Category Archives: Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report Newsletter

Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report – Vol. 4 no. 3 Summer 2014

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Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report
“Veritas in Caritatis”             
Vol. 4, No 3, Summer Issue 2014
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 (this issue here)
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. Cameras: For Us, or Against Us? By Rahsquo
2. Crowding, Violence and Nevada Stickney Report
3. Uppity Inmate: Engineering Submission, by Cal
4. Government Pushback, Small Town Style
Section Two: Law, Equity and Policy
1.     The Darkness Deepens
2.     Sicherungverwahrung and the Male Peril
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1.    Report: Nevada Appellate and Post-Conviction Project Now Defunct
2.    Justice Brandeis Innocence Project
3.    New College Program: New Free Dom College
4.    Sociological Study Underway
5.    Obamacare Now Covers Ex-Felons
6.    Poem: The Man in Me by John Fenton
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Section One: Conditions
1) Cameras: For Us or Against Us? By Rahsquo
In a putative effort to curb violence and other illegal activity at NNCC (a medical/retirement facility) cameras were installed in 2011. Prior to this installation of cameras in all units (except the human barn unit 10), the only areas where cameras were active was the infirmary and the visiting room.
The British author George Orwell (ne Eric Blair) in his visionary novel, 1984, described a futuristic society that furnished cameras almost everywhere. “Big Brother” would be individually monitoring your whereabouts. Mr. Orwell’s book was published in the 1930’s, and may have inspired the voyeuristic practices that are today disguised as legal surveillance.
Immediately, I can attest to have witnessed grown men stimulated by the camera installation to exhibit behaviors of hysterical panic about the sudden lack of privacy. They wondered what the cameras were for? Some speculated that they were there to deter and ward off any further assaults by a rogue group of correctional officers under the leadership of a sadistic lieutenant that harassed and physically abused old and crippled prisoners. The mutual occasional fisticuffs that are bound to transpire among 1500 men did not seem to warrant the rise in “get tough” measures imposed by the administration. After all, NNCC, in addition to being a medical facility, is a low-medium yard. Surely the majority of the elderly sick and dying prisoners were no threat to the safety and security of the institution.
Here is an example of the seemly side of camera usage in prison:
After the cameras were up-and-running, a newly admitted prisoner was allegedly assaulted by one of two prisoners in general population. When the “alleged” assault victim reported the incident, the cameras were “played back” and the prison investigator swiftly apprehended the two perpetrator caught on camera—or so the officials thought. In fact, there was no coverage where the actual assault took place— inside the bathrooms. Only the hallways have video monitors in the units. Two black men who appeared on the hallway video “around” the time of the assault. These mistakenly accused were pressured to randomly name two others, who were then charged with the assault. One of the now falsely accused had an alibi that arbitrarily disregarded; he had been in the infirmary for a doctor’s visit and had proof of it. The other black man lived in another wing, and no video footage was use to prove he left that wing to go to the other at the time of the assault. Both innocent men did serious hole time, while the actual bully went home 2 days after the beating!
On the other hand, video evidence has brought some justice to the yard. On Thanksgiving Day 2009, an official lynching occurred in the mental health wards of the prison infirmary, and because of the existence of a video tape of the “cell extraction” the killer correctional officials were removed from duty (at this time there is no knowledge of and criminal changes ever brought against them). Rumors coming out of the correction staff community report the mentally deranged inmate was gassed, tazed, and deprived of air with a plastic bag. One of the rogue cops, before the excrement hit the fan, retired.
The video evidence reportedly resulted in the firing of two officials, the suspension of two others.
So, are the cameras for us or against us? It appears to depend on the practice of a virtue called justice by the controllers of the cameras.
2)   Crowding, Violence and the Nevada Stickney Report
On and off the NNCC situation has included the usage of dayrooms for use as temporary housing in order to upgrade the facility’s Unit bathrooms, increasing the mandated 90 to 1 ratio of staff to inmate to about 140 to 1 in the two housing barns 10A and 10B. this Unit did not need any retrofit, having been built in 2007, so it was used as overflow. The work is now done and the overflow was moved out on July 28.
The mandates of population-staff ratios stem from a lawsuit in the early 1980’s that lasted until 2002. It is captioned Stickney v. List, CR-R-79_11_ECR. I am told stories by old timers, that in those days, correctional officers made minimum wage and supplemented their income by selling drugs, hookers and booze to inmate. The ratio of officers to inmates was 1 UNIT to 1 GUARD, resulting in shockingly high levels of rape (yes, man rape) and assault, obviously exacerbated by drugs and alcohol.
3)   Uppity Inmate: Engineery Total Submission
It is unfortunate duty to report on the retaliation by an NDOC official against a fellow inmate. It is truly troubling because, as a witness, it was clear to me the inmate was innocent of any wrongdoing. It was even more disturbing to witness the capricious, arbitrary, irrational behavior of a high-ranking NDOC official, who was so drunk on her own infallible power, she lost custody of her mind.
