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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:28:53 GMT -5
Like Crew, many of the death row inmates have been at San Quentin for a decade or longer. More than 140 have been there at least 15 years. The majority of them probably won't be executed. Since California voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978, 10 death row inmates have been executed, 12 have committed suicide and 21 have died of natural causes. As their appeals creep through the courts or remain in limbo because they don't have lawyers, these inmates spend most of their time in cells the size of a walk-in closet, roughly two paces across and five or six paces deep, each with a toilet and sink. They eat their meals in their cells. On death row, just like at most penal institutions, privileges are bestowed so that they can be taken away if necessary. Otherwise, a prison would be too dangerous to control. So it is that well-behaved inmates who can afford them have televisions, CD players, limited canteen privileges. Some even have acoustic guitars. They play chess by yelling out moves between cells or tiers. They can visit with relatives in small, private rooms, during which they are allowed brief embraces at the beginning and end of the session. Although the condemned don't have computers or access to the Internet, a Canadian anti-death-penalty group has a Web site, www.ccadp.org, on which it posts writings, artwork and other information mailed by death row prisoners seeking pen pals or financial support. Many of these postings read like personal ads. Charles Ng, who arrived at San Quentin in 1999 after his conviction for the torture and murders of 11 people in Northern California, describes himself on the Web site as "a self-taught artist who loves animals." Ng seeks pen pals and offers to sell his artwork so that he can "raise money for my day-to-day items." He can be reached at his mailing address, his inmate number and the ZIP code for San Quentin. While prison officials say the growing population creates security concerns, some inmate-rights groups worry that death row may soon get so crowded as to border on inhumane. In theory, well-behaved death row prisoners are supposed to get up to six hours a day in a yard with a basketball hoop and exercise equipment. But some of the yards for the condemned are so jammed that it's hard to move around, much less exercise. In a letter to the Union-Tribune, one inmate referred to an East Block yard as "a total zoo." Another said he goes out only on Sundays, when most of the other death row inmates stay inside watching football. "They're running out of space," said Steven Fama of the Prison Law Office, which offers legal aid to inmates. "It's a problem, and it's only going to become a bigger problem." Caste system among inmates One of the ironies of the penal system is that some death row inmates in San Quentin claim to support capital punishment. Shortly before his 1993 execution, Dave Mason, who murdered five people in Alameda County, was quoted as telling a friend: "I've always believed in the death penalty. There is no reason for me to change my view just because it's my life that's involved." In October, the Union-Tribune wrote letters to dozens of inmates to find out about life on death row. Of the three who responded, one said he believes in the death penalty, although he thinks the system has flaws – the most notable example, he says, being that he has been unfairly convicted. "Some people like to kill, and that's all they want to do. They don't deserve to live," said the inmate, who shot and killed a San Bernardino County man execution-style after kidnapping the man and his wife during a residential burglary. The inmate asked that his name not be used. Indeed, when it comes to their fellow convicts, condemned inmates are a remarkably intolerant lot. Serial killers are unpopular on death row. So are thieves and inmates who try to profit from their crimes. In a 1995 article for an Orange County magazine, death row resident Michael Hunter expressed his disgust at fellow inmates William Bonin and Lawrence Bittaker, two serial killers who tried to make money from their notorious sprees. Among other things, Bittaker offered to sell the public autographed copies of his victims' autopsy reports. "Almost without exception their exploitation of their victims for dollars is loathed and considered filthy lucre by the men here," Hunter wrote. "Yes, there are different degrees of hell, and Bonin and Bittaker are, for the most part, treated as pariahs." Perhaps the most unpopular inmates are child killers. Indeed, one of the three prisoners who wrote to the Union-Tribune requested anonymity out of fear that this article would focus on the Westerfield case, which many of the condemned men followed through the news.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:29:10 GMT -5
"I don't want to be associated with an alleged baby killer, directly or indirectly," wrote the inmate, a serial rapist convicted of killing a 16-year-old girl.
According to the inmates who responded, the most hated man on death row is Richard Allen Davis, convicted of killing 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. Not only did Davis kill a child, but his crime gave rise to California's "three strikes" law.
Many unpopular inmates on death row never leave the security of their cells. In 1997, Los Angeles gang member Jimmy Palma, whose murder victims included a 5-year-old girl and an infant boy, was stabbed to death in one of the yards.
There are, however, a couple of options if a particularly reviled inmate feels compelled to get sunlight. On East Block, for instance, there is one yard reserved for death row prisoners who need protection. There they mingle with a few other condemned men who aren't a threat to each other.
Then there are the 10-by-4-foot outdoor cages commonly referred to as walk-alones or dog runs. A death-row inmate who can't be outside with anybody else can exercise there.
Prison Capt. K.J. Williams, who manages death row, wouldn't specifically discuss what Westerfield's daily routine might be if sent there, but he said all new arrivals are evaluated to make sure they can assimilate in the most non-disruptive way possible.
"I wouldn't want to put him in harm's way, nor do I want my staff in harm's way," Williams said. Cauldron of hostilities Condemned inmates cope in different ways. For some, the death sentence simply fades conveniently out of sight, becoming as invisible as the water on the other side of the walls.
"Death row isn't what you think," wrote the inmate convicted of murder, kidnapping and burglary.
"It's not dark, dank and full of cynical people. . . . People have made as good a life as possible. And as such they go from day to day living that life. The reality of the sentence is always present. How could it be otherwise? But it's not predominant. It's like the cell bars. After a while you don't even see them."
Several years ago, Crew, the inmate who killed his wife, got himself kicked out of North Segregation by getting into a fight. Now he lives on East Block with the majority of the other death row inmates.
Unlike the condemned on North Segregation, those on East Block aren't allowed to socialize on their tiers. They're either in the yard or in their cells, doing whatever it is they do to pass the time.
Crew says he's grateful for a change in scenery, even though East Block is "a madhouse" and the yard a cauldron of hostilities, with inmates jostling for position around the dip bars and pull-up bars.
"The yard I'm on now is crowded; there's no room to run," he wrote. "There's more tension, so I have to do a whole different type of time. I must keep my mind totally aware of things going on around me. I can't focus on my exercising like I used to.
"But I'm OK. I've been locked up 19 years. I know how to survive."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:29:39 GMT -5
From: TomPaine.com September 16, 2002 By Bill Berkowitz
Death Row Off The Web - Arizona Censors Communications By Death Row Inmates Bill Berkowitz is a long time political observer and columnist.
"They are sentenced to death, not to silence," Tracy Lamourie, one of the founders of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, recently told the Advocate News of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Officials in the state of Arizona have a different point of view: In mid-July, the state began enforcing a two-year-old law banning prisoners from contributing information about their cases to Web sites run by outside organizations.
Toronto NOW, the city's local independent weekly newspaper, reported that the Arizona bill would "control and censor Web pages for death row inmates" provided by the Toronto-based Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CCADP). "The Coalition has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the state regulation [HB 2376] in court," the paper added. "But we don't know what's sadder. Arizona's need to further dehumanize prisoners about to be murdered by the state or the fact that the coalition maintains over [450] Web pages for death-row prisoners across the U.S."
Tracy Lamourie and Dave Parkinson run the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Via several e-mail exchanges they told me that of the 450 Web pages of death row prisoners that they maintain, 370 are for prisoners living on death row, 4 are for prisoners who have been released and 8 are for prisoners who had been re-sentenced. Parkinson wrote that "10 percent of American death row prisoners have a page on our site. We also have pen pal requests for hundreds more. "
"The idea" for the Web pages, Lamourie says, "is to give a voice to a segment of society that is often written off by the public and to remember those who were executed.
"It isn't glorifying anyone to allow them a voice before they are executed -- to allow them to send us reports of abuses going on in the prison, legal issues in their cases, even writings and poetry detailing life in a cage waiting to be killed."
Lamourie told me that she and Parkinson founded CCADP after they heard about the case of Jimmy Dennis. "This," said Lamourie, is "a Pennsylvania case of actual innocence that was garnering little or no attention or support. After reviewing the legal materials and realizing the credibility of his claims of innocence, we set up the first CCADP Web page -- devoted to the Jimmy Dennis case -- and included information about the behavior of the police as well as witness statements, photos and contact information. Dennis has since gained the support from people around the world, and Web pages for him have sprung up in the U.K., Germany, Singapore, and elsewhere. Dennis is now being represented by a large law firm in Washington who were specifically seeking a case of actual innocence. We hope and expect to hear that Jimmy Dennis will be exonerated in the not-too-distant future."
