San Quentin News

Written By Inmates - Advancing Social Justice

Florida DAs charge fentanyl dealers with murder in cases of overdose

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A woman overdosed and died in jail. As a result, another faces first-degree murder charges.

On Sept. 7, 2018, 24-year- old Jeniffer Patrick was riding in a car with her 49-year-old boyfriend when they were stopped by Marion County sheriff deputies, who found drugs and syringes in the car.

Patrick was arrested and booked into the Marion County Jail in Ocola, Fla., where she was then strip-searched and placed in a holding tank with other women.

This is where she came across 22-year-old Lorraine Gardner who had been in custody since July 2 on a probation violation stemming from three drug charges for MDMA, cocaine and methamphetamine, according to The Appeal, a non-profit criminal justice news outlet.

According to the Marion County sheriff’s department, video shows Patrick handing something to Gardner, who then put it to her face. Soon after, she began to show signs of physical distress.

Later footage shows something falling out of Patrick’s pants: a small baggie containing a tan mixture. The substance was tested and was revealed to be 2.5 grams containing fentanyl.

In November, Patrick was charged with first-degree murder. The murder charges against Patrick are a part of a push to treat fatal overdoses as homicides.

In June 2017, Florida passed a fentanyl trafficking law that increased penalties for dealers, including first-degree murder charges in cases where a homicide results from a drug overdose.

Amy Berndt, the prosecutor in the case, said, “Basically, as long as we can prove that the person delivered the drug that caused the death—fentanyl, it’s first-degree murder.” She remains committed to putting Patrick in prison for the rest of her life, adding that small-time dealers are the problem.

Drug policy experts caution that these new harsher penalties will not save lives—in fact, the threat of more time in prison might increase the likelihood of a fatal overdose if family members, friends or other users hesitate to call authorities, Linsay LaSalle of the Drug Policy Alliance told The Appeal.

Simply, this acts as a deterrent to calling 911. Lawmakers stand firm stating they want to send a clear message to drug dealers in Florida. Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill and promised it would save lives.

Attorney General Pam Bondi seconded the notion that the law would protect Floridians from dangerous drug traffickers.

AB32 would prohibit contracts with private prisons

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California would phase out the use of private prisons under pending legislation.

AB32 would prohibit new contracts with private prisons and phase out existing contracts over four years, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The measure was introduced by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda.

Bonta said he introduced the bill because corporations that run private prisons put making money for their shareholders above rehabilitating inmates, according to the March 31 Chronicle article.

“It’s just the wrong approach to a government service that should be public,” Bonta said. The bill is part of his broader goal to move California “away from mass incarceration, from mass warehousing” and refocus on “the rehabilitation side. We’ve lost sight of that over the years.”

Shutting down private prisons will require California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to reduce the state prison population to make room for the 2,000 inmates currently housed in private prisons in Kern and San Bernardino counties, the Chronicle said. This decline will need to be achieved at a time when the 113,656 non-private prison population is only about 3,300 below a federal court-ordered cap, according to the article.

Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned for an end to the use of private prisons in California. His campaign website said that for-profit prisons “contribute to over-incarceration. ” In his in- augural address, he also promised to “end the outrage that is private prisons in the State of California once and for all.”

Newsom spokesman Brian Ferguson wrote in an email: “Addressing inequities in the criminal justice system is among the governor’s top priorities.

“The governor and his staff are also working closely with corrections department officials to reduce the state’s reliance on out-of-state and private prisons to house inmates.

However, there is still more to do, and we’ll be looking at all of our options when the time is right,” Ferguson wrote.

A spokeswoman for the prison guards union said the group “believes the state of California is responsible for people who are tried, convicted and incarcerated … not a private corporation who answers to shareholders.”

California should pay counties to house overflow inmates, Bonta said. However, the California State Sheriff’s Association opposes the bill. Association lobbyist Cory Salzillo said county jails are already overcrowded because of former state prisoners remaining in county jails under realignment. Many of those prisoners are more dangerous, have mental health issues, and serve longer sentences than former county jail inmates, Salzillo said.

