WHEN Q-WING WAS X-WING
Special Report by Margaret Laughlin for the Miami Herald May 30, 1999

Not all of the inmates on Q-WING (previously X-wing) are lifers or on Death Row. Most have a date. They went on strike February 1st to tell us that conditions are so bad that they can't endure it for the length of time they are made to stay there. They have quit eating to bring attention to the plight of people put there and forgotten. Knowing the punishment they will endure, I figure what they have to tell us is pretty important, despite DoC's usual claims to the contrary.

Q-Wing aka X-Wing's Maximum Management is for all practical purposes solitary confinement, isolation in the form of the brutal Super-Max prisons.  Some defenders of extreme punishment measures are fond of saying, "they deserve what they get," but if 'what they get' is illegal, destructive, un-rehabilitative, then we are the ones who suffer.

Isolation was originally designed and instilled in prisons to break a man down so he could be rebuilt.  The problem is, there is no rebuilding after the breakdown.  When those men, made sick by zealous keepers and bad methods, come out of prison, it could be us or someone we love who suffers the wrath of their mental state.

You may remember that Meg Laughlin wrote a long expose on X-wing in 98 and about the Valdes killing and other beatings there in 2000. She reminded me to clarify that X-Wing (Q) is not just for Death Row inmates, it's for people who get DRs that DOC guards think are serious enough to warrant putting them there.

Just as there are people now who are not on death row but live in Q-wing, there were people in 1999 who were not on Death Row but on X Wing.  Among them were the "Hamilton Five" who were transferred from Hamilton CI because they were charged with knocking a guard down. (Frank Valdes was complaining about their being beaten before he was beaten to death.) But none of the five were in prison for murder and none were on Death Row.

There are a few good officers. But there are a few that scare the hell out of a lot of people. I try to make a point to differentiate between officers and guards, just like police officers and cops:  There's good and bad in every arena.

As a side note, during the time after Frank Valdes' murder, the St. Pete Times once reported that 7 out of 10 men working in confinement areas had their own criminal histories.  It would be interesting to do that count again to see if there has been improvement.

A DoC nurse once told me, "If some of these 'officers' were not wearing the uniform, they'd be gangs on the street."  That's all I want to do, is help get rid of those bad apples.

Ms. Laughlin also had a piece in Harper's, as well as the Herald, that told what guys were on X-Wing for -- really petty stuff.

Kay Lee, Grandmother
kaylee1@charter.net
2863 Rock Cliff Road SE
Atlanta, GA  30316
404-212-0690

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Published: Sunday, May 30, 1999
Section: Special Report
Page: 1L

X WING PRISON OFFICIALS DEFEND SOLITARY CONFINEMENT; HUMAN-RIGHTS ADVOCATES CALL IT CRUEL PUNISHMENT

By MEG LAUGHLIN, Herald Staff Writer
Memo: INSIDE X WING

For convicted murderer Askari Muhammad, formerly Thomas Knight, one of the happiest moments of his life came when he was moved back onto Death Row.

Back into an 8 x 10 cell with a cot and a metal toilet. Back to cell bars he could see through into a narrow, dim hallway. Back to two visits in the yard a week. Back to a few books and a 13-inch black and white TV. And, most important, back to the sounds of life. After 12 years in solitary confinement - the record at Florida State Prison (FSP) in Starke - Muhammad moved to a small, bleak cell to await execution, a move that was a definite step up.

FSP is the end of the line for prisoners in Florida. It is the strictest, bleakest, most prison-like prison in the state - a treeless, wind-swept compound of metal, concrete and surgically sharp razor wire. It is home to Death Row and the electric chair.

And in the bowels of FSP is X Wing: a prison within a prison. Mini-storage containers off a narrow corridor where inmates cannot be seen or heard. Nor do they see or hear. Instead, they sit and stare at four closed walls. Sometimes for years. For Muhammad, it was 12 years - longer than anyone.

