Prison Ministry Network News

The Supreme Court justices, arguing Feb. 26 whether or not the collection of DNA during an arrest is an unreasonable search considering that a suspect is presumed innocent, split in unusual camps. The state of Maryland had discovered a rape suspect when he was arrested for assault. The Court of Appeals had struck down the case as a violation of the Fourth Amendment dealing with search and seizure. The state disagrees.

According to The Washington Post, "Justices Antonin Scalia and Elena Kagan were the most critical of Maryland's law; [Samuel] Alito and Stephen Breyer seemed most supportive."

On Christmas Eve, a decade after a petition was filed by the grandmother of a prisoner, the FCC adopted its notice of proposed new rules for prison phone rates to stop what it calls a government-sponsored “monopoly.”

Others have labeled the high costs as “predatory” to families and the commissions paid by companies to the prison systems as “kickbacks.” The FCC’s action took longer than the grandson’s release from prison.

Faith--based groups in Wisconsin are determined to cut the prison population in half in three years. Journalist, ordained minister and columnist with the Capital Times Phil Haslanger writes:

“Half of the people behind bars in Wisconsin are there for nonviolent crimes. Half of them have issues with drug and alcohol abuse and/or mental illness. And most of them are going to return to our communities at some point.”

The Rev. Jerry Hancock, a former assistant district attorney and a former assistant attorney general, and now an ordained minister, said if Minnesota can do it, so can Wisconsin.

“We need treatment on the front end to keep people out, help on the back end to keep people from going back into prison after release and a way to allow people in prison to earn their way out. If we did all three of those things, we could solve this in three years.”

The effort, called the 11X15 Campaign, begins with rallies, meetings and marches by coalitions and networks of congregations led by clergy who have worked in and observed the criminal justice system in their earlier careers.

A police officer, an ex-offender and an Urban League Champs program have cut the recidivism rate in Las Vegas to 26% down from the state’s 40%, the rate at which released inmates return to Nevada's prisons within three years.They have done it by making themselves advocates or “buddies” willing to vouch for ex-offenders to employers

Chad Baker, a Metro Police officer in West Las Vegas, has been mentoring former inmates for two years at the Urban League. He grew frustrated arresting the same people all the time in the department’s Bolden Area Command.

As a mentor, Baker seeks to mend relationships with ex-offenders and help them find employment at nearby businesses, such as grocery stores.“It’s one thing for an ex-offender to go into a business to try to get a job,” he said. “It’s another when an ex-offender walks in while a Metro Police officer is by their side.”

Jon Ponder started Hope for Prisoners after he was released from a Pennsylvania prison in 2009. He credits his time served in federal prison for a bank robbery with helping him turn his life around and understand what inmates need for successful transitions into society.

“My entire time in prison, I didn’t go to prison,” he said. “I went to school. I used every bit of time in prison to learn and grow.” www.hopeforprisoners.org

Long-term success ultimately hinges on a person’s desire to change, said John Butler, outreach coordinator for the Urban League’s RExO Champs program.

In an editorial, The New York Times said the Justice Department in its recent annual report failed to mention mandatory minimum sentences and its effective drug policies when it noted that the 218,000 federal prison inmates and a budget of almost $6.2 billion are “incompatible with a balanced crime policy and are unsustainable.”

The already-taxed Bureau of Prisons network swelled to 39 percent above capacity through last September, and is expected to surge to more than 45 percent above its limit in 2018, says the Government Accountability Office report, titled "Growing Inmate Crowding Negatively Affects Inmates, Staff, and Infrastructure."

There is no evidence that long mandatory sentences deter crime, says The Times, and “…there is very good evidence that older prisoners (45 and up) are the least dangerous…”
http://tinyurl.com/9hghkd9

A newspaper story last spring about defendants convicted on faulty forensic evidence has led to a review of tens of thousands of criminal cases by the Justice Department and the FBI.

The Washington Post reported in April that the “Justice Department had known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people but had not performed a thorough review of the cases."

The cases, from 1985 or earlier, will be examined in concert with The Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

In June, the Supreme Court said prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing. “ The decision was based in large part,” said a Washington Post editorial, “on the assertion that federal judicial intervention was unnecessary because the great majority of state legislatures already had passed laws to give prisoners adequate access to the revolutionary technology.”

While 47 states allow some statutory access to DNA testing, the laws are limited and sketchy and motions for testing are often denied, even where the inmate offers to pay for it and the test could confirm guilt or innocence.

In January, Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced the Criminal Justice and Forensic cience Reform Act (S.132) It will establish an Office of Forensic Science within the Department of Justice.

