April 9 COLORADO: Where will we keep them? Each year, the prosecutors and judges of Colorado send about 1,000 people to prison. And each year, the Colorado Department of Corrections takes up a bigger slice of the state's budget - from 2.8 % 20 years ago to 8.6 % last year. Despite adding 10,523 state prison beds and 4,000 private prison beds since 1985, the system is in crisis. Prisons are running out of beds. State budget analysts have said the system could be short of space for 1,428 inmates by the 2007-2008 fiscal year. Prison officials plan to double-bunk inmates in 540 cells and put an additional 1,100 beds in unused space in some prisons - 840 of them in private facilities. The DOC also is reviewing 5 bids from private companies to house 3,000 inmates and estimates it will need $380 million in construction projects over 5 years. Even with those measures, analysts say Colorado will be seeking space again if incarceration trends continue and the inmate population - 21,407 including those in Community Corrections - increases to the projected 27,000 by 2011. Tough sentencing laws, mandatory prison terms and a parole system that releases few inmates early have kept people behind bars for longer, and the state budget shortfalls of recent years stopped planned construction of several new prisons and expansions. Now, some wonder if Colorado can build itself out of its prison crisis. "This could very well develop into a problem that destroys our ability to properly fund higher education and roads," said state Rep. Bernie Buescher, a Democrat from Grand Junction who sits on the Joint Budget Committee. "At a certain point, things have to moderate. Either that, or half of us are in prison and half of us are supervising those in prison." 20 years ago, the state spent $57 million on prisons. Colorado spent $591 million last year, and that could increase to $643.8 million next fiscal year. To keep up with incarcerations spurred by tough 1980s sentencing laws, lawmakers in the 1990s approved about one new prison or major expansion a year. When the economy turned sour in 2001 and the state faced major budget shortfalls, new prison construction halted. But new inmates kept coming - between 60 and 100 a month, and, despite warnings from prison officials and the Joint Budget Committee, nothing was done. "I don't think anybody should be surprised," said Christie Donner, director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, which lobbies against prison expansion in favor of sentencing reform. "There has been a very substantial growth rate, an alarming growth rate, and you haven't seen any effort to address it." DOC officials say the courts determine the inmate population, and there is little they can do about it. "We don't control our front door or our back door," said Gary Golder, the DOC's director of prisons. "We end up with whatever we're sent." DOC requests for prison construction to house 2,061 beds between 2000 and 2004 were denied. Money for a 948-bed expansion of Colorado State Penitentiary in Caon City was approved in 2003, but it was delayed by a lawsuit over funding and is not expected to open until 2009. "We're told what we are funded for, and we deal with it as best we can," Golder said. At the El Paso County jail, Cmdr. Paula Presley is closely watching the DOCs space crisis. Even with a recent addition at the county jail, the population typically hovers close to the 1,599 capacity. When the DOC can't find space for a jail inmate who has been sentenced to prison, the inmate joins the jail backlog. Last year, the Sheriff's Office sent 662 inmates on backlog to other county jails. "When we are crowded at this level, it definitely has an impact," said Presley, who runs the jail. The state recently raised the amount it reimburses counties to $48.96 a day for inmates on backlog - it had been $47.42 - but the cost to hold them can be $3 to $13 a day more than that, meaning the Sheriff's Office spent $116,000 to $377,000 last year holding inmates without reimbursement. For some smaller counties, the daily cost of holding an inmate is $80 or more, but the reimbursement is the same. Statewide, the average daily backlog last year was 721, up from 393 5 years earlier. Sheriffs worry that, if the DOC space crisis deepens, they will pay the price. "There's really no room in the county jails to pick up any of the overflow from the state," said George Epp, former Boulder County sheriff and current executive director of the County Sheriffs of Colorado Inc. "We're very concerned," Epp said. "We're looking at our options." Presley said the Sheriff's Office in the past has gone to judges and sought early release of inmates because of crowding, and may have to do so again if the backlog worsens. On Oct. 18, 2002, inmate Edward Montour strolled up to an officer in the cafeteria at the Limon Correctional Facility. "I just took Autobee down," Montour, a convicted child murderer, told the officer, according to DOC records. "Do you want to cuff me now or wait?" In the adjacent kitchen, Sgt. Eric Autobee lay unconscious on the floor, bleeding from his head, nose and mouth. The 4-foot-long ladle Montour beat him with was on a table next to him. Autobee later died. It was the 1st killing of a Colorado prison guard in 72 years. Montour told investigators he did it to impress other inmates, according to DOC documents. He is now on death row. Some, including Autobees parents, blame a prison system that was forced to cut costs. In an unrelated labor appeal to the state personnel board in 2003 by an officer disciplined at the prison, an administrative law judge wrote there had been several physical and sexual assaults on prison staff, there