Correctional officers call X Wing ``the worst of the worst for the worst of the worst.'' Human-rights investigators call it ``cruel and unusual punishment.'' Psychiatrists study it and write about the irreversible mental damage to those held there for more than a few months.

Twenty-three inmates now are incarcerated on X. Some have been there for years, though none for as long as Muhammad. Like him, they are put there because of something they did in the prison: Maybe they killed someone, as he did. Maybe they hurt someone or threatened to do something that would disrupt the prison. Maybe they damaged property or tried to escape. Or got caught with contraband, more than once. But whatever they did, like Muhammad, it is usually something else that keeps them there: breaking prison rules while they are in solitary confinement.

``My former experience with the conditions in solitary at FSP and the arbitrary decisions that keep people there raised questions about how much power the Department of Corrections should have beyond the jurisdiction of the courts,'' says Randall Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice Institute, a public-interest organization.

In 1993, Berg represented X Wing inmate William Van Poyck, who sued the Department of Corrections for ``imposing unduly harsh conditions of confinement . . . in solitary confinement . . . that caused serious
psychological problems.'' The department settled and Van Poyck, got an undisclosed amount of money. But, still, X Wing continues - currently with Van Poyck back for 30 days.

Debbie Buchanan, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections: ``Inmates are kept on X Wing because they have become huge management problems. An inmate works his way onto X, and he can work his way out. X Wing is not to punish; it is to manage inmates who are dangerous or a security risk or a disciplinary problem. It is there because we have inmates we can't keep under control in any other way.''

`LIKE LIVING IN A COFFIN'
7 by 8 feet, a solitary cell is a windowless vault

X Wing consists of 24 seven-foot by eight-foot sealed vaults on the wing that ends with the electric chair. Each vault has two doors, one in front of the other. The inside door is barred and covered with steel mesh, the other solid steel. The windowless boxes have beige concrete floors and beige concrete walls. Instead of furniture, there is a concrete slab with a pad for a bed, a metal toilet, a metal sink and a metal box.

In his recent book, Black's Law, Miami attorney Roy Black, who represented Muhammad in the mid-'90s, described X-Wing: ``No window, no breeze, no air conditioning to get through the brutal Florida summers, no one to talk to and only that solid steel door to look at . . . like living in a coffin.''

According to prison rules, inmates on X for being disciplinary problems could possibly get off the wing in six months or less. But if they receive disciplinary infractions while there, which most do, they stay put, and their rights continue to be restricted: No reading materials other than their own legal documents. No visits. No exercise and no going outside. Sometimes, no open outer door or way to see out of the cell. Sometimes, three ``management meals'' a day - a loaf of bread with imitation cheese and grated carrots baked into it and a big glass of water. The only right that inmates on X are guaranteed is a five-minute shower three times a week.

``The extreme isolation causes substantial mental deterioration in a short amount of time, which makes inmates more impulsive and uncontrollable. This sends them further and further into the belly of the beast with no way out,'' says Harvard psychiatrist Stuart Grassian.

Human Rights Watch described X Wing in 1991 as ``a particularly glaring example of . . . a maxi-maxi [maximum security confinement cell] with conditions particularly difficult to bear.'' They concluded that incarceration there ``clearly amounts to corporal punishment explicitly prohibited under the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.''

BREAKING PRISON RULES
Response to infractions called `draconian'

Mark DeFriest, 39, is on X Wing right now. He has been in the vault for about eight years - except for less than a year off in 1996, when he got an amnesty. The original crime that put DeFriest in jail in 1978 was stealing a truck, for which he served a year. Then, while on probation, he was arrested for having a gun in his possession. For this, he got four more years. He then escaped from jail and stole another truck, robbed some stores and ran up a string of felonies including armed burglary, which got him a a 49-year sentence.

Back in the slammer, DeFriest became notorious for stashing contraband in his mouth and rectum: packets of cocaine and marijuana, cell keys, handcuff keys, hacksaws, knives, razor blades and cash. Even a Walkman with earphones. He also became notorious for finding creative ways to get out of his cell. Because of this, he was moved to X Wing from 1991 to 1996 and back again in 1997.