It also will establish a Forensic Science Board comprised of scientists, practitioners, prosecutors, defense attorneys and other stakeholders to make recommendations in research priorities, standards and best practices; establish committees of scientists to be overseen by the National Institute of Standards and Technology which will examine each individual forensic science discipline to determine research needs and help set uniform standards.

A column in The Washington Times, published a column says “Left and Right agree on criminal justice reforms.” Escalating costs are leading voices from both sides of the aisle to call for an overhaul of the systems that now costing many states more than colleges. The writers urge Congress to follow the examples of states like Georgia, South Carolina, Kansas and Ohio. They have increased drug treatment inside and moved nonviolent prisoners into programs outside prisons.

http://tinyurl.com/9gltbro

'We will keep fighting’
Senate Justice Reform Measure Fails
As Republicans Cite 'States Rights'

Although some Republicans using states’ rights arguments, blocked passage of legislation that could begin the reform of the criminal justice system, Senator James Jim Webb (D.VA) said he is not backing down.

“We will keep fighting,” he said, “for a comprehensive review of the justice system, with the help of the thousands of sheriffs, police, mayors and justice advocates who have joined us in pressing for reform.” Out of a needed 60 the vote was 57-43. The legislation passed the House last year.

It would establish a bipartisan National Criminal Justice Commission to recommend reform and has the support of more than 100 organizations including The Heritage Foundation and law enforcement groups.

The Innocence Project on Feb. 3 announced the 250th exoneration of a prisoner through DNA testing.

Freddie Peacock, 60, of Rochester, N.Y., was convicted in New York in 1976 of a rape he didn't commit based on a false eyewitness identification and a false confession that police claim he made during an interrogation. Peacock, who has severe mental illness, was freed in 1982, but continued the fight to clear his name..

His fight to clear his name after release is the longest of any DNA case so far. He spent the last 28 years pushing for complete exoneration, even turning down chances to end his parole. Finally, with the help of the Innocence Project, his name has been cleared.

A report issued by the Innnocence Project “250 Exonerated – Too Many Wrongfully Convicted -- describing the 250 cases -- may be found at http://innocenceproject.org/news/250.php

• There have been DNA exonerations in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

• 76% of the wrongful convictions involved eyewitness misidentification.

• 50% involved unvalidated or improper forensic science.

• 27% relied on a false confession, admission or guilty plea.

• 70% of the 250 people exonerated are people of color (60% are black; nearly 9% are Latino; 29% are white).

The National Coalition Against the Death Penalty (NCADP) points out that 17 percent of the exonerated were serving under threat of the death penalty. "While exonerating 250 citizens, the cases also identified 90 real perpetrators and 40 of them were convicted of subsequent crimes."

In December, James Bain, 54, was exonerated in Florida after spending 35 years in prison for the rape of a child and Donald Eugene Gates, 58, was freed in Arizona after serving 28 years in prison for rape and murder.

Justice advocates, unhappy that an estimated 5.3 million Americans cannot vote or participate fully in civic life because of a criminal conviction, are pressing for Congressional action to establish a federal standard restoring voting rights in federal elections. Sen Russell Feingold and Rep. John Conyers introduced the Democracy Restoration Act as S.1516 and H.R. 3335.

The provisions of the Democracy Restoration Act would:
• Restore voting rights in federal elections to nearly 4 million Americans who have been released from prison and are living in the community.
• Ensure that probationers never lose their right to vote in federal elections.
• Notify people about their right to vote in federal elections when they are leaving prison, sentenced to probation, or convicted of a misdemeanor.

Passage of the Democracy Restoration Act would:
• Create a uniform standard across the country in federal elections.
• Strengthen our democracy by creating a broader and more just base of voter participation.
• Aid law enforcement by encouraging participation in civic life, assisting reintegration, and rebuilding ties to the community.
• Facilitate election administration by streamlining registration issues and eliminating the opportunity for erroneous purges of eligible voters.
• Eliminate the confusion about who is eligible to vote.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's School of Law, 35 states continue to disenfranchise people after release from prison. http://tinyurl.com/lxb73b

Virginia Ex-Offenders May Vote Next Year

Virginia 's governor has urged all ex-offenders who served time for nonviolent crimes to ask for a return of their voting rights. The Sentencing Project reports that Gov. Tim Kaine said in a broadcast interview with WSLS 10 he cannot by law restore voting rights across the board; it must be done one by one by name. He maintained that he has restored the rights of all nonviolent ex-offenders who applied and that those convicted for a violent felony require an investigation.

