8-21-15 California:
SACRAMENTO — Shortly after 2 a.m. on April 6, 2010, a guard at Salinas Valley State Prison noticed Alan Ager’s cellmate trying to stuff something under a mattress. It was Ager, blood trickling from his mouth and a cloth noose tied around his neck.
The convicted child molester died 10 days later without regaining consciousness, his death earning his cellmate a second life sentence.
California state prisoners are killed at a rate that is double the national average — and sex offenders like Ager account for a disproportionate number of victims, according to an Associated Press analysis of corrections records.
Male sex offenders made up about 15 percent of the prison population but accounted for nearly 30 percent of homicide victims, the AP found in cataloging all 78 killings that corrections officials reported since 2007, when they started releasing slain inmates’ identities and crimes.
The deaths — 23 out of 78 — come despite the state’s creation more than a decade ago of special housing units designed to protect the most vulnerable inmates, including sex offenders, often marked men behind bars because of the nature of their crimes.
In some cases, they have been killed among the general prison population and, in others, within the special units by violence-prone cellmates. Officials acknowledge that those units, which also house inmates trying to quit gangs, have spawned their own gangs.
Corrections officials blamed a rise in the prison homicide rate on an overhaul meant to reduce crowding. As part of the effort, the state in 2011 began keeping lower-level offenders in county lockups, leaving prisons with a higher percentage of sex offenders and violent gang members.
Violence and homicides won’t decline unless the state goes well below the prison population level set by the courts — 137.5 percent of the system’s designed capacity, said James Austin, president of the JFA Institute, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that works on prison issues.
Until the state gets its prison population below 100 percent of capacity, you’re going to have this,” he said.
Overall, 162 California prisoners were killed from 2001 to 2012, or 8 per 100,000 prisoners — double the national average over the same time period and far higher than that of other large states, including Texas, New York and Illinois, according to federal statistics.
Officials in Oklahoma mainly blamed gang violence for giving that state the nation’s highest long-term prison homicide rate, 14 per 100,000, although a quarter of its inmate homicide victims in the last decade had convictions for sex crimes.
In California, from 2012 to 2013, the most recent years for which data were available, the rate rose to 15 per 100,000, according to a report by a federal court receiver, though corrections officials said the number of deaths dropped last year.
Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton would not comment on the possible reasons for California’s long-term trend of inmate homicides.
The problem is most acute with sex offenders. Last fall, the corrections department’s inspector general reported that so many homicides occurred in the “increasingly violent” special housing units reserved for vulnerable inmates that the department could no longer assume that inmates there could peacefully co-exist.
The report looked at 11 homicide cases that were closed in the first half of 2014 and found that 10 victims were sensitive-needs inmates. Using corrections records, the AP found that eight of them were sex offenders.
The inspector general recommended the reinstatement of a policy dropped 15 years ago that required potential sensitive-needs cellmates to fill out a compatibility form before they are housed together and that inmates with a history of violence toward cellmates should be housed alone.
Thornton said the report led to an ongoing review of the policy of housing most prisoners, including vulnerable inmates, two to a cell.
Experts said the state could better protect sex offender inmates by separating them into their own facilities. Prison gangs, though made up of inmates often convicted of heinous crimes themselves, have long made it a practice to target sex offenders.
They’re going to clean up anybody on that yard with ‘hot charges,’” said former inmate Todd Siefert, referring to any crime against a woman or child, including a sex offense. The very lowest rung is reserved for child molesters.
Seifert said he was confronted by white supremacist inmates less than a half-hour after he arrived at the California Institution for Men in Chino in 2004 and was severely beaten by a half-dozen fellow inmates for his sex crime involving a woman.
Corrections department spokesmen in Illinois, New York and Texas said the targeting of sex offenders is not considered a problem there. Some states have stricter protocols for keeping sex offenders away from other inmates.
Those participating in Maine’s rehabilitation therapy program are housed separately, and none has been injured or killed in the decade it has been in existence, said Dennis McNamara, executive director of the Counseling and Psychotherapy Center Inc., which runs the program.
However, only about 11 percent of the state’s inmate sex offender population is in the treatment program, corrections spokesman Scott Fish said in an email. Of four Maine inmates killed behind bars since 2001, two were sex offenders.
Massachusetts, state policy calls for sex offenders to be placed in a “therapeutic community” that offers intensive treatment aimed at changing their behavior, preventing relapses and preparing them for eventual release.
The state had a high-profile inmate homicide in 2003, when John Geoghan, a former Roman Catholic priest whose sexual abuse conviction sparked a widespread abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, was killed by a fellow inmate who claimed he was chosen by God to kill pedophiles.
