CALIFORNIA INMATES
Jess Sullivan, Daily Republic
FAIRFIELD — A Vacaville man who in 2010, when he was 14, raped, repeatedly stabbed and sodomized a 13-year-old girl and repeatedly stabbed her 1-year-old brother is set to return to a Solano County courtroom Friday morning.
Alexander Cervantes, 22, was transferred to the county jail Thursday from California State Prison, Solano, in Vacaville where he had been serving a 68-years-to-life sentence for what he did after breaking into the children’s Vacaville home late at night. He stabbed the girl 42 times. Her brother was stabbed 13 times.
California Supreme Court justices voted unanimously in February to throw out prosecutors’ effort to reverse a lower court ruling ordering a new trial for Cervantes. The Court of Appeal in 2017 overturned eight of Cervantes’ felony convictions, but upheld convictions for charges of forcible rape, forcible sodomy, forcible oral copulation, residential burglary and two charges of assault with a deadly weapon.
Cervantes’ court appearance is scheduled in front of Judge Carlos Gutierrez, who is likely to send the case to the juvenile courts in light of changes in the laws in recent years about how crimes committed by juveniles are handled by the courts.
At some point prosecutors will decide if they will seek a retrial for Cervantes on the overturned criminal charges.
Also at issue is whatever prison sentence may be imposed on Cervantes since higher courts have deemed lifelong sentences for youthful offenders at times amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and as such are unconstitutional.
Prior to the Court of Appeal overturning portions of his sentence, Cervantes’ minimum eligible parole date was Sept. 23, 2077, when he would have been 80 years old.
“This case involved horrific acts of violence against two young and vulnerable victims and it is unsettling to have the case come back at this time with no final resolution of the matter,” Solano County District Attorney Krishna Abrams said in 2017 after the Court of Appeal ruling.
Jess Sullivan, Daily Republic
FAIRFIELD — A prisoner who is serving a life sentence and faces a murder charge for the 2015 death of his cellmate at California State Prison, Solano, was in court briefly Thursday.
Jesus Perez, 49, was flanked by prison guards, a Spanish-language interpreter and his court-appointed attorney, Barry Newman, who is disputing a diagnosis by prison psychiatrists that Perez, declared mentally incompetent in August 2017, is now mentally fit and able to stand trial on a murder charge.
Judge John B. Ellis ordered a trial be conducted in June and July in which he will decide whether Newman is correct that his client is still mentally incompetent or if prison doctors are correct.
Perez was in prison for a 2009 first-degree murder conviction out of Los Angeles County.
Perez is accused of killing his cellmate, 24-year-old Nicholas A. Rodriguez, on May 4, 2015. Rodriguez’s body was found several hours after a prison riot had spurred a lockdown of the prison. Parts of his body were found stuffed in a garbage can in a shower stall a few doors from their cell. Other parts of his body were later found in a garbage can in an exercise yard. Rodriguez’s body was nearly cut in half and most of his abdominal and chest organs had been removed.
Rodriguez was serving an eight-year sentence for an Alameda County robbery.
CALIFORNIA PAROLE
For the first time, Gordon's family joined in asking the state to keep the "Layla" songwriter and acclaimed rock drummer incarcerated for the 1983 killing
Patrick Flanary, Billboard
Fearing a risk of violence if released from prison, a California court has denied parole to Jim Gordon, the Grammy-winning drummer serving a life sentence for killing his mother in 1983.
The decision, by the Board of Parole Hearings, marks Gordon's 10th denial and the first time his family and legal counsel have asked the state not to grant him parole.
Gordon backed many significant rock recordings of the 1960s and '70s, including Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'," Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" and, most famously, "Layla," as a member of Eric Clapton's band Derek and the Dominos. Gordon played with an understated yet distinctive groove on dozens of songs that became radio hits, and was known to his peers as the "only living metronome."
But at the height of his career, Gordon was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Combined with substance abuse, his mental illness threatened his professional reputation. Beginning in 1978, Gordon sought medical treatment at least 15 times, court records show. But he could not escape his mother's voice, which he claimed had tormented him for years. The hallucinations grew relentless, demanding that Gordon eat less, even stop touring.
To confront the voices, Gordon drove to his mother's house, where he struck her head with a hammer and also stabbed her. In 1984 he was sentenced to 16 years to life, and "remains an unreasonable risk of threat to public safety," according to the parole board's decision in March at California Medical Facility in Vacaville, where Gordon is jailed.
"I think he would be a threat to himself if he were to be released," said Jeffrey Hall, Gordon's attorney, according to a hearing transcript obtained by Billboard. "I think he'd hurt somebody else."
Amy Schief, who manages her father's finances but has no contact with Gordon, also suggested that parole would be premature. "Certainly our family has been traumatized by what happened," Schief said. "But it's been so many years and it doesn't really seem like he's going anywhere at this point."
Gordon has served 34 years of his life term, and will next be eligible for parole in 2021.
He got his professional break in 1963 at age 17, when he joined the Everly Brothers on tour in England. Gordon played professionally for the next 20 years, backing some of the biggest names in rock music on the road and in the studio, including Joe Cocker, Frank Zappa, Harry Nilsson, and George Harrison. In 1970, Gordon's work on Harrison's All Things Must Pass led to the formation of Derek and the Dominos with Clapton, bassist Carl Radle, and keyboardist Bobby Whitlock.
That group was short-lived but produced a giant hit with "Layla," which Gordon co-wrote. It was his greatest musical achievement yet had nothing to do with the drums; he played the song's signature melancholy piano refrain. (In her 2016 memoir, Rita Coolidge claimed she wrote that part with Gordon.)
"Layla" charted twice in two different years, peaking at no. 16 on the Billboard 200 in December 1970 and reaching no. 10 on the Hot 100 in August 1972 -- long after the band had broken up. (In 1993, while in prison, Gordon won a Grammy for Best Rock Song for "Layla," following the success of Clapton's Unplugged, named Album of the Year.) The song has been streamed more than 30 million times, according to SoundScan.
When Derek and the Dominos disbanded, Gordon's popularity and work ethic earned him sessions that became monumental albums, among them John Lennon's Imagine, Gordon Lightfoot's Sundown, and Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic.
With that fast fame the turbulence of his drug and alcohol abuse never slowed, a lifestyle that doctors later testified had exacerbated Gordon's mental disorder.
"I think that people overlook that, aside from his obvious mental illness, Jim was a really great, gentle guy with so much untapped talent," drummer Rick Marotta told Billboard by email. "I wish that there had been a way for someone to stop the horrific events that sent him away for all of these years, but unfortunately we lived in an environment that didn't rescue people with that kind of illness. There was too much acceptance of strange behavior blamed on drugs and alcohol."
