“Evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the Department of Corrections… with consideration as to whether it is feasible… to establish an oversight or advisory board…(c) policies for the operation of the Department of Corrections;”
Category Archives: Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report Newsletter
New issue: Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report Vol 4 nr 1
E-mail: nvjprudence@gmail.com http://nvjprudence.wordpress.com
Statement of Purpose:
The NJPR Newsletter reports on current prison conditions, good and bad; more importantly it looks at and evaluates the legal processes and the substantive laws which are designed to keep men in prison: Pre-trial issues, probation and parole policy, sentencing structures, post-conviction law, and most important, the philosophy underlying policy in practice.
The purpose of the NJPR Website is to provide a repository of affidavits, declarations and grievances in Web-Dossiers organized by categories of intuitional behavior. Fundamentally, this is a whistleblowing organization trying to associate with other “transparency” projects at an intrastate, national and global level. We seek to identify patterns which can be utilized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
We invite any resident, and especially judicial officers of the Courts and government Administration to write letters to the NJPR.
Index to this Issue:
Section One: Conditions
1. Ely Inside Exposé: Doctor’s Report, Pt. I
2. Prison Rape Elimination Act at NNCC
3. Prison Cold Cuts Lunch Reduced Again
Section TWO: Law, Equity and Policy
1. Racial-Economic Bias Study Repressed (Pt. I)
2. Update on NJPR Investigations
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1. AR 750: Book Approvals Eliminated
2. United States Government Manual
3. VVA/ Veterans Update
4. Poem: The Waiting Game
Section One: Conditions
1) Ely Inside Exposé
From: Anonymous
To: Mr. X
Ely State Prison
P. O. Box 1989
Ely, Nevada 89301
October 15, 2011
Dear X.,
I just read your letter of October 11,2011. Some of what I am going to tell you may surprise you.
I quickly discovered that *** was murdered. It was obvious from the medical records that we had that something rotten was going on at ESP. **** told me a lot about what was going on. The ACLU knew all about it also. It was their goal to improve the medical care for all the prisoners, not to avenge any wrongdoing or murder. The ACLU settled the case last summer and did not even tell me it was settled. I was going to depositions for the case for them. I called *** the ACLU lead attorney on the ESP case, and told her that I did not think anything would change unless they went to court and got the ring leaders indicted. She said that the ACLU was not interested in sending people to prison. They wanted to make things better for the prisoners.
I know that the medical care at ESP is just as crappy as ever! If you can get enough money to get your surgery, take it and get the surgery. You will never break the Good-old-boy network in Nevada government. You just might get yourself killed trying… there is no justice, only people with power and people without power. If you somehow got every player at ESP to confess on the stand they would never serve a day in prison. They would claim insanity, then claim a disability due to the stress working at the prison. The more you try to fry these jerks, the more likely you will lose everything.
I am an old fool. I still get a lump in my throat when I see the American Flag. I still believe in justice, and right and wrong. These people at ESP are as wrong as anyone can get. The ring leaders are EVIL! I want you to win! I would like for you to get a new trial and be st free. You may win money enough to get your surgery. The more they are afraid the truth about the deaths will come out, the more they will want to shut you up. You want to aggravate them enough to give you some money, but not enough to kill you. It is a fine line you have to walk. I will help you as much as I am able. I also know that I am hated by the ring leaders at ESP. if I continue to threaten them they will want me gone. I, however, am harder to kill than you are. So, for now I am concerned about you.
Keep your goal in focus and push onward at every turn. They are hiding your medical record because it alone proves them guilty. Private citizens have the right to see their medical record. Prisoners lose their individual rights. But… since this case pivots around your medical care, and you are acting as your own attorney, I don’t see how they can keep it from you. They will try to keep sections of your medical file from you, because they know what they have done to you for years by denying treatment for your spinal stenosis opens them up to liability. Not treating you is tantamount to medical torture. They know that!
You have been an amazing lawyer, and you dug up the facts that the defendants in your case tried so hard to cover up. Have you considered trying to obtain a lawyer on a contingency basis? Be well advised *** that the more people on your side who know what you know about the murders at Ely State Prison and the ensuing cover-up, the safer you will be.
I well know all the crimes committed by the warden and medical staff at ESP. I can imagine the frustration you must feel at being imprisoned by people who did far worse things than the prisoners. Keep in touch, and we will pursue this further.
Sincerely, Anonymous
[Editor’s Note: This is the first of two letters passed along to NJPR. The second will be published in the next issue. This professional account lends credibility to the editorial conclusion that exempting NDOC from political oversight of rule making protections is a BAD idea. The LAW needs to change. NRS 233B.039(1) (b) must be repealed, and the judicial branch must re-take their oath of office to uphold their Article VI duties to protect citizens from executive and legislative police and economic abuse of power.]
2) Lies and Retaliation by CAL
My friend has utilized his life prison term to advance prisoner’s rights issues by standing up to the administration and pressuring them for reforms, through the grievance process. The inmate advisory committee and when necessary civil action my friend has brought about a safer more humane incarceration for many men and women in the State of Nevada.
My friend has been so successful that the prison administration has asked him on several occasions, through his capacity as an inmate Law Clerk, to represent people with certain prisoner’s rights and/or confinement issues. My friend attempted this past year to report the sexual abuse of another inmate in accordance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). As a result of these efforts my friend is being punished; he was fired from his inmate law Clerk job, and was brought-up on a bogus notice of charges. His confidentiality in reporting a P.R.E.A. violation has been compromised and now my friend fears dangers of further official retaliation.
On 12/21/2013 my friend was “caught” passing a note to his wife in the visiting room. The note contains information regarding the sexual abuse and harassment of a mentally ill female inmate in the NNCC segregation unit at the regional medical facility (violating NDOC regulations). The note describes a serious instance and references have been made regarding numerous others being perpetrated by the correctional officers and male inmates. The note closed with a plea for help stating that no reporting echelon is too high to include even governor Sandoval.
My friend’s wife was also detained by correctional officers and prevented from leaving visiting until she gave-up the note. Upon learning the content of the note the correctional officer became a legally mandated “reporter” and should have initiated an institutional investigation in accordance with P.R.E.A. But, no such report has been filed, and the female inmate continues to be subject to abuse.
Now, to compound these issues the official disciplinary officer (who has previously been found guilty of misconduct against my friend) allegedly went around the operations building, in front of inmates and fellow staff, yelling “PREA! PREA! He’s claiming PREA!” this was reported by other inmates and staff present: Affidavits are being complied.
The disciplinary officer also reportedly threatened to “Out” my friend to other inmates and staff branding him as responsible for paper and pens being taken out of visiting and they’d take the kids’ crayons if my friend used the defense that the paper and pens are provided for inmates and their families. In other words, either my friend takes a fake charge or he gets a jacket put on him that he was the “stoolie” that ruined visiting room privileges for everyone.
The PREA report puts my friends life in danger from official retaliation by level reduction. My friend’s federally conferred right to confidentially report prisoner abuses in accordance with PREA has been maliciously disregarded. The federal government must responsibly oversee the state implementation of PREA. NDOC has violated protected anonymity and safety. The federal government must now wrest this abused power from the state and rectify these abuses while punishing those responsible.
[Editor’s Note: Contact D. Striplin, P.R.E.A. Coordinator, through interdepartment mail, or have family phone 775-887-3142, email dstriplin@doc.nv.gov.]
3) Prison Lunch Reduced Again
The menu at NNCC was changed in the fall of 2013. But within two months there was some kind of backlash and the positive changes went backward.
The major problem with a prison diet is a lack of protein. The discontinuation of the hot lunch program about two years ago contributed to a severe calorie and protein deficiency. In the fall, the warden improved the lunch by increasing total calorie and protein counts by give each man two sandwiches a day, not one. Also, the police were told to stop confiscating food coming out of the chow hall, like fruit and other breakfast item and dinner items, as doing so interfered with mens self-control of severe diabetes by self regulation of food intake. Making men eat all their food at one time, or not at all, has likely killed not a few men in NDOC. File Reports and complaints with:
State Health Officer, Tracy Green
NV. Division of Public and Behavioral Health
4150 Technology Way, Carson City NV 89706-2009
-OR-
Marena Works, Director
Carson City Health and Human Services
900 E. Long St., Carson City NV 89706
Section Two: Law, Equity and Policy
1) State Suppression of Social Study Evidence
NJPR has obtained the on-line Docket of the Supreme Court Commission called ASKT 160, which is an establishment of a “Task Force for the Study of Racial and Economic Bias in the Justice System”. From this on-line Docket mailed in, selections were requested from the Supreme Court Law Library via the generosity of a prisoner willing to buy excerpts at 10$ a page. This is a preliminary sketch.
One of the first items purchased was an Emergency Motion for the Supreme Court to adopt Recommendation No. 1 of the Final Report, which was filed contemporaneously, on June 18, 1997. We will discuss selections of the 81 Recommendations later with analytic comment. For now we deal with the Motion filed by the Chairman of the Task Force, Kevin M. Kelly, Bar No. 1600, of Las Vegas; [volunteers are currently trying to locate Kelly].