Adding to the problem in California, the department identified nearly 100 gangs that formed in sensitive-needs units, said Matthew Buechner, a special investigator who trained other corrections officials on problems with prison gangs until he retired last fall.
In Ager’s case, the 5-foot-4, 135-pound inmate was kept in special housing when he first entered the prison system at San Quentin. But he was housed with general-population inmates soon after his transfer to Salinas Valley because officials there decided he didn’t need extra protection.
Ager, 63, was housed with Clyde Leroy Beaver, a convicted murderer who has spent the last four decades in prison. Beaver pleaded guilty to murder in Ager’s slaying and got another life sentence that Ager’s son considers essentially meaningless.
A federal judge ruled in March that Ager’s family failed to show that prison officials acted with deliberate indifference.
“The very day they let him into the yard, he was filing complaints, ‘Get me the hell out of here,’” said Ager’s son, Daniel. “‘This is not safe. I’m going to get killed out here.’” ..Source.. by CafeMom.com
August 21, 2015
AP Exclusive: Many sex offenders killed in California prison
September 30, 2009
FL- Convicted child killer Couey dies in prison, Florida officials say
9-30-2009 Florida:
(CNN) -- A Florida death-row inmate convicted of abducting and murdering 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005 has died, prison officials said Wednesday.
John Evander Couey, 51, died at 11:15 a.m. ET of natural causes, a Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman told CNN. He had been taken to a Jacksonville, Florida, hospital from Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida.
Because of privacy laws, no further information could be released by the Department of Corrections.
A source close to the case told CNN that Couey's death was not unexpected and he had been ill for some time.
"I never dreamed it would happen like this," Jessica's father, Mark Lunsford, told CNN. He said he never thought he would live long enough to see Couey put to death because of the lengthy appeals process.
He said he was sad when he heard the news of Couey's death. "To me, death is sad," he said. "But her death, Jessie's death, has been redeemed ... I'm relieved. I'm glad it's over with."
Couey was sentenced to die in August 2007 for abducting and raping Lunsford, then killing her by burying her alive. The girl was snatched from her bed in her family's Homosassa, Florida, home the evening of February 23, 2005, by Couey, a registered sex offender. Her body was found three weeks later, buried at the home of Couey's half-sister, who lived within sight of the Lunsford home.
The girl's body was wrapped in plastic garbage bags, and her hands were bound with speaker wire. She was clutching a stuffed dolphin -- a toy won for her at a state fair by her father, and which Couey allowed her to bring with her when she was abducted.
"I am not shedding any tears," the girl's grandmother, Ruth Lunsford, said on Wednesday. "I don't feel sorry for him. I think God said, 'John Couey, it's time to go.' "
"I don't feel sorry for him that he had to suffer," she said. "He didn't have any mercy on my granddaughter when he murdered her. I'm glad we didn't have to wait years and years for his appeals and execution, and the taxpayers no longer have to pay for him. I'm glad that God took a hand in it."
Authorities believe Lunsford was kept for several days before she was killed. Her blood was found on a mattress in the home where Couey was living, her fingerprints also were discovered at the location. During the search for the girl, as authorities and hundreds of volunteers combed Citrus County, north of Tampa, police twice visited that home.
"Couey's timeline after he kidnapped Jessica Lunsford leaves open the possibility that she was alive, and in the house, at the time of the first and possibly the second interview," according to a prosecution memo in the case.
In sentencing Couey, Judge Ric Howard noted Couey became fearful of police dogs being used in the area in the search for the girl. He told Lunsford he was planning to take her home, but did not want her to be seen, and so persuaded her to get into a trash bag. He then knotted another trash bag over her head, placed her in a hole and shoveled dirt on top of her.
Jurors convicted Couey of first-degree murder, kidnapping and sexual battery on a child under 12 in March 2007.
Howard, at Couey's sentencing, brought many in the courtroom to tears as he discussed how the girl died slowly as her oxygen ran out. A medical examiner testified she could have been alive as much as five minutes, or even longer, before she lost consciousness, Howard said.
"He caused a slow, suffering, conscious death," Howard said of Couey. "Her only source of comfort during this horrific experience was her purple dolphin." Another horrific detail the judge noted: The girl was able to poke several fingers through the innermost trash bag covering her before she died.
The judge also noted that Couey made "crude, vulgar and repulsive" comments to police after his arrest regarding his sexual assault of the girl, and the judge quoted Couey as saying the media was blowing the case out of proportion -- "This kind of thing happens every day."
Lunsford's slaying sparked national outrage and led to stricter Florida laws regarding registration and supervision of released sexual predators, following a push led largely by her father, Mark Lunsford.
Although Lunsford's death was one of several that contributed to the passage of a federal child-protection law dealing with sex offender registration and other matters related to child sex offenses, Mark Lunsford said at the time of Couey's sentencing the law does not go far enough.