As Gordon told Rolling Stone in 1985 of the murder, "I had no interest in killing her. ... I had no choice. It was so matter-of-fact, like I was being guided like a zombie." His trial attorney later told The Washington Post that Gordon "truly believed he was acting in self-defense."
Today Gordon refuses contact with lawyers and declines to attend parole hearings. He is said to rarely leave his cell, and often resists medication. A 2005 document shows he was collecting $4,000 a month in royalties at that time, and was disciplined for giving some of that money to fellow inmates.
In November 2017, Gordon was again diagnosed with schizophrenia. Court records show he also suffers from delusions, a heart condition, and an enlarged prostate. Still, Gordon was deemed ineligible for California's new Elderly Parole Program, instituted earlier this year, which gives special consideration to inmates older than 60 who have served 25 years.
Gordon turns 73 in July. Yet despite having no record of violent behavior since 2001, the board determined that his mental health "remains dangerously unstable."
Jean Elle, NBC Bay Area
Relatives of three young children killed by their mother 20 years ago in Daly City asked Governor Jerry Brown to reject a parole board’s recommendation to release the mother.
Megan Hogg was convicted of murdering her three kids — Antoinette, 7, Angelique, 3, and Alexandra, 2 — and sentenced to 25 years to life and now, the family and investigators are working together to oppose her release.
The children were murdered in their Daly City home by their mother in 1998 and the girls' aunt along with other extended family members recall the painful chapter now that the State Board of Parole hearings is recommending her for parole.
"I'm fearful for her to come and say she starts a family I don't think she learned from it," said Karla Douglas.
The San Mateo County District Attorney’s office agrees, saying Hogg shows no remorse for suffocating her three girls. Additionally, they say she has not been a good prison inmate, saying she has a record of dealing drugs in prison and was found to be at moderate risk to re-offend.
The family, DA and police continue to send letters to Gov. Brown asking him to reverse the decision and they urge others to do the same.
CORRECTIONS RELATED
Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post
In the early morning hours of Nov. 11, 1978, Rhonda Wicht, a 24-year-old waitress and cosmetology student, was beaten, raped and strangled with a macramé rope in her apartment in a quiet suburb near Los Angeles. Down the hallway, her 4-year-old son, Donald was smothered and suffocated to death in his bed, according to prosecutors.
Hours after a relative discovered their lifeless bodies, a suspect was arrested in the case: Craig Coley, Wicht’s former boyfriend with whom she had recently broken up. Coley was charged with their killings. After a first trial resulted in a hung jury, Coley was convicted in a second trial of murder in 1980. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Coley remained behind bars for more than 38 years, always adamant that he was innocent. He petitioned for clemency, with no luck. A police detective with the city of Simi Valley begged his agency to reopen the case, noticing possible failures in the investigation. But authorities refused to give it a second look.
That all changed on the eve of Thanksgiving last November, when Gov. Jerry Brown (D) pardoned Coley after police found new DNA evidence that no longer placed him at the crime scene. A Ventura County Superior Court judge erased his conviction. At the age of 70, Coley was released from prison, an innocent man.
After nearly four decades, authorities reopened the investigation into the deaths of Wicht and her son. Now, Simi Valley police are looking into whether their murders might be tied to the man charged in one of the most notorious unsolved serial killings in U.S. history — the “Golden State Killer.”
Authorities announced last week they had arrested 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo, charging him with capital murder, after a DNA match allegedly linked him to killings and rapes across California, spanning several years. Officials suggested he could be linked to even more cases, with dozens of victims who were attacked in the 1970s and 1980s.
Simi Valley police want to examine DeAngelo’s genetic profile to find out whether his DNA is consistent with the evidence in the Wicht case, the Associated Press reported.
Deputy Chief Joseph May, of the Simi Valley Police Department, told CBS Los Angeles it is “within the realm of possibility that he could be a suspect in our case.” The time periods for the crimes match up, and so do the general locations. “He is suspected of committing a homicide in Ventura County,” May said. “We’re part of Ventura County.”
Simi Valley Police Chief David Livingstone told a San Diego NBC affiliate that he noticed similarities between the crimes of the Golden State Killer and the Wichts’ murders.
The suspect who terrorized Californians in the 1970s and 1980s often attacked young single women living alone or with only their children. He used ligatures in his rapes, and at times ransacked the rooms of his victims, Livingstone told NBC 7.
“There was some ransacking in the Wicht case,” Livingstone said. “Not that a lot of murders don’t have some similarities, in terms of violence, but this one is close enough and with the time frame it’s close enough.”
Simi Valley authorities hope to at least be able to include or eliminate DeAngelo as a possible suspect.
“I don’t care how they find out as long as they find out and it’s a true conviction,” Coley, the man wrongfully convicted of the mother and son’s murders, told CBS Los Angeles. “I feel elated for the family, for Rhonda’s family. I believe that at some point in time that they will find who did this and justice will finally be served.”
Coley’s journey to his own semblance of justice began in the early 1990s, after a Simi Valley police detective spotted “red flags” in the Wicht case file. The detective, Mike Bender began noticing that certain evidence in the investigation wasn’t analyzed properly, and several solid suspects were never pursued. “It appeared that a real investigation hadn’t occurred,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The detective met Coley at a state prison in 1991 and became convinced of his innocence. But none of Bender’s superiors would let him reopen the case, he told the Union-Tribune. In 1991, they ordered him to stop pursuing the case or else he’d be fired. So Bender quit his job, leaving Simi Valley but pledging to continue working toward cracking the case.
Bender took the 16 boxes from the case with him to his new home in Northern California. Every Saturday, he talked by phone with Coley.
In September 2015, after Bender pleaded with numerous government agencies to look into Coley’s case, Brown requested that the Board of Parole Hearings conduct an investigation.
Livingstone, who was 11 when the killings happened, also took an interest in Coley’s case, he said at a news conference last year. While organizing his agency’s newspaper clippings archive, he learned that biological evidence used to convict Coley could be re-examined using DNA technology that wasn’t available in 1978.
Hearing of Bender’s involvement in Coley’s case, Livingstone reached out to the former detective in October 2016. Livingstone learned that biological evidence in the Wicht case was ordered destroyed by a judge. But he knew that sometimes, such evidence often ends up being simply misfiled. He decided to reopen Coley’s case to find out what happened to the missing evidence.
Some of this key evidence was found in a private lab in Northern California. The lab had inherited the evidence after two other labs went out of business, the Ventura County Star reported. None of that DNA ended up matching Coley.
Simi Valley police and the Ventura County District Attorney’s office chose to support Coley’s petition for clemency, writing they “no longer have confidence in the weight of the evidence used to convict” Coley and that the current evidence met “the legal standard for finding of factual innocence.”
