Arizona burying prisoners at rapid clip.

Now that Az Department of Corrections Director Chuck Ryan has lowered the standards that members of his execution team need to meet in order to kill another human being, it should be much easier for him to reduce the state prison population. It's no surprise that he went this route to reduce the number of people he needs to lock up instead of improving access to substance abuse treatment or the quality of re-entry programs for those returning to the community. After all, this is the man who had a dentist (Michael Adu-Tutu) direct his medical program and a podiatrist at Perryville "treat" women now dying of cancer who could have been cured. 

Perhaps if not for the way he treats all his other prisoners I'd believe some sense of duty to dispensing "justice" drove his correctional policies, but I've seen so many prisoners die behind bars who were only sentenced to prison for a few years that it's hard to believe that justice has anything to do with this. With our pervasive disregard for all of human life in AZ, it's no wonder the ACLU and Prison Law Office had to intervene in this place...

Arizona Territorial Prison Cemetery

---------as published today by the Capitol Times----------

AZ on pace to match busiest year for executions

By Amanda Lee Meyers, Associated Press

Published: March 14, 2012 at 1:26 pm

With two executions already carried out so far this year and two more up for consideration next week, Arizona is on pace to match its busiest year for executions since establishing the death penalty in 1910 and be among the busiest death-penalty states in the nation, The Associated Press has determined.

If the Arizona Supreme Court approves of two more death warrants on Tuesday, and if the state carries out three additional executions of inmates likely to be at the end of the appeals process well before year-end, that would make seven executions for 2012.

That would match the 1999 total, the most ever in the state.

“We’re having a big year,” said Andrew Clemency, a public defender who specializes in death penalty cases in the Phoenix area and teaches about the subject at Arizona State University. “Arizona is becoming a major player in the death-penalty world, right up there with places like Texas or Georgia or Florida.”

Texas leads the nation in executions just about every year, and last year put 13 inmates to death. In comparison, Arizona executed four inmates last year. In 2010, Texas executed 17 inmates and Arizona put just one inmate to death.

Nationwide last year 43 inmates were executed in 13 states.

If Arizona puts seven inmates to death this year, it could become the second-busiest death-penalty state after Texas. Last year, Alabama executed the second-highest number of inmates at six.

Clemency attributed Arizona’s recent uptick to a coincidence in the timing of appeals being exhausted. But he also tied it to Arizona’s reputation as a conservative state in which politicians can win favor by supporting the death penalty.

“We’ve always kind of had a healthy appreciation for the death penalty here in Arizona,” he said. “It’s been sort of a part of our legal system forever, going back to the Old West days.”

Shari Silberstein, executive director of the anti-death-penalty group Equal Justice USA in New York, said Arizona appears to be bucking a national trend that has seen many states move away from the death penalty.
The drop in Texas executions to 13 last year, for example, is down from 24 in 2009.

“Arizona is kind of out of step with where the rest of the country is going on the death penalty,” Silberstein said. “It is concerning. It says that Arizona is not looking at the facts that everyone else is recognizing.”

Executions nationwide have decreased steadily since they hit an all-time high of 98 executions in 1999 and have averaged at 44 a year since 2007, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In the past five years, four states have repealed the death penalty — New Mexico, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. Governors in those states cited cases of innocent people being executed, and said the system was expensive and ineffective at deterring murder.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber said in November that he’ll never allow another execution in his state under his watch, calling the system “compromised and inequitable.”

Other states still have the death penalty on their books but simply don’t enforce it.

Silberstein credited high-profile exonerations of men on death row as putting a human face to errors in the system, and thus beginning a change in public opinion.

As of January this year, the Death Penalty Information Center reported that 140 inmates on death row have been exonerated in 26 different states since 1971, mostly through DNA evidence or confessions from other people.

Arizona has executed two inmates so far this year — Robert Henry Moormann on Feb. 29 and Robert Charles Towery on March. 8.

On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court will consider whether to approve death warrants for Samuel Villegas Lopez, 49, and Thomas Arnold Kemp, 63. If approved, their executions would be scheduled to be carried out in late April or early May.

Lopez was convicted of raping, robbing and stabbing a 59-year-old woman to death in her Phoenix apartment on Oct. 29, 1986, after what court records described as a “terrible and prolonged struggle.”

Kemp was sentenced to death for kidnapping a 25-year-old college student from outside his Tucson apartment on July 11, 1992 and robbing him before taking him into a desert area, forcing him to undress and shooting him twice in the head.

The three other inmates whose executions could be scheduled this year are Daniel Wayne Cook, Richard Dale Stokley and Edward Harold Schad.

Cook was scheduled to be executed April 5 for killing a man and a teenage boy in 1987 in Lake Havasu City after torturing and raping them for hours, but the U.S. Supreme Court put the execution on hold until it rules on Cook’s claims of ineffective counsel during post-conviction proceedings. A ruling is expected by the end of next month.

Both Stokley and Schad recently lost appeals in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and could see their executions scheduled within months if the U.S. Supreme Court declines to review their cases, which is mostly likely.

Stokley was convicted in the kidnapping, rape and murder of two 13-year-old girls who went missing from a camp-out in Elfrida in southwestern Arizona on July 7, 1991. Stokley’s friend, Randy Brazeal, was convicted of second-degree murder in the killings and was released from prison last year.

Schad was convicted of killing a 74-year-old Bisbee man in August 1978 after robbing him.

Arizona Assistant Attorney General Kent Cattani said about 50 other inmates were nearing the end of their appeals in the 9th Circuit and would likely be executed within a year of whenever they’re turned down. That sets the stage for dozens of executions in the next few years in Arizona.

Some of those cases have moved slowly through the court system over the course of decades.

“I’m not sure why it has taken as long as it does,” Cattani said. “From the state’s perspective, it’s something that could move more expeditiously.”

Since 1910, Arizona has executed 93 inmates; 28 of them have been put to death with lethal injection since the state began using that method in 1992. The state executed 28 inmates by hanging from 1910 through 1931, and 37 inmates by lethal gas after that.

Altogether there are 128 inmates still on Arizona’s death row.

Inside the AZ DOC with retired DW Carl Toersbijns.

Great interview with Carl Toersbijns on the Lou Show. In 2010 Carl retired from his job as Deputy Warden at the state supermax facility, ASPC-Eyman, where many prisoners with mental illness are managed in solitary confinement instead of in a mental health care setting. Since retiring, Carl's written a couple of books about his career in corrections, and has been blogging and advocating for prisoners with serious mental illness. He's also repeatedly called for his old boss Chuck Ryan to be fired or resign. Here he addresses the abusive culture of the ADC, the role that Chuck Ryan may have had in setting the tone at Abu Ghraib, and the needs and rights of prisoners with mental illness. Please take the time to listen to this show, and go like the Lou Show on Facebook afterwards - Lou's really been great working to help us expose and reduce the abuse of state prisoners. 

