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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:21:05 GMT -5
Free Speech Radio News: Pacifica Radio Network - Friday, December 27, 2002 Free Speech for Prisoners (10 minutes into the program, 3:59 length) - DOWNLOAD MP3 of the program (About 13MB) " Prisoner's rights advocates are praising a recent ruling that has temporarily put a stop to an Arizona law that prohibits prisoners from having their names posted on websites. The groups contend the law is a violation of prisoners' constitutional right for free speech. For now, a federal judge agrees. More on the story from Leslie George." Dave Parkinson is speaking from the CCADP. Listen : www.fsrn.org/news/audio/20021227b.mp3********************* SAN DIEGO - CBS news Nov 20, 2002 5pm News KFMB-TV 8 CBS San Diego, California did a story focusing on the CCADP's California Death Row prisoner webpages and penpal requests. We have not seen this coverage. ********************************** Prisoners of Advocacy - ACLU Lawsuit Pits First Amendment Rights Against Victims' Rights and Prison Security By Bryan Robinson - ABCnews.com July 30 — Arizona prisoners hope they do not appear on various advocacy groups' Web sites, or else they may be charged with a crime or have more time added to their sentences. This has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to file a federal lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections, alleging that the state law barring prisoners from communicating with the Web sites of advocacy groups violates the First Amendment rights of both the inmates and the organizations that want to tell their story. The law, adopted by Arizona in 2000, prohibits inmates from communicating with Internet service providers, remote computer services and Web sites, either directly or through other parties. "It's really a matter of both infringing on both the First Amendment rights of the prisoners and the groups," said David Fathi of the ACLU National Prison Project. "The Corrections Department has the right to prevent prisoners from communicating with groups who want to put these prisoners on their sites. Organizations have been told that any mail sent to prisoners will be confiscated. So the First Amendment rights of both have been heavily burdened." However, Arizona prison officials say the issues surrounding the law involve more than freedom of speech. The law is intended to ensure both prison security and the rights of victims' families who feel violated by prisoners' presence on Web sites. Advocating Free Speech — For Everyone Under the law, Arizona inmates and their stories are not allowed to appear on sites outside the one maintained by the Department of Corrections. And if officials find stories about inmates posted on outside sites, they can threaten the prisoners with punishment, even if they never initiated contacted with their advocates. "It is extraordinary that Arizona prison officials believe they can tell international groups opposed to the death penalty what they can and cannot say online about prisoners in Arizona," said Eleanor Eisenberg, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona. "It is equally absurd that this law punishes prisoners even when they are not responsible for the posting of information about them on these outside Web sites." The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three groups — Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Stop Prisoner Rape. Before the prisoner-internet law was adopted, Arizona inmates were not allowed to have direct computer access to the outside world. Plaintiff lawyers said the goal of the lawsuit is not give direct computer access to prisoners and opportunities to conduct or plan crimes in cyberspace. They are trying to preserve the right to freedom of expression of both inmates and the prisoner rights groups. "We're not talking about giving prisoners access to computers with a modem or anything like that. We're talking about their communicating with groups through letters, phone calls, or they're telling other parties to tell their story on the Web," said Fathi. "In the state's legislative history, it has not been an issue of prison security or maintaining prison security. There have been people out there who have been annoyed that prisoners have been able to get information about them out there, saying things like, "I need a lawyer' or 'I'm innocent' or even things such as 'I'm lonely. I need someone to talk to.' This is really about nothing more than the suppression of free speech." Preserving Victims’ Rights and Prison Security However, Arizona prison officials there is more to the law than alleged suppression of speech. The families of murder victims were horrified when they learned that their loved ones' killers has postings on the Web asking for pen pals and professing their innocence without revealing all the details of their crimes. Jennifer Johnson Lopez was disgusted when she found out that her father Roy Johnson's convicted killer, Beau Greene, appeared in a picture of a Web site searching for pen pals. Convicted killers are prohibited from contacting their victims' families in any way, and Roy Johnson's family, believing that Greene had violated their privacy, urged the Arizona state legislators to pass a law prohibiting other prisoners from telling what may be distorted versions of their stories. "The law started when the wife and daughter of the victim of a homicide came across a picture of her father's killer, Beau Greene, and he was talking about how he was such a great lover of cats," said Gary Phelps, chief of staff for the Arizona Department of Corrections. "They were very upset, and she [the daughter] felt that her privacy had been violated." Phelps also pointed out, despite the ACLU's arguments, that the law is also intended to buffer prison security. He recalled a 1997 foiled prison escape where Floyd Bennett Thornton Jr., a death row inmate, and his wife Rebecca were killed in a hail of gunfire. Thornton had enlisted his wife's help in his attempted escape as she fired a semiautomatic rifle at authorities before guards killed her and her husband near the prison fence. Phelps said that further investigation showed that inmates were using the Internet to solicit help in escape plans. "As we were investigating the incident we found that some inmates were using a very remote Internet access system to try to solicit help with escapes, escape routes, maps," he said. An Inmate’s Alleged ‘Catch-22’<br>Still, the ACLU argues that the Arizona law is too broad. Inmates, the federal complaint alleges, have received notices from officials who threaten to charge them with crimes or add time to their sentences if they do not tell the advocacy groups to remove their names from their sites. However, the prisoners, under the law, cannot contact the sites, leaving them in a no-win situation. "It's really a Catch-22," said Fathi. "The prisoners are told to contact the sites and get their name off the sites or risk being charged with a crime. But if they contact the sites, they are still violating the law." New York has a similar Internet prisoner access law forbidding inmates from receiving mail from third-party services. However, they are allowed to send mail to these services, as long as they disclose that they are prison inmates. Arizona prison officials, Phelps said, do their best to monitor traditional correspondence between inmates and the outside world, inspecting all their letters. However, they will do anything necessary to monitor non-traditional correspondence, especially if prison security is at risk. "It's an issue that faces this country, even as we try to track down and protect the nation from terrorists," Phelps said.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:21:29 GMT -5
July 21, 2002 - WFLA-TV News Channel 8 NBC Affiliate in Tampa, Florida
Internet Gives Death Row Inmates Forum JACKSONVILLE - Amos King, facing execution for the 1977 stabbing death of a woman, tells visitors to his Web site he was wrongly accused. ``I'm innocent of the charges I'm on death row for,'' King writes. ``I'm the victim of a frame-up.'' Several dozen Florida death row inmates have Web pages proclaiming their innocence and pleading for money and letters. Although some sites are created by friends and relatives, many are supported by people in other countries who oppose capital punishment. The Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty is behind many of the sites. Tracy Lamourie, co-founder and director of the organization, said it considers the death penalty a human rights issue and thinks death row inmates should have their say. ``In a lot of the cases, they probably have done some nasty things, but they don't deserve to be killed,'' Lamourie said. The group currently sponsors about 350 inmate Web pages. Inmates mail the information to the organization, which develops a Web site. In most states, inmates do not have Internet access. Lamourie said the purpose of the Web pages is to raise awareness of the death penalty, ``so that those in the U.S. become just as disgusted by the practice as those of us outside who look upon the death penalty in the way we look at slavery, at apartheid, at the way the mentally ill were treated a century ago.'' The site generates 100 to 200 e-mails a week, she said, some complimentary and some critical. Ted Hires, founder of the Justice Coalition, a victims' right group in Jacksonville, abhors the killers' Web sites. ``I can't believe that we would tolerate a convicted, cold-blooded killer having a Web site,'' he said. ``It inflicts cruel and unusual punishment on the victims' families.'' Debbie Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections, said inmates with Web pages are not violating any laws. ``There is nothing we can do to stop them,'' she said. King, who received a stay earlier this month, has a site thanks to a group of Europeans and Americans opposed to the death penalty, said Sissel Egeland of Denmark. ``We fear Amos King is innocent,'' Egeland said in an e- mail. ``The risk of executing the wrong man and creating new victims should go to the heart of [Gov.] Jeb Bush and convince him to be cautious.''
