Sunday, January 31, 2010
News, In this Issue...

Trouble on death row

New visitation restrictions create problems after string of non-execution deaths

A guard patrols the fence line at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
  Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images

 

By Charles Stanley
 
       On New Year’s Day, 2010, convicted murderer Leeland Mark Braley was found hanged dead in his cell on death row at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. His apparent suicide, currently under investigation by the Department of Corrections, marked the third non-execution death on the row since October 2009. Since Braley’s death, new restrictions, meant to enhance security within the prison, have been placed on inmates’ privileges including the revocation of contact visits with family and loved ones for all prisoners.
 
Advocates for the inmates and their families, however, say the restrictions, especially the elimination of nearly all physical contact with anyone from outside the prison walls, goes beyond the limits of humane punishment or reasonable security measures. 
 
       On Oct. 29, 2009, death row inmate Kim McMichen died from pneumonia at the Atlanta Medical Center. On Nov. 19, inmate Timothy Pruitt was found with injuries originally thought to be sustained in a botched suicide attempt. He would die on Dec. 6. Then there was Braley's death sometime during the night that spanned the New Year.
 
       The deaths spur questions about the safety, security, and care provided to inmates at the state prison. The New Hope Center, which provides lodging for family members visiting death row inmates, claimed in an online newsletter in December that McMichen, who was convicted of killing his wife and her boyfriend, might not have died had he received medical treatment in a more timely fashion. 

    According to the Gainesville Times, “on Nov. 19, Pruitt tried to hang himself with a bedsheet inside his cell” and died later of complications. Multiple news sources have reported that Pruitt’s death, currently under investigation by the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC), is widely believed to have been a homicide.  Pruitt was sentenced to death for the 1992 rape and murder of 10-year-old Wendy Nicole Vincent of Dahlonega.

    Finally, many are left to question how, so soon after Pruitt’s death, Braley was able to secure the means to end his own life in his cell. Braley was sentenced to death in August 1999 for the 1998 murder of Kelli Hammond, a 25-year-old insurance agent in Zebulon. According to the Associated Press, trial testimony revealed that Braley “went into Hammond’s business to ask for money. When she refused, he returned with a knife and gun. Prosecutors said Braley cut Hammond’s throat and then stabbed her.”
 
       While some may point out that these were “dead men walking” anyway, advocates—and inmates whose guilt is in question—counter that for people already confined to their cells for as many as 23 hours a day, the new restrictions that went into effect after Braley's death represent what Pastor Randy Loney calls “another kind of death.” 
 
   GDOC's new rules cap the number of non-family visitors allowed on each inmate’s visitation list at two. Furthermore, inmates and their visitors are now separated by a barrier of wire mesh and bars, impairing visual contact and preventing physical contact.   
          
       Loney, a pastor with the Glad River Congregation at Mercer University in Macon and author of the book “A Dream of the Tattered Man,” has been ministering to death row inmates for 25 years. He says visits from family and loved ones are a lifeline for most death row inmates, and to take that away from them is devastating.
 

CROCHETING BANNED ON THE ROW

 
       Death row inmates at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson spend their hours of isolation reading, listening to one of the three radio stations available to them and praying, says Loney. They can watch television in their cells between 4:30 p.m. and lights out, around 11:30  p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
 
       “Some of them sing hymns, from early in the morning until the time they go to sleep,” he says. “They take that very seriously.”
 
       For one hour a day, they are given what is called “runaround time" when groups of five prisoners are allowed to leave their cells, roam the dorm, converse with each other or use the phone.
      
       In the past, says Loney, prisoners could also pass the time with crochet.
 
       “They crocheted lovely pieces,” he says, “everything from doilies to hats for infant children. But that was taken away. … I’d say five years ago, something like that.”
 
       The inmates also get yard time, spent outdoors within the prison walls. GDOC Spokeswoman Peggy Chapman says every inmate gets an hour of yard time every day. Loney, however, reports that inmates tell him yard time accounts for only about two and a half hours each week.
 
      Clergy and attorneys, who count as those two non-family visitors, are allowed to visit during four hours of each week day. Family and loved ones may visit between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekends. 

     In the past, inmates would sit in the same room as their visitors. Monitored on closed-circuit television and by a guard watching through a window, they could stare into the eyes of a minister, clutch the hand of a loved one, or review a legal document with an attorney. Since the beginning of the year, though, visitors have had to communicate with prisoners through a series of bars and what some have described as a “grate” that obstructs the view of inmates and visitors and prevents physical contact between them.
 
       Although the timing for the elimination of contact visits coincides with the inmate deaths, Chapman says the two are unrelated. She says that it was actually an investigation into security concerns and contraband within the prison that prompted the elimination of contact visits. She declines to go into detail about the ongoing contraband investigation, other than saying the new restrictions are meant “to maintain our practice of maintaining safe and secure prisons” and “obviously there was a safety concern.”

     Chapman adds she cannot discuss ongoing investigations into the alleged suicides of Pruitt and Braley. She also declines to comment on the pneumonia death of Kim McMichen, citing restrictions barring her from discussing medical information about an inmate. 

