Mentally Ill Inmate Starves to Death in Utah Jail

June 6, 2011
by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway
From: SolitaryWatch

The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that a young prisoner who apparently suffered from serious mental illness died of starvation and dehydration after spending four months in the Salt Lake County Jail, much of them in solitary confinement. Carlos Umana, 20, weighed at 180 pounds when he entered the jail in October 2010; when he died on February 27, he weighed just 77 pounds. Tests showed that none of his prescribed psychiatric drugs were in his system at the time of his death.

As a teenager, Umana was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. According to the Tribune, his mother, Tammy Martinez, said that Umana had ”stopped taking his medication in the fall. ’Then he started hearing voices and thinking people was poisoning him,’ Martinez said. Umana was so concerned about people poisoning him, she said, that he started preparing all his own food.”

On October 26, Umana stabbed his mother’s boyfriend, who was preparing a meal in her kitchen; he later told the police that he believed the man was going to kill him. He was charged him with first-degree felony attempted murder and held in the county jail. The Tribune describes what happened next:

Read the rest here.

Ex-Inmate Starts Scholarship Fund: will aid kids with incarcerated parents

Salt Lake City Weekly:

By Eric S. Peterson
Posted May 18,2011

Karl “Willy” Winsness had a lot to think about during his 17 years in the Utah State Prison. One thought was why, as he alleges, the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s officers who raided his Rose Park apartment with a “no-knock” warrant didn’t identify themselves as law enforcement before they kicked his door down and he ended up shooting one officer through the arm. The officer lived and Winsness got five years to life. While Winsness worked on a legal defense to exonerate himself, he also dreamed that a monetary award might someday be available to provide a scholarship for children of inmates who lacked a mom or dad to help support them—a pain Winsness knew firsthand, being unable to support his two daughters while he was incarcerated.

Read the rest of this positive story here.

Utah woman freed from prison after 17 years, declared "factually innocent"

Via CBS News
May 10, 2011

(CBS/AP) DRAPER, Utah - In the pouring rain Monday, dozens of friends and family members of Debra Brown stood waiting outside prison gates, huddling under umbrellas -- some holding small children, others colorful balloons.

Shortly after 2:30 p.m., Brown, 53, walked out of Utah State Prison after 17 years, touching off an emotional reunion. She had maintained her innocence the whole time. Finally, a judge believed her and she was free to go.

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Utah prisons remain on lockdown after inmate dies

Utah prisons remain on lockdown after inmate dies

By Associated Press
Tuesday, May 3, 2011

DRAPER, Utah — Both Utah state prisons remain on lockdown after a deadly fight between inmates and a spate of recent stabbings. ...Read the rest here.

Deseret News: 2011 Utah legislative outlook on crime

By Paul Koepp, Deseret News

The Utah Department of Corrections is requesting from Utah lawmakers an additional $4.9 million to shift inmates to county jails. The state prison is over capacity, with the Board of Pardons and Parole starting early releases of prisoners in the past year. If the prison system stays over capacity for 45 days, state law would trigger an emergency release.

UDOC has also requested approval to build a 300-bed facility, similar to a halfway house, somewhere along the Wasatch Front to house parole violators short term instead of sending them back to prison.

Read the rest here.

Early resolution plan in works to move criminal justice system along

From: Deseret News

By Emiley Morgan, Dec 22nd 2010

SALT LAKE CITY — An ambitious plan to streamline the criminal justice process by eliminating as many as 50 percent of felony cases within the first 30 days after they are filed is set to launch in February.

The "aggressive" initiative known as Early Case Resolution is meant to not only streamline the court process and lead to quicker resolutions but also free up more jail space and lower recidivism rates.

"We need something concrete," 3rd District Presiding Judge Robert Hilder said. "We need something that will really make a difference."

Hilder — one of two judges who have been working to implement the system for close to two years — said that now it is not uncommon to sit in a hearing for as many as three hours only to have the hearing continued to a later date. Roll call hearings, scheduling and status conferences can be continued several times.
"We have a long history of those things happening not just once or twice, but five, 10, 15 times with no movement forward," he said.

It was frustration with this process that led current District Attorney Lohra Miler and the Salt Lake City Council to consider this model, Hilder said.