were 19 vacancies for correctional officers and others were working 12 hours at a time to fill the gap. The DOC cut $21 million from its fiscal year 2002-03 budget, and there were 450 vacant positions systemwide when Autobee died. The prison system faced $54 million in cuts during the economic downturn. But inmates kept coming in, and overall spending by the DOC, though it decreased in 2002, went up every other year, from $497.8 million in 2002-03 to $591.2 million last year. By comparison, the Department of Transportation's budget decreased $161.5 million between 2002-03 and 2005-06. The Department of Human Services - which runs mental health and substance-abuse programs meant to keep people out of prison - lost $50.8 million in the same period. Criminal justice reform advocates say if Colorado continues to put more people behind bars and build more cells, corrections will eat up even more of the state's budget. "You can keep doing it, but you're getting minimal margin of return," said Jon Caldara, president of the conservative Independence Institute. "Sooner or later, Colorado will be forced to have an unpleasant discussion on mandatory sentencing," Caldara said. "Instead of having the difficult conversation, we end up pushing for more taxes." WHAT THEYRE SAYING "This could very well develop into a problem that destroys our ability to properly fund higher education and roads." STATE REP. BERNIE BUESCHER - a Democrat from Grand Junction who sits on the Joint Budget Committee "There has been a very substantial growth rate, an alarming growth rate, and you haven't seen any effort to address it." CHRISTIE DONNER - director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition "Sooner or later, Colorado will be forced to have an unpleasant discussion on mandatory sentencing." JON CALDARA - president of the conservative Independence Institute (source: The Gazette) CALIFORNIA: Victims of the Justice System----A conference at UCLA brings together the state's wrongly convicted, to share their experiences and push for legal changes. One by one they ascended the stage and introduced themselves, each an embodiment of the legal system's fallibility in California. "My name is Herman Atkins," a tall ponytailed man said. "The state of California stole 12 years of my life for a rape and robbery I did not commit in Riverside." "Good morning, my name is Gloria Killian," a well-spoken middle-aged woman said. "The state stole 22 years of my life for a robbery and murder I did not commit in Sacramento." "Good morning. My name is Ken Marsh," a third speaker said. "The state took 21 years of my life for a murder I did not commit in San Diego in 1983." 17 people in all reiterated the point to a packed ballroom at UCLA on Saturday: that although they now were free, countless other innocent people are imprisoned in the state. Atkins, Killian, Marsh and the others were wrongfully convicted and cleared years later. They took part in the event, called "The Faces of Wrongful Conviction," to dramatize the flaws in the state's criminal justice system. The gathering was sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union, Death Penalty Focus, Amnesty International and others. It came as a state Senate-created commission is beginning to study and review the criminal justice system in California, with a particular focus on the causes of wrongful convictions and possible disparities in how death sentences are meted out. Former California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, chairman of the commission; San Francisco attorney Jon Streeter, the vice chairman; and Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, the commission's executive director, all were in attendance Saturday. "We realize the system is imperfect," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a pro law-enforcement organization in Sacramento, in a telephone interview. If the commission comes up with needed reforms, that will be a public benefit, he said. Scheidegger added, however, that he thought individuals sentenced to long terms, rather than the death penalty, were "more vulnerable" to errors in their cases, because death row inmates are entitled to more legal assistance after a conviction. After identifying themselves and the duration of their time behind bars, each participant in Saturday's ceremony hung handcuffs on a wall on the stage and then 10 more pairs on behalf of so-called exonerees unable to attend the 2-day conference. As the half-hour event, the first of its kind in California, concluded, the crowd gave the group of former inmates a prolonged standing ovation. The speakers were a varied group. A few, such as Atkins, were cleared as a result of DNA evidence discovered after their trials. But most - including Killian and Marsh - gained their freedom after even longer legal battles in which there was no magic bullet like DNA. There were whites, African Americans, Latinos, an Asian American and a Native American. They had come from as far south as San Diego and as far north as Yreka. All but Killian were male. They had served as little as 1 year - Bobby Herrera, for assault in Santa Clara County - and as much as 24 years - Thomas Goldstein, for murder in Long Beach. 