The NDOC was in the midst of implementing its standard [unwritten] institutional procedure of geno-punitive retribution. This term describes the practice of operant conditioning of groups. It is a practice consistent with the deprivation theory of corrections that justifies subtle forms of terrorism against target populations aimed at deterring future bad acts.
An inmate of the Unit that [illegally] houses 140 inmates was caught making pruno, or home-made fruit wine. The police found it in the ceiling. He [the winermaker] was sequestered to the disciplinary housing unit. But the [unwritten] policy of NDOC is to punish the entire community in which the transgressor lives. The policy requires acts of aggression by the prison officials against the entire cohort, and in this case included:
The arbitrary and capricious taking of property under color of a law or housing code,
The disestablishment of practices and customs of the inmate community, in this case the use of curtains in front of the defecation toilets and in and around the bank beds for sleeping privacy,
The drastic and absurd removal of the ceiling tiles in the rooms where the pruno was hidden ;
The invention of cosmetic rules of prohibition regarding the placement of fans and television reception antennas, and the storage of clothes, and usage of shelf space.
The sudden capricious demand that “this place has to look like a military barracks”.
The officials made people straighten out the towels hanging at the ends of beds and take down decorative items, or intensive micromanage
Although these seem extremely mild irritants the psychological exacerbation of fear was impressive, due to the mere increase of police presence in the unit. Normally there is one officer on duty 24 hours a duty, and visits by “suits” (high ranking officials) are extremely unusual. During the height of the government hysterical overreaction to the pruno crime, an uppity inmate had the gumption to ask the ringleader of the high rankers applying the operant retribution what the provocation was for such an attack. The Ringleader government thug responded by demanding the inmates Identification card, and ordering his “level reduction” by moving him out of his “Level One” unit into a level Two unit. The level reduction may cause the loss of his job, which would directly increase the amount of time spent in prison because non-workers do not get “good time” credit. The loss of lower custody status reduced his privileges, but he is too terrified to file a grievance, because he fears escalated government push-back by his being moved to a higher custody yard.
The aider and abettor of the Ringleader carrying out the orders of his superior official told me personally, when I asked “why all this hubbub?” “The inmate who confronted the Glorious Ringleader really pissed her off, he should have known his place”.
The practice of harem scarem mass punishments (geno-punitive retribution) has a counterproductive effect of causing inmate-on-inmate violence which is the exact opposite of the job of a correctional facility. The behaviors of the officials trigger mimetic behaviors of the inmates. Because of the immature example of bullying and irrational scapegoating of 139 men to pay for the act of one alcoholic inmate, (violence begets violence), the inmates experienced a huge community increase of blaming, finger pointing, character assassination, backstabbing and faultfinding—against each other. Only a tiny fraction had the gumption to file a grievance, which will be reported on next issue.
4) Government Push-Back, Small Town Style: How to Chill a Prisoner
A recent exposé in the Rolling Stone, (Putin Clamps Down by Janet Reitman 5/8/14) there is an interesting series of observations. Each phenomena has an American homologue.
First, this sentence uses a category of relation between the government and an individual or group:
“Wary of government push-back, the protesters played by the rules,…” (53)
Here, the term push-back refers to the use of the police power of the national government of Russia. Here is an example of how push-back works at a prison facility in the backwood polity of Nevada.
A prisoner at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, run under an experimental regime that imposes collective psychological conditioning (mind control) through a “level system”, suffered head trauma from a piece of falling concrete. He received treatment and was even taken out in chains to be checked at a local hospital. Several days later he found out another man had suffered from a near miss of falling concrete in the same Unit 4 (the lowest level of the operant conditioning system). He filed an emergency grievance, stating he wanted an official to take pictures of the dilapidated concrete ceiling and to be compensated for the pain suffered.
The officer in charge called the victim of falling concrete up to the main administrative office. When he got there he was met by a bizarre sight: all of the correctional staff assigned to the Mayberry control center had collected up into a choral group of 5-7 persons and when the inmate arrived inside the building, they all sang out, in UNISON, the same words, in the same voice:
HIIII ROBERT!
Wha…? Really
Robert filed suit later, and it passed screening, because in addition to the bizarre stage show, these clowns took him to administrative segregation under the color of law.
Section Two: Law and Equity
1)   The Darkness Deepens
The Nevada Department of Corrections is generally exempt from all rulemaking procedures which executive branch officials must use. These Rules are found in Chapter 233B of the Revised Statutes (NRS). 
There was an exception, until recently. The prison store fund rules used to require that the Administrative rulemaking process had to be utilized. It appears that this requirement might have been revoked. This rules requirement penciled in at NRS 209.221 (7) and (8) is referred to in the 233B, stating “except as provided in 209.221, NDOC is exempt from 233B rules”. However, this language is deleted in a recent computer printout of the statute, making NDOC’s discretionary rulemaking power absolute, and thus a despotic dominion.
Chapter 176, NRS 176.0125 establishes the Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice, at paragraph 4, states that the commission shall:

