A
group of lawyers, prisoner advocates, family members and supporters will be
presenting a weekend conference re-examining the history of Ohio's
most notorious prison uprising, the eleven day occupation of L-Block in the
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville in 1993.
The conference will present a comprehensive examination
of the facts, stories and legal proceedings from the uprising. We are also
interested in exploring the context in which the uprising occurred and the
consequences for the people of Ohio. To this end, we are seeking workshops,
presentations, participation from the broader community. We'd like you to help
us explore relevant issues such as the prison industrial complex, mass
incarceration, prison conditions, death penalty, solitary confinement, and
super-max prisons. Each of these topics is intimately present in the story of
Lucasville, and we hope you or your organization can help us provide conference
attendees with a broader understanding of how Lucasville relates to so many
issues that impact all of our lives.
The conference will be held from Friday
evening, April 19, through midday Sunday, April 21, 2013 at Columbus
State Community College in downtown Columbus. If you are interested in
participating, please submit a proposal describing your idea, workshop or
presentation to Re-ExaminingLucasville@gmail.com by Jan 18th. If you
have any questions, please contact me at
Re-ExaminingLucasville@gmail.com.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
RE-EXAMINING LUCASVILLE: ESSAY 7
By Staughton Lynd
Note: This is Essay 7 in the series I have been
writing on “Re-Examining Lucasville.”
Two persons, one an experienced journalist and the other a prisoner at
Lucasville in April 1993, have said the same thing. They believe the main idea that should tie
our thoughts together is: THEY DON’T
KNOW WHO DID IT!
That is,
five men have been sentenced to death for murdering ten victims during the
occupation of L-block, but the authorities (the State of Ohio, the Lucasville
Special Prosecutor, the several Assistant Prosecutors, and the Ohio State
Highway Patrol) do not know who actually committed the homicides.
Instead,
the authorities have gone after the men who they believe were “leaders” of the
eleven-day occupation of L-block. They
have been able to get away with their claims because of the Ohio doctrine of
“complicity,” which allows courts to sentence people to death if they were
present at the scene of criminal conduct or were otherwise involved.
It was the prosecution’s burden to
convince juries, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Five should be found
guilty of the murders that took place during the rebellion. Much has been said about the homicides in
previous essays. Essays still to come
will examine in very great detail how I believe the State constructed a false
explanation of the murder that most concerned the public: the murder of hostage officer Robert
Vallandingham. For now, I shall gather
scattered references to the several homicides from the different essays, and
show that the State either did not know who did the killings, or knew, but
needed the actual killer as a witness and so blamed someone else.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Ojore Lutalo
Bonnie Kerness
Settlement House as a volunteer on issues of housing, and gangs. In 1961, at the age of 19, she
moved to Tennessee to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. In Memphis she was trained
as a community organizer by the NAACP. She continued her work and training at Highlander
Training School in Knoxville, where organizers from throughout the Civil Rights movement met
for training and brainstorming. Bonnie moved back North in 1970 and became active with welfare
rights, tenants rights and anti-war issues.
Bonnie gained her Masters in Social Work and has served as a human rights advocate on behalf
of prisoners since 1975. Bonnie supervised the Family Stabilization Project, a re-entry services
project for the AFSC for over 15 years. She is currently Coordinator of AFSC’s Prison Watch
Project , which has isolation, other forms of no-touch torture and use of devices of torture in US
prisons as a primary focus. She has served as Associate Director and Acting Director of the
AFSC Criminal Justice Program in Newark and the National Coordinator of the Campaign to Stop
Control Unit Prisons. She serves on the Advisory Committee of California Prison Focus, Women
Who Never Give Up, and Solitarywatch.
She has helped publish, “Our Children’s House – testimonies of Youth in Juvenile Detention”;
a play also called “Our Children’s House”; “Torture in US Prisons – Evidence of US Human
Rights Violations; “The Prison Inside the Prison: Control Units, Supermax Prisons and Devices
of Torture”, the Survivor’s Manual (written by and for people living in isolation) and “”Inalienable
Rights – Applying International human rights standards to the US criminal justice system”.”