Kelly asks for the Supreme Court to “adopt” Recommendation No. 1, and that upon adoption, “then names will be submitted to the Court… as members of the implantation committee”. This is what Recommendation No. 1 states:
“It is imperative to establish a standing committee… to implement [the remaining 80 recommendations] related to disparate treatment within the system[1]. Such committee shall report annually to the Supreme Court… without the establishment of the standing committee the requisite implementation and monitoring of the recommendations is impossible”.
The odd thing is, the Docket (register of actions) does not reflect any Order responding to the Motion. No opposition appears to be filed by opponents of such a commission! So, whatever happened? What kind of judicial branch is it that fails to make a response to a motion filed with its clerk? The options are few—the judicial silence of non-responsiveness indicates either a broken or corrupt system. And it would be foolish to propose that the causes of the corruption can be attributed to a common psychological disposition of the Supreme Court justices. Such psychologism is a conceptual bias perpetrated by the state administrators themselves to serve as an effective mythological account that serves to conceal the other more likely account of objective, visible and measurable sociological account of the causes of officious lies.
The sociological cause of the Task Force is explained in its Final Report: the Las Vegas riots that erupted after the acquittal of the police state of Los Angeles after the beating of Rodney King.
Page 12 of the Report attributes the cause of the Study to be Elgin Simpson, an officer of a non-profit corporation, Community Peace. Yet, the report cites a theory of disposition of the “frustration” of citizens as a cause for the call for a Task Force. The sentiment was claimed in the report to be caused by “the perceived biases in all aspects of the criminal and civil justice system”.
The Report further states that the government was quick to infiltrate, dominate and coopt the Task Force with the presence of “numerous elected and public officials, including a Nevada Supreme Court Justice, Charles Springer. Springer petitioned the Court for ADKT 160.”
The Task Force studied the following Issues:
Jury Issues, making seven (7) recommendations;
General Quality and Access to Justice, making nine (9) suggestions;
Juvenile Justice, making fifteen (15) demands for change;
Pre-Arraignment issues, making fifteen (15) demands;
Law Enforcement, making eleven (11) demands;
Sentencing Decisions, making (9) suggestions;
Assignment of Counsel, making nine (9) suggestions;
Death Penalty issues, with six (6) demands for change.
The Report states that Post-Conviction Issues needed to be studied, but the Task Force ran out of funds and manpower.
(To be continued…)
2) Update on Prisoner Political Investigations
A fellow prisoner reports success in the fight for access to public documents for the AB 85 Advisory Committee to study the laws regarding sex offenses. The Legislative Counsel Bureau refused to deliver up until served with a Summons to Show Cause. Why the institutional lurking. NJPR investigations have hit a brick wall regarding the Access to Justice Foundation and the federal/ FOIA request to USDOJ regarding Washoe County Jail went into a black hole!
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1) AR 750 Book Approvals Eliminated Hard Cover, Learning CD’s Next
The NDOC policy at its prison facilities has been maladapted for many year and been open to malicious misinterpretation by the few rotten apples in the barrel suffering a neurotic mental disorder manifesting as sadist “Needs” to inflict pain and suffering. Prisoner’s must be given credit of courage of self-defense and fighting for what is right, in the face of might and power.
The prison officials have made concessions—to their credit of good (albeit delayed) sense. The inmate no longer needs pre-approval; any suspicious books will be red-flagged by the property room sergeant and sent to the warden or book committee for final review, whose final Order will be grievable, presumably.
The hardcover issue is in a grey area. Currently only “Religious” hard cover books follow the Ashker v. CDOC standard (224 F. Supp. 2d 1253); but Sgt. Wagner always used common sense, and allowed the option of sending secular hard covers to be replaced by the book bindery for $7.50. but simple cut-off removal is anticipated because it is logically abused to allow inexpensive cover cut-offs for religious books, but not “secular”. The legal standard applies to both.
This same bureaucratic absurdity applies to Compact Discs. What is the “penological” interest in allowing in to prisoners music CD’s that sound like Satan Under Torture, yet refuse to allow Books on CD, language Learning CD’s and classical music? There seems to be a conspiracy to keep men crazy to keep the cycles of violence raging and the “prison industry” revenue flowing.
Sie sind Alles Trottels!
2) United States Government Manual
This Government Manual is a listing of the Legislative, Judicial and Executive branch officials of the federal government. It is hugely recommended by NJPR. The law library at NNCC does NOT keep this on hand, nor does it keep an analog of a State of Nevada directory. The manual is usually offered at a steep discount after it is a year old, through Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller, P. O. Box 15, Falls Village, CT 06031-0015.
3) VVA Veterans Update by CAL
The NNCC warden Isidro Baca has stopped all fundraising activities since his arrival in late 2012. Prison VVA Chapter 719 has donated over $100,000.00 over the last ten years to local schools. The squashing of such prisoner activity has only one penological purpose: to increase the pain of the prisoner, which has the corollary purpose of satisfy the blood lust of the sadistic element of society which apparently has gained control of public policy makers. The prisoner, to a man, tries to maintain hope, and to psychologically sublimate his status of social outcast to one of human normalcy. The government policy to enslave men is spelled out in the ordinance of its enabling act of statehood: “That there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude otherwise than in the punishment of crime”. Taking away “normal” human acts of charity serves to intensify the social degradation of slavery. Allowing fundraisers world also serve the behavior modification intention of the ridiculous level system imposed by Baca, by increasing positive reinforcements to higher levels and negative reinforcement to lower-lockdown units by dint of deprivation. Go team!
4) Poem: “The Waiting Game”
I missed my class of poetry
Because of legal bus’ness;
The legal fight to be set free
Is poetry no less.
But still I missed the guys—we talk
Of something other than
The daily grind of senseless squawk
Of this marginal clan,
Or other subject causing scandal
That scraps morality;
It’s par for course to be a vandal
In this convict city.
It really is the same for you
In chains invisible,
As is for us in convict blue—
We’re all a-risible.
So to my colleagues at the class
I miss you but I won’t
Give in to evil-hiding brass—
They try to scare, but don’t.
But waiting is the topic here
Let’s not forget my point—
I’m waiting for someone not my peer,
And beat it from this joint.
—
[1] The text calls for a monopoly of membership to such a committee by representatives of the “criminal justice community”, that is, the police power agents. The mention of “academics and concerned citizens” is an inept afterthought. This is to practice logical fallacy.
———-
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Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report Vol. 3, No 4 – Fall Issue 2013
The spring 2013 Informational Bulletin Newsletter published by Nevada-CURE reported that NRS 179A.270-290, passed in 1997, required the Central Repository for Nevada Records of Criminal History to collect sex offender recidivism data. In 2009, the Central Repository petitioned to have these responsibilities removed through AB 81 apparently because “the agency has neither the staffing nor the technical expertise to address recidivism of sex offenders.” Unfortunately, AB 81 passed.
Ron S.
A Nevada prisoner
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report (summer 2013)
“Veritas in Caritatis”
Summer Issue 2013
THEME: “Audi alterum partem” – Listen to the other side!
“Voice of the Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report”
E-mail: nvjprudence@gmail.com
Website: http://nvjprudence.wordpress.com
Statement of Purpose:
The NJPR Newsletter reports on current prison conditions, good and bad; more importantly it looks at and evaluates the legal processes and the substantive laws which are designed to keep men in prison: Pre-trial issues, probation and parole policy, sentencing structures, postconviction law, and most important, the philosophy underlying policy in practice.
The purpose of the NJPR Website is to provide a repository of affidavits, declarations and grievances in Web-Dossiers organized by categories of intuitional behavior. Fundamentally, this is a whistleblowing organization trying to associate with other “transparency” projects at an intrastate, national and global level. We seek to identify patterns which can be utilized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
We invite any resident, and especially judicial officers of the Courts and government Administration to write
letters to the NJPR.
Index to this Issue:
Section One: Conditions
1. The Death of Scott Hyatt- by Kevin Pope
2. Level System Report
3. Parole Board Inquisition and Serial Sentencing
Section TWO: Law, Equity and Policy
1. Justice Procedures and Government Concealment: Policy of Secrecy
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1. Denial of Access to Chapel Facilities Suit
2. Update on 12-Step Programs
3. Veteran’s Activities
Subscriptions and Services
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Newsletter can be delivered via e-mail or snail-mail. We ask you send a copy into NDOC system and your local legislature and press!
Dept. of Justice Issue Dossiers:
Scanning, storage and Electronic Delivery of Dept. of Justice, press, politicians and state administrators.
——————–
Section One: Conditions
1) A Kinder Gentler Genocide, Kevin Donald Pope
Scott Hyatt, of Unit 2, Dorm B-3, who was not under death penalty or the “other” death penalty, life-in-prison, laid in a near comatose condition. He was recently diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, a terminal illness, but curable by a marrow transplant.
He was told by prison that the treatment was “not available”. I helped him write letters begging for compassionate release. The prison did send him to Carson/Tahoe Hospital for treatment, but it failed so he was sent back to prison.
