San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Pennsylvania under scrutiny after prisoner dies in custody

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Family of deceased raise questions about cause of death in legal action against prison administrators

Everett Palmer Jr. died in custody from injuries that York County Prison in Pennsylvania deemed were self-inflicted, reported The Washington Post.

“There was so much mystery and unanswered questions in a way that violates every policy and procedure the state has,” said Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney representing the family.

Palmer, a Black man, was arrested in Pennsylvania in 2016 for driving while under the influence (DUI) and causing a single-car crash. Emergency responders at the time said they could smell alcohol on Palmer. His blood alcohol level tested 0.148—whereas Pennsylvania’s legal limit was 0.08.

Palmer returned to Lancaster County in 2018 to clear up the warrant for the DUI, and ended up being detained and sent to York County Prison.

Palmer was in single-cell housing on April 9, where he was reported to have been in an “agitated” state while repeatedly hitting his head on his cell door.

When custody officials noticed Palmer’s behavior, they placed him in restraints and then took him to the prison clinic for evaluation. The coroner’s report said that’s when Palmer was “noted to be unresponsive.”

Staff’s attempts to resuscitate Palmer proved unsuccessful. He was then pronounced dead early the next morning.

Palmer’s official cause of death was “complication following an excited state, associated with methamphetamine toxicity, during physical restraint. ” The manner of death was undetermined, according to the coroner’s report.

His death has prompted a possible grand jury investigation into his death.

“My son was a perfectly healthy young man, and my son is not going to bang his head on a cell. My son was not a troublemaker, not at all, he was a very gentle, kind man,” his mother, Rose Palmer, told the Washington Post.

The county contracted with an independent firm, Forensic Pathology Associates (FPA), to perform an autopsy, York County Coroner Pamela L. Gay told the Post. She said that the result for methamphetamine toxicity meant that the level of methamphetamine in Palmer’s system “was sufficient enough that it could have contributed to the death.” Yet she questions how Palmer could have got the drug while in custody. These findings prompted the family to pursue civil and criminal charges against York County Prison.

They continued to have questions regarding his death a year later.

“My brother was a good man, he comes from a good family, if he did something wrong with regards to the DUI then clearly he should be held accountable for that. But that should not be a death sentence,” said Dwayne Palmer, regarding his brother’s death.

When the Palmer family did get Everett’s body, it was missing his brain, heart, and throat. At that point, they hired an independent pathologist to determine what had happened; the independent pathologist, after investigating, said Palmer’s death should be considered a homicide. At first, the coroner’s office denied removing Palmer’s organs; it took several months before they admitted that they had removed the organs and that FPA had them. Gay, the county coroner, said that “it was not uncommon for those organs to be removed and kept by a lab.”

“We’re gonna get answers to what led to his death, and we do that with everybody. We’re going to do this the right way,” Gay said.

In recent years, police and law enforcement have been scrutinized for their handling of African Americans during police stops, arrests, or while in jail.

Sandra Bland was another such suspicious death. She died in a Texas jail cell in 2015. Her death was classified as a suicide. A traffic stop led to her incarceration. She was videotaped being confrontational toward officers. An officer was recorded during the incident threatening Bland with a Taser. The video recorded him saying he would “light you up.” Within three days of her arrest she was dead. The emergence of this video prompted nation-wide outrage while her family sought answers.

Accidental overdoses prosecuted as felony-murder under new laws

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Two months after her fiancé’s funeral, Kimberly Elkins pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Elkins, now 49, used fentanyl to deal with chronic pain. One day, she shared a fentanyl patch with her fiancé, Aaron Rost, and they overdosed. She woke up that night, but he didn’t. She was sentenced to four years in prison in Minnesota for his death, according to the New York Times.
“I struggle really hard with this…trying to find my responsibility in it,” says Elkins as she sits in prison for sharing the fentanyl with him.
The cases are more common among drug abusers, but are not limited to them. Friends and family members who provided or sent the drugs to someone who overdoses and dies as a result can be arrested and charged for felony murder.
Mark S. Rubin, the Washington County attorney who pursued the case against
Elkins, compared overdose prosecutions to a fatal collision—even if they did not intend for the other to die, they are still responsible.
“We feel that constitutes a crime of possibly murder in the third degree, but at least manslaughter in the second degree,” Rubin said.
On Rost’s Facebook page there was a debate by family and friends about whether Elkins is responsible for the death of her fiancé, the New York Times said. Rost’s sister backed the prosecution of Elkins death.

“I struggle really hard with this…”

“How the hell can you sit and blame her for it all, considering whether she gave it to him or not, he still had the choice,” one friend wrote, calling Rost’s sister “heartless.”
Rost’s sister responded, “I’m heartless? I had to plan a funeral for a 36-year-old man.”