June 10, 2002 WAKA-TV 8 CBS Affiliate: Montgomery, Alabama - Lead story on 6pm and 10 pm news
Death Row Website 06/10/2002 John Matson The Canadian based website is home to the web pages of over 350 death row inmates. It's billed as the ultimate online death penalty resource. Built by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, it house pages for death row inmates from every state that uses the death penalty, including Alabama. Although the state's death row prisoners don't have access to the internet, they can still get their message across. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesperson Brian Corbett says: "They can be on their approved mailing list or friends or family of an inmate could correspond wit this group and feed them info." Many of they claim to be wrongly convicted, using the web to get their case heard by possibly millions around the world. Brian Corbett says: "They're using this group as their voice, going through somebody else to get a message or whatever it might be out there." Victims of Crime and Leniency director Miriam Shehane was shocked when she first saw the site. Miriam Shehane says: "They go through 13 appeals and then they're able to do this, I find it appalling." She's upset that the victim's side is not heard. Miriam Shehane says: "The thing that concerns me is taking their statements at face value." The Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty's website also lists up coming execution dates across the U-S. Ironically, Canada does not have a death penalty. The state of Alabama currently has 187 people awaiting execution on death row. Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:21:50 GMT -5
May 31, 2002, Houston's NBC affiliate, KPRC TV, did a 3 minute piece in their news regarding the CCADPs webpages for death row prisoners, particularly the page of Texas prisoner Lonnie Johnson. The piece included interviews with the mothers of the victims, who dispute Johnson's version of the killing, and his allegations that the killings stemmed from a racist attack against him. The piece included a segment from a phone interview with the CCADP's Tracy Lamourie.
Transcript of May 31, 2002 segment from KPRC-NBC Channel 2 In Houston's story on the CCADP's inmate webpages and Lonnie Johnson's in particular :
KPRC - ...on a webpage, looking for penpals, asking for money and telling their stories. But they're not hospital patients or the elderly. The web pages are for death row inmates, and two local mothers are outraged about one inmate's messages about their murdered sons."
Chris Schultz : And you have wounds that are there but they kind of scab over and its like they just ripped open again.
KPRC - For almost 12 years, Chris Schultz and Laura McCaffrey have been partners in pain. The two Magnolia area mothers lost their teenaged sons on the same day, by the same killer. Sean Fulk and Punkin McCaffrey were gunned down in 1990 after witnesses say they gave this man, Lonnie Johnson, a ride in their truck. Johnson was later sent to death row for the murders, but even from his cell, the mothers say, Johnson is still victimizing their sons.
Chris Schultz : When something like this comes up, you start thinking of all the horrible things they had to go through.
Laura McCaffrey : Then when you read all that, you start re-hashing it all in your mind, it brings it all back to you. And it hurts.
KPRC - What they say hurts is whats on this website. Its run by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty and features personal webpages for more than 350 US inmates on Death Row, and ninety from Texas, including Lonnie Johnson. Johnson's page calls the women's sons racist, and says he was wrongly sent to Death Row for fighting his lynching. They're the same arguments Johnson made throughout his trial, but its the fact that he's given this one sided forum that makes the mothers so upset.
Chris Schultz : There are facts that you can't dispute, and he's being allowed to say anything about these kids.
Tracy Lamourie (via phone) : We really need to have a forum where they can put forward their best argument."
KPRC - Websute founder Tracy Lamourie, lives in Toronto, and by phone, says that her volunteer website offers free pages to Johnson and others to show the faces of the death penalty. She says the pages are not meant to be objective or investigative, instead they use information mailed in by the inmates or their supporters and give them a place to tell their story.
Tracy Lamourie : We hate to, obviously, cause any more pain to any victims families..we are essentially attempting to open up the justice system to allow public scrutiny from all sides. And with all information.
KPRC - But these mothers say its bad information that does nothng but taint their sons memories. And they're fighting to get websites likes this one shut down.
KPRC ANCHOR : Website organizers say the inmates' arguments are usually nothing more than what they've said in legal appeals or even in media interviews. Texas inmates don't have access to the website, but can simply mail information to the Canadian group. Meanwhile Schultz and McCCaffrey are taking their concerns to legislators. CBC Radio, Vancouver, BC. Tracy Lamourie appeared on CBC radio Friday, April 26, 2002 as a guest on BC's Radio Almanac speaking about the case of Canadian William Sampson, detained in Saudi Arabia.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:22:09 GMT -5
University of Manitoba - UMFM 101.5 FM, Winnipeg, MN Tracy Lamourie appeared on UMFM 101.5 Wednesday April 17, 2002 as a guest on UMFM's HUMANITY UNDER SCOPE. WESH-TV, NewsChannel 2 NBC affiliate in Winter Park, Florida April 8, 2002 Huggins Faces New Trial In Larson Murder - Artwork, Poetry By Huggins Found On Internet POSTED: 9:50 a.m. EDT April 8, 2002 UPDATED: 10:20 a.m. EDT April 8, 2002 ORLANDO, Fla. -- Jim Larson is preparing to go through another capital murder trial of John Huggins, the man charged with kidnapping and killing his wife. A jury convicted Huggins (pictured, left) in the death of Carla Larson, a College Park woman who was kidnapped and murdered five years ago, but the conviction was set aside because prosecutors held back evidence which was potentially beneficial to the defense, officials said. Thanks to advocates in Canada, Huggins has been able to beg for pen pals and money, while publishing poetry and cynical cartoons about the prospect of being put to death. Despite that, Jim Larson is trying to remain focused on the next step in his long trek toward justice. "There's a part of my life when I'm sitting quietly and I think 'What's going to happen?" Larson said. Meanwhile, WESH NewsChannel 2 has discovered poetry and artwork created by Huggins posted on the Internet. Larson said it's not right. "It's sad this is the way it goes. I don't know how he has access to a computer in the first place," Larson said. A group called the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty provides death-row inmates like Huggins with free Web space. In a cartoon series, Mickey Mouse is put to death, not for justice, Huggins said, but for vengeance. Huggins claims he's an innocent man. "Do you think the prosecutor's office is going to let me come back from Death Row and show everyone in the media that they send innocent people to Death Row? No. They will use every trick they can get away with to save face," according to a Web posting by Huggins. In this new trial, Larson said he wants the jury to see his face, and those of Carla Larson's loved ones, devastated by her death and determined to see Huggins pay with his life. "I don't have much choice but to move on and go through this again. My whole family is going through it again," Larson said. Huggins' lawyer, Orange and Osceola County public defender Bob Wesley, said it's too close to trial to comment on his strategy, but Larson is confident the outcome will be another conviction and death sentence for Huggins.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:23:00 GMT -5