Brown signed the pardon, writing that the detective who originally investigated the case “mishandled the investigation or framed” Coley.
Coley “has been a model inmate for nearly four decades. In prison he has avoided gangs and violence,” Brown wrote. “Instead he has dedicated himself to religion. The grace with which Mr. Coley has endured this lengthy and unjust incarceration is extraordinary.”
Coley may be the longest-serving prisoner in California to be granted clemency, Simi Valley police told the Los Angeles Times. In February, the California Victim Compensation Board voted unanimously to award Coley $1.9 million — the highest award ever paid to an exonerated California prisoner, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“It’s not something you can describe other than it’s painful,” Coley said to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “I went four decades not being able to grieve the woman and child I loved.”
Since he was freed, Coley has been living near San Diego with his friend and “savior” — the retired detective, Bender and his wife.
Even if the DNA does not come back as a match with the suspected Golden State Killer, Simi Valley police say it will at least be one potential suspect they can cross off their list.
“We want to solve this case,” Livingstone told NBC 7. “The Golden State case gives us a lot of hope that even after many years, there’s always the chance. It still shows you that you can solve cases even though it has been that many years.”
Republican incumbent Anne Schubert is dogged by police accountability questions
Brandon E. Patterson, Mother Jones
The race for district attorney in Sacramento, California, where city police fatally shot an unarmed, 22-year-old black man named Stephon Clark last month, is shaping up as a referendum on police accountability and mass incarceration.
Incumbent DA Anne Schubert, a Republican in a city and county dominated by Democrats, has come under harsh scrutiny from local and national groups, media organizations, and her Democratic rival for her tough-on-crime positions and financial ties to police organizations.
The Intercept last Wednesday ran a report detailing more than $400,000 Schubert has received from local and state police groups over the years—an amount that constitutes nearly a third of her overall campaign donations, according to the article.
Schubert was already taking heat, at least in liberal circles, for having declined to file charges against a single officer, despite more than 20 officer-involved shootings and 13 deaths in law enforcement custody in her jurisdiction in 2015 (when Schubert took office) and 2016, according to the Sacramento News & Review. She “has prosecuted more activists for civil disobedience than she has officers involved in misconduct,” the weekly paper wrote.
The more recent donations, say local reform groups and Schubert’s challenger, assistant DA Noah Phillips, could influence Schubert’s decisions related to the Clark shooting, which is still under police investigation. Now those groups are publicly speculating that Schubert’s reluctance to prosecute in dozens of earlier police-related deaths may have been swayed by the law enforcement cash her various campaigns—one for superior court judge, one for DA, and then her current re-election effort—have collected going back to 2009.
Schubert took money from local police unions as recently as earlier this month, according to the Intercept report. She also accepted donations from police unions in the week after Clark’s death, according to campaign finance records. She has yet to announce her prosecutorial intentions related to more than a dozen other police shootings and in-custody deaths in 2017 and 2018.
Incumbent district attorneys are facing unusual scrutiny this election season as progressive groups push to replace old-school DAs across the country with reform-minded candidates. Few incumbents are under more pressure than Schubert. The police donations just after Clark’s death drew headlines from local and national media outlets, and the Phillips campaign has capitalized on the controversy, unveiling a new TV ad suggesting that Schubert cannot be an impartial arbiter in the Clark case. Groups including the local Black Lives chapter, the Anti-Police Terror Project, and Real Justice PAC—a national group that is backing Phillips and working to educate voters on the issues—are also claiming Schubert is beholden to the police.
It is not uncommon, actually, for district attorneys to accept campaign donations from police groups. But those who do run the risk of bad optics, experts say. Police-reform groups, not surprisingly, consider such donations a conflict of interest.
Local groups are stepping up their organizing as the June 5 election nears. Sacramento Area Congregations Together, a coalition of some 50 faith groups, schools, and others organizing around the race, is canvassing neighborhoods every weekend until Election Day. The nonpartisan coalition advocates for criminal justice reform—volunteers aim to educate voters about the powers and critical role of the district attorney.
Other groups are taking a partisan approach: Black Lives Matter Sacramento is circulating contact information for Democratic politicians who have endorsed Schubert, and encouraging people to call and pressure the pols to rescind their endorsements. Real Justice PAC has done likewise, and is calling on local Dems to endorse Phillips instead—RJP also has donated at least $13,000 to the Phillips campaign and is helping it recruit volunteers.
Reformers are also targeting Schubert over her positions on state ballot initiatives that affect California’s jail and prison populations. She was an ardent opponent of a 2014 initiative that aimed to alleviate unconstitutional overcrowding by reclassifying some felonies as misdemeanors and allowing people convicted of those crimes to apply for reduced sentences. She sued Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016, hoping to block an initiative that increased early-release opportunities for nonviolent offenders and ended prosecutors’ unilateral discretion in deciding when juvenile defendants should be charged as adults. She also adamantly opposed a failed 2016 measure that would have ended the death penalty in California, instead penning an op-ed in support of a successful measure to speed up the execution process. Schubert also fought against Prop. 64, the ballot initiative that legalized the recreational use and sale of marijuana.
Now Schubert is supporting a campaign for a measure that would roll back some of the reforms put in place by earlier initiatives: The so-called Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act of 2018 would elevate certain misdemeanor offenses to felonies and make it harder for some offenders to seek parole or early release.
Schubert, whose campaign declined an interview request for this story, has maintained that she has always “follow[ed] the facts” in her decisions and that the donations from police groups have not influenced her choices. Her positions on past ballot measures, she has said, were in keeping with the best interest of crime victims and the public, and that despite ongoing protests outside her office demanding charges against officers in the Clark case, she cannot make any decisions until the police department has completed its investigation. The demonstrators have been so persistent that Schubert recently erected a metal fence around her building to thwart them.
Phillips, Schubert’s rival, is running on a platform that includes bail reform and greater transparency around the office’s handling of police shootings—he argues that Schubert could have dealt with the case differently, in part by immediately laying out for the public her process for such a case. (She only did so in a press conference a full month after Clark’s death.)
Phillips showed up at several rallies for Clark in the weeks after the shooting as well as city council meetings and other forums where the incident was being discussed “to hear what concerns are being raised” and to campaign. “People have to understand that their leaders are willing to lead them, find solutions, and move forward,” he explains. “If you are absent, no one will trust you, no one will have faith in the system, and no one will believe you when you give them information.”