Bonnie speaks widely on behalf of men, women and children in prison about US human rights
violations of the UN Convention Against Torture. She has been quoted in articles, books and
other publications on prison related subjects.
Ben Turk
Ben Turk
Ben volunteers with RedBird Prison Abolition and occasionally tours the DIY theatre circuit with Insurgent Theatre.
He administers LucasvilleAmnesty.org and has been involved in
organizing with the survivors of the Lucasville Uprising since January
2011.
Staughton and Alice Lynd
Staughton and
Alice Lynd
The Lynds
have been supporters of the Lucasville uprising prisoners since 1996. They have
a long history of support for civil rights and for nonviolent alternatives to
war.
Staughton
was a history professor but no university would hire him after his activism
during the Vietnam War. First he,
and then Alice, went to law school and became labor lawyers. Staughton sued U.S. Steel in an
unsuccessful effort to keep steel mills from shutting down and to permit worker
community ownership. Alice worked
on employment discrimination cases, health and safety violations, and
represented retirees who lost pension and medical benefits as a result of plant
closings.
As volunteer
attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the Lynds were two
members of the team that brought a class action concerning the conditions of
confinement and due process rights of prisoners at the Ohio State Penitentiary.
That case went to the Supreme Court of the United States and established certain
procedural rights for supermaximum security prisoners nationwide. Staughton and Alice also wrote friend of
the court briefs on behalf of several of the men sentenced to death for their
alleged conduct during the Lucasville uprising.
Staughton
Lynd’s book, Lucasville: The
Untold Story of a Prison Uprising, first published by Temple University
Press in 2004, is now available in a second edition published by PM Press, P. O.
Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94523.
Staughton
and Alice have been exceedingly generous and helpful to those who built this
site. They can be contacted via email at salynd@aol.com. More
from Staughton Lynd, here.
Bob and Suzanne
Bob Fitrakis and Suzanne Patzer
Bob Fitrakis is a Political Science Professor in the Social and
Behavioral Sciences department at Columbus State Community College,
where he won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991. He was a Ford
Foundation Fellow to the Michigan State legislature in 1975 and studied
at the University of Sarejevo on scholarship in 1978. Fitrakis earned a
J.D. from the Ohio State Univeristy Mortitz College of Law in 2002. His
Ph.D is in Political Science from Wayne State University in Detroit,
Michigan. He has also taught political theory at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn and political science at Wayne State University and
Oakland Community College.
He is the author of five Fitrakis Files books: Spooks, Nukes & Nazis, Free Byrd & Other Cries for Justice, A Schoolhouse Divided, The Brothers Voinovich and the Ohiogate Scandal and Star Wars, Weather Mods and Full Spectrum Dominance. compilations of his writings at the Free Press and Columbus Alive. Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman co-wrote Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? Essential Documentsand What Happened in Ohio? A documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election (New Press 2006) (with Steve Rosenfeld) and How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, George W. Bush vs. The SuperPower of Peace in 2003 and Imprison Bush in 2004-2005. Fitrakis also wrote The Idea of Democratic Socialism in America and the Decline of the Socialist Party (Garland
Publishers 1993). Dr. Fitrakis is a frequent speaker on political,
labor and social policy issues at national academic and political
conferences.
Kunta Kenyatta
Monday, October 29, 2012
RE-EXAMINING LUCASVILLE: ESSAY 6
RE-EXAMINING LUCASVILLE: ESSAY 6
By Staughton Lynd
Let’s try to visualize
the most unfair criminal trial we can imagine.
Let’s make a
list of elements that might be part of such an unjust proceeding.
The list might include the following elements.
1. The judge excuses one potential jury member
after another who states that he
or she could not in good conscience recommend the death penalty.
2. The evidence in support of convicting the defendant
consists entirely of
testimony by other prisoners.
Each of these elements was present in the trial of
George Skatzes, who was found
guilty and sentenced to death for the aggravated murder of prisoners
Earl Elder and
David Sommers. In addition, in
the portion of the trial concerning Mr. Elder’s death:
3. Skatzes was sentenced to death for allegedly
ordering prisoner Rodger
Snodgrass
to murder Earl Elder. But Snodgrass, a
prosecution witness, testified that
Elder
was still alive when he left Elder’s cell.