December 23, 2002 - Page A4 Toronto Star Dec. 23, 2002. 01:00 AM www.thestar.comFree speech win for Canadians They block ban on information about prisoners on Web Arizona statute violated broader rights, judge rules TRACEY TYLER - LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER - TORONTO STAR In what's being hailed as a victory for free speech, a Toronto couple has persuaded a United States federal judge to block a law that bans information about Arizona prisoners from the Internet.Inmates in Arizona faced severe punishments if information about them or their cases appeared on a Web site, sanctions that included the possibility of being charged with a misdemeanor and loss of good-behaviour credits. That is, until Tracy Lamourie and Dave Parkinson came along.The Toronto couple, founders of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, took the state to court, alleging the law was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.Citing fears of "irreparable harm" to the First Amendment, U.S. District Court Judge Earl H. Carroll issued an injunction last week halting enforcement of the law. Experts predict it will be struck down as unconstitutional at a full hearing expected early next year before the same judge."It's such a relief," said Lamourie, who says she and her spouse are long-time activists who started the coalition after Canadian citizen Stan Faulder was executed in Texas in 1999. "This is not just a prisoners' rights issue," Parkinson said. "This is a free person's issue and involves the right to operate a Web site outside ... Arizona."The law was enacted two years ago to stop inmates from communicating with an Internet service provider, but in practice its sweep was much broader. Arizona inmates have no access to computers, but were presumed to be behind details about their cases that appeared on the Web.State officials monitored the Internet and told prisoners whose names appeared on Web sites they had to get the information removed within three weeks or face criminal charges."They continued to do this and punish the prisoners, even if we notified them they (inmates) had nothing to do with the information on our Web site," Lamourie said.Civil rights and advocacy groups like the coalition faced the choice of deleting information on their Web sites or taking the risk that prisoners they tried to help would be punished, said the American Civil Liberties Union, which has represented the coalition in its battle against the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections.Carroll's ruling was applauded by the Arizona Daily Star in an editorial on Thursday. "Critics view the injunction as an early Christmas gift to some of the worst felons in Arizona's prison system — a view that completely misses the point," the newspaper said. "In limiting the information about inmates on the Internet, the Arizona law also limits the free speech rights of anyone — inmate, lobbyist or ordinary citizen — who would put information about the convict on the Internet. For that reason, the law is likely to be found unconstitutional."However, the decision was less well received by Stardust Johnson, widow of a murdered University of Arizona music professor. "They (the coalition) ought to go back to Canada and take care of their own business there," she told the Arizona Daily Star, which called the law "a poorly crafted bill" that resulted from Johnson's emotional but understandable appeals.Her husband, Roy Johnson, 58, was bludgeoned to death in 1995 after leaving an organ recital. Beau Greene, the man sentenced to death for the murder, later appealed for pen pals through the Internet. A posting titled "Lonely on the Row" had him posing with a kitten.In an interview with the Toronto Star, Johnson said she believes the law prevents convicted felons from preying on vulnerable people and doesn't unduly restrict the rights of advocacy groups like the coalition.The coalition maintains that Web sites like its own are an important vehicle for inmates who claim to be wrongly convicted to get information to the public."My heart bleeds for anyone convicted of something they didn't do," Johnson said. "But I believe convicted felons are mostly manipulators and sociopaths who prey on the vulnerable. Vulnerable women do crazy things." Some 53 inmates had been charged with violations of the law and 24 were disciplined to view the photo that went with this; of Tracy and Dave and prisoner art and letters visit www.ccadp.org/news2003.htm and scroll down
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:23:17 GMT -5
Dot con Mark Oliver looks at the growing phenomenon of prisoners' websites and asks if links from the clink are a good idea
Mark Oliver Tuesday December 17, 2002 The Guardian
Chris Morris' satirical TV news show the Day Today once had a sketch with prison authorities responding to the revelation that inmates at Strangeways had been running an international airport.
The notion of prisoners having their own websites may seem similarly comic, yet a small but growing group of high-profile inmates are now enjoying some of the freedoms of the information superhighway. And, as we shall see, the ones that exist have their surreal elements.
The prison service says prisoner internet access is heavily restricted as part of IT training courses, but there are no specific rules to stop material from prisoners that has been forwarded, for example by letter, being published online by third parties.
Last week the website of convicted murderer Jeremy Bamber raised eyebrows when it scooped three judges by revealing that he had lost his appeal 24 hours before they confirmed as much in court.
The site, jeremybamber.com, is an impressive affair, showcasing a tranche of evidential documents relating to his case. It also has a friendly colour picture of him, no doubt trying to look unlike a multiple-murderer.
Then there is Kingofhits.com the "official site" of pop impresario Jonathan King, jailed late last year for sex attacks on boys. The site carries postings from a "JK", ostensibly expressing his views of life inside (he says he was convicted by a jury of "well meaning but brain dead morons"). There are also denials of tabloid stories, advice on "how to be a success" and a section headlined "send money".
Bronsonmania.com claims to be the official site of serial hostage-taker and armed robber Charles Bronson, and showcases claims of prison brutality, pictures of his artwork, and opportunities to buy merchandise, including his book, Solitary Fitness.
However, the most recent one is barrygeorge.co.uk. The home page has two frosted pictures side-by-side of Barry George and Jill Dando, the TV presenter he was convicted of killing, and asks "A miscarriage of justice?". There are details of how to petition the home secretary for his release.
There is also convictsreunited.com, the friends reunited for lags, and the Guardian has a regular prison columnist, Erwin James, who is serving a life sentence (payments for the articles are donated to charity) and whose pieces are available online at Guardian Unlimited.
Earlier this year, the debate about prisoners writing for publication hit the headlines. In October, the prison service found Tory peer Jeffrey Archer to be in breach of prison rules for publishing an account of the start of his sentence for perjury. He was punished by being moved from a low security prison to a harsher regime for three weeks.
Prison rules - drawn up in 1963 - state inmates cannot publish for profit, compromise the privacy of other prisoners, or provoke disorder.
The Prison Governors' Association said that the parameters of prisoners publishing online would be governed by the "same principles". The prison service said governors would make decisions in individual cases, but added it was not possible for them to "police the internet".
Depending on their category, existing rules allow for authorities to monitor prisoner correspondence for offensive material, but aside from this, there is little else to impede inmates providing content for websites.
