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Friday Criminal Justice Shorts


JERRY BROWN PLANS TO SAVE $500 MILLION BY SENDING MANY NON-VIOLENT, NON-SERIOUS OFFENDERS TO JAIL, NOT PRISON

The East Bay Express says this;

California Governor Jerry Brown outlined plans this week to save $500 million a year by keeping citizens with “non-violent, non-serious, non-sex offenses,” and no prior convictions out of state prison. Such felons would have to stay at county jail, Brown is proposing, and that’s a step in the right direction, drug law reformers say.

The Press-Enterprise points out fears of shifting the burden to the counties.

Inland jails are crowded and could become even more so with Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal Monday to shift responsibility for low-level offenders and parole violators to county government.

Local officials have expressed concern about housing state inmates, since their own jails are already consistently full.


THE STRANGE CASE OF TWO WOMEN, TWO LIFE SENTENCES, HALEY BARBOUR, AND A KIDNEY

Two sisters were given life sentences as kids for an armed robbery that netted them $11. Now one of the sisters needs a kidney to live. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has let both sisters out on the condition that one donates her kidney to the other (which the kidney-donating planned to do anyway).

AlterNet has the rest of the story. Here’s a clip:

On Friday, the State of Mississippi and Gov. Haley Barbour released two sisters from prison as part of an organ-donor deal done in callous disregard for organ transplant law and transplantation ethics. While no one with a modicum of compassion would object to the suspension of the sisters’ unduly harsh sentence, the suspension demands that one sister trade a bodily organ for her freedom.

But despite major protests by the transplant community, Barbour and the state refused to change the terms of the prisoners’ release. It now remains to be seen if the U.S. attorney general will enforce the law, and whether the United Network for Organ Sharing — the entity responsible for overseeing transplants — will ensure that no hospital violate the provisions of the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act by accepting one of the sisters as donor when there is suspicion that she has received what the law calls “valuable consideration in return for donating her kidney. Lack of compliance with the law could open the door to coercive practices in transplantation where prisoners are concerned….


A PANEL OF FEDERAL JUDGES SAY THAT RUMSFIELD, ET AL CAN’T BE HELD LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR TORTURE

The AP has the story:

A panel of federal appeals court judges expressed doubts Thursday that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and three former military officers can be sued for allegedly allowing torture in U.S. military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In courtroom arguments, two of the three judges were skeptical that Rumsfeld and three U.S. military officials could face damage claims for exercising command responsibility over subordinates accused of torturing prisoners. Nine prisoners have filed suit.


FILE THIS UNDER: WOULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN EASIER TO JUST SERVE THE TIME?

Nearly 32 years ago, in May of 1979, 24-year-old Nancy Garces was serving a 2-year prison sentence for forging a credit card when she escaped from the California Institution for Women (CIW) .

According to a release from the CDCR late Thursday, Garces, now 56, was finally apprehended in Santa Barbara on Tuesday.

CDCR officials will escort the 56-year-old Garces back to CIW this week. She may face additional charges, including escape.

Since 1977, more than 99 percent of escapees from California state prisons have been apprehended.

2 Comments

  • WTF!!!! They were 19 and 22 at the time they did the crime!!!! They used teenage accomplices!!!!Those accomplices were the ages of kids but not the sisters!!!! Did you misread something Celeste?

    I have a family member who has worked for years in the organ transplant field and they told me this was highly unethical and had no doubt their center would refuse to transplant the donated organ from one sister to the other as it would obviously violate federal law.

    THE STRANGE CASE OF TWO WOMEN, TWO LIFE SENTENCES, HALEY BARBOUR, AND A KIDNEY

    Two sisters were given life sentences as kids for an armed robbery that netted them $11. Now one of the sisters needs a kidney to live. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has let both sisters out on the condition that one donates her kidney to the other (which the kidney-donating planned to do anyway).

    More of Barbour’s handiwork…

    Barbour has used his executive authority to free prisoners sparingly over the years, but some of his decisions have created a backlash.

    In 2008, Barbour used his power to release from prison Michael David Graham, who had shot and killed his ex-wife in 1989 on a street in Pascagoula. The action drew outrage from Coast officials and residents, partly because it came as a surprise with little notification to those involved in the case and no courtesy call to law enforcement in the area.

    Graham had served 19 years for the murder, but was unable to get parole. Barbour suspended his sentence, a reprieve less sweeping than a pardon, which requires Graham to report monthly to a case worker.

    In 2009, the parole board infuriated the family and friends of Jean Elizabeth Gillies, a University of Mississippi student who in 1986 was raped, sodomized and strangled, when it paroled her killer, Douglas Hodgkin. Graham and Hodgkin had both worked as prison trusties — prisoners who earn privileges through good behavior — at the governor’s mansion, a tradition in Mississippi that dates back generations.

  • SF, Actually I didn’t misread the Alternet article, which says the sisters were teenagers when they committed the robbery. but now that I’ve checked around in other reports, it turns out that the Alternet reporter has the facts wrong and you’re quite right, the sisters were 19 and 20-something and the actual robbers were teenage boys.

    However in more reading around it looks like the sisters’ attorney is going to challenge the underlying conviction. The sisters have always contended that they were innocent. I have no idea how likely this is or isn’t.

    I posted this story because of the organ transplant angle, which is dicey as it sets a possibly problematic precedent, as pointed about by the UNOS people. In any case, I thought it was an odd an interesting tale that would interest y’all. I don’t know enough to have a strong stand on the elements within it. I suspect you don’t either.

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