For many of the isolated, depressed and desperate prisoners on the nation's death rows, the CCADP's Web pages serve as their only lifeline. One inmate on Texas' death row wrote: "I want to thank you. I do not dramatize or exaggerate when I tell you I believe you have served as a conduit that saved my life. In the despair that can overwhelm us here, I was very seriously considering suicide or waiving my appeals. Because of you I have found reason for fighting, reason for living, and happiness beyond measure."
Another wrote: "Your site has changed my life, it taught me to love to write, except when it gets over 100 degrees in my tiny cell. But it helped me hang on to life; most times while on death row I wanted to give up and die, not only cause someone was gone because of me or cause I lost everything. But I felt like I was worthless. [Because of you]... I was blessed with another chance."
Not everyone believes prison inmates should have access to the Internet, let alone have their cases publicized through special Web pages. "I think [the CCADP] are just misguided individuals," Assistant District Attorney John Sinquefield told the Advocate News. Sinquefield, who has prosecuted death penalty cases, said the people running the Web site aren't related to the victims of "the people slaughtered by some of the worst, most heinous criminals around." Sinquefield added that he thought CCADP is "intervening in something that's not really their business. I think they should stay in Canada. I'm sure there's plenty of criminals up there to keep them busy."
Several members of victim's rights groups have also found the Web pages for prisoners unsettling. "These people are bad dudes," Frank Parish, a board member of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, whose stepdaughter was abducted from the parking lot of a Houston grocery store and murdered, told Wired News. "It doesn't bother me at all that they don't have their Bill of Rights. They forfeited those when they made the deliberate choice to violate the law."
Arizona silences inmates
On July 18, 2002, according to the Canadian Coalition's Web site, the organization filed suit in the Arizona courts "to have the law that attempts to cut off communication between advocacy groups and prisoners declared unconstitutional." The ACLU is representing the CCADP, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Stop Prisoner Rape in this action.
Because of HB 2376 and the "actions now being taken against prisoners by ADOC" [Arizona Department of Corrections], CCADP has decided to place all Arizona death row prisoners online, to "ensure they are not effectively silenced by this law."
In actuality, prisoners do not have direct access to the Internet. The ACLU explained in a letter to Terry Stewart, Director Arizona Dept of Corrections that inmates "have no access to computers... linked to the outside world." What the law is trying to prevent, the ACLU claimed, is "correspond[ence] or attempt to correspond with a communications service provider or remote computing service."
What the prisoners have had access to is the ability to communicate with outside organizations that have set up Web pages on their behalf in the form of written letters, poetry and art. These days, with so many legitimate questions raised about falsely convicted and incarcerated prisoners on death row, it's common sense to allow prisoners an outlet to talk about their lives and cases. Especially so, given the recent number of cases involving prisoners -- now numbering more than 100, including six from Arizona -- removed from death row after information that they had not committed the crimes they were convicted and sentenced for was discovered.
According to CCADP, the statute that went into effect July 18 reads:
"Except as authorized by the department of corrections, an inmate... shall not have access to the Internet through the use of a computer, computer system, network, communication service provider or remote computing system."
Inmates are prohibited from sending or receiving mail from an Internet service provider or "remote" computing company. Any inmate found in violation of this statute "is guilty "of a Class 1 misdemeanor," and could be denied "earned release credits." In addition, the statute applies if "any person accesses the provider's or service Internet Web site at the inmate's request."
In a letter from the Arizona Department of Corrections, prisoners have been advised that to "avoid possible criminal charges and/or disciplinary sanctions," they need to have their names "removed" from the CCADP Web sites "within three (3) weeks." Officials will be monitoring the Web site and if "your name/information etc. has not been removed... or is located on any other Web site on the Internet system, disciplinary actions WILL BE administered and possible criminal charges may result."
CCADP Stands Firm
In response to the ADOC, CCADP's Directors Dave Parkinson and Tracy Lamourie advised Arizona authorities that although they've received the inmate's request for removal, they will not comply. "We believe that ANY and ALL requests received by the CCADP from the State of Arizona, regarding removal of information from the Internet," Parkinson and Lamourie wrote, "have been made under duress and as a direct result of Prison Administration trying to coerce and intimidate prisoners through threats of retaliation, punishment and/or criminal charges."
The CCADP insists that it holds the rights to all the materials received from inmates before the statute went into effect and it will continue to post these materials "with or without the permission of the prisoner in question. Prisoners are not aware when they contact us that we may or may not comply with the prisoners request for removal at a later date."
The Coalition also announced its intention of creating Web pages for all Arizona death row prisoners, "with or without their knowledge or consent" and promised to "diligently scour the Internet to locate any and all current postings by prisoners that may not yet be deleted and copy them as well to include on our new Arizona Prisoners section."
Lamourie points out the bind in which prisoners have been placed by this legislation. "If Arizona prisoners are punished for even contacting groups like ours, how are they able to comply with requests to be removed if it means they have to write us in order to do so? The question is indicative of how crazy this law is, and is a point raised in our brief. Also, prisoners have no way to confirm that the group or individual maintaining a site for them has received their request for removal, and have absolutely no control over what someone on the other side of the planet may have on their Web site."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:30:00 GMT -5
The Aug 22-28 issue of Toronto's weekly newspaper NOW magazine in UPFRONT section : death row on the web In a punitive act thats being called an attack against constitutional rights, the state of Arizona is trying to control and censor Web pages for death row inmates provided by the Toronto based Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (www.ccadp.org). The Coalition has teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the state regulation in court. But we don't know whats sadder, Arizona's need to further dehumanize prisoners about to be murdered by the state or the fact that the Coalition maintains over 350 Web pages for death row inmates across the US." THE ADVOCATE, Baton Rouge, Louisiana www.theadvocate.com/stories/082002/new_inmates001.shtmlAug 20, 2002 Inmates on death row share their stories via the Internet By BRETT BARROUQUERE - Advocate staff writer Like many single men, John Francis Wille is out on the Internet, looking to make a connection. Wille acknowledges his place on Louisiana's death row in his Web posting and says he likes camping, sports, collecting postcards and listening to various types of music. "I enjoy learning about people & their cultures. I love to travel, but have not gotten a chance to do that in a long time," Wille wrote in his Web posting. What the description omits is that Wille doesn't have a computer and why he's on death row -- for the 1985 rape and murder of 8-year-old Nichole Lopatta in LaPlace. Wille's page is one of five by death-row inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and many around the country on a Web site sponsored by a Canadian anti-death penalty group. The group, Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, posts Web pages for inmates, using writings, pleas for pen pals, photos, court records and even artwork mailed to them by the incarcerated. "They are sentenced to death, not to silence," said Tracy Lamourie, one of the directors of CCADP. But the way Lamourie is allowing the inmates to speak out rankles some prosecutors. "I think they are just misguided individuals," said East Baton Rouge Assistant District Attorney John Sinquefield, who has prosecuted death penalty cases. Sinquefield said the people running the Web site aren't related to the victims of "the people slaughtered by some of the worst, most heinous criminals around." "These are people … who are intervening in something that's not really their business," Sinquefield said. "I think they should stay in Canada. I'm sure there's plenty of criminals up there to keep them busy." The Internet site (http://www.ccadp.org) features access to Death Row inmate Web pages from around the country. Some inmates ask for pen pals, others write about prison life. Few make direct reference to what they were convicted of, unless, like Elzie Ball, it is to plead their innocence or accuse police and