On March 1, 1999, U.S. Federal Judge William Wayne Justice ruled in a 167-page Opinion that Texas state prisons have failed to rehabilitate themselves in that they still ran a brutal and inhumane prison system where prisoners are gang-raped, beaten, and extorted by other prisoners while their pleas for help and protection are met with indifference by guards and prison officials.
Donna Brorby and her staff of lawyers presented 80 witnesses, including experts and prisoners who told of abuses so horrifying that several observers could not bear to hear some of the testimony. Judge Justice ruled that the Court will maintain oversight of the prison system and gave the state three months to come up with a plan to remedy unconstitutional conditions and practices.
Judge Justice first took control of Texas prisons in 1979 following a year-long trial brought about by civil-rights complaint filed in 1972 by prisoner David Ruiz. 349 witnesses testified at the 1978-79 trial telling of unspeakable atrocities committed by "building tenders" (prisoners who had been appointed as guards) and aided by guards and prison officials. Murder and torture were common punishments for such rule infractions as not picking enough cotton to satisfy the field major. Prisoners who wrote complaints to the federal court describing these barbaric terms of confinement were targeted for retaliation by wardens, with building tenders carrying out the beatings and rapes, and on occasion murders of jailhouse lawyers and others with no fear of punishment of any kind.
In 1980, Judge Justice ruled that confinement in the Texas prison system constituted cruel and unusual punishment, citing overcrowding, understaffing, brutality by guards and building tenders, substandard medical care, and uncontrolled physical abuse among prisoners.
Under court orders Texas cured overcrowding by getting voters to approve $1,200,000,000 in bonds to be used to build more prisons. Thus, they turned a prison system which consisted of 15 prisons housing 18,000 prisoners into the mammoth it is today: 110 prisons housing 150,000 prisoners. Build them, and they will come. They were also forced to eliminate building tenders, but have since trained their guards to take over building tender duties.
Texas Attorney General John Cornyn immediately said Texas will appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He said he has no plans to negotiate a plan that will satisfy the federal court ruling. He is newly elected and has promised voters that he will end federal oversight of Texas prisons. He believes that Texans don't want their prisons to be constitutional. I suppose that, like many Texans, he believes that constitutional prisons would reflect a softness on crime, a label that no Texas politician could survive.
Kudos to Attorneys Donna Brorby, Co-counsel Ginny Morrison, and all their helpers, and expert witnesses, and to the prisoners who, with great courage, testified to the shame and humiliations, personal horrors and abuses that they have been subjected to at the hands of the correctional criminals and their willing prisoner accomplices. To all those who worked on behalf of the prisoners, it is good to know that there are those good people in this country who still see us as human beings rather than the despised trash that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice would like for us to be in order to promote the recidivism that is the breath of life necessary to perpetuate power and their license to steal from the $1.2 billion annual prison budget.
Judge William Wayne Justice, the Honorable, best sums up this cesspool of criminality that Texas prisoners must try to survive: "The evidence before the court revealed a prison underworld in which rapes, beatings and servitude are the currency of power. Inmates who refuse to join race-based gangs may be physically or sexually assaulted. To preserve their physical safety, some vulnerable inmates simply subject to being bought and sold among groups of prison predators, providing their oppressors with commissary goods, domestic services, or sexual favors ... To expect such a world to rehabilitate wrong-doers is absurd. To allow such a world to exist is unconstitutional."
Standing Deer
The Texas prison system is reverting to the bad old days when guards brutalized and murdered prisoners with impunity. This story is just breaking and facts are hard to come by. What I report here has been gleaned from two stories from the Houston Chronicle by Kathy Walt; an internal memo by John F. McAuliffe, director of the prison cyst'ms Internal Affairs Division; and personal interviews with people who were there. McAuliffe's memo is dated December 1, 1994.