Dan Tench, a media lawyer at Olswang, says that under the European convention on human rights, prisoners have a right to freedom of expression which places the burden on the would-be restrainer to prove any material should be repressed. Mr Tench says: "There is no reason why prisoners should not have websites of their own ... it restrains unbridled government, the force of the executive just doing what it likes."
Yet some would disagree. The Mirror reported that when the Bamber site launched in March, it carried adverts for "sexy underwear" that had angered victims of crime groups.
Brian Caton, the general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, says: "The last thing we want is criminals being allowed to bask in some kind of fame." He added that while teaching computer skills was important, "there is always a chance that prisoners with internet access will go to areas that they shouldn't".
David Roddan, the general secretary of the Prison Governors' Association, said offence to victims and their families was a primary concern and that there was a responsibility to protect them and the public. "I think anybody who has suffered child abuse themselves or members of their family have, will be offended by the principle of Jonathan King being able to run a website," he said.
But Mr Roddan said it would be "quite difficult to have a computer scheme, which we do, and some sort of policing arrangement against people setting up their own website, except for high security prisoners".
Perhaps more crucially, he said that governors had to be very careful not to stray into moral judgments "that in fact legally we are not entitled to make, and find ourselves being challenged in the European court".
A positive reason to support prisoner websites, is that they could be useful tools in genuine miscarriages of justice. The band Asian Dub Foundation used their website to campaign for Satpal Ram, who was released this year after serving 16 years for a murder committed during an assault by a group of white men in Birmingham.
Over the Atlantic, though, there was a case last year where the family of murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas, from California, started a campaign to stop her killer and kidnapper, Richard Allen Davis, seeking young pen pals via a prisoners' charity website, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
Marc Klaas, her father, told wired.com: "This guy killed my daughter, and there he is, smiling and asking for pen pals ... I'd hack the [website of the] son-of-a-bitch if I could." But managers of the site, which has web pages and pen pal requests for more than 1,000 condemned prisoners, were defiant.
Guardi
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:23:38 GMT -5
Constitutionality of Arizona law keeping inmates' information off Web to be decided Anchorage Daily News, Alaska - Copyright © 2002 Nando Media Copyright © 2002 Christian Science Monitor Service By TIM VANDERPOOL, Christian Science Monitor
FLORENCE, Ariz. (December 27, 12:10 p.m. AST) - Arizona's state prison dominates the skyline of this small desert town southeast of Phoenix, its perimeter a dense network of chain-link fences, guard towers and concertina wire. For nearly a century, the state's worst criminals have been sent here to serve their sentences or to await execution in isolated captivity.
But that isolation is coming to a high-tech end. Today, the pervasive Internet has touched even this forbidding place, where a convicted killer now stands at the center of a growing controversy over just how far inmates' rights extend online.
Beau Greene was a 29-year-old drifter when he killed University of Arizona music professor Roy Johnson in 1995. But after Greene was sent to death row, information about him was posted on a prisoner-advocacy Web site, including sympathetic details about his affection for cats. Johnson's family was so outraged that two years ago they persuaded Arizona's legislature to make it a crime for inmates' information to appear online.
Prisoners are rarely given direct access to the Internet, and never in Arizona, say officials. Arizona's Department of Corrections began punishing inmates whose personal information - sent by mail, or passed through friends or relatives - appears on the Web sites of inmate-advocacy groups.
Members of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty are bitter about the action. Arizona officials "hope to blackmail Web page owners into submission by punishing those whom our work is trying to help," says David Parkinson, co-director of the Toronto-based group. In protest, the coalition posted information on all Arizona death-row inmates so none could be singled out for discipline.
The American Civil Liberties Union took up their case last summer with a lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections. In mid-December, District Judge Earl Carroll placed a temporary injunction on the enforcement of the Arizona statute. In his decision, Carroll cited the irreparable harm the law posed to First Amendment free speech rights. The constitutionality of the law will be taken up again in the next few months.
Critics say the Arizona measure violates the free speech rights of inmates and their supporters and that it targets only prisoner-advocacy groups since the Corrections Department continues posting information about death-row inmates on its own Web site.
David Fathi, an attorney for the ACLU's National Prison Project, calls the law unconstitutional. "It's not about prison security," he says. "It's not as if they're trying to prevent someone from sending instructions into prison for how to make a bomb, or plans on how to escape."
But Steve Twist questions whose rights are being violated when inmates gain even indirect access to the Web. A Johnson family friend who championed victims' rights as assistant Arizona attorney general in the 1980s, Twist says online postings sympathetic to Greene "were deeply traumatic" for Roy Johnson's survivors. "It's just another wanton, needless infliction of pain that should not be permitted in a charitable society."
Similar conflicts have occurred around the country, as prisons struggle to fashion new rules governing Internet access. Sometimes those conflicts are resolved in court.
For example, following an ACLU lawsuit in California, a federal judge affirmed the right of inmates to receive e-mail correspondence.
But Oregon officials took action on their own against a convicted serial killer who was selling his wildlife drawings online. And in New York's Champlain Valley, where Scott Geddes raped and killed Susan Anderson nine years ago, her relatives began a petition drive to prohibit Geddes from operating a Web site he created with outside help.
"It sickened me when I saw it," Anderson's brother, Randy LeMieux, said. "Basically, (Geddes is) looking for other victims, the way I look at it."
But banning Web sites from posting inmate information may pose constitutional hurdles.
The Internet "has broken down many traditional walls, and in theory gives prisoners access to the outside world to plead their cases," says Tracy Westen, a professor of media law at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications. "But to retaliate against prisoners for cooperating with citizens who have full First Amendment rights seems to diminish the public's rights."
Citing the ACLU lawsuit, Arizona prison officials declined to comment.
But Arizona DOC spokesman Gary Phelps has said that the law deters crimes by a "death row subculture" that attempts to scam outsiders via the Internet. Prisoners have preyed on women with personal ads and raised thousands of dollars through online defense funds, he says. "One inmate on death row, who is no longer with us, told investigators that it's a game," that the prisoners "have to get something out of everyone."
Westen agrees that there's a potential for inmates to perpetrate crime on the Internet but adds that "anyone could use the Web for illegal purposes." Since outgoing correspondence is screened, "there are ways prison officials could control how inmates use the Internet short of prohibitions directed by the Arizona law," he says.
Fathi is more strident. "We see these (laws) as periodic attempts to silence prisoners," he says, "and keep the eyes of the public away from what goes on in our nation's prisons and jails, where two million American citizens live."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:24:07 GMT -5
Unlock free speech
A badly crafted Arizona law trampled First Amendment rights.
A federal court judge has temporarily blocked an Arizona law that aimed to keep sympathetic information about inmates off the Internet. Critics view the injunction as an early Christmas gift to some of the worst felons in Arizona's prison system - a view that completely misses the point.
In limiting the information about inmates on the Internet, the Arizona law also limits the free speech rights of anyone - inmate, lobbyist or ordinary citizen - who would put information about the convict on the Internet. For that reason, the law is likely to be found unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Department of Corrections last July. It contended the state law illegally seeks to regulate free speech outside prison walls.