       Kathryn Hamoudah, public policy associate for the Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR), has implored Brian Owens, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections, to bring back the contact visits. Hamoudah also asked, in a letter to the commissioner, that families and friends of prisoners who do not comply with rules for visitation be dealt with on a case-by-case-basis. Additionally, Hamoudah’s letter addresses complaints about 23-hour lockdowns, strip-searches and allegations that prisoners have been locked in their cells naked and without bedding or heat. (The GDOC denies this has occurred.)
 
       The elimination of contact visits, says Hamoudah, is “the latest and most severe of what has been a systematic depletion of privileges that create a balance for those on death row.”
 
    SCHR Executive Director Sara Totonchi says her organization has been contacted not only by families and friends of inmates, but also attorneys who are attempting to do their due diligence in representing inmates.
 
       Totonchi is skeptical of claims that the restrictions are unrelated to the recent deaths of Braley and Pruitt. “They say they’re not a result,” she exclaims. “Then why the hell are they implementing it all of a sudden? Just for the hell of it? That doesn’t make any sense.”
 
       Totonchi believes that by limiting contact between death row inmates and their families, prison officials are pushing away a potential resource for encouraging order within the prison.
 
       “We really believe strongly that family members and friends of people in prison are the greatest untapped resource that the Department of Corrections has to work with,” says Totonchi, who adds that family members can be a resource for the GDOC in “assist[ing] their loved ones in complying with prison rules, behaving accordingly and working towards having one of the most peaceful and safe institutions possible.”
 
       Martina Correia, an anti-death penalty advocate with Amnesty International, has been visiting her brother, Troy Davis, on death row since the early ’90s. Because Davis has been receiving medical treatment in Augusta, Correia has not been to Jackson since contact visits were taken away. She can, however, attest to the toll that restrictions on visitations take on family members.
 
       “Every time they punish someone, they punish the families,” she says. “The families are not bringing in [contraband]. We have to go through all kinds of stuff to get into the prison. The only way they can get materials like that into the prison is through the people that work there.”
 
       Even before contact visits were taken away, Correia says many inmates’ family members had already reduced or stopped their visits completely because of the difficulties posed to family by prison officials. Because the administrative staff does not work on Saturdays, she says, hiccups in communication can end a visit before it even starts, rendering an often long journey useless.
 
       “If there’s a problem at the facility, there’s no recourse. Nothing. If you’ve already gotten okayed and approved by phone,” she says, “then you get there and somebody forgot to fix the paperwork up front, then you’re just stuck and they don’t care how far you’ve traveled.”
 
       Even families that do get into the facility, says Correia, can find that their already limited visiting time is cut short by security measures, paperwork, screening for H1N1 and the lag in time caused by a single guard escorting prisoners one at a time from their cells to the visiting area.
      
       “If you come at 9 [a.m.], you have to wait up to an hour to get into the facility,” she says. “Then you have to wait 30, 40, 50 minutes for the inmate to come down to visitation … a process that used to take 30 minutes can take up to two hours.”

NO CONTACT

 
       Pastor Randy Loney has experienced the security procedures and the long wait for prisoners to appear in the visiting room. He has trouble imagining how a visitor such as himself could bring contraband past the security measures in place when contact visits were still allowed.
 
       “Security is really tight. I can’t even bring a Bible into the prison,” says Loney, noting that the prison staff will provide a Bible for clergy members upon request. “I can take a paper and pencil in to take notes.”
      
       When visiting inmates, Loney describes stopping in a security room, taking off his coat to have it X-rayed, and passing through a metal detector. The guards, who he is quick to note are always respectful, nonetheless closely scrutinize him before he enters the visitation room. He has to leave his car keys, wallet and anything else in his pockets behind. Nothing is allowed in, with the exception of a few coins for the vending machines. Inside the visiting room, he is still watched by the live guard and closed-circuit system.
      
       “I don’t see how I could be seen as a threat,” he says.
 
       The GDOC would not allow The Sunday Paper access to the prison’s visitation rooms, or provide photos of the dividers. Therefore, we are left with Loney’s description.
 
       “It’s thick wire mesh,” he says. The best analogy for the view provided through the mesh, he says, is, “if you put your hands together and make a little patchwork with your fingers and try to look through your fingers. … You see a distorted face, and it’s dim as well because of the lack of good light.”
 
       Loney says he has seen a noticeable change in demeanor amongst the prisoners he regularly visits.
      
       “Their families are their lifelines,” he says, “and when they can’t hug their mothers and fathers and children and brothers and sisters, they’re heartbroken … it’s palpable.”
 
       When asked whether men convicted of humanity’s most heinous crimes are likely to illicit sympathy from the public, Loney responds that prisons are charged with imposing civilized punishments.
 
       “I think everyone agrees that there is a tremendous difference between punishment and dehumanization,” he says. “To deprive people of human contact is far beyond punishment. It becomes dehumanizing.”
      
    The GDOC’s Chapman, responding to charges of harsh conditions, says that the primary goal of prison staff and prison regulations is safety and security. Although the GDOC currently states that an inmate’s attorney of record (no associates or paralegals) can conduct contact visits to allow for effective legal advice, there is no indication that the ban on contact visits will be lifted for any other visitors. SP