Four Texas prisons are involved in the Internal Affairs probe in which thirty guards are being investigated for organized criminal conduct. At McConnell Prison in Beeville, Texas, a group of guards known as the "Blue Bandanas" severely beat 25-year-old Willie Jones on November 24, for "mouthing off" to a guard. Two of the guards involved in the Jones beating (Rodolfo Rodriguez and Damian Contreras) were indicted a few days ago (early December '94) by a Bee County Grand Jury on charges of aggravated assault, retaliation, and tampering with a witness. The charge of "tampering" stems from the guards' efforts to threaten two other guards into giving false statements about what happened. One guard was fired (Rodriguez), and the other resigned (Contreras). Both are free on $25,000 bond. Both were members of the "Blue Bandanas", a loosely organized group of guards who derive their name from the Color of the bandanas they carry "to let the inmates know they had unity". McAuliffe further said in his memo addressed to the Texas board of KKKriminal Justice and to top administrators in the department: "This latest case represents the fourth pending investigation involving allegations of organized criminal conduct on the part of the correctional officers using excessive force in attacks on targeted inmates." I don't know for sure what "targeted inmates" means to them, but I have been a targeted inmate and I can tell you it ain't no fun.
Meanwhile, at Robertson Prison near Abiline, Texas, four prisoners were beated so badly that the brutality could not be covered up. Internal Affairs is investigating these crimes which is akin to the fox investigating the chicken coop. Information on these cases is nearly impossible to come by because Texas prisoncrats have cloaked the entire investigation in a shroud of secrecy.
Perhaps the strangest case of all is at Michael Prison at Tennessee Colony, Texas, where at least six prisoners were beaten and brutalized. The Anderson County District Attorney Jeff Herrington refused to prosecute the cases in spite of the serious violations of state law which he is sworn to uphold. But why should we expect him to prosecute the good ol' boys that he drinks with and who vote him into office? It is probably the best thing that could have happened to us because now the federal authorities have taken over the prosecution of ten Michael Prison guards in six separate cases of prison brutality. I never thought I'd be glad to see the Feds ride in, but when you're a prisoner in a cyst'm as lawless as Texas you're glad to see an evil that you can hope is not quite as evil as the one you know.
But the real death KKKamp has been Terrell Prison just outside Livingston, Texas. We first heard on October 7, 1994, that prisoners were terrorized by guards who attacked them sporadically for seven hours. When the guard riot ended, 30-year-old Michael McCoy lay dead and prisoner Eric Robinson was suffering from a severe beating. Guards Alex L. Torres and Joel Lambright have been charged with murder. Both are free on $50,000 bond. Variuos charges have been filed against four other guards who went on the rampaging riot with Torres and Lambright, and a total of nine guards have been suspended.
Only three days later on October 10.1994, Anthony Thibodeaux was murdered in Terrell Prison. The guards first reported the 24-year-old black man died when he had a seizure and hit his head on the floor. The autopsy determined that Thibodeaux had been murdered and the guards changed their story saying that he was kicked to death by a gang of prisoners in the Day Room. The official cause of death was a brain hemorrhage due to a ruptured esophagus. The guards now say that he was struck across the esophagus by one convict and fell to the floor. Then six inmates pounced on him beating him unconscious. Whatever happened, no charges have been filed in Thibodeaux's murder.
The first of the four recent murders at Terrell Prison was the July 14, 1994, slaying of 22-year-old Paul Hernandez. Guards reported that Hernandez was being shaken down by a gang of prisoners who wanted him to join the gang. He died of massive head injuries. No charges have been filed. On August 5, '94, 23-year-old Randy Payne had his head split open by a steel toed boot and died at Hermann Hospital in Houston on August 12, never regaining consciousness, his mother at his bedside. It took prison keepers seven hours to get Payne to the hospital after his body was found. Prison officials have told Mrs. Payne that her son fought off two gangs of prisoners for nearly two hours because he refused to pay protection or become their punk. No charges filed.
These four murders happened at Terrell Prison, a prison that opened in December of 1993 and was bally-hooed by prisoncrats to be the dream prison -- a state of the art Gulag costing $57 million and holding 2,250 poor people. Warden Keith Price boasts of its design and electronic eavesdropping capabilities -- features that are supposed to allow guards to see into virtually every nook and cranny, and even listen in on convict conversation.