Here's a link to the story by the Sentencing Project: http://tinyurl.com/y8rhfge

It should be noted that Robert McDonnell, who will take office as governor in January, has a voting record in the state legislature far to the right of many of Gov. Kaine's political views, so the future of the program may be in question.

Innocent Man Executed – The Fallout

News reports that Texas executed an innocent man in 2004 have led to bipartisan discussions and support for forensic reform--scientific standards nationally. The New Yorker magazine ran an extensive, detailed story about the father who was put to death for setting a fire that killed his three children. It turns out he was convicted on faulty evidence, according to arson experts and the story, ”Trial by Fire” by David Grann. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

But the former prosecuto,r who is now a judge, still believes Cameron Todd Willingham was guilty. He told a Nightline interviewer "without question" the scientific evidence was not valid, but went on to claim that Willingham was “likely a devil worshipper and was therefore guilty.”

Gov. Rick Perry recently fired the head (and two members) of a special commission he had appointed to investigate the case two days before a report by a fire expert was due to be delivered. The Innocence Project called it a Nixon-like “Saturday Night Massacre.”

Justice Scalia: “not a single case…the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.” NCADP Campaign: The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty quotes Supreme Court justice Antonin Scully when he wrote in 2006 that “there has not been ‘a single case - not one - in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops.’”

The NCADP calls on everyone to get out the word that the state of Texas has executed an innocent man. Suggestions and references to a report about Willingham and three other innocent men are found here: http://www.ncadp.org/index.cfm?content=96

To find state NCADP affiliates:www.ncadp.org/affiliateDirectory.cfm

Science-Based Federal Forensic Standards Supported

A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing showed that bipartisan support exists for science-based federal forensic standards. Senators also focused on the recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences to establish an independent, science-based entity to oversee forensic science research and standards.

Chairman PatrickLeahy noted that one in five labs do not meet accreditation standards set by the National Academy of Crime Lab Directors. "We cannot allow these nationwide deficiencies in forensic sciences to continue." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112681135

Feds Require Inmates Who Plead Guilty to Waive DNA Tests

The Washington Post reports that the attorney general has ordered a review of the Bush administration policy that was apparently initiated to get around The Innocence Protection Act of 2004 allowing federal inmates to seek post conviction DNA tests to prove their innocence.

"The waivers are filed only in guilty pleas and bar defendants from ever requesting DNA testing, even if new evidence emerges," Jerry Marcon wrote in an Oct. 11 story. http://tinyurl.com/yg6gs7e

DNA Test Exonerates 241st After 23 Years; Episcopal Church Urges Inmate Testing

The Innocence Project has announced the exoneration of another innocent man – held for 23 years in Texas for a rape he did not commit. DNA tests proved Ernest Sonniers’ innocence and identified the two men who committed the 1986 rapes. He was released Aug. 7.

In June, the Supreme Court said prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing. “ The decision was based in large part,” said a Washington Post editorial, “on the assertion that federal judicial intervention was unnecessary because the great majority of state legislatures already had passed laws to give prisoners adequate access to the revolutionary technology.”

At this writing, 241 wrongly incarcerated individuals have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 16 who were on death row. In almost 40 percent of the cases, the real perpetrator has been identified by DNA.

In July, the Prison Ministry Task Force of the Diocese of Maryland drafted a resolution for introduction at the Episcopal Church's General Convention that urges the church and all Episcopalians to “call on their legislators and members of Congress to ensure that all those accused and convicted have broad access to DNA testing, not only to exonerate those who are innocent but also to identify the true perpetrators of crimes they have been accused or convicted of.” It was sponsored by three bishops and was enacted.

Passage of the resolution means the church’s government relations office in Washington can go to work lobbying for appropriate legislation before congress. Sen. Patrick Leahy, Senate Judiciary Committee chair, is author of the Innocence Protection Act that is part of the Justice For All Act of 2004, which is up for reauthorization. It provides grants to the states that protect crime scene evidence and make DNA testing available to prisoners. The IPA would save innocent men and women from execution by making available to those on death row adequate counsel and DNA testing.

Senator Leahy’s comment about the Supreme Court ruling: This decision only creates new procedural roadblocks and unnecessary hurdles to getting at the truth in this and many other cases. As Justice Stevens wrote in dissent, ''The DNA test [the defendant] seeks is a simple one, its cost modest, and its results uniquely precise . . . . Yet [the state] refuses to allow [the defendant] to test the evidence at his own expense and to thereby ascertain the truth once and for all.' To overcome this result, I will continue to work to make modern DNA testing available whenever possible to strengthen our criminal justice system."

