Posted on 02/12/2007 11:22:29 AM PST by B-Chan
Typical liberal. Do you libs ever have a day when you aren't afraid of your own shadow?
I've always thought it was ridiculous that these things are allowed to happen in a controlled environment like a prison. It seems like a great case for privitization. If the guards were held responsible like at any other private firm, the number of rapes would be cut way back. In a government facility, a guard can take a bribe to look the other way and just shrug his shoulders when an inmate is attacked. In a private facility, he would be held directly responsible for what happened on his watch. I'm not soft on crime at all, but it's a crime in and of itself that prisoners under the care of the state and federal government are allowed to run amok like a bunch of wild animals.
Did I miss it in the article; what prison did this happen in?
Don't violate the law. Don't get thrown in prison.
Don't enter the border patrol profession.
Excellent point!
I've learned from experience.
;-)
I have a problem with the whole concept of prison as it is known today. I don't think it is effective either as a means of punishment or as a way to safeguard the public from criminals. I would prefer to see a simple three-tiered system of criminal punishment: confinement (under Spartan conditions -- say an outdoor fenced pen behind the local courthouse) for misdemeanor crimes, corporal punishment (caning) for non-violent felony crimes, and hanging for crimes of violence. Hanging would be used only in cases where a plea of "guilty" is entered by the accused; those claiming innocence would be given a commuted sentence (up to life) without possibility of parole, to be served in a prison camp run under military discipline.
Ideally, we should have a Coventry -- an area where the law does not apply -- in every state. This area would have fenced and guarded borders, but within those borders would be without any law or legal government at all. Those who choose to live without the law would be sent to Coventry, where no law exists, there to survive as best they can.
If anyone has experienced sheer terror, it’s Kirk Bloodsworth.Still think it can't happen to you?Tried and found guilty of the brutal rape and murder of a 9-year-old Rosedale girl, the barrel-chested crabber from the Eastern Shore was sentenced to die in the gas chamber for his horrific crimes.
But Mr. Bloodsworth didn’t have anything to do with what he was accused of. A former marine with no criminal record, he had been wrongly convicted and would later become the first American on death row to be exonerated by DNA testing.
But as he was led onto the grounds of the Maryland State Penitentiary in Baltimore in 1985 on his first day on death row, no one believed his story – least of all the other prisoners.
Handcuffed and shackled as he slowly made his way across the yard of the penitentiary, Mr. Bloodsworth noticed other prisoners racing to the fences to glimpse the monster they had heard so much about.
This was the man a Baltimore County jury convicted of beating Dawn Hamilton with a rock, sexually mutilating her, raping her and strangling her to death by stepping on her neck.
As the new prisoner shuffled onto the old prison campus, he was dwarfed by the gothic structure’s tall granite walls, silver spires and imposing turrets that loomed ominously over Forrest Street like a medieval castle.
Jeering at him, the inmates shouted repeated threats of violence.
“We’re going to do to you what you did to that little girl,” they screamed. “We’re going to get you, Kirk!”...
Mr. Bloodsworth believes one of the main reasons he was arrested was the tremendous pressure Baltimore County police were under to find the person who had committed those heinous acts in the summer of 1984. Two young boys identified him as the person they saw near the crime scene and an anonymous caller said he had been seen with the girl earlier in the day.
Mr. Bloodsworth, who never met the murdered girl, had told an acquaintance he had done something “terrible” that day. He was referring to his failure to buy his wife dinner, but it was used against him in a different context.
Although he lived in the area of the crime, Mr. Bloodsworth had returned to the Eastern Shore soon after the murder – making it look like he had fled. Misfortune seemed to conspire against him at every turn.
The Maryland Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in 1986 because of withheld information at his original trial, but he was again found guilty by a second jury and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Of the nearly nine years he spent behind bars, two of them were on death row.
Mr. Bloodsworth was the one who had first proposed the idea of DNA testing. An avid reader in prison who served as the librarian, he learned about the new technology in a book called “The Blooding.” Robert Morin, his attorney, was able to get his client tested.
It was exactly that post-conviction testing that proved Mr. Bloodsworth’s innocence in 1993. He was released and paid $300,000 in compensation – the accumulated salary the state said he would have earned as a waterman. Gov. William Donald Schaefer pardoned him that same year.
Mr. Bloodsworth said he had to endure the suspicions of many who believed he had gotten off on a technicality. It was difficult for him to maintain a job after his release because people thought he was a murderer. DNA testing later identified the real killer – Kimberly Shay Ruffner, a man who had been previously charged with sexually assaulting children. He pled guilty to the Dawn Hamilton murder and is now serving a life sentence.
The prison system in the US is uncivilised and a violation against fundamental human rights. It's as simple as that really.
--Still think it can't happen to you?--
Anything can happen but odds are extremely small that I don't worry about it. I would not have left the area right after being questioned with my wife filing a missing persons report on me. His excuse for leaving town? He forgot to bring home some fast food for his wife's dinner and she was mad at him. Along with the 'eye-witness' testimonies, he certainly looked guilty. But now we have DNA testing (which set him free) so it is less likely to happen now.
Since Human Rights Watch is involved I question the authenticity of the letter(s) and the study.
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