Texas Prison News

Texas is also proposing a $100 medical fee to it's prisoners. Jean sent from my iPad

 

Begin forwarded message:

From: CURE Date: October 21, 2011 7:53:15 Subject:

 

In Bid to Cut Costs at Some Texas Prisons, Lunch Will Not Be Served on Weekends B HOUSTON — Texas prison officials last month ended the decades-old practice of serving last meals to inmates about to be executed after one man ordered an elaborate feast of hamburgers, pizza and chicken-fried steaks that he did not eat. But the 300 inmates on death row are not the only ones coping with food restrictions. Thousands of other inmates in the Texas prison system have been eating fewer meals since April after officials stopped serving lunch on the weekends in some prisons as a way to cut food-service costs. About 23,000 inmates in 36 prisons are eating two meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays instead of three. A meal the system calls brunch is usually served between 5 and 7 a.m., followed by dinner between 4 and 6:30 p.m. The meal reductions are part of an effort to trim $2.8 million in food-related expenses from the 2011 fiscal year budget of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the state prison agency. Other cuts the agency has made to its food service include replacing carton milk with powdered milk and using sliced bread instead of hamburger and hot dog buns. Prison administrators said that the cuts were made in response to the state’s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall in 2011, and that the weekend lunches were eliminated in consultation with the agency’s health officials and dietitians. Michelle Lyons, an agency spokeswoman, said that inmates with health problems who have been prescribed a therapeutic diet continue to receive three meals per day. By reducing its weekend meals, Texas has set itself apart from most other state prison systems. State inmates in New York, California, Nevada, Florida and several other states are fed three times a day, seven days a week. Federal prisoners receive three meals daily, as do inmates in the county jails throughout Texas. Most states serve their inmates milk in cartons, but Texas prison officials said switching to powdered milk would save them an estimated $3.5 million annually. Ohio and Arizona serve two meals per day on the weekends to reduce food-service costs. Georgia serves two meals per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, though inmates on work details receive a third meal. Inmates’ relatives and legal advocates in Texas said the elimination of milk in cartons and weekend lunches was an unnecessarily harsh cutback that had a negative effect on prison life. In August, 19 inmates at the Hutchins State Jail near Dallas, one of the 36 prisons that reduced weekend meals, signed a petition and sent it to the Texas affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the food cutbacks a violation of the federal Constitution. “I think it’s really easy to take things away from inmates,” said Susan Fenner, executive director of the Texas Inmate Families Association. “One inmate told me, for some of them, that’s all they have to look forward to is a meal.” Inmates are allowed to purchase chips and other snacks from prison commissaries. In prisons that have cut back on weekend meals, food from the commissaries has taken on a new significance. Prisoners’ relatives said the meal reductions affect low-income inmates the most, because their families cannot afford to send money to keep them supplied with commissary snacks. The weekend meal reduction appears to be out of step with the standards adopted by the American Correctional Association. In adult prisons, the association recommends serving three meals per day. Variations are allowed based on weekend and holiday food-service demands as long as the meals meet basic nutritional goals, but the standards do not state that the variations can be done every weekend or as a cost-cutting measure. Daron Hall, the sheriff of Davidson County in Tennessee and the president of the American Correctional Association, said Texas prison officials had adopted a loose interpretation of the food-service standards and needed to monitor the impact of the reductions on inmates. “I’ve never read the standard to mean you can do it every weekend,” Sheriff Hall said. “In the economic climate we’re in, you’re asked to do some creative and inventive things. You have to balance that with the safety and welfare of inmates in the facilities.” Prisoners’ rights advocates said that serving inmates fewer than three meals a day falls into a legal gray zone based on various cases around the country. In Texas, a state law requires inmates to be fed “three times in any 24-hour period,” but the law applies only to county inmates and not to state prisoners. “We’re beginning to see this more frequently, as states and counties begin to cut back on food in a short-sighted attempt to cut costs,” said David C. Fathi, director of the A.C.L.U.’s National Prison Project in Washington. “This is not something the Supreme Court has addressed.” Texas prison officials said they have no legal concerns about the food cutbacks, believe that they are in compliance with the correctional association standards and stress that inmates have not reported health problems stemming from the meal reductions. “Extensive consultation with T.D.C.J.’s health services department and system dieticians prior to implementation of this plan have allowed us to avoid any medical issues,” Ms. Lyons said in a statement. State Senator John Whitmire, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee whose outrage over last meals on death row led to the end of the practice last month, said the reductions were not a major concern to him. “If they don’t like the menu,” he said, “don’t come there in the first place.” __._,_.___

