a sheet with a
knot over the top, and then immediately closed the door. Several minutes later,
other inmates in the area are seen trying to get the guards’ attention.
Corrections officers attempted to remove the
ligature around Kimball’s neck and perform CPR. He remained unresponsive and was
later pronounced deceased at Munroe Regional Medical Center. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today
Prison escape murderer is arrested
Scotland Yard said he was arrested at about 5.15pm on Friday in Faversham, Kent.
Massey was sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting a man dead with a sawn-off shotgun at a pub in Hackney, east London, in 1975. The escape was the third time he has given guards the slip.
One of Britain's longest-serving prisoners, he made off from the category B jail at about 6.30pm on Wednesday. Category B prisoners are described as those "for whom the very highest conditions of security are not necessary but for whom escape must be made very difficult".
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "John Massey has this afternoon, Friday June 29, been arrested by detectives from the Metropolitan Police Service specialist crime and operations command. He has been taken into custody at a north London police station."
He was found following an intelligence-led operation, said the spokesman. A second male was arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting an absconder and was also taken into police custody. The Prison Service is investigating how Massey managed to elude staff.
Massey was initially released on parole in June 2007 after spending the last 18 months of his life sentence in an open prison in Derbyshire preparing for freedom, it is understood. Under his parole terms, he was ordered to live in a bail hostel in Streatham, south London, under a curfew. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today
Arizona inmate to be executed in new open process
Witnesses expect to be able to see prison officials inject a lethal drug into
a condemned inmate for the first time in Arizona history on Wednesday, when the
state is scheduled to execute its fourth prisoner of the year.
Arizona opened up the process after a federal judge recently sided with The Associated Press and other news organizations in Idaho to allow witnesses full viewing access to lethal injections.
Until now, witnesses from the news media, the state and victims’ family members walked into the death chamber at the state prison in Florence after the inmates had been injected and covered with a sheet up to their chest or neck. Once the witnesses were in place, the drugs then coursed through the inmates’ veins. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today
Arizona opened up the process after a federal judge recently sided with The Associated Press and other news organizations in Idaho to allow witnesses full viewing access to lethal injections.
Until now, witnesses from the news media, the state and victims’ family members walked into the death chamber at the state prison in Florence after the inmates had been injected and covered with a sheet up to their chest or neck. Once the witnesses were in place, the drugs then coursed through the inmates’ veins. More
PrisonerPal.com True Crime Today
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