“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;”

There’s some hope in that.
Now, any warden with common sense would want to obtain the intelligence of circumspection by offering to receive “input” from all parties possible. The unwritten rules of reason require this. There are cases where this is done. In 2008, this writer was witness to the actions of Chaplain Garcia at Lovelock. He asked for inmate participation, he was delivered an article of the Prison Legal News article regarding the case at Pelican Bay Prison in California where the officials refused to allow hardbound books. (PLN, July, 07, pg 19)
The result of that case was a court order for the officials to cut the cover off. Garcia brought that law to the meeting and a policy was established to do this. Another example of rulemaking input is at AR 802, Community Volunteers. At 802.04(i) it states “A volunteer is encouraged to submit suggestions for conducting, enhancing or improving volunteer services”. What needs to happen is to change the language to say,
“The warden shall request, on a yearly basis, the volunteers and families of convicts and the general public to submit suggestions. The input shall be tallied and formatted, and a copy delivered to the survey participants, and to the Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice, and the Legislative Counsel Bureau, who shall make said survey report available to the general public in both formats, digital and hardcopy”.
A third example of current potential input for policy review and rules process is the Inmate Advisory Committee (IAC). This practice is being used at the medium yard at NNCC, and in general is used for conveying decrees from the Glorious Leader, and as a pressure release value that deals with cosmetic issues regarding the conditions of confinement. It’s basically a place to whine for whiners and moaners  about trivialities like television reception.
The Principle of Government Secrecy is necessary in some situations, such as in times of war, and the executive war machine needs to conceal its hand from the enemy. The so-called War-on-Crime justifies civil government secrecy. But the “war-on-crime is a product of the ideological apparatus of the official anarchists trying to escalate the war-on-crime for economic good. Malinski v. NY 68 S. Ct 781 demands no ear be given to loose talk about war on crime!
2)   Sicherungverwahrungand the Male Peril—Myth, Spin and Therapeutic Economy
In the April 2014 CURE Civil Commitment Newsletter, the article “The Presumption of Dangerousness” did an excellent job describing the state of affairs. This reports on two dimensions which are important if we attempt to be scientifically circumspect. The first dimension is the historical, and the second is the normative, or “ethical”.
The historical dimensions open upon the Germanic homologue of “civil commitment”, or a “non-punitive” taking by the government of some normal civil right. Traditional German law has something called Massregeln, which seem, like civil commitment, to fall between civil and criminal forms of law. Massregeln include sanctions such a taking away a privilege, like the right to drive a car or work in a particular industry. The non-punitive taking of physical liberty is called Sicherungsverwarung.
Like here, the taking of a right in the realm of civil law have fewer procedural safeguards. In the1871 German penal code they did not distinguish between penalties civil and criminal. Because the civil taking causes suffering, the taking cannot logically be thought of as a non-penalty.
There was a movement to bifurcate the Massregelnfrom criminal law that could not get legislated. The German lawmakers did not want to make it easier for the executive branch to impose civil penalties. However, that increase of power to impose civil removal of physical was gained by guess who? Adolph Hitler and his fascist regime. Although abused by that regime, it has not gone away.
However, today civil commitment must be pronounced at original sentencing (like many American enhancement laws here). It must also be reviewed and confirmed by due process hearing upon termination of the criminal sentence. Also the civil penalty of post-punitive confinement is safeguarded from abuse by the legal principles of proportionality and equity (fairness). Safeguards are built-in in ways that don’t happen in America. This information is taken from “Abusing State Power or Controlling Risk?: Sex Offender Commitment” by Nora Demleitner, 30 Fordham Urb. L. J. [http://law.fordham.edu/fordham-urban-law-journal/ulj.htm] 1621.
The second dimension is the normative, or the moral aspect of law, in its most traditional sense. The current ideological apparatus uses a positivistic rhetoric which colonizes the public discourse to a point of exclusive monopoly, even among the most strident critics of the American law-and-order regime. This means an exclusion of the moral-virtue dimension of law. The historical dimension is tolerated, but the moral is absolutely dismissed as mere opinion. Therefore, all public discourse is a soliloquy of the actuarial statistical mathematics, which appears and sounds impressively scientific. But it is not. The usage of the rhetoric is done purposely by the law-and-order regime to stir up widespread panic, sway the minds of juries and judges, and colonize the minds of the offenders the regime seeks to over-control. This thesis is support by the well-concealed thesis the critical analyses of academics who have exposed the validity of psychotherapeutics as entirely non-scientific.
For example, William M. Epstein, a clinical social worker and professor at University of Nevada -Las Vegas, writes “Psychotherapy as Religion: The Civil Divine in America,” [http://www.amazon.com/Psychotherapy-As-Religion-Divine-America/dp/0874176786] in which he demonstrates convincingly that “The meaning of the field [of psycho-therapy] is derived not from objective evidence of effectiveness but from the preferences of the culture– a sociological marvel rather than a clinical one”.(4)
What this implies is that the normative/moral dimensions of society has been expropriated from its traditional religious institutions and monopolized by a secular institution which conceals its religiosity behind a spurious mythology of a morally neutral “science”. 
This amounts to an expropriation of meaning by the forces of the dominant economic naturalism—“science” merely means “knowledge”, and there can be a “science” of the now shunned realm of reality called the divine, which has been imprisoned into the non-scientific realm of the subjective opinion. Thus human institutions that relate to the divine are targeted and labeled as “non-scientific”, and therefore rejected as a valid source of moral and ethical discipline, in both the day-to-day practicalities of life and in the sphere of political governance.
In fact, the so-called legal principal of the “separation of church and state”, in operation, serves the merge and conflate the functions of the church (and religion generally) into itself. This phenomena did not happen overnight, but the process has a history, and is taken up in the next section of this essay, which is forthcoming.
The current Massregeln of the United States tends to point its violence on the weakest and most morally suspect of society. In the Supreme Court case, Buck v. Bell, it upheld the eugenic therapeutics of purifying the whole fabric of society by sterilizing the morons, mentally retarded, racially impure and sexually deviant, with a minimum of administrative due process—given notice and a one-sided hearing. Only the glaring evils of Adolph Hitler wiped out the statutes in the state legislatures. It is a known fact that Hitler modeled his reforms after the genocidal cleansing statutes of California.
 Civil commitment laws are nothing less than euphemized forms of eugenics, seeking to “cleanse” society not only now, but in the future, of all risk of the new genetic peril: the sex offender. The latest “peril” of (mostly male) is added to the perennial list of targeted classes in the prosecution of national warfare. The First World War saw the mass psychological manipulation of the state psychologist to rouse the American public to war against the “German peril”. In World War II it was the “Yellow peril”. In the cold war it was the “Red Peril”. During the drug wars it was the “Black Peril”. Today we see a gender war, creating the target of the “Male Peril”. [See “The Emerging Criminal War on Sex Offenders” by Corey Raybarn Yung, 45 Harv. C. R. –C.L.L. Rev. 435]. Since the vast majority of sex offenders are male, it is not illogical to see the current Massregeln in terms of a military offensive in the broader Gender War. [See “The Feminist War on Crime” by Aya Gruber, 92 Iowa L. Rev. 741]
   