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Texas Lockdown: Solitary Confinement in the Lone Star State

 
“The most locked-down state in the nation” is how Robert Perkinson, author of the book Texas Tough, describes the Lone Star state. Texas, he writes, has “led the way in criminal justice severity” in everything from executions to trying juvenile as adults – and solitary confinement is no exception. In 2010, Texas held 8,701 of its 154,795 inmates in what it calls “administrative segregation”–the second highest number in the country after California. And Texas was one of the few states that last year saw its number of inmates in segregation increase while its overall prison population decreased.
Texas’s administrative segregation units deprive prisoners of all human contact. Bartlett Whitaker, in solitary confinement on death row, writes: “I am not even sure that a man who has completely disconnected from the world should still be called ‘human’ to be honest with you.” For 23 hours every day, inmates stay in tiny and often windowless cells; most are permitted one hour of solitary recreation time. Texas segregation units forbid contact visits for inmates, while telephone use is severely limited and sometimes prohibited altogether. Inmates do not have access to rehabilitative or educational programs. Prisoners placed in solitary remain there, on average, for more than four years, though some have been in isolation for up 25 years. Former inmates say that once placed in isolation, it is extremely difficult to be allowed to re-join populated prison units and many prisoners finish their sentences in solitary cells.
Source: Solitary Watch, July 6, 2011



Filing: DNA clears Texas man convicted of murder

By DANNY ROBBINS Associated Press © 2011 The Associated Press

Aug. 17, 2011, 3:23PM

 

DALLAS — A new court filing in the case of a Texas man who has spent 24 years in prison for killing his wife claims that DNA evidence can exonerate him.

Michael Morton is serving a life sentence for beating his wife to death in Williamson County in 1986. But court papers filed Wednesday on the 57-year-old Morton's behalf by the Innocence Project say a court-ordered test on a blood-stained bandana contains the DNA of another man.

The filing contends that Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley should be removed from the case because he suppressed an interview transcript that strengthened Morton's case. It also cites Bradley's animosity toward the Innocence Project during his tenure as chairman of the state Forensic Science Commission.

Bradley says he will "diligently pursue" any new evidence.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7701453.html#ixzz1VKcpJEp8

 

com me& courts
Judge overturns man's child rape conviction

He was sent to prison despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack

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Image: Stephen Brodie
LM Otero / AP
Deaf inmate Stephen Brodie sits in a cell during a jailhouse interview in Dallas on June 24. A judge on Monday overturned Brodie's 1993 child rape conviction.
By JEFF CARLTON
The Associated Press
updated 9/27/2010 10:41:58 PM ET
 

DALLAS — A judge on Monday overturned the 1993 conviction of a deaf man who was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack.

Stephen Brodie, 39, dropped his head in relief after an interpreter signed to him that Judge Lena Levario had set aside his conviction on the grounds of actual innocence. He then turned to face the courtroom audience, some of whom waved both hands in the air — sign language for applause.

"I feel like a burden has been lifted," Brodie told reporters through a translator. "I feel light. I feel extremely happy."

Brodie's legal woes didn't end immediately, despite the judge's finding of innocence. He was taken back into custody and forced to change from a suit and tie back into a striped jail uniform. He won't be released until officials in Lamar County in east Texas — where Brodie was imprisoned for failing to register as a sex offender — and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sign off. That had been expected to happen Monday, but a bureaucratic delay with the state prison system delayed the release until at least Tuesday.