4. The medical examiner testified that Elder’s fatal
wounds were caused by a
broad blade. However, Snodgrass
himself as well as another prosecution witness, Tim
Williams, testified that the weapon supposedly carried by Snodgrass was
a thin, icepick-
like shank that made small, round holes.
5. Tim Williams was himself named by two other
prisoners as one of the three men who actually killed Elder. Williams is now on the street.
6. Another
prisoner, Eric Girdy, has confessed to being one of those three men.
Girdy has repeatedly stated under oath that Skatzes was
nowhere around at the time and
had nothing to do with what happened.
7.
Girdy testified that the weapon he used was a piece of broken glass from
an
officers’ restroom.
The medical examiner testified that he found a shard of glass in one
of the potentially lethal wounds made by a broad blade.
8.
Girdy’s belated confession was accepted as true by the special
prosecutor
and Girdy was duly sentenced in the Scioto County Court of
Common Pleas.
In the portion of the trial concerning the murder of
David Sommers:
9. Several
weeks after Skatzes was convicted and sentenced to death for
Sommers’ homicide, prisoner Aaron Jefferson, in a separate trial, was
found guilty of
allegedly committing the same murder.
10. As in the trial of Skatzes, when Jefferson
was tried for killing Sommers the medical examiner testified once again that
Sommers had died as the result of a single, fatal blow by an instrument like a
baseball bat. Thus two men were found
guilty of striking the same lethal blow.
11. An Ohio Court of Appeals determined that
there was no way to prove which man had struck the fatal blow, but Skatzes was
guilty anyway because of his “complicity” in the murder and his sentence of
death should be affirmed.
Nothing has been done to vacate George
Skatzes’ death sentence for the
aggravated murders of Elder and Sommers.
What Skatzes Says
George
Skatzes has written a statement from which the following are excerpts:
Twenty eight years and
counting! I am totally at my wits’
end! Please let me explain! Please hear me out!
The
testimony by the inmates in the Earl Elder murder was contradicted and
undermined by the testimony of the forensic pathologist. Yet all this means nothing to the
courts! George Skatzes was found guilty
and that is that! Justice?
Ohio
Jury Instructions 409.56, Other Causes, Intervening Causes, states: “If the defendant inflicted an injury not
likely to produce death, and if the sole and only cause of death was a fatal
injury inflicted by another person, the defendant who inflicted the original
injury is not responsible for the death.”
[George adds: There is nothing
true about Snodgrass’ testimony. But if,
for the sake of argument, we assumed that Snodgrass was telling the truth,
since Snodgrass said Elder was alive when Snodgrass left his cell, under Jury
Instruction 409.56 Skatzes could only have been guilty of attempted murder.]
In
the case of David Sommers, there is no physical evidence to link George Skatzes
to the crime. The inmates who testified
against George Skatzes are self-admitted participants in the murder!
We
have two people convicted for causing the death of David Sommers by dealing a
single massive blow to the head. Two
people convicted for the very same act?
The object is, of course, to convict at any cost!
Summing up his trial and convictions, Skatzes declares:
We have a man convicted and sentenced to death only
on the word of jailhouse snitches. It
was their word alone without any independent objective and corroborating
evidence.
Law Versus
Justice
In three
aspects of the courts’ proceedings concerning Mr. Skatzes and others of
the Lucasville Five, prosecutors have been able to cite and
rely on the law as pronounced
by state and federal courts.
But that doesn’t mean that these convictions and sentencse
are just! It only
means that Skatzes, like other Lucasville defendants, is a victim of what
he calls “the criminal injustice system.”
Let’s
consider three of the judicial doctrines that stand between Lucasville
defendants and light at the end of the tunnel.
The Death Qualified Jury
A jury’s recommendation of the death
penalty must be unanimous. It takes only
one juror in
twelve to prevent a recommendation for death.