The Innocence Project is building a petition to call for an independent federal agency to oversee forensic science following a recommendation by the National Academy of Science that Congress create a National Institute of Forensic Science. A bill is expected in September or October.

The Justice System Is Sending
Entire Communities Back to Prison

But States Seek Ways to Reverse Revolving Door

(See entire program and transcript at http://tinyurl.com/q5yhor)

The criminal justice system is sending whole communities back to prison and jail, says Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly’s May 22 feature broadcast over the PBS network. And how some states are taking new approaches to reverse the revolving doors by rewarding with tax dollars parole and probation departments that reduce the prison population.

Correspondent Phil Jones visited Brownsville in Brooklyn, N.Y., where community activists, including the Justice Mapping Center, are pushing for new approaches.

ERIC CADORA (Director, Justice Mapping Center): The current overuse and overdependence on criminal justice is a complete failure. It’s having no impact on these issues of public safety and crime. That’s not to say there isn’t a need for a level of criminal justice. But this radical overuse is not accomplishing those goals. Cadora said he found about 150 blocks in New York City where the authorities were spending more than a million dollars a year just to send people back and forth from prisons upstate to the neighborhood than back to prison again.

GREG JACKSON (Community Activist): Incarceration is not just the individual going to jail, but it’s the whole family going to jail, for Brownsville. Everybody’s suffering from it. There are no reentry programs to help them get jobs or kick drug habits or find housing -- especially when felons are not allowed to live in public housing.

Mr. CADORA: Let us take the investments that had been built up over the years from criminal justice, redirect them to investments in civil institutions in those neighborhoods — better schools, better health care, better mental health support, and so on. In many of the states where the Justice Reinvestment initiative has taken root, prison populations are either dropping or the trend line in growth has been radically reduced, and that’s from Connecticut to Kansas — liberal to conservative. In Kansas, when they found that 60-65 percent were being sent back to prison because of a parole or [probation revocation, the legislature turned it around.

JONES: That was the case in Kansas, so legislators passed a new law — a new direction —committing taxpayer dollars to cities and communities that change parole and probation regulations that'll reduce the prison population by 20 percent.

Mr. CALDORA: That’s kind of what the reinvestment project is about. It’s about saying, “Look, if you can reduce it, we’ll give you the money to keep reducing it.”

New Policy In Maryland for Parole, Probation Violators

Frank Dunbaugh, director of the, Maryland Justice Policy Institute, has been saying that for years. And he repeated it to the Maryland Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services Gary D. Maynard, at a meeting several early this spring. Maynard's reply was that he is putting into place a new policy. When ex-offenders violate parole or probation, they will be turned over to the Department of Parole and Probation for discipline and not sent back to the prison facilities.

Sen. Webb Calls America’s Criminal
Justice System a 'National Disgrace’

Bill Calls for Commission to ‘Reshape’ System

Sen. James Webb (Democrat of Virginia) has introduced the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 to “bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.”

He said, “ America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

”We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

“The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 will create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.

“Why We Urgently Need this Legislation:

-- With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses 25% of the world's reported prisoners.

-- Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.

-- Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.

-- Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S., many of them foreign-based; and Mexican cartels operate in 230+ communities across the country.

-- Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.

Fact Sheet -- http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FactSheeti.pdf

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH OUR PRISONS?" asks Senator Webb on the front cover of Parade Magazine March 29. The issue is worth tracking down at your library because he dominates the issue with the subject of the lead article, "Why We Must Fix Our Prisons."

www.parade.com/news/2009/03/why-we-must-fix-our-prisons.htm
l

. Religious Community Leads Fight
To Repeal the Death Penalty

Churches Use High Tech to Reach State Legislators

By Val Hymes

The Episcopal Church is not only taking to the streets to fight for an end to the death penalty; it is now fighting smarter.

Legislation in at least 11 states calls for a repeal of the death penalty and two others want a moratorium with a study, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Bills are moving forward in New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, Montana and Nebraska. Bills also have been introduced in New Hampshire, Washington, Connecticut, Illinois and New Hampshire. Maryland’s bill was amended to restrict the use of the death penalty.

Alaska, on the other hand, has a bill in to reinstate the death penalty and Georgia is trying to broaden its reach. A bill passed by the Virginia Assembly specifying additional offenses as eligible for the death penalty was recently vetoed by Gov. Timothy Kaine.

In Maryland, Bishop Eugene T. Sutton marched with other religious leaders and the governor through the streets of Annapolis to the State Capitol to call on the legislature to repeal the law. The Senate, however, scratched the repeal and called for more proof of guilt for death sentences. The bishop said that will not stifle his opposition.