As an “enemy combatant” labeled as a “sex offender”, men convicted of such an offense against the “state” all face civil commitment, especially if we evaluate the phenomena with sophistication. In other words, there are now increasing restrictions attached to the regular penal sentences that constitute indirect and constructive forms of civil commitment in operation, yet not called civil commitment. They are imposed without due process.
Men released from prison are paroled, because the vast majority, no matter the degree of the crime, are given life sentences with possibility of parole. So they are on life time parole, which federally or locally mandated residence restrictions, and are subjected to lengthy sentences for failing to register every three months or being found within three or four football fields locations of any congregations of minors. So, we see the presumption of dangerousness not only upon release. We find the presumption in the pre-trial stage during incarceration, at parole hearings and when granted parole—for the rest of the offenders life.
The other observation with an American homologue is this:
“A second and even more crucial change in the law gave the prosecutor’s office unlimited discretion on whom to prosecute [in violations of public assembly law].”
So, the implication here is twofold:
–          That prior to this liberation of state prosecutors from limitations on their discretion, there were more stringent rules in place;
–          That the hallmark and measure of how despotic and tyrannical a government is, one looks at the constraints in place on the state prosecutors.
Therefore, we can conclude that there is no greater tyranny and no great despot in the international scene than the USA. Why? Because only in the United States does the government prosecutor have absolute discretion, unfettered by any rules, any oversight, or any power greater than themselves; and this power is not hierarchic and inefficient.
The absolute power is networked in a polycentric grip through 3,144 county district attorneys, plus the huge staffs of 50 state attorney general’s office (not counting territories). Add to that number the massive United States Attorney General’s office spread out through the federal district court system, with each deputy exercising with not a single constraint on their discretion—they have despotic dominion. All that exist is a hollow and meaningless, as well as non-binding, codes of professional ethics, all of which clearly and expressly do not give legal rights or cause of action to hold the network of District Adversaries accountable.
   
