In this edition: 

The Department of Justice announces its investigation of two Pennsylvania prisons, attempted suicide and subsequent abuse at Allegheny County Jail where guard is also charged with attempted smuggling and more...

Suicide Attempt Outlines Flawed Justice System: Paul Weimer attempted suicide at 1:00 A.M. at the Allegheny County Jail on October 31st. He was found by his cellmate 15 hours later with blood coming out of his mouth. Weimer was taken to Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh,in a coma, and survived. His girlfriend, Mary Dininno, got a court injunction to be able to visit him. When she arrived on the scene, Weimer was in poor condition with severe head injuries and a ripped anus. It is unclear how Weimer sustained those injuries, but Dininno stated that guards at the jail nearly lost their job, that she was expecting an investigation into Weimer’s unrelated injuries, and that they were sweeping it under the rug. Weimer attempted suicide by swallowing pills. When an investigator asked Dininno where Weimer got the pills, she stated, “the prisoners tell me they can get anything down there.” After Weimer was found unresponsive, Dinninno reports that his cellmate was immediately interogated, and guards informed all members of the pod. that if Weimer was dead, they would all get accessory to murder charges added to their sentence.

 

Weimer is currently being held on the 6th floor of the Jail in the mental health unit. He is not receiving any mental health treatment, feels stable, and wants to be moved out of isolation. Dinninno’s understanding of mental health treatment at the jail is, “if you try to commit suicide they put you in a box and leave you there for awhile.” Dininno indicated that he was in lockup in his cell for 23 hours a day and not receiving medication for his current health problems, including high blood pressure.

 

Dininno reported that all of Weimer’s possessions had been confiscated including items she had specifically purchased from the commissary, so that he would have them. He is currently without any socks or underwear.

 

“I don’t understand how they do this. There is no accountability”, Dininno said. “If anyone ever told me five years ago that I would be in this position, I would have told them they were nuts. I’m fighting for his life. Every door that I go to gets closed.” Dininno worked with an attorney to get access to visit Weimer at the hospital. The attorney informed her that she would have a case if Weimer died, but that the jail has a shield. “What gives them the right?,” asked Dininno. “What I don’t get is if you go to prison, you’re beaten. You can be raped. You can get whatevered. Who gives them the right to be God in there? Prisoners rights are being stripped daily. These are people’s lives. I understand that it’s not supposed to be a picnic. But this is a living hell.”

Justice Department launches investigation into human rights violations in Pennsylvania Prisons: On Thursday, December 1, the United States that it is opening civil investigations into two state prisons in western Pennsylvania. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania are jointly investigating this matter under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act.

 

According to the Department’s press release, the investigation will focus on allegations that the State Correctional Institution (SCI) Pittsburgh failed to adequately protect prisoners from harm, including from prisoner-on-prisoner and officer-on-prisoner violence and sexual violence, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids cruel and unusual punishments. In addition, the department will look into whether SCI Pittsburgh officers systematically targeted prisoners for violence and other abuse based on the prisoners’ race, sexual orientation, gender identity or other status, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

 

The department will also investigate allegations that the State Correctional Institution Cresson, located in Cambria County, provided inadequate mental health care to prisoners who have mental illness, failed to adequately protect such prisoners from harm, and subjected them to excessively prolonged periods of isolation, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Justice Department will seek to determine whether there is a pattern or practice of violations of the Constitution by officers or staff at SCI Cresson and SCI Pittsburgh. 
This investigation is separate from any potential federal criminal investigation involving these facilities.

 

     Announcement of the investigation is the latest in a series of stories that are bringing public awareness of the human rights crisis within Pennsylvania prisons. Hundreds of prisoners throughout the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC) have been notifying courts, lawyers, legislators, family members and advocacy organizations for years about rampant human rights violations inside the walls, many amounting to torture, and their efforts to seek justice have been largely ignored.

