Dispatch from the inside: A prisoner in solitary watches as guards use Tasers on a naked, mentally-ill woman in a shower, and reflects on their increasingly brutal use in the #Texas correctional system. https://www.texasobserver.org/an-inside-look-at-taser-use-in-texas-prison/
“In solitary confinement, many prisoners suffer from mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar, and psychosis that are exacerbated by prolonged isolation. Those suffering from schizophrenia and other mental diseases are target practice for the Tasers on a daily basis.” https://www.texasobserver.org/an-inside-look-at-taser-use-in-texas-prison/
"Both groups were surprised that they had so much in common. The condemned women were astonished that the nuns had chosen to live a life nearly as confined as their own, in rooms that they, too, called 'cells.'"
Lawrence Wright for The New Yorker: https://longreads.com/2025/03/13/the-nuns-trying-to-save-the-women-on-texass-death-row
Death penalty update: On March 11, the Court of Criminal Appeals stayed David Wood’s execution. The court has not yet announced whether it will send the case back to the trial court to review the evidence of Wood’s innocence.
https://www.texasobserver.org/david-wood-execution-desert-killer/
“They were accusing me of every unsolved crime on the planet.”
Despite numerous oversights and concerns with his case highlighted by his attorneys, David Wood is scheduled to be executed on Thursday. https://www.texasobserver.org/david-wood-execution-desert-killer/
#DeathPenalty #CriminalJustice #politics #USpol #news #Texas #prison #HumanRights
Hmmm.... so the Govt's answer to extreme workloads for probation officers, is not to invest in more staff but rather to cut provision of rehabilitation programmes & lower the grade of staff that deal with sex offenders (in England & Wales).
This looks like yet another case of the Govt. knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing... the social costs of this sort of this sort of myopic politics are all too predictable!
Jailhouse snitch testimony is considered a red flag by many legal experts. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 256 people who have been exonerated of felonies in the United States since 1989 were convicted in a case using jailhouse informant testimony. Sixteen were from #Texas. https://www.texasobserver.org/david-wood-execution-desert-killer/
American prisons run on forced labor. For @bolts, historian Robert Chase answered reader questions about the legal basis for paying incarcerated people below minimum wage, whether the Americans with Disabilities Act applies in these circumstances, who has the authority to stop prison labor, and more.
https://boltsmag.org/the-past-and-present-of-prison-labor-your-questions-answered/
Court filings reveal a bombshell: A former cellmate of one of the informants said he knows that the story the state used to convict Wood—the purported jailhouse confession—was made up with the help of El Paso police.
https://www.texasobserver.org/david-wood-execution-desert-killer/
This is an awful story of how the failure of simple technology (a broken intercom, an unused phone line) contributed to a woman's inability to get prison authorities to intervene when her husband seemed her (correctly) to be suicidal...
If you wanted an example of how cuts to maintenance budgets are not simple savings but can be lethal, this would be a fatal & awful case to cite.
Really, this country is just falling apart!
Because #Trump had recently warned, “We are watching [Zuckerberg] closely, & if he does anything *illegal*” during Trump’s 2nd term, “he will spend the rest of his life in #prison,” this opportunity must have sounded enticing. #Zuckerberg indicated that he would not in any way obstruct Trump’s agenda, acc/to the Times, & foisted blame for any prior offenses onto subordinates.
Most of the #oligarchs submitted, but those who didn’t went to #prison or into #exile, lest they fall prey to the country’s epidemic of window-plunging deaths. (Khodorkovsky was imprisoned, putatively for fraud & tax evasion, but really for supporting independent media & opposition parties.) Since then, affinity for #Putin has been a sine qua non of high-level economic success in Russia.
How To Pump A Memecoin, 2025 Edition
1. get arrested for stealing pro #Israel yard signs
2. get sentenced to 8 months in prison
3. escape from prison
4. launch a memecoin
5. rug everyone for $50k
6. donate everything to Palestinian charities
7. go on the run from the law with an active twitter account and a firearm
never a dull day in crypto
https://x.com/peedenisonline/status/1893800513860174143
This sounds like an extraordinary memoir!
As a teenager, Tanya Smith stole bank reserves over the phone to help friends and neighbors pay off overdue utility bills. When the F.B.I. derided her, saying Black people "don’t have the brains" to pull off complex heists, she taught herself to hack computers and went on to steal tens of millions from banks and casinos in a multi-year crime spree
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/c6fd7e99-e74c-4e1b-b769-9a84bf520f29
1/2
Eva Wiseman's point about the prison system not being a suitable substitute for proper care for women who are mentally ill is absolutely right;
we have (like so many other aspects of our society) seemed to have returned to the C19th callousness & brutality while claiming there's no alternative.
There's alway an alternative, we just refuse it!
Richard Tabler is scheduled to be executed on Thursday, which will make him the second person executed by #Texas in 2025. We examine his complicated relationship with the criminal justice system during his case: https://www.texasobserver.org/death-penalty-richard-tabler-2025/
Rocío San Miguel, a Venezuelan human rights lawyer, has been held in the infamous "Helicoide" prison by the #Maduro Regime since 9 February 2024. She needs urgent care for a broken bone.
#Venezuela #HumanRights #Helicoide #Prison #Caracas #Repression #Dictatorship #HumanRightsLawyer
Death penalty experts refer to people who forego part of their appeals in order to expedite their executions as “volunteers.” 39 people executed in Texas since the 1980s have sought to fast-track their executions. At times, Richard Tabler wants to be one of them. https://www.texasobserver.org/death-penalty-richard-tabler-2025/
In New Jersey, there’s no legal mechanism for judges to take into account whether a defendant suffered abuse that may have been a factor in their committing a crime. Seventy-two percent of first-time offenders imprisoned for a violent crime in the state’s women’s prison were abused by their victim. While Governor Phil Murphy has granted clemency to some people, The ACLU of New Jersey and other groups are now advocating for a legislative fix. @bolts takes a look at the issue.
https://boltsmag.org/new-jersey-clemency-and-sentencing-for-survivors-of-abuse/