So how could these four murders have happened without the guards' complicity? We have learned that all four murders happened in the same maximum security section known as Seven Building. And now we know why convicts call it "go to heaven building". At least three, and possibly all four murders occurred on the same duty shift. The "investigation" continues.
Can you imagine what Texas prison will be like when they hire another 9,500 guards next year? They hired 8,000 new ones this year. They now have 62 prisons housing nearly 100,000 poor people, and they plan to open a new facility a week for the next 18 months. That means in mid-1996 Texas will have 134 prison facilities with 28,000 guards running out of control. "It is much easier to imprison surplus labor than to create jobs."
George Bush Jr., the new governor, has already promised to make the prisons miserable. I wonder what he thought they were already? The legislature has cut our gate money down from $200 to $50. That means if you sleep on the streets you can feed yourself for about five days if you eat at McDonalds. Who can look for a job while living in a cardboard box? They have also passed legislation that says that once you lose your good time you never get it back. This bit of genius will help fill those 134 prisons. The more macho among us are grumbling because they are making us wear girl pants, i.e., trousers with no pockets and no fly. But the real corker is that on March 1, 1995, all tobacco products will become contraband for prisoners and guards alike. Your prison. Love it or leave it. Auden said, "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return." A simple truth, but Texans don't seem to realize what they're doing. Do they really want to meet the products of their outrageous prisons on some dark and gloomy night?
When I was thinking about a title for this report, a story I read somewhere a long time ago came to mind. One of Napoleon's ministers advised him to make Devil's Island into a prison where they could cast the most terrible murderers of the day. "But who will guard such criminals?" he asked. "Worse criminals!" the minister replied.
I go now. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.
-- STANDING DEER
I know something about consuming High Security corrections. I spent some years in the Control Unit at Marion, Illinois -- the prototype of later High Security / Control Unit / Adjustment Center / Ad Seg / Administrative Maximum / Special Handling Unit, man-made, hell-on-earth nightmares. I was sent to USP Marion in 1976 after being convicted of bank robbery. While there, I watched men's minds deteriorate and dissolve into madness. I nearly crossed that line myself.
What do these severe terms of confinement do to the minds of the men? Does living in a cage smaller than your bathroom with constant harassment from guards reduce men to sniveling, quivering jellyfish -- like the parole board wants -- or are some of these prisoners harboring a seething rage, a hatred and lust for revenge so deep that citizens will have to pay with their lives when these men get out? The justification for the death penalty in some minds is "At least they can't kill again." But most of the men in High Security will get out.
I do not suggest that all, or even most of those in High Security, will be driven to madness and terrorism. I don't even suggest that most of these men belong in High Security. I am saying that if the State of Texas has its way and builds eight of these things, there will be nearly 5,000 men subjected to this cruel and unusual punishment. If just one out of a thousand seeks revenge for his mistreatment when he get out, and kills only one person, five Texans will die because of the blunders of their prisoncrats.
To bring to the light the truth that High Security doesn't make men better --it simply makes them crazier -- I wrote an article in 1982 which included the poem "When I Get Out", written some 20 years ago by a convict who was in the Marion Control Unit with me in the late '70s. He was executed in 1992 by the State of Delaware, but not before he had killed 19 people. He is an example of the monsters that mind-torture creates, bought by big bucks spent on ever more sophisticated mind-control techniques used in legal, behavior-modification torture chambers. The poem is obviously the product of a totally deranged mind. I had to clean it up, cut out parts of it, and change some of the wording before I could include it. Even so, it still shocks and jolts the reader.
"When I Get Out" and my original introduction to it have been published all over the world, including appearances in the books Cages of Steel, Criminal Injustice, Journal of Prisons, and in the intellectual publication, Issues in Radical Therapy. So when the editor of The Huntsville Item asked me for a guest column in December 1997, I cleaned up the 1982 piece with the poem and sent it in.
Here is the poem. Listen carefully. You're about to step into the nightmare that prisoncrats have created in your name.
