SOS Cecil Ash: Please Send Help.

July 2011 Artwalk display
(with Cougar)
1009 N. 1st. St. / Phoenix

This is how easy it can be to help us convene legislative hearings next session on the violence, suicides, and poor health care in the prisons. The AZ House Health and Human Services ' Committee is chaired by Cecil Ash, a truly decent man, and seems to be the best place to hold such hearings. Following Stan's letter requesting this is Representative Ash's response.

I understand that Representative Ash is still focusing his energies on sentencing reform - which we desperately need - but in the meantime people are continuing to die unnecessarily inside. If Ash doesn't want to spend political capital using his chairmanship of the HHS committee (as opposed to the Judiciary Committee), for something directly related to health and human services, then he needs to cultivate another legislator who will do that in the next session that we can lobby.

Until Representative Ash can identify that person for us - or until someone else steps forward to lead the charge on this matter - please keep sending these kinds of letters and emails to him, folks. And send me what you're willing to let me post for others to learn from, as my buddy Stan did for us...

This letter, by the way, was a beautiful gift for Dana's mom on that difficult day. Thanks, Stan, from all of us.

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From: Stan Hemry
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 11:05 AM
To: Cecil Ash
Subject: Dana Seawright's unsolved murder

Good morning Rep. Ash,

I am a resident of Phoenix for more than 10 years. Today is the 1st anniversary of this young man's death. I writing to draw your attention to the murder of Dana Seawright, who refused to give up his cell in prison with a man of another race. One was black the other, Hispanic. Dana's gang ordered him to prove his loyalty to the gang. Dana was subsequently killed for a fake attack on another man of the same race as his cell mate. 10 of Dana's gang members were given enough leeway within the prison facility to enter his cell and beat him to death for not delivering the beat down ordered by his gang.

Now, I know that this sounds like typical gang activity, but Dana was standing up for the freedom of association. Something the gangs and guards, apparently, do not allow. This type of violently-enforced segregation underscores the divisions that are routinely encouraged within the prison community.

Guards and prison people both manifest the divisions as they see racial tensions played out in tragic ways. Scenes, like the one of Dana's murder while under guard, re-enforce segregation and violently punishes prison people, who do not abide within the artificially-created, racial divides.

Dana's murder is a harsh wake up call to take action to examine what is happening. This could have easily been me, or possibly you, Rep. Ash, given the same circumstances. I would have done what he did and probably be murdered too.

Racially-segregated gangs monitor and enforce divisions among the prison people. Why can't there be a program to gradually de-segregate the prison community? Train the guards to understand that we are all equal in frailty, love and life. Give the prison people adequate mental and physical health care.

If there is any justice left in the system, I hope you will convene hearings into the rapidly rising murder and suicide rates in the Department of Correction. Understanding the circumstances surrounding the tragedy of Dana's death could help to reform the training received by prison guards and lower the tension levels among the prison people.


Respectfully,


Stan Hemry
PHX 85004

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Contact me if you are an educator and want to screen Arlington West in your school.



-------to contact Representative Ash------



----------reply from Representative Ash--------

From: Cecil Ash
Date: Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 3:06 PM
Subject: RE: Dana Seawright's unsolved murder
To: Stan Hemry

Dear Mr. Hemry:

Thank you for your email. There are a great many problems in the prison system. You have identified some of them in your email. You are correct, given the same set of circumstances, you or I might have done the same thing.

I am not indifferent or unaware of the many problems in the D.O.C. However, to have hearings this next session would jeopardize some of the sentencing reforms I've been working on for the last three years. Before undertaking hearings on your issue, I need to get some of the sentencing changes enacted. Then I will proceed to look at health issues (both physical and mental) in the prison system. If we could stop so many people from getting in there in the first place, we might have the resources to do a better job with a smaller population.

I will put you on my email list to be informed of our efforts in this area.

Again, thank you for email, and my condolences to Dana's family.


Sincerely,



Cecil Ash

State Representative

District 18

Liberty and Justice for All: AZ Freedom March 2010.

Staggering into the morning from a two-week period of fevers, fatigue, and altered consciousness - punctuated by the grief of traumatized families - I found myself at the Freedom March for the Wrongfully Convicted on the State House lawn Saturday. It was organized by Camille Tilley, Courtney Bisbee's mom. As detailed by Stephen Lemons in the Phoenix New Times, Courtney was a school nurse and single mom when she was falsely accused of touching a teenage boy and sentenced to 11 years in prison as a child molester. Sensationalized by the press, Courtney was convicted and condemned before she even went to trial.

Camille and Tom Tilley, 2008.