According to Scott, the only way to stay alive was regular blood transfusions, six (6) pints at a time. Two days before he died, Scott told me he was given only 2 pints of transfusion. That night he laid in a near comatose state in his dorm and began to bleed out of his orifice. He died two days later.
The prison staff and doctors are in the main honest people trying their best. Dr. Gedney is, in my book, an unsung hero who saved my life in the past. However, they must work against the policy of genocide—insurmountable odds marshaled against them by the administrators above them, hiding like stalkers in their shadowy offices of power over life and death. There are staff who form power cliques who sadistically delight in carrying out the policies of disdain and hatred, behind the mask of “legality”. I call this the hidden agenda of discontent and malice, intending to create havoc by making human pain through Undue Stresses for the sake of civil police-state idols of calculated efficiency, cost-effectiveness and vengeance.
[Editor’s note: In earlier editions, Fall 2011, we were puzzled that the compassionate release law which used to be in the hands of the Parole Commissioners at NRS 213.1217 was repealed. Mister Pope informs us that this power was merely transferred by NRS 209.3925 to the hands of the Director of the Nevada Department of Corrections, which is to jump from the frying pan to the fire.]
2) Level System Report
In 2001, the legislature of Nevada passed an enabling statute that stated the NDOC Director “may” implement a level system in his facilities. All of the prisons in Nevada began to do so, where the custody level was rated “high” or “medium high”. NNCC, a medical yard and a medium custody warehouse, created a level system operating procedure (OP) but it was never suitable for a medium yard. In June of 2012, Administrative Regulation 516, Level System, was signed by Director Cox. The NDOC is exempt from all due process safeguards, such as evidentiary hearings on record, public notice, attendance and commentary. The ONLY check on the arbitrary and capricious rule is the prisoner lawsuit. It is policy of the state of Nevada that citizens of prior bad acts and public convictions are subject to civil legal sanctions that act as shields to the erosion of state police power to be capricious and arbitrary.
The system of levels is a policy of undue pressure. Just today, an intimate associate of ours, a man on the yard as a reward for years of good behavior, snapped. This man was commuted from death sentence, to life without. He struggles with immense sorrow for his liberty. This new system locks him down 3 days out of 4, deprives him of all human dignity of hope, personal growth—then expect him to take “ownership” while the police state will NOT see its own errors.
3) The “Perfection Clause” and Substantive Due Process: Nevada’s Secret Tribunals—Psych Panels/Boards
The attack of the originalist movement in legal circles aims at increasing the unilateral police power of the state by the reduction of immunities and privileges of citizens accused or convicted of crime. The originalists (Justices Scalia and Thomas) are rooted in a secularized biblolotry derived from the twisted sola scriptura doctrine of Martin Luther in the 1500’s. Most fundamentalists are harmlessly duped to believe that no good, no truth and no beauty exists outside the four-corners of the bible. Scalia and Thomas are almost Constitutional fundamentalists—if a principle of law cannot be found in the letters of the document it’s no law at all. They scorn the intellectual virtue of inference, where such an inference was not also left behind in the historical records of the framers spoken or written word. This kind of jurisprudence is called legal positivism, the tool of tyrants and totalitarian systems. The U.S. Constitution, with its clause of perfection implies that the support of tyrants was not the goal of the American Fathers. It says, “We the people… in order to form a more perfect union…” means a historical commitment to moving away from the evils of total state power to the point of a fascist state wearing perfume of sanctity. Lady Liberty smells like a fancy whore.
Nevada thinks “perfection” means creating secret tribunals that mentally torture the condemned, and perpetrate the practice of “serial sentencing”.
The psych-panels, which are described below, were hidden behind the Regal Decree’s of Mr. Brian Sandoval back when he was Attorney General in 2003. He issued the sinister law that “Because the Psych Panel functions as an arm of the sentencing court (judiciary) and are not subject to the requirements of the Open Meeting Law.” [Open Meeting Law Opinion, (OMLO 2003-21/A6 File No. 03-019].
This opinion is in the favor of the accused in a back-handed way, because it implies that those subject to the psych panel are entitled to demand due process privileges such as legal counsel present, rights of rebuttal, evidentiary rules. Of course the only intention of Brian Sandoval was to conceal the activities of the Psych Panel, and prevent the public from perceiving what really goes on—the psychological torture of a new hearing which is successive to the first sentencing hearing years before. If the Psych Panel is a judicial body, rather than an administrative body, it is due to provide the level of procedural protections required by the
Constitution.
At least that is a claim that could be made. The odd thing is that the Administrative Regulation 813.01 (8) states the Psych Panel is “Subject to Open Meeting Law.” Most men who have gone to the Psych Panel and Parole Board would testify that the behavior of both the Panel and Board members is often that of a brow-beating judicial torturer-interrogator. All evidentiary rules are thrown out the window and both Tony Corda and psychologist and Robert Schofield have been knowing to yell and berate inmates for events of childhood.
Luckily, the Psych Panel has been “reformed”; the bad news is that the reform is merely a concentration of all power to inflict pain is vested in one man and one tool of inquisition—an actuarial device used in the insurance industry; Senate Bill No. 104 has disbanded the 3-Person Panel, effective July 1, 2013. Instead, the Psych Panel powers becomes included in the powers of the Director of prisons, Greg Cox, who will send a psych tech over with an “accepted standard of assessment”. Further, the state will not “take ownership” for any future abuses, mistakes or errors in such assessments, [213.1099-3]!
Section Two: Law and Equity
1) Justice Procedures and Government Concealments State Policy of Secrecy
The last issue carried a review of a law review article by Rachel Barkow, “Separation of Powers and the Criminal Law”, (58 Stan. L. Rev. 989). The article begins to expose the myth to the public, which all prisoners know from first hand experience: there is no true ADVERSARY SYSTEM. That phrase is a slogan parroted by district attorneys, and all other “stakeholders” in the system, to CONCEAL the truth of a continental inquisitorial system in place. That means we citizens are tried by an official of the executive branch—a whole army of officials, called the “Criminal Justice Community” (CJC). The problem is, they make up the rules as they go along— without oversight!
For example, court rules. The most crucial part of any action, process or creation is the beginning. In the criminal justice system, the beginning is the police investigation. That’s why over the years the Supreme Court of the United States began to make rules with its famous Miranda v. Arizona case, requiring the announcement of rights to the suspected citizen.
Judicially, the beginning is the Grand Jury indictment or the Complaint filed by the local attorney or attorney general at the Justice Courts (in Nevada, at least). Yet, for many many years, there were no Justice Court Rules! So certainly there wererules, but only the administrators knew what they were. Unbelievably, Reno Justice Court did not publish rules until 2012, and Sparks (and the rest of rural Nevada) did not publish them until 2013!
So, like the ADKT 411 “standards” for professional defense lawyers, these rules need to be actively promulgated by the local courts, so that defendant-citizens know how to fight back!
In Europe, such rules are not kept secret, and as a result the incarceration rate is 76% lower, Will America do this? No. will Nevada? HELL no.
District Court rules have long been available, but not to pretrial detainees. Even so the rules are skewed to favor the un-detained and prejudice those held without bail. The response times, for example, don’t give the prisoner a fair hearing. State attorney’s are allowed to file responses to prisoner petitions on the day of the hearing, so that the prisoner cannot respond. This is due to the special viciousness of American state-religion, the social nationalism made famous in the abuses totalitarian-fascist regimes in World War II Germany. That is why the European inquisitorial system is so dangerous—it is highly subject to abuse without protective oversight.
What we have today in America is cogently sinister. It has a inquisitorial system hiding behind a façade, a lying myth, that it s an “adversarial system”. Because of the logical fallacies which seem to be genetically bred into Americans, they believe anything that comes out of the four-corners of the television, radio, newspaper and Smart phones. So did the Garman’s of Nazi Germany.
The early, critical stages of the Grand Jury, and preliminary hearing are not protected by adversarial rules—they are considered “administrative” in nature, inquisitorial. When Europe let go of oversight at such inquisitions, it burnt 12 million Jew. When America allowed such protections to the citizen go, it built up the biggest prison gulag the world has ever seen. Only free people, enslaved to their blissful stupidity, cannot SEE the crisis. Amazingly, even Nevada prisoners are lulled into blissful stupidity—by design. Nevada is
one of the few state systems that allow private TV. Take them away, like they do in Ely and lock-down units, you get angry fighters.
Unless the American CJC corrects its behavior of denying access to knowledge of legal processes, the system will keep expanding until it implodes.
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1) Denial of Religions Rights to Those Who Require Sanctuary Space
Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) can be supposedly accessed by any person, and the NJPR has reviewed a prison lawsuit by Dirk Klinke, Kevin Pope and J. Quintero, Cs. No. 3:13-cv-00008-mmD-VPC.
The prisoners attempted to bring a class action suit for alleged NNCC Facility deprivations and systemic NDOC deprivations of constitutional privileges.