When I get out
the first thing I'm gonna do
is get me a gun to protect myself
from the police.
Probably more than one gun
because
there's so many different kinds
of police.
Maybe a .460 Weatherby
with a twelve-power scope
for kings, dictators, presidents and popes.
A .357 magnum for law enforcement officials in
general,
and a nice nine millimeter
Browning High Power
for just plain folks like you.
When I get out
I want to kill as many people
as I can before they get me.
I'd like to get the Queen Mother
and the Pope
and the President if I have the time.
Remember when you cut off my
eyelids by putting me in a
sensory deprivation chamber
in total darkness
because I wanted to go
to my mother's funeral?
Remember when you chained
me to a bed
and beat on my feet
with wooden paddles until
they turned to blood and
swelled up like basketballs?
When I get out
I'm going to spend the hatred
you've taught me
by becoming a mass murderer.
And all you judges, jurypersons,
cops, jailers and executioners
can't stop me
because it was you who
murdered Charles Brooke
and taught me that
it's cool to kill.
It was you who told me I lived
in a free country
as you ground your heel in my humanity
and laughed at my pleas for dignity
and spat on my manhood.
It was you who dressed up
in moon man suits
beat me to the floor with clubs
and drugged me with Prolixin
because I couldn't stop calling
my baby daughter's name
when she left this world.
So, in return of the lessons
you have given me
I'm going to teach you two things:
First, that these sealed-tomb, tiger cages
belong to you, Mr. & Mrs. America,
and it is you who must accept
the responsibility
for what you and your hirelings
have done to me.
The second thing I'm going to teach you
is something you should already know
but don't act like you do, namely
the Christians say "Do Unto Others, etc."
the Buddhists say something about
"What goes around comes around."
In prison we simply say:
Payback belongs to me
when I get out.
It won't be much longer.
I'm counting the days.
So, you better pray I don't find you,
gentle reader,
'cause when I've paid my dept
to society
society must pay its debt to me.
When I get out ...
I never dreamed The Huntsville Item, which is read only by guards, Ku Klux Klan members, and other redneck types, would publish my piece with the poem. But on January 6, 1998, as I was sitting in my cage trying to talk to my cellie out of tattooing MAYHEM on his forehead, here comes Turd Head Red -- a runner at the law library -- with the January 6 edition of The Item. Turd was all out of breath as he handed me the paper with my piece in it.
My cellie looked at me and said, "Oh shit."
"Oh shit," I replied
So I packed my books and legal files and waited for the guards to gather me up. Three days later, on January 9, here they came, four deep -- two rushed me and handcuffed me behind my back while two began destroying my cage, pouring my legal files out on the floor and stealing everything pertaining to Leonard Peltier, political prisoners, my political files and notes and the draft of The Item piece, plus some books, Cages of Steel, Can't Jail the Spirit, With the Power of Justice in Our Eyes, and other titles.
Before they throw you in the hole, they take you to the "infirmary" where a guard posing as a nurse takes your temperature and blood pressure to assure you are healthy enough for solitary confinement. They charge the victim $3 for this service and you have no choice but to go. My blood pressure was 276/148, a reading that means you have been dead for about a week, but the guard/nurse recorded it as 229/121 and claimed it was so high because I was scared of the guards. (Yeah, right! Hee, hee, hee. They really frightened me.) They tried to kill me by refusing me all blood pressure meds.
I was held incommunicado without charge for 13 days (never mind their "Rules of Disciplinary Procedure", which says if a pre-trial detainee is held 10 days without a charge he'll be released.) They falsified my lock-up date from 1/9/98 to 1/13/98 in order to comply with the pre-hearing 10-day rule. The charge was "Threatening Capt. Pickett, other correctional officers, and public officials." The FBI laughed at it.
The rules also say that in pre-trial hearing you will be allowed all your property. I couldn't even get a stamp, envelope, pencil, or sheet of paper out of my property even though I had tons of writing materials stored in a room about 10 feet from my cage. They had me where prisoners can't come, so nobody could slip me anything or smuggle a letter out. But through an extralegal resource I was able to get word out.