Deaths in Custody: Otto Munster, 40.

  Otto Munster

On Monday, March 5, another prisoner of the State of Arizona died by apparent suicide. Otto Munster had just turned 40 when he was sentenced to the Arizona Department of Corrections in September 2011. The judge made  a special stipulation in his sentencing orders that he receive mental health and substance abuse treatment services in prison - recommendations like that from  judges are seldom ever followed, though - they mostly serve to ease the conscience of the person sending a mentally ill prisoner to something other than the psychiatric hospital they think they should be in instead. 

I don't know just how vulnerable a prisoner Otto Munster was - I can find no information on him other than his criminal and court records. He was apparently mentally ill, however - dually diagnosed with a substance abuse disorder as well. Otto apparently had no prior criminal record in Arizona, but was arrested in March 2011 for several charges including armed robbery and aggravated assault. Based on the police report and a motion by the defense counsel, Otto was ordered to have a psych evaluation for competency (known in Arizona as a Rule 11) before any further legal proceedings. That means he was stuck in Joe's jail  untiol he pled guilty and was sentenced - about six months. The initial evaluation resulted in a split decision by the doctors, so he had a third one, at which he was finally found competent enough to plead guilty to the crime he was charged with when he was deemed too ill to stand trial. 

Like most mentally ill prisoners who had to pass through the Maricopa County jail, it appears that Otto pled guilty as soon as he was found competent. No matter how emphatically they may assert to their claims of innocence, they do that because the conditions in the jail are so horrible, they feel hopelessly trapped in the criminal justice system, their attorneys are telling them they could face outrageous sentences if they lose at trial, and just about every prisoner of Joe Arpaio's thinks a determinate prison sentence is better than an indefinite stay in our county jail. These days, a stay in state prison may well be worse than Joe's jail, though, as evidenced by the recent class action lawsuit about the gross medical and psychiatric neglect at the ADC. That's saying a lot.

The ADC itself reports that 75% of incoming prisoners are there for offenses related to their substance abuse, but only 2,302 (out of the 60,000 people they handle every year) ever got any kind of substance abuse treatment from them in all of 2011 (that's in the small print on the back page of this brochure). That figure includes the treatment provided to all those DUI offenders we supposedly lock up in special private DUI prisons, too, as well as every meth addict that comes through - despite the ADC's billion-dollar budget, prisoners just aren't getting what they need to be come decent citizens, folks, even when they beg for it.  

Chuck Ryan's Arizona Department of Corrections has only two priorities, neither of which is rehabilitative or treatment-oriented. They serve to punish and incapacitate people, that's all. That's why they're dying inside at such a clip behind bars, now, and why they come back to us in worse condition that when they went into prison in the first place. Judges need to stop deluding themselves and their defendants that prisoners will actually get their mental health or substance abuse treatment needs met by the state if placed in custody. In all probability, they will be more traumatized than healed by their experience in prison - if they survive it. At least 40% will come out infected with the Hepatitis C virus, too (half not even knowing it). HCV is a serious epidemic behind bars that the ADC has refused to fully address - which means it's also a major public health problem festering in our communities, where 95% of state prisoners eventually return to.

And so, it's easy for prisoners in Arizona - especially the seriously mentally ill being sent there on the false belief that they'll be "cared" for and safer there than if left on the streets, like Shannon Palmer - to quickly fall into a sustained state of terror, hopelessness and despair. According to the ADC website, almost immediately after arriving in prison, Otto Munster began to pick up disciplinary charges. From what's visible, it looks like most of those charges were aggravated refusals to follow an order - usually the order to house. Most guys who rack up disciplinaries for that are fearing for their lives and refusing to be in General Population; I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that this is the predicament Otto was in. 

Otto also initiated a petition for post-conviction relief, meaning he changed his mind about his plea deal and wanted a trial. He had to initiate that without legal assistance, however, and appears to have struggled to meet the requirements of the court for doing it properly - though Judge Paul McMurdie seemed to be trying to accommodate his mental illness by allowing his petition to proceed anyway; he even appointed an attorney to represent him (most post-conviction relief petitions I see are done without help). Otto likely discovered what I just explained about state prison as soon as he arrived and was horrified that he agreed to do five years there. He barely even made it five months. I suspect he was requesting protection from another prisoner or a gang when he died.

When a prisoner requests protective segregation, they usually go into the detention unit of the prison they're at, or they go to ASPC-Florence, where both Rosario Rodriguez-Bojorquez and Duron Cunningham were at, awaiting determination of their protective segregation requests, when they killed themselves in September 2010. That's where Otto was incarcerated when he killed himself this week as well. The ADC should know by now that when they tell vulnerable, frightened prisoners they won't be protected from targeted violence, they need to be alert for a self-destructive response. Especially after guards mocked Shannon Palmer's pleas for safety and he was castrated by his cellmate at ASPC-Lewis (also in September 2010), the level of terror among the men has skyrocketed. Death by hanging is understandably seen as a far more preferable out than dismemberment by another prisoner or a brutal rape and beating by a gang.

Many folks in the general public seem to think that the only people really getting hurt in prison are child molesters (and we tend to act as if they all deserve whatever may happen to them there, which is itself an indictment of what a brutal society we are). In fact, the folks I see dying en masse behind bars are by and large the seriously mentally ill who most Americans would be shocked to find are languishing in state prisons for things like smoking pot too many times on probation, or climbing a utility tower in the middle of a thunderstorm to be closer to God (Shannon Palmer got three years for that, under a law intended to prevent theft of copper wire. He was "rescued" by Mesa police and taken right to jail instead of a psychiatric hospital. Thank Judge Connie Contes for that one).

The Department of Corrections has apparently not yet located next of kin for Otto. If they end up keeping custody of his body, he will be buried with a simple service on prison grounds. There, his loved ones, if ever located, will have to go through the regular visitor application process every year just to leave flowers on his grave. If Otto's family or friends come across this post, please contact me. My name is Peggy Plews, my number is 480-580-6807, and my email is prisonabolitionist@gmail.com. I'm no mental health professional or lawyer, but will do what I can to support you through the aftermath of his suicide, and can even connect you with other grieving families now fighting the way the ADC neglects and abuses Arizona's mentally ill prisoners. 

