Archive for May, 2012
Judge to Weigh Prison Health Care Privatization by Jim Saunders
Posted: May 30, 2012 in News and politicsTALLAHASSEE | Eight months after a judge tossed out a controversial prison-privatization plan, lawyers will argue next week about the constitutionality of a state decision to contract with companies to provide inmate health care.
Leon County Circuit Judge Kevin Carroll will hold a hearing Tuesday focusing on budget fine print that lawmakers approved last year directing the Florida Department of Corrections to privatize prison health services.
Opponents, including the Florida Nurses Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, filed lawsuits early this year challenging the move. Like in the prison-privatization case, they argue that lawmakers improperly used the budget fine print — known as proviso language — to require the health care changes.
In a pre-hearing document filed last month, the nurses association said privatization of health services is a “substantial policy decision” that must be approved in a regular law, not in the annual budget.
“The (Florida) Constitution prohibits using appropriations acts to enact or change substantive law,” association lawyers wrote in the document.
But the state and two potential contractors dispute that lawmakers acted improperly and argue that the health-care issue is different from the prison-privatization plan that was found unconstitutional. They contend, in part, that the Department of Corrections already had the legal authority to contract for health services, regardless of the language added to the budget.
“Plaintiffs seek to prevent (the department) from entering into contracts for the provision of inmate health care by attacking the validity of proviso,” the state said in a court document this month. “However, the (department) has authority to enter into such contracts independent of the proviso.”
The department has already sought proposals from companies that would provide the services. Last month, Secretary Kenneth Tucker sent a letter to legislative leaders and the governor’s office recommending that Corizon, Inc., receive a contract for prisons in North and Central Florida, while Wexford Health Sources would receive a contract in South Florida.
Privatization is a highly controversial issue in state government, as workers fear they will lose jobs or see shrinking pay.
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Lawsuit Alleges Toxic Exposure at Florida Prison by Bill Kaczor
Posted: May 30, 2012 in News and politicsCurrent, former employees blame ailments on recycling facility.
TALLAHASSEE | More than 160 current and former employees and family members are suing the federal prison agency over ailments they blame on exposure to toxins at an electronics recycling facility at a penitentiary in the Florida Panhandle.
Many are suffering from sores, joint pain, memory loss and internal bleeding as well as thyroid, reproductive and breathing problems, according to the lawsuits.
They attribute those and other ailments to such toxins as lead, cadmium and beryllium that filled the air and covered their clothing in the form of a pollen-like dust at Marianna Federal Correctional Institution’s e-waste recycling facility.
“They never gave us any protection for handling this contaminated material,” said Freda Cobb, a medically retired former guard and cook supervisor. “We felt they used us as their guinea pigs.”
The Federal Bureau of Prisons in 1994 began using low-paid inmate labor to recycle computers and other electronic gear to extract gold and other valuable materials at Marianna, about 60 miles west of Tallahassee. Three years later, the bureau began expanding the program to other facilities in New Jersey, Kansas, California, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Texas and Ohio.
Cobb, 51, was recuperating at home Wednesday after being hospitalized for several days last week suffering from thyroid problems, high blood pressure, and liver disease. Over the years she’s also had skin sores, memory loss and migraines. Her uterus was removed when it tripled in size. Her husband and children also have had various ailments.
Two lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court at Panama City last month allege the bureau and UNICOR, the trade name for Federal Prison Industries, “willfully, recklessly, and/or negligently” operated the recycling facility in a way that caused the plaintiffs to be exposed to toxic dust.
That included at one time the prisoners’ use of hammers to break glass computer screens and television picture tubes containing toxic materials.
“When I came out at the end of the day, I looked like a coal miner,” said Delbert McKinney, who retired as a correctional officer last year. “I’d have it on my nostrils. I’d blow it out of my nose. It would be on my clothing.”
McKinney, 57, said he suffers from internal bleeding, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, skin and brain lesions, nausea, headaches and dizziness. His wife had thyroid problems after washing his contaminated clothing and their son developed rashes, he said.
The bureau had not filed a response as of Wednesday. A spokesman for the bureau in Washington, D.C., was unaware of the lawsuits and had no immediate comment.
The lawsuits, one for 82 current and former employees and the other for 83 family members, were filed after the government rejected their administrative claims.