prosecutors of misconduct. Ball was convicted of killing Ben Scorsone Jr., 44, who tried to stop the armed robbery of a bar in Gretna in May 1996. On his Web page, Ball, on Death Row since August 1997, pleads for help in overturning his conviction and claims he was set up by deputies in Jefferson Parish. "I have been falsely accused, tried and convicted for a crime I did not commit," Ball wrote. "I am a living witness, there are innocent people on the death rows of America." Lamourie also posts photos of executions and memorial pages to people executed by various states, including Feltus Taylor of Baton Rouge, who was executed in June 2000 for the 1991 murder of Donna Ponsano during a robbery at a Baton Rouge fast-food restaurant. The idea, Lamourie said, is to give a voice to a section of society that is often written off by the public and to remember those who were executed. "It isn't glorifying anyone to allow them a voice before they are executed -- to allow them to send us reports of abuses going on in the prison, legal issues in their cases, even writings and poetry detailing life in a cage waiting to be killed," Lamourie said. Family members and friends pass along the opportunity to go online to interested inmates, Lamourie said. From there, the inmates or their supporters can directly mail the materials that they want online, Lamourie said. The only restrictions on the Web site are ones set by Lamourie and Dave Parkinson, who operates the page with her. The pair say they won't post anything that is "blatantly racist, misogynistic, homophobic, pornographic or glorifies the crime the person is accused of committing." "This has never become an issue," Lamourie said. It's all legal and doesn't violate rules about contacting inmates, prison officials here said. Angola prison has no prohibition on inmates contacting outside groups or people with letters or photos of themselves, officials said. That's not the case everywhere. Lamourie's group is locked in a legal battle with the Arizona Department of Corrections over a law passed punishing prisoners who take part in Web pages put up by advocacy groups. But for one anti-death penalty group, the Web site and some of its graphic images -- including photographs of botched executions -- may not be the best route to take. Kathy Gess, co-director of Louisiana CURE (Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants), said the Web site appears to be a way to raise awareness about the use of the death penalty in the United States. Yet Gess said the entries by the Death Row inmates don't reflect the seriousness of the issue. "We personally would not use this Web site, but we see it as another reason to not use executions to solve our social problems," Gess said. Sandy Krasnoff, executive director of Victims and Citizens Against Crime, a victims' rights group, said so long as no one is getting hurt by the Web site, he has no problem with such projects. He said the Canadian group has the right to post the Web pages. "We might not like some of the things they do," said Krasnoff, a former New Orleans Police officer. "But, we have no problem with those people."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:30:42 GMT -5
Thursday, August 8, 2002 - St. Petersburg Times - St. Petersburg, Florida DOOMED.CON - To the dismay of their victims' families, death row inmates are pleading their innocence on the Web. By TOM ZUCCO, Times Staff Writer - St. Petersburg Times - August 8, 2002 www.sptimes.com/2002/08/08/Floridian/doomedcon.shtmlJohn Marquard, a 35-year-old widowed father whom his friends call J.C., posts intricate pen-and-ink drawings on his Web page. Anthony LaMarca, a former Dunedin resident, uses his page to show off samples of his poetry and handmade greeting cards. And Michael Rivera, 40, who announced recently on his page that he got engaged, says he's quite handy with a crochet hook. You can buy some of his work. Or he can make something to order. "If you'd like an afghan, baby blanket, baby booties, baby bonnets or some types of sweaters," writes Rivera, "contact me and we can work something out." What Rivera doesn't highlight on his Web page is that in from the bicycle she was riding near her home in Lauderdale Lakes, molesting her, choking her to death when she struggled, and dumping her body in a field in Coral Springs. Like Marquard and LaMarca, Rivera was convicted of first-degree murder and is awaiting execution on Florida's death row. (Marquard was convicted of killing a North Carolina woman, LaMarca of shooting his son-in-law twice in the head.) Rivera, Marquard and LaMarca are among at least 50 Florida death row inmates who have Web pages where they display their artistry or literary talents, plead for donations and legal help, solicit pen pals, and in nearly every case, swear they are innocent. It's a voice they've never had before. It's free to the inmates. It can be accessed by people all over the world. And it's legal. In Florida, no death row inmate has ever seen his or her page. (Of the three women on death row, at least one has a Web page.) None of the 372 inmates on death row has any access to a computer. At most, a few inmates have small portable radios or black-and-white TVs outside their cells that get only local stations. But inmates are allowed to write letters. "And that's how it's done -- through the mail," said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections. "They write letters to groups that host these sites -- mostly antideath penalty groups outside the United States. We can't do anything to prohibit them from sending mail to anyone other than victims or their families. "It's a shame," Ivey added, "that these groups are using these Web sites to perhaps cause further conflict to the victim's families." The father of one victim wants to know what he can do to stop the practice. But the people who set up and maintain the pages say their concern goes beyond the inmates' guilt or innocence. They don't want to see anyone, even a convicted murderer, put to death. On his Web site, hosted by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, death row inmate Troy Merck claims police hid crucial evidence, that his juvenile record was improperly used against him, and that he was wrongly found guilty of murder.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:31:09 GMT -5
The Garth Brooks fan Jimmy Newton was celebrating his 25th birthday and the recent birth of his son at the City Lites nightclub near Pinellas Park on Oct. 12, 1991. According to witnesses, Newton and some friends left the club at closing time. In the parking lot, they found Troy Merck, 19, and a friend leaning against one of their cars. Newton asked Merck and his friend to move. Merck, who had come to Florida a few days earlier from North Carolina, challenged Newton to a fight. Newton, a Little League coach, refused. Witnesses said Merck then removed his shirt, grabbed a hunting knife from his car, and attacked Newton from behind. He lifted Newton's head by the hair, slit his throat and stabbed him at least a dozen times. Witnesses heard Merck tell Newton, "Guess I'm going to have to show you how to bleed," and "Happy birthday!" As Merck and his friend left the parking lot, witnesses said Merck repeatedly boasted, "I f--- killed him" and "If I didn't kill him. I'll go back . . . find him in the hospital and finish the job." At various points during his two trials (the first ended in a hung jury), Merck gave the thumbs-up sign to Newton's family, blew kisses to Newton's sister and made remarks about her figure. He smirked at the judge, sang country songs, and threw a temper tantrum that got him hog-tied by deputies. The vehemence of Merck's attack and his attitude afterward were among the aggravating circumstances Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Nelly Khouzam cited when she sentenced Merck to death in 1993, heeding a jury's recommendation. After hearing Khouzam's instructions during sentencing, Merck responded, "You mean it takes 30 minutes to say this s--?" Nothing more was heard from Merck until 1998, when his Web page appeared. On it, he claims police hid crucial evidence, that his juvenile record was improperly used against him, and he suggests that the real killer was his companion on the night of the murder. "It was proven I wasn't the person who started the argument with the victim," Merck writes. "A man that was possibly the one who had the best and most contact with the killers was supposedly never questioned by anyone as to what he saw. Another witness who said he got a very clear look at the driver of the getaway car was never shown a photo lineup or questioned." Merck, 30, also writes that he enjoys reading about mythology and listening to Garth Brooks. An example of his art work appears on his page. A sketch of flowers, trees and ferns. Ron Cheek is 59. Retired from his job as a supervisor at GE, Cheek now works part-time as a bartender at a Clearwater VFW hall. He is also Jimmy Newton's father. He remembers Merck giving him the thumbs-up sign during the trial. And 10 years later, it still eats at him. Cheek had heard that some death row inmates had Web pages, including the man convicted of killing his son. But he never looked. "I think it just sucks," Cheek says from his St. Petersburg home. "I mean, come on. The criminals get all the rights. The victims get nothing. This is just disgusting." Cheek has Internet service. He volunteers to log on to Merck's page for the first time. But before he even sees it, he wants it gone. "What can I do about this?" he asks. "How do we stop them? If I need to talk to a Congressman, I'll do it. "This isn't right."