AZ State Capitol, PHX

March 6, 2012

Limits on free speech at the AZ State Capitol...

Was down at the Capitol yesterday following the announcement that our prisoners and survivors have filed their class action lawsuit against the Department of Corrections; this was the day when I planned to finally lay down one of my murals on the plaza between the two legislatures. Dana Seawright's mother, Kini, joined us. I managed to get the main part of it down - sans the names - before the cops stopped to hassle me. 

Fortunately, there were a couple of cameras trained on me at the time Officer Anderson of the Capitol Police confronted me, and ultimately - after giving me the new list of protest rules- they backed down. While trying to dissuade me from finishing my project he fumbled over what law, exactly, I was breaking by chalking the walk, despite his repeated threats to arrest me if I didn't "take it out there" (gesturing to the city sidewalk out by 17th Ave. and Wes Bolin Plaza, where I usually chalk). My response to his directions was to maintain that the free exercise of political speech is meaningless if we are relegated to places where no one can hear us before we're allowed to speak - for which reason, I refused to take my protest elsewhere, and challenged him to ticket me, arrest me, or leave me alone to finish my task. 

Anderson made sure to let me think I'd been both warned and trespassed, telling me I'm not allowed to return to the Capitol grounds unless I have "legitimate business" to conduct there. I asked who made this decision to ban me, who I appeal to, and who, exactly, determines each time I come to the legislature whether or not my business is "legitimate". As far as I was concerned, what I was doing at that moment was a very legitimate effort to communicate information to my lawmakers and governor. All the information I could get out of Anderson, though, was the name "Joe" - that's apparently who's in charge of the Buildings and Grounds department. 


So, how is it that the guy in charge of lawn maintenance is also the one who determines whether or not my exercise of free speech is constitutionally protected? That doesn't seem like it would fly in court, so I plan to challenge it this spring - stay tuned for that one. Besides, it's hard to take cops seriously whenever they go the whole gamut from being Mr. Nice Guy doing me the favor of cutting me a break by letting me go if I stop chalking immediately, to aggressively posturing and threatening to arrest me if I don't comply, to backing off and saying things like "I'm not going to arrest you because you WANT me to arrest you - I'm not talking to you anymore. We're just going to wash this off as soon as you finish so no one that you want to see it will see it" (Anderson's final answer to me yesterday - after which I finished my mural in peace and took photographs so everyone can see). 

I've had way too many cops try to bullshit me into believing that whatever they say is law that I've learned to insist that they cite the law and apply to me it if they really think I'm breaking it - but to otherwise leave me alone. There's also a big difference between rules or codes of conduct and "laws", and cops like to act as if they can arrest me for the former when I haven't broken the latter. I guess I can be trespassed from a property for violating rules, but I don't think they can outright arrest me unless it's also a violation of law.

Anyway, here's the new list of rules for "ACTIVITY" (read: "Protest") at the Capitol. I think we should have a day this spring to do nothing up there but protest them for trying to silence their dissenters, breaking every rule in the book in the process. Until then, my friends, if you plan to protest at the Capitol, be sure to have someone backing you up with a camera rolling on the cops - and the Buildings and Grounds crew - when they come after you...

As far as I'm concerned, the importance of alerting  the right people to what's going on trumps the need for the Legislature to have an "orderly" sidewalk. As long as this Governor denies the severity of the crisis of violence and despair in the state prisons, I'll keep on trying to get the message across in as many ways as possible. If we have to wait for this lawsuit to be settled before anything at the ADC changes, too many more people will needlessly die. Chuck Ryan and his henchmen all need to go now.

Prisoners file class-action suit against Arizona Department of Corrections

Arizona Department of Corrections - Central Office
Phoenix (November 22, 2011)

Please, families, tell your loved ones behind bars that help is really on the way. It's going to take a long time for anything to change through the courts, though, so you need to tell prisoners to be patient and "No more suicides!" At least have them write to me before they give up for good... 

--------from the National ACLU's website, at long last. Thanks to all the partners taking this state to task for their abuse and neglect of our most vulnerable prisoners-----

PHOENIX – Prisoners in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections receive such grossly inadequate medical, mental health and dental care that they are in grave danger of suffering serious and preventable injury, amputation, disfigurement and even death, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed today by a legal team led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison Law Office.

The lawsuit also charges that thousands of prisoners are routinely subjected to solitary confinement in windowless cells behind solid steel doors, in conditions of extreme social isolation and sensory deprivation, leading to serious physical and psychological harm. Some prisoners in solitary receive no outdoor exercise for months or years on end, and some receive only two meals a day.

“The prison conditions in Arizona are among the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Donald Specter, executive director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based Prison Law Office. “Prisoners have a constitutional right to receive adequate health care, and it is unconscionable for them to be left to suffer and die in the face of neglect and deliberate indifference.”

Specter was the lead counsel in Brown v. Plata, a similar case from California in which the Supreme Court last year reaffirmed that prisoners have a constitutional right to adequate health care.

“Courts have consistently ruled that solitary confinement of people with mental illness is unconstitutional because it aggravates their illness and prevents them from getting proper treatment,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “Even for those with no prior history of mental illness, solitary confinement can inflict extraordinary suffering and lead to catastrophic psychiatric deterioration.”

Critically ill prisoners have begged prison officials for medical treatment, according to the lawsuit, only to be told to “be patient,” that “it’s all in your head,” or that they should “pray” to be cured. Arizona prison officials have repeatedly been warned by their own medical staff of the inadequacy of the care, echoing complaints from prisoner advocates and families that prisoners face a substantial risk of serious harm and death. Yet, they have failed to ensure that minimally adequate health care is provided as required by the Constitution.  

In one particularly tragic case, a prisoner at the state prison complex in Tucson died last year of untreated lung cancer that spread to his liver, lymph nodes and other major organs before prison officials even bothered to send him to a hospital. The prisoner, Ferdinand Dix, filed repeated health needs requests and presented numerous symptoms associated with lung cancer. His liver was infested with tumors and swelled to four times its normal size, pressing on other internal organs and impeding his ability to eat. Prison medical staff responded by telling him to drink energy shakes. He died in February 2011, days after finally being sent to a hospital but only after his abdomen was distended to the size of that of a full-term pregnant woman. A photograph of Dix shortly before his death appears in the lawsuit.