But under current law in state and
federal courts, any potential juror who states
that he or she
opposes the death penalty under all circumstances will almost surely be
“excused,” that
is, excluded, from jury service in a capital case.
In contrast, a juror who indicates
support for the death penalty is asked another
question, namely,
Would you follow the instructions of the judge about the law? If the
juror answers,
Yes, then that juror may be seated even though he or she favors the
death
penalty just as
strongly as opponents of the death penalty oppose it.
The following extracts show the
doctrine of the “death qualified jury” at
work during the “voir dire” (jury selection
process) in the case of George Skatzes.
Juror
#1
THE
COURT: . . . I have a question I want to ask you. . . . [I]n a proper case
where the facts warrant it and the law permits it, could you join in with
others in signing a verdict form which might recommend to the Court the
imposition of the death penalty?
A: No, sir.
THE
COURT: You don’t believe you could do
so?
A: I don’t believe so.
THE
COURT: Under any circumstances?
A: No.
THE
COURT: Could you tell me why?
A: I had a brother who was murdered and I found
it in my heart to forgive that man. I
would not have found him guilty to the extent that his life would be taken.
THE
COURT: In other words, you feel that if
you didn’t do it in your brother’s case, you wouldn’t do it in any other case,
right?
A:
Right. . . .
[DEFENSE
ATTORNEY]: . . . Do you feel that this is a teaching of your church?
A: Not so much a teaching of my church as it is
an understanding of mine that I do not create life. I am not giver of life, so I feel that it’s
not my responsibility or within reason to expect me to take a life. . . .
THE COURT: You may step down.
Juror
#8
THE
COURT: . . . In a proper case, where the
facts warrant it and the law permits it, could you join in with the other
jurors in signing a verdict form which would recommend to the Court the death
penalty?
A:
Yes, your Honor.
[PROSECUTING
ATTORNEY]: . . . We brought you here
because we want to discuss with you your views on capital punishment. Can you share them with us, please?
A: I strongly believe in them. I wish they were enforced more often.
[PROSECUTING
ATTORNEY]: . . . Do you believe the
death penalty is the only appropriate penalty in all cases of an intentional
killing?
A: Pretty much.
[PROSECUTING
ATTORNEY]: Does that mean?
A: Yes.
[PROSECUTING
ATTORNEY]: . . . You can think of the
wors[t] crime that comes to your mind and if you find that person guilty at the
first phase, we don’t go straight to death.
We have the second hearing at which point you would get additional
evidence to consider in making your decision as to what punishment is
appropriate. . . .
What
we need to know is whether you could set aside your thoughts as to what you
think the law should be and follow the law that the Judge gives you?
A: Yes.
[PROSECUTING
ATTORNEY]: If you found someone guilty
of a horrible, horrible crime, as bad as you can think of, would you be willing
to keep an open mind and listen to the evidence at the second phase before
making a decision as to which penalty is appropriate?
A: Yes.
[PROSECUTING
ATTORNEY]: No matter how bad the crime?
A: Yes.
. .
.
THE
COURT: . . . We want you back [to serve
as a juror in the case].
With the doctrine of the
death-qualified jury before us, there should be no
difficulty in understanding why, in such a high percentage
of cases, Lucasville
prosecutors either won a favorable jury decision or entered
into a favorable plea
agreement. At one
public forum concerning George Skatzes, known to fellow prisoners
as “Big George,” an attender who had read the dialogue
between the judge and potential
jurors
commented: “Big George is in Big
Trouble.”
Studies cited by the American Bar
Association and the American Law Institute
indicate that the process of selecting a
death-qualified jury produces juries that are more
likely to convict the defendant during the guilt
phase of the trial, and more likely to
impose the death penalty during the sentencing
phase. John Paul Stevens, retired
Justice
of the United States Supreme Court, stated when he
was on the bench that this rule
“deprive[s] the defendant of a trial by jurors
representing a fair cross-section of the
community.” He
is convinced that “the process of obtaining a ‘death qualified jury’ is
really a procedure that has the purpose and effect of
obtaining a jury that is biased in
favor of conviction.”
The Doctrine of Complicity
A familiar
hypothetical presents the problem of a group of bank robbers.
