Debased Guard Behavior and Abuse Escalates Pending Death Row Transfers.
Michael L. McBride.
For many years there has been and continues to be numerous complaints and friction between death row prisoners and personnel in the Ellis Death Row prison in Huntsville, Texas because of the deliberate indifference and callous disregard for the prisoners' personal property. Personal property restrictions on Ellis Death Row are such that even when correct procedures are followed and the rules for possession strictly adhered to by the prisoners, nothing actually belongs to you. The guard-level staff and lower-level supervisors and staff charged with maintaining records of ownership further aggravate the problem by condoning through their silence the misfeasance of the guards.
There are many reasons why possession of personal property is important to the prisoner. Most often this is the only semblance of proprietary control we have within our existence. The American way of life is bound by material ownership. Because we are restricted not only in the amount of possessions, but also the nature of those things, we must be very selective in what we choose to have. We know that there is a fine line between possessing something and identifying with it to such an extent that it possesses us and defines who we are. Guards know this as well and on Ellis they use it as a weapon of psychological torture and leverage. They make it their individual personal agenda to continue the mortification process all the way to the end. They are indoctrinated to be effective tormentors, it's part of the qualification requirements. It is well known that dispossession of property is an important aspect of incarceration because people invest self feelings in their possessions. Even though the most significant of those possessions is not physical at all, but one's full name; whatever one is thereafter called, loss of one's name can be a great curtailment of the self. On Texas Death Row you are more often than not called by your cell or execution number. Another extreme expression of a campaign to degrade and abuse.
I have personally experienced the guards at the Ellis Death Row in a frenzy of destruction. They will isolate a housing wing and attack it by surprise. This is known as a 'shakedown.' Shakedown is prison tropism for searching one's body or housing, though the Ellis guards reduce it to a much lower level. It's as if they wish to impose upon us The Benedictine Abbot, let him be most severely punished. And in order that this vice of private ownership may be completely rooted out, let all things that are necessary be supplied by the Abbot;..... so that dropping toilet tissue into the toilet so that you will then have to beg them for more as though you're asking them for permission to defecate.
When I account for family and friends how I've lost various articles of personal property, items which I depend on them to provide, their incredulous question is invariably, "Why don't you make a formal complaint to the warden, or file a lawsuit in court? If they should not be doing what they do they should be made to replace those things and be punished or fired." Until 1996 that would seem a well-informed suggestion. But in 1996 our hell got a little bit hotter.
That's when Republicans dropped on prisoners another of their legislative neutron bombs; they Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), which overhauled inmate access to the civil courts. This sedulously crafted piece of language is so vicious, detailed and sweeping that it effectively locks prisoners out of court, cuts us off from our professional allies on the outside, and draws a legal vein over official practices of physical and psychological torture, and the abuse of our vested possession of personal property entitlements.
Prior to implementation of the PLRA, prisoners were able to file civil rights suits under Title 42, United States Code, section 1983 whenever we saw fit. But now we must first exhaust all 'administrative remedies,' which involves long forms, review by distant panels, appeals, counter appeals, and applications before special panels. Besides being time consuming and futile, the canard of administrative remedy requires that convicts appeal to their abusers. For example, if a prisoner wants to sue a guard for extra-judicial destruction of legally possessed personal property, he must file complaints, outlining the case, with those very guards.
once administrative remedies have been exhausted and the convict is still willing to go to court, we face another set of flaming hoops. The prison Litigation Reform Act states that, "no federal, civil action may be brought by a prisoner .....without prior showing of physical injury." [Public Law 104-134, Sec. 806.] In other words, fear and psychological trauma are still grounds for a suit, but only if one can show physical injury and/or loss. In the instances of personal property claim, proof of purchase and ownership records are kept by the administration. During the shakedown, your copies of those records are also searched. When those records are 'lost' or destroyed, there is no proof for the court and you may not show physical injury or loss. However, if that can be done, you then face the next difficulty: A $120 court filing fee.
It is well-documented that the death penalty is overwhelmingly applied disproportionately to the poor and minorities, the socially and economically disenfranchised lower strata of American society. Death Row throughout the United States is a secure dumping ground for capitalism's social wreckage and social dynamite.
Since 1915 the poor have had the right to file suits without paying filing fees; until 1996 this 'in forma pauperis' statute applied to convicts as well. After all, most prisoners are from poor families, thus receive little or no money from home. In the post-PLRA world, indigent prisoners must first submit and affidavit (sworn-to statement) declaring all their assets and income, and a certified copy of the previous six months of their prison trust account records. Only in cases where prisoners have absolutely no income from prison labor, and no donations to their commissary trust account from family or friends, and no reasonable prospect for such income in future, will they be granted 'in forma pauperis' standing. Most often this exhaustive bureaucratic struggle conducted from behind bars, through long handwritten forms, delivered by less-than-enthusiastic guards will end in defeat. In such cases when a paupers status is achieved, the prisoner will nevertheless be made to pay. In such cases, "the court shall assess, and when funds exist, collect......and initial filing fee" of 20 percent of the required $120 filing fee. From then on the inmate will have 20 percent of their monthly income raided by courts until the full filing fee is paid. If a prisoner should have two suits or should file an appeal, they are, in many jurisdictions, required to pay yet another $120 filing fee, thus doubling their monthly payments. (Most states already levy a 10 to 30 percent tax on commissary accounts.)