Jackie Thomas, one of the lawsuit’s named plaintiffs who is housed in solitary confinement at the state prison complex in Eyman, has suffered significant deterioration in his physical and mental health as a result of being held in isolation, where he has become suicidal and repeatedly harmed himself in other ways. Prison staff have failed to treat his mental illness, improperly starting and stopping psychotropic medications and repeatedly using ineffective medications that carry severe side effects. Last November, Thomas overdosed on medication but did not receive any medical care.

“Faced with such gross indifference on the part of prison officials to the needs of prisoners with mental illness in their care, it was essential we get involved,” said Jennifer Alewelt, staff attorney with the Arizona Center for Disability Law, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Prisoners with mental illness can be particularly vulnerable, and we must do everything we can to ensure their mental health needs are met while incarcerated.”   

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona against Charles Ryan, director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, and Richard Pratt, the department’s interim director of the division of health services, the lawsuit asks, among other things, that constitutionally adequate health care be made available to prisoners, that medications be distributed to patients in a timely manner, and that prisoners not be held in isolation in conditions of social isolation and sensory deprivation that put them at risk of harm. The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages.

“Arizona has used the absence of transparency to callously ignore the basic needs of persons entrusted to its care, at times with deadly results,” said Daniel Pochoda, legal director of the ACLU of Arizona. “Absent court intervention the health and well-being of thousands of prisoners will continue to be sacrificed to economic expediency.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Arizona has the sixth-highest incarceration rate in the nation.

Other attorneys on the case are Daniel C. Barr of Perkins Coie LLP and Caroline Mitchell of Jones Day.
A copy of the lawsuit is available here and here.

More than just a number: Watching Tony Die, Part 3.

Most folks who have been reading here any amount of time know about the highly preventable suicide of young Tony Lester, whose tragic story has been revealed in several parts since he died in July 2010 at ASPC-Tucson of self-inflicted wounds to his neck. For those needing to catch up, I've compiled links below to the previous posts I've made about Tony. 

Deaths in Custody: Anthony Clayton Lester (9/15/10).

 

The Highly Preventable Suicide of Tony Lester (1/8/11).

 

Waiting in the Silence: Remembering Tony Lester (6/16/11).

 

Watching Tony die: The Halloran Investigation and feedback (11/11/11).

 

 (the above post has the links to both of Wendy's first two pieces on Tony)

 

The conviction of Tony Lester: A juror's regrets (1/2/12).

 

Below is the third part of the CH12 / KPNX investigative series: "Watching Tony Die". Wendy Halloran has done an outstanding job challenging the Department of Corrections' treatment of prisoners with serious mental illness, and even dug deeper to look at the sentencing reforms needed to spare people like him inappropriate terms of incarceration...unfortunately, our legislature has pretty much obliterated chances for that again this year, however.

Those folks with loved ones in prison need to watch this clip and please email connect@ad.gannett.com to register your feedback. Especially with the current conditions in the state prisons, it's important for the media to know that these lives matter.

ALSO REMEMBER 
the FOLLOWING UPCOMING EVENTS:

Stop Prisoner Abuse Demonstration: 

Friday, March 9 at 10am 

AZ State Capitol/Wes Bolin Plaza.

Community Forum on Medical Neglect in AZ State Prisons 

Thursday, March 22, 6:30pm

Maryvale Community Center

Deaths in Custody: Deliberate Indifference to Ferdinand Dix.

For those of you who think that the health care in prison is free and guaranteed, think again. Medical co-pays can cost a weeks' pay, and the negligence one must contend with inside costs prisoners plenty. This is why the ACLU National Prison Project and the Prison law Office are about to sue the State of Arizona.

After receiving the following video, I asked the sender how she knew him:

"He was my brother.  I spent 36 hours watching him die in a hospital in Tucson, shackled hand and foot to the hospital bed, even though he was basically vegetative/comatose and had tubes coming out of every orifice – and I mean every one of them.  It was very sad and painful to see.  I just could not believe how he looked, with his belly so distended, filled with tumors in his liver.  I could not understand how anyone inside that Tucson prison could see a man, like my brother, walking around that prison complex looking like he looked and not instinctively known or felt like: "Hey, that inmate needs to see a doctor and get some serious treatment!"  I just can't believe that people like that exist.   Just where do they find these people who work within the AZDOC?  Did no one who examined him in the medical clinic think that his belly looked a bit odd?  Did they bother to touch it, particularly given his complaints about not being able to eat?  My mother was just now telling me how she remembers in some of his letters and phone conversations he would say, "Momma, I'm just so hungry and I can't eat anything."  Peggy, his liver was so big it had literally compressed his digestive organs and made it such that he could not eat.  Can you imagine a human being walking around like that, for Lord knows how long, feeling so hungry and feeling like nothing was being or could be done about it?"

video by Michelle Lependorf



Survivors of police and prison violence, abuse, and institutional indifference are often isolated, and may be vulnerable to state oppression if prisoners or their survivors try to sue for violations of their civil rights. Please, if you find yourself in that situation, contact me (Peggy at 480-580-6807 / prisonabolitionist@gmail.com). I can put you in touch with other families for support, we can work on getting your narrative out there, so there's more than just a criminal record or mugshot telling your loved one's story, you can help in the larger fight against state violence.

ASPC-Tucson Deaths in Custody: Ferdinand Dix.

 

Ferdinand Dix was given six years in Arizona's state prisons for drug crimes and forgery, but he suffered and died horribly from cancer over the course of his first two years behind bars. He died on Valentine's Day of last year. His mother narrates his suffering most poignantly in her lawsuit against the state of Arizona and ADC Director Charles Ryan for gross neglect...I'm only including the pertinent excerpts.

AZ DOC: Witness the Murder of Pete Calleros

from the roof of the Herberger Theater

(the mural was made there without their consent - it's a public sidewalk) 

February 20, 2012

What follows is a highly redacted AZ Department of Corrections Criminal Investigations Unit report and an Administrative Investigation Report on the death of Pete Calleros on August 10, 2009, obtained directly from the state last year in a public records request. His family has been in contact with me since I first posted on his homicide - they confirmed that the AZ Department of Corrections told them it was a suicide when they sent his body home.  No one ever told them it may have been murder in the aftermath, when more information was available. That seems to be a simple courtesy that every crime victim's family should be able to expect - the truth from law enforcement officers investigating their murder.

So, if we can't expect the Department of Corrections to protect and serve those whose lives they have total control over while in custody, then how can they possibly profess to protect the public with what they do? After all, one of Pete's killers is now out on parole and missing, with a warrant for his arrest. Hope I don't run into him out here.