The vast majority of the establishment Democrats have already endorsed Schubert—and so far, none has succumbed to the reformers’ pressure tactics. (The Phillips campaign chalks up its endorsement deficit in part to the fact that Phillips didn’t start campaigning until January, more than two months after Schubert announced her bid.) There is no independent polling in the race. In an internal poll commissioned by the Phillips campaign, voters overwhelmingly chose Schubert, but after they were read “brief and balanced” statements describing the candidates and their positions, Phillips pulled to an 11 point lead. The Schubert campaign would not share any internal polling results.
If she loses, Schubert wouldn’t be the first district attorney to go down over a police shooting. Cleveland’s former top prosecutor Tim McGinty, who declined to press charges in the 2014 death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and Anita Alvarez, who faced calls for her resignation over her botched handling of the Laquan McDonald case in the Chicago area, were both defeated in 2016, as was Angela Corey, the former Florida prosecutor who failed to convict Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Reform DA candidates beat incumbents in several more races in 2016 and last year.
Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones faces a similar type of electoral challenge. In January, the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee published an op-ed calling for someone run against Jones, a Republican and a staunch Trump supporter who was unopposed in his previous re-election bid. The paper cited lawsuits over alleged abuse by Jones’ deputies that have cost the county millions, and personal attacks the sheriff made last year against the founder of BLM Sacramento. Jones has also taken heat for his office’s contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency to house detainees in a county jail.
Jones, who donated to Schubert’s first campaign for district attorney, will now be facing Milo Fitch, a former deputy chief at the Sheriff’s Department who is running on a platform that includes support for bail reform and increased educational and jobs programmings for county jail inmates. Many of the groups organizing around the DA race say they plan to get involved in the sheriff’s race as well. They are hoping public outrage over the Clark shooting will prove pivotal in getting people to the polls. “Stephon Clark creates a sense of urgency for folks in Sacramento to say enough is enough,” says Gabby Trejo, an organizer with Sacramento ACT. “Folks are ready for change.”
Restorative justice workers contend with a public health crisis that persists long after inmates are released
R.W. Dellinger, Angelus
Wearing a red jacket on an overcast March morning, Gary Thomas is the first to speak in the rough circle at the Partnership for Re-Entry Program (PREP) headquarters.
“Absolutely, my health went down because of the poor nutrition we got in prison. I developed coronary artery disease. I got a total of 15 stents before I had a heart bypass and 11 after the bypass. One of my arteries was 99 percent blocked due to cholesterol. Had to have surgery and be repaired with part of a bovine heart. I had an aortic aneurysm, and they had to repair that. They had to put two more stints in my lower abdomen. Now that I’m out, I work every day. I’m 70 years old, and if I don’t keep going, if I stop now, it’s all over.”
Thomas gives this medical report with a country twang and easy chuckle at the end. He served 30 years of a life sentence in eight different California prisons.
PREP, a restorative justice ministry of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is housed on the first floor of a long-past-its-prime 2 1/2 story, blue-with-brown-trim Victorian in South LA.
That is where Thomas and seven co-workers, all having served lengthy prison sentences, have left their computer stations to talk about a matter the Prison Policy Initiative called last year a hidden “public health problem.”
“When they started feeding us nothing but chicken or turkey products, it just got so old it was nasty,” Thomas went on. “So, a lot of guys ate from the commissary and vending machines. You could buy Top Ramen soups and mix that with different cheeses and meats to supplement that soup and make it last longer and a lot tastier to boot.”
One might argue prison meals have changed in the 34 California prisons that house 130,000 inmates since this “lifer” gained his freedom 3 1/2 years ago. But Tony Kim, the youngster in the group, readily disputes this. In his baseball cap and gray sweatshirt, he looks at least 10 years younger than his actual age of 50.
“I supplemented my meals like Gary because one of the major issues at Stockton [prison] when I was there were grievances about the kitchen because of the way they prepared the food and the small portions,” says Kim, who just got out four months ago after serving 32 years in five prisons — and developed diabetic neuropathy along the way.
When his doctor recently asked him if he was a vegetarian because he was vitamin B-12 deficient, Kim says he replied, “No. Not by choice.”
Alfred Cruz, 60, is nodding. “Sure, it affected my health,” he points out, looking across the circle at me.
“It’s hard to maintain a hard immune system when your body’s not receiving the right nutrition. I got hepatitis C in there, and TB (tuberculosis), and Valley fever. So, it’s hard for your body to fight when you’re not getting the right nutrition, the right vitamins. And with their medical system, if you do get sick, it’s hard to get any help.”
Cruz served nearly 30 years in five California prisons. He also passed on many institutional meals. Instead, he would get together with two or three inmates, with one buying tortillas, another some chili beans and another a jar of mayonnaise.
But even pooling the little money they earned from their prison jobs, it was tough coming up with it on any steady basis. So, he wound up going back to what was served: two hot meals and a bag lunch that consisted of a slice of baloney between stale bread.
Some cooks liked to use prisoners as guinea pigs, he recalls.
“I remember one time at CMC they were gonna try switching over to emu meat. An emu is a smaller version of the ostrich. It was like a big drumstick. Tasted really bad, with a bad aftertaste, too,” he says.
After some thought, he goes on: “But the one meal that stuck out to me was Sunday, the ‘Grand Slam’ breakfast, which was the closest thing to a normal meal: fried eggs, sausage, cold cereal and then toast.”
Daniel Adamik glances up through black-framed glasses. “While I was incarcerated, I also had a double bypass open-heart surgery. And the cardiologist said that one of the contributing factors to having two blockages was the poor nutrition that they had in the prisons,” he says.
“So, the thing is — there might have been one or two tastier meals, and we might have supplemented our food with commissary food or stuff in packages — none of that food was nutritious, too. You’d buy summer sausages, they were just a package of fat. You couldn’t get fresh vegetables. You couldn’t get lean meat. It was very difficult and extraordinarily expensive.”
High carb, sugary diet
But prison grub is supposed to be bad, right?
That’s the reaction of a lot of Americans — not only in years past, when punishment was the only reason for criminals serving hard time. The idea of “rehabilitation” was an afterthought. And nobody had even heard of the notion of “restorative justice” — where offenders try to reconcile the harm they have done to victims and the community.
But a recent study by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as state reports like “Prison Voice Washington” by the Prison Policy Initiative have called the decline in food quality in prisons a growing “public health problem.”
Why?
Because the vast majority of incarcerated men and women in these state facilities eventually get out — many in a year or two. For example, the average prison time served in nearby Washington State is 29 months, while the median is just 16 months.
And even a year on a poor high carb, sugary diet is more than enough time to inflict serious health consequences such as diabetes and coronary conditions on a person.
In fact, research shows that eating an unhealthy, high caloric diet for just four weeks can lead to long-term steady rises in cholesterol and body fat.