A Dallas County sheriff's deputy cut short Brodie's impromptu news conference after the hearing, saying he couldn't permit such a perk for an inmate.

Brodie originally was arrested in 1991 for stealing quarters from a vending machine at a community swimming pool. While he was being questioned about that crime, police began asking about the unsolved rape of the 5-year-old girl a year earlier.

Brodie has been deaf since childhood, but police questioned him for hours without an interpreter. He eventually confessed, but later told The Associated Press he felt scared and pressured.

Richardson police said Monday that Brodie initially declined their offer of an interpreter.

"We felt like we did the best we could," Jonathan Wakefield, an investigator with Richardson police, told the AP. "It was a thorough investigation, and we didn't coerce or intimidate Mr. Brodie. We believe no innocent person should be incarcerated."

When a judge ruled the confession was admissible at trial, Brodie and his attorney figured a guilty verdict, which was punishable by up to 99 years, was all but certain. So they cut a deal — pleading guilty to assaulting the girl in exchange for a five-year prison sentence. After serving that sentence, Brodie served two more prison stints totaling five more years for twice failing to register as a sex offender.

Michelle Moore, Brodie's current attorney, said Brodie was made a scapegoat because police were under pressure to find the person responsible for more than a dozen sexual assaults of young girls terrorizing the north Dallas area in the early 1990s. (The person who did this was out there free to rape other young girls while this innocent man was locked up!!)

Brodie's confession came under repeated attack Monday from experts questioned by Moore and prosecutors Mike Ware and Terri Moore, who supported Brodie's innocence claim.

Carlos Garcia, an Austin defense attorney and an expert in police interrogation techniques, testified that Brodie made a false confession that "was not corroborated by any evidence." After viewing the interrogation, he said the detective leaked to Brodie several key details about the crime scene. Nonetheless, by Garcia's count, Brodie's confession included just two correct details out of 45.

"This is an unreliable piece of evidence," Garcia said of the confession.

In addition, Brodie was convicted even though a hair and a fingerprint that police believed came from the perpetrator were not a match. Moore said prosecutors failed to notify Brodie's trial attorney that testing showed the hair excluded Brodie as the source.

When Brodie was arrested and convicted, police knew the fingerprint, found on the window through which the perpetrator entered the victim's home, did not match their suspect or anyone living there.

A year after Brodie's conviction, police learned the fingerprint belonged to Robert Warterfield, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 1994. Warterfield also was suspected by Dallas police in the dozen unsolved sexual assaults and attempted assaults of young girls in the Dallas area.

Richardson police discounted the Warterfield print as coincidence, saying Warterfield "somehow touched the frame when he was wandering around in the neighborhood four days prior to this offense," according to police records. The police chief also assigned an investigator to see if Warterfield and Brodie worked together in committing the crime.

"We did pursue leads and information on Mr. Warterfield, but nothing ever developed from that," Wakefield said.

"I told him our greater obligation was to rectify our mistake with Brodie," Golden said. "He said our only legal obligation was to inform the DA of this discovery and it had been done."

Warterfield, who is free and working for a yard service in Stephenville, according to the state sex offender registry, was never charged in the attack for which Brodie served time. District Attorney Craig Watkins said after the hearing that his office is investigating Warterfield and that the statute of limitations has not expired.

Warterfield appeared at Brodie's hearing Monday and invoked the Fifth Amendment right to not provide testimony that might incriminate himself.

James Hammond, an investigator with the DA's office, testified that Warterfield said "he'd been expecting us" when he recently attempted to interview him about the assault. Warterfield declined to cooperate, saying "it wouldn't be in his best interests," Hammond testified.

"To tell the truth?" Ware asked.

"Yes," Hammond said.

Dallas County has exonerated 20 wrongly convicted people in recent years through DNA testing — more than any other county nationally and all but two states. But the Brodie case does not involve DNA. Instead, it is the county's first potential exoneration involving a false confession, Moore said.

Brodie is the second exoneration case in two years involving Richardson police. The first was Thomas McGowan, who was freed in 2008 after serving 23 years of a life sentence for a rape he did not commit.

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