Prison
Walls begin To Talk
Despite threats and
possible reprisals,
affidavits from 10
prisoners tell of systematic beatings, harassment, and torture by guards.
In the wake of the furor surrounding the beating death of Florida State Prison inmate Frank Valdes, untold numbers of other prisoners are seeking legal help to tell their stories of brutal treatment by prison guards.
One of them is Gary Waid, sentenced to nine years in a federal prison last October on a charge of conspiracy to import 1,000 pounds of marijuana. Later the feds traded him with state officials for custody of 10 life-term inmates.
Waid neither went quietly to FSP nor has remained quiet about conditions at the maximum security prison. He wrote a letter to The Miami Herald about the vicious treatment of his fellow inmates: "If something is not done, someone is going to kill someone," he warned just days before Valdes' death.
Angered prison officials issued a disciplinary report and moved Waid from FSP to New River work camp, which is also in the Raiford prison complex. The report says he wrongly used a computer to write the letter.
That still did not quiet him, and e-mail list-serves have broadcast his reports. He says he has gained a celebrity status and is being treated well. His comments on the Valdes case: "The man they killed was, according to the reports, a really rotten human being. But did they have to blow the guy up?"
Waid's family has succeeded in finding a Miami attorney, Don Cohn, who has taken the case. Cohn told MOON he hopes to get Waid back to federal custody. "In the transfer, Waid lost gain time and a chance to get to a federal halfway house. There was no good reason for sending him to FSP."
Waid has also gained the support of Kay Lee, a Key West woman who has become an advocate for non-violent prisoners convicted on marijuana charges. Lee said her daughter was damaged in surgery and scar tissue has wrapped itself around her internal organs. No health insurance will pay for corrective surgery of the very painful condition or for pain medication.
Searching for help for her daughter, Lee found marijuana was effective. Living in Kentucky at that time, Lee set up a table of information in front of the Kenton County Courthouse and urged people to lobby their legislators to approve the medical use of marijuana - to no avail.
"While doing this, I met prisoners charged with pot use, and eventually it turned into a ministry. I've been doing it for 20 years," she explained. Statewide she is known as Grandma Kay.
"I learned about the bad conditions in prisons across the country and I got on the road to lobby for changes. She fields her questions about the American prison system to local authorities, to state legislators, to Congress members, first from Kentucky and then from Florida.
"Does the system hire people for their brutality or does it train them for it? Most guards are probably all right, but there is a core group that operates without any oversight to damage peaceful, non-violent inmates," she said.
"We are locking up sick people for using pot, although the Florida Supreme Court last spring agreed that marijuana has a legitimate medical use. One prison guard told me, 'Lady, you can call the President of the United States and it won't do any good. The warden has full authority."
This week she e-mailed Gov. Jeb Bush with an appeal for him to stop prison brutality. As of MOON's press time, she had received no answer.
In August, Lee and other prisoner advocates picketed the prisons at Raiford after first being told they had no right to be there. FSP assistant warden W.C. Whitehurst and New RIver warden Mike Rathman tried to persuade them to use the relatively hidden area used by death penalty protesters at execution times, but they insisted on their right to stand on State Road 16.
A Bradford County sheriff was summoned, but he supported that right. The protesters were then told to contact the DOC office in Tallahassee for the official policy on demonstrations. Kevin Aplin, of the Florida Cannabis Action Network, one of the demonstrators, said some guards were hostile to them, but others were supportive.
Aplin also said he has been in touch with state DOC. Kay Kapnek of the correction department's Policy Development Section told him the state had no official policy on the matter. She referred him to C.J. Drake, who works for the DOC Office of Public Affairs.
Aplin has not heard from Drake but planned to visit the prisons to talk again with the wardens on free speech rights.
"If the prison has no policy on the civil rights of the public, how can we trust them to observe the free speech rights of inmates?"
"We have a list of demands of the prison system," he said. "We think DOC Director Michael Moore should have a review panel made up to include citizens, inmates, and their families. We also think (Eighth Circuit State Attorney) Rod Smith should include these people in his investigation of the Valdes death."
