CALIFORNIA PRISONER CHALLENGES TORTURE
by Luis Talamantez After FIVE solitary years inside a "prison of tomorrow" where natural sunlight does not penetrate, prisoner Steve Castillo finally got his day in court June 11, 1999. Appearing on a habeas writ before Sacramento State Court Judge Ronald Tochterman, the 40-year-old Chicano prisoner, looking pale and thin, managed a clenched-fist salute to his supporters despite being severely encumbered by handcuffs and waist chain. His two teenage daughters sat in the front row. Benita, 16, couldn't recall ever seeing her father before.
Like hundreds of others in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison, Castillo is accused of belonging to a prison gang. Within California's mammoth prison system, being "validated" as a prison gang member means automatic placement inside the notorious SHU (Security Housing Unit) at PBSP. Other SHU units exist around the state, including one for women at Chowchilla. Prisoners at Pelican Bay have been propagandized as the "worst of the worse," deserving of their grim fate. But over the years and through dozens of organized visits to the prison site, members of California Prison Focus have become convinced that the real violators of the law are the prison staff there. CPF has been a voice for prisoners over the last eight years. It monitors human rights abuses in many of California's worst prisons and seeks to address them.
Through an elaborate scheme practiced nowhere else in the U.S., the California Department of Corrections systematically targets prisoners-mostly Latinos and Blacks-from its other 32 prison compounds to feed into its SHU warehouse depots. The Internal Security System actively collects evidence against prisoners, using informants. Then, during closed-door hearings where no self-defense is allowed, it routinely convicts them. They are then transported to SHU hundreds of miles away. This insures that the state-of-the-art facility near the Oregon state line continues to operate at full capacity, at an annual taxpayer cost of $50 million.
Evidence used to entrap prisoners into gang validation and transportation to indefinite hell can be anonymous snitch notes, group photos, tattoos, innocent letters from home, or other flimsy items, which assist the Internal Gang Investigator to make an official finding that the "target" is either a member or associate of a prison gang. Once charged, all are found guilty. Prisoners designated "a threat to institutional security" are sent off to be warehoused inside an expensive but bare SHU cell. The only way out is "parole, snitch or die." Castillo is serving a 35-to-life sentence for murder and has no parole date.
The only real option Castillo and hundreds of others similarly situated have, other than becoming state informants, is to file writ after legal writ in hope of obtaining release from this bureaucratic maze of institutionalized racism and injustice. Some 85 percent of all prisoners kept in the SHU are prisoners of color.
In 1993 Castillo filed a petition of inquiry before California's Office of Administrative Law asking for a ruling on regulations that make no allowance for due process or constitutional protection. Gang validation, indefinite SHU placement, and debriefing make up what is commonly thought of as the "deadly triad." Over the last ten years, tens of thousands of prisoners throughout the CDC have been warehoused without proof of wrongdoing. After years of silence, the OAL issued a 20-page administrative finding that says the CDC has for 10 years been illegally operating "underground" regulations never legally promulgated under the Administrative Regulatory Act, which all state agencies are bound by and which the OAL oversees.
Time and again, Castillo has been brought before prison kangaroo courts in an attempt to break him down. He has repeatedly denied gang ties and has, instead, accused his oppressors of targeting him because of his jailhouse-lawyer activities. He has been told that he must "debrief" if he wants any consideration for release from lifelong lockup.
Prisoners spend all their time inside windowless cells with no fresh air entering the sealed warren of chambers. Many commit suicide or are driven insane. CPF has found that numerous prisoners housed inside the SHU can claim years of clean time, having done nothing illegal to be kept there. Their only real prison infraction has been their refusal to surrender their personal identities or collaborