RE-EXAMINING LUCASVILLE: ESSAY 7

RE-EXAMINING THE LUCASVILLE UPRISING

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.           

                       

Ojore Lutalo

Ojore Lutalo is a recognized United States Political Prisoner. He was held in new Jersey's State Prison's infamous Management Control Unit for 22 years of day in and day out, month in and month out solitary confinement.  He was interned in this unit in an effort to break his mind and neutralize his radical political beliefs stemming from the Black Liberation Movements of the 1970's. Ojore is a political anarchist believing that people have the capacity to govern themselves through the process of consensus. Ojore, and other political radicals in US prisons have evidence of ongoing government surveillance. His release from this documented torture was ordered in 2009 via a court order. Ojore's freedom was interrupted last January 26 when he was "disappeared" from an Amtrak train, arrested and charged with "endangering public transportation". All of those charges were dropped. His story is the story of how the US uses psychological and physical torture for political reasons. Ojore's story is embedded in a report submitted to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review Working Committee which is due to review US political repression and the existence of US political prisoners this November.

Bonnie Kerness

Bonnie Kerness has been an anti-racist activist since she was 14, working at the University
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

Kunta KenyattaA former prisoner and activist, who was serving time at Lucasville during the uprising, and author of several short stories about the prison system.