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1) Report on the Nevada Appellate and Post-Conviction Project
NJPR editorial policy is to maintain a letter-of-inquiry campaign to follow-up on people, organizations and writers who show concern about the American police state. Recent solicitations to the national office of “Critical Resistance” [at 1904 Franklin Street, Ste. 504, Oakland CA, 94612] produced a national “Pro Bono Legal Resource” list. The only outfit listed for Nevada is:
Nevada Appellate & Post Conviction Project
When this reporter wrote to the address on the Resource list, he was replied to by Michael Pescetta, Chief of the Capital Habeus Corpus Unit at the Federal Public Defender office [at 411 E. Bonneville Avenue, Ste. 250, Las Vegas, NV 89101]. Says Mr. Pescetta “The Project no longer exists. The capital habeus unit of the FPD now does the work that the Project formerly did”.
The guy goes on to say he might be able to provide referral services if a concise clear summary of the case was sent to the Federal Public Defender. Here is the follow-up letter which has been sent to the Federal Public Defender, Michael Pescetta:
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of July 15, 2014. You implied in your letter that you might be able to provide a referral if a clear status summary of the case is provided. I’m just checking to see if I understood you correctly.
Also, I’m enclosing a copy of a letter received from the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project. It identifies a Non-DNA technique of fighting actual innocence cases. As a contributing editor to an all-prisoner written whistleblower newsletter, Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report, I am seeking referral to investigative journalists who might be interested in starting a West Coast Iinnocence Project that serves the horrifying embarrassment of the Nevada criminal justice administration. You can send an email to nvjprudence@gmail.com .”
2) Justice Brandeis Innocence Project
As mentioned above, NJPR has discovered (through the Critical Resistance Resource List) the Innocence Project at Brandeis University. The Project is run by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at 415 South Street, MS 043, Waltham MA 02454. The Project does not use forensic DNA evidence as all other innocence projects. Also, as all other innocence projects, the Brandeis Project serves an exclusive region without exceptions.
NJPR is attempting to compile a list of investigative journalist in order to organize a Western United States Innocence Project that would utilize the journalistic method, as it is sorely needed.
Let us remind ourselves that the Motherland of the U.S., Merry Old England, has a permanent, government funded innocence commission, which excludes all police and prosecutors from its review board.  Here are some authors of investigative reports on the criminal administration:
karmstrong@seattletimes.com
mauricepossley@gmail.com
bmoushey@pointpark.edu
3) New College Program for Prisoners
New Freedom College is a non-profit school recently established with non-accredited college courses available on a sliding-scale starting at $33.00 per unit ($99. Per 3 unit course), a price which INCLUDES the price of the textbook.
NFC has applied for official accreditation from the nationwide Distance Education and Training Council. The mandatory probationary period for the school began in June 2013 and the school officials fully expect to pass master in June 2015, less than a year from now.
The low price above applies to those who have agreed to pursue a 2 or 4 year degree program. There are fear: Business/Entrepreneur Paralegal Studies Drug and Alcohol Counseling, and English Language.
New Freedom College
1957 West Burnside St. #1660
Portland, OR 97209
Newfreedomcollege.org
4) Sociological Study Underway
The July 2014 Prison Legal News article titled “BOP Grievance System Contributes to Compliance or Defiance of Prisoners” will serve as an inspiration for an upcoming investigative piece on the NDOC grievance system. A contributor to the NJPN whistleblowing project will poll inmate populations and create a statistical analysis of the data collected.
The Editors of NJPN invite contributions from all sources to add to the data set, such as ideas for polling questions and the name and location of sociological prison studies or ideas for future research projects. Contact our public e-mail address:
nvjprudence@gmail.com
The data of this study will be situated in comparison to the study “Procedural Justice and Prison: Examining Complaints Among Federal Inmates 2000-2007” by the U.S. Marshalls Service and the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland.
5)  Obamacare Will Cover Prisoners? Uh, No.
It is interesting that prison officials are refusing to disseminate to all prisoners the great hope-creating news that affects the future well-being of prisoners. Inmates are thus once again deprived of the comforting sentiment of hope.
The National CURE outfit reports that “Some [un-named] correctional systems are helping” to get inmates enrolled into Obamacare prior to release. For older invalid inmates, this means release can be to a community nursing home. CURE also reports that the Affordable Care Act also covers, if the state applies, prison and jail inmates who have to go to outside hospitals for intensive care.
It’s a complex law that will be research and report on later. Family and friends can call 1-800-318-2596 for information. That the prison population of America is deprived of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act is an expression of the general policy of the ”deprivation theory” of corrections. To extend this hypothesis further, the exclusion of prisoners from basic care is sure evidence of a government advancement of the religious principle of the “unworthy poor”.
6) Poem: The Man in Me, by John Fenton
Before it’s too late
I saw the man in my house
And he could hardly breath
I pursued the man to desperate end
I’d see him here and there again
Standing there in my refracted dreams
Too scared to bleed, to ‘fraid to fight
Steal away into the night
Where only a thief should have the right
Leaping through every hide-and-find
Ever allusive not quite in my grasp
I finally met the man where I could see
Behind the mirror he wept, the man cries for me.

New issue: Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report Vol 4 nr 1

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We received the following from our comrades via email, and decided to repost it here:

Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report

Vol. 4, No 1      “Veritas in Caritatis”              
Winter Issue 2014

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. 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

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We received per email the following:

Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report
Vol. 3, No 4     “Veritas in Caritatis”              Fall Issue 2013
THEME: “Audi alterum partem”
Listen to the other side!
“Voice of the Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report”
E-mail:  nvjprudence@gmail.com    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. NNCC Doubles Its Lunch Calorie Intake (Thank God)
2. Pressure letters on “Prison Rape Elimination Act”
3. Kevin Pope Taken to the Hole, or Worse
4. Open Letter to Senator David Parks
Section TWO: Law, Equity and Policy

1.     Politics of Fear and Ignorance, by Anonymous
Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1.    Prison Waiting Contest
2.    Job Application Policy Charges
3.    New Second Chance Bill in U.S. Congress
4.    NNCC Drug Experiment as Civil Religion

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!

E-mail: $3 for 6 months
            $5 for 12 months

Snail-mail: $8 for 6 months
                $15 for 12 months

 Dept. of Justice Issue Dossiers:
Scanning, storage and Electronic Delivery of Dept. of Justice, press, politicians and state administrators.
            .75¢ 1st 10 pages ($7.50)
            .60¢ per page after that

Customized letter: $1 per 250 word

Section One: Conditions

1)   NNCC Food Policy Change—to the Better?

In August 2013 the officials basically doubled the calorie intake of the midday lunch meal by offering two sandwiches, instead of one. Since terminating the hot lunch policy two years (or so) ago, the wardens have carried out the master plan of the NDOC czars in giving out only a “sack lunch” at ALL facilities. Prior to this deprivation, the sack-lunch policy was only at the high security prisons. Now it is everywhere, making all prisons equal in terms of food intake policy. Andre Sakharov once coined the term “convergence theory” that proposes a sociological analogy to the phenomena of water seeking the lowest level possible. He noticed that in totalitarian states the idea of the “good” seems to be reversed, and government actors and leaders are bizarrely inclined or predisposed to emulate the agency leaders who are the least humane, charitable or decent.

The repressive food policy of continued downward trajectory seems to have hit bottom and bounced up a notch. Even the quality of the lunch meats served has improved a bit. Thank you.
2)   Pressure Letters on PREA

Federal law required that all state prisons and local jails must have been in compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act. One of the inmates informs NJPR that he wrote to the NGO “Just Detention International” and received a packet of information, [Address: 3325 Wilshire Blvd # 340, Los Angeles CA 90010, info@justdetention.org]. The packet of information included the name of the NDOC point person in charge of supervising this compliance. The inmate proactively wrote a letter to the NDOC staff asking for a breakdown on the specific actions taken by NDOC to comply with the federal law.