“When people are released from prison, their health problems become community health problems — and a financial burden on the local public health system,” points out the Washington study.
“Preventing and helping treat chronic illnesses by serving nutritious food is cheaper than medical treatment, both during incarceration and after release.”
There are two main reasons for prison food actually getting less nutritious, according to the report. Almost all state prisons — including California — have replaced cooking from scratch, with fresh vegetables, meat and poultry, with processed food from central factories that only need to be reheated. So, plastic-wrapped, sugar-filled “food products” have replaced locally grown and prepared healthy food.
Nationally, most of this processed food served to prisoners has been outsourced to two private corporations: Aramark Correctional Services and Trinity Services Group. Like all profit-making entities, their driving purpose is to make money for stockholders by cutting costs.
These privatized food services have had an increasing number of lawsuits filed against them by inmates, government agencies and even states. Prison kitchens under contract to Aramark have reportedly “served food tainted by maggots … rotten meat … food pulled from the garbage … [and] food on which rats nibbled.”
The Prison Policy Initiative’s investigation concluded that while prison food has gotten worse, U.S. mass incarceration has meant more and more individuals are in prison and trying to survive on that non-nutritious food.
“Now, states and communities must face the long-term health consequences — and resulting health care costs — of feeding large numbers of incarcerated people unhealthy food,” states the report. “Far from the frivolous complaint, unhealthy prison food is actually a public health concern likely costing states and taxpayers far more than it saves.”
‘Abuse of mass incarceration’
After the impromptu bull session inside the seedy LA mansion, Sister Mary Sean goes outside to sit in a lawn chair on the front porch. Then the former teacher tries to explain to me why the quality of prison food is so important. And she should know.
For 17 years, she has worked with former and current inmates serving lengthy sentences in California. She has seen firsthand how bad nutrition inside facilities carries over to chronic illnesses outside.
“Why did you really want Angelus News to do this story?” I ask.
The woman religious straightens up before speaking. “Because I see bad health among the men who work here at PREP and during my visits to prisons around California,” she says.
“I see how bad it is dentally and physically. Many of them have serious health issues. And I know the food in these prisons is not nutritious. So, I think it’s a story that very few people know about. And I think it’s a major, major issue.
“Almost all the people you talk to, inside or out, have health problems,” she adds. “So, I think it’s an abuse. I think it’s an abuse of mass incarceration.”
PREP offers correspondence courses to help prisoners successfully re-enter today’s hypersonic society. “Turning Point” teaches life skills and examines the reasons for criminal behavior. “Anger Management” does just that. “Gang Awareness and Recovery” helps younger inmates leave the gang lifestyle, and “Insight” prepares inmates for their parole board hearing.
These and other courses give prisoners the tools to change their behavior and become productive members of the community when they are released, maintains the 77-year-old woman religious.
Inmates send back finished assignments, which are corrected by PREP workers like Gary, Tony, Alfred and Daniel. The assignments are then returned to prisoners with written feedback. And when all have been approved, certificates are given out.
Allowing these programs into California’s prisons has been a crucial step by its Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, according to Sister Mary Sean. But the poor food problem in our state prisons remains unchanged.
“I see good change in our facilities,” she says. “But I do not see change in nutrition. And then when inmates are released, they struggle to get adequate health care for all these conditions they developed in prison.”
Chris McGuiness, New Times
Kevin Lee McLaughlin woke up in the early morning hours of April 13, 2017, feeling unwell.
The 60-year-old inmate had been in custody in the San Luis Obispo County Jail since late January awaiting sentencing on an assault charge. At 2:30 a.m., he saw a jail nurse for an evaluation. He complained of numbness, tingling, and pain in his left shoulder and arm.
"I'm clammy," he said. "I need to go to the hospital."
The nurse took McLaughlin's vital signs, which were normal. The inmate wondered aloud if maybe he'd just slept on his arm. McLaughlin, whose jail medical records show that he was being treated for hypertension, was given 1,000 milligrams of Tylenol and sent back to his bed with plans to see a doctor the following day.
Less than one hour later, at about 3:13 a.m., a correctional deputy checked on McLaughlin and noticed he wasn't breathing normally. The deputy asked jail medical staff to conduct another evaluation. Five minutes later, that same deputy found McLaughlin unresponsive in his jail bed. An out-of-county medical examiner found that McLaughlin died of a heart attack, the result of chronic heart disease. McLaughlin's death was listed as natural.
Most of the inmate deaths in the SLO County and Santa Barbara County jails have been classified as natural. They made up more than half of the 41 inmate deaths at the two facilities over the last 18 years. New Times' review of dozens of coroner's investigation reports and medical examiner autopsies revealed that many of those inmates suffered from serious chronic medical conditions.
Grand jury reports and independent evaluations point to long-standing deficiencies in inmate health care at both facilities, and legal claims and lawsuits against both jails allege that those deficiencies have led to lapses in medical care that could be killing sick inmates. While the state prison system reviews inmate deaths to determine whether better care could have prevented those deaths and releases the results to the public, local jail officials say they review deaths but don't make their findings public
Advocates and some inmates' families have accused both jails of violating inmates' constitutional rights by providing substandard health care. The FBI is currently investigating the SLO County Jail for civil rights violations, while a federal class action lawsuit was filed against the Santa Barbara County Jail over conditions for sick and disabled inmates. Amid increasing pressure to address the issue, the sheriff's department and officials in both counties say they are working on reforms at both facilities, aiming to improve care and cut down on inmate deaths.
At risk
Johnny DeWitt, 49, had been in the Santa Barbara County Jail for nearly three months when he got into a verbal argument with another inmate on the morning of Nov. 26, 2015.
DeWitt—who'd been arrested for making violent threats—suddenly grabbed his chest and collapsed. He fell into the arms of another inmate and and was placed on the ground. The inmates yelled out to nearby deputies.
At 8:55 a.m., a "man down" call went out over the jail's radios. DeWitt lost consciousness and stopped breathing while custody and medical staff were trying to evaluate him. They started CPR. Emergency Medical Service workers arrived and spent 45 minutes trying to revive him. An ambulance took DeWitt to Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, but he never regained consciousness.
At 10:53 a.m., DeWitt was declared dead.
An autopsy determined that DeWitt's death was natural: a heart attack. Autopsy records stated that he suffered from coronary artery disease, hypertension, and diabetes, conditions further complicated by a history of methamphetamine use.
A review of deaths at the Santa Barbara Couinty facility showed that more than half of the 21 inmates who died in the jail since 2000 suffered from at least one type of chronic medical condition. That total includes seven deceased inmates who suffered from hypertension, four with heart disease, and four diagnosed with hepatitis C. In addition, the records showed three inmates had documented histories of diabetes, and another three suffered from cirrhosis.