He is the only inmate to have escaped from X Wing, which he did by fashioning a fragment of aluminum into a master key. But he got caught before getting out of the prison. He is also the only inmate to have spent so much time at FSP and on X, without ever having physically harmed another person.

Now, both doors of DeFriest's cell are usually kept shut and he can't see out. Nor does he get any exercise or books. His most recent disciplinary infraction on Feb. 17 further extended his stay on X: A guard found a prison library book in his cell - Tom Clancy's Power Plays. To make matters worse, some pages were missing. Corrections officials won't say when DeFriest will get off X. He is scheduled to get out of prison when he is 75.

Lionel Lespinasse, 24, is also on X. He went there from Charlotte Correctional Institute after slamming his food tray into a guard. The guard noted in his report that he had not been injured, but LEspinasse still landed on X at FSP. After a few days in the vault, Lespinasse extended his stay by going bonkers behind the double doors and breaking the metal heater in his cell.

He is in prison because, at 18, he stole a car and got a year in jail. At 21, he was convicted in a robbery and a carjacking. He is scheduled to get out in 35 years.

Of the current group in X, James Agan, 73, is the oldest. Agan was put in FSP solitary because he stabbed another prisoner to death, after being convicted of an earlier murder. But it's not clear what has kept him there for almost five years. Recently, he said he didn't want to take a shower. He spit when a guard rolled him in his wheelchair to the shower and threw urine from the big yellow hose in his side. Mostly, though, he sits in his wheelchair with his head down, showing signs of the ``disassociating from reality'' that psychiatrist Grassian says X-Wing inmates inevitably display.

Buchanan says he is there because his wheelchair rolls in the shower easily, but corrections officers say it's because he wants to be there, away from other prisoners because he thinks it keeps him out of trouble. But Agan complains about X, saying that when he was on Death Row, before his death sentence was commuted to life, things were better. At least he had a small TV to help him pass the time.

But not all of the inmates on X are lifers or on Death Row. Most have a release date. One of these inmates is Sol Hoke, 21, who had been at Charlotte Correctional Institute for six years for robbery and burglary. Hoke was sent to X at FSP in April, after he threw his lunch at a guard and refused to be handcuffed. For a while, he was on bread and water management meals. Hoke's stay on X and his release in five years raises the question of what effect isolation on X has on an inmate's ability to reintegrate into society.

Jack Fevurly, a retired federal prison administrator for a ten-state area, studied X Wing in the early '90s and wrote a report that said it was not up to national correctional standards. He described it as ``draconian'' and ``cruel.''

Fevurly now says it is still not up to these standards: ``Inmates should have minimal things - like five hours of exercise a week, books, a place to write, a time to go outside. If you take too much away, they become so severely impaired they're a bigger problem when they get out than when they went in.''

DEATH ROW'S LAST STOP
After visit to solitary, inmates `go quietly'

With Askari Muhammad, who spent 12 years on X Wing, the effects that it will have on him when he gets out of prison are not an issue because he will never get out. He went from Death Row to X Wing in 1980 after he killed a guard in a fit of rage - this after murdering a prominent Miami couple six years before. But it was not murder that kept Muhammad on X for 12 years. It was disciplinary infractions while on X Wing. It was for acknowledging a court order that the prison refused to acknowledge.

From July 17, 1974, when he was arrested in a South Dade field after shooting Sydney and Lillian Gans in the back of their necks, Muhammad, then Thomas Knight, was nothing but trouble for the prison system. Less than a year later, he escaped from jail for 103 days. When he was finally recaptured and the first murder case went to trial, Muhammad was so disorderly and loud in court, he had to be removed. Once convicted and put on Death Row for the two murders, he kept growing a close-cropped beard when it wasn't allowed. He managed to get a medical pass to keep it. He also plaited his hair when it wasn't allowed. He got written up for that dozens of times.