Angry e-mails In Toronto, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty maintains Web pages for about 350 death row inmates nationwide (including the 50 in Florida, which can be found at ccadp.org/florida.htm) and plans to add another 300 pages soon. Coalition leaders say they want to humanize the men and women on death row, create a permanent record in case someone is executed and later found to be innocent, and ensure that no one falls through the cracks of the justice system. "We get a lot of angry e-mails," said Tracy Lamourie, co-founder and director of the CCADP. "But also a lot of positive comments." The CCADP was founded in 1998 and receives no funding. "We work out of our own pockets and we're all volunteers," Lamourie said. "We do these pages in the evenings and on weekends out of our homes. We don't ask for membership and don't charge for the pages." Lamourie said her group does not pass judgment on the inmates' claims of innocence. "We just think a lot of people don't know about executions. They think the death penalty is simply the killing of the worst of the worst. The Ted Bundys. But it's mostly the ones who had the worst lawyers. You don't see millionaires on death row. "We're seen as being mean or insensitive to the victims and their families," Lamourie added. "All we can say is we'd have no interest if they (convicted murderers) weren't being killed. That's why we don't have Web pages for people sentenced to life." Lamourie said nothing is posted on the death row pages that would be considered objectionable or would glorify the crime. "I deeply apologize for any added distress or pain," Lamourie said. "I can understand how people can be angry. "But it's not about agreeing with (the inmates) or supporting this person and what he did. It's about killing people. I'd rather see them do life in prison without parole. "This is a human-rights issue," she said. "In other countries (where there is no death penalty), when the victims or their loved ones walk away (after a murderer has been convicted and sentenced to life without parole), they don't feel like they've gotten second-best. They feel they've gotten closure. That person is going to die in prison, and they know it. "Killing another person is not necessary. These people are locked away forever, and society is protected. It's over."
Thumbs down Ron Cheek calls. He says he found the page and saw the man who killed his son. He read what Troy Merck had to say. "This irks the s-- out of me," Cheek says. "What right does he have? He's a convicted murderer. They shouldn't have rights. End of story. "Why isn't there a Web site where people like myself can say, 'Here's the guy's record. Judge for yourself'?" Cheek says the Canadian death penalty group doesn't understand the magnitude of the inmates' crimes, especially the one involving his son. "These people don't see the whole picture," he says. "They're against the death penalty, but they don't realize how heinous, brutal and unnecessary this was. "This guy (Merck) doesn't deserve this. Look, I'm a logical-thinking guy. I know people get wrongly convicted. But in this case, there's no doubt. "And Jimmy wasn't a violent kid. He never had a fight in his life. He was a night-shift supervisor for Wal-Mart. He was handing out cigars that night because his son was born . . . "If they gave Merck life, he probably wouldn't live long anyway. Not someone like him. But I just don't want to take that chance. "And then he turns around on this Web page and pulls all this horse s--. "I just hope I live long enough to see it (Merck's execution). If they have to carry me on a stretcher, I want to be there. "And I hope the last thing he ever sees is me standing there at the window, giving him the thumbs-up sign."
What about Danny Rolling? Serial killer Danny Rolling, Florida's most infamous death row inmate, doesn't have a Web site; he has not sent any material to the Canadian death penalty opponents who are posting Web sites for condemned people. But least a dozen Internet sites are devoted to Rolling and the 1990 murders of five Gainesville college students. Most are accounts of the crime and profiles of Rolling.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:32:06 GMT -5
Canadians take fight to end death penalty stateside to Arizona By:Allen Jones, Managing Editor - The Tomball Potpourri, August 6, 2002 - Tomball, Texas www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=4966948&BRD=1492&PAG=461&dept_id=187497&rfi=6The owners of a Canadian anti-death penalty Web site are trying to invalidate an Arizona law that bans the state's prisoners from communicating with organizations like it, and others. It is a controversial law that one Magnolia resident says she wishes Texas would adopt. The Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty maintains more than 350 active Web pages for prisoners sentenced to death across the United States. As part of the organization's educational outreach efforts the Web pages are free and available to all prisoners sentenced to death. According to the organization's co-director, Tracy Lamourie, the Web pages can include anything from detailed legal transcripts highlighting claims of innocence, to the personal writings of death row inmates, as well as artwork and requests for correspondence. But many in Arizona and elsewhere, including some in the Magnolia and Tomball area, are troubled that many of the pages contain false statements that sometimes end up haunting the families of murder victims. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty and other anti-death penalty advocacy groups are claiming the Arizona law punishes that state's prisoners, even when they are not responsible for the posting of information about them on outside Web sites. The suit, filed in a federal district court, claims Arizona bill HB 2376 bans all communications by third parties about the state's prisoners - preventing any communication between prisoners and advocacy groups such as the Canadian Coalition. According to the ACLU's filed complaint, notices were also handed out to prisoners instructing the inmates to remove their names and all information pertaining to them from Web sites within three weeks or face criminal charges and disciplinary sanctions. "We say in our suit that the bill violates both the First and 14th Amendments of the United States Constitution," said ACLU's National Prison Project staff council, David Fathi. "It prohibits prisoners from corresponding. This law suppresses the flow of information from prisoners to the outside world and it chills the advocacy of the plaintiffs and other anti-death penalty and prisoner rights organizations. The law just says 'no.' It is not narrowly tailored to ban defamatory statements." Fathi told The Potpourri that the bill, adopted by the Arizona legislature in 2001, essentially makes the posting of death-row information a criminal act of the prisoner even if the prisoner has no knowledge of the Web page. "In that case, Arizona's Department of Corrections is violating their own law," Fathi said. "There own Web site lists information about their inmates. And we don't see them enforcing the law regarding pro-death penalty Web sites." According to an Arizona State Senate fact sheet for the bill, the purpose of the legislation is to prohibit "prison inmates from posting or retrieving Internet information either personally or through a third party." And the ACLU claims the state's own Department of Corrections director, Terry Stewart, has stated that the "statute is intended to prohibit direct or indirect access to Web sites through the Internet, particularly for the purposes of communication." "The legislative history of the bill reveals that it was enacted, not in response to concerns for prison order or security," claims Fathi, "but because some persons were annoyed by the Web sties that maintained a prisoner's innocence, challenged the fairness of the prisoner's trail, or solicited legal and political support for the prisoner." The ACLU's filed complaint refers to the bill as a "bare desire to suppress such speech because it is unpopular..." And that, the law group claims, "is not a legitimate governmental objective." The Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty accepts written submissions from death-row inmates and volunteers input their writings onto Web pages set up on their behalf. During a previous interview with the organization's co-director, Lamourie said she expects that some inmates are using their Web site to post bogus information about their cases.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:32:27 GMT -5
We don't say it is true," she previously stated to The Potpourri. "In some cases, inmates may lie. But if they are doing that, they are shooting themselves in the foot."
Lamourie stated that financial restrictions at the anti-death penalty organization prohibit them from hiring fact-checkers to research claims made about inmates regarding their cases.
"There have been some instances where inmates have provided reams of information on their Web pages and were able to get better lawyers that helped them get free because they were actually innocent," she said.
She told The Potpourri that although she personally understands what the families of murder victims must go through emotionally after reading inmate statements on the Coalition's Web site, "there would be no need for the site if the United States ended the death penalty."
Despite the few and in-between cases of wrongful convictions Lamourie speaks of, Magnolia resident Chris Schultz said she is in favor of Arizona's law and she hopes Texas will soon enact a similar legislation. The man who was convicted by a Harris County Court of Law for the murder of her son, Gunnar "Sean" Fulk, and his friend, Leroy McCaffrey Jr., has a Web page on the Canadian Coalition's Internet site.
Lonnie Earl Johnson was convicted of murdering the two teens in August 1990. According to police and medical reports and court documents, Johnson hitched a ride with the boys from a Tomball convenience store during the late night hours of Aug. 15, 1990. The boys' bodies were found the next morning. Both had multiple gunshot wounds.
Fulk had brush-burn abrasions on his back indicating that he had been dragged across a nearby asphalt road while still alive. He died as the result of three close-range gunshot wounds to his face and another to his chest, one of which fractured his right eye bone and burst his eye. Another bullet was found at he base of his skull.
McCaffrey's death, claim state medical reports, was the result of a gunshot wound to his neck and head. He also suffered two superficial gunshot wounds to his chin and shoulder. His neck wound was seven inches below the top of his head, and one of the bullets severed his spine. Johnson was turned in by his girlfriend who claimed he had bragged about killing two boys upon his return to Austin in Fulk's vehicle. On the Canadian Coalition site, the Texas death-row inmate claims he killed the boys in self defense and he says they were racists. After an initial story ran about the Web site and how the parents of the two murdered boys felt about Johnson's statements, a representative from the Canadian Coalition sent The Potpourri an e-mailed letter on Johnson's behalf where the inmate maintained his innocence and said Fulk had learned his racist attitude from his mother. He claims Schultz called him a "nigger" during his trail. *
* NOTE: The above statement is inaccurate. NO Official representative of the CCADP ever contacted the paper about this, or would refer to members of the victims families as racists. The email referred to may have been sent by one of Lonnie's supporters, NOT the CCADP.