I've had previous correspondence with the ADC about Pete's case - see here, for example. They've never responded. Maybe mainstream media (or the DOJ) will have better luck getting an answer out of them for why Pete's family was never told about the evidence of his murder.

For those of you who loved Pete, I'm sorry to put this out there like this, but the truth needs to be told. He may have murdered a man, but his sentence was not to be executed, and this is symptomatic of so much that is wrong with the current leadership at the ADC. And for the community's sake, the men who killed Pete should be held responsible, and the rest of us should be protected from them. If we were reading the narrative below of a guard who was murdered, the word of a prisoner against another would be all the evidence the prosecution needed to get the death penalty. Here the ADC won't even present the case to the prosecutor as a homicide. I wonder how they reported this death to the DOJ, anyway. If they told the guy's mother he had hung himself, my bet is they lied to the feds, too. I don't know why the FBI isn't looking into this already...falsifying a federal report is a serious offense.

Dear Governor Brewer: Time to FIRE Chuck Ryan.

Many folks wonder what I do with the art I create, and why I bother chalking sidewalks when they just get washed off once I leave. The chalkings are multi-functional: they leave a message for the person or entity whose walk I'm chalking, and when I shoot them they deliver my message all over the world on Facebook and my blogs. I have a really cheap, crummy camera, so I learned to make the most of it by manipulating the colors to make these postcards with. I send them to decision-makers, allies, prisoners, media, etc. to raise awareness and show solidarity and struggle with those suffering the most. Feel free to download any of my art and do the same. I do this all with nothing more complex than the Windows image editing program that came with Vista.

We do still have a crisis in the prisons, by the way. The ACLU is about to sue over medical neglect, but the culture of contempt for prisoners and the pervasive despair and violence behind bars is unchecked. It's a poison that trickles from the top down. By far, those dying are the most vulnerable among us - not the vicious punks or molesters people think are the ones who get it in prison, and therefore don't care about. Those committed to protecting the rights of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled in the community should especially care about what's happening in the state prisons, because that's where so many are still heading.

This is what I did with the mural Kini Seawright and I did yesterday at the Herberger - her son was murdered for loving a Mexican. Brewer needs to be held accountable, too: All these deaths after all, are not only Chuck Ryan's - they're hers - and the longer she leaves him in charge the more culpable she is for the next suicide or homicide of someone's child, mother, brother, or friend in prison.

Anyone who is similarly moved to communicate with the Governor may want to do so in a public forum, so you can't be as easily ignored. 

The address for the Arizona Republic is: 

 Letters to the Editor

The Arizona Republic

P.O. Box 1950

Phoenix, AZ 85001

Letters may also be faxed to (602) 444-8933.Or contact them via the on-line form.

Fight Prison Violence: FIRE CHUCK RYAN.

My friend, Kini, and I went down to the Herberger Theater in downtown Phoenix this morning, and chalked a huge mural on their Van Buren Street sidewalk - which happens to be facing the Arizona Republic Building. We hoped it would get someone's attention there, but they tend to ignore me so as not to encourage my protests. It's okay - we got what we needed and left. I'll catch up with them via the US Mail.

Kini's son, Dana Seawright, was murdered in Lewis Prison in July 2010; chalking a memorial for her son and the other prisons who have died in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections under Chuck Ryan and Jan Brewer was pretty personal. We both agree that in order to stop this body count from climbing, Chuck and his henchmen must leave NOW. The poison, the contempt for prisoners and their families, begins there and trickles down.

Anyway, we set out on this morning's mission because this was Occupy 4 Prisoners day across the country. This is how our own small action turned out - it made for some awesome postcards about deaths in custody. 

Thanks to Patty at the Herberger today, by the way, for appreciating what we were trying to do and not washing it up as soon as we left. Sorry to leave you such a big job to clean up.

these were both shots taken of the sidewalk from the roof, courtesy of the good people at the Herberger.

Criminal Damage and Deaths in Custody: Letter to my Sentencing Judge.

Resistance Alley, Phoenix, AZ

(June 4, 2011)

January 26, 2012

Honorable Gloria G. Ybarra
Phoenix Municipal Court
300 W. Washington St.
Phoenix, AZ 85003

Dear Judge Ybarra,

I sure hope you’re having a good day. This is kind of long.

I appeared in your court this morning prepared for trial, but the charge I contested was dropped so I ended up entering a plea unexpectedly. When you asked if I had anything to say before you entered your sentencing orders, I was kind of at a loss for words. I’m not very experienced at being prosecuted and don’t know what the proper procedure is, but since my thoughts have caught up with me now, in the still of the night, I hope it isn’t too late to enter them into my official court record. My crime was one of civil disobedience, so this action just isn’t finished until my statement for sentencing is in your hands. This is it.

I first began investigating and blogging about Arizona’s state prisons 2 ½ years ago when Marcia Powell died at Perryville Prison. Marcia was a 48 year-old mentally ill sex worker with a long history of drug and prostitution convictions and no family willing to claim her body once she was gone. She got 27 months for offering a cop a $20 blow job, doing much of it on the maximum security yard at Perryville. Marcia was supposed to be on a 10-minute suicide watch when she was left in an uncovered cage, largely ignored, for nearly four hours in the mid-day sun.  It was at least 107 degrees that day. By the time someone noticed her unconscious on the ground, Marcia had defecated on herself, her organs were overheated and failing, and she had second degree burns all over her body. She went into a coma and passed away that night after the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections removed her from life support. 

"Free Marcia Powell"

Remembering women who have died 

from suicide and the violence of neglect 

at Perryville state prison in Goodyear, AZ.

(November 18, 2011)

In the wake of Marcia’s death, 16 ADC employees were disciplined, 7 of whom were referred for criminal prosecution. No one ended up being charged, unfortunately; they all got their jobs back, in fact - except for the deputy warden, who was allowed to retire. Conflicting testimony was one reason no one was prosecuted - all the prisoners said the guards ignored Marcia’s pleas for water and relief from the sun; the guards had another story, of course. 10,000 pages of ADC investigative material, and the county attorney couldn’t make a single case out of it to hold anyone responsible - not even on a misdemeanor.

What happened to Marcia affected me deeply; there, but for the grace of God, went I.

I had been a teenage alcoholic and addict, and traded my sex a few times in my life to get high and get by. What I did as a teen to support my habit could have landed me in prison for 20 years - not rightfully so, mind you, but there nonetheless. I’m manic-depressive, as well - I’m just lucky I sobered up young, had good health insurance, and was never criminalized. The places I landed when I got into trouble all had heated bedrooms, not icy cold cells; we were traumatized and ill, not fundamentally bad; we were watched by psychiatric aides, not guards - and they didn’t lock us in cages to “wait us out” through the hours or days when we most wanted to die. I was blessed where Marcia wasn’t - I wasn’t that far from where she ended up though.