Some critics of the temporary injunction, issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Earl H. Carroll, are no doubt under the impression that inmates in Arizona prisons have direct access to the Internet. They do not.
Inmates are not sitting in their cells with a personal computer and an Internet connection. They cannot surf the net or exchange e-mail with anyone.
What they can do, however, is send information about themselves to the Canadian group, which then sets up a Web site for that prisoner. Inmates can use the space to discuss their cases or request pen pals. Anyone who wanted to do so could then write to the inmate through the regular mail.
Arizona law says that if information about a prisoner appears on the Internet, the inmate can be punished. One of the attorneys who challenged the law says that potential punishment in effect imposes restrictions on what those outside the state can publish on their Web sites. The punishment can be severe: It includes reducing or eliminating early release time the prisoner has earned.
The Canadian coalition has been publishing Web sites for each inmate on Arizona's Death Row, whether or not the inmate requests it. It says Arizona's law embodies a double standard by permitting the Department of Corrections to post inmate records on its Web site but making it illegal for anyone else to post any other version of the inmate's information on another Web site.
The Arizona law that is now blocked from enforcement was a poorly crafted bill that resulted from the emotional appeal of a Tucson woman whose husband had been murdered. Stardust Johnson's outrage at discovering her husband's killer portrayed on the Internet as a kindly animal-lover is entirely understandable, but it is not grounds for disassembling the First Amendment rights of people who are not killers.
Mrs. Johnson is the widow of University of Arizona music professor Ron Johnson, who was murdered in 1995. The Web site dedicated to the convicted killer, Beau Greene, "gave no clue he was a brutal murderer," Mrs. Johnson said in a story in Wednesday's Star. "Instead he represented himself as a lonely man holding a cuddly kitten who was misunderstood."
Any victim, or any member of a victim's family, would likely react with the same degree of anger. Mrs. Johnson channeled her outrage into the law, which the federal court has now temporarily blocked. That law says "An inmate shall not send mail to or receive mail from a communication service provider or remote computing service."
By temporarily blocking Arizona from enforcing that law, Judge Carroll wisely noted that the law infringes upon the First Amendment rights of those who have created the Web sites. We do not minimize the despair of those who were victimized by brutal, remorseless felons, but emphasis should be placed on controlling those felons in ways that do not violate the constitutional rights of free citizens or groups with whom officials may happen to have political or philosophical differences.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:24:26 GMT -5
Judge Blocks Attempt By Arizona To Ban Prisoners From Cyberspace www.thedeathhouse.com/deathhousenewfi_337.htmBy Robert Anthony Philips Dec 17, 2003 Death Row inmates and other state prisoners banned from cyberspace are now back in - probably permanently. A federal judge Monday temporarily stopped prison officials from enforcing a law that forbids prisoners <http://www.thedeathhouse.com/deathhousenewfi_109.htm> from sending information, pictures and stories about their cases or themselves to Web sites that publish them. District Judge Earl Carroll issued the temporary injunction on the Arizona law, enacted in 2000 to protect families of murder victims, saying the law violates freedom of speech. David Fahti, staff counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project and co-counsel on the legal challenge, said the "battle is over" and doubts whether Arizona will push to have the statute upheld and enforced. "The judge's opinion makes very clear he thinks this statute is unconstitutional," Fahti said. "I doubt there is anything the state can do to change his mind...At some point, the preliminary injunction will turn into a permanent injunction with either the state's agreement. As of today, the state cannot enforce the statute." A spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney General's office did not immediately return a telephone call for comment Tuesday morning. The Arizona law banned prisoners from posting information about their cases on the Web or corresponding using a remote computer service or communication service provider. Various anti-death penalty groups and other prisoner rights sites frequently provide inmates with Web space to tell about their cases, post pictures and solicit pen-pals. Under the law, prisoners who kept information on the Web were subject to disciplinary measures and criminal prosecution. Fahti said that although no prisoner was criminally charged, some did loose prison privileges for having information posted about themselves on Web sites. Prisoners Disciplined The ACLU argued that the law had a chilling effect on advocacy groups who give prisoners Internet space and also sought to punish prisoners who spoke out. The ACLU had challenged the law on behalf of anti-death penalty and other advocacy groups The groups involved include the Canadian Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Florida- based Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty <http://www.cuadp.org/>, both of which maintain prisoner pages. "Arizona's attempt to censor Internet content was a frightening step toward government repression of free speech," said Eleanor Eisenberg, the executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, in a prepared statement. "Today's court order puts a timely and immediate stop to this ill-conceived law." "Prisoners should not be punished for making public their claims of innocence," said Abe Bonowitz, director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "Today's decision is a tremendous victory for civil liberties and freedom of speech. And it's not just about prisoners. This benefits everyone." Killer's Picture On Net Sparked Push For Law Attempting to restrict prisoner speech is not a new battleground and prison systems across the Untied States have been given wide leeway in the courts, under the guise of security, to prohibit certain activities by inmates. In September, a U.S. district court judge in California ruled that prisoners have a First Amendment right to receive mail that contains material printed from the Internet Gary Phelps, the chief of staff for the Arizona Department of Corrections, said in a interview with The Death House.com last July that the cyberspace ban was put in place to prevent victims from coming across the pictures and reading letters from the men and women who committed crimes against them. Phelps said the law was proposed after relatives of a Tucson man who was murdered came across a Web site portraying the man convicted of the killing as a caring person and included a photo of him holding a cat. He said the law was enacted by legislature, and not proposed by the Arizona Department of Corrections. Stardust Johnson, the widow of the man killed, testified on behalf of the bill, saying that prisoners are sometimes manipulators, sociopaths and pscyhopaths who want to prey on people - and the Internet is a good way for them to do it. "I think its a shame that this judge has determined that prisoners can have access," said State. Rep. Linday Gray, a Republican lawmaker from Phoenix who co-sponsored the legislation that led to the ban. "Because of their offenses against society, they should lose the priviledges that the rest of free American enjoys." But, apparently not to say what they want on Web sites. Feisty Anti-Death Penalty Site Fahti said the genesis of the law proves that it was to "surpress unpopular speech" and not enacted for any legitimate security concern. Prisoners, especially death row inmates who are held in isolation most of the day, frequently write to the sites requesting pen-pals, soliciting donations for defense funds or proclaiming their innocence. Some letters even tell of the inner workings of prison systems and alleged abuses. Many of the inmates also have their pictures posted on the sites. On the forefront of the battle was the Canadian Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty <http://ccadp.org/arizona.htm>, a feisty group that refers to Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating as "Killer Keating" and rips President George Bush, who the coalition accuses of "homicide," for okaying executions while governor of Texas. After the Arizona law was enacted, the CCADP stated that an "Iron Curtain (was) emerging around America's death camps." In response to the ban, the CCADP announced that it had put the all Arizona death row prisoners online "to ensure they were not effectively silenced by the law."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:24:44 GMT -5
Law barring online information about prisoners enjoined
* Although prisoners do not have access to the Internet, the law would prevent communication between advocacy groups and the prisoners they sought to assist.