Suddenly, posters went up all over the grounds at the NNCC facility, announcing the existence of federal anti-rape law. The proactive inmate received a curt one sentence letter from an unknown official in Las Vegas stating a conclusory announcement that NDOC is in compliance with federal law”. The inmate also sent an FOIA request to the U.S. Dept. of Justice asking for Nevada’s compliance reports, and they have not responded within the mandatory 20 day period.
3)   Kevin Pope Disappears

NJPR writer Kevin Pope has disappeared. The rumors are flying. All that was seen was that an S and E (Security and Escort) officer drove up to the back side of Kevin’s unit in a black van, entered into Kevin’s dorm, where he was taking an afternoon nap, and rousted him, cuffed him up and walked him out to the van and drove away. Some rumors have it Kevin was taken to Ely State prison, which is bad news considering Kevin’s heart condition (triple bypass).

Kevin is the most prolific writ writer on the yard, and the most helpful legal mind on the yard, always ready to stop what he was doing to listen and offer his knowledge.

We won’t repeat hear the police-generated rumors about the charges against Kevin, as that would serve to dignify the likely-to-be untrue content.   

Om-namah-shivaya, Kevin—stay in prayer.
4)   Open Letter to Senator Parks of Nevada

Senator David Parks
PO Box 71887
Las Vegas NV 89170-1887
Dear Senator:
Two recent articles in the Prison Legal News (Nov., 2013) have inspired me to share them with you.

The first article highlights the American practice of non-transparency and suppression of press coverage of criminal justice systems, prisons and the aftereffects. Any “news” that appears is bias based and “criss driven”. In Nevada, the court procedural rules are made without benefit of public scrutiny, the prison regulations of NDOC are exempt from normal rulemaking safeguards, and the behaviors of the parole departments are shielded by layers of bureaucratic secrecy. 

Here is a solution idea: the Ombudsman idea which failed in recent legislation. Both New Jersey and Iowa have an Ombudsman office and Vermont has a Prisoner’s Rights Office, 6 Baldwin St., 4th Floor Montpelier VT 05633, www.defgen.state.vt.us. that takes care of the problems of prisoners and press blackout of prisoner conditions, as such operations could be and should be open to public scrutiny of records and rulemaking processes.

The next article is related: the suppression of accurate data given to the public, in this case to the “pre-trial detainee”. The article highlights a study by the federal Government Accountability Office titled “Indigent Defense: DOJ Could Increase Awareness of Eligible Funding”. The judicial processes of the executive branch agencies are obliged by natural fairness to notify applicants and defendants of civil enforcement of all the citizen’s rights and rules of engagement. Why is this notification abandoned in the criminal justice system?  Defendants are deliberately blinded from the completely suppressed information such as court rules, processes, practices, customs and pertinent statutes, and all rights devolving to the detainee under the law. 

The solution is to apply for an Edward J. Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program to insure the cost of providing the ADKT 411 “Indigent Defense Standards” to all detainees, and pay for costs of supplying all the notification of the courts laws, rules and basic motions and practices. Only this will level playing field of the adversary system.
Section Two: Law and Equity
1)   Politics of Fear and Ignorance, by an Anonymous prisoner of Nevada
Political Agendas at the Expense of Public Safety

The Inconvenient Truth

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.

Interestingly, the State has nearly unlimited resources and manpower to pass sex offender laws and hand out extensive and multiple criminal sentences like free candy in light of an overcrowded penal system and substantial budget constraints. It’s amazing what they can accomplish when they put their minds to it. The Prosecutor’s office does not seem to be begging the Legislature to be relieved of their responsibilities to any degree like the Central Repository did.

It appears the rationale behind relieving the Central Repository from collecting sex offender recidivism data may have been a politically motivated decision made intentionally at the expense of public safety. The agency could have very easily been provided the resources to achieve their objectives.

Any official state-sponsored study on Nevada’s sex offender recidivism could call into question the rational of current sex offender laws and the political agendas of those responsible for passing and/or sponsoring them. Such studies could also reveal inconvenient truths about sex offender recidivism in Nevada that could take the steam out of election year. How can a politician or a judicial candidate compete for office, pass, or adjudicate politically popular laws based on unverified anecdotal assumptions, popular myths, or traditionally perceived conceptions about sex offenders when the truth about such offenders stands as an inconvenient obstacle to the promotion of fear and ignorance needed to persuade naive constituents for their vote and continued support?

Jumping from one unverified myth to another every election year only promotes fear and ignorance at an enormous financial expense while only benefiting a political agenda at the expense of public safety.

Since at least 1959, the United States Supreme Court has observed that education is a deterrent to crime. See Kingsly International Pictures Corp. v. Regeats of Univ. of N.Y., 360 U.S. 684, 689 (1959). Keeping the public uneducated or otherwise ignorant about sex offender recidivism by relieving the Central Repository from collecting data on the subject appears a substantial and affirmative step by our Legislature to promote crime. In other words, a political agenda has taken priority over public safety. Fear and ignorance about Nevada sex offenders remain the status quo.