CRIPA AZ STATE PRISONS

 E. Roosevelt St. Artwalk

(April 2, 2011)

Since then I’ve done extensive research on the violence and neglect in the Arizona Department of Corrections. When I discovered from an analysis of state records that the suicide and homicide rates doubled almost immediately under the current administration - which wasn’t interested in any dialogue about my research or conclusions - I began pushing the ACLU and the Department of Justice hard to intervene. For a long time, my appeals for help were met by silence or answered with form letters. The body count kept growing. I began to draw the names of the dead in murals on the sidewalks of justice - the legislature, courthouses, the police department and jail, and the ADC itself. I put down memorials in chalk all over town, then made postcards out of them and sent them across the country, calling media, lawmakers, activists - anyone I could think of for help. I even engaged the Phoenix police in my quest for assistance - quite often, in fact. None of the prisons I have issue with are in their jurisdiction, but I didn’t think that should stop them. They still could have helped open doors.

By last spring, when I finally painted the names of the dead across my alley, this was all deeply personal to me. Because I write about prison deaths, trying to humanize the prisoners as much as possible, I hear from their families a lot. Daily I’m exposed to the secondary trauma of working with survivors of prison violence;  I live with the mother of a prisoner who was murdered by the West Side Crips at ASPC-Lewis two summers ago. Her son, Dana Seawright, was caught by the gang in a relationship with a Mexican prisoner, and by refusing to hurt someone to prove his loyalty to his own race, he died from a double hate crime for being true to himself. So the names I lay down on the earth in my murals are more than just criminals: I have spoken with many of their parents, lovers, teachers, siblings and kids. I know too many of their stories. Each time I add a new name to my list, I am acutely aware that - whatever their crime - it is still someone’s father or son, mother or sister, loved one or friend - someone I will be hearing from soon. 

  "Please Send Help"

Phoenix Police Parking Lot

(October 1, 2011)

On May 10, a meeting was held of the Maricopa County Commission of Justice System Intervention for the Seriously Mentally Ill. My analysis of suicides and homicides in the state prisons as of that date revealed that not only had they doubled under the current administration, but that prisoners with serious mental illness were at particularly high risk of being victims of both. I went to the meeting to tell them this, first stopping outside to chalk a memorial for them. The meeting was being held at the Old County Courthouse on W. Washington St.

I should note here that I’ve been exercising my free speech rights all over the sidewalks of Phoenix for a little over 2 years now; it rinses right off with the occasional desert rain. It took the Phoenix Police and County Attorney’s Office awhile to decide that my chalk alone didn’t warrant arrest or prosecution for criminal damage; bank security guards around town took a little longer to catch on. So I wasn’t too surprised when - not long into my project that morning - a deputy came running out of the courthouse waving his radio in the air and yelling “you can’t do that here!” 

 Old County Courthouse, Phoenix.

(May 10, 2011)

Before I knew it, he took his foot and rubbed out the name of a young mentally impaired boy who had killed himself just a week after arriving in adult prison. Within minutes I was surrounded by deputies and daring them to take me to jail for trespassing, furious about what I considered to be desecration. Honestly, it was at that moment that I decided the next time I put that kid’s name down on the ground, no one was going to be able to smudge it out. The deputies backed down after the presiding judge for the day told them to leave me be. They washed all the names away as soon as I went inside.

And so, a week or two later, I began to paint my back alley - first with a memorial spanning about 20 feet. Then, inspired by the graffiti of resistance around me (we have enlightened vandals in our neighborhood),  I figured that if I was going to go to jail for criminal damage, I might as well do it right. I spent that next week decorating my alley and getting it ready for a small demo at June Artwalk, when I invited the Graffiti Detectives to arrest me. I even decked it out with anarchy symbols. I figured if I did enough damage I’d be charged with a felony, and could then take my case to Maricopa County’s Superior Court. There I planned to use my prosecution to confront the judiciary about packing all these people into prisons without taking any responsibility for assuring that there’s ample mechanisms for protecting their rights and lives behind bars. I wanted them to call for a judicial investigation into the homicides, suicides, and medical neglect in the state prisons. Seriously.

 "Resistance Alley: SOS"

Phoenix, AZ

Artwalk

(June 4, 2011)

I don’t know why I thought my plan might work, or why I was willing to risk felony charges and state custody to try to get the courts more involved; it was kind of extreme. I think it had something to do with finding out at the time that my mother’s brain cancer was terminal, and feeling powerless to fight it - one friend observed that I picked fights with as many cops as I could around then. My mom’s illness aside, though, I felt like I was rushing another gunshot victim to the ER, day after day, and instead of escorting me there or summoning an ambulance, every time the police stopped me they just chided me for property damage - I wasn‘t finding that very helpful, and often told them so. Anyway, I actually wrote to the Superior Court - and chalked their walk a few times - and I don’t think they’re doing a thing.

I clearly wasn’t thinking things out too well when I planned to turn to criminal mischief in order to enlist their assistance - I was kind of manic last spring from not sleeping enough after Mom got sick. By mid-May I wasn’t all that organized or realistic about my strategies for instigating social change. I was just simmering with rage at the Department of Corrections, arguably the most heavily-fortified institution in Arizona, and easily the most well-funded. Director Chuck Ryan has a billion dollars at his disposal to fight me with - not to mention all the courts, cops, guns, laws and lawmakers in the state on his side - and I was out of ideas for soliciting help. I was utterly powerless to do anything myself, yet felt completely responsible for each new life lost that didn‘t have to be. For the death rates from suicide and homicide alone to normalize again, at  least one in every two would have to be prevented. Among many in the mental health field, suicide is 100% preventable - that, at least, should be our goal.

Artwalk, Phoenix

(June 4, 2011)

I didn’t really care at the time about the possible consequences to my life of committing a felony or two; I also didn’t think my neighbors would mind much what I was doing. When I wasn’t grieving, I was just plain mad. “The City” could go to hell as far as I was concerned. The potential that my outdoor décor would cause anyone harm - beyond, perhaps, a little consternation - seemed pretty minimal next to the crimes of the evil empire I was deploying my artistry against. It still does, I have to say…though I guess that sounds a lot like I’m simply minimizing and justifying my own criminal conduct. That much I stand guilty of as well, then. 