"Children usually learn and have a lot of the same feelings on issues like that as their parents...," he said in the letter to The Potpourri.
Schultz said Web sites such as the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty place the same anguish on the families of victims that was experienced when they first hear that their loved ones are dead.
"There doesn't seem to be much truth on that Web site because there are no safeguards to check what really happened," Schultz said. "They can make up any story they want to and continue to slander their victims. If they want to put up a Web site for death-row inmates, all the facts should be there."
According to the ACLU lawyer, it is not against the law to lie.
"It is against the law to defame someone, but people make incorrect statements all the time," Fathi explained. "This isn't about if what they said was true or not. It is about their First Amendment rights. It is not illegal to post info that is not true or is inaccurate. The Arizona law is not narrowly tailored. It restricts all communication."
Schultz said it seems like it would be easy to at least check an inmate's story before publishing it on the Internet by researching court documents and by reviewing police and medical reports. "But, for myself, I don't believe they should be able to do stuff like that at all," she added. "These guys have gone through the justice system and they are on death-row. I think it would be a really good idea for Texas to follow Arizona and keep inmates from accessing these sites. It is being misused."
Andy Kahan, the City of Houston's Crime Victims Assistance director, Arizona is the first state to undertake the death-row restriction. It is an idea he would like to see Texas undertake as well. His advisory work with the non-profit victims advocacy group Justice For All helped persuade Texas' congress to pass a bill making "murder-bilia" - memorabilia sold by death-row inmates - illegal in the state. He said Justice For All may place their own version of the Arizona bill on the group's legislative agenda for 2003.
"I am meeting with the Justice For All board members in September and this is one issue we may plan to push," he said. "I can't say for sure if they will decide to put it on their agenda this time or not, but it is definitely on the table. Schultz is not the only one out there who are being victimized by these sort of sites."
Tomball resident Marsha Craven, president of the non-profit support organization Parents of Murdered Children, says that although she is not a member of Justice For All, the organizations often work "hand-in-hand" on issues involving victims rights.
"I was there testifying before the Texas House and Senate about the Murder-bilia Bill and if Justice For All takes up this cause, I would fight for it as well," Craven said.
She said she doesn't understand why Canadians should have any say-so over Arizona's or any U.S. laws.
"What do they know about First Amendment rights? They don't live here," she said. "It seems they just don't have anything else to do besides harass us. They need to wake up and smell the roses."
Craven said thinks the Canadian Coalition truly believes in their plight but that they are "wearing blinders."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:32:52 GMT -5
Index On Censorship Online: www.indexonline.org/news/20020801_unitedstates.shtmlUnited States: Prisoners' rights - Arizona tries to jail the internet Aug 2, 2002 Arizona state law bans prisoners in its jails from internet contact with their friends and families - and now from campaign groups trying to defend their rights. Three such groups have now recruited the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the bans on freedom of speech grounds. Three prisoners' rights organisations are suing jail managers in the western US state of Arizona over a new law that criminalises communications with prisoners and punishes them if information about their cases appear on websites run by their supporters. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is representing Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR), the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CCADP) and Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP) in their case against Terry L Stewart, Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections. They argue that his department's enforcement of Arizona's House Bill 2376 violates both their and their prisoner contacts' first amendment rights to free speech and severely hampers their advocacy work on behalf of prisoners. SPR, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CCADP) and Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP) seek to invalidate a state law that seeks to ban all information from Arizona prisoners from being posted on the internet. "For many prisoners, we are the only source of information about surviving sexual assault, and we rely on the internet," says Lara Stemple, executive director of SPR. SPR, a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to ending sexual violence against men, women, and youth in all forms of detention, posts survivor stories, comments, and excerpts from prisoners' letters on its website. "Men and women who have been raped in prison are often too ashamed to speak out," explains Stemple. "SPR's website gives survivors a chance to connect with one another, and when you are isolated, ashamed, and afraid, that connection can be a matter of life and death." All three organisations maintain websites containing information about prisoner rights, as well as information about specific inmates. The SPR posts contributions from inmates written about their own personal experiences of sexual abuse while incarcerated while the CUADP and CCADP websites posting of personal case information from prisoners and appeals for legal and political assistance. The CCADP website held information from 45 prisoners in Arizona jails at the time the suit was launched. SPR regularly sends fact sheets, survivor stories, and referrals printed from its website to survivors who are still incarcerated. "Arizona's attempts to restrict and censor the content of advocacy organizations' own websites certainly violates the Constitution and establishes a troubling precedent," says Ann Beeson, Litigation Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. "Prisoners and the groups that choose to assist them retain the same vital freedom of speech that all Americans do." The bill reinforces restrictions on unmonitored inmate access to the internet and aims to restrict correspondence between prisoners and 'communication service provider ' or 'remote computing service', though not communications with newspapers and magazines.
The law also imposes disciplinary action against inmates whose names or personal information appear on the websites. Inmates may also be disciplined if any person outside prison walls accesses a provider or service website at a prisoner's request.
The July 18 order reads in part: "Except as authorized by the department of corrections, an inmate shall not have access to the internet through the use of a computer, computer system, network, communication service provider or remote computing system. An inmate who violates this section is guilty of a class 1 misdemeanour."
The penalties include removal of good behaviour points towards parole. Prisoners whose names are spotted on the sites are issued with an order demanding that they contact the site and have their names withdrawn.
In May and June of this year CUADP was contacted by two prisoners requesting that information about them be removed from the website. CCADP has similarly been contacted by at least four inmates.
"This ill-conceived law places prisoners in a Catch-22," said Eleanor Eisenberg, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona. "The only way for prisoners to stop information from being posted on the Internet is to contact the very organizations the prisoners are now banned from contacting."
SPR, CCADP and CUADP are challenging the bill's 'chilling effect' on their right to free speech and its effective censorship of their public concerns about prisoner safety.
They also note that pro-death penalty organisations such as Crazy Pros and organisations which seek harsher penalties for prisoners such as the National Organisation of Parents of Murdered Children also post information about inmates, their crimes and their sentences.
To date Stewart and his department have not asked prisoners named by these pro-death penalty websites try to contact them to have their names removed. It seems that inmates are only vulnerable to punishment when their cause is taken up by organisations that try to argue their innocence on their behalf.
In its letter to Stewart, the ACLU said it believed that the legislation would be swiftly invalidated by the courts.
"There can be no doubt that the purpose and effect of this legislation is to suppress the flow of information from prisoners to the outside world, and to chill the advocacy of CCADP and other anti-death penalty and prisoner rights organizations," the ACLU letter added.
"The Internet is a vital source of news and information for millions of people in the United States and around the world," said David C. Fathi, staff counsel with the ACLU's National Prison Project.
"The government may not ban information about prisoners from the Internet any more than it could ban such information from newspapers or television."
This item is awaiting a comment from the Arizona Department of Corrections. Additional reporting by Avery Davis-Roberts.