According to The New York Times, the whole notion of overdose homicide prosecution is based on the 1986 cocaine-related death of Len Bias, a one-time college basketball player on the road to going pro, who collapsed two days after he was drafted into the NBA by the Boston Celtics.
Bias’ friend was charged in the overdose-homicide, but was later acquitted of any wrongdoing. States started passing laws, nicknamed “Len Bias laws,” which were designed to prosecute drug dealers when the sale of drugs resulted in death.
Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, New York, and Pennsylvania have passed “Len Bias” laws to go after drug dealers. From 2015 to 2017, in the 15 states where the New York Times gathered most of its data, there were more than 1,000 cases like Elkin’s that involved accidental deaths. The charges against friends, family, and drug users in these cases ranged from manslaughter to murder.

Pennsylvania prisons ban printed books

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Pennsylvania prisons have banned printed books, turning to electronic books instead, according to an op-ed in The Washington Post.

Prisoners must buy a tablet for $147 from a private company to read a limited number of titles, according to the opinion piece by Jodi Lincoln, co-chair of Book ‘Em, a Pittsburgh nonprofit organization that sends books free to incarcerated people and prison libraries.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PDOC) eliminated donations from Book ‘Em. The PDOC explained that the change is designed to stop contraband and drugs from entering prisons.

“This argument doesn’t hold,” said Lincoln in her opinion article.

“This policy, part of a larger trend of censorship in state prisons around the country, should alarm everyone,” Lincoln said, “It dehumanizes people in prison.

“The PDOC published examples of contraband drugs they have intercepted, none of which came from free book organizations.”

Book ‘Em offers Pennsylvania prisoners a connection with the outside world as prisoners request books regularly.

“These connections cannot be replicated by e-books or ordering a specific book through the PDOC,” Lincoln said.

She explains that there is an economic barrier as well because “incarcerated people are paid less that $1 per hour, and the criminal justice system disproportionately locks up low-income individuals.”

“In addition to the financial barriers, this policy also severely damages an incarcerated person’s ability to fully reenter society.”

Book ‘Em provides books like GED and SAT study books, textbooks, nonfiction books and business and trade books.

“The list of available e-books is missing some of the most requested books, including dictionaries, textbooks, graphic novels, and books focused on incarceration issues such as The New Jim Crow and Illegal to Legal,” said Lincoln.

Drug         Threshold dose (mg)            Potency relative to morphine

Morphine                12.5                                                          1

Oxycodon                  9.4                                                          1.3

Heroine                      6.25                                                        2

Fentanyl                    0.187                                                     67

PH.D. Drug and Chemical Control Unit. The Drug Administration

*Fentanyl potency compared to other drugs according to Srihari R. Tella

NEWS BRIEFS: November 2018

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1. USA—The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in early 2016 that sentencing juveniles to life with no chance for parole is unconstitutional. The states with the highest juvenile lifers were Pennsylvania, Michigan and Louisiana. As of mid-September, The Advocate reports that Pennsylvania had 530 juvenile lifers affected by the decision—375 were resentenced and 150 were paroled. Michigan’s juvenile population was 360. One-hundred- twenty were resentenced. Fifty were paroled. Louisiana had 302 juvenile lifers affected—218 were resentenced and 23 were paroled.
2. Santa Fe, NM—The Penitentiary of New Mexico houses approximately 260 inmates in Supermax or The Box, reports the Santa Fe Mexican. Prison officials call isolation units the Predatory Behavioral Management Program. The main purpose of the program, prison officials say, is to isolate predatory inmates who are a danger to staff or other inmates and the public. At least eight lawsuits, since January, were filed against the isolation units. Prison officials claim inmates who show behavioral improvements may get out of their cells to receive drug counseling, anger management and educational programs, however, some in- mates dispute that claim.

3. Birmingham, Ala.—In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was convicted of murdering two fast food employees. It took 30 years to show that he did not commit the murders, according to the Helena Independent Record. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his sentence after testimony used to convict him was proven false. He was re- leased from prison in 2015. Hinton does public speaking about the US justice system. He is the author of The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Hinton is the 152nd person exonerated from death row since 1973 and the sixth in Alabama.