If the suit manages to be accepted by the court as a legitimate complaint and given a docket number, officials have another powerful trick: The rule of summary judgment. Summary judgment allows any party to a suit the opportunity to have it dismissed without hearing or review simply by filing a motion claiming a defence. Summary judgment permits any party to a civil action to move for a summary judgment on a claim, counterclaim, or cross claim when he believes there is no genuine issue of material fact and that he is entitled to prevail as a matter of law. The motion may be directed to all or part of a claim or defence and it may be made on the basis of pleadings or other portions of the record in the case or it may be supported by affidavits and a variety of outside material. The claim may be summarily dismissed.
I was on Ellis Death Row in 1996 and I remember when the Prison Litigation Reform Act was made law. There is a collective sigh of relief among the class defendent personnel knowing they would no longer be made to answer for their 'mistakes'. But the worm turned and they soon began using their new found immunity as a shield for further, more brutal oppression.
The staff guard turnover rate quickly began to reflect this changed attitude. Junior supervisors were brought to death row who had previously been demoted and sanctioned for their sadistic treatment of prisoners in other prisons. They quickly began collecting around them junior guards from those other prisons until they had their own little hierarchy of cronies and sycophants. The obvious result was even more brutality. Lower-level guards would routinely beat prisoners, destroy personal property, file prevaricated disciplinary infractions, and aggressively provoke physical confrontations with as many death row prisoners as they could get to participate. But they finally fell back into it, to some degree, in 1998; on Thanksgiving Day hell and several death row prisoners broke loose. The well publicized murder of death row prisoner Martin Gerule turned Texas Death Row on its head. During the ensuing investigation of the escape attempt of seven death row prisoners a double shake-up of Ellis Death Row staff and policies ensued. At least 50 percent of upper-level and lower-level staff were either fired, demoted or transferred to other prisons. The purge spared no one, even the three senior and junior wardens were kicked out.
When it was further determined that the primary reason why those prisoners tried to escape was due to the incessant brutality and sadistic treatment by Ellis Death Row staff, more heads rolled. To be sure, the rest of us were subjected to more than 18 months of retaliation and paroxysms of collective paranoia. After all, that was to be expected considering gravity and excrement. But now we have a situation where it is acknowledged that the Ellis Prison Unit is simply too antiquated to house Texas Death Row and death row prisoners are being transferred to the even more fearsome Charles T. Terrell Unit in Livingston, Texas.
The Terrell Prison Unit epitomizes deprivation and isolation. Not unlike a common alarm clock, it's a set and forget institution. They put you in a cell, feed you three times per day, usually allow daily showering and out of the cell time for two hours per day, five days per week, and then they forget you're there.
Although the staff here is generally more professional in their approach and they do not personalize their duties on the job, there is an extreme lack of sensory stimulus. There is a 'window' 93 inches from the floor (3 inches from the ceiling) which measures 3-inches-by-45-inches reminiscent of a horizontal archer's slot in medieval castles. The cell walls are solid concrete and the door is solid steel, excepting two narrow, vertical, screen-covered openings through which the guards may monitor inside. There is no television and only those with adequate resources and permission may purchase their own, personal radio. The only sounds provided by this prison is the slamming of doors, the occasional release of demons by the insane, and the sound of cold air being forced into your cell.
Because the transfer of death sentenced prisoners from Ellis Death Row to Terrell Death Row is incomplete, the complaints and reportage of increased brutality on Ellis is again reaching an epidemic scale. Ellis personnel realize that they have lost their battle to keep us there. We were like a trophy in their minds. They could boast to
their peers that they were somehow special because they lorded over the most heinous killers, Death Row. They could boast to one another tales of their daily brutality, how they finally goaded one or another particular prisoner into a futile retaliatory attempt and how they subsequently gathered their compatriots in riot gear and collectively beat him within inches of his life. They know they will not be given free reign to
abuse us and suffer absolutely no repercussions. For if they retain their jobs as guards somewhere else in the prison system they will not have the same level of physical and psychological protection against retaliation from general population prisoners if they decide to continue the antagonism and harassment and physically provocative behavior. They are being weaned from the breast of unaccountability and they do not like it.
Like children throwing temper tantrums when they do not get their way, they have escalated the pace of mortification by showing spasms of depravity toward Texas Death Row.
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