Under a recent state law, prisoner and civil rights groups had a choice: They could either delete information they published on their Web sites about Arizona prisoners or risk punishment of those prisoners they are trying to help.
But for now, this is not a choice the groups will have to make.
Recognizing that this law implicated First Amendment rights, federal judge Earl Carroll temporarily enjoined enforcement of the law, which punishes prisoners if they write to an Internet site provider, if any person accesses a Web site at a prisoner's request, or if prisoners have access to the Internet.
Carroll's Dec. 16 order came after the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Stop Prisoner Rape, and Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, filed suit to declare the law unconstitutional and moved to stop enforcement of the law.
The law was enacted in January 2000 to maintain prison security, but plaintiffs argue that it goes too far.
Arizona prisoners do not have access to the Internet; however, by writing to an advocacy group that maintains a Web site, inmates are able to have information about themselves or their case published online.
In their motion to enjoin enforcement of the new law, the plaintiffs argued that the law violated the First Amendment because prisoners are punished when their names are mentioned on a Web site, even if the prisoner was not responsible for the material.
The law also violates prisoners' rights because it prohibits them from writing to advocacy groups about their innocence or sexual assault while in prison, and could be used to punish prisoners when a Web service provider publishes an account of their case that differs from that offered by the Arizona Department of Corrections, they argued.
In addition, plaintiffs argued that the law burdens the speech of Internet service providers because they must regulate the circumstances under which free persons can access their Web sites to ensure that no one is accessing the Web site at the request of a prisoner.
As applied, the law "will inhibit communication between plaintiffs and the very population they wish to reach," argued attorneys for the ACLU. "With no audience, and severed from the people for whom they advocate, plaintiffs' political speech is significantly chilled."
The court found that there is a strong likelihood that the restrictions are "not rationally related to legitimate penological objections" and ordered the Arizona Department of Corrections not to enforce the law.
The Department of Corrections argued that the law was necessary to prevent crime victims from encountering information about prisoners on the Internet that would cause them further pain.
However, "the fact that someone is offended by speech does not give that person a veto on the speech," said Alice Bendheim, co-counsel for the ACLU.
The court also rejected the department's argument that the law is necessary to prevent fraud by prisoners or inappropriate contact with the public since these concerns are already addressed by existing department policies and criminal statutes.
The temporary injunction will remain in effect until the court has a full hearing on the issue.
According to the ACLU, Arizona is the only state in the country to have enacted a statute that imposes such severe restrictions on the First Amendment rights of inmates and non-inmates.
(Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty v. Stewart: Counsel: David Fathi, ACLU National Prison Project, Washington, DC; Ann Beeson, ACLU Technology & Liberty Program, New York, NY; Pamela K. Sutherland, Arizona Civil Liberties Foundation, Phoenix, Ariz.; Alice L. Bendheim, Alice L. Bendheim P.C., Phoenix, Ariz.) -- ST <http://www.rcfp.org/news/2002/1218canadi.html#init>
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© 2002 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:25:02 GMT -5
Arizona Inmates Back on the Net By Michelle Delio <http://www.wired.com/news/feedback/mail/1,2330,1-167,00.html> Story location: www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56880,00.html 02:00 AM Dec. 17, 2002 PT Citing fears of irreversible damage to the First Amendment, a federal judge in Arizona on Monday overturned a state law that banned information about state prisoners from appearing on the Web. Under the law, prisoners were barred from corresponding with a "communication service provider" or "remote computing service" and were also charged with a misdemeanor if anyone created a website or accessed the Internet at a prisoner's request. Acting on behalf of three prisoners' rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty v. Terry L. Stewart <http://ccadp.org/arizona.htm> in federal district court last July, seeking to overturn what the ACLU and its clients saw primarily as a global free speech issue. "Arizona's attempt to censor Internet content was a frightening step toward government repression of free speech," said Eleanor Eisenberg, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona. "It is extraordinary that Arizona prison officials believe they can tell international groups opposed to the death penalty what they can and cannot say online about prisoners in Arizona." Some anti-death-penalty groups such as the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty <http://www.ccadp.org> and Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty <http://www.cuadp.org> host sites for prisoners on death row who want to publish information about their cases, or who would like to communicate with pen pals. Shortly after the law went into effect, the Arizona Department of Corrections scoured the Internet and informed prisoners whose names appeared on websites that the information had to be removed within three weeks or they could face criminal charges. But the Canadian anti-death-penalty group refused <http://ccadp.org/arizona-letter2DOC.htm> to remove inmate pages from its website, saying that the information had been posted before the law went into effect and that the information belonged to the group. According to Tracy Lamourie, one of the CCADP's directors, for the past several months the coalition had received reports from prisoners charging they were being punished as a result of surfing activist groups' websites. "Today's decision stops the state and prison authorities from basically attempting to blackmail groups like ours by punishing those whom we are trying to help," Lamourie said. "We are pleased that the Arizona court recognized that states cannot legislate or restrict the action or First Amendment rights of prisoner advocacy groups or human rights groups such as ours, nor can they attempt to dictate what can be reported on websites or other methods of communications." A spokeswoman from the Arizona Department of Corrections said that to her knowledge no prisoners had faced criminal charges because of the law, but several had been disciplined "by losing minor privileges for a short period of time." The relative of a man allegedly murdered by an Arizona prison inmate had mixed feelings on the ruling. "I hate to even think of the bastard who murdered my stepbrother sharing the same Internet as I do," said Keira Sherman, a secretary in Wisconsin. "And I also hate to think that people are wasting their time fighting for that bastard's rights. "But I guess when I calm down a bit, I'd say I support the advocates' right to do what they feel is correct," she added. "I just don't believe in censorship, even though sometimes I wish I did."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:25:21 GMT -5
Web rights break into prisons news.com.com/2100-1023-978074.htmlBy Lisa M. Bowman Staff Writer, CNET News.com December 16, 2002, 3:31 PM PT Prisoner rights groups are cheering a federal court ruling that quashes attempts to halt Web postings that mention prisoners. U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll on Monday put a temporary halt to an Arizona state law that banned prisoners from posting information about their cases on the Web or corresponding using a remote computer service or communication service provider. Under the law, prisoners who kept their information on the Web were subject to penalties including criminal prosecution. The law was designed to maintain prison security in the digital age, but prisoner advocacy groups said some corrections officers were using it to threaten inmates out of posting their side of the story on the Web. Although prisoners do not have direct access to the Web, prisoner advocacy groups would post information on an inmate's behalf. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil rights groups challenged the law on behalf of anti-death penalty and other prisoner rights groups, saying it threatened free speech. "Arizona's attempt to censor Internet content was a frightening step toward government repression of free speech," Eleanor Eisenberg, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, said in a statement. The judge agreed, issuing a preliminary injunction saying that protecting the First Amendment rights of prisoner advocacy groups and their clients "is a compelling public interest." Furthermore, he said corrections officials already had methods in place to protect public safety, including a ban on prisoner access to the Web and searches of ingoin and outgoing inmate communications. The Arizona Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:25:51 GMT -5
