Archives for November 2008

SAN FRANCISCO – A divided state Supreme Court yesterday ruled Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was wrong to deny parole to a murderer who was a model prisoner during the more than 23 years she served behind bars.
In a 4-3 decision, California’s high court said the governor must consider more than just the nature of the crime when he overturns Board of Parole Hearings’ decisions granting parole. The majority decision, written by Chief Justice Ronald George, said the governor must show “some evidence” the parolee is a danger to public safety.
The governor’s legal affairs secretary, Andrea Hoch, said the ruling “adds an inappropriate level of review, which unnecessarily limits the governor’s discretion to decide the parole of a convicted murderer based on … the best interest of public safety.”
The court’s ruling yesterday stems from the board’s decision to grant parole in 2005 to Sandra Davis Lawrence, 61, who after rejecting a plea deal for a two-year prison sentence was convicted of first-degree murder in 1983 and sentenced to a life term for killing her lover’s wife 12 years earlier.
In August 2005, the parole board for the fourth time in 12 years granted her parole because it found her to be a well-behaved prisoner who accepted responsibility for the killing, expressed remorse and showed no signs of being a danger to the public. Lawrence volunteered for many prison organizations and earned a master’s in business administration.
Still, Schwarzenegger reversed the panel’s decision as he had done previously, finding the killing to be particularly egregious. Lawrence shot and stabbed Rubye Williams to death in 1971 and then spent 11 years as a fugitive before turning herself in to police accompanied by the late Los Angeles attorney Johnnie Cochran.
Schwarzenegger said in his 2006 veto that Lawrence’s crime was “a cold, premeditated murder carried out in an especially cruel manner and committed for an incredibly petty reason.”
Governors Pete Wilson and Gray Davis made similar reversals when they were in office, likewise determining the nature of Lawrence’s crime made her a danger to society.
In a second, related case yesterday, a unanimous court upheld Schwarzenneger’s denial of parole to an El Cajon murderer it said remained a danger to public safety. Using the legal standards spelled out in Lawrence’s case, George wrote that Schwarzenegger was right to deny parole to Richard Shaputis because the prisoner failed to take responsibility for killing his wife, and there was “some evidence” he remains a danger to society. Shaputis was convicted of second-degree murder in 1987 for shooting his wife, Erma Jeanne Shaputis, 47, and was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison.
(Reprinted with permission from The Associated Press.)
 

…..a biographical, historical and introspective

look at our world behind the walls,

the way it is, as well as the way it was.

