Alabama Inmate's Family Sues After Son Beaten To Death

MONTGOMERY, Ala. A former Alabama prison supervisor was behind bars after a jury convicted him Tuesday of fatally beating an inmate and conspiring to cover it up. The federal court jury of eight women and four men returned guilty verdicts against former corrections Lt. Michael Smith. The verdicts followed six days of testimony about the fatal beating of inmate Rocrast Mack at a state prison in southeast Alabama. Mack's family wept while listening to the jury's verdict. "Justice has been served for my son," Mack's father, Larry Mack, said outside the courtroom. Smith, 38, of Auburn was convicted of violating Mack's constitutional rights by fatally beating him, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He faces up to life in prison. U.S. District Judge Myron Thomson ordered him taken into custody immediately and did not set a sentencing date. Mack was led out of the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back. Two other former officers at the Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton — Scottie Glenn and Matthew Davidson — have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Another former officer, Joseph Sanders, is scheduled for trial July 8. The state Department of Corrections has had cases before where officers were fired or disciplined for abusing inmates, but the charges in Mack's death were unprecedented. The department sought an investigation after an autopsy on Mack raised questions about Ventress employees' statements that Mack jumped on a female officer and got injured when he continued to resist officers trying to subdue him. After the verdict, Corrections Commissioner Kim Thomas said, "This type of conduct is aberrant." He said the verdict makes clear to correctional officers everywhere "that there are limits to their power and authority" and that they should listen closely to their training about when they can use force. Mack, 24, was serving a 20-year sentence for a drug conviction from Montgomery County when he was beaten at the medium-security prison on Aug. 4, 2010. Testimony showed a female officer hit Mack first when she caught him inappropriately touching himself in his bunk. Mack hit her back, and the officer radioed for help, saying an inmate jumped on her. Smith, the shift supervisor, and other officers responded and during the next hour, the 5-foot-11, 160-pound Mack was hit repeatedly by officers. Witnesses said Smith was angry over the female officer suffering a bloody lip, and he hit, kicked and stomped on Mack's head to send a message to other inmates that they had better not touch one of his officers. Mack died the next morning at a Montgomery hospital with bruises covering his body, his front teeth knocked out, and his brain swollen from the injuries. The defense argued that Smith didn't know his officer had struck Mack first and he was trying to maintain order in a prison overcrowded with 1,633 inmates and only 18 guards on duty. The defense said so many officers hit Mack that it was impossible to know who struck the fatal blow. Kewonda King, the mother of Mack's 5-year-old son, joined Mack's family outside the courthouse to reflect on the verdict. "It lifts a weight off my heart," she said. But she said her son, Rocrast Mack Jr., still doesn't understand after nearly three years that his father is dead. "He used to visit his daddy in jail, and he still asks me to take him to jail to see his daddy," she said. Mack's family sued the state after his death and reached a $900,000 settlement, with $440,000 of it going to his son http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Ex-supervisor-found-guilty-in-Ala-inmate-death-4620876.php