Robber A is
the driver of the getaway car. While his
companions enter the bank,
he stays at the wheel of their vehicle, perhaps listening to
the car radio or reading the
newspaper. Meantime,
the men actually in the bank encounter difficulties, there is a
scuffle, robber B
uses his gun, and a bank teller falls to the floor, dead.
What should
be the punishment of robber A? Under
Ohio law he can be found to
be “complicit” in the entire criminal course of conduct, and
presumed to be just as guilty
as the man who pulled the trigger. Moreover, whereas under Ohio law someone
guilty of
“conspiracy” to rob the bank would not be eligible for the
death penalty, under the Ohio
law of “complicity” every one in the group would be exposed
to the possibility of
execution.
After Aaron Jefferson was convicted
of striking the same fatal blow for which
George Skatzes had been convicted, an Ohio Court of Appeals
considered the case.
The court began its explanation by stating: “Skatzes contends that his due process rights
were violated because the state charged and convicted two
inmates—Skatzes and Aaron
Jefferson—with the murder of David Sommers, when the
evidence suggested only one
fatal blow. He argues
that these [were] ‘inherently factually contradictory theories’.”
Not so, the
court continued. “The state’s theory was
that both Skatzes and
Jefferson were complicit in the crime; there was no way to
prove who had inflicted the
fatal head injury. . . .
A defendant charged with an offense may be convicted of that
offense upon proof that he was complicit in its
commission.”
The court may not have read the
transcript of the Skatzes and Jefferson trials.
In
closing argument in the Skatzes trial, Prosecutor Daniel
Hogan did not say, “there was no
way to prove who had inflicted the fatal head injury.” Rather, Hogan asked the jury to
think “about David Sommers, . . . the one where [Skatzes]
wielded a bat and literally beat
the brains out of this man’s head.” State v. Skatzes, p. 6108. And in the Jefferson trial,
Prosecutor Crowe told the jury:
If
there was only one blow to the head of David Sommers, the strongest evidence
you have [is that] this is the individual—I won’t call him a human—this is the
individual that administered that blow. . . .
If there was only one blow, he’s the one that gave it. He’s the one that hit him like a steer going
through the stockyard, the executioner with the pick axe, trying to put the
pick through the brain.
State v. Jefferson,
Tr. at 656-57.
The court also failed to mention that whereas Jefferson
was sentenced to many
years behind bars, Skatzes
was sentenced to death.
Jason Robb
was the victim of a prosecution theory about Sommers’ murder that
was equally bizarre. According to prosecution witnesses, Sommers
chased Robb from L-
2 to L-7, where Sommers was
beaten to death by prisoners other than Robb.
Yet Robb
was convicted and sentenced
to death for Sommers’ murder!
Ineffective Prohibition of Snitch Testimony
Heightened
reliability is required in capital cases.
Convictions based on the
testimony of
informants, who are offered reduced charges, parole, or other benefits
in
exchange for their testimony, are inherently unreliable in
the absence of independent and
objective corroborating evidence connecting the defendant to
the crime.
Defense Alternatives
Lucasville capital defendants were
faced with an excruciating choice.
If they had not
killed anyone during the eleven days, they had the right to go to
trial and try to convince a jury of
their innocence. But their juries would
be made up of
men and women willing to recommend
the death penalty; their trials would be governed
by the doctrine of complicity; and their trial court judges would have no
way to assure defendants of the good faith and credibility of prosecution
witnesses.
However if, recognizing that the
dice were loaded, the defendant elected to plea
bargain, the best possible outcome was likely to be
imprisonment for life.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
RE-EXAMINING LUCASVILLE : ESSAY 5
By Staughton Lynd
Representation
on behalf of the five Lucasville defendants condemned to death has been
frustrated by the prosecution’s unwillingness to turn over to lawyers for the
defense the records of its own interviews with potential witnesses. Finally, during the winter of 2011-2012,
lawyers for four of the five capital defendants won the right to see summaries
and transcripts of investigators’ interviews (for the most part conducted by
officers of the Ohio State Highway Patrol) with Lucasville prisoners. The labor of collecting and evaluating this
material has barely begun.