This may not be the wisest thing for me to say, since I still have to answer to you on this matter, but I’d still paint the town tomorrow if the circumstances seemed to call for it. I am, for the most part, an anarchist at heart, and want to see the art of resistance flourish all over the place. Phoenix is feeding a good number of people to the prisons and jails every day, and nothing about how the city has responded to this crisis has changed since I started. Not that I plan to repeat this action - I just don’t want to end up in Chuck’s custody myself. That would make what I do a whole lot harder.

Anyway, following my Artwalk demonstration, the Graffiti Detectives tried to accommodate my desire to get into Superior Court by folding all my charges into a single felony. I really appreciated that at the time, and told them as much. I think Bill Montgomery either didn’t want to be part of my theater, though, or he just knew I was a little compromised by certain stressors (I was actually sending him postcards of my graffiti trying to provoke him into prosecuting me sooner rather than later…). Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit for caring one way or the other, and his people just thought I’d be a nuisance to deal with so they dumped me on your court instead. I’ve picked on him and his prosecutors in my blogs before, though - I would have thought they’d love to get their hands on me. That speaks well of their professionalism, I suppose.

Anarchy: No Justice/ No Peace

Resistance Alley Artwalk

just to be provocative

 (June 4, 2011)

In any case, I’m grateful not to be facing prison for even a day or the brand of “felon” for the rest of my life. Sgt. Kaddatz and Detective Rowe could have actually lodged more complaints against me than they did because I vandalized my alley again later that month, impatient for them to file the first set of charges so I could take my fight to court. I’ve chilled out since then, by the way. I still chalk sidewalks - I just stay away from painting them. The Graffiti Detectives showed a lot of restraint, I thought - especially considering how hard a time I gave them when they didn’t arrest me. I didn’t think my intersecting privileges should exempt me from what any young Latino male might go through in my shoes, so I got a little provocative and baited them a few times. I’m kind of grateful to be a well-educated middle-class white woman today, though, because if I was anyone else I would have probably been tasered or shot by now.

 "Prisoners Dying: SOS"

The Phoenix Center

(April 23, 2011)

I’ve come down a lot since then, of course - otherwise you would have been seeing me in court in pink socks and stripes. I got really depressed after my Mom died this summer, and my financial situation deteriorated so my energy has gone increasingly into basic survival. My court proceedings this fall and winter have been tedious and anti-climactic, to say the least - I haven’t had the kind of manic drive to orchestrate what I initially envisioned I‘d be doing with all this. One of the problems with my bi-polar disorder is that the fallout from my grandiosity and expansiveness usually catches up to me just as I’m crashing the hardest and am the least able to explain myself - I get way in over my head, and can‘t account for how I got there. I actually haven’t had much to say of late, believe it or not.

 "Demolish the Prisons"

ACLU-AZ, Phoenix

(April 26, 2011)

Since my protest in June, the ACLU and the Prison Law Office have at least decided to file suit against the AZ Department of Corrections over the medical and psychiatric neglect of their prisoners, the abuse of solitary confinement, and the skyrocketing suicide rates under Chuck Ryan. I think my research and imprisoned correspondents were more influential in helping them take that step than all my protests and postcards were - but the fact that there’s an emerging and impassioned prisoner rights movement here must have helped convince them that Arizona isn’t a lost cause. That’s part of what I do with my blogs: I bear witness, and try to make this struggle - and the people we’ve relegated to the darkness - more visible. 

 MLK Day Memorial

Margaret T. Hance Park, Phoenix

(January 16, 2011)

Both before and after my June Artwalk action, I tried to get the Phoenix Police to prompt my guy at the DOJ more about investigating the prison homicides, to no avail. The Capitol Police aren’t any help, either. I have to hand off  the high assault and homicide rates to someone before I can let myself retire from all this, and I just don’t know yet if the DOJ is going to agree to CRIPA Arizona over the rampant prison violence. The state prosecutor association’s recent attempt to blame it all on an inherently more violent inmate population is a distortion of data, at best - it’s more propaganda crafted to justify locking increasing numbers of people away. ADC statistics actually show a decrease, not an increase, in the number of violent offenders committed to their custody in the past two years.

I’m afraid the problem behind the escalating violence in Arizona’s prisons lies in the institutional culture that‘s been cultivated there, and how the ADC does business these days - not in who their customers are. Their policies and programs (or lack thereof), and their fees and penalties all reflect more than indifference - there’s a deep and pervasive contempt for prisoners and their families under this regime. Chuck Ryan himself is a bully, encouraging subordinates to behave the same way towards their staff and prisoners alike. He actually had a mentally ill Supermax prisoner prosecuted for arson who tried to kill himself by setting himself on fire after begging for a year to get out of solitary. The court added a year and a half onto his existing 10-year sentence, and even ordered that the guy pay the state restitution for his medical care in the amount of $1.8 million. He was prosecuted while chained to a bed and recovering from burns over 80% of his body.

  Who will represent the dead?

Arizona State Legislature, Phoenix

 (February 22, 2011)

Anyway, I still have some work to do on the prisons, but will refrain from engaging in acts of civil disobedience that may have a negative impact on my neighbors or community. As for the taxpayer dollars involved in policing and prosecuting me - really, I think the money would have been much better spent by the city getting someone to investigate the state prisons like I asked them to in the first place. The Phoenix Police could have at least contacted DPS or the DOJ to express their concern about the homeless mentally ill people they’re helping send off to prison - where they’re being assaulted, castrated and killed - so it’s not just my voice falling on deaf ears about all this (there are a lot of us clamoring out here these days, actually). A phone call requesting that the proper law enforcement agency conduct an investigation is all I’ve asked them to make. Instead, today there’s a few more lawsuits against the ADC, a few more names for my murals, and a few more families grieving their dead than there were when I demonstrated in June.  I’m just a civilian needing law enforcement assistance or the persuasive power of an informed judiciary - why is that so hard to get here?

I’m not too happy with either the courts or the cops in this state, frankly. A whole squad of detectives turned out to protect the pavement and dumpsters from my paintbrush at Artwalk in June, yet none of them will try to help me stop this death toll from climbing. If I presented evidence identifying suspects in an unsolved homicide in Buckeye or Tucson proper - or non-law enforcement corruption at the state level - they would have facilitated interagency communication about it without hesitation. Prisoners draw silence and blank stares, though. A well-placed phone call six months ago could have saved lives - still can, really. Here we are, though, half a year later, and instead of nailing the folks with the guns and badges and power who are doing real criminal damage to people‘s lives, the city is still prosecuting me and ignoring the evidence that I‘ve compiled against far more guilty parties. 