 

     The investigation into SCI Pittsburgh comes after the eight guards who worked at the prison were suspended earlier this year, the four ranking supervisory officials were fired May 1, and seven guards have subsequently been arrested on charges related to a two year reign of terror inside the prison’s F-Block. An Allegheny County grand jury issued the indictments against the seven guards after obtaining evidence from staff and prisoners.

 

     Graphic details of the scandal emerged when the alleged ringleader of the abuse, Harry Nicolletti, was arrested on September 27 on charges that he sexually and physically assaulted more than twenty state prisoners at the SCI Pittsburgh over the course of two years The ninety-two criminal charges included assaulting and raping prisoners and then covering up the crimes by means of threats and intimidation. Amongst other charges, Nicolletti has been accused of:

 

• Attempting to shove a broomstick into the anus of a prisoner; 
• Bribing a prisoner for oral sex; 
• Ordering prisoners to contaminate the food of other prisoners with bodily waste and mouse feces, along with urinating in juice cups;
• Violently raping a transsexual prisoner while calling him a “weird freaky monkey,” “nigger,” and a “dumb faggot;
• Paying prisoners with cigarettes, extra food, and prescription drugs, including Xanax and Vicodin, for their obedience;
• Threatening to issue misconducts, which would send a prisoner into solitary confinement, along with threats of death to anybody who spoke out against the abuse.

     Six more guards were arrested on November 15 for assault, official oppression, conspiracy and terroristic threats. Sean Thomas, Jerome Lynch, Tory Kelley, Kevin Friess, Bruce Lowther, and Brian Olinger were arrested for their roles in the abuse. Friess was charged with 20 counts and Kelly with 26 counts, more than the others. Prisoners told the grand jury that the two often worked in concert with Nicoletti to attack them, with Friess usually serving as a lookout. A prisoner said Friess once stood by as Nicoletti ordered him to stick his head in a toilet, which he then repeatedly flushed. Friess also grabbed an prisoner by the throat after he passed a cigarette to a black prisoner, whom he called a racial slur, according to the criminal complaint.

 

     Kelly would often threaten inmates, according to his criminal complaint, telling one, “If you ever say anything to anyone, I will splatter your blood over the cell.” The same prisoner said Kelly “came to his cell to assault him just about every day.”

 

     While the PA DOC has claimed that the investigation and arrests are evidence that it does not tolerate violence inside its prisons, lawsuits filed by former prisoners and the former administrators suggest that reports of the rape and abuse of prisoners had been made known to the DOC hierarchy months before any action was taken to stop it. One suit filed by an anonymous prisoner who was targeted by Nicolletti asserts that his family members notified Executive Deputy Secretary Shirley Moore-Smeal as early as April 2010. Another lawsuit that was filed by the former leading officials at SCI Pittsburgh against the Governor and the PA DOC claims that they were notified of the abuse allegations in September 2010. According to the criminal complaints later filed against Nicolletti and the other six guards, the accused staff members continued to commit crimes well after April and September, all the way until early January when Nicolletti was suspened.

 

     Damont Hagan, a human rights defender at SCI Cresson, has spent almost every day of the past ten years in solitary confinement. Hagan was previously being housed in the Secure Special Needs Unit at SCI Cresson, until his transfer to SCI Huntingdon on May 13th, where he remains in a solitary unit. The SSNU is a solitary confinement unit for prisoners with diagnosed mental health needs. Hagan, and other prisoners in the SSNU at Cresson, have reported being deprived of food, bedding, personal items, and other necessities. While at Cresson, Hagan was subjected racial abuse, physical assault, and food deprivation, and has been told that he would not be permitted to progress through the treatment program and would remain in solitary confinement, unless he stops filing grievances and lawsuits. Shortly before his transfer, Hagan was assaulted by Captain Pirozzola, while Lieutenant Hoffman held the prisoner in the security office. The assault left him with a swollen right eye and mouth. Investigator Kertes from the Department’s Office of Special Investigations and Intelligence (OSII) took a statement from Hagan about the assault, but failed to intervene when Cpt. Pirozzola told Hagan that he would not receive any of his property unless he withdrew the complaint.

