Did Guards kill Maine inmate? Corrections chief sez there will be no investigation, so who knows?

The no-comment arrogance of Maine Corrections Asst Commissioner for Public Relations Denise Lord , who also said her masters also forbade any inmate from speaking to the press about the death of Victor Valdez!  Lord needs to be reassigned. She is a creature of the old guard , the corrupt system that the new MSP warden Patricia Barnhart is here to root out.  Let her promote corrections energy conservation with her old crony: disgraced ex-warden Jeff Merrill!


A mysterious new inmate death
Prison Scandal Watch
By LANCE TAPLEY , Portland Phoenix |  December 10, 2009

Despite a scandal earlier this year over a prisoner death, state corrections officials won’t allow the Phoenix to interview a Maine State Prison inmate who has claimed in letters that prison staff abused an ailing prisoner, Victor Valdez, before Valdez died in late November.

Jeff Cookson had sent a letter a week before Valdez’s death to prison-issues activist Judy Garvey of Blue Hill expressing fears for Valdez’s life. He alleged that staff “ripped out” his kidney-dialysis tubes — “and he bled all over the place” — to take him to solitary confinement in the Supermax unit because he had supposedly broken a prison rule.

Deputy Corrections Commissioner Denise Lord said Valdez, 52, died of “medical causes in the hospital,” according to the Bangor Daily News’s paraphrase of her remarks. Lord refused to give more information, citing medical confidentiality restrictions, and said no investigation of the death would take place. She said her department “took the appropriate level of action” concerning the death, as the News described her comments.

Lord wouldn’t tell the Phoenix why the department forbade Cookson, a convicted murderer, to be interviewed except to suggest in an e-mail that prisoners weren’t allowed to comment on the treatment of other prisoners. In the past the department has intermittently claimed confidentiality rules give state officials the power to prevent inmates from discussing other inmates, despite a longstanding federal-court consent decree in which Corrections agreed to allow inmates free access to the news media.

When Cookson sent Garvey a second letter, this one reporting Valdez’s death, he said there were “15-20 inmates who would like to be Victor’s voice and tell about the abuse we witnessed.” He added that if a medical examiner looked at the body, “I believe that it will show physical abuse that contributed to his death.”

As soon as Garvey, a member of the Maine Coalition Against the Abuse of Solitary Confinement, received Cookson’s first letter she e-mailed various officials with his information. After she learned that Valdez was dead, she e-mailed her concerns to Attorney General Janet Mills — who oversees the state medical examiner’s office — and Governor John Baldacci, but received no reply from either. Lord told her that the concerns about Valdez were unfounded.

Valdez, a native of the Dominican Republic who was also known as Valdez-Ramos, was serving a four-year sentence for assaulting a man in Portland with a machete. It’s possible Valdez died solely from natural causes. Court sentencing records filed early this year state that, besides kidney failure, he suffered from congestive heart failure, cirrhosis of the liver, and had lung problems. His attorney, Randall Bates, wrote that his medical care had “already strained jail resources to the maximum.”

Paul Wright, editor of the national monthly Prison Legal News, commented in an e-mail that it’s “quite common for prisons to cover up and restrict the info on prisoner beatings, deaths, etc., and it generally works quite well. . . . The use of laws on medical privacy to cover up wrongdoing is also fairly widespread.”

The prison’s many recent instances of turmoil include an April murder, apparently by inmates, of sex-offender prisoner Sheldon Weinstein. The fallout so far includes the firing of a guard and a $1-million federal wrongful-death lawsuit by Weinstein’s widow. This summer Warden Jeffrey Merrill was demoted. A new warden, Patricia Barnhart, from Michigan, began work December 1.

Exiled Mainers' names read out in Statehouse

The names of twenty exiled Mainers resounded through the echoing dome of the Maine statehouse, as WRFR Community Radio producer Ron Huber read them out beneath a banner reading End Exile.

Did Governor Baldacci hear? He might've; his office was but a dozen yards away. You can listen to the reading of the names of the Exiles in the Maine Statehouse's Hall of Flags to the accompaniment of a small drum. (short mp3).

How can we as a state countenance using punitive exile as a tool of "corrections"? Bring 'em home, Governor.

Maine legislators continue probe into prison mismgmt; state's exile policy assailed.

Maine's prison system mismanagement is under a refreshingly detailed probe by the state legislature's investigative unit OPEGA, which Tuesday aired its interim report to the legislature

Listen to coverage by Maine Public Radio News of two state prison-related stories that unfolded at the state capital June 6th (5 minute mp3) Read the text of their coverage

At the same time, an arrogant response by the Department of Corrections that the state's exiling policy and history is "confidential" sparked a press conference in the Hall of Flags by Ron Huber, community radio news producer for now-exiled Maine inmate Deane Brown, a convicted burglar-turned gadfly inmate news correspondent, who was sent from Maine State Prison south at the beginning of Governor Baldacci's second term to a series of prisons in Maryland. The link above also includes coverage of Huber's press conference.

(1) Legislature today discussed and heard testimony on the interim report on management of Maine state prisons by OPEGA the legislature's office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability.

The report is called Maine State Prison Management issues- Organizational Culture and Weaknesses in Reporting Avenues Are Likely Inhibiting Reporting and Action on Employee Concerns. (Link to report at opega website doesn't work Will scan a paper copy. Stay tuned.)

(2) In his press conference, Huber called on Governor Baldacci to open up the state's inmate exile program to public scrutiny, and review all the cases. The agency insists that its exile policy and decisions are confidential.

However, exile is a severe punishment to both the incarcerated and to his or her family and community. Maine Department of Corrections must lose its power to permanently strip Native Mainers of their citizenship. Such a drastic decision must not take place behind a smokescreen of bogus "confidentiality".

PodCast: Maine Corrections Watch radio 6/27/09

Weekend Roundtable July 27, 2009 Listen to this week's podcast
Topics: Maine's ghost inmates....ending punitive inmate exile...Russians tour Maine prison.
On this fifty minute show we discuss the push to end Maine Department of Corrections' practice of exiling "troublemaker" inmates to prisons in distant states. We also look at the ghost gerrymandering of non existent inmates in the federal census and what it means for School administration Districts. Then a report on a tour of Maines juvenile incarceration facilities by a group of Russian judicial court officials. All interspersed with Jimi Hendrix's music, including Up from the Skies, Bellybutton Window, Third Stone from the Sun, and Night Bird Flying (Jimi's country song).

Maine Prison head defies Legislature over exile policy

Maine Speaker of the House Snubbed By Corrections Boss

Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson has rejected requests by a Maine legislative leader and other legislators for information about the state's punitive exile policy.

Speaker of House Hannah Pingree, Senator Chris Rector and others have been refused by Commissioner Magnusson, when they requested an explanation of his punitive exile policy.

Commissioner Magnusson says his department's exile policies and the identities of exiled Maine prisoners are "confidential"; he will not explain them.

This is a slap in the face to the Maine Legislature," said Ron Huber, radio producer for an exiled inmate Deane Brown of Rockland. "The Department of Corrections is grown arrogant in its power and secrecy. Its time for the Commissioner and this deputies to be brought down a peg or two."

Under the Baldacci Administration, the state has adopted forced relocation as a solution for "troublemaker" inmates. 10s of cases may exist of Mainers spirited off to distant states' prisons, for rocking the boat on poor prison conditions or institutional corruption.