What is wrong with this place?

"Criminal Damage"

Resistance Alley, Phoenix

(June 10, 2011)

The answer to that, I think, has to do with the fundamental disregard we have for human life in Arizona - except to the extent to which a living, breathing being means somebody’s profit. That’s a bigger issue, of course, requiring an organic solution like revolution. There’s nothing the DOJ or ACLU combined can do about a terrified, self-interested, ignorant electorate like ours. Look at how our laws reinforce dehumanization of certain populations, too - it’s pervasive. It’s “criminal damage” to impede access to water for livestock in Arizona, and yet you can be prosecuted for littering if you try to assure access to water in the desert for human beings…specifically, for migrants.  Brown-skinned ones. That’s pretty twisted.

So is the state constitution. We need to amend the Victim’s Bill of Rights to include prisoners in the definition of “victim,” or we’ll never get justice for victims of police and prison violence, neglect and abuse. Persons “in custody for an offense” are exquisitely vulnerable to trauma and victimization, and will continue to be so as long as we diminish their rights that way. They and their survivors (in cases resulting in death) are the only class of people excluded from the rights afforded all other crime victims. That’s only because the perpetrators in those cases are most likely cops, not because one becomes suddenly less deserving of life or safety once taken into state custody. I can’t believe that most Arizonans - if they knew about Shannon Palmer, Tony Lester, Marcia Powell, Brenda Todd, Susan Lopez, Duron Cunningham, and Dana Seawright, to name a few - would continue to deny prisoners and their loved ones the same rights they would preserve for themselves and their children. Maybe that’s the next place I’ll go with my murals - a public education campaign of a slightly different kind.

Well, I guess that’s my statement, for better or worse - the one I would have read at sentencing if I saw it coming today. Sorry it’s so long. I hope it’s not too late to enter it into my court record. It’s also going up on my blogs. It’s just intended to be explanatory, not to excuse me in any way. I was ready to take full responsibility for everything I did - I really was prepared to go to prison if I needed to, in order to advance my cause. Thank God (and the County Attorney‘s Office, of course) that I didn’t.

In any case, I didn’t mean to wait until after you sentenced me to articulate why I did what I did, and what I am and am not remorseful for (yes, my neighbor's wall, no, the alley and dumpster - I made great improvements to the scene). Maybe that’s not very fair of me; I think you’re supposed to get the last word in. Hopefully it wouldn‘t have made you any less inclined to cut me loose with only restitution and community service. You can always take it out of me the next time, though - I’ll be back again with the Occupiers soon. I was arrested filming the police at their Hance Park protest this fall…

 Abolish the Phoenix Camping Ordinance!

Margaret T. Hance Park, Phoenix

(October 15, 2011)

I guess there’s one more thing I need to say, actually - whether or not it gets me into trouble. Please try not to send any more mentally ill people like me and my brother to Joe’s jail. He’s killing us in there, too, you know - some violently, like Marty Atencio, and some quietly - like those who cycle in and out of there for years dying inside, unnoticed. We aren’t “safer” or getting “cared for” in there as opposed to being on the streets, for the most part. Rather, behind bars we are in constant danger of violence, trauma and despair.

I don’t know why there isn’t anything the judiciary can do about guys like Arpaio and Ryan, since you entrust us so confidently to their custody. Once you get our fingerprint and designate us as property of the state, it seems you’re pretty much done with us, too. Surely if you can order cops into our private homes to enforce drug laws, you can send them into our public jails and prisons to enforce important laws that protect vulnerable persons from neglect and abuse, and promote the civil rights of all. It would seem to be your legal duty, in fact, to make sure that the places you lock us away in for our punishment - or our protection - aren’t routinely violating our rights to health, safety, sanity, and life, and that when you do learn of such things, you have them investigated further, or you dig into it yourself. We deserve to be treated with some humanity, whatever our crime.

Sadly, I heard a Municipal Court judge this week say she couldn‘t order or otherwise compel the jail to give a mentally ill prisoner his meds, even though his attorney said he was decompensating rapidly without them. That’s deeply troubling. She can’t convince or coerce the jail to give him essential medical care, but she’s empowered to imprison him for the next nine months on a Rule 11 getting restored to the level of competency that the MCSO destroyed. He would be punished if he was non-compliant with treatment in there, but the jail staff get off hurting him scott free. That’s stealing a piece of a man’s life from him because he’s ill, not because he’s a criminal. He hadn’t even been sentenced. How does that resemble justice? If that judge can’t have a clerk call Magellan or Correctional Health Services and get that guy his injection before he gets sicker, then she should at least have ordered someone to make a civil rights complaint on his behalf - not just leave him to unravel in jail between hearings like that. That’s real criminal damage.

"The Trial of Officer Kevin Gerster"

Maricopa County Central Courthouse, Phoenix

(March 11, 2011)

Having one’s “hands tied” by the politics of dealing with an incompetent but popular elected sheriff - or the governor’s appointed chief disciplinarian, for that matter - doesn’t keep them free of the blood of prisoners when one knows specifically who is suffering, how, where, and what could be done to alleviate it. Even I accept that responsibility when a plea for help arrives in my post office box, and I have no power to exert but that which I create myself - in fact, I‘m just another convicted criminal now. I’m not the one putting all these people in jail and prison, either. I think the feigned helplessness of people who could intervene meaningfully if they tried is an excuse for laziness or cowardice. It also explains why we have to beg the feds to investigate every law enforcement agency, detention center, and penal institution in this state in the first place - our own people won't do the job when it's clearly called for.

So, that’s basically what my crime - this particular crime of expression, anyway - was all about. While I take responsibility for making amends where I offended and restitution where I harmed, I don’t think I’m the one who needs to be rehabilitated here. Please share my concerns with your colleagues and ask them to be more pro-active in the future when it comes to the well-being of the vulnerable people they order confined in the custody of those who have already shown they will neglect, torment and kill us with startling frequency.

"Please stop killing your prisoners"

Arizona Department of Corrections: 

Central Office, Phoenix

(November 22, 2011)

Thank you for your time and patience with me. I wouldn’t have been so candid with most judges, I don’t think, so I sure hope you’re as cool as you seem to be; I mean no disrespect. If anything, take it as a sign that I trust you to be able to handle it, which is saying a lot for someone with your kind of power.

Take care,

Peggy Plews
Prison Abolitionist

Abandoned Tent City Guard Tower

Maricopa County Jail, Phoenix

(April 4, 2011)