Records on SLO County's inmate deaths show many of the same medical conditions. Of the 20 inmates who died in custody since 2000, more than half had at least one documented chronic medical condition. Among those, five suffered from heart disease, and two were diagnosed with high blood pressure. Three had liver-related conditions including cirrhosis, and another two were diagnosed with hepatitis. At least two were diagnosed with cancer, but only one had it listed as their cause of death.
"We see a lot of heart disease, we see a lot of cancer," said Dr. Christy Mulkerin, the SLO County Jail's new chief medical officer. "We see a lot of liver disease and ton of diabetes."
While such diseases aren't uncommon, Mulkerin and other SLO jail officials said that chronic illnesses within the inmate population tend to be more severe. For many inmates, medical conditions often go undiagnosed or untreated prior to their arrest and are exacerbated by homelessness, drug use, alcohol abuse, or other factors.
"When they come in, they come in directly off the street," said SLO County Undersheriff Tim Olivas. "It's not just a high-risk population, it's probably the highest risk population."
Inmates can request medical services by either asking a guard or submitting a written form known as a "kite." Mulkerin said in the first two months of 2018, the jail received 1,345 medical requests to triage and prioritize. Santa Barbara County jail staff field more than 12,000 requests for health services each year, according to California Forensic Medical Group, a company currently contracted to provide mental and medical health care at the jail.
Both jails are limited in what health care they can actually offer. Part of that is due to the facilities themselves. Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said his jail did not have a dedicated medical clinic, but a "hodgepodge" of exam rooms spread throughout the jail, which was built in the 1960s. Brown said inmates can get the basics: physicals, check-ups and exams, and intervention and treatment for minor injuries or illnesses.
"But if it's anything more than that, it requires us to take them out of the jail to a hospital or a specialist," Brown said. "If it's an emergency, or if they need regular dialysis, or have cancer and need chemotherapy, that's also offsite."
The SLO County Jail's Stahl Hall, a medical and mental health clinic, provides a similar level of care. Mulkerin said Stahl's single examination room doesn't have "monitored beds," where an inmate can be placed for an extended period of time and have their vital signs tracked.
"We can't do that right now because that person would be taking up our one exam space, and we can't see anyone else," she said.
At both jails, inmates are transported to the hospital by deputies, or in the most severe or life threatening cases, by ambulance. According to Mulkerin, the jail recorded 59 hospital emergency room visits in the first three months of 2018. Inmate death records showed that seven of the 20 inmates who died in SLO jail custody were transported to a hospital, while 14 of the 21 inmates who died in Santa Barbara custody were transported to a hospital prior to their deaths.
Warning signs
John Kelly entered the Santa Barbara County Jail in March 2013 on a DUI charge. A type 2 diabetic, Kelly said he figured the jail and its staff would simply keep him on his treatment and medication schedule. Instead, he claims that the poor quality of care in the jail turned the 2 1/2 month sentence into a fight for his life.
"I understand I had a debt to society, but I never expected the kind of torture it was," he said.
Kelly described trying to get medical care in the jail as a "tug of war." While on the outside, Kelly took insulin before every meal. Inside, he was allowed two injections each day. He filled out and submitted kites, but appointments were few and far between. At one point, Kelly said the jail ran out of a long-lasting brand of insulin he and other prisoners used. For the next 10 days, they replaced it with insulin that didn't last as long but never changed his dosage to make up for it, according to Kelly. His condition deteriorated, at one point becoming so severe that Kelly said he had to be rushed to a nearby hospital.
As a result, Kelly said he spent much of his time in jail on a roller-coaster ride of blood sugar highs and lows, leaving him worried that he might slip into a diabetic coma or worse.
"It was a complete nightmare," he said. "I was pretty sick the entire time."
Concerns about medical services at the Santa Barbara County Jail surfaced in 2008, when a grand jury report on the facility stated that many inmates' complaints to the American Civil Liberties Union noted a lack of attention to inmates' ailments or pain and delays in getting medical attention. The grand jury also found that jail medical records were still handwritten and that staff had no access to online medical records for inmates.
In 2017, Dr. Scott A. Allen conducted an independent review of the jail's medical services. Allen is co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, and his review was commissioned jointly by Disability Rights California and Santa Barbara County. A number of Allen's findings echoed the 2008 grand jury report. Allen's report also found that staffing was inadequate, that physician availability was limited to just three days a week, and that the jail lacked protocols to manage ongoing care for chronically ill inmates.
"Chronic disease management is inadequate," Allen wrote. "My review found management of chronic illnesses such as asthma, diabetes, HIV, and hypertension, among others, to be ad hoc, incomplete, inconsistent, and reactive as opposed to proactive."
In December 2017, Disability Rights California filed a federal class action lawsuit over substandard conditions in the jail. The organization alleged that Santa Barbara County and the Sheriff's Office failed to provide adequate medical care to inmates housed in the jail. The suit draws on Allen's findings and alleges that custody staff refused to provide or deliver sick call forms to medical staff and that the jail's south dormitory, which houses prisoners with serious medical needs, was dirty and crowded, with some chronically ill inmates forced to sleep on small plastic beds on the floor.
In SLO County, a grand jury raised concerns about medical services for inmates at the SLO County Jail after a string of high-profile inmate deaths in 2016 and 2017, including McLaughlin's. According to a 2017 report, the grand jury sought significant and detailed information about inmate health and safety but found it difficult to obtain that data.
"In some cases, we were told it was simply not available," the report stated.
The report attributes the lack of information to multiple agencies being responsible for inmate health care, including the Sheriff's Office, SLO County Drug and Alcohol Services, and the SLO County Public Health Agency.
"Such a structure raises a concern about how well various aspects of inmate care are coordinated, especially when health issues cross multiple boundaries such as drug abuse, psychiatric care, and ongoing medical issues," the report stated.
As part of a process to reform the jail's medical and mental health care services, SLO County commissioned an independent review and evaluation of those services from Dr. Alfred Joshua, chief medical officer for the San Diego County Sheriff's Office. While the county and SLO Sheriff's Office used Joshua's findings to craft a number of reforms, including hiring SLO jail CMO Mulkerin, they refused to release the evaluation, denying a New Times Public Records Act request for the document.
A legal claim filed against the county by McLaughlin's family accused the county of "decades-long deliberate indifference" to the medical needs of inmates. The claim alleged that the jail suffered from a lack of adequately trained staff; failed to develop and implement policies and procedures for how to care for ill inmates; and kept incomplete, illegible, and inadequate health records.
"[McLaughlin] entered the jail as an elevated health risk," the claim against the county stated. "[McLaughlin's] medical condition otherwise would have been manageable with proper medication and timely and professional treatment, including a transfer to a hospital for more specialized and acute care."