Bonta has also proposed legislation to require the state’s public employee and teacher pension funds to divest from private prisons. The retirement system for teachers announced it would do so in November.

CDCR agrees to legal settlement over disciplinary documents

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“I spent five years to get them to dismiss the write-ups which should never have been filed in the first place”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) agreed to pay an inmate $8,400 in a legal settlement for disciplinary and non-disciplinary documentation the inmate claimed were false and retaliatory.

The settlement agreement, entered in April 2018, also required the CDCR to remove all paper and electronic copies of the documents from the inmate’s file in exchange for his dismissal of two other lawsuits.

“I spent five years to get them to dismiss the write-ups which should never have been filed in the first place,” said Chung Kao, an inmate at San Quentin State Prison.

Court records show that in 2012 Kao filed a civil rights suit in the federal district court in San Diego, CA, alleging that the prison appeals coordinator “arbitrarily and dishonestly rejected, cancelled and/or discarded 21 inmate appeals” submitted by him and placed information in his prison file accusing him of abusing the inmate appeal process.

Kao alleged the appeals coordinator documented that he filed numerous inmate appeals “which contain(ed) veiled threats of lawsuit and requests/expectations for special treatment.” The unsupported reason was “in attempts to intimidate, threaten, harass, manipulate and unlawfully influence staff for personal reasons.”

At the time, Kao was housed at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. In 2017, the prison offered Kao $1,400 and the expungement of the erroneous information in his file to settle the case.

During the settlement process, Kao filed a separate civil rights suit in the same court, alleging the prison staff filed a false disciplinary report against him, found him guilty without evidence, and thereafter threw away his inmate appeal of the discipline to retaliate for his filing grievances and lawsuits against the prison’s staff.

In a previous case, Kao was successful in state court to compel the prison to file and process his disciplinary appeal because the CDCR “is obliged to process disciplinary appeals by the regulations in the California Code of Regulations, Title 15, section 3084 et seq.,” the court said in its opinion in February 2016.

The district judge dismissed the 2017 lawsuit upon filing. Kao filed an appeal to the federal appeals court in San Francisco, CA.

The CDCR then offered a consolidated settlement in which the state agreed to pay an additional $7,000 to Kao, along with the expungement of the disciplinary report and prior settlement offers, in ex- change for Kao’s dismissal of the appeal and earlier lawsuit.

Federal law prohibits prison actions which would “chill” inmates’ exercise of the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances using the inmate appeals system. The prohibition includes prison policy penalizing inmate choice of language as well as retaliation for filing inmate appeals.

“Retaliation is still commonplace,” said Kao. “The evil-doers knew they’d al- ways get away because, in the end, it’s the taxpayers who had to foot the bill,” referring to California’s indemnification law protecting state employees against legal liabilities arising from their official conduct, even if the acts are intentionally malicious.

Iranian legal reforms reduce executions

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Capital punishment in Iran has roughly been cut in half because of drug law reform, a human rights organization reports.

Executions in Iran have also been cut in half after historic law reforms, according to Human Rights Watch and Harm Reduction International.

Iran had 225 executions in 2018, of which 91 were for drug offenses. In 2017, there were 507 executions, according to a March 17 story in Current Events.

The decrease in drug- related executions is due to new amendments in drug laws, which were motivated in part by international pressure and grassroots efforts.

Chief Justice Larijani’s judicial order in 2018 initiated a review process for all drug offenders on Death Row, possibly to commute execution sentences under the newly changed standards. Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters reported 3,000-4000 sentences would be commuted.

“Non-governmental organizations (in Iran) are key partners in implementing drug treatment programs… Their constant efforts and lobbying have helped political and religious authorities to adopt new approaches to tackling the drug problem,” according to a report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Former U.N. Human Rights Chief Ra’ad Al Hussein called on Iran to “institute a moratorium on the use of the death penalty” because he said capital punishment is inhumane and irreversible.