Klinke claims that low level officials circumvent the Prison Director’s and Prison Commission’s administrative regulations that state hospitalized and punished prisoners in the Unit Seven segregation units by “round-filing” inmate requests (throwing them in the trash can) Klinke has been told he will be moved off the yard to another facility. Pope filed for discriminatory animus by prison guards to his Siddha Yoga gurus.
Quintero filed for religious deprivation of the sanctuary space in the multi-purpose facility that provides legal, religious and physical exercise services; he lost the prison custom of giving access to Catholic rosary devotees to the three Chapel rooms under the supervisory eye of the camera system and the neighboring law librarian and coach. The action was severed by Judge Miranda M. Du, meaning each plaintiff had to file separate pleadings.
2) Update on 12-Step Programs
Last issue notified Nevada officials and news outlets that not only was Alcoholics Anonymous completely “eradicated” the institutional sadism of those officials, it (AA.) was reduced (or raised) to a privilege reserved only to a particular class of NNCC inmate, those who participate in the Senior Structured Living Program.
We at the NJPN received a garbled e-mail that seemed to be trying to imply the issue raised threatened the well-being of SSLP members, and that the program and its founder were trying to do good. Nowhere in our article did we question the goodness of keeping AA as a prison program—we stated that creating a caste
system is unfair to those in the lower class, and that sequestering it to ONE unit is violative of AA. principles themselves.
At any rate, AA is now available for two additional units, No’s 3 and 5 now get visits from an “outside” sponsor 1 day per week.
May the ghost of Al Garcia haunt the wardens. This all boils down to the reduction of access to the prison facilities begun with this level system—prior to the “official beginning”, the college classrooms in Mayberry were closed, and the meeting rooms of the Gym/Chapel/Law Library Complex were made off-limits.
3) Veteran’s Activities
First, the Vietnam Veteran’s Association (VVA) got told they could not provide refreshments to their members at their monthly meetings. Then, they got told they cannot hold “fundraisers” any more—one of the only delights of the year for NNCC inmates was to get “street food” once or twice a year, and a summer barbecue. Then, the administration said it could not pass out a Christmas eve goodie bag to the evil convicts anymore. Then the Glorius Leaders said the VVA had to close their office.
A medical transfer from Lovelock said the last fundraiser there was in 2012.
They stopped at NNCC in 2011.
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report Vol. 3, No 5 (2013)
E-mail: nvjprudence@gmail.com
http://nvjprudence.wordpress.com
Statement of Purpose:
The NJPR Newsletter reports on current prison conditions, good and bad; more importantly it looks at and evaluates the legal processes and the substantive laws which are designed to keep men in prison: Pre-trial issues, probation and parole policy, sentencing structures, post-conviction law, and most important, the philosophy underlying policy in practice.
The purpose of the NJPR Website is to provide a repository of affidavits, declarations and grievances in Web-Dossiers organized by categories of intuitional behavior. Fundamentally, this is a whistleblowing organization trying to associate with other “transparency” projects at an intrastate, national and global level. We seek to identify patterns which can be utilized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
We invite any resident, and especially judicial officers of the Courts and government Administration to write letters to the NJPR.
Index to this Issue:
Section One: Conditions
1. Taking a Hard Right: Level System at NNCC
Section TWO: Law, Equity and Policy
1. Law Article Review: “The Emerging War on Sex Offenders”
2. Law Article Review: The Fusion of Power and Administration of Crime
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1. AA Now Sequestered by Exclusivist Program
2. Poem
Subscriptions and Services
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Section One: Conditions
1) Hard Right: NNCC “Level System”
Prisons in America has its historical roots in the Puritanical acceptance of Jeremy Bentham’s weird idea of the “Panoptican”—an idea derived from his “Principle of Inspection”. This historical principle was discussed in Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison News, Vol. 1, No. 10, “Pre-Trial Conditions”.
Bentham was inspired the Psalm of David that takes note of God’s invisible omniscience, by which God know all things, all thoughts, at all times. Bentham proposed the use of All-Seeing Architecture to impose the coercive power of the state. Bentham invented, by appealing to natural fear of God’s all-seeing eye, the psychological prison of the watchtower, the “bubble”, the gunpost, and the surveillance camera that now covers the entire Western industrial economy. “Panopticon” means all-seeing.
This biblical theology fused with the Puritan’s idea of turning the secular world into a monastic Empire where everyman is a highpriest of his own world. [How else can one say “welcome to my world?”] This is derived from the wild Calvinist theory of the “universal” priesthood of all men. This is why the Puritan were eager to embrace Bentham’s proposed prison system. With this in mind, we can interpret the recent actions by the State to increase the security level of the NNCC facility.
NNCC was the last “open” yard in Nevada prison system. After the 1990’s federal push for escalating the “war on crime”, all inmate-friendly managers in the Nevada Department of Corrections were hounded out by a new breed of puritanical zeal for pain infliction on the reprobate sinner-citizen. Any person who loses their “sainthood” are excommunicated by civil society.
The NDOC, though the warden Isidro Baca, has closed the open yard and created a “level system”.
Level 3 is lowest. Units 2 and 4 are level 3, comprising 360 men. They have no access to daily yard. They have no access to the gym or weights, ever. They have no access to psycho-programming required by the state for good time and parole release. They have no access to work that keeps their hope for statutory “good time” alive. There are an inordinate number of “litigators” kept in this level, meaning the prison system is psychologically “conditioning” mass behaviors by rewarding the effete and timid and punishing the virtuous political citizen.
Level 1 is the highest, and gets the most privileges, and it is reserved ONLY to those who genuflect and adore the pagan god of the government, the GAIN SPIRIT. ONLY those who have a PAY NUMBER can join the Level One “blessed and highly favored”. So, we see a religification of a state prison system, and a paganization of a supposedly Christian theology of “puritanism”.
Level 2 aspires to escape the shame and stigma of level 3, and clamors to one day to join the Holy Ones who have a paycheck. The problem is, there are no jobs, and prayerfully the Nevada economy will continue to tank, and take its pagan psycho-babble level system with it. May ghost-township come soon to Nevada! (To be continued…)
Section Two: Law and Equity
1) Law Article Review: “The Emerging Criminal War on Sex Offenders” by Corey Rayburn Yung, 45 Harvard Law Review, C. R. –C.L.L. 435 (2010)
The Adam Walsh Act and its progenitors have been challenged in all the Federal District Courts, and has been upheld in almost all of them. One decision HAS found the S.O.R.N.A. provisions of registration Un-constitutional. In 2008, a U.S. District Court in (of all places) Florida, stated:
“While sex offenders may be the least sympathetic lot of society, the law does not recognize a distinction between everyman’s right to travel and a sex offender’s travel. And, an exception for them today may bring tomorrow’s application to all”.
This is a Bright-Line Rule!
In other words, there are certain rights which, at least in a Christian concept of law which is grounded in Natural Law, recognizes certain Bright-line rules of substantive and procedural rights which are valid and applicable to All people, at all times, everywhere. Without Exception.
But this principle of objective ethical principles of law has been corrupted by so-called “reformed” theology that DOES allow for exceptions—those who are predestined by God for perdition are the exceptions. How convenient to have the moral power to determine WHO is marked God for a destiny of hell, and make an “exception” to the Bright Line Rules of Law. This is to sub-humanize certain “lost souls” as unworthy of equal treatment before the law. This theological perversion is called the “absolute depravity” of men, and the principle of double predestination—either saved or hound for Hell.
When you hear a person declare “he deserves a fate worse than death”, you are witness to the manifestation of this so-called “Christian” reformed theology which allows for exceptions to the Rule of Law. When you hear the words “worse than death”, you are hearing either a pagan devil worshipper or an evangelical “Christian”: they both glorify vigilante-lynch-mob justice.
This article by Corey Yung is by far the most radically courageous acts of any academic I’ve read recently. Anybody who takes an objective, scientific look at such an “apple-pie” issue is bound to find themselves attacked, and Yung needs prayers.
Yung’s article can be fairly criticized on one point: it is blind to the deeper roots of the “War –on-Crime”. Historically, the article needed to have pointed out Saint Thomas More’s much despised work Utopia, and his trenchant critique of the English “war-on-crime” in the late 1400’s, situationally determined by the economics of industrial production of sheep wool to clothe the militarization of eh early British Empire. The writer could have mentioned Jeremy Bentham’s coining of the word “war-on-crime” at the height of the British industrialization, in the early 1800’s.
Yung starts only with the recent American escalation of the “war-on-crime”, pinning most of the blame on the “war-on-drugs”. She seems not to be aware of the radical feminist roots of the current “war-on-sex offender”, as identified historically by Marie Gottschalk[1].
Other than these oversights, this article hopefully will work its way out of the ivory towers and get into the hands of some honorable and courageous legislators. It is vastly important that people “realize how controlled they are by the PROPAGANDA of the Industrial Empire, and crime.