The county rejected the claim in November 2017. The family has until May to file a lawsuit.
Twenty-five percent of the medical malpractice claims filed against SLO County in the last 20 years were related to the jail. Of those jail-related claims, nearly half alleged negligent or denied medical care.
Ryan James Johnson wasn't surprised by the allegations. Johnson, 41, spent time in the jail in 2012 while on trial for first-degree murder.
"The level of care at SLO County Jail, I believe, is meant to just get people through with the bare minimum," Johnson, who is now serving a 26-years-to-life sentence in a state prison, wrote in response to questions from New Times. "I believe that the medical care is designed to focus on temporary treatment to essentially stabilize the person until they can pass them off to the next destination."
Deadly lapses
William Meredith Harvel, 73, was disoriented and confused when he was booked into the SLO County Jail on Feb. 18, 2008, for negligently discharging a firearm. In addition to showing signs of dementia, Harvel suffered from a number of serious medical conditions including hypertension and prostate cancer. He was put in a wheelchair and placed in a medical isolation cell. Eight days later, an X-ray revealed that Harvel had an enlarged heart and was suffering from congestive heart failure, mild pulmonary vascular disease, and possible pneumonia.
On Feb. 27, 2008, Harvel began having difficulty breathing and was hyperventilating. He was given a paper bag to breath into, which gave him "some relief."
Four days later, at about 6 p.m., an inmate worker who was mopping the floor said he saw Harvel place his feet on the floor and try to lean forward into a sitting position on his bed. Harvel fell back and hit his head against the wall behind him, slumping over on his side. The inmate alerted custody staff, who went to the cell to assess Harvel.
He became unresponsive. Twelve minutes later, medics arrived, but life-saving efforts were unsuccessful. Harvel was pronounced dead at 8:29 p.m. An autopsy lists his cause of death as congestive heart failure.
Although his death may have been natural, the coroner's report doesn't specify whether it may have been preventable. The report does state that the jail had access to both his medical records and medication regimen as early as four days after he was booked into the jail. The coroner also noted that Harvel was not given any medications during his incarceration, but didn't say what role that may have played in his death.
Records from SLO County's legal counsel show an administrative claim related to Harvel's case was filed in March 2008 and closed in September of the same year. The claim itself was not available, as California state law allows older claims to be destroyed. A decade later, the claim filed by McLaughlin's family alleged that a lapse in medical care may have led to his fatal heart attack.
In addition to stating that jail medical staff failed to recognize that he was having a heart attack, the claim alleged that McLaughlin was given medication that hastened his death. Health records included in the claim showed that McLaughlin was prescribed ibuprofen during his stay at the jail. The claim pointed out that in 2015, the FDA issued a drug safety notification that non-aspirin nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which include ibuprofen, increase the chances of or even cause heart attacks or strokes. The agency issued similar warnings in 2005.
The FDA's announcement also stated that patients with heart disease or risk factors for it have a greater likelihood of having a heart attack following NSAID use. According to his jail health records, McLaughlin was already taking medication for high blood pressure and hypertension, but was also prescribed a 1,200 milligram daily dose of ibuprofen for seven days in January and again in February for five days.
"It should have been known to jail personnel since 2005 that even short-term use of NSAIDs elevated blood pressure and could cause heart failure," the claim stated.
Tracking lapses in care related to inmate deaths is something that California's state prison system has been doing since 2008, and state prison medical officials believe that collecting that data led to a reduction in preventable deaths. Health care at the state's prisons has been in federal court-ordered receivership since 2005, the result of a 2001 lawsuit over the quality of inmate care.
"We review all our deaths and look at every single one intensely," said Dr. David Ralston, a regional deputy medical executive for California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS), a group currently providing health care at the state's prisons as part of the receivership.
According to CCHCS's data, the top three causes of death among the state's prison inmates in 2016 were cancer, cardiovascular disease, and liver disease. CCHCS reviews inmate deaths and makes their findings available to the public via an annual review. According to the reviews, none of the 334 inmate deaths in 2016 were classified as definitely preventable, down from 18 in 2006. The same data shows that the number of possibly preventable deaths dropped from 65 in 2007 to 18 in 2016.
Ralston, who oversees medical care at seven California prisons including the California Men's Colony in SLO, said the decreasing number of preventable deaths was, in part, due to the rigorous reviews and tracking of lapses in care.
"We really look to see if there was any way we could have improved their care," he said. "Continuous improvement is sort of our mantra."
According to CCHCS's data, the most common lapse in 2016 was failure to recognize, identify, or adequately evaluate important symptoms or signs.
Mulkerin said that SLO County conducts multi-disciplinary reviews to comply with the state's Title 15 law, which sets minimum standards for local detention facilities. Those reviews include identifying areas of improvement, but the results are not made available to the public.
"The confidentiality is a must to ensure that the conversation is frank and productive, without violating the patient's rights and privacy," Mulkerin said.
The Santa Barbara County Jail was found to be in compliance with Title 15's death-in-custody review requirement, according to a biennial inspection from the California Board of State and Community Corrections conducted in 2016. However, the December 2017 lawsuit filed against the Santa Barbara County Jail alleges that it failed to adequately review and document deficiencies in care and says that the jail's review of in-custody deaths is inadequate.
None of the documents reviewed by New Times—coroner's death investigations or medical examiner autopsy reports related to the 41 inmate deaths—identified lapses in care, nor whether the deaths were preventable.
"The defendants do not take the necessary steps to avoid similar treatment failures, and the consequent risks to human life, in the future," the lawsuit states.
Making improvements
As scrutiny over deaths at both facilities continues, officials in SLO and Santa Barbara counties have promised the public that they are making reforms.
After criticism of its former jail medical services contractor, Corizon, Santa Barbara County chose a new contractor, California Forensic Medical Group. The group began providing services to the jail in April 2017. The company is supposed to help improve care at the jail and help the facility gain accreditation from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC). According to a recent grand jury report, the jail also improved its intake screening process and implemented an electronic health records system.
"The dedication of our medical and mental health staff to our patients and county is exemplary," Craig Diamond, a spokesman for California Forensic Medical Group, wrote in an email response to questions from New Times.
In addition, Santa Barbara County is building its Northern Branch jail facility in Santa Maria. The $111 million facility will provide 376 beds, 32 of which will be dedicated for mental and medical health.
Sheriff Brown acknowledged that pressure from Disability Rights California helped push the county to support and fund those reforms.
"They focused on our facility and the levels of services and felt those were inadequate. ... It's really the impetus for doing more than what's been done in the past," he said.