13 Texas prisoners died from heatstroke since 2007

Lawsuit Claims Texas Prison Protects Weapons, Not Prisoners WASHINGTON 6/19/2013 Lawsuit Claims Texas Prison Protects Weapons, Not Prisoners From Extreme Temperatures: 13 Die Of Heatstroke As many as 13 Texas prisoners died from heatstroke since 2007 according to a lawsuit that questions how administrators decided to allocate the much-valued commodity of conditioned air in oppressive Texas heat. Courthouse News Service has the story but buries the lede, which is this: [Texas Department of Criminal Justice] even air-conditions the armory at the prison because it considers possible damage to its weaponry more important than possible, or even likely, death to the inmate population. A little overdramatic perhaps. And of course we’re still in the allegation-making phase of this lawsuit. But still, wow. More from the report: In their complaint, the three families say they “bring this lawsuit to prevent more men from dying of heat stroke in the brutally hot TDCJ Gurney Unit and seek redress for their relatives who perished at the Gurney Unit.” … In the complaint about the three dead men, the families say: “Like most other TDCJ units, the Gurney Unit inmate living areas are not air conditioned, and apparent indoor temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees. These temperatures last late into the night, providing no relief to prisoners. Even early in the morning, indoor apparent temperatures are sweltering. “As each of the defendants named individually have long known and discussed internally at high-level TDCJ and UTMB leadership meetings well before 2011, temperatures this elevated cause the human body to shut down. As the body can no longer cool itself, body systems fail. If there is no immediate intervention, extreme temperatures will cause death.” Defendant Robert Eason was the TDCJ’s regional director for its Gurney Unit when the inmates died, according to the complaint. “Even though ten men died of heat stroke in 2011 – and eight of them died in his ‘region’ – Eason did not consider these deaths a serious problem. In fact, in the face of these deaths, he believed TDCJ was doing a ‘wonderful job’ and ‘[didn't] have a problem with heat-related deaths,’” the complaint states. “Eason’s direct supervisors, [Brad] Livingston, [TDCJ Correctional Institutions Division Director Rick] Thaler and [Thaler's Deputy Director William] Stephens, were similarly unconcerned. The deaths of prisoners from heat stroke at the Gurney Unit and system wide were regularly discussed at meetings Thaler and Stephens held with their deputies, including Eason. “Even though the existing policies were obviously inadequate, Thaler, Stephens, and Eason continued to follow the same deadly course of conduct. Air conditioning the Gurney Unit or other prisons was never even discussed. Nor was moving individuals with heat-sensitive medical conditions or disabilities to air-conditioned prisons discussed or implemented.” The TDCJ officials were also keenly aware that certain prisoners should not be in the heat, the families say. “It was well known to TDCJ and UTMB leadership that people with certain medical conditions, like diabetes or hypertension, or who take certain medications, like psychotropics or diuretics, are much more vulnerable to extreme temperatures. Their medical conditions prevent their bodies from regulating their temperature, putting them at much greater risk of death,” the families say in the complaint. Each of the four inmates had been prescribed pyschotropics or diuretics before their deaths, according to a chart in the complaints. Makes you happy to have air conditioning, eh? Another more important question: Does it concern you that prison administrators were apparently more willing to spend taxpayer dollars on air conditioning an armory filled with weapons than a prison filled with human beings? If the alleged claims turn out to be true, it should. ——— Follow me on Twitter @ssttrroouudd http://www.forbes.com/sites/mattstroud/2013/06/19/lawsuit-lack-of-air-conditioning-texas-prisons/

Police Officer Ronald Vanrossum as a Rapist}Friendly Fire The Good, the Bad and the Corrupt,