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:33:05 GMT -5
Aug 2002 BYTES IN BRIEF: www.senseient.com/bytesinbrief/bytes.asp?page=currentbytesACLU CHALLENGES ARIZONA LAW CENSORING DEATH PENALTY SITES On July 18th, the American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of anti-death penalty and other advocacy groups, filed a suit in Arizona federal district court seeking to overturn a state law that bans all information about Arizona prisoners from the Internet. The lawsuit, Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty v. Terry L. Stewart, was brought on behalf of three prisoners' rights groups against the Arizona Department of Corrections, which is responsible for enforcing this law. The law (Arizona House Bill 2376) also bars prisoners from corresponding with a "communication service provider" or "remote computing service" and disciplines prisoners if any person outside prison walls accesses a provider or service website at a prisoner's request. The groups represented by the ACLU include the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which has information about 45 Arizona prisoners on its website; Stop Prisoner Rape, a group that seeks to end sexual violence against individuals in detention; and Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a group that organizes public education campaigns with the intention of abolishing the death penalty. All of the ACLU's clients maintain websites with prisoner information. Recent state agency notices demand that prisoners have their names and case information removed from advocacy websites or face prison discipline and possible criminal prosecution. The ACLU's complaint alleges that the legislation in question has the effect of suppressing the flow of information about prisoners to the outside world and stifles the advocacy efforts of the ACLU's clients and other anti-death penalty and prisoner rights organizations. The complaint in the case may be found at: www.aclu.org/court/stewart.pdf
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:33:20 GMT -5
July 28, 2002 The Chicago Tribune Inmates' personal ads doing time on Internet - Web sites draw pen pals, anger victims' families By Lynette Kalsnes Tribune staff reporter - Published July 28, 2002
In his Internet personal ad, Luther Casteel lounges in a well-cut suit and stares out seductively while expressing a love for slow dancing, jazz and hiking with his dogs. He is a spiritual person, he says, who likes fine cars, clothing and the Chicago nightlife. And incidentally, he was convicted of murder and makes his home on Death Row. "The state says I'm a `Natural Born Killer,' but I am a very ompassionate man and a born-again Christian!" his ad says. Casteel, 45,convicted of killing two people and wounding 16 others in a shooting at an Elgin pub in April 2001, one of thousandsof convicts, from petty criminals to some of the region's notorious killers,who have placed ads seeking correspondents, legal help and long -term relationships on a quickly growing list of prison pen pal Web sites. The quest for prison pen pals is not new--for years, prisoners have sought them through newspaper and magazine ads. But "the Internet seems to have replaced that," said Gary Phelps, chief of staff for the Arizona Department of Corrections. "It's quicker, cheaper, you get a much broader market.... It's harder to control." The trend has infuriated victims' rights organizations and victims' families, who are concerned the sites could lead to scams or influence impressionable young people to commit similar crimes. Victims' relatives also are incensed at the idea that murderers and rapists, whose punishment is supposed to include their isolation from society, are entitled to any kind of pleasant interaction with the outside world. Robert Weides, the father of the bartender Casteel killed, sees the ads as an "absolute outrage." "To imagine this man has any rights is just unconscionable," he said. "When you did what he did, you lost your right to be a human being." But Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Fairchild said such sites are legal and the prisons can do little beyond monitoring mail and calls, because prisoners have a right to correspondence. Prison reform groups argue the sites can shine light on prison abuses while socializing inmates, making them feel more connected to the outside world and less likely to re-offend. Internet pen-pal sites are growing rapidly in number and membership. Cyberspace Inmates lists 1,625 inmates and gets 5,000 to 10,000 hits a week, while PrisonPennPals.com has 1,006 inmates and averages 2,600 hits a day, according to the founders. The people writing include homemakers, oil riggers, students and police. Prisoners do not have Internet access, Fairchild said. Instead, they mail information to Web sites to develop the ads, which often include protestations of innocence alongside paintings, poems and photos of prisoners taken in better days, or in the visiting room while subtly flexing their muscles. Inmates primarily learn about the sites from other prisoners, though family members also can provide information. Many sites have applications that family and friends can send to an inmate to fill in the necessary details. As for what the inmates write, PrisonPennPals.com founder Stephen Hartley said his site corrects grammatical errors and edits out profanities or sexually explicit material. Beyond that, he said, the material runs as the inmates provide it. People generally can write letters directly to inmates or via the Web site, which would mail the messages to the prisons. Some human-rights sites, such as the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, cost nothing. More commercially oriented sites charge inmates up to $80 a year, or charge the people who wish to write to prisoners a fee for each message. Among the extras available to prisoners, one site will digitally alter dank visiting-room photos into fantasy vacations, showing inmates in resorts they have never visited or on cruises they have never taken. Kept from `going insane' Such idyllic spots are a far cry from the cell where Jesus Padilla Jr., 28, of Cicero, is locked up for 23 hours a day. An inmate at the Downstate Tamms super-maximum-security prison, Padilla was sentenced to 60 years after strangling an Oak Park woman, hiding her body in a shed and reportedly bragging about it. The lack of human contact spurred him to place an ad on an Internet Web site, where he averaged nine hits a day. "The Web site would provide a means for me to be able to have people from outside write to me and keep mefrom going insane in this place," Padilla said in a letter. "It is not every day that one can smile in a place such as this, but when you see the smiles radiating from a prisoner when he receives a letter from a friend you will grasp the profound meaning behind the contact we have made." Padilla, whose ad says he is an animal lover and an American Indian who upholds the ways of his ancestors, said he has corresponded with a teacher, another professional and a business owner. They write him out of curiosity about prisoners' lives or "just out of the kindness of their hearts," he said. Though the medium has changed from pen and paper to cyberspace, the controversy over such communications remains the same, said professor Ned Benton, who heads the public management department at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "As always in corrections, you're balancing questions of security and public safety, and questions of individual freedom," he said. Susanna Orr, Jeffrey Weides' mother, called for a ban on third-party communication. Her son, who had two children, was considering going into the landscaping business before Casteel's bullets ended the dream. "I don't think [Casteel] should have any contact with people he can be an influence on," Orr said. New York and Arizona prohibit third-party mail and Internet access. But even with penalties including a loss of good-time credits, inmate Web pages in Arizona recently topped 150, Phelps said. Arizona's law, which human rights groups challenged in court this month as a violation of free speech, was created after a woman searching for information about her late father discovered his killer's Internet ad instead, Phelps said. "My concern is public safety," Phelps said. "I think these inmates are continuing to fleece the public, putting the money into accounts that someone else manages, and we have no idea." But proponents argue that prisoners have rights and need contact with the outside world. Some of the sites document prison abuses and bring legal help to the innocent, said Tracy Lamourie, a co-founder of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. She hopes the Web will help end the death penalty by showing the human face of those sentenced to die. Engaged to a prisoner Texan Laura Rawls, who writes inmates in several states, including Illinois, said inmates lose everything, even their families, as the years pass. "I saw there was so much pain behind those walls," said Rawls, who runs a prison ministry. "I wanted to do what I could to help, to let them know they're not alone. Society kind of shuns these guys. That's one of the main reasons they can't make it in this world." Rawls is engaged to an inmate pen pal. She said she hasn't received much support from the outside world. "They think you're stupid for writing to inmates," she said. Though Rawls acknowledged the need to be cautious, she said she does not worry about writing inmates or her plans to marry one. "I believe everybody has the right to a second chance." "Most of the guys ... they're going to get out," said Cyberspace Inmates founder Rev. Rene Mulkey. "I would much prefer someone who's been rehabilitated, who has taken college courses, who has written with people and interacted as my neighbor, than someone who has spent time in a cage."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:33:41 GMT -5