"We're trying to avoid hearings that do not advance a case," Hilder said. "We want hearings that are meaningful. This will free up more time management for more complex cases."

For that to happen, there has to be cooperation from those at all levels, Salt Lake City prosecutor Sim Gill said. Gill will take over as district attorney in January. In addition to prosecutors, he said law enforcement agencies, defense attorneys, probation and parole officers and those in the Salt Lake County 3rd District Court are on-board.

"This is a collaborative effort of multiple stakeholders who are being brought together under a common model, because they all have a role to play in it," Gill said. "This model works on the premise that everybody, every stakeholder, has something to gain."

Gill said the project targets those defendants who attempt to "fatigue" the system in hopes of getting a better deal and aims to eliminate the bottleneck that is created by numerous continuations of hearings. It should also make interactions with defendants more valuable.

"This is not just about an efficient process," Hilder said. "It's a very different way of doing business. It's about early resolutions where people take responsibility. It's about their performance on probation, a sentence that is tailored ... lesser jail or no jail and probation. ... People are more likely to succeed."

He said similar models are currently in place in Florida, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and California, but Salt Lake County would be the largest criminal court in the country to undertake the task. The closest in size, in Sonoma County, Calif., has seen noticeable results, Hilder said.

Read the rest here.

“Home Sweet Home”

From SolitaryWatch:

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

Brandon Green is imprisoned in Uinta 1, a supermax unit at the Utah State Prison in Draper. His writings appear on a blog created for him by Utah Prison Watch. In this piece, he challenges readers to imagine what is like to live in solitary confinement, as he vividly describes the physical and psychological deterioration that take place in an isolation cell.

Go to your bathroom door and kick a hole in it. Now lock yourself in tight. Throw all your hygiene items, except a tooth brush and toothpaste tube, out the hole. Everything. Now go to your tub and flip it over. This is where you’ll sleep. Now sit. The light switch disappears and the shower spigot. A little speaker replaces them. It listens and sometimes speaks to you. Laughs at you. Taunts you. Tells you your suffering is entertaining. You can’t shut off the light with no switch and you’ll have to shower using the sink.

As you sit, you hear ten or so voices outside the door. That’s funny. Sounds like that guy who robbed my mother’s house last year and put her in a wheelchair after brutally beating and raping her. It can’t be! Is that the judge that let the man run free too? And his twisted attorney? Why are they here!?!

The worst enemies you could imagine, or put a face to, have just moved into your house. As you sit in the bathroom. These people only wish you harm of the utmost. And your death would be nothing but joy for them. All your food, and any mail you might be expecting, will have to come from these “squatter enemies.” Good luck!

To make matters worse, these enemies of yours control all your heating, air conditioning, water from your sink and to your toilet. And to top it off, if they see you sleeping they’ll kick the door and yell at you. They laugh.

You can hear these men day and night right outside your door. You smell them barbecuing and smoking. You’re hungry. You can hear these men torturing people. Sometimes other people in similar bathrooms next to yours are pulled out and placed in body bags. To the amusement of these squatters.

A day passes this way.

“My god,” you say, “what have I done to deserve this?”

A week passes.

You cry.

A month.

You attempt suicide but your vein closes up before death.

A year.

You are now talking to yourself and running around naked. You are convinced the food you seldom receive, that’s halfway edible, is poisoned. As you eat the rotten “meat” your beard and mustache get in the way of the teeth chewing. You couldn’t cry if your life depended on it. And it used to. But you’ve forgotten why.

Two years.

You can’t remember. You’ve forgotten. Forgotten what? You don’t know. The “squatter enemies” come around and you look at them. They look at you. They laugh. You start to laugh too. You forgot why. But you do.

Three years.

You sleep 20 hours a day. You can’t help it. But your floor is clean. You keep it spotless. You don’t know why. But you do. You’re skinny. You’ve lost an easy 60 lbs. Your skin is turning yellow and your legs cramp up and atrophy. You don’t want to die anymore. Why bother? You’d rather sleep and dream. The dreams are so vivid. More real than these walls.

Five years.

You go home, you leave your bathroom, this year.

They tell you that. But why? Where do I go? I don’t want to leave now. I like my tub and sink…