The drug epidemic and the death penalty had risen throughout the decades following the 1979 Islamic Revolution when religious and governmental officials drew a hard line against drug addiction. The result: hundreds were arrested and executed each year, according to the story.

“International law requires not only the reducing of, but ideally the elimination of, the use of the death penalty for drug offenses in Iran,” according to Harm Reduction International. It claimed low level drug of- fenders are still being executed.

Wisconsin governor submits proposal to build more prisons

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Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers, whose campaign pledged to cut his state’s prison population in half, has instead recommended a $259 million expenditure to build more prisons.

According to Matt Kettle of MacIver News Service, the governor submitted a proposal to build seven major Department of Corrections (DOC) projects. This is a six-fold increase from his predecessor, Gov. Scott Walker, who recommended $41.68 million in DOC capital financing.

“The spending is just mind-blowing,” said state Rep. Michael Schraa (ROshkosh), chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Corrections.

Prison construction, at 10% of Evers $2.5 billion two-year budget, demonstrates the new governor appears to have turned away from social reform. MacIver News Service said he now plans on increasing the prison occupancy by at least 310 beds to cover a projected increase of approximately 3,000 additional inmates by 2025.

As late as last year, the state’s prison population was 33% above capacity.

According to reporter Kettle, Evers successfully campaigned on initiatives that included decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana and “investing in people, not prisons.”

The governor was credited with a political strategy that enabled him to agree with reforms that were in line with his more liberal opponents in the Democratic Party primary. Included in his campaign was a promise of a massive reduction of prisoners.

Now, Schraa told MacIver News Service that it appears the governor is stepping away from one of his main campaign promises, which included fiscal and social reform by reducing the prison population. During the campaign, Evers told his constituency that the prison population’s reduction of 50% is a “goal that’s worth accomplishing.” Kettle reported. Now, Wisconsin State Rep. Schraa said Evers made it clear to him in a meeting earlier this year that the governor was not talking about cutting the prison population in half anytime soon. “That’s when he back-

tracked and said that his goal is to have that eventually, that could happen even after he’s out of office,” added Schraa, according to reporter Kettle.

The DOC still says they are committed to research- ing any possible opportunities to reduce Wisconsin’s prison population.

In an email sent to MacIver News Service, the DOC wrote, “Under Gov. Tony Evers’ criminal justice reform, our staff is looking into many different avenues to reduce the prison population while maintaining our first priority of public safety.”

Reporter Kettle concluded that Evers’ reverse and search for additional prison beds, emphasizes an admission that social justice reform programs and initiatives might sound good on the campaign trail, but they don’t necessarily reflect the reality of the rising prison population and the need to keep the public safe.

SB 1421 gives public access to police misconduct records

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The public now has access to police misconduct records, thanks to a new law.

This legislation grants access to the public of all investigations in the use of force and officer misconduct.

A state appeals court has ruled the law has immediate statewide impact.

Presiding Justice Stuart Pollak and Justices Alison Tucher and Tracie Brown upheld a decision by Superior Court Judge Charles Treat. Police groups in several counties asked the California Supreme Court to take up their case, but the court refused.

Michael Rains, the police union’s lawyer, said the ruling reflected the courts attitude that they don’t “give one hoot about the rights of police officers.”

For decades, California has had some of the nation’s most stringent confidentiality standards for police personnel records, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The new law is SB1421 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.

Tenaya Rodewald, the lawyer who argued the case before the appellate court, said, “For the first time in a long time, the Legislature has decided it’s really important for public trust in law enforcement and the administration of justice in this state for people to be able to obtain records of serious incidents of police misconduct.”

Californians divided over results from criminal justice reforms

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A debate is growing on the impact of criminal justice reforms in California. Widely differing views are surfacing on reforms approved by California voters in recent years.