What this, and the
several following essays, will report is what can be concluded at this time as
to each of the ten murders and the case against each of the five capital
defendants.
21 Point Agreement
This
document, signed by Arthur Tate, is the 21 point agreement that ended
the uprising in a peaceful surrender. The State of Ohio almost
immediately violated essential points of the agreement, when it pursued
legal action against alleged leaders and others who refused to cooperate
with investigators.
RE-EXAMINING LUCASVILLE: Essay 4
By Staughton Lynd
Summary So Far
So far, I
have been discussing the Lucasville uprising as a whole. I’ve asked:
Why should we doubt the accuracy of the trial court verdicts? What caused this rebellion, anyway? In what sense can these events be called
“tragic”?
Let’s sum up where we have arrived.
In Essay 1
we offered some examples of the unreliability of conclusions asserted by
prosecutors in trials after the end of the uprising. Particularly dramatic was the statement of
one of the prosecutors (now a state court judge), Daniel Hogan, that we
would never know “who hands-on killed
the corrections officer, [Robert] Vallandingham. . . . I don’t know.
And I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
How can the State of Ohio propose to execute three men (Siddique
Abdullah Hasan, Jason Robb, and James Were) for the murder of Officer
Vallandingham when it doesn’t even know who killed him?
Kite from Hasan
This kite was written by Siddique Abdullah Hasan and received by
Warden Arthur Tate just a few days before the riot.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Letter written by Warden Arthur Tate
This is the letter referenced in Staughton Lynd's second Re-Examining Lucasville Essay as evidence that Tate would benefit from causing a riot at SOCF.
RE-EXAMINING LUCASVILLE: Essay 3
by
Staughton Lynd
A Tragedy?
When
people use the word “tragedy,” they ordinarily mean something completely bad
and sad, like the mass killings in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.
Almost
as many human beings were killed during the eleven-day uprising in Lucasville
(ten) as in the Aurora movie theater (twelve).
But does the word “tragedy” adequately describe what happened at the
Southern Ohio Correctional Facility?
I
think the correct answer is, Yes, but in two different ways. One of the meanings the dictionary gives for
“tragedy” is “a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair,” a “calamity,”
a “disaster.” The dictionary gives an example: “the tragedy of the President’s
assassination.”
And
certainly the Lucasville Uprising was such a tragedy. The ten persons murdered were unarmed and
outnumbered. They never had a chance.
But
the dramatic presentations in ancient Athens or in Shakespeare’s London were
tragedies in a second sense. The “tragic
hero” in these plays, like the Greek king Oedipus, or Hamlet and Othello in the
plays of Shakespeare, was a well-intentioned person who had a “tragic
flaw.” The flaw was some aspect of the
hero’s character that brought him down and caused his destruction.
One
can look at the Lucasville events in this way, too. When prisoners sought to occupy L block they
did not intend to kill anyone. The
prison administration cannot be fairly accused of desiring the death of Officer
Vallandingham.
RE-EXAMINING THE LUCASVILLE UPRISING: Essay 2
by Staughton Lynd
What Caused the Uprising?
History
books often contain a chapter that tries to answer the question: What caused such-and-such a revolt or
revolution?
For
example: What caused the “Boston
Massacre” in 1770 when British troops stationed in Boston fired on a crowd that
was pelting them with frozen snowballs and oyster shells? What caused the “Boston Tea Party” of 1773
when chest after chest of tea imported from Great
Britain was thrown into Boston
harbor? (Hint: There had not been a new tax.) What caused the beginning of actual warfare
at Lexington and Concord
on April 19, 1775?
The truth
is that it is very difficult to be sure why human beings suddenly throw caution
to the winds, and, knowing that there may be enormous consequences, take a
stand and risk everything. Unsure as to
the real causes of a rebellion, the historian may take refuge in a chapter
title like “The Gathering Storm.”
Let’s see
if we can do better regarding the causes of the longest prison uprising in United
States history in which lives were lost, at
the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in Lucasville, April 11-21, 1993.
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