 

     HRC has also received reports regarding Tracey Pietrovito, a forty-three year old man who was also in the SSNU at Cresson. Pietrovito was being confined in a hard cell after he withheld his meal tray in protest of his food being served to him smelling of urine and chewing tobacco. He was held in the cell under punishment conditions for over a week. Though the official reason for Pietrovito’s solitary confinement are prison staff’s claims that he was suicidal, the solitary units at Cresson offer no meaningful access to mental health counseling and he was deprived of a mattress, toilet paper, and access to his legal work. There have been multiple reports of staff at Cresson subjecting Pietrovito to similar conditions for weeks at a time, in one instance confining him during the winter to a hard cell with an open window, with only a single blanket and smock to keep him warm.

 

     John McClellan was found unresponsive in his solitary confinement unit cell at SCI Cresson shortly before midnight on May 6. He was pronounced dead soon afterwards. HRC received multiple reports that McClellan died by hanging himself after his cries for help were ignored, and staff encouraged him to commit suicide. Two letters state that prison guard McCullen and Sergeant Bejmovic told McClellan to kill himself after the prisoner attempted to seek help for his mental conditions. Yet another report indicates that Unit Manager Michelle Houser had ignored warnings that McClellan was speaking to himself in an incoherent and alarming manner. In the words of one prisoner: “This inmate had real mental health problems and was trying to seek help, but all he got in return was an offer to kill himself.”

 

     In the wake of the suicide of John McClellan in May, guards in the restricted housing and secure special needs units at SCI Cresson were reported to have retaliated against prisoners who witnessed the torture and harassment of John McClellan. One prisoner, Christopher Balmer, filed a complaint against the guard who harassed McClellan and encouraged him to commit suicide. Balmer was then deprived of property, placed in a strip cell, and beaten by guards over the course of three months. In July, Balmer himself attempted to commit suicide. After hospitalization, Balmer was returned to solitary confinement despite a psychiatric diagnosis concluding that isolation would only worsen his mental issues and post traumatic stress disorder. Aside from Balmer, several other prisoners became subject to similar abuses including death threats and starvation in the wake of the McClellan suicide. One prisoner, Nadir Tariq Allah, went on a sixteen day hunger strike on June 21 to protest the intimidation of prisoners and other injustices within the prisons, though was transferred halfway through the strike.

 

     Ongoing violations continue to be reported from within Cresson’s solitary confinement units. Last week, James Freeman reported that himself and Kenneth Ruffin were on hunger strike in the restricted housing unit in protest of their being deprived mental health treatment and subject to abusive conditions. Freeman suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being stabbed by a cellmate in the solitary confinement unit at SCI Coal Township two years ago. Despite suffering from PTSD, Freeman is being forced to double-cell in the solitary confinement unit, and the prison’s head psychologist, James Harrington, has informed him that he will not receive treatment unless he is suicidal.

 

     During the past four years the Human Rights Coalition has documented in excess of 1,000 serious violations of human rights inside Pennsylvania prisons, including countless reports of physical abuse, retaliation, racism, food deprivation and contamination, sexual harassment and violence, terroristic threats, and other actions that are symptomatic of the culture of terror and dehumanization endemic to the prison system.

 

     The human rights crisis inside Pennsylvania prisons has emerged in the context of a nearly four-decade long implementation of race- and class-based policies of mass incarceration that have led the United States to become the world leader in incarceration. As the ranks of the incarcerated have swelled to historically unprecedented proportions, the war on prisoners and its corresponding attitude of societal indifference has escalated as well.

 

     The Justice Department investigation holds the potential to expose some of the more serious state crimes being perpetrated in two of the PA DOC’s twenty-seven facilities.

During the course of the investigation, the Justice Department has stated that it will consider all relevant information. The investigation will include visits to the facilities, a review of records, interviews with prison officials, prisoners and other witnesses, including family and community members, and advocates.

 

     Starting on Dec. 2, 2011, the department will be able to receive additional information from community members via email atpennsylvaniaprisons.community@usdoj.gov.