Judge halts law banning inmates on the Internet Beth DeFalco Associated Press Dec. 17, 2002 03:00 PM A federal judge ordered the Arizona Department of Corrections to stop enforcing a policy forbidding inmates from corresponding with, or appearing on, Web sites. U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll granted an injunction request by the American Civil Liberties Union to stop enforcement of the law, which is the subject of a pending lawsuit."Putting free speech behind bars simply because it concerns prisoners sets a dangerous precedent," said Arizona ACLU attorney David Fathi. "The court's decision makes clear that Arizona may not jail the Internet."The statute, passed by the Legislature in 2000, makes it a misdemeanor for an inmate to communicate with Internet service providers, send a letter to a Web site or to a third party who then forwards it to a Web site or publishes it for the inmate.Inmates can lose privileges, good-behavior credits or face other punishments for violations, corrections officials said.The lawsuit was filed by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which is represented by the ACLU.The group claims the law violates prisoners' constitutional right to free speech, and attempts to suppress unfavorable opinions about the Corrections Department.In his ruling, Carroll wrote that protecting the First Amendment is a "compelling public interest."Department of Corrections Chief of Staff Gary Phelps said that since the law went into effect, 53 inmates have been cited for violations. However, until a final ruling is made on the case, those citation will not be dealt with or removed from prisoners records.He said the law is necessary because inmates use the Internet to defraud the public, contact minors and even plan escapes.The department only investigates inmate Internet publications when information is brought to its attention."The Internet in general is difficult to police," Phelps said.An increasing number of prisoners are going online to post their stories on Web sites.Debra Jean Milke, the only woman on the state's death row, has a site proclaiming her innocence and soliciting donations for her defense. She was sentenced to die for having her 4-year-old son killed before Christmas 1989."The public will surely be disgusted with what they see on the Internet from murderers and rapists," said DOC spokesman Mike Arra. "Many people could, and are, preyed upon by inmates through their Internet games."The state Legislature passed the 2000 law after being lobbied by Stardust Johnson, whose husband Roy - a University of Arizona music professor - was murdered after leaving a church recital he had given. Mrs. Johnson was outraged when she came across a Web site her husband's killer was using to solicit pen pals.Eisenberg said the inmate Internet law was created in response to Mrs. Johnson and that prison security arguments made were an afterthought."I don't mean to sound unempathatic," Eisenberg said. "But there's a powerful tool - it's called the (power) off button."---On the Net:Arizona Department of Corrections: www.adc.state.az.us/American Civil Liberties Union: www.aclu.orgCanadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty: www.ccadp.orgFind this article at: www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1217inmates-internet-ON.htmlWednesday, 18 December 2002 U.S. judge bars law keeping inmates off Net By Howard Fischer CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES PHOENIX - A federal judge barred the state from enforcing a law blocking prison inmates from soliciting correspondence on the Internet. U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll said the law illegally infringes on the First Amendment rights of those with whom the inmates want to correspond. He said that while officials from the Department of Corrections have legitimate security concerns, they can be addressed in less obtrusive ways. Mike Arra, spokesman for the agency, said attorneys are studying the ruling before deciding whether to appeal. Carroll's decision drew an angry reaction from Stardust Johnson whose husband, Ron, a University of Arizona music professor, was murdered in 1995. It was Stardust Johnson who spurred lawmakers to enact the ban after seeing a Web site set up on behalf of Beau Greene, the man convicted of her husband's killing. She said that without the legal barriers inmates, including pedophiles, can make contact through the Internet with people who are unaware of the crimes they committed. Johnson had particularly harsh words for one of the three organizations that sued, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. "They ought to go back to Canada and take care of their own business there," she said. Johnson said Greene's Web site was misleading at best. "It gave no clue he was a brutal murderer," she said. "Instead he presented himself as a lonely man holding a cuddly kitten who was misunderstood." Ron Johnson disappeared after an organ performance at a Green Valley church. He was found beaten to death four days later, face-down in a muddy wash west of Tucson. Greene was sentenced to die for Johnson's murder. Inmates have no direct Internet access. But various groups, like the Canadian Coalition, make Web pages available for inmates who send them information about themselves, either seeking to tell their story or looking for pen pals to write them through the regular mail system. The 2000 law closed that avenue by making it a crime for inmates to send information that would be posted on the Internet. In defending the law, the state said the restrictions are necessary to prevent attempts to defraud the public and preclude "inappropriate contact" with minors, victims or other inmates. Carroll, however, said there are other ways to do that, pointing out that inmates have no direct Internet access. He noted that prison staffers can open incoming and outgoing mail and examine it for contraband. And letters that are not privileged may be read to determine if the contents "might facilitate criminal activity." The judge also said current prison regulations permit staff members to monitor and record inmates' telephone calls. Carroll also said this is not strictly about the rights of inmates. He said those who wish to communicate with inmates also have a right to do so - and that the ban on inmates' sending or receiving mail from groups that post information on their Web pages infringes on those rights. David Fathi, an attorney representing the three organizations, said the law amounted to Arizona trying to impose its restrictions on what others outside the state could post on their Web sites. But Assistant Attorney General Jim Morrow said the only bar was to inmates' sending information. He said nothing precluded inmate rights groups from posting stories about Arizona inmates. Arra said there are other reasons to limit what inmates can post. "Many inmates put advertisements seeking pen pals on the Internet and seek donations to their causes or to their defense funds," he said. "But there's really no authority that is monitoring where that money might go other than the inmate himself." Arra acknowledged that the law covers only Internet postings - and never precluded inmates from doing the same thing in individual letters or even through ads in commercial publications.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:26:14 GMT -5
Bank-robbery slayer's execution set for tonight Debt, overdue bills blamed for heist plot, mass murder By Bob Doucette Staff Writer
Thursday, December 12, 2002 Edition: City, Section: NEWS, Page 1-A Dateline: McALESTER