Shortly after McLaughlin's death, the SLO County Sheriff's Office announced that it would implement a number of reforms to inmate mental and medical health services at its jail as well. One of the most significant of those was hiring Mulkerin as chief medical officer. With her in place, control of all aspects of inmate care will fall directly under the Sheriff's Office as opposed to being dispersed between multiple agencies.
"It's been an amazing shift," Undersheriff Olivas said. "Bringing it all under one person who answers to the sheriff has really solved a lot of problems."
The county is currently building a new medical clinic at the jail, which it hopes to open in June. SLO County is considering possibly contracting out jail medical and mental health services, similar to Santa Barbara County, but has not made a final decision. The jail is also working toward NCCHC accreditation.
While jail officials say that systemic problems such as a lack of space and resources, and a population with high rates of chronic illnesses make providing care to inmates a challenge, McLaughlin's family's claim said that's not a valid defense for indifference to inmates' medical needs.
"It's a crime to ignore an inmate's medical needs," the claim stated.
OPINION
Jose Gaspar, The Bakersfield Californian
On April 19, at 3:50 p.m, Vicente Benavides was escorted out of San Quentin State Prison in a white van.
The doors opened and he stepped out a free man — just two days short of 25 years on death row — after having been wrongfully convicted in Kern County Superior Court on April 20, 1993.
A group of supporters waiting outside the prison’s east gate rushed to greet him, encircling the now white-haired 68-year-old man. Watching Benavides getting hugs and taking selfies seemed almost unreal as people wiped tears away, apparently still in disbelief this moment had finally come.
“We call it like a miracle we have to have faith,” said Jose Luis Figueroa, a friend of the Benavides family. “But we never thought this was going to happen.”
Then Benavides was whisked away by the group including lawyers while a media mob tried to follow shouting questions, but we were kept at bay by prison officials who said we were on state property.
Benavides and family members have declined interviews so far.
This has to rank as one of the most unusual cases in Kern County judicial history.
Convicted for the first-degree murder and sexual assault of 21-month-old Consuelo Verdugo in Delano, the California Supreme Court threw out that conviction earlier this year citing false medical evidence was used at trial to convict Benavides, who always maintained his innocence.
Long after the conviction, it was determined the child died as a result of blunt force trauma to her stomach. Dr. Astrid Heger, considered the preeminent expert in the field of sexual abuse, said she’s convinced “to a high degree of medical certainty that Consuelo’s abdominal and rib injuries were most likely caused by a vehicular accident.”
It turns out the child was never sexually abused, Kern County District Attorney Lisa Green admits. Green was not the District Attorney in 1993, nor did she prosecute the case.
When the Supreme Court overturned the conviction, Green had the chance to retry Benavides for second-degree murder, but declined to do so. Yet Green isn’t totally buying the idea that Benavides did not kill Consuelo Verdugo.
“The evidence strongly suggests that Mr. Benavides is not innocent,” said Green in an interview with reporter Olivia LaVoice of KGET, adding, “But it was also convincing that he shouldn’t have been doing time on death row.”
The case has generated strong reaction from all sides. Local defense attorney Arturo Revelo thinks that in a certain way, this case isn’t that unusual at all. He maintains the Benavides case is indicative of how Latino and black defendants get wrongfully convicted in Kern County.
“This case had problems from the very beginning with the medical evidence and yet the court allowed this evidence to be shown to the jury, which they then concluded that Benavides was a monster,” said Revelo.
The case has also had an emotional toll on at least one of the jurors in the 1993 trial.
Gordon Jones was deeply troubled when he learned that false medical evidence was used to convict Benavides. Jones was the last holdout in voting to send Benavides to death row. He’s relieved the man he voted to convict is now a free man. “I would say it’s the best thing that could have happened,” said Jones. He believes there are serious problems with the judicial system.
“How many more cases like this has there been when an innocent man gets convicted?” said Jones. “Who’s next?” One could sense anger and disgust in his voice.
What to make out of this bizarre case?
Equally troubling is that a 21-month-old child was killed and there is no one being held accountable for her death. Where is the justice for her?
Vicente Benavides spent nearly 25 years on death row, a place he did not belong. In that time, both of his parents have gone to their graves with the thought their son was a convicted child molester and killer. He is now trying to adjust to a new life, too old to go back to his old job as a farm laborer working in the fields of Kern County.
According to friends, he has no savings, no health insurance, no Social Security or retirement.
Trying to get compensation from the state for his wrongful conviction is easier said than done. He will have to prove to the California Victims Compensation Board that he is factually innocent of all charges.
I’m not sure what lessons all sides can learn from this most unfortunate experience. Jones said he is writing letters to the California Supreme Court in an attempt to keep this from happening again.
“I will sleep better when legislation is enacted to prevent this cruel court system from systematically proving that innocent people are guilty until they can prove their innocence,” said Jones.
LA Times Editorial Board
A Kern County Superior Court judge last week ordered that a 68-year-old former farmworker, Vicente Benavides Figueroa, be released from San Quentin's death row after the local district attorney declared she would not retry him. Benavides had been in prison for more than 25 years after being convicted of raping, sodomizing and murdering his girlfriend's 21-month-old daughter.
Benavides was freed after all but one of the medical experts who testified against him recanted their conclusions that the girl had, in effect, been raped to death — conclusions they had reached after reviewing incomplete medical records. In fact, the first nurses and doctors who examined the semiconscious and battered girl in 1991 observed no injuries suggesting she had been raped or sodomized, but those details were not passed along to the medical expert witnesses who testified in court. Injuries later observed at two other hospitals were likely caused by that first effort to save her life, which included attempts to insert an adult-sized catheter.
Convicting Benavides was an egregious miscarriage of justice; he spent a quarter-century on death row for a crime he apparently did not commit. His exoneration serves as a reminder of what ought to be abundantly clear by now: that despite jury trials, appellate reconsideration and years of motions and counter-motions, the justice system is not infallible, and it is possible (or perhaps inevitable) that innocent people will end up facing execution at the hands of the state. Not all of them will be saved, as Benavides was.
The case also ought to remind us of the dangers inherent in California's efforts to speed up the calendar for death penalty appeals under Proposition 66, which voters approved in 2016. Moving more quickly to execute convicted death row inmates increases the likelihood that due process will be given short shrift and the innocent will be put to death. Benavides — described in court filings as a seasonal worker with intellectual disabilities — was convicted in 1993. But the records that blew up the case against Benavides, but also raised doubt that Consuelo Verdugo had been murdered at all, were not uncovered until about 2000. Proposition 66 makes it less likely that such diligent research can be completed in the single year it gives appellate attorneys to file their cases (a process that currently consumes three years or more), and thus more likely that innocent people will be put to death