4. Nebraska—On Aug. 14, Carey Dean Moore was executed by a lethal injection that included fentanyl and three other drugs, Desert News reports. Nearly 40 years ago, he was sentenced to death for the murder of two cab drivers.
5. Huntsville, Tex.—On Sept. 26, Troy Clark was executed by a lethal injection of pentobarbital. He was convicted of the kidnap/ murder of a woman in 1998. Clark’s last statement was that he did not do the killing, The Texas Tribune reports.
6. Houston, Tex.—State prison officials are reviewing grievances denied to inmates seeking dentures. Prison officials plan to clarify when dentures are needed as well as creating a review board to recommend who gets dentures. The change comes after The Houston Chronicle reported that the state prison policy had said chewing isn’t a medical necessity and that inmates could eat pureed food.

7. Richmond, Va.—Prison officials have suspended a new policy that would have barred women wearing tampons or menstrual cups from visiting inmates at state prisons. The postponement came a day after media coverage about the plan, scheduled to begin in November. Prison officials say the policy was intended to prevent contraband from getting into prisons.
8. Pennsylvania—A non-profit organization that sends free reading material to incarcerated people and prison libraries wrote in the Washington Post “… books and publications, including legal primers and prison newsletters, cannot be sent directly to incarcerated Pennsylvanians. Instead, if they want access to a book, they must first come up with $147 to purchase a tablet and then pay a private company for electronic versions of their reading material — but only if it’s available among the 8,500 titles offered to them through this new ebook system.”

9. USA—Extensive research shows that putting people with mental health issues in isolation cells for as little as two weeks, worsens their condition or could produce a mental health problem. With this knowledge, The Guardian reports, “more than 4,000 people with serious mental illness are being held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons.”
10. Seattle—became the 20th state where courts or legislatures have abolished or ended the death penalty, The New York Times reports. The state’s highest court ruled that capital punishment had been “imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.”

San Quentin News & Wall City Merchandise


http://sanquentinnews.com/california-supreme-court-multiple-strikes-unconstitutional/

Suit alleges Tennessee neglected diabetic inmates

California’s next governor faces executions

Servicemen sentences overturned

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Two servicemen on military Death Row had their sentences overturned this summer, reports the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). U.S. Air Force veteran Andrew Witt and Vietnam War veteran Robert Fisher both had attorneys who failed to present mitigating evidence of mental health issues and trauma in their initial trials.
Witt was sentenced in 2005 for murdering an airman and his wife. After a three-week capital resentencing trial, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces imposed a life sentence, according to DPIC, which cited the La Crosse Tribune.
Fisher, who had received a Purple Heart from President Lyndon B. Johnson, was convicted of the 1980 murder of his girlfriend. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania overturned his death sentence and granted a new trial.
In both cases, attorneys failed to present evidence that their clients suffered from head trauma or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD can cause serious psychological after-affects for years after a soldier returns from combat, according to DPIC.
In Witt’s case, the attorney failed to present mitigating evidence that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury just four months before the murders. Witt’s death sentence was the first one handed out to an airman since 1992.
In Fisher’s first trial, his attorney failed to present the mitigating evidence of trauma and other mental health issues Fisher experienced due to his service in Vietnam.
Twelve veterans have had their death sentences reduced to life in prison, while four veterans in military prisons are still on the U.S. military death row.

Dr. Downey overcomes hurdles

Approximately 10 Counties Responsible For a Quarter of U.S. Executions

More inmates taking meds for mental health issues


 

One member of Black liberation group paroles

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Black activist Debbie Sims Africa overcame a decade of parole denials and finally received her freedom after serving nearly 40 years within Pennsylvania’s prison system.
Africa and eight other MOVE members were all jointly convicted of a policeman’s murder in 1978.
MOVE is a political organization founded in 1970s Philadelphia to protest rampant police brutality.
The officer died during a raid on MOVE’s residential headquarters, detailed in a recent workers.org article. Africa, now 61, is the first of the “MOVE 9” to be released.
“They don’t really want to be so quick to let people who are accused of killing a cop out on parole,” said Mike Africa Jr., Debbie’s son. “The parole board seems to be retrying them, asking them questions about the incident that seem to have nothing to do with the years they’ve spent.”
Two of the MOVE 9, Phil and Merle Africa, have al- ready died in prison, while the other six continue to be denied parole in the face of constant opposition by The Fraternal Order of Police. The FOP holds positions on Pennsylvania’s Board of Probation and Parole and claims that members have “refused to accept responsibility,” “lacked remorse” or pose a “risk to community” as reasons to continue denying them.
MOVE arose in 1972 against the backdrop of all-out state campaigns targeting the Black Panther Party and other Black liberation groups. In May 1977, the police obtained a court order to force MOVE out of their home, resulting in a 15-month siege of the surrounding Powelton Village neighborhood.
Officers swarmed the house in the early morning of August 8, 1978, launching a full-scale assault with water cannons, tear gas and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
“We huddled together scared because we knew cops had lots of guns and other weapons,” Debbie recalled in a written account for onamove.com. “We didn’t know how they were gonna do it, but we knew their plan was to kill us.
“Cops were yelling over a loudspeaker for us to come out of the house, but we didn’t trust them, so nobody went out there.”
Debbie was 22 years old at the time of the attack, eight and half months pregnant with her son, Mike Jr., and in the house with her 23-month-old daughter, Michelle. After running for cover to the home’s basement, she described the police bombarding her family with a crossfire of powerful fire hose spray. The water broke through the windows, decimating wooden support beams, and killing their dogs.
Amidst the flurry of tear gas and smoke grenades, Michelle was ripped from her mother’s arms. Mike Jr. was born in a prison cell five weeks later.
Officer James P. Ramp suffered a gunshot wound to the back of his head during the melee. According to workers.org, although no physical evidence pointed to a MOVE member pulling the trigger, they were all convicted of third-degree murder and con- spiracy. Philadelphia police obliterated the entire MOVE residence following the raid, destroying any hope of find- ing exculpatory evidence.
Other Black revolutionaries continue to face tremendous difficulty in achieving parole, even after multiple decades of incarceration.
In 2016, 80-year-old former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli had been granted parole through a court order, but police unions and advocacy groups successfully challenged his release through higher court litigation, according to workers.org, Acoli’s sentence was extended 15 more years.