The Political Agenda at Work
The low recidivism rate of convicted sex offenders oddly remains a secret in today’s society.  In McKune v. Lile, 536 U.S. 24, 33 (2002), the United States Supreme Court cites to the DOJ’s 1997 report on Sex Offenses and Offenders for the finding that all sex offenders have a “high risk of recidivism.” Yet this report finds the recidivism rate of released sex offenders for new crimes as 7.7%, and that rate is the second lowest rate of recidivism of all released offenders in the study. Also cited by the High Court for this apparent “high rate of recidivism” is another 1997 DOJ report on Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1983. Interestingly, after making an inquiry to the DOJ, no such report was released in 1997.

In Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84, 103 (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court zealously upheld a sex offender registration and notification law by ratifying the Legislature’s findings that all sex offenders, as a class, have a high rate of recidivism without first independently verifying those facts.

Without those unverified legislative findings, it would appear that the sex offender registration and notification laws would have been decreed unconstitutional. That would have called into question the constitutionality of all sex offender registration and notification laws across the country. The entire opinion of Smith v. Doe relied substantially on the unverified or otherwise affirmative misrepresentations about sex offender recidivism.

When a constitutional right is at stake, the usual judicial deference to legislative findings gives way to an exercise of independent judgment of the facts to ascertain whether the legislative body has drawn reasonable inferences based on substantial evidence. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S.  622, 666 (1994). Quoting from non-existent DOJ reports and making affirmative misrepresentations of fact from existing reports is not an exercise of independent judgment based on substantial evidence. It appears that a political agenda encouraged a desired result rather than a just and accurate one.

Legislatures and courts around the country are now making serious decisions about laws based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmative misrepresentations about sex offender recidivism. Why must the truth be a pliable commodity in this country and be distorted to fit political agendas? The politics of fear and ignorance remain the order of the day.

Causes and Effects of Sexual Abuse

There are “correlations between childhood sexual abuse and later problems such as substance abuse, dangerous sexual behaviors or dysfunction, inability to relate to others on an interpersonal level, and psychiatric illness.” Kennedy v. Louisiana, 171 L.Ed.2d 525, 568-69 (2008)(Alito, J., dissenting)(quoting authoritive reports on child sexual abuse). “Victims of child rape are nearly 5 times more likely than nonvictims to be arrested for sex crimes and nearly 30 times more likely to be arrested for prostitution.” Id.

There are legions of medical and scientific studies that empirically demonstrate that sexually abused children have a high disposition to commit sexually based crimes in the future. It is not uncommon for a convicted sex offender to have a history of being sexually abused as a child.

Without thinking twice, many in our society would find it absurd for a convicted sex offender to babysit a child or run a day care center. Would you take your chances with an adult who was a victim of childhood sexual abuse? They do not register and background checks will not likely provide a clue to their potential to commit a sexual offense. They are not subject to any degree of oversight. The heightened potential of a victim committing a sexual offense is an inconvenient fact that cannot be lightly disregarded if public safety, victimization, and crime prevention are to be taken seriously.

How many politicians expect to get your vote or support if they suggest or propose victims register to prevent future sexual offenses or to otherwise promote public safety? If registration apparently works so well for convicted sex offenders, then why not for victims if public safety is of central concern? Since registration is not a form of punishment according to a substantial weight of judicial authority, then there should be no problem. Right?

A Solution

Unlike convicted sex offenders, victims of sexual abuse are never required to register despite their heightened potential to commit a sexual offense. If there is a genuine concern for public safety and future sexual offenses behind registration and notification laws as authoritatively held by the U.S. Supreme Court in Smith v. Doe, then it would be perfectly rational to require victims to register. To hold otherwise would compromise public safety and promote future sexual offenses followed by more victims. Why wait for a victim to commit a sexual offense and create new victims before requiring them to register? That’s illogical and only promotes a continuing offense cycle of new victims followed by future potential offenders. That kind of cycle needs to be stopped!

Any concerns for privacy over registration and notification requirements are substantially outweighed by the government’s legitimate objective of public safety. I have yet to see any court relieve registration requirements for privacy concerns.

Victims should be relieved that registration and notification requirements do not promote the goals of punishment and are purely regulatory pursuant to Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. at 105-06. Furthermore, a conviction is not required to impose a civil regulatory law. Id. At 113 (Stevens, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part)(observing that a conviction is not a necessary predicate for civil commitment).

It is true that not all victims commit sexual offenses in the future. The same is also true with convicted sex offenders. In any case, registration and notification requirements are imposed on all sex offenders regardless of their individual risk to reoffend. Doe, 538 U.S. at 104. There is no reason why this same requirement cannot be imposed on all victims of childhood sexual abuse since public safety is of central concern.

If victims have a high potential to commit sexual offenses based of empirically accurate and verified research but are not required to register, then the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution requires convicted sex offenders be treated the same. If not, then the public safety rational that is at the very basis of registration and notification laws are truly pretextual to an agenda towards using legislative and judicial agendas to punish convicted sex offenders; a rational that plainly cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny on several fronts. Given the pervasive attitudes toward convicted sex offenders, it would be naive to assume otherwise.

If our government chooses not to collect data on sexual offenses but yet continues to legislate and make fundamental decisions about sexually based crimes and laws, then they are willfully navigating in the dark. They have chosen to disregard your safety at the expense of their political agenda of fear and ignorance. The citizens and residents of this State should be outraged!