Yung identifies precise rhetorical MYTH’s utilized by the Criminal Justice Community that is the lobbyist name for the Criminal Justice Industry. Yung traces the evil transmogrification of normal “law enforcement that escalates into a criminal WAR”. (437, emphasis added) She describes how RHETORIC is utilized, becoming a “multi-faceted public discourse wherein the population is exposed to the warrants for the conflict through a variety of mediums. For example, television advertisements, television episodes [police shows] movies, new reports from various sources, local [pro-victim] activist groups, bumper stickers combine to send a message justifying a war” (443, inserts added).
Her contributions in identifying the “characteristics of Criminal Wars” used in the1970’s War-on-Drugs opens the doors for further research. The characteristics she defines as follows:
1.) Marshaling of Resources—that is, the government provides money and contributes surplus war hardware and financial incentives. Her description make us realize that we are prisoners of war.
2.) Myth Creation—meaning a mytho-poetic “creation of substantial myths about the danger” of the targeted enemy, drug users, sex offenders etc. she teaches about a sophisticated sophism called a “condensation symbol”: names, words, phrases or maxims” that evoke discrete, vivid impression in each listener’s mind, and also involves the listener’s most basic values…”[2]
3.) Exception Making—“as in international wars, criminal wars are marked by DEVIATIONS FROM NORMAL CODES OF CONDUCT.” (444)
Yung cites how this occurs in the current “war on terror”—permissible torture, suspension of Geneva Conventions, use of private mercenary corporations, domestic surveillance. She then cites what this writer hollers about all the time, exceptions that are crafted into normal law enforcement rules, designed to make loop-holes to the Bright-line rules of the Bill-of-Rights. She notes the massive militarization of civil police, which gives the governments exceptional legal and technological tools in the wars on crime, along with money!
Yung’s analysis of the sex-crime scene leaves no doubt there is a “war” on sex offenders. Under the Myth Making rubric, Yung identifies 5 myths that have “served as cornerstones to America’s sex offender policy”:
1.) Stanger Danger—conceals the fact that sex crime is a family and community crime, and stranger sex crime is rare. The myth hides the destruction of family relations, because most sex crimes are family based.
2.) High Recidivism—myths of “incurability” justify and conceal the government destruction of families and community, by permanent exile into prisons and the “life-time” supervision and travel restrictions. Studies show LOW recidivism.
3.) Sex offense homogeneity—all sex offenders are alike, from serial stalker rapists to parking lot pee-ers. (Nevada has a boat-load of pee offenders.) This is a new myth, according to Yung, and deserving of further consideration.
4.) Molestation as “Fate Worse than Death”(457). This is where Yung brings up the notion mentioned at footnote 1. Yung devotes only one paragraph to the notions of “innocence and virginity” as the basis of the war-drum gravity intoned by fear-mongering, puritanical statists, which uses the concealing myth to justify sadistic increase in pain infliction.
5.) Enemy creation—the typical “yellow peril” war rhetoric INVENTED by Woodrow Wilson’s NWI anti-German campaign led by experts in motivational psychology, and Edward Bernys’ Office of War Information. This is basically an alliance between local government and special interest war-on-crime consortia lobbies, and mass media outlets, creating an almost unanimous public support for the war-on-sex offenders. The biggest supporters of this war are prison inmates themselves, as everyone knows in the back of their mind.
6.) Rational Unanimity—one myth which is overlooked by Yung and most others is the phenomena identified by René Girard as unanimous mimetic violence—herd behaviors.
There is a legal maxim in the Judeo-Christian tradition which says that if a proposition has met no opposition during debate or hearing, and is unanimously agreed to, it is probably a wrong decision. The whole sex crime issue can be seen as a scandal that until this article by Yung, nobody stands up against. The escalating war on MALE sex offense started in the 1970’s and 1980”, and laws relating to them can, at least in Nevada, be confirmed (by looking at the record) as having been carried unanimously by the legislatures. Rational discourse always requires a pro-con circumspection, and foresight of real consequences. Herd lynch-mob thinking operates on the fear of uncertainty, and is irrational.
The most important section in this article is on the”exception making”, which are basically loopholes for police powers to get around the Bright-Line safeguards and privileges of individuals, and protects lower order institutions of family and the local parish. This is to be discussed in later articles.
2) Law Article Review: “Separation of Powers and the Criminal Law” by Rachel E. Barkow, 58 Stanford Law Review 989-1054 (2005-2006)
In trust and probate law of inheritance and wills, there is legal principle called the “presumption of good faith”. This presumption arises from a duty of the civil courts to respect the wishes of the deceased person leaving behind instructions. For example, if the person making the will (a testator) selects a trustee to administer his will, it is PRESUMED the trustee was “trusted” by the testator, and the judge will adopt this same presumed trust. It is fairly difficult to overcome this presumption of good faith that the trustee will do what the deceased wills him to do.
Now, consider that this same principle of what is basically family law of trusts is applicable in the administrative law of governmental bureaucracy. The individuals who work for the government administration of all three branches (judicial, legislative and executive) possess and operate under what is called the “public trust”. All of us under the government shadow operate on “the presumption of good faith”. We hope, and have faith that government workers will act in the best interests of all, or the “common good”, or commonweal. To insure this good faith is psychologically coerced, we see three conditioning factors set up in the constitutions and statutes.
Deterrence factors are built into the statutes by sanctions of civil and criminal punishment of those who dare violate the public trust. Reward factors are also built in by honors and pay increase, in addition to the moral-religious duty to civic virtue.
The third factor is the due process safeguards built into the administrative system to ensure that the best interests of the public trust are met. Both State and Federal bureaucracies have adopted over the last century very strict standards of rulemaking. In other words, when most agencies make up rules that affect the general public, they follow the rule making guidelines of the Administrative Procedure Act, (APA), at both levels of government. This mostly controls the executive branch, who are allocated money by the legislative branch, and told by the legislature’s “enabling act” what the money is for, and leaves the “how to” up to the agency, which requires rules.
Now, the courts in the early days of state and federal administrations were the only insurance that the government would be “checked” and “balanced”. An affected party had to sue and allege, like in trust law, a breach of good faith by the “trustee”, the government bureaucrats.
But over time, internal administrative safeguards of due process were put in place so that now, citizens are given a “grievance procedure” prior to lawsuit. This internal safeguard of rulemaking also includes the notifying of the public when rules are to be made, allowing public comment, and holding evidentiary hearings. All this produces a very strong “presumption of good faith” by the courts.
This article by Rachel Barkow puts forth the Revolutionary Fact: this “presumption of good faith” adopted by the courts in civil-administrative law has crept over into the judicial thinking in Criminal Law! Let this dawn upon you: the executive branch attorney, police and courts are blessed with the presumption of good faith without the strict processes of oversight and due processes that act as safeguards against the growth of unfair and unjust rules!
This, says Barkow, is NOT what the Bill of Rights had in mind. The Bill of Rights, as ought to be clear, were based on the real plausibility (if not presumption) of BAD FAITH on the part of the executive branch agents, and sought Bright-Line Rules to protect individual persons against the high likelihood of the corrosive effects which power has on people.
This is a must read article by all citizens, but alas, it is a long and daunting task; and challenges a presumption which has risen to the level of a theological doctrine of belief. Such “religious” doctrines arising in the atheistic or pagan context are called myths which conceal the Truth. So the message Barkow announces is a difficult one to let sink in. we are subjected to 24-hour a day proganda from an early age and the general message from Hollywood and state-school civics courses is that we owe the executive branch lawyers and police a “presumption of good faith”. But if you read the Bill of Rights, you realize this is an oxymoron, like “military intelligence”. Barkow’s only error is to think challenges to this doctrine would succeed only at the federal level. This writer believes natural law, equity, and the Fourteenth Amendment opens up challenges for state prisoners.
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1) Monopolization of Prison Volunteers
The last AA group at NNCC, a Spanish speaking group run by outside volunteers. The last English language group had its last meeting in March 2013. This would make deceased Al Garcia. While he was on the yard for his 20 years, he had up to 10 or 15 groups per week!
One of the Alcoholics Anonymous traditions states that AA shall not “lend its name to any outside enterprise lest problems of money property and PRESTIGE divert us from our primary purpose, to carry the message…”
There ARE A.A. groups available. But only if one has the fortunate PRESTIGE of being associated with the so-called “TRUE CRIT” therapy program which is give Level One status. The founder-director of this program has arranged for outside members to come to her private queendom to let AA and NA have meetings for this “Senior Structured Living Program”, (SSLP). This regulation of exclusion of non-seniors (under 55 years old) of AA meetings constitutes AA’s own rules of non-association, and violates the rights of a protected class—men who cannot or will not join or cannot qualify for membership to this exclusive program.
2) Poem: A Love of Hate, by L.G.
The message passes cell by cell:
“It looks like someone else just died—
I hope it’s not a guy I know”
Thank God! It’s just old man McBride.
His final issue stains the bed.
Despite his sagging skin, and gray old hair,
He was a pretty good ol’ boy—
So why does no one seem to care?
The guards come running, shuffling in
They stand around, and each one fumbles
With their consciences’ and keys.
“He does look pretty far gone” one mumbles.
The nurse comes trudging, snapping her gloves
She pokes his neck and shakes her head
“The pulse is gone”, she says with a yawn.