The following article appeared in the July 21st - Miami Herald, Daytona Beach Journal, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Naples Daily News, Bradenton Herald, The Lakeland Ledger, St Augustine Record, and several other news outlets throughout Florida... Florida death row inmates push their views on Internet JULY 21 - 2002 By Ron Word - Associated Press Amos King, facing execution for the 1977 stabbing death of a woman, tells visitors to his Web site that he was wrongly accused. "I'm innocent of the charges I'm on death row for. I'm the victim of a frame-up," King writes. It's a familiar theme. Several dozen Florida death row inmates have Web pages where they proclaim their innocence and plead for money and letters. Although some sites are created by friends and relatives, such as the site originally set up for Gainesville student killer Danny Rolling by his former girlfriend, many of them 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 CCADP, said the organization considers the death penalty a human rights issue and feels it is appropriate to let death row inmates have their say on the Web. Web pages are available to anyone on death row anywhere in the world, including the United States. "In a lot of the cases, they probably have done some nasty things, but they don't deserve to be killed," Lamourie said in a telephone interview from her office in Toronto. The group currently sponsors about 350 inmate Web pages and expects to have as many as 650 soon. Inmates mail the information to the organization, which develops a Web site. In most states, inmates do not have Internet or e-mail 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. It is wrong, and it must stop." The site generates 100 to 200 e-mails a week, she said, some complimentary and some critical. "I'm sorry for any added stress or pain it causes victims," she said. Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty also provides Web pages to inmates who believe they are wrongfully convicted. 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." "It just keeps that wound open," Hires said. 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, 47, who received a stay two deaths before his scheduled death earlier this month, can thank a group of Europeans and Americans who are opposed to the death penalty for his Web site, according to Sissel Egeland, who lives in 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." King is under a death warrant for the 1977 stabbing death of death of Natalie Brady, who lived near a corrections center in Tarpon Springs, where King was incarcerated. Earlier this month, King posted a message on his Web site inviting Gov. Bush to his execution, which has been stayed while the constitutionality of the state's death penalty laws are challenged. "In as much as you have issued your proclamation of his guilt by signing the warrant for his execution, we ask that you have the courage to attend his death and stand for your beliefs and convictions in person," the invitation states. Another condemned killer Carl Puiatti poses in a picture with his mother at the top of his Web site. "I have been sentenced to death for a murder I did not commit and would like to take a plight to the people of the world in order to help me obtain defense monies needed to hire competent legal counsel," Puiatti writes. Puiatti's co-defendant Robert Glock was executed Jan. 11, 2001, for the 1983 slaying of Sharilyn Johnson Ritchie, a Manatee County home economics teacher. "I killed Ms. Ritchie. I'm sorry for it," said Glock as he lay strapped to a gurney just moments before his death. On another site, inmate, Samuel Jason Derrick, 35, claims he was unjustly convicted for the 1987 murder of Rama Sharma, 55, who owned the Moon Lake General Store in Pasco County . "Almost 13 years later, no end to this nightmare is in sight. Since I have been on death row, I have become divorced. I have sat helplessly, not being able to help my family. My father has died. I have missed out on my son's daily life, and have not been able to be there for him when he needed me most. My potential is being wasted," Derrick's site states. "Still, I remain positive. I am optimistic that someone will eventually hear my cries," said Derrick, who posted a picture of him and his son. One of the three women on Florida's death row, Virginia Lazelere, also has a Web site where she proclaims her innocence to the 1991 shotgun murder of her husband, Norman, an Edgewater dentist. The Web site asks for donations to her legal defense fund. On the Net: Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty: ccadp.org/Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty: www.cuadp.org(source: Associated Press)
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:33:55 GMT -5
State Pen Mightier Than Speech? By Julia Scheeres 2:00 a.m. July 18, 2002 PDT www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,53832,00.html The day Stardust Johnson ran across her husband's killer on the Internet, holding a kitty cat and searching for female pen pals to alleviate his death row boredom, was the day she went from a mild-mannered widow to outspoken victims' rights advocate. "I curled up into a fetal position on the floor, screaming," said Johnson, whose husband Roy was on his way home from giving an organ recital at a Tucson, Arizona, church when he was kidnapped and bludgeoned to death with rocks by a meth addict. "He didn't mention that he'd brutally murdered my husband and thrown his body into a wash." Johnson's outrage led to the creation of a 2-year-old Arizona law that makes it a criminal offense for inmates to publish personals, pen pal ads, financial aid requests or even their artwork and musings on the Internet. Critics charge that the ban violates inmates' free speech, but prison officials say they're doing their duty: protecting victims and their families from additional emotional distress, and the public from professional scam artists. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday in the federal district court of Phoenix challenging the law's constitutionality on First Amendment grounds. "This isn't about security, it's about suppressing unpopular speech," said David C. Fathi, the staff attorney for the ACLU National Prison Project. "Basically some people in Arizona didn't like the fact that prisoners were able to express themselves on the Internet, so they're trying to shut them up." The subject of prisoners' rights is complicated, Fathi said, with security indeed being a valid concern for the government. "The short answer is that prisoners forfeit rights that are, by their very nature, incompatible with incarceration -- freedom of movement, freedom to gather together with persons of one's choosing, freedom to engage in one's preferred occupation, etc.," Fathi said. "They do not forfeit rights that are not incompatible with incarceration -- freedom of speech, freedom to practice their religion, etc. These latter rights may be limited only to the extent necessary to maintain prison security." It's not the first time the ACLU has fought to defend prisoners' First Amendment rights. In Nevada, the ACLU successfully sued state officials on behalf of an advocacy newsletter called Prison Legal News when it was banned from cells. And in California, the ACLU is currently challenging a Pelican Bay State Prison policy that prohibits inmates from receiving any document printed from the Internet. Victims' rights groups argue that free speech protections don't apply to prisoners. "These people are bad dudes," said Frank Parish, a board member of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, whose stepdaughter was abducted from the parking lot of a Houston grocery store and murdered. "It doesn't bother me at all that they don't have their Bill of Rights. They forfeited those when they made the deliberate choice to violate the law." Meanwhile, prisoner websites -- especially death row inmate sites -- are flourishing. Although most inmates don't have Net access themselves, they snail-mail material to friends and activists who post it online for them, enabling them to reach millions of potential sympathizers with their pleas of innocence, requests for financial or legal aid, denunciations of guard abuse and lonely-hearts ads. And that worries Gary Phelps. The chief of staff for the Arizona Department of Corrections said his department conducted an investigation of the state's death row subculture and found a warren of lying, conniving baddies. "They were using the tremendous worldwide reach of the Internet to fleece people and run scams from prison over which we had no control," Phelps said. Phelps said several death row Don Juans were using the Web to drain the bank accounts of lovesick women, pledging affection to multiple female fans at once in an elaborate con game to see which inmate could bilk sympathizers out of the most money. Then there was the stranger-than-Hollywood case of death row inmate Floyd Thornton. In 1997, Thornton's wife Rebecca, whom he met through an Internet personals ad, arrived at Arizona's maximum-security facility in Florence brandishing an AK-47 and tried to bust her hubby loose as he was weeding the prison vegetable garden. She was killed in the shootout with guards, but not before fatally plugging her husband by accident as he sprinted toward the fence. For all these reasons, cutting off prisoners' Internet access to the world seemed like a logical step to Phelps, who insisted that protecting "vulnerable" women from manipulative inmates was not patronizing. "It's a public safety measure to protect people from their own stupidity, like the laws against drinking and driving. It's the government's duty to protect people from the con artists of the world," he said. Arizona inmates are given three weeks to remove their material from the Internet or face misdemeanor charges, although most are punished by having their "good time" credits or visitation rights revoked, he said. So far this year, 53 inmates have been cited for their online content. (Arizona has 29,000 prisoners, and roughly 130 are on death row.) But the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the largest purveyor of Web space to condemned prisoners, has not only refused to take down Arizona inmate sites, but has indeed pledged to create a page for every death row dweller in the state, with or without their consent. "They're sentenced to death, they're not sentenced to silence," said CCADP co-founder Tracie Lamourie. "As far as we are concerned, the letters they send requesting to take down their material were written under duress and (we) won't honor them." For every letter the group gets from a prisoner asking to be taken off the site, the CCADP shoots off a response stating that the materials are the property of the CCADP and won't be removed. Lamourie said the group has been thanked by inmates for the bold action. She downplayed criticism that inmates misrepresent themselves, noting that the public can easily search news or state prison sites for the particulars of their crimes. Her goal is to give death row prisoners an outlet to speak freely, she said, not to fact-check every account for accuracy. "We're giving prisoners a voice. Americans should know who they're killing."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:34:21 GMT -5
BANNED FROM CYBERSPACE State Law Banning Prisoners from Writing Letters to Web Sites Prompts Lawsuit - By Robert Anthony Phillips July 18, 2002
PHOENIX, Az. - Two anti-death penalty groups have filed a lawsuit against the Arizona prison system for enforcing a law that bans prisoners, including death row inmates, from sending letters to their Web sites.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit for the groups, charges that the broadly worded Arizona state law, which went into affect in July 2000, is a violation of free speech rights and seeks to punish inmates who write letters to the Web sites.
The ACLU said that inmates have been threatened with disciplinary action or criminal prosecution and the law has a "chilling" effect on advocacy groups.
Gary Phelps, the chief of staff for the Arizona Department of Corrections, said the law was put in place to prevent victims from coming across the faces 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 killer, who is on death row, as a caring person and holding a cat.
Corrections officials said that so far, 53 prisoners have been given disciplinary tickets for violating the Web rule and 24 have lost prison privileges as a result.