Katherine Viker, one of three Tallahassee lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said the bureau contended current and former employees cannot sue because they are covered by workers compensation for job-related injuries.
That argument, though, does not apply to their families and also shouldn’t apply to the employees because negligence negates the workers compensation exception to their right to sue, Viker said.
“We absolutely know that they knew they were poisoning these people,” she said.
That includes current and former inmates. They aren’t included in the lawsuits because federal law imposes stricter legal requirements on prisoners, the lawyers say. They first must go through a multistep grievance process and the law limits lawyer fees and awards.
The suits are seeking unspecified compensatory damages for “physical injury, medical bills, genetic damage, depression, lost wages and loss of the capacity for the enjoyment of life.”
This is a third attempt at legal action.
A federal judge in 2009 dismissed a suit filed by employees and inmates seeking a declaratory judgment, injunction and the release of documents on dangers and safety risks of recycling.
A second suit sought to have the recycling facility declared a nuisance under Florida environmental law. It, too, was dismissed. The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeal rejected an appeal last year, ruling a state law couldn’t be used to close down a federal facility, Viker said.
The Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General issued an investigative report in October 2010. It concluded e-waste recycling programs at Marianna and other prisons failed to safeguard staff and inmate safety. Investigators found instances of misconduct, dereliction of duty and dishonesty including potential criminal violations.
The report though noted other federal regulatory agencies between 2007 and 2009 found exposures to cadmium and lead were below limits set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
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REGISTRY COVERS 23-YEAR SPAN IN U.S.
Study: 2,000 Wrongly Convicted, Exonerated
WASHINGTON | More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.
There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.
The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.
They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years each. Nine out of 10 of them are men and half are African-American.
Nearly half of the 873 exonerations were homicide cases, including 101 death sentences. More than one-third of the cases were sexual assaults.
DNA evidence led to exoneration in nearly one-third of the 416 homicides and in nearly two-thirds of the 305 sexual assaults.
Researchers estimate the total number of felony convictions in the United States is nearly a million per year.
The overall registry/list begins at the start of 1989. It gives an unprecedented view of the scope of the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States and the figure of more than 2,000 exonerations “is a good start,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.
“We know there are many more that we haven’t found,” added University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, the editor of the newly opened National Registry of Exonerations.
Counties such as San Bernardino in California and Bexar County in Texas are heavily populated, yet seemingly have no exonerations, a circumstance that the academics say cannot possibly be correct.
The registry excludes at least 1,170 additional defendants. Their convictions were thrown out starting in 1995 amid the periodic exposures of 13 major police scandals around the country. In all the cases, police officers fabricated crimes, usually by planting drugs or guns onto innocent defendants.
Regarding the 1,170 additional defendants who were left out of the registry, “we have only sketchy information about most of these cases,” the report said. “Some of these group exonerations are well known; most are comparatively obscure. We began to notice them by accident, as a byproduct of searches for individual cases.”
In half of the 873 exonerations studied in detail, the most common factor leading to false convictions was perjured testimony or false accusations. Forty-three percent of the cases involved mistaken eyewitness identification, and 24 percent of the cases involved false or misleading forensic evidence.
In two out of three homicides, perjury or false accusation was the most common factor leading to false conviction. In four out of five sexual assaults, mistaken eyewitness identification was the leading cause of false conviction.
Seven percent of the exonerations were drug, white-collar and other nonviolent crimes, 5 percent were robberies and 5 percent were other types of violent crimes.
“It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We’re finally beginning to see beyond that. This is a sea change,” said Gross.
Exonerations often take place with no public fanfare and the 106-page report that coincides with the opening of the registry explains why.
On TV, an exoneration looks like a singular victory for a criminal defense attorney, “but there’s usually someone to blame for the underlying tragedy, often more than one person, and the common culprits include defense lawyers as well as police officers, prosecutors and judges. In many cases, everybody involved has egg on their face,” according to the report.
Despite a claim of wrongful conviction that was widely publicized last week, a Texas convict executed two decades ago is not in the database because he has not been officially exonerated. Carlos deLuna was executed for the fatal stabbing of a Corpus Christi convenience store clerk. A team headed by a Columbia University law professor just published a 400-page report that contends DeLuna didn’t kill the clerk, Wanda Jean Lopez.
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WE ALL DO THE TIME. 