“McBride… I’m sure it’s better he’s dead”.
So now it’s just formality—
To fake the report, tie on the tag
To the toe of this nasty abnormality
“Roll up his shit, let’s stuff him in the bag!”
Why not let him home to die?
He’s someone’s brother, granpa, dad.
“He’s a piece of shit, fuck’m, fie!
We kill ‘em here because they’re bad!”
I guess they’re right, its not surprising
He wasn’t pretty, but ugly and old.
It’s sure a vile eulogy
“Call the coroner he’s getting cold”.
—
[1] Yung rashly and wrongly blames “patriarchal notions”, citing “The Patriarchal Rhetoric Driving Capital Rape Statutes”, 78 St. John’s L.R. 1119 written by same author Yung.
[2] Citing “Rhetoric in the War on Drugs”, Elwood, 1994.
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report Vol 2, No. 5 (Summer 2012), published Dec. 2012
Vol. 2, No 5 “Veritas in Caritatis”
Summer Issue 2012
THEME: “Audi alterum partem”
Listen to the other side!
“Voice of the Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report”
E-mail: nvjprudence@gmail.com
http://nvjprudence.wordpress.com
Statement of Purpose:
The NJPR Newsletter reports on current prison conditions, good and bad; more importantly it looks at and evaluates the legal processes and the substantive laws which are designed to keep men in prison: Pre-trial issues, probation and parole policy, sentencing structures, post-conviction law, and most important, the philosophy underlying policy in practice.
The purpose of the NJPR Website is to provide a repository of affidavits, declarations and grievances in Web-Dossiers organized by categories of intuitional behavior. Fundamentally, this is a whistleblowing organization trying to associate with other “transparency” projects at an intrastate, national and global level. We seek to identify patterns which can be utilized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
We invite any resident, and especially judicial officers of the Courts and government Administration to write letters to the NJPR.
Index to this Issue:
Section One: Conditions
1. Civil Actions Against NNCC Law Library Closures
2. Parole News: AB 85 Committee Report, Aug. 20 2012
3. Compassionate Release DOES Exist?
4. Cop Beaten by Inmate
Section TWO: Law, Equity and Policy
1. Ex-Con Travel Passport Policy
2. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Administrative Law Loopholes
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1. “Christian” Hater Habits and Correspondence Policy
2. Inmate Intellectual Activities at Rock Bottom
3. Call for Fast Against Injustice
4. Thoughts on Henry David Thoreau
Subscriptions and Services
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Newsletter can be delivered via e-mail or snail-mail. We ask you send a copy into NDOC system and your local legislature and press!
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Section One: Conditions
1) Civil Actions Against NNCC Law Library Closures
The prisoners at NNCC have voiced their grievance at both the Federal District Court and the local district state court. The Federal petition was kicked to the curb apparently. The local action taken was a writ of mandamus/alternative. The court tried to chill the inmate litigants by illegally demanding a federal level of proof of indigency.
The closure of the law library is conjectured to be a long-range plan to lock-down the last remaining medium custody yard in the Nevada system. At this writing, the plan is to create a level system here, which is usually reserved for high security situations. The administrator has just informed the Prison Industry workers they will be moved from cell-designed unit four, to a barn designed unit 10. The battle against state sovereignty begin.
2) Parole News: AB 85 Committee Report, Aug. 20 2012
The Nevada legislature created in 1999 an Advisory Committee to study the draconian sex laws and the registration requirements. NJPR wrote to the Legislative Counsel and received the minutes of its second report. The committee is monopolized by the “criminal justice community” members and under the dominium of the Executive branch Attorney General.
The meeting minutes express with great satisfaction that their laws now conform to the Federal SORNA, which threaten individual states with a 10% loss in Federal Justice Assistance Grants. The Parole and Probation Department come into the prison to break the “happy” news about the decrease of liberties for released inmates condemned for sex crimes, leaving behind public information pamphlets on the subject. The Legislative Counsel refused to send additional documents (exhibits) of the AB 85 Committee, instructing us to contact the boss of the Committee, the Attorney General. Separation of powers issue seem to be implied.
3) Prisoner Let Go on Compassionate Release!!
Some months back, NJPR reported on the lack of statutory authority for releasing men to families to die. Our old friend Doug died stuck on the yard we reported; but recently another very ill man was actually let go! Which is great, but what is the procedure? Is it a new procedure? Is it covered by an Administrative regulation, or by legislative statute? Or does it come under the common law of executive clemency of the executive branch chief, the Governor of the State of Nevada?
To be continued…
4) Cop Taken on in Fisticuffs After Taunting Inmate Complaining of Broken Property
The custody managers of the prison decided to do a deep search of a barn-like housing units at NNCC, and the staff well instructed by their supervisor to be zealous. The result was the destruction of the property (some say it was a trivial Styrofoam dinner tray) of an inmate, who went up to the unit officer in a rage, yelling about his loss.
The officer did not respond with an apology about the breakage and the inconvenience. The officer responded with aggression and a throat of immediate arrest and placement in the “hole”. The inmate apparently took the Cop’s aggressive comments to be an invitation to have a boxing match, and commenced to pummel the officer to the ground. Why taunt? Is it smart? Is it respectful? Is it prudent? Is it in accordance to the Code of Professional Conduct?
Section Two: Law, Equity and Policy
1) Felons and Ex-Felons, and Foreign Travel
We still receive lots of inquiries about the truth of U.S. Passport policy. This is taken verbatim from a letter from San Francisco Passport Agency:
“Indeed, the information you received is correct… Felons and ex-felons are allowed to apply for and receive passports; but please note there are exceptions to this rule. In certain circumstances, felons and ex-felons are given a “namecheck hold” status (depending on the specific circumstances) by law enforcement and when we receive a namecheck hold we are required to have these applications approved by our legal department in Washington D.C. If legal approves these, we issue the passports. If legal does not approve these, we do not issue the passport and send the applicant a letter and advise them that their passport could not be issued at this time. Please note that in these circumstances, no refunds are given.”
2) Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Administrative Blind spots
There used to be, among the American people, a healthy distrust of the individual states. The people were wary of the state’s disrespect and disregard for constitutional rights of the United States, and would look to the federal government for the vindication of those rights. But the states have been able to utilize the coercive power of mass media to create a unanimous identity between the American individual person and the nation-state. This identity between the “people” and its government is the hallmark of the “totalness” of a totalitarian nation-state. But this merging of identity is an extremely new phenomena, and infects both camps of the struggle between “federalists” and “state’s rightists”. The first identifies with the federal government, the second is loyal only to the local despot over the federal agent. The tension of this social conflict is perceptible in the Supreme Court of the United States, especially in the Marshall-Brennan era.
For a good illustration of the attitude creep over time, let’s look at a passage from Coleman v. Thompson 501 U.S. 702, in the dissent of Blackmun, Marshall and Stevens. This is a case that “states rights” philosophy continues the trajectory towards totalitarianism through “its crusade to erect petty procedural barriers in the path of state prisoners” seeking justice in the federal courts, by creating a “Byzantine morass of arbitrary… impediments to the vindication of federal rights” but the right being eroded, the right to come to a higher law, springs from a duty, as all rights do—the duty of the federal courts to keep a vigil over the state’s treatment of its citizens. About the source of this duty, Blackmun notes: “Indeed the duty arose out of a distinct distrust of state courts, which this court perceived as attempting to evade federal review.”
This distrust reflects the truth of power, and the high degree of corruptibility of governments at local levels, and the higher likelihood of the breakdown of the Republican form of government that prohibits the merging of the branches into a “total” state at the local level. It is a prudent habit of caution and the intellectual virtue of circumspection to “distrust” the political seats of power in the shadows of localities. Even the federal district courts are subject to passively give in to the pressures of the various pressures of the executive and legislative branches.
This healthy intellectual distrust of local governments is evident in the Supreme Court insofar as there are judges on that bench that have not swallowed the mythology of the “states rights” doctrine. The Supreme Court is more impossible than local courts due to three things: the dignity of the institution, the extremely high public visibility, and lack of local connections that could influence its Justices. These natural political prophylactics against corruption are not present in local state courts.
And they are not present in state prison mechanisms of local “justice communities”. Normally, both state and federal executive branch agencies are constrained by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments (respectively) to provide due process in the formulation of agency rules and the actions these agencies carry out upon the non-governmental social agencies of the Executive branch, although authorized and funded by the legislature.
But in Nevada (and probably many other states) the prison administration is EXEMPT from normal public participation, oversight and scrutiny as provided for by it Administrative Procedure Act. Nevada Revised Statute 233B.039 (1) (b) EXEMPTS the Nevada Department of Corrections from its rulemaking guidelines. Of course, the effect of this exemption is to make its operations invisible and secret. Even though Nevada has grand jury statutes that permits them to enter into prisons, this is a very rarely, if-ever-used vehicle to draw prison officials into the light of public scrutiny. The only reliable public participation in rulemaking by prison officials has been the end-user, prisoners themselves. But since local courts are now so much under the thumb of the executive and legislative branch, very little justice comes from courts. But that is all the more reason to keep up the good fight!