 

 

Allegheny County Guard charged for attempted smuggling: A guard at the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, John Adams, was charged with attempting to smuggle drugs into the jail this month. Police were notified by a prisoner of drug activity and then collaborated with the informant to catch the guard in the act. Adams was arrested at a local McDonalds in possession of a loaded handgun, marijuana and cash that he had just exchanged with another witness whom he had spoken to on the phone. The phone conversations were recorded by undercover police officers, with Adams telling the informant that he would bring the drugs into the jail by the end of the week. The guard was set to make $1,000 for completing the transaction, but instead was arrested on charges of using his cell phone for a drug deal, drug posession, and possession with intent to deliver.

 

     The Pittsburgh Post Gazette published an article titled, "What happens when the guards go to jail?", connecting the recent arrest of Adams with the one night lockup of 6 guards who worked at SCI Pittsburgh and who were recently charged with multiple counts of abuse after a grand jury investigation at the institution. Attorneys questioned how their clients would be held in the jail “safely”, with one attorney, Casey White, quoted, “Most of the inmates are there for violent crimes. If one of them gets word that these are corrections officers, who knows what could happen?” While the violent crime rate in America continues to decrease, and the majority of people in prison are housed there for nonviolent offenses, the amount of guard misconduct and official abuse reported to the Human Rights Coalition to be happening on the inside, makes retaliation a definitive threat.

 

     Questions about housing guards at prisons where they know how to operate security panels and know where all the video cameras are located, were raised at a recent statewide conference of prison wardens. Jeff Hornberger, the president of the Pennsylvania Prison Wardens Association, said that preparing for guards in lock up is not something to really worry about because it happens rarely, but that “it is more of a publicized thing right now than it ever has been.”

 

     An attorney, James Wymard, who was representing one of the other guards held for the night in lockup indicated that his client was put in a seperate isolated area under close supervision for security reasons. He said that the situation was very unpleaseant, and that his client did not enjoy it at all. The Human Rights Coalition recieves consistent reports from prisoners across the state with severe mental health needs who receive no mental health treatment, but are instead held in extreme isolation for security reasons or to minimize contact with other prisoners, for months or even years. Russell Maroon Shoatz, one of many people held in prison because of his participation in black liberation struggles in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and cofounder of the Human Rights Coalition Pittsburgh Chapter, has been held in isolation for the past 21 years.

     The mainstream media has publicized the experience of white, male, correctional officers who are in isolation for one night, while ignoring the broader picture of who really is in solitary confinement, why, and for how long. The National Religious Campaign against Torture is currently organizing a legislative campaign against the prolonged use of solitary confinement as a common punitive practice against people in United States prisons.

The spokesperson for the Allegheny County Jail, Judi McNeil, indicated in the Post Gazette that the guards would be “treated consistently with all the other inmates while they were there.” One can only hope that they were not subjected to the abuse and neglect that is endemic to the overcrowded prison system.

Philly area: Wednesdays are Write On! Prison Letter Writing Night at the LAVA space at 4134 Lancaster, 6-9 pm. Come help us stay connected with the many prisoners who write to us with news from inside, learn to document crimes committed by prison staff, and help bring an end to the abuse and torture of our brothers and sisters behind bars.

 

If you’d like to know more about the Human Rights Coalition or would like to get involved, come to Write On!, to our monthly general meetings (second Monday of each month, 6pm), or call us at 215-921-3491, email: info@hrcoalition.org, or visit our website at http://www.hrcoalition.org./

 

Pittsburgh area: Write On! – Letter writing to prisoners and HRC work night every Wednesday at 5129 Penn Avenue from 7 -10pm. To get involved with HRC/Fed Up! in Pittsburgh, email: hrcfedup@gmail.com or call 412-654-9070.

You’ve been listening to the Human Rights Coalition’s PA Prison Report. HRC is a group of current and former prisoners, family members, and supporters, whose ultimate goal is to abolish prisons.