On Wednesday, Mark Lunsford told CNN he is a Christian and he believes he will see his daughter again.
In a jailhouse phone call before his sentencing, Couey told a woman described as his aunt he expected the death penalty.
"I kick myself in the butt a hundred times a day," he said. "Stupidity ... Just trying to figure out, I'm just asking myself, 'Why was you so stupid?' "
"Well, none of us are perfect," the woman said, "and the drugs didn't help any."
"No, that was a big problem," Couey said. "Drugs, alcohol."
Speaking after Couey's sentencing, Mark Lunsford referenced Couey's earlier comments in which he said that when he got to heaven, he would apologize to his victim.
"I have bad news," Mark Lunsford said. "I don't think you're going to make it there." He called on Couey to drop his appeals. "You want to do something for her, give your life for the one you took." ..Source.. by CNN
April 13, 2008
CA- O.C. deputies lied to grand jury, testimony shows.
Sheriff's Department employees changed stories and compared notes during the probe into the death of inmate John Derek Chamberlain.
4-13-2008 California:
They lied, they changed their stories and they compared notes even after being ordered not to by a special Orange County grand jury investigating a deadly beating at Theo Lacy Jail, the testimony shows.
During 45 days of grand jury prodding, members of the Sheriff's Department repeatedly hindered the probe, according to thousands of pages of transcripts made public last week. Then-Sheriff Michael S. Carona refused to answer a single question, including whether he was the county's sheriff the day John Derek Chamberlain was killed by other inmates.
Chamberlain, a Mission Viejo computer technician who was being held on suspicion of possessing child pornography, was beaten by fellow inmates over a 50-minute period near a glass-walled guard station while the ranking jailer watched television and exchanged cellphone text messages with friends, according to the grand jury transcripts.
Although the grand jury probe did not lead to criminal charges against any sheriff's employees, the transcripts show the hurdles that prosecutors faced as Carona and his troops took the witness stand.
Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas and acting Sheriff Jack Anderson agreed that the testimony painted a deeply unsettling picture of a law enforcement agency that had broken down. One expert said the findings could erode the public's confidence in the department, the second largest in the state.
"A great part of law enforcement is public trust," said former San Francisco Police Chief Anthony D. Ribera, director of the International Institute of Criminal Justice Leadership at the University of San Francisco. "Given the awesome authority that law enforcement has in our society, the issue of integrity has to be totally part of the fabric of the organization."
The special grand jury impaneled by Rackauckas spent nine months trying to get answers in the October 2006 beating at Theo Lacy Jail in Orange. Among the questions the grand jury sought to answer was whether deputies helped instigate the attack and why the Sheriff's Department decided to take the lead in the homicide investigation -- breaking a decades-old policy under which the district attorney reviewed inmate deaths.
From the outset, grand jurors were so worried about leaks from the secret proceedings that they convened at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana because the nearby Superior Court is served by sheriff's bailiffs. But transcripts show it didn't take long for testimony to be discussed among witnesses. Several had to be called back to the witness stand after prosecutors discovered they were allegedly sharing information with Deputy Kevin Taylor, who was accused by an inmate of wrongly identifying Chamberlain as a child molester -- an open invitation in jail and prisons for trouble.
Deputy Sonja V. Moreno, for example, was ordered to return two times before she finally confessed to lying repeatedly to the grand jury and passing along information to Taylor, according to the testimony. By that time, five of Moreno's friends had testified that she discussed her testimony with them too.
Moreno, a close friend and neighbor of Taylor, testified that she drove to his home and told him she was asked about 22 text messages that he exchanged with her and others during the Chamberlain attack. She said she also told Taylor that jurors asked her whether she and Taylor were more than friends. She denied any romance but later admitted to prosecutors they had once kissed but that it was not intimate, according to testimony.
Asked why she had lied, Moreno testified that she thought the information was important to Taylor, that she has a hard time keeping secrets from friends and was under stress. "I didn't go there so that I can taint an investigation or interfere with something," she said.
Special Officer Phillip Le, who was on duty with Taylor during the attack at Theo Lacy, told the grand jury that instead of refreshing his memory about the incident by reviewing his own statements to homicide investigators, he asked for Taylor's incident report instead. He said that sheriff's Det. Ken Hoffman, who was investigating the homicide for the department, gave him a copy.
Le also testified that he made a "command decision" to record over the first seven to 10 minutes of videotape he was using to document the scene after guards discovered Chamberlain had been beaten. His decision effectively erased the initial reaction to Chamberlain's injuries.
Le testified that he realized he was about to run out of videotape and decided to record over the beginning of the tape.