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1) Ely Chaplain Transfers to NNCC with Hater Habits
Chaplain Stogner came to NNCC after being brainwashed into Ely-style institutional hatred of human beings called inmates. His first Jesus-loving act was to tear down the Chapel schedule and cancel all “inmate-led” services and violated AR 810.3-7A “Inmate Facilitators”. Then he disinfected the chaplain office, installed a huge stereo-system apparently so he can thump his bibles to the beat of Christian-rock (a bizarre oxymoron).
A lawsuit is pending on several issues against his acts. One issue regards a threat he issued to an inmate for writing to the Roman Catholic Bishop Randelph Calvo. To make the story short, the inmate said “Reeaally?” and wrote a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who wrote an e-mail back as follows:
“… Nevada State prison inmates corresponding to and receiving letters from ordained clergy who are also volunteers at the correctional center of the inmate, correspondence is permitted regarding religious matters of faith and morals. When this kind of communication occurs the ordained clergy is acting in the capacity of a professional for the Church and not a lay volunteer.”
As mentioned above, NRS 233B.039 (1) (b) exempts the Department of Corrections from the watchful eye of normal administrative rule-making and adjudication. This creates a dark shadow where citizens hired as staff are invited to be “role models” of the typical consumer culture I-do-what-I-want attitude!
2) Broken Record Tactics: Give Men Something to Do
The first thing Charles Dicken’s noticed about the Philadelphia experiment of mandatory solitary confinement was the amazing creative output of the inmates. The only alternative to stark raving madness was for the wardens of the … to give the inmates opportunities for intellectual stimulus and things to do with their hands.
The Nevada policy is to drive men stark raving mad so that the resulting raving madness can become propaganda that brainwashing (by mass media) the public mind into believing inmates are sub-human, the worst-of-the-worst. Many other “states” have the same policy. Any state that has such a policy has no right to the name or status of “state”. The state has turned into a “nation-state”, which is more of a civil religion than a state, according to contemporary thinkers like.
NNCC has lost its Toastmaster’s International group, the Blue Eagles Gavel Club, all of its inmate led religions programs, all college level course offerings, all of its Alcoholic Anonymous meetings led by inmates and has reduced all inmate activities to psycho-Therapeutics or “programming”. They leave open the gym, organized sports and pool (billiards). Of course also the typical prison “weight-pile” for the bodybuilder cult. But if a fellow would like to buy a Great Course college class, that seems to be excluded by the “safety and security” of the institution.
3) Fasting as Social Action and Prayer for Justice
The Nevada Prison News (NPN) ran an article in its last issue (Summer 2012, p. 5) by SAMAEL, who calls on the audience of that Zine for a fast against the terrible conditions of Ely State Prison. The editors of NJPR are in full support of this. Mahatma Gandhi kicked out British oppressors by his practice of Satyagraha. In the ancient prayer practices of the Roman Catholic, and other Eastern Christian Churches, fasting plays a major role. There are entire seasons of fasting-prayer (Advent before Christmas and Lent before Easter). Every week there is a required fast on Fridays, and the Saturday night before Sunday Mass. The word “breakfast” refers to the nightly fast of the monastic tradition—break-fast.
The important part of the fast is the intentionality, the “giving” aspect of the suffering that accompanies a fast. There are three kinds of ends to prayer in the Christian monastic view: purgative, the illuminative and the unitire. Fasting can be used to any of these ends. By fasting for the purging of an injustice in the world, we are using petitionary prayer.
Now, there is a doctrine of equity and natural law called the doctrine of clean hands: he who asks for justice must DO justice. If we are unjust ourselves, how dare we approach the almighty Creator? So, the intention for justice must be universal—we must wash our hands of our own injustices at the same time as the purging of social injustices in a specific sense.
So, that being said, this editor will offer up and participate in fasting toward any end (if good) suggest by other Nevada prisoners.
4) The Civil Religion of Henry David Thoreau
In the famous essay “Civil Disobedience”, Thoreau drops numerous memorable one-liners and gnomic phrases. For example here is one that should tickle the ears of inmates: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison”. How about this one: “Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it”.
And this: all men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and resist, the government when its inefficiency or its tyranny are great and unendurable”. These are all reiterations, not to poorly spoken of principles of natural law Andthis is my “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies… In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or the moral sense”.
All of this secular wisdom is for naught, and completely nulled out by the following declaration: “There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize theindividual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly”. It can be, and has been demonstrated that there will never be a really free and enlightened state, period! Just like there will never be a man who is an angel, or impeccable (never making error).
The American writer looks at the state from an epistemological perspective, which really is the wrong category to use as a measure (although it continues to be the measure, which explains the wholesale acceptance of modern masses on the omniscient levels of “knowing” by the Homeland Security domestic surveillance program).
The correct category to use is merely Justice, and that is harder to reach perfection in than the techniques of government surveillance. So, as ear-tickling as Thoreau’s quips are, that is all they are. His mind is an early-middle stage onset of immanentism, and this means the loss of the imagination’s power to conceive of the true Power and Authority of the universe. If one cannot do justice to that One, how will justice be done in a plurality of men?
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report – Vol. 2, No 4 Spring Issue 2012 (published in September of 2012)
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report
Vol. 2, No 4 “Veritas in Caritatis” Spring Issue 2012
THEME: “Audi alterum partem” – Listen to the other side!
“Voice of the Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report”
E-mail: nvjprudence@gmail.com
Website: nvjprudence.wordpress.com
Statement of Purpose:
The NJPR Newsletter reports on current prison conditions, good and bad; more importantly it looks at and evaluates the legal processes and the substantive laws which are designed to keep men in prison: Pre-trial issues, probation and parole policy, sentencing structures, post-conviction law, and most important, the philosophy underlying policy in practice.
The purpose of the NJPR Website is to provide a repository of affidavits, declarations and grievances in Web-Dossiers organized by categories of intuitional behavior. Fundamentally, this is a whistleblowing organization trying to associate with other “transparency” projects at an intrastate, national and global level. We seek to identify patterns which can be utilized by the U.S. Department of Justice.
We invite any resident, and especially judicial officers of the Courts and government Administration to write letters to the NJPR.
Index to this Issue:
Section One: Conditions
1. The Retrogression of NNCC Court Access
2. Report on Parole and Probation Practices
Section TWO: Law, Equity and Policy
On Motions to Correct Illegal Sentences
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
Poem: Inmate Gratitude by Terrence Sweeney
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Section One: Conditions
1) Law Library Closure at NNCC
About two years ago, the Administration threw out two thousand hardbound volumes of Supreme Court and Pacific Reporters, claiming the computer access would adequately replace the loss. The prison “saved” no money in the wanton destruction, but probably are losing money through the high cost of digital services through Mathew Bender & Company, Inc. On top of this are the exorbitant printing costs for the hundreds of thousands of pages to replace the pre-printed volumes that would have lasted a hundred years. What kind of moronic fiscal responsibility is that?
Now, in early August, the law library has shut its doors entirely. The prison clerks are not trained in the law and no arrangement for access to trained professionals has been made. Already, copies of personal criminal proceedings are being carried by PRISONER law clerk assistants, by hand from the units to the copy machine in the library and back. This has already caused problems because inmate petitioners cannot be present to supervise the copying of complex pleadings with many exhibits.
2) Report on Parole and Probation
Mike X. is over 60 years old. Some years back, during the course of the break up of his marriage and loss of a family business, he was arrested for sale of a small amount of drugs to an under-cover agent in Reno, Nevada. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to drug court in lieu of prison. The expense of the alternative is borne by the convict to the extent that Mike, who was also without a car, was unable to meet his obligation. He absconded to California, where he had friends and a job waiting for him. He did well for a year or so then was injured and ended up in a convalescent hospital. He was taken custody by local law enforcement, taken to local jail and picked up by Nevada law enforcement and transferred back.
At his hearing, the District Attorney offered drug Court again, but John was in worse condition than before, so he refused and chose to serve his 2-5 year sentence in prison. The judge so ordered, and John, still injured, spent his first three or four months in the prison infirmary. He went to the main units for about three months, then had his first parole hearing.
His “parole plan” for the Parole Board Hearing was to go back to the convalescent home in California and/or to his friends there. He was approved for parole on this plan.
After the hearing, he was informed by his unit officer that they would not release him to California and the reason given was “they don’t do that anymore”. Eventually he was released to Safe Harbor Half-way House at 469 9th Street in Reno, Nevada.
The State, says John, pays the first three weeks of the program fees, and then the rest is up to the parolee. John had been given 29$ upon his release, and the program costs 650$ month. The program, according to John, offered three meals and a bed, and nothing else. Had he been able to stay on his sentence would have expired in January 2011. He was unable to get his disability payments reactivated within the three weeks he had his rent paid by the State of Nevada; the program began to ask for their money, and John was also bound to pay a 30$ per month Parole fee, and a 50$ drug evaluation fee for a psychoanalyst report. The program supplied the card of a professional analyst he was to have hired. John, having no income became overwhelmed and decided to turn himself into the parole officer assigned to his case and lie to the officer so he would get “violated” and taken back to prison.
