Tag: inmates
Missouri Carries Out Eighth Execution This Year

Missouri Carries Out Eighth Execution This Year

Washington (AFP) — Missouri put to death a convicted murderer early Wednesday, the eighth death-row inmate executed there so far this year in a grim record among U.S. states.

Earl Ringo, a 40-year-old African American sentenced to death for a 1998 murder during an armed robbery at the restaurant where he worked, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 1231 (0531 GMT) in the town of Bonne Terre, said Mike O’Connell of the state corrections department.

Ringo died nine minutes after he was injected, the spokesman said.

O’Connell did not specify if a controversial sedative, Midazolam, was used before the execution.

Ringo’s lawyers had mentioned it in last-minute appeals to the Supreme Court that were rejected.

Midazolam was used in three executions this year — in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona — that were criticized because the condemned took longer than usual to die and apparently suffered.

Missouri has long denied using it. But it recently admitted using a sedative to ease inmates’ anxiety before execution.

“The only lethal chemical the department uses is pentobarbital,” said communications director David Owen in an email to AFP.

Death penalty opponents allege that the three lengthy recent executions — which left inmates suffering for over an hour at times instead of 10 minutes — amount to a form of torture or the “cruel and unusual” punishment forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.

Ringo is the eighth person executed by Missouri this year, out of a total of 28 in the entire United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The number is the highest ever recorded by a U.S. state at this point in the year.

Texas, which habitually claims that grisly record, is also scheduled to execute an eighth person, a convicted murderer, late Wednesday.

Eighteen U.S. states have abolished the death penalty, but 32 others — and the federal government — maintain the practice, and polls suggest it retains majority support among the U.S. public.

AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm

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Supreme Court Leaves California In Charge Of Disabled Inmates

Supreme Court Leaves California In Charge Of Disabled Inmates

By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court turned down a states’ rights appeal from California Governor Jerry Brown on Monday, leaving in place a judge’s order that requires state officials to monitor each of about 2,000 disabled prisoners who are held in county jails.

Without comment, the justices refused to hear Brown’s complaint that the order “violates fundamental federalism principles” by holding the state liable for lapses by local officials.

The court’s dismissal is the latest setback for California’s top officials in a long-running battle with federal judges over the management of the state’s prisons.

Three years ago, the high court upheld judges who said the state’s prisons were so badly overcrowded that they could not provide decent health care for inmates who had medical or mental problems. The only remedy, the court agreed, was to reduce the number of state prisoners.

In response, Brown helped engineer a “realignment” that shifted thousands of low-level offenders and parole violators to county jails. In 2012, the legislature decreed that these inmates were the “sole legal custody” of county officials.

But last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state retained the legal duty to make sure that prisoners who have a disability are given the “reasonable accommodations” required under the Americans With Disabilities Act, even if they are held in a county jail.

“These accommodations include the basic necessities of life for disabled prisoners and parolees, such as wheelchairs, sign-language interpreters, accessible beds and toilets and tapping canes for the blind,” said Judge Stephen Reinhardt for the 9th Circuit. “The state is not absolved of all of its responsibility for ADA obligations as to the parolees” just because they are now held in county jails, he wrote.

The appeals court upheld a 43-page order by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken, which said state officials must check with each parole violator who is sent to a county jail and has a disability. She said the state must see to it that the inmate receives the accommodations required under the law.

Brown and California Attorney General Kamala Harris appealed to the Supreme Court in March and asked for a review of the 9th Circuit’s decision. It “sets a dangerous and sweeping precedent that effectively nullifies the states’ 10th Amendment right to delegate powers to local governments,” they said. If left standing, it would leave the state “liable for alleged ADA violations in the county jails,” they argued.

Late last year, the state said about 26,000 parolees were being held in 200 jails throughout the state, and 1,889 of them had a disability. This number is constantly changing, they said.

In reply to the appeal, lawyers for the prisoners who sued the state said Brown and Harris had exaggerated the impact of the judge’s order. “At its core, the injunction merely requires the state to provide disability notifications, collect disability data and issue reports to the counties,” they told the court.

After considering the appeal last week, the court said it had denied review in the case of Brown v. Armstrong.

Photo: Wallyg via Flickr

Florida Jail Explosion Kills Two Inmates, Injures Dozens

Florida Jail Explosion Kills Two Inmates, Injures Dozens

Miami (AFP) – At least two inmates were killed and more than 100 people injured when an apparent explosion destroyed part of a jail in the southern U.S. state of Florida, officials said Thursday.

The blast “resulted in a partial building collapse” at Escambia County Central Booking Facility in Pensacola, Florida, officials said on the county website.

The cause of the explosion, which came Wednesday night at 11:00 pm, was not immediately clear.

Initial reports cited an “apparent gas explosion,” but the most recent update from the county said only that “the State Fire Marshall and ATF are on scene investigating the event.” ATF is the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“Between 100 and 150 prisoners and corrections officers have been injured and transported to local hospitals,” in addition to the two dead, the notice said.

“Uninjured inmates are being moved to other detention facilities in Escambia County and neighboring Santa Rosa County,” it added, noting that the prison staff were working to account for the location of each of the inmates.

The explosion came after heavy rains drenched the U.S. east coast Wednesday, and caused flooding, including at the jail.

A county spokeswoman told a local newspaper the flooding may have been a contributing factor to the blast.

The detention center “took heavy flooding today,” Castro told the Pensacola News Journal, “but we’re not sure if that affected what happened here tonight.”

Pensacola is located in the Florida panhandle, in the far northwest of the state near the border with Alabama.

©afp.com/Joe Raedle

Iraq Empties Abu Ghraib Prison As Jihadists, Troops Clash

Iraq Empties Abu Ghraib Prison As Jihadists, Troops Clash

By Pol O Gradaigh and Kadhem Al-Attabi

BAGHDAD — Iraqi authorities have closed the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near the capital Baghdad for security reasons and evacuated all its prisoners, the Justice Ministry announced Tuesday.

The complex’s 2,400 inmates had been moved to other prisons in northern and central Iraq, the announcement said, without specifying when the operation had taken place.

Abu Ghraib, Baghdad’s central prison, lies about 20 miles west of the capital in the Sunni-dominated al-Anbar province, where local and pan-Arab media reported clashes on Monday and Tuesday.

Security forces loyal to the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have been battling Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in the province since January.

The Iraqi army’s head of operations in the region was killed along with a number of other officers in a helicopter crash, army officials said.

The officials, who were not authorized to give their names, said that the crash was due to a technical fault.

ISIL is reportedly in control of the city of Fallujah, an additional 20 miles to the west, and it recently published video clips of what it said was a military parade by its fighters in Abu Ghraib.

In July ISIL attacked Abu Ghraib and another prison north of Baghdad, and it alleged to have liberated 500 inmates.

Abu Ghraib prison became notorious after pictures of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in the complex were made public in 2004.

ISIL has its origins in al-Qaida in Iraq but has broken away from the international network as it seeks to control territory in neighboring Syria against the instructions of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

Tension is high in Iraq ahead of parliamentary elections due to be held on April 30 in which al-Maliki is seeking a third consecutive term.

In recent months, the country has seen almost daily attacks mainly targeting security forces and Shiite civilians.

According to U.N. estimates, 8,868 people were killed in violence in 2013, Iraq’s highest annual death toll in five years.

AFP Photo/Mauricio Lima