Disciplinary tickets are given to inmates who violate prison rules. A ticket can result in loss of privileges inside the prison for specific periods of time.
The 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 Web sites.
The ACLU says one of the targets of the law is the Canadian Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which has an extensive Web site that publishes letters from death row inmates around the United States, including Arizona.
The CCADP said on its site that a "new Iron Curtain is emerging around America’s Death Camps." It views the Arizona law as an attempt to legislate what advocacy groups can put on their Web site.
The CCADP is a rabble-rousing Web site that not only publishes letters from death row prisoners, but includes a memorial page for convicted murders who have been executed; Web pages for individual death row prisoners; information on upcoming executions; and requests from death row inmates for pen pals.
The site also accuses President George Bush of 154 "homicides," the number of executions he allowed during his time as governor in Texas. The site also calls Bush a "serial killer." The site refers to Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating as "Killer Keating" for allowing executions in his state. President Bush and Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating: Targets of Canadian anti-death penalty group.
The Arizona law bars inmates from having access to the Internet through the use of a computer, computer systems, network, a communications service provider or remote computing system. Inmates are also forbidden from sending or receiving mail from a communication service provider or remote computer site.
The ACLU had sent a letter to the Arizona Department of Corrections in June demanding that the law be suspended, calling the measure an attempt at censorship and a violation of freedom of speech.
The ADOC countered that it had no authority to suspend a law passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.
The ACLU said it brought the lawsuit on behalf of three groups: the Florida- based Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP), the Canadian Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and Stop Prison Rape. The lawsuit was filed in Arizona federal court Thursday.
Abe Bonowitz, director of the CUADP, said the Arizona law is aimed at suppressing information.
"I am concerned that a prisoner can be punished for making public his or her claims of innocence," Bonowitz said in a prepared statement. "The purpose and effect of this legislation is to suppress the flow of information from prisoners to the outside world, and to chill the advocacy of CUADP and other anti-death penalty and prisoner rights organizations. As the lawsuit contends, pro-death penalty organizations have not been targeted by the Arizona Department of Corrections."
Bonowitz said his group’s Web site lists three Arizona death row prisoners in its "Wrongful Convictions" section. One of the prisoners, Robert Murray, wrote to the site saying he was innocent. Bonowitiz said that Murray later wrote to the Web site saying he could be disciplined.
David C. Fathi, legal counsel for the National Prison Project (part of the ACLU), said the Arizona law not only violates the rights of prisoners, but also the rights of advocacy groups, such as CCADP, that publish inmate letters on the Internet.
"The purpose of (the law) is to prevent information about what is happening from getting out," Fathi said. "They are threatening prisoners with criminal prosecution for having information about themselves on the Web site.
"If you look at the statute, there is not a word about prison security or the dangers of someone trying to break someone out," Fathi said. "Some people just didn’t like the fact that prisoners were able to express themselves on the Internet and, therefore, tried successfully, to pass legislation. The law is very clear that speech that annoys or upsets someone is not sufficient reason to allow government to ban it."
Phelps said that by banning inmates from expressing their views and telling about themselves on the Internet, the state is helping prevent crime victims from "coming across" the postings on the Web.
"We supported this law," Phelps said.
The Canadian anti-death penalty group says it provides free Web space to all prisoners under a sentence of death as part of its educational and outreach efforts. The CCADP says there are 350 Web pages devoted to death row prisoners on its site.
"Prisoner pages can include anything from detailed legal transcripts highlighting claims of innocence to prisoner's writings, artworks and requests for correspondence," the group said in a prepared statement.
The CCADP said it will not remove any prisoner information from its site, viewing the law as an attempt to "silence the voices of human rights advocates..."
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Post by CCADP on May 7, 2005 12:35:31 GMT -5
Victims all over again By:Allen Jones, Managing Editor - The Tomball Potpourri, May 07, 2002 - Tomball, Texas www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=4064220&BRD=1492&PAG=461&dept_id=187497&rfi=6When two Magnolia area women discovered a Web site discussing their two teen-age sons, the mothers were outraged - not because the site's owners didn't first get their permission to write about their boys, but because the founders of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty did not check the facts supplied by Lonnie Earl Johnson who sits on death row for killing their sons. A binder filled with newspaper clippings and old photos and a stack of Harris County District Attorney's Office documents tell the story of how Gunar Sean Fulk and Leroy "Punkin" McCaffrey Jr. died Aug. 15, 1990. It is a story of a gruesome death that the two women, Chris Schultz and Laura McCaffrey, know by heart. They have memorized every detail of their sons' deaths. If truth be told, there is hardly any need for their binder and stack of court papers because they have had to inscribe the events surrounding their boys' demise into the dark recesses of their brains. "Sean had brush-burn abrasions on his back indicating he had been dragged across the asphalt while still alive," Schultz said. "He died because of three close-range gunshot wounds to his face and one to his chest. One fractured his right eye, bursting it. A bullet was recovered from the base of his skull." Schultz also said her son's best friend, McCaffrey Jr., died from a gunshot wound to his neck and head. "The District Attorney's office also said he suffered two gunshot wounds to his chin and shoulder. One of the bullets severed his spine," she said. According to newspaper archives at The Potpourri and The Houston Chronicle as well as court documents, on Aug. 15, 1990, at about 1:30 a.m. Fulk was called to stop by a Tomball Stop 'N Go where his friend, Tammy Durham, was working the graveyard shift. Being alone, she wanted Fulk to keep her company. Before Fulk arrived at the store the black male who would be convicted of his murder was already there. At approximately 2 a.m., Fulk arrived with McCaffrey Jr., both teen-agers had just gotten off work. Durham stated that after visiting with her for about 10 minutes, the boys walked outside. According to Schultz, Durham had left the store's doors open to let the place air-out and it allowed the store clerk to overhear a conversation between the boys and Johnson, who asked for a ride. Johnson claimed his car was out of gas and that he needed a lift. Durham said the boys looked for a gas container inside the store. She provided them with a container and the boys left telling Durham they would be right back. As they drove down FM 2920 in Fulk's truck, Durham told investigators that she noticed Johnson was riding between the two boys in the cab of the vehicle. That was the last time Durham saw the boys alive. Later that morning, a man driving to work on FM 2920 saw a dead body lying on the side of the road. When he pulled over, he noticed a second body lying about 125 yards from the first. A second motorist, according to Harris County investigators, stopped at the scene and called police. When Harris County Sheriff's Department homicide investigator Max Cox arrived at the scene, he reported that blood in the middle of the road, lead him to believe that Fulk had been shot in the roadway and dragged to the roadside. Cox also noted in his statement to the District Attorney's Office that he determined McCaffrey Jr. had been running away when he was shot. The truck was gone and so was Johnson. It was Aug. 31 outside an Austin topless bar that Johnson was finally located and arrested. Johnson's girlfriend, who worked at the bar, helped police obtain an arrest warrant for suspicion of two counts of capitol murder by confessing that Johnson had told her on the night of the murders he had killed the two boys. It wasn't until November of 1994 that Johnson was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death row. And now, nearly 12 years later, the mothers of Fulk and McCaffrey Jr. say their sons are victims once again with the establishment of the Canadian Web site which allows death row inmates to publish whatever thoughts they may have. Johnson's pages on the anti-death row Web site features a poem he wrote, a pen pal request, bank account information for appeal expenses, an inside view of death row, and his version of the Aug. 15, 1990 events which lead to the deaths of Fulk and McCaffrey Jr. Johnson claims he was looking for a ride that night but that the trip turned into a struggle of self-defense when the two teenagers began to call him racist names and pressed a gun to his side. At 27 years old and standing 5 foot nine inches and weighing 219 pounds, Johnson said he was able to fight back but that fear and rage took over causing him to kill the teens in self preservation. He said he struggled against Fulk first, who was bigger than McCaffrey Jr. He grabbed the gun from Fulk when McCaffrey Jr. jumped on his back. The gun went off, he claims on the Web page, and the "big guy falls." "I have the pistol now," he wrote to the Web site's founders. "The other guy comes at me with a knife. So I pull the trigger." After being arrested and spending four years in jail, he wrote, state appointed legal aid did little to defend him. He said his family and friends were in court every day and that "everyone expected him to be acquitted."
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