The newly formed Legislature of the fledgling state of California authorized the state’s first prison in 1852, and the merchant ship, Waban, was purchased by the state for the princely sum of $850. Anchored in the waters off Point Quentin, the 13-year-old wooden vessel was outfitted and remodeled to imprison up to 40 inmates in its dark, dank hold. Within months the state was to encounter its first prison overcrowding as the nightly total of inmates chained in the Waban’s hold regularly exceeded 60 men. Four men at a time typically occupied each of the Waban’s tiny 8’x 8’ cells.
San Quentin today sprawls over 432 acres of prime real estate at Point Quentin on the shores of San Francisco Bay. The average daily population of approximately 5,250 inmates is housed in a variety of accommodations from cells to dormitories. California’s Condemned Row, as well as its execution chamber, are located behind the walls at San Quentin. With an annual operating budget in excess of $ 210 million, it is the world’s most expensive prison to operate.
By January of 1853, 150 cons were packed in deplorable conditions on the tiny Waban, and the state’s first prison expansion project was undertaken. The Legislature authorized the purchase for $10,000 of 20 bay-side acres near Mission San Rafael. An additional $135,000 was set aside to build a new prison designed to hold 250 inmates. Inmate labor was to be used during the construction process. Also in 1853, the first warden’s residence, also utilizing inmate labor, was completed at a cost of $14,453.75.
State prison expansion projects are alive and booming in our state as Gov. Schwarzenegger signed a 2007 bill providing $7.9 billion to add one prison and 53,000 additional beds to the system which currently consists of 34 prisons housing approximately 153,000 male and female inmates.
By 1854, the newly constructed prison, christened Corte Madera Prison, already exceeded its designed capacity of 250 inmates. They were housed in 48 small 10’x6’ cells and one long room on the prison’s bottom floor that was designed for overflow inmates. An original cell description described them as “8’ to 9’ feet high in the center with an arched ceiling, tapering to a height of 5’ at the sides. A solid iron door featured a small slit in the center to allow the cell’s occupants their only chance to gulp fresh air or peek thru to the world outside their tiny cell.” The Waban, which had by now been towed to Marin Island in the Bay, was still used to hold the worst of the convicts, as was the island itself.
In the early days of the state’s new prison system, the average con was a 25-year-old serving about a two-year stretch behind the walls.
Today’s inmate population is aging noticeably, and the recent “tough on crime” era has resulted in legislated sentencing enhancements that have significantly lengthened the average inmate’s stay behind bars. Excluding the inmates housed on Condemned Row, the average con at San Quentin is much older, an average of 37 years old, and serving a term that is considerably longer in duration than at any time in the state’s history, approximately 48 months.
December 27, 1854 witnessed the prison system’s first major prison break when 22 cons stole a boat and fled from Marin Island. A number of the fleeing inmates were killed in the running gun battle which ensued.
Records reflect that the new Corte Madera Prison was a co-ed facility, with the women, of course, housed separately from the male inmates. In 1855, amid allegations of drunken guards, well-heeled inmates enjoying daily excursions outside the prison grounds, and charges of cohabitation between guards and female inmates, the state stepped in and took back operation of the prison from its contractor/operator.
The accepted practice of allowing inmate trustees to venture off the grounds to enjoy cocktails in nearby San Rafael was curtailed under the state’s tutelage, much to the trustee’s chagrin.
In 1858, over 500 inmates were crowded into the state’s only prison. Recognizing a need to get a handle on the overcrowding problem, the state agreed to construct a new prison in the small town of Folsom. Actual construction at Folsom was not to begin until 20 more years had passed.
DOES THIS SITUATION SOUND FAMILIAR?
In the next issue: a mass prison break of 200 inmates, the advent of striped uniforms, construction of the new prison at Folsom, and a closer look at the daily routine of a San Quentin inmate.
Also, in 1860, the first JOINT VENTURE program utilizing private contractors and inmate labor comes to San Quentin.    
              
 
 

 

Participation in the electoral process has always been important for many reasons, but more so now.  By November 4, a black president was elected.  Whom ever was elected we are being thrust into historical event, but none of this would be significant without the right to vote.
Have you ever wondered why in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq prisoners are allowed to vote whereas in the majority of the states of this Union prisoners have no voting rights, even those on parole?
Some would cry, Saddam’s voting rights are a meaningless ploy, a ruse, a hoax. I say, whatever you call it, they got to vote; what’s your excuse America?
To deprive a person of his right to vote is to silence him, to prevent him from obtaining representation, and to keep him in a status that is less than human.
We all know, during America’s slavery period, the justification for maintaining slavery is based upon social economics that elevates some to think they are superior to other—less than human. That never changed. Prisoners are commodities and an economic factor where the penal system becomes a corporate fact.
We think slavery ended somewhere in the 1800s, but the truth is slavery never ended in the United States of America.
The United States Constitution, 13th Amendment § 1 says; “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
As you can see, there is an exception where slavery is permitted even today.  The 13th Amendment removes slave ownership from the private citizen and places it exclusively in government hands.
In other words, when you become a prisoner you are also a slave.  While you are on parole, technically, you are still a prisoner but are housed at your  own home, at your own expense and still pay taxes, still slaves. Less than human, because parolees have no right to vote.
The mock election conducted at San Quentin reminds me of my slave status, the importance of the right to vote and the reasons for which prisoners are treated as less than human, but also a commodity.