“I vow to continue the struggle to end the death penalty without restrictions,” he said. “If the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s has taught us anything, it is that nonviolence is still the most powerful weapon that we have to deter the evil of violence and murder…more powerful than the electric chair, more effective than a lethal injection. State-sponsored killing is not going to end the cycle of violence that we all decry.”

At the same time, Episcopalians were urged to contact their legislators and they are doing it across the nation.

“The religious community across the board has taken up the mantle on this issue,” said Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to End the Death Penalty (NCADP). “They are stepping up their moral leadership, encouraging their parishioners to put their faith in action.”

It is made easy for them to contact their legislators and governors by going to the Web site of a local affiliate. In Maryland, it’s Citizens Against State Executions (CASE) and clicking on “Take Action.” In New Mexico, it’s the New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty (NMCADP); in Colorado, Coloradans Against the Death Penalty (CADP). NACDP has affiliates in every state and works closely with them when legislation is pending.

This new bolder activism was reflected in a 2007 “Clergy Voices” survey of mainline Protestant clergy by Public Religion Research released March 6. It found that 81 percent of the Episcopal clergy surveyed supported an end to capital punishment, compared with 66 percent overall. The national church has formally opposed the death penalty for the last fifty years.

The Roman Catholic Church, said Rust-Tierney, has responded with the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Death Penalty. “We are using technology to make it easier” for people to speak to their lawmakers and governors.

Maryland ’s bill is “a significant step,” she said. “Narrowing the death penalty is a recognition that we need to change, that it doesn’t work. It is a serious indictment of the death penalty.”

As it moved – no longer a repeal -- to the Maryland House of Delegates, Bishop Sutton’s words echoed outside the State House, “I implore all of our legislators, follow your conscience.”

+++

Val Hymes is coordinator of the Prison Ministry Task Force, Diocese of Maryland. To locate state affiliates: www.NCADP.org

Clergy Fights Death Penalty
With Internet and the Pen

The church waded into the death penalty issue with op-ed pieces in The Washington Post by the Bishop of Maryland, Eugene Taylor Sutton, and the Bishop of Washington, John Bryson Chane: “A Moral Test for Maryland Legislators”, and in the Baltimore Sun by the Suffragan Bishop of Maryland, John R. Rabb, and the Bishop of Easton, James “Bud” Shand.: “Execution Isn't Path to a Peaceful Society.” www.ang-md.org

An interfaith group of clergy – Roman Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish -- also spoke out at a a news conference Jan. 14 and signed a letter to the governor and General Assembly urging the end of the death penalty, saying, “Common to all of us are the sanctity of life and forgiveness.”
http://tinyurl.com/cwxxgw

There were 37 executions in the nation last year. New Jersey repealed the death penalty late in 2007. Death penalty repeal efforts were narrowly defeated in Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico last year. Those states are trying again this year..
http://tinyurl.com/cxrj4c

The Numbers Climb;
The Problems Grow
5.1 million on parole or probation

By end of 2006, one in every 31 adults: 7.2 million were in the adult correctional population;.. At the end of 2007, 5.1 million adults were out on parole or probation. Now, at the end of 2008, how many will go back inside? RTwo-thirds arfe expected to be rearrested within three years, and they will be responsibler for 10 million new crimes by 2013. In 2009, 700,000 will be released and 3.5 million will return to their communities over the next five years . http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pandp.htm

WASHINGTON - The U.S. adult correctional population -- incarcerated or in the community -- reached 7.2 million men and women, an increase of 159,500 during the year(2006), the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today in a new report. About 3.2 percent of the U.S. adult population, or 1 in every 31 adults, was in the nation's prisons or jails or on probation or parole at the end of 2006.

The number of men and women who were being supervised on probation or parole in the United States at year-end 2006 reached 5 million for the first time, an increase of 87,852 (or 1.8 percent) during the year. A separate study found that on December 31, 2006, there were 1,570,861 inmates under state and federal jurisdiction, an increase of 42,932 (or 2.8 percent) in 2006.

During 2006 the number of inmates under state jurisdiction rose by 37,504 (2.8 percent). The number of prisoners under federal jurisdiction rose by 5,428 (2.9 percent).

In 2006 the number of prisoners in the 10 states with the largest prison populations increased by 3.2 percent, which was more than three times the average annual growth rate (0.9 percent) in these states from 2000 through 2005. These states accounted for 65 percent of the overall increase in the U.S. prison population during 2006. The federal system remained the largest prison system with 193,046 inmates under its jurisdiction. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/p06ppus06pr.htm

Can a Parolee Have a Drink?

Can a Parolee
Have a Drink?