Now, six or seven years later, Courtney's still fighting for her child and her freedom from behind bars. The evidence exonerating her has been in the hands of the Maricopa County Attorney's office for over 4 years now. Andrew Thomas just sat on it. We're waiting to see if Rick Romley picks her file up before he goes. He had the courage to drop capital murder charges against Lisa Randall, the babysitter the county worked two years on prosecuting for the death of a child who was in her care, so we're hopeful.

Camille is an extraordinary woman. She sees the bigger picture - the contexts in which her family has been repeatedly victimized by agents of the state - and goes after every piece of it she can get her teeth into: not just abuses of prosecutorial discretion, but also minimum mandatory sentencing, police brutality, conditions of confinement and medical neglect in the prisons, racial profiling, and early release provisions for non-violent offenders. The devastating events of recent weeks, the rapid rise in the prisoner death toll, and the timing of the Freedom March this year brought a new constituency under her wing: the families of people prosecuted for the symptoms of their mental illnesses.

I've spent much of my adult life studying crime, punishment, and serious mental illness in an effort to keep my own loved one out of prison. I successfully convinced a handful of judges and prosecutors across the country to drop charges against him drawing on my research into the trans-institutionalization of the mentally ill, particularly those dually diagnosed with psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. I kept a few of my homeless clients out of jail that way, too. My experience has been that most people working in the criminal justice system agree that most of the seriously mentally ill whose lives are being chewed up there don't belong in jail or prison, they need housing, community support services and access to psychiatric hospitals. Instead, unfortunately, the seriously mentally ill are three times more likely to be incarcerated than hospitalized.

Shannon Palmer is one of the most stark examples of the damage done to a person's life by wrongful prosecution and incarceration that I've ever seen, but "justice" destroys innocent lives every day. According to Camille's research (based, I believe, on exonerations in death penalty cases), up to 10% of people in prison may be wrongfully convicted; factually innocent. If you look at prosecutions such as Shannon's, sentences of imprisonment for women like Lasasha Cherry, and Tony Lester's prosecution and sentence, then the number of people we have in prison who really shouldn't be there increases dramatically.

As of August 2010, the Arizona Department of Corrections estimates than about 9,362 of their 40,204 prisoners - about 25% - need on-going mental health treatment. Many of those individuals were too incompetent to stand trial or even to plead guilty when first arraigned - how can we then hold them fully culpable for criminal intent and send them to prison? They also estimate that 75% of offenders enter the system with major substance abuse issues. It's a serious and common error to believe that the mentally ill and addicted are getting the treatment they need in a safe environment when incarcerated. They are the most vulnerable to trauma, abuse and exploitation, which most have endured enough of already.

Most of us fail to appreciate the huge chunk we take out of people's lives when we criminalize and incarcerate them, and what lasting repercussions there are. We take it for granted that our system is just. American justice is not designed to expedite the exoneration and liberation of the innocent or even to equalize the punishment of the guilty. Once you plead guilty or are convicted, it's damn near impossible to get out through the appeals system, and no matter how innocent you are, it's all too easy to be violated on probation or parole - Arizona couldn't keep the prisons full otherwise.


There are people still trying to clear their names who have long since done their time - time they never should have had to do. Many have lost their careers, homes and families in the process of being branded a criminal. And some, like Shannon Palmer and Tony Lester, have lost their lives to our way of dealing with crime and doling out punishment.

What really astonished me - everyone, perhaps - at Saturday's Freedom March was how well one of our state legislators, Cecil Ash, articulated all that and more. Representative Ash is the chair of the House Study Committee on Sentencing Reform and Co-Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. He not only spoke to the issues we've been dealing with, he sat and listened to every single story, in 100 degree heat, until 2:15 in the afternoon. He even took notes as families were talking about their experiences. And as far as I could tell, of all our state lawmakers, he was the only one to bother to come.

AZ Representative Cecil Ash,
Freedom March Phoenix, 2010.

You could tell by the way he talked about his letters from Arizona's prisoners that Representative Ash not only reads them, he's sincerely troubled by their predicaments and has been thinking about solutions. We incarcerate far too many non-violent offenders, and he wants to reduce time served before parole eligibility for some from 85% of their sentence to 65% of their sentence. He wants to rewrite some of the minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines to give judges more flexibility when they encounter defendants in exceptional circumstances.


Because of Brewer and Bill Macumber, Ash also wants a constitutional change to remove the power of clemency from the hands of the governor and invest it solely in a non-partisan board. And he wants to see prison reform so that people aren't needlessly suffering and dying while serving their time, regardless of their crime (or lack of one). Those are just a few of the changes he touched on wanting to raise the next legislative session.

Julie Acklin, Freedom March 2010, Phoenix.