The grand jury was routinely stymied in its efforts to obtain records because sheriffs' officials refused to produce batches of documents, including simple policy manuals, without a legal battle. Many records that were eventually turned over had portions blacked out and hadbeen screened first by a sergeant who handled civil claims against the department. According to testimony, he admitted instructing employees how to answer certain questions.
When prosecutors asked for Taylor's background file, they were told it was missing.
Taylor had been the subject of at least two internal affairs investigations for allegedly beating one inmate and breaking the arm of another, according to prosecutors. According to the testimony of Capt. Davis Nighswonger, that is the kind of information that should have been included in his background file.
Dan Martini, then the assistant sheriff overseeing the department's estimated 7,000 background files, testified that the disappearance of Taylor's file made no sense and that he had considered bringing in the state attorney general's office to investigate. Martini was removed from his position by Carona two days before he appeared before the grand jury.
"It came to my attention that there was a, quote, 'missing' file that involved Kevin Taylor," Martini said. "It rose me out of my seat, and I said, 'We do not have missing files.' "
One of the goals of the grand jury was to determine why the Sheriff's Department chose to lead the investigation of a death in custody rather than turn the case over to the district attorney, in keeping with a 1984 agreement aimed at avoiding a conflict of interest. But their efforts were frustrated.
Prosecutors expressed exasperation with the testimony and foggy memories of then-Undersheriff Jo Ann Galisky and Assistant Sheriff Steve Bishop. Both said they could not remember who made the final decision to let their own department investigate.
Contrary to earlier testimony, Galisky and Bishop told jurors that after Chamberlain died they were informed by their subordinates that the department had previously taken the lead on custodial deaths.
During her testimony, Galisky admitted she changed a memo she'd provided to an earlier grand jury that was also examining Chamberlain's death. Once changed, according to transcripts, the memo stated that the Sheriff's Department was always the lead investigative agency in jail homicides and that the district attorney played a secondary role.
During questioning, Deputy Dist. Atty. Keith Bogardis pressed Galisky on the memo.
"That's an outright lie," Bogardis said to her, according to transcripts. He then asked her to defend her actions.
"I don't think it was my intention to mislead the grand jury. I believe I was trying to respond and give them the information," she said. "Whatever changes I made in there, there was no intention to lie to them."
On her second day of testimony, according to transcripts, Galisky realized she was now not just a witness but a target of the grand jury. She immediately asserted her 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination and declined to answer further questions. She and Bishop were forced out of the Sheriff's Department in February shortly after the grand jury briefed Anderson on the findings.
Last week, Anderson suspended Taylor, Le and fellow jailer Jason Chapluk, along with Moreno and an internal affairs investigator who allegedly pressured a witness to reveal her grand jury testimony. He has promised more punishments as the department launches what he has described as the biggest internal investigation in its history.
"The fundamentals of our profession are based on truth," said Anderson, who took charge of the beleaguered department after Carona stepped down in January.
"We must collect facts accurately and present them accordingly," he said. "Anything less is unprofessional, and anyone who would engage in that should be removed from the profession and shouldn't be a cop anymore." ..more.. by Christine Hanley, Stuart Pfeifer and Christian Berthelsen, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 19, 2007
Deaths in Custody Statistical Tables
July 2007:
This site contains a series of data tables describing recent trends in mortality in State prison, local jails and State juvenile correctional facilities. Data are presented over time, by jurisdiction and by demographic groups. The mortality data are from the BJS Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP), which was launched in 2000 to implement the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 (Public Law 106-297).
BJS phased in implementation of the Act over a four-year period. Data collection on deaths in local jail facilities began in 2000, followed by collection from State prison authorities in 2001. In 2002 BJS began collecting records of deaths from all State juvenile correctional systems. These collections involved individual-level reports of each death, as opposed to aggregated counts.
In 2003 BJS began collecting data on arrest-related deaths involving the nearly 18,000 State and local law enforcement agencies in the United States. Statistical tables on arrest-related deaths are forthcoming (Fall 2007).
To access data tables, click on one of the criminal justice populations below:
State prison deaths, 2001-2005
Local jail deaths, 2000-2005
State juvenile correctional facility
deaths, 2002-2005
Print version of all tables in PDF format (501 KB file)
For detailed analyses, see the following BJS publications:
Medical Causes of Death in State Prisons, 2001-2004
(January 2007, NCJ 216340)
Provides an in-depth look at the various medical conditions related to mortality in State prisons.
Suicide and Homicide in State Prisons and Local Jails
(August 2005, NCJ 210036)
Presents detailed data on suicide and homicide rates in correctional facilities over time, as well as comparative rates of such deaths for different groups of inmates. ..more.. by DOJ