McALESTER - For Jerry Bruno, life as he knew it ended Dec. 14, 1984. While working as a manager at a Lawton discount store, he received an urgent call to go to his wife's workplace, the First State Bank of Chattanooga in Geronimo. When he arrived, he learned that his wife, Kay, had been stabbed during a robbery that left her and three other people dead. "All my kids were cheated; I was cheated," he said of that day. He since has remarried and lives in Wichita Falls, Texas. Police eventually caught the killers, Jay Wesley Neill and Robert Grady Johnson. Time has caught up with Neill. Neill, 37, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 tonight at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for his part in what then was one of the state's worst-ever mass murders. Although it's been nearly two decades since the killings, the wounds of those left behind are still deep. "It's been 18 years of hell without my daughter," said Janie Bowles, mother of 19-year-old Jeri Bowles, a bank employee who was killed in the robbery. "You stop and think of how things might be if she was still here." The crime had its roots in the financial condition that Neill and Johnson faced in the months before the robbery. The two met at a bar in February 1984 and became romantically involved. They shared an apartment, a car and the bills, but soon found themselves in money trouble. Neill, who had left the Army in August of that year, was struggling to find work. Johnson also was unemployed. Creditors, including First State Bank, threatened to repossess their car and television. Weeks before the robbery, their landlord told them to pay up or face eviction. At one time, friends of the men told authorities the pair had $7,000 in past-due bills, according to court records. Neill had told two friends the bank would be easy to rob because it had little security, according to transcripts from his 1992 retrial. Neill and Johnson started planning the robbery three weeks before it occurred. In the days before the robbery, Neill and Johnson bought two knives and booked plane tickets to San Francisco. Johnson later obtained a handgun permit from the city. On the day of the robbery, the men bought a .32-caliber pistol and a box of ammunition, according to trial transcripts. They also moved their flight departure time up from 6 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. At about 1:30 p.m. Dec. 14, Neill held up the bank, officials said. He forced three employees - Kay Bruno, 42, Jeri Bowles and Joyce Mullenix, 25 - into a back room where they were stabbed a total of 75 times, authorities said. Slash wounds across their necks were so deep that two of the women were nearly decapitated. "It was like everything else blacked out and you're not really aware of what was going on," Neill said during a taped interview with the religious television show "The 700 Club" in 1986. "I could hear my heart beating in my ears. Everything was going a million miles an hour." Bank customers who came into the building during the robbery weren't spared. Using the pistol he bought less than an hour before, Neill shot three customers in the head, killing Ralph Zeller, 33, authorities said. "I was just praying, 'Oh dear God, send someone in here. Send someone in here to rescue us," survivor Marilyn Roach said during Neill's 1992 retrial. Bible verses went through her mind moments before she was shot twice in the head, she said at trial. Bellen Robles, her husband, Ruben, and their baby, Marie, were also targets. Bellen, then 15, suffered two gunshot wounds. Ruben Robles told the court in 1992 that he saw a hand gripping a pistol aimed at his 14-month-old daughter's head and saw it dry-fire, apparently out of bullets. Although Neill claims to have robbed the bank alone, Roach told the court he heard one voice say, "I thought I told you not to shoot anybody," then a different voice answered, "Well, they moved." The controversy over who was in the bank continues today. Johnson claims he wasn't there and denies involvement in the robbery. The FBI says Neill was alone in the bank. Many victims' relatives, including Janie Bowles, said it would be impossible for one person to carry out that much violence in so little time. "The only thing for Jay Neill to do is to tell the truth before he dies," she said. An hour later, the men boarded a plane in Lawton headed for Dallas, then caught a connecting flight to San Francisco. They left Oklahoma with nearly $17,000 and booked a hotel room and 24-hour limousine service. While there, they shopped, toured the city and went to night clubs. Witness accounts and tips from the men's friends led the FBI to their San Francisco hotel. Police in Lawton found a bloody knife in the men's abandoned car, and roughly half the cash was recovered back at the hotel room. In the wake of the killings was a trail of broken dreams. The Bruno family lost a mother and wife. Jerry Bruno said in 1992, "I felt like I was robbed of my golden years." Mullenix, whose husband was a basketball coach at Geronimo, was seven months pregnant with their first child. The couple had just bought a home, and they were working on a nursery. Jeri Bowles, who graduated from Geronimo High School in May 1984, was less than two weeks away from being engaged. Her ring was wrapped up as a present under the family Christmas tree. "She loved children, loved family, loved sports," Janie Bowles said. "She was looking forward to a career in banking." Neill and Johnson were both convicted and sentenced to death. Their sentences were overturned in 1992 when the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that they should have had separate trials. Neill was again convicted and sentenced to die later that year. Johnson received a life-without-parole sentence after his 1993 conviction. For his part, Neill said he regrets what he did and apologized during the sentencing portion of his 1992 trial. "I just wish I knew more about life when I was a confused 19-year-old," he is quoted as saying on the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty's Web site. He maintained correspondence with Roach, who said in the 1986 "700 Club" program that she has forgiven him. But for others, it's been more difficult. "I'm not like some of the other people. I haven't forgiven him," Jerry Bruno said. "I'm just glad justice is going to be served after 18 years. It's about time." Janie Bowles expressed similar feelings. "People talk about closure. I think closure is an ending. But this will never end for us." She said family members plan to spend Saturday doing what they do every Dec. 14 - going to Jeri's grave site. But this visit will be different, she said. "I'll be able to say to her, 'Baby, we got one.'"
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:28:14 GMT -5
Life inside death row
David Westerfield is to be sentenced Friday for the kidnapping and murder of Danielle van Dam. If the judge imposes the death penalty, Westerfield will be sent to San Quentin. Here is a look at California's death row.
By Alex Roth UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 17, 2002
SAN QUENTIN – Twenty years ago Mark Crew, a Santa Clara County truck mechanic, shot his wife to death, after which a friend chopped the woman's head off and dumped the corpse into San Francisco Bay.
Now Crew lives on death row at San Quentin State Prison. His home is a single cell in a section known as East Block, which has more than 400 condemned inmates, six exercise yards and several exercise cages for inmates who might be in danger if they mingled with anybody else.
Crew spends up to six hours a day in a crowded yard with a basketball goal and the rest of his time in his cell, where he crochets and draws pictures of castles.
Other condemned men pass the time listening to CD players, watching television or doing push-ups by their beds. If they live in North Segregation, a unit reserved for the most senior and best-behaved death row prisoners, they can leave their cells and play board games together on their tier.
On Friday, David Westerfield is scheduled to be sentenced in San Diego Superior Court for the kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam, a neighbor in Sabre Springs.
If Judge William Mudd follows the jury's recommendation and imposes the death penalty, Westerfield will be sent to this prison 15 miles north of San Francisco, the home of California's death row for men.
San Quentin has become a monument to the glacial pace of capital punishment in California.
When Crew first arrived, there were fewer than 200 men on death row. Now there are nearly 600, and the population increases by roughly 25 to 40 annually. The pace of executions is about one a year. Death row has grown crowded enough to create logistical issues.
"Many of us have been here 10, 15, 20 years," Crew wrote in a recent letter to the Union-Tribune. "After so much time even our families give up on us and move on."
The prison is adjacent to the Marin County town of San Rafael, on the edge of San Francisco Bay, and some of its buildings date to the 19th century.
As a work of architecture, the place looks almost medieval. As a penal institution, its design is woefully outdated. The ever-expanding population of death row inmates is forcing officials to come up with creative solutions to house them.
The prison now holds more than 5,700 inmates, with the condemned kept separated from other prisoners. Decades ago, all of death row was fully contained in North Segregation, a 68-cell unit that sits on the top floor of North Block and thus is nicknamed "The Shelf."
Now the prison needs three separate buildings for all the death row prisoners – North Segregation, East Block and the Adjustment Center, for condemned inmates who won't behave. There may be the need for a fourth unit in three or four years. Officials have proposed a plan to build a $200 million facility at San Quentin that would house more than 900 condemned men in one building. The power of privileges
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