Posted: 12/8/2003 10:14:37 AM Ex-cop, SBPD in conflict By GINA TENORIO, Staff Writer SAN BERNARDINO - It has been a long journey for former San Bernardino police Officer Stephen K. Peach and the Police Department. Throughout this year, Peach and the police have traded accusations of lying and misconduct that ended with Peach's termination in September. He is appealing the decision. Peach also is watching closely to see if his recently released self-published book, Friendly Fire The Good, the Bad and the Corrupt," will have an impact. Published by 1st Books, it claims to reveal secrets the department has tried to hide. "I just decided this was one of the only ways to do this," Peach said. "Society as a whole has lost respect for police officers. Some think the police are no better than criminals." He hopes the book shines a spotlight on the department and forces change, he said. "If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone," he said. Police Chief Garrett Zimmon declined to comment on the case or the book, saying he couldn't because it was a personnel matter and because an appeal is pending. In the book, Peach details the start of what he claims was the downward spiral of his service with the department and the end of his dream. A native of Great Britain, Peach said he was hired Jan. 5, 1991. http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/literature/books_in_PDF/Peach%20S.-%20Police%20Corruption.pdf Things were good for years, he said. But he began to take issue with some officers' behavior. Among those issues was what Peach described as the narcotics team's penchant for beating people up. He began to speak up at briefings and make enemies, he said. The book describes a 1998 shooting during which, he writes, he was shot by a supervising officer while serving a search warrant on Doug Domino, another former officer who also took legal action against the department. "So as this was warrant speed, as soon as the door swung open I was expecting to see (another officer) run into my field of view and I would follow his lead, but nothing happened, he didn't move," the book reads. "I even stopped looking at the potential threat from inside the residence to look at (the other officer) to see why he wasn't running into the doorway and as I looked towards him I was shot in my upper right leg, I did not know where the bullet came from and assumed that Domino had fired from inside the residence and the bullet had gone through the stucco wall prior to entering my leg. The gunshot did not seem loud at all and there wasn't a great deal of pain but I could see that the wound was very serious." He said the ordeal left him without a portion of his leg muscle and contributed to the end of his career. But the real collapse began after he tried to expose officer Ronald Vanrossum as a rapist, he said. Vanrossum was sentenced in October to 34 years in state prison on charges of rape, sexual battery and oral copulation by threat of authority to arrest. "An old informant had told me she'd been raped by Vanrossum," he said. Yet when he tried to tell his supervisor, nothing was done, he said. When he refused to drop the issue, the department began investigating him, he said. Law-enforcement officials paint a different picture of the facts behind Peach's termination in a civil-service board's findings report provided by the City Attorney's Office. His dismissal was a result of a sexual affair Peach had with Michelle Roan, a felon and prostitute, the report said. Officials accused Peach of lying to investigators about the relationship and a number of letters he allegedly wrote to Roan at the state prison in Chowchilla in 2001 and 2002. The documents state that Peach's actions were a violation of the department's core values. There is only one arrest which could be traced in any way to any contact that Peach had with Roan." Investigators denied that Roan was Peach's informant and said Peach was often vague with other officers about her identity. An excerpt from one of the letters he allegedly wrote to Roan in prison states: "So I've got to wait until Oct. '02 hopefully it will go by quickly and I'll come and visit you wherever you end up." Peach insisted the letters were taken out of context and were written to a source in a manner that would not identify her to friends or officials as being an informant, he said. "She had told me she had something important to tell me," Peach said. "I wanted to know what she had to say. I'd always been known to have informants."

5 Guards Beat Handcuffed Inmate

Judge says witnesses, evidence disagree in inmate beating case prisonmovement.wordpress.com The investigation concluded that five prison guards pinned down, kicked and stomped a handcuffed inmate so violently that one nearby onlooker wept, closed her eyes and began to pray. By Jon Ortiz A...

Texas Jailers Ran a 'Rape Camp' Behind Bars,

http://www.alternet.org/rape-texas-jail Texas Jailers Ran a 'Rape Camp' Behind Bars, Claim Two Women www.alternet.org This is unbelievable.

Records Show Excessive Use of Force at Colorado Supermax

Records Show Excessive Use of Force at Colorado Supermax by Lisa Dawson Records kept by the Colorado Department of Corrections show 61 instances from March 1, 2012 to March 1 of this year of corrections officers using force on men held at the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP), where prisoners are held in administrative segregation on lockdown for 23 hours a day. The "use of force" log, obtained by Denver's Westword, documents varying levels of physical contact used in each incident, some of which required mild force, and others which prison officials deemed it necessary to use brutal control tactics, including restraint chairs and pepper spray. This story comes from Alan Prendergast, who writes for Westword and has reported on Colorado prisons for years: At Colorado's state supermax prison, inmates get into confrontations with guards over food, hygiene, privileges, a refusal to "cuff up" or whatever out of boredom, mental illness or plain orneriness. Some claim to be provoked by staff. Whatever the reason, it's a contest the prisoner is going to lose every time. Like many prisons throughout Colorado and across the nation, people with mental illness compose a large part of the population at CSP. Prendergast writes on the potential impact of solitary confinement on people with mental illness: Although proponents of supermax prisons claim that they act as a deterrent to violence elsewhere in the corrections systems, the facilities also become repositories of "problem" inmates, whose failure to follow the rules tends to prolong their stay in solitary confinement and possibly exacerbate any preexisting mental problems. (As we've previously reported, roughly a third of CSP inmates have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness.) http://solitarywatch.com/2013/06/15/records-show-excessive-use-of-force-at-colorado-supermax/