That includes Proposition 47 in 2014, that reduced some crimes from felonies to misdemeanors; Proposition 57, which passed in 2016 and allowed prison officials to decide which nonviolent felonies could be reduced to misdemeanors (under Proposition 47), and a 2018 measure allowed many defendants to be released without bail pending trial.

Opponents of reform argue that California’s new laws are to blame for increases in certain categories of crime or short-term fluctuations in rates of violent crime. The opponents include state police unions, court employees, some district attorneys and politicians. They blame early release initiatives for violent episodes of recidivism, according to the Jan. 21 New York Times.

Ironically, overall crime rates have reached lows not seen since the 1960s, the newspaper reported.

“Proposition 47 has nothing to do with violent crime,” said Charis E. Kubrin of UC Irvine. She is one of the researchers in a study that found no link between Proposition 47 and violent crime.

The study uncovered increases in larceny and auto thefts, but Kubrin and her co- author, Bradley J. Bartos, did not conclude that Proposition 47 was the cause.
The Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys criticized the study, adding that Proposition 47 had “arguably failed,” due to increases in crime.

“important to understand that we are in a historic decline… we are safer than almost at any time in history”

Last year, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned of a “staggering increase in homicides.” Violent crime did rise in 2015 and 2016, yet, when FBI figures were released, they showed violent crime had decreased in 2017. This is why some researchers and activists say that criminal justice policies should not rely on annual fluctuations, the newspaper reported.

“Year-to-year fluctuations don’t really tell you much,” said Rob Smith, executive director of the Justice Collaborative. He also told the newspaper that it’s “important to understand that we are in a historic decline…The reality is across California and across the country, we are safer than almost at any time in history.”

In California, law enforcement unions, bail bond companies and other groups are pushing measures to define new crimes as felonies and repeal the state’s recent cash bail reform.

As hunger strikes continue in ICE detention centers court issues decree to stop force feeding certain individuals

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Flag of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement

A judge has ordered the federal government to stop force-feeding detainees on a hunger-strike at an El Paso, Tex., immigration processing center.

“This is a win for us,” said Louis Lopez, one of the attorneys representing Malkeet Singh and Jasvir Singh. Both men are seeking political asylum. “They have a First Amendment right to protest,” Lopez told the El Paso Times.

U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama ordered the government to stop force- feeding two of nine detained Indian immigrants known as the “El Paso Nine.” He said it raised several questions, but the judge warned the detainee’s attorneys that if their clients health started to decline, he would reconsider force-feeding.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported the hunger strike began with two detainees on Dec. 30, 2018, with others joining the strike. ICE then obtained court orders in January to be- gin force-feeding the detainees non-consensually.

ICE told the New York Times four other individuals at different detention centers were also on a hunger strike. Since May 2015, Freedom for Immigrants reported 1,396 people on hunger strike in 18 detention centers.

The World Medical Center in a 2006 statement said “the forced feeding of hunger strikers is unethical, and is never justified,” the New York Times reported.

Dr. Michelle Iglesias, the El Paso detention center’s staff physician, testified that force-feeding is implemented to prevent the damage done to the body by prolonged starvation. Iglesias further explained starvation can be very painful.

In a statement to the El Paso Times, ICE said that there were 12 detainees— nine from India and three from Cuba—still on a hunger strike as of Feb. 14. However, none were being force-fed against their will.

The reversal of this practice comes after public pressure by protesters, human rights advocates and the United Nations human rights office, which said that force-feeding of immigrant hunger strikers could violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, reported the El Paso Times.

California legislators consider voting rights for parolees

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Right To Vote

This year, California legislators will decide whether a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights to people on parole can be on the ballot for the 2020 elections.

According to an article in the Sacramento Bee, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 6 (ACA 6), also known as the Free the Vote Act, was introduced by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty.

ACA 6 will pave the way for a 2020 ballot measure that would restore the voting rights of about 50,000 parolees.

Under Article II, section 4 of California’s Constitution “The Legislature shall prohibit improper practices that affect elections and shall provide for the disqualification of electors while mentally incompetent or imprisoned or on parole for the conviction of a felony.”