Monday, the demonstrators appeared at Smith's Gainesville office to protest his lack of action. Smith told MOON, however, that when the investigation is concluded, he plans to prosecute for homicide.
Lee has been told by prison authorities that fewer than four percent of the inmates have done bodily harm to anyone, "but the whole intent of the system seems intended to destroy the spirit of non-violent people. The national war on drugs has overloaded prisons with such people. How does society benefit from that?"
Cohn has given MOON affidavits from 10 inmates referred by Waid. All claim brutal treatment by guards. All say they live in fear every day, can't sleep at night and have suffered severe physical injuries. All signed statements that they had not been disrespectful to guards or provoked the attack and had not fought back when beaten.
Cohn is considering a civil action against the Department of Corrections on their behalf. The attorney released the inmates' statements on the condition that names or identifying information on prisoners or guards be withheld.
From the affidavits, in the words of the prisoners:
Affidavit 1: "Then the beatings began. I was naked and facing the wall and they kicked me. Then they ordered me to pick up my pants and I bent over an they beat me on the head with their fists. I went down. Then two of them, one on either side, began beating me on the ribs. The pain was bad. 'Why?' I said.
'Don't ask me any questions, you nigger. You niggers are always stealing on the streets.' He kicked me three more times in the ribs...The next day I told the physician's assistant about my ribs. Nothing was done."
Affidavit 2: "They walked out of my cell and locked it. Then one of them pulled out a can of Mace and shot me with it. I spit up blood for four days...I haven't been the same since then. I'm nervous all the time. I have nightmares. My thoughts are confused. My fingers and wrists hurt. Sometimes I have gaps in my thinking. I have trouble with simple words. I am still in fear for my life and I feel there is no one to turn to help me cope with what has happened."
Affidavit 4: "On that day the cowardly guard kneed me in the groin, a technique that is SOP at FSP. As I bent over, my eye was split open by the other officer. As I fell, they both began to kick and kick, yelling at me and asking if it felt good. At one point I was told, 'You get blood on the floor, boy, you're gonna lick it up.' So I had to hold my eye with one hand while I was trying to protect my body with the other...During the next few nights officers repeatedly maced me in my cell. They kept spilling my food tray and laughing. At one point I did not eat for four days. I lost 11 pounds."
Affidavit 5: "An officer banged on my bunk while I was asleep, and I sat up and yelled. I thought it was my cell mate. I was given a DR for disrespecting an officer. As one officer struck me from the side and behind, the other turned me against the wall and slammed my face into the concrete, over and over again, opening a big gash. The blood began to run into my eyes. In the end I asked for a doctor. But I was not allowed medical help (The cut was open; the scar is still there today).
"I cannot go to Tallahassee. I cannot complain to the warden. I will be beaten again. These DOC employees should face assault and battery charges and lose their jobs."
Affidavit 6: "There's a game that's sometimes run in discipline procedures that consists of a thousand questions that have no answer. 'You a slick boy, ain't you? What do you think about me? Like to beat my ass? I seen you smirking. Got that convict attitude. Why you wanna get so smart?'
"The answers are all approximately 'Yes sir, no sir, not me sir, I'm a piece a shit, sir.' Then everyone left but one officer. He began shouting. He slapped me across the face. He shouted at me to hit him back. I did not.
"In the end he said, 'If you tell any inspector what's happened in here I will send your ass over there, and I will have you beaten every day, every shift.' These officers should not get away with this. The beating is bad enough, but the terror is worse."
The other affidavits tell similar stories of brutality, physical injuries and threats of worse beatings if the inmate reports the action.
Lee said she believes that if enough people are informed of prison conditions, pressure will build for changing the laws that incarcerate people of victimless crimes.
"It seems like so many don't care, but I still believe that most people are basically good. If they knew the facts, if they understood the demographic changes in today's society, they would lose their stereotypes of prison inmates. If they realized that the great majority of prisoners are non-violent, they would demand changes in laws and in the prison system," she said.
The Valdes story has taken the lid off a prison system that has been well-documented by Amnesty International's book "United States of America: Rights for All." MOON reported on the book's chapter on prison abuse in last month's issue.