The Prison Thread

[Nat]

Rachel Maddow Exposing private prisons role in Arizona's 'Papers Please' roots



I think this is an interesting twist on the Arizona law. It takes her a while to get there, but half-way through she finally gets to it (minute 6).
and a follow-up:

[Nat]

Based in central Austin, the Inside Books Project (IBP) is an all volunteer, non-profit organization sending free books and educational materials to people in prison in the state of Texas. It is the only project in the state offering this vital resource to Texas' prisoner population, which now exceeds 171,790.

[Medusa]

There's a pretty good book called "Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man's Prison".
The writer talks about his time in prison and is now a human rights advocate due to all of the things he endured. Powerful stuff.

[SuperFemme]

I don't think that the population has ANY idea as to what it is like to be in prison in America.

Which is frightening considering the rate at which we fill up our prisons.

I do think we need to be clear on one thing. Prison is NOT about rehabilitation. The programs available that even take a small crack at rehabilitation are few and far between.

[The_Lady_Snow]

[Nat]

[Daywalker]

I have a share:


http://www.sirdaywalker.com/SendthePainBelow_2009.pdf


Might wanna bookmark it ~ it's a long long story.


But the story is a non-fiction.
The story...is mine.

[IrishGrrl]

Originally Posted by Nat

Based in central Austin, the Inside Books Project (IBP) is an all volunteer, non-profit organization sending free books and educational materials to people in prison in the state of Texas. It is the only project in the state offering this vital resource to Texas' prisoner population, which now exceeds 171,790.

When I get back from my trip next week I will donate to this project. I think often about how books literally saved my life, my mental state, and taught me so many things. Mostly, they have been an escape. I think at the very least, no matter what someone's crime, they are entitled to books.

Irish

Thanks for this video!

[Nat]

Help Free the Scott Sisters <-- click to sign petition

Read the following petition to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, and add your name on the form to your right
September 14, 2010

Dear Governor Barbour,

Jamie and Gladys Scott – the “Scott Sisters” – have been incarcerated in Mississippi for the last 15 years for an armed robbery which, according to court testimony, yielded $11. They have consistently denied involvement in the crime. Although neither of the Scott Sisters had a prior criminal record, they were each sentenced to an extraordinary double life sentence.

The presiding judge in their trial, Judge Marcus Gordon, has a history of racially biased rulings, including granting bail to the KKK murderer of the three civil rights workers: Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.

Furthermore, Jamie Scott now has lost renal function in of her kidneys and cannot survive without a transplant. She has suffered repeated infections and been hospitalized due to unsanitary prison conditions. The Department of Corrections will not allow tests for kidney compatibility even though numerous volunteers have come forward.

Given these serious concerns, we ask that you:

1) Grant a pardon or commute the sentences of Jamie and Gladys Scott to time served, and

2) Grant Jamie Scott a “compassionate medical release” given the serious medical condition she is facing.

There is no greater form of violence than injustice. Please review this case and bring justice to the Scott Sisters who have suffered excessive incarceration for a crime in which their participation is questionable.

[Nat]

Miss. judge tosses out 31-year-old rape, murder convictions

HATTIESBURG — Two men imprisoned since 1979 for a rape and murder that DNA evidence now shows was committed by someone else are free men today.

Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich this morning threw out the convictions of Phillip Bivens and Bobby Ray Dixon and ordered evidence be presented to a grand jury on Andrew Harris, whose DNA matches that of evidence from the crime scene. Harris already is serving a life sentence at the State Penitentiary in Parchman for another rape in Forrest County two years after Eva Gail Patterson was raped and murdered on March 4, 1979.

“Thank God, thank God,” Bivens said after Helfrich’s ruling.

Dixon, 53, who is out on medical release given inmates who have a terminal illness, said, “It feels good. It feels real good. I thank God. I feel blessed.”

Dixon has advanced lung cancer and a brain tumor and is undergoing chemotherapy.

The third man convicted of the crime, Larry Ruffin, died in prison in 2002.