2 had been on death row. Summaries of their cases indicate they were victims of such problems as inaccurate eyewitness identifications, unreliable jailhouse informants, the failure of police and prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence and faulty forensics. More than 200 people have been wrongfully convicted in California since 1989, said Jeffrey Chin, assistant director of the Innocence Project at California Western School of Law in San Diego, one of the conference sponsors. That's 1 a month, said state Sen. Gloria Romero, (D-Los Angeles), who opened the conference. Romero has been pushing for a death penalty moratorium, but it is an uphill battle. "According to the latest Field Poll, 63% of Californians support the death penalty," she said. "We have work to do." Natasha Minsker of the ACLU said the purpose of the conference was twofold: to draw attention to "wrongful convictions and to strategize solutions for much-needed change." Stanford University law professor Lawrence Marshall, who played a key role in getting several innocent men off death row in Illinois when he was teaching in that state in the 1990s, called Saturday's event "truly momentous." "It's time for California to be humbled by its capacity for error" in its criminal justice system, he said. In November 1998, Marshall organized the first national conference of death row exonerees at Northwestern Law School. That event is believed to have set the stage for a death penalty moratorium in Illinois and major changes in the system there. More broadly, it awakened Americans to the realization that innocent people had been sent to death rows across the country. Although Saturday's conference included several death penalty-related panels, the gathering at UCLA had a broader focus, particularly since most of the California exonerees had been serving long sentences rather than facing execution. California has more individuals - at least 28,000 - serving life sentences than any other state. Throughout the day, the exonerees shared experiences among themselves and with the wider audience. Most were upbeat, but their suffering was obvious. Marsh, for instance, developed such severe separation anxiety during his years away from his wife, Brenda, that he cannot bear to be apart from her, even for a few moments to take a group photograph with the others wrongfully convicted. She accompanied him in the photo and also onstage. He introduced her by saying she had been in her own prison for the 21 years he was behind bars. Despite losing many years of their lives, several of the exonerees said in interviews that they were not bitter. "Bitterness and anger will destroy you," said Killian, who was a law student when a man involved in a Sacramento murder made up a story that she had masterminded the killing. Now 59, Killian has formed a nonprofit organization, Action Committee for Women in Prison, based in Pasadena. She lives with Joyce Ride, the mother of former astronaut Sally Ride, who spent thousands of dollars of her own money to hire an investigator and an appellate lawyer to look into Killian's case after visiting her in prison and becoming convinced of her innocence. "My focus," Killian said, "is on the women I left behind and the changes I can effect to ensure that this does not happen to other people." (source: Los Angeles Times) FLORIDA/JAMAICA----re: foreign national on death row Ja will not interfere in US death row case ? A-G ATTORNEY-GENERAL A.J. Nicholson has hit back at claims that the Government has neglected a Jamaican awaiting the death penalty in Florida. Senator Nicholson said it would be inappropriate for the Government to apply pressure, political or otherwise, on the Governor of Florida regarding the case. Jamaica, he noted, would not interfere in the judicial process of the United States. Lance Armstrong was sentenced to death by lethal injection for murdering a Florida policeman in 1990, but hopes to avoid this fate with his clemency hearing on April 14, to be held in the Broward County Circuit Court in that state. In an article published in last week's Sunday Gleaner, Mr. Armstrong's lawyer, David Rowe, said the Jamaican Government was his client's only hope for clemency, but accused the Jamaican consulate in Miami of ignoring his requests for support and failing to visit him during his 16 years of imprisonment. NOT TRUE "This is simply not true," responded Mr. Nicholson in a letter to the newspaper. He said that the consulate had visited Mr. Armstrong on February 15 in response to a request from his mother, and that previously, he had made no requests for support. "The Jamaican Government sympathises with Mr. Armstrong and his family and will provide any assistance that it can in supporting Mr. Armstrong as he prepares for his upcoming clemency hearing," pledged the Attorney-General. CAN ONLY PROVIDE 'GENERAL' SUPPORT "It can only provide general support to Mr. Armstrong through its consulate in Miami to ensure that Mr. Armstrong's general rights are protected and that his reasonable requests are addressed," he added. The clemency hearing will not accept any possible new evidence, but decide only whether there are mitigating circumstances which may justify removing Armstrong from death row. The threshold for any such decision, however, will be very high, particularly because Armstrong was found guilty of killing a police officer. Armstrong has always maintained he did not shoot dead Broward Sheriff's Deputy John Greeney. At 2 a.m., on February 17, 1990, Armstrong and another man, Ercely Wayne Coleman, with whom he worked, entered a Church's Fried Chicken restaurant. A robbery and shoot-out with the police ensued, during which officer Greeney was shot dead. Armstrong has always maintained that he was never part of the robbery, but was framed. Nevertheless, he was convicted and sentenced to die for the murder in 1991. The death sentence was thrown out on a technicality in 1993, but was later reinstated. (source: Jamaica Gleaner)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----COLO., CALIF., FLA.
Rick Halperin Sun, 9 Apr 2006 16:14:29 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