While Representative Ash is our knight in shining armor, he wasn't the star of the show. The stars were the ordinary citizens who stood up to tell their stories and share their grief. Julie Acklin talked about her son Davon, sick in prison with Hep C and not getting treatment. She hopes his fight brings relief to all prisoners infected with HCV. We're planning to hit the lawn at CASS shelter this week to collect signature for the petition to the clemency board and educate people about Hep C.

Patti Jones brought nephew Tony Lester's daughter, just turning 1 that day, and told of his love for his family, the torment of his first psychotic break, his prosecution in the wake of a suicide attempt, and his death after being taken off his meds just a few weeks into a devastating 12-year prison term. Probably 20 of his relatives were there wearing t-shirts in his memory; they converted a table into a memorial with pictures and balloons. Patti pledged to organize with other families to push sentencing and prison reform to prevent what happened to Tony, trading numbers with Julie.

one of Tony Lester's little loved ones.

Other individuals and family members spoke eloquently and passionately about their disillusioning experiences with the criminal justice system in Arizona as well. There was considerable emphasis on mandatory minimum sentences and enhancements, abusive prosecution and the coercion involved in plea bargaining, and the non-incarceration consequences of being criminalized - including stigma, child custody issues, and the challenges that probation and parole stipulations present even to innocent people.

Allison Hicks ("Backspin") talked about her time in the Maricopa County Jail and her ordeal with wrongful prosecution, about which she has written and will soon have a movie. The Arizona Death Penalty Forum gave a brief presentation, and some of Jim Rix' books, Jingle Jangle, about AZ death row exoneree Ray Krone were on hand. Daniel Horne was with us in spirit - his books about Maricopa County corruption were distributed, and he sent an extensive handout for folks, which I hope to touch on in another post.

We also celebrated the success of our extensive efforts to get Andrew Thomas out of the Maricopa County Attorney's office and keep him from becoming AZ attorney general. He was huge obstruction of justice there. According to Camille, his office convicted over 200,000 people during his tenure. If 10% of them are innocent, that's a long trail of beaten families and damaged lives he left in his wake, with no sign of remorse or concern. We will be expecting more out of Mr. Montgomery - who is reportedly sympathetic towards people with mental illness - assuming he takes office after Romley's term expires. Hopefully Arizonans will never again have to tolerate someone like Andrew Thomas in a position of such power again.

Thanks, Camille, for all you did to put together the day - and for all you do year round for prisoners and their families.

And thank you, Representative Ash. You give us hope that our government is not completely lost, and that our loved ones have not been permanently discarded.

AZ LEG: House Study Committee on Sentencing FRI 5/14

I encourage as many people as possible to attend and sign up to speak at this committee meeting Friday. Read up on Fischer's study first, if you can (here's the press release - it's rather disturbing); the data he has is useful, but I take issue with many of his conclusions. Professor Lynch may rebut some of what he has to say; Franklin Zimring also has some interesting analyses of the trends in crime and punishment over the past decade (here's a sample; Google him for more).

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Interim agendas can be obtained via the Internet at http://www.azleg.state.az.us/InterimCommittees.asp

ARIZONA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

INTERIM MEETING NOTICE

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

HOUSE STUDY COMMITTEE ON SENTENCING

Date:              Friday, May 14, 2010

Time:             10:00 A.M. or upon recess or adjournment of Floor

Place:                        HHR 5

AGENDA

1.	Call to Order
2.	Opening Remarks
3.	Testimony on Sentencing: ·         Representative Jerry Madden, Texas State Representative; Vice-Chair, House Corrections Committee; Member, House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee ·        Dana Hlavac, Deputy County Manager, Mohave County Criminal Justice Services ·        Daryl R. Fischer, Ph.D., author “Prisoners in Arizona, A Profile of the Inmate Population”   [March, 2010] ·        Robert Hirsh, Pima County Public Defender ·         Derek Rapier,  Greenlee County Attorney; Chairman, Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council ·         Jeremy Mussman, Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office ·        Mona Lynch, Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California Irvine;  author, Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment [Stanford University Press 2009] ·         David Gallagher, Executive Director, Arizona Addiction Treatment Programs, Inc. ·        Senator John Huppenthal, Arizona State Senate, District 20
4.	Public Testimony
5.	Discussion
6.	Adjourn

Members:

Representative Cecil Ash, Chair
Representative Doris Goodale
Representative Laurin Hendrix
Representative Bill Konopnicki
Representative Kyrsten Sinema
Representative Anna Tovar

2/4/10

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People with disabilities may request reasonable accommodations such as interpreters, alternative formats, or assistance with physical accessibility.  If you require accommodations, please contact the Chief Clerk's Office at (602) 926-3032, TDD (602) 926-3241.

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