Right to Police Transparency

Revisiting Black History’s National Movement


http://sanquentinnews.com/optionb-org-support-group-overcoming-effects-incarceration/

San Quentin News World Travels

NEWS BRIEFS September 2018 USA, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania & Arizona

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1. USA – The stocks of two of the world’s biggest private prison companies are outperforming the market amid the current immigration crisis. Both the GEO Group and CoreCivic sup- ported Donald J. Trump’s presidency. The companies donated $250,000 to Trump’s Inaugural Committee, with GEO hav- ing donated $225,000 to a Trump Super PAC during the 2016 election.
2. USA — There were 56 percent fewer criminal convictions of illegal immigrants than of native- born Americans in Texas in 2015, a new report shows. The report by the Cato Institute found that the criminal conviction rate for legal immigrants was about 85 percent below the native-born rate. The data shows comparable patterns for violent crimes such as homicide and property crimes such as larceny. The study did find that immi- grants in the United States illegally were more likely than native-born people to be convicted of “gambling, kidnapping, smuggling, and vagrancy.” But those crimes represented little effect on overall crime rates in Texas that year. Another study, published in March in the journal Criminology, showed that states with larger shares of undocumented immi- grants tended to have lower crime rates than states with smaller shares in the years 1990 through 2014. Among other things, they found that the relationship be- tween high levels of illegal immigration and low levels of crime continue even after controlling for factors such as age, urbanization, labor market conditions and incarceration rates.

The studies conclude that not only does illegal immigration not increase crime, but it may contribute to the drop in overall crime rates seen in the U.S. in recent decades.

3. Texas — Chris Young, 34, was executed by an injection of compounded pentobarbital on July 17 for a 2004 robbery and murder of a San Antonio storeowner.
4. Ohio — Gov. John Kasich commuted the death sentence of Raymond Tibbetts to life in prison with- out possibility of parole, re- ports UPI. Kasich’s office cited “fundamental flaws in sentencing phase of his trial,” as the reason for commuting the death sentence in a statement regard- ing his decision July 20. In particular, “an inaccurate description of Tibbetts’ childhood by the prosecution, essentially prevented the jury from making an informed decision about whether Tibbetts deserved the death penalty,” the office said. On the same day, Kasich also granted a reprieve to delay the execution of Cleveland Jackson, who was scheduled to be executed between Sept. 13 and May 29, 2019.
5. Pennsylvania — Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill that allows Pennsylvanians to seal nonviolent misdemeanor records that carried a sentence of a year or more in jail if they have stayed out of trouble for 10 years and paid all fines and costs, reports Tribune News Service. The law also automatically seals re- cords for second-degree or third-degree misdemeanor convictions that carried sentences of two years or less if the individual has no other convictions for a decade and for arrests that did not result in a coviction. Offenses involving guns, sexual assaults/ rapes, murder, kidnapping, child endangerment and endangering the welfare of children are not subject to the law.

6. Phoenix, Arizona — A judge found the state’s prisons chief to be in civil contempt of court and imposed a $1.4 million fine to the state for not improving, adequately, health care for inmates. The lawsuit said some prisoners complained their cancer went undetected or they were told to pray to be cured after begging for treatment, The Associated Press reports. It also claims the failure of the medical staff at one prison to diagnose the metastasized cancer of an in- mate resulted in his stomach swelling to the size of a pregnant woman at full term.

 

Pennsylvania $325,000 for 37 years in solitary

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A Pennsylvania inmate who spent 37 years in solitary confinement has been awarded $325,000 in a settlement, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Arthur Johnson of Philadelphia, who spent more than half his life in solitary confinement, filed a lawsuit claiming that his 37 years spent alone in a small cell amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and violated his right to due process under the United States Constitution.   

Johnson, who was released back into the general prison over a year ago, after a U.S. district court judge ordered his reintegration in late 2016. Johnson is housed in State Correctional Institution Greene.

“Half of the state’s foster-care population is made up of children with opioid-addicted parents,” reports Bloomberg according to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican. BUSINESSWEEK.com Oct. 9, 2017

“It has been a big adjustment,” said Bret Grote, Johnson’s attorney. “Being surrounded by so many people in the yard, in the cafeteria.

“Issues like wanting to self-isolate, dealing with anxiety and despair, they remain with everybody I’ve known who’ve been in 20 or 30 years,” Grote continued.

Johnson had no meaningful physical contact with another person since 1979. He was not allowed any contact visits and spent at least 23 hours a day locked up in his cell, according to the article.

Johnson, who is serving a life sentence for a gang-related murder, had several attempted escapes in the 1970s and 1980s. This led to him being placed in solitary confinement. Johnson has remained free of any serious infraction since 1987. In court documents he has been described as a “model inmate” by a deputy superintendent.

As part of the settlement, the state agreed to move Johnson to an institution closer to his family and not to return him to solitary confinement for his past offenses.

Virginia disputes ACLU charges of harsh solitary


 
https://sanquentinnews.com/lawyer-urges-defendant-plead-guilty-capital-case/

KID CAT graduates 43 in its fourth cycle

State’s sex offender registry has low recidivism rate

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AC

                New statistics show a low recidivism rate for some registered sex offenders in the state of Pennsylvania, a newspaper reports.

“It’s really clear that all of the evidence and all of the data show that most sex offenses are committed by first-time offenders,” said Emily Horowitz, professor of sociology and criminal justice at Saint Francis University, quoted in the article.

Court records for Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, revealed 75 cases were charged as sex crimes in 2016, and out of those 75, only two were committed by persons registered as sex offenders, according to The Sentinel story published on the cumberlink.com website.

25 percent of millennial-age American men think asking a woman who is not a romantic partner to go for a drink is harassment, according to a recent survey by The Economist/YouGov reports The New York Times 1-17-18.

More than a third of millennial say that if a man compliments a woman’s looks it is harassment, according to a recent survey by The Economist/YouGov reports The New York Times 1-17-18.

Additional court records show 300 sex offenses charged in Cumberland County between 2013 and 2016, but only six involved registered sex offenders.

“For whatever reason, people who are on the registry have a very low recidivism rate, and if one is really concerned about decreasing sex offenses, they kind of have to look elsewhere instead of people who have already been convicted of sex offenses,” Horowitz added.

The low number of defendants on the sex offender registry may also be an indicator the policies are working, said David Freed, Cumberland County district attorney.

“You can look at that and say people on the registry aren’t committing sex crimes,” Freed said.

“Would they be more likely to do so if we didn’t have a registry?” he asked. “I can’t answer that…Is it effective? That’s the question for all these punishments.”

FBI data showed the rate of rape in Pennsylvania remained low at 25.8 per 100,000 people to 24.4 per 100,000 people, between 1990 and 2015.

During that time, Pennsylvania enacted its first Megan’s Law requiring sexual offenders to register with Pennsylvania State Police’s online database registry for public disclosure.

According to research done by The Sentinel, for a period of more than 20 years, there was no significant change in the rate of rape compared with the rate after the implementation of Megan’s Law.

“When we tell ourselves that these registries are going to be effective, or that they are going to protect children, or they are going to protect the community,” said Carissa Hessick, University of North Carolina School of Law professor. “I think we need to dig behind that and figure out what that means.”

Hessick said recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed just five percent of repeat sex offenders released from prison go on to commit new crimes within five years.  Evidence is building for the argument that sex offenders have low recidivism rates, Hessick added.

“The public discussion surrounding sex offenders doesn’t seem to match up very well with the social science evidence we have about sex offenders and recidivism,” Hessick told The Sentinel. “It’s not surprising the policies we’ve adopted aren’t achieving their goals since they don’t seem to have been based on complete or accurate information.”

Wrongfully convicted of a sex crime cleared after eight years

Italy’s rehabilitation method: public interaction

Court aids sex offenders seeking early parole


 

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