John’s assigned officer was not in when he arrived. The duty officer that day was assigned to talk to him. John informed her he had taken vicodin’s. She questioned him for about 5 minutes then had another officer came and cross-examined him. They did not drug test him. He was in County Jail in about 2 hours. He was there 2 months. His assigned Probation Officer, Ms Simon Tachi, came to see him to have him sign paperwork. John did not have his required “revocation hearing” until he was in prison for three weeks not while he was at County Jail.
At his Revocation Hearing, John fessed up to what he had done and they reinstated his parole and gave him until April 1 2010 to go back to them and supply them with a new “parole plan”. John is considering that it would be safer for him to spend the remainder of his sentence in prison, as he cannot thrive in the State of Nevada as he has no family, no friends, and no income. If he “expires” his sentence, he would be free from the Nevada system and could travel back to California. John is a professional grade graphic artist.
Section Two: Law and Equity
1) On Motions to Correct Illegal Sentences
Notes on the Use of Edwards for Governmental Evasion of Motions to Correct Illegal Sentences in the State of Nevada.
The Executive branch at local and central levels has convinced the judicial branch that the convicted and incarcerated citizens of the region cannot succeed in finding relief under the statutory “Motion to Correct an Illegal Sentence” (NRS 176.555) UNLESS “it is illegal for being at variance with the controlling sentencing statute” Edwards v. State.
This controlling principle is derived from non-9th Federal District case law. The prisoners at NNCC recently received copies of three non-9th District cases which are cited by the Edwards court to support its pro-government stance of preferential treatment of prosecuting attorney. We will discuss these three cases and show how the local executive lawyers of the government have hoodwinked the judicial branch, and constructed a law that magnifies its own power and vitiates the individual citizen.
This is done by omitting from judicial consciousness the entire law of the underlying cases, and presenting to them only those portions prejudicially favorable to the government. This reductive prevarication creates a sham appearance of the American claim to the rule of law and is a major contribution to prison over-population, because it is a “legal” weapon in the war-on-crime denial of the lower courts, who trusted the statist executive branch lawyers twisted cutting up at the case law to insure its own “victory” at the high cost of injustice to Z. and thousands of others.
Prince v. U.S., 432 A2d 720
Z. was denied his motion to correct his outrageously unfair sentence because it fell within the range of maximum penalty allowed for by legislated statute, as stated in Edwards above. The implied message is that there are NO OTHER CIRCUSTANCES which give the judge cause to change the sentence. This is a fabrication.
The government lawyers derived this legal standard of Nevada from Prince v. U.S., 432 A2d 720, which (the lawyers tell the court) says
“A sentence is a nullity if it is illegal for being at variance with the controlling sentencing statute”.
What the government forgets to tell its local judges is that Prince is a case of the government filing a motion to correct a sentence. The judge in this case departed downward, giving a lighter sentence than called for by the statutes. The government had to file the motion two times before the judge would get it right and impose the ten year sentence. This Prince court relies on Bozza v. U.S. 67sct 645 which points out that “an excessive [broken off]
The case of Z.
We are going to scaffold this discussion upon a live case that probably represents the situation of thousands of illegally sentenced men in the industrial justice system.
Z. was driving in Las Vegas and was typically profiled as a black suspect; he refused to stop for about 30 seconds, but never sped up past miles per hour. He was stopped and searched, which produced two small packets of personal use drugs, one cocaine, one heroin. Z claimed there was no “probable cause” and a public pretender file a motion, and the court colluded with the government to come up with a fabricated police-car computer-generated document that provided a false-positive “cause”.
The defendant was offered a penalty of about four years prison with good time considered. He exercised his constitution right to a trial and paid the jury trial penalty, and eventually got a sentence enhancement on the bifurcation of two charges out of the one act of drug possession and received sixty years. Then, being placed in one of the southern Nevada lock-down prisons where true access to the courts is denied systematically he became time-barred on his Habeus Corpus.
He has been attempting a Motion to Correct since 2011, was denied and now is attempting a Motion to Reconsider the sentence should be “corrected” as well.
Now since the Government’s own stated aims are to seek justice in the abstract and not mere victory over its own citizens. It failed in its obligations to make concessions that excessive sentences can be requested by those convicted of them and the conditions under which this can occur. This failure of the government implies a hidden agenda of winning at all costs, as is if the adversarial system justifies the idea of equity and fairness inimical. So the question of how a prisoner convict can use this Motion to Correct Sentence begs to be answered.
Allen v. U.S. 495 A2d 1145 (D.C. App. 1985)
Another statist interpretation found in the Edwards case which is used to foreclose the Motion from effective use by citizens against the government is the argument that the Motion to Correct an Illegal Sentence can be only brought to fruition if the conviction is presumed to be valid, and that the court cannot entertain arguments of alleged errors in the proceedings prior to the imposition of the sentence. Only when the judge departs from the statutory perimeters can this motion be used—or so says the state. This Allen case builds on Heflin v. U.S. 79sct 451, Robinson v. U.S. 454 A 2d 810.
The third non-9th Circuit case which is the foundation of the repressive Edwards case is the Robinson case, cited above. Now, Robinson relies on U.S. v. Ramsey 655 F2d 398 (1981), which reveals two distinct kinds of illegal sentences: one in which is illegal on its face due to various reasons, and one which is the sentence is imposed in an illegal manner.
Nevada bureaucrats have weaved a public lie that motions to correct applies only when there is a defect in the imposition of statutorily correct sentence (either too much or too little punishment). But we’ve shown above a sentence is also illegal when there is no evidence to support a conviction and the judge fails to catch it. One example is the situation when the government “pyramids” sentences by sneaking in a conspiracy charge on top of the charge of consummating the conspired act—they should merge to one act. Or as in the case of Z, one act of possession of illegal drugs is punished as two acts even though there is no additional evidence to separate the act into two—like time, place or action.
The second way a sentence becomes illegal as described in the underlying Robinson case is the manner in which it is impose of which is a correction of a sentence made illegal by a government “pyramiding of penalties” by creating two counts of guilt for one act.
Now in Allen, the government does not pyramid, and they have proven two acts. But the case clearly defines a situation when a sentence can be illegal in other ways than just being statutorily incorrect. The Nevada Edwards case omits this discussion from the record and carefully redacts the Allen language to find words to fit its argument for statist domination over all the players in the “justice community”.
It is clear that judges themselves, and certainly not state-hired “defender” read the underlying case law to find the whole truth. It is a little know fact how the indigent and poor are routinely denied access to the non- Nevada and non-9th Circuit cases at the facility law libraries, and the Supreme Court will not supply such law except to the WEALTHY inmate who can pay. The rule which the underlying Allen case makes is that a sentence is illegal on its face when it creates two counts and two punishments from a single act, as in the case of Z…
This applies to Z because he was punished for exercising his rights to trial by not only sentencing him twice for one act, but he got a quantum leap of punishment by getting the “habitual criminal enhancement”, and received a potential death sentence of 60+ years! Remember, the government offered him years!
Now, the state of Nevada statute has a ritual procedure that must be met not just substantially but strictly. If the government indicts by Grand Jury and they decide to enhance, they must give a “notice” of such to the Grand Jury and defendant. If the government charges by information then seeks enhancement, the government must Amend the complaint. Not give “notice” to Grand jury, but Amend complaint.
The underlying Robinson case, the court establishes absolute strictness to this ritual. The dissent of Mack says it best:
“The commission of this procedural error can well result in the loss substantive right… since the legal requirement for imposition of a sentence was not met here… the court did not have authority to impose the [enhanced] sentence”.
Z. got a “notice”, not an amended complaint so his sentence is illegal for two reasons: double jeopardy and improper imposition of sentence both of which can be addressed under a Motion to Correct on Illegal Sentence.
However, one cannot see this in the case law of Edwards in Nevada. One has to read all the underlying case law to discover the oppressive violence by virtue of the Executive branch lawyers covering up the whole record, concealing the truth, duping the judges and publics, and reductively obscuring the parts of the rules of law which will diminish government power, and enhance the possibility of victory for citizens in the Anglo-American adversarial system.
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1) Poem:
Inmate Gratitude
Each day you work an angel in my life
Perhaps one day you’ll save me from a knife.
Amid the ridicule you keep me safe from harm
When gangs attempt to try and break my arm
Ready you stand when needed by my side
Even solace you give the night I cried
Comfort when friends and family fell ill and died
Your presence gives no place for evil to hide.
Your days are never simple and always rough
Surrounded by things who try to huff and puff
Challenged by cons to see of your up to snuff
One hardly ever thinks to thank enough.
Often fools, they throw you one more curve
They try so hard to work your final nerve
They blame you first for sentences they serve
Let this be just a thanks that you deserve.
PAX
Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report
2. Food Degeneration
3. Clothing Degeneration
4. Inmate Beaten by Cops– Again
Gödel’s Political Theory
The Tyranny of Parole and Probation
Poem: Progress by Decree (for Doug, RIP)