Helfrich said he will take up the posthumous exoneration of Ruffin after the grand jury meets.

He appointed District Attorney Jon Mark Weathers as special prosecutor in this case. Weathers has been investigating Harris ever since he found out the DNA at the crime scene matched Harris.

The Innocence Project pushed for the DNA tests that ended up clearing Ruffin, Dixon and Bivens in Patterson’s rape and murder.

Ruffin’s case is the first time in Mississippi and the second time nationally that DNA has cleared an inmate posthumously, according to the Innocence Project. The first was last year in Texas when DNA tests cleared Tim Cole, who died in 1999, of the 1985 rape of a Texas Tech University student.

Dixon and Bivens had pleaded guilty and fingered Ruffin as the rapist after allegedly being beaten.

Of the 259 DNA exonerations since 1989, 63 have involved false confessions and 19 have involved false guilty pleas, according to statistics kept by the Innocence Project.


Phillip Bivens (left) is hugged by Teresa Strickland , the sister of Larry Ruffin, after Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich ordered the release of Phillip Bivens and Bobby Ray Dixon, and said the two will be fully exonerated pending a presentation of DNA evidence to a grand jury. (Matt Bush/Hattiesburg American)


Dixon (George Clark/Hattiesburg American)

[Nat]

Lawyers for relatives of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed for the 1991 arson murder of his three young daughters in Corsicana, on Friday petitioned a judge in Travis County to hear evidence and determine whether Willingham was wrongly convicted.

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Willingham’s execution has caught national attention for the specter that Texas may have killed an innocent man. Several arson experts in recent years have rejected the science that the investigators who testified at Willingham’s trial used to determine that the fire that killed his daughters was intentionally set.

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Willingham, above right, was convicted of murder in 1992 in the deaths of his children —1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron and 2-year-old Amber — who died of smoke inhalation after a fire at the family’s house in Corsicana, about 55 miles northeast of Waco.

He maintained his innocence until his 2004 execution.

Willingham’s lawyers have claimed that local and state fire investigators relied on faulty scientific methods in concluding that the fire at Willingham’s house had been intentionally set.

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Willingham was executed during (Governor) Perry’s tenure (February 16, 2004) and Perry was accused of playing politics with the case last year when he replaced three members of the nine-member Texas Commission on Forensic Science, including the chairman, Austin defense lawyer Sam Bassett. The members, whose terms had expired, were replaced just days before the commission had been scheduled to hear the findings of the expert they had hired to evaluate the case. That presentation was postponed indefinitely.

[Nat]

Originally Posted by Nat

Lawyers for relatives of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed for the 1991 arson murder of his three young daughters in Corsicana, on Friday petitioned a judge in Travis County to hear evidence and determine whether Willingham was wrongly convicted.

---------------

Willingham’s execution has caught national attention for the specter that Texas may have killed an innocent man. Several arson experts in recent years have rejected the science that the investigators who testified at Willingham’s trial used to determine that the fire that killed his daughters was intentionally set.

-------------

Willingham, above right, was convicted of murder in 1992 in the deaths of his children —1-year-old twins Karmon and Kameron and 2-year-old Amber — who died of smoke inhalation after a fire at the family’s house in Corsicana, about 55 miles northeast of Waco.

He maintained his innocence until his 2004 execution.

Willingham’s lawyers have claimed that local and state fire investigators relied on faulty scientific methods in concluding that the fire at Willingham’s house had been intentionally set.

-----------------

Willingham was executed during (Governor) Perry’s tenure (February 16, 2004) and Perry was accused of playing politics with the case last year when he replaced three members of the nine-member Texas Commission on Forensic Science, including the chairman, Austin defense lawyer Sam Bassett. The members, whose terms had expired, were replaced just days before the commission had been scheduled to hear the findings of the expert they had hired to evaluate the case. That presentation was postponed indefinitely.

a follow-up on this - I read a while back that his wife is saying he confessed to her that he'd done it.