“ACA 6 will eliminate an arbitrary barrier to voting, reduce recidivism and give formerly incarcerated people an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to become productive, contributing members of our society,” McCarty said, according to a witness- la.com article.

In an interview with San Quentin News, Eric Henderson of Initiate Justice said that the idea for ACA 6 stemmed from conversations between Taina Vargas-Edmond, Executive Director of Initiate Justice, and incarcerated people.

According to a Common Cause report titled “Democracy Behind Bars: How money in politics, felony disenfranchisement and prison gerrymandering fuel mass incarceration and undermine democracy,” the practice of felony disenfranchisement was brought over by the original colonists as the British practice of “civil death,” which included the loss of property, voting, and other civil rights.

Common Cause also noted the racial legacy when felony disenfranchisement was used to bar free black men from voting after the Civil War.

In November of last year, Floridians passed Constitutional Amendment 4, which was supposed to restore the voting rights of more than half a million convicted felons, according to an article in Politico.

However, Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature is maneuvering a bill through the legislative process that would limit the voting rights gained by the 64% voter-approved Amendment 4.

“This is exactly what we were worried about from the beginning—legislative at- tempts to undermine the will of the people who voted for second chances and to rid Florida of the last vestiges of its Jim Crow-era past,” said Kirk Bailey, political director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, according to Politico.

An article in the Washington Post, “What gets ex-prisoners politically and civically involved?, Credited Florida’s Amendment 4 with re-enfranchising “more than one-fifth of the state’s African American population.”
The Republicans’ pro- posed bill includes a list of crimes that would disqualify someone from being allowed to vote and also requires the formerly incarcerated to pay court costs, fines, and fees as part of completing their sentence before they can vote.

“When partisan politics gets involved, the people lose,” said Neil Volz, political director with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition in Politico.

Under Amendment 4, people convicted of murder or felony sexual assault still are barred from voting.

According to the witnessla. com article, in the last two decades there have been nationwide voting reforms that have reinstated 1.4 million Americans on either the local or state level. However, there are another 6 million are still barred from voting because of their criminal past.

“Civic participation is foundational to a sense of community—and it can play a major role in reducing recidivism,” said California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who supports the new ACA 6 bill.

If ACA 6 passes through the Legislature, the 2020 ballot proposal would restore the voting rights of people on parole, leaving disenfranchised the mentally incompetent and the incarcerated.

Popularity for capital punishment is on the decline in the US

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The popularity for and sentencing for the death penalty is declining in America, a research paper reports.

“The recent history of capital punishment in the U.S. has been marked by declining popularity and usage … Within the past 15 years, eight states have abandoned the death penalty through legislative repeal or judicial invalidation,” according to theconversation.com website.

“Capital punishment has been and continues to be controversial. … More than 2,700 men and women are under death sentence,” the website reported.

California has the nation’s largest Death Row: 737 men at San Quentin and more than 20 women at Chow- chilla.

“The number of new death sentences imposed annually nationwide has plummeted from more than 300 in the mid-1990s to a fraction of that – just 42 in 2018,” according to the National Death Penalty Archives in- formation.

There was a modern-day high number of 98 executions in 1999. Last year 25 people were executed in the United States.

Public approval for the killings is also declining. A 1995 Gallup Poll registered 80 percent public support for capital punishment. A similar poll in 2018 reflected only 56 percent support.

Texas leads the nation with more than five times as many executions as the next leading state, according to researchers.

Execution history includes the case of 14-year- old George Junius Stinney Jr., put to death in 1944 by South Carolina. Seventy years later his sentence was vacated when a judge ruled he did not get a fair trial.

The Stinney story and many others can be found at the National Death Penalty Archive. These archives house the court records, newspaper and magazine articles, bulletins, photographs and index cards for each of nearly 16,000 executions. These records have been assembled by M. Watt Espy Jr. over the past three decades for the project.