Bonnie Kerness of the Control Unit Project of American Friends Service Committee and Anna Standing Deer, my wife, were the first to post my situation on the internet, then Anna Dobbyn in San Antonio, Zoitista. So the cards and letters poured in, along with faxes and phone calls and telegrams. By March 26, 1998, I had received 1,600 letters, and people were calling the prison, faxing the warden and director and writing outraged letters. Whoever thinks that emergency responses are a waste of time and resources can argue with me because if it had not been for the Power of the People, I would be dead today.
The authorities figured out how to tame my support. On February 4, they confiscated my legal files and political notes and began moving me from wing to wing for no apparent reason. Then they took my name away from me and on March 26, transferred me to Pack 1 Prison. My name must now be written as "Robert H. Wilson", even though my legal name is Standing Deer Wilson. What they accomplished by changeing my name is that now they send all the mail coming to Estelle back to the sender without explanation. This makes all but the most dogged or experienced give up. When they call the warden at Estelle, he says "Wilson is no longer here", and when they call the warden at Pack 1, he says, "Who? Standing Deer? We have no such person!"
And we thought we were slick!
When they put me on a bus and brought me to Pack 1, I had none of my property, not envelopes, stamps, writing paper -- or any meds. My blood pressure med is Clonidine 0.02 mg three times a day, and if you abruptly cease taking it, you go into withdrawal and your blood pressure shoots sky high -- there are recorded deaths for not getting it. So I went into a blood pressure crisis with a reading of 276/ 148 and nearly died. The health care professional in the guise of a male nurse told me, "Nothing is an emergency. Put in a sick call request." This happened at 2 p.m. By luck I had an attorney phone call at 3 p.m. from Margaret Gold. When I told Margaret about the denial of Clonidine, she called the medical director and bared her fangs, so they got me tthe clinic and put Clonidine and Anlodipine down me and just barely saved my life.
The ACLU in Houston is now my good friend, and I've got a lot of help in Texas. On 90.1 FM radio at 9 p.m. every Friday night, "The Prison Show" airs with Ray Hill, an ex-prisoner, as the host. He said kind words about me for two weeks running and gained me more friends, so a whole bunch of folks will crawl down the prison's throat if they try to kill me agian.
Ted Koppel did four "Nightline" evenings from Estelle's new control unit. One evening he spent the night there to emphasize his journalistic dedication. Now he really knows what it's like to be thrown into a control unit with no company other than the camera crew, sound technicians, producer, director, and guards bringing pizza, coffee, cupcakes, and seeking autographs all night long!
Koppel got dynamite interviews from Marta Glass, an ACLU volunteer, Debora Perkey, an ACLU attorney, and Ray Hill, but much of what they said came out of Ted Koppel's mouth live as if he said it. That Friday night Ray Hill started "The Prison Show" saying, "This is Ray Hill and Marta Glass coming to you from Ted Koppel's cutting room floor."
Ted Koppel also said, "It's one thing to isolate dangerous inmates 23 hours a day, but it becomes a deeper social problem when those men are literally driven nuts by the process, but then released right back out on the street when their time's up." Hey Ted! That's exactly what I said, but I got 24 days solitary confinement in the hole and lost parole eligibility for another year. Ted Koppel should at least have lost his good time.
Attorney Margaret Gold sent Ted Koppel a big packet about how I was locked up and given a major case, destroying my parole possibilities for at least a year, and how the propaganda minister for the TDC lied to the press, saying, "This is not a First Amendment case" and claiming I was not locked up for having my guest editorial published in The Huntsville Item, but rather because they found contraband in my cage and I was "verbally assaultive" to the guards.
A total fabrication! There was NO contraband. There was NO verbal assault. There might have been in other circumstances, but I was so happy to be locked up for my publishing a piece I have been trying for 15 years to have published in a mainstream newspaper, knowing it was a clear First Amendment case, that I wanted to keep pristine.
By the way, when I went to the hole, my cellie did tattoo MAYHEM on his forehead. Looks pretty good too. In color.
In The Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Standing Deer