Then, in October 1980, in a fit of rage over not being allowed to see his mother on visiting day because of his beard, he stabbed prison guard Richard Burke to death with the sharpened handle of a ladle, used for serving prison soup. It was this murder that got him moved to solitary confinement. He also got a third death sentence.

A year later, while still in solitary, he legally changed his name from Thomas Knight to Askari Muhammad. The court ordered the prison to recognize the name change. But the prison refused and insisted Muhammad call out his former name, Thomas Knight, to identify himself when his prison number was given every morning. When Muhammad held to the court order and called out his new legal name, guards wrote him up every day for disobeying a command. He got more than 500 disciplinary infractions, which extended his time on X Wing to 12 years.

``He was kept in solitary because the correctional officers wanted revenge after he killed their friend, Richard Burke,'' says Susan Carey, Muhammad's former attorney. ``It was the prison's own form of punishment and the disciplinary charges were simply a way to try to justify the punishment on paper.''

Corrections spokeswoman Buchanan: ``The name an inmate comes into the system with is the name that inmate keeps. We cannot acknowledge name changes, legal or otherwise, that take place after an inmate is already in the system. We did not insist that Thomas Knight be Thomas Knight to punish him in any way. We did it because that is how the system works.''

After 12 years, Muhammad got out of solitary because he started yelling out his former name. And, he did something else, says a former FSP correctional official, who asks not to be named: ``Thomas became subdued and quiet. He no longer had that enraged expression on his face. When his perceived demeanor changed, he got to go back on The Row.''

Carey remembers going to see Muhammad after he returned to Death Row. He was brought handcuffed and shackled to the visiting area, where Carey waited on the other side of a glass. She had picked yellow and purple wildflowers along the side of the road before entering the prison and held them up for Muhammad to see.

``They startled him,'' she says. ``It made me realize he had not seen anything bright for years.''

In mid April, Palm Beach Circuit Judge Marvin Mounts took a group of prosecutors, public defenders, police, judges, probation officers and one reporter on a tour of the state prison system.

As the tour group moved down the X-Wing corridor, a guard offered to open the outer metal door so everyone could see a solitary confinement prisoner. The prisoner happened to be Agan, who sat in his wheelchair with his head bowed over. A yellow tube funneled urine into a bag. When the guard called his name, he lifted his head and squinted in confusion. Someone asked him how he was. He responded that he was OK. He spoke slowly and methodically, as if pulling words out of early memory: ``You have a nice day, m'am,'' he told the group as it passed by, on its way to tour Death Row.

The Death Row wing that the group visited was the corridor where Muhammad - once called ``Death Row's meanest'' by The Herald - has lived since getting off X Wing in 1992. If all of his future appeals fail, he will probably remain there four or five more years. This means that after 30 years in prison, 12 spent in solitary in a windowless vault, Muhammad will be strapped in the electric chair and put to death around 2004.

The tour group filed down the dim corridor of Death Row cells until it got to cell 15, where Muhammad sat on the edge of his cot, writing in a legal pad. He is 48 now. Paunchy and calm. No beard. No enraged expression. He wore glasses and a knitted prayer cap. His handwashed underwear hung overhead, his chess set and prayer rug were on the floor beside his cot. The reporter in the group called out his name - the name that kept him in isolation for 12 years: ``Askari Muhammad.''

``What did you say?'' he called back, lifting his head, trying to see into the corridor.

Again the name: ``Askari Muhammad.''

``No one here calls me that,'' he said. Then two words and nothing more: ``Thank you.''

Before he is executed, Muhammad will be returned to a cell on X Wing. David Lehr, a former FSP assistant superintendendant who led the recent prison tour, explained that Death Row inmates are put on X Wing a month before their scheduled execution to complete the process of breaking them down before they are strapped into the electric chair.

``This way, they go quietly,'' he said.

Keywords: FLORIDA PRISON STARKE PRISONER LIST PROFILE SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
HUMAN RIGHTS

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