Ron S.
A Nevada prisoner

Section Three: Art, Culture, Education and Religion
1)   Prison Writing Contest Info
Send an SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) for submission guidelines:

Vidahlia Press and Publishing House
800 Town and Country Blvd.
City Center, Ste. 300
Houston TX 77024

Submission Deadline is February 1, 2014

Another possible publication outlet is:

Criminal Justice Journalists
c/o Dept. of Criminology
University of Pennsylvania
McNeil Building Ste. 483
3718 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6286
2)   Job Application Policy Changes

Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (C.U.R.E.) reports in their recent newsletter report two recent positive policy changes for prisoners leaving prison.

First, in April of 2012, the United States has prohibited private corporate policy which acts as a “blanket denial of employment” to ex- felons. This mandate was issued by Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (E.E.O.C.) says the CURE people. For information:

EEOC Library/Reading Room
131 M Street NE
Washington DC 20507

Second, on October 30, 2013, Target Corporation modified its job application forms to remove the criminal history questions. NJPR will investigate into the creation of national and local employers who have followed suit, and demand a policy statement from Nevada officials.
3)   New Second Chance Bill in U.S. Congress
In April of 2008, President Bush signed the Second Chance Act authorizing federal grants to state punishment authorities “to improve outcomes for returning to society” after incarceration. The response of our Glorius Leader in Nevada was to cut out college programs at NNCC, stop the horticulture programs, put a stop to Alcoholics Anonymous, shut down law libraries, shut down regular libraries in the units, shut down the veterans of Vietnam Association activities and shut down the public-speaking training club of Toastmasters International. The Congress of the United States, after five years, has introduced S. 1690 and HR 3465 to continue funding the practices and policies that help prisoners.
     There is a word that means “deriving pleasure from cruelty”. Psychobabblers call it sadism, the religious tradition calls it diabolical. To deny a man the benefit of enjoying a legal right offered by the statutes of the United States is most certainly a cruelty. One wonders at the source of the Glorus Leader’s cruelty, sadism or Satanism?
4)   NNCC Drug Experiment as Human Sacrifice of the Civil Religion: An Interview

An article in Nevada CURE asked for responses to the question “Is Forced Medication an NDOC Problem?” Recently, several participants of the “psych ward”, Unit 6, were kicked out, so NJPR asked them some questions, after they read the CURE article.

NJPR: So, is forced meds a problem?
Griz: Yeah, it is a problem.
NJPR: How do they “force” you to take meds?
Griz: They take you to the hole in 7B.
NJPR: OK, they cuff you up and take you to the hole—how do they actually force the meds on you?
Griz: They come and “extract” you, hit you with shields, taze you, thank they force a shot of Haldol into your ass.
NJPR: Who is “they”?
Griz: The SERT team. [ed., Special Emergency Response Team]
NJPR: Tell me about he federal experimental drug program you mentioned. How do you know its funded federally?
Griz: State ain’t got no money. They cut our food back. How else can staff bring in fancy new flat screen TV’s and all these special training videos?
NJPR: So you’re never seen any actual documents?
Griz: Well, not really. Just the waiver forms.
NJPR: Do they tell you what drugs they are giving you?
Griz: yeah, they do. But they don’t tell you what the side effects are. We ask them to tell us, but they won’t answer us. They say they are too busy to talk about things.
NJPR: Why were you kicked out?
Griz: A misunderstanding I was having with another inmate—we were not physically fighting. We just went down to his cell to talk things out, and this guy’s cellmate misinformed staff about it. She blew it out of proportion.
NJPR: Who is she?
Griz: *****, the psych that has been there the last twenty years.

There is clear need for Freedom of Information Act demands made, but where does one start? Is it the Food and Drug Administration or the Department of Justice? Would the prison officials respond to inquiry?

HEIL HITLER, HEIL NDOC!

Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report (summer 2013)

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Vol. 3, No 6    
“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!

E-mail: $3 for 6 months
            $5 for 12 months
Snail-mail: $8 for 6 months
                $15 for 12 months

Dept. of Justice Issue Dossiers:

Scanning, storage and Electronic Delivery of Dept. of Justice, press, politicians and state administrators.

  .75¢ 1st 10 pages ($7.50)
            .60¢ per page after that
  Customized letter: $1 per 250 word

——————–
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)

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Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report
Vol. 3, No 5 “Veritas in Caritatis” Winter/Spring Issue 2013
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. 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

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!

E-mail: $3 for 6 months
$5 for 12 months
Snail-mail: $8 for 6 months
$15 for 12 months

Dept. of Justice Issue Dossiers:
Scanning, storage and Electronic Delivery of Dept. of Justice, press, politicians and state administrators.
.75¢ 1st 10 pages ($7.50)
.60¢ per page after that
Customized letter: $1 per 250 word

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

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Nevada Jurisprudence and Prison Report

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!
E-mail: $3 for 6 months
            $5 for 12 months
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                $15 for 12 months

Dept. of Justice Issue Dossiers:
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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)

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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

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!

E-mail: $3 for 6 months
$5 for 12 months
Snail-mail: $8 for 6 months
$15 for 12 months

Dept. of Justice Issue Dossiers:
Scanning, storage and Electronic Delivery of Dept. of Justice, press, politicians and state administrators.
.75¢ 1st 10 pages ($7.50)
.60¢ per page after that
Customized letter: $1 per 250 word

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