Sentence inflation February 2, 2008
Posted by Idta in : Criminal Law, Law Enforcement , 2comments
This week I sat second-chair in the trial of a 32-year-old bipolar man accused of cutting a guard’s hand with a razor blade. He has 5 years left on his current sentence. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.
A high-ranking officer testified that he ordered the man’s cell to be searched every 2 hours — day and night. If the defendant refused to wake up, be shackled, and come out of the cell, they sprayed him with chemical agents. Then they sent five men in riot gear into his cell to pull him out forcefully. This apparently went on for several months.
The officer said he didn’t know about any research concerning the harmful effects of sleep deprivation, and he wasn’t aware of any harmful effects. (But he grudgingly conceded that lack of sleep could probably make someone irritable.) Also, in his 16 years experience, he had never heard of any guard taking an inmate’s food, as punishment or in retaliation for bad conduct. He’d never even heard the prison lingo — jack the food — for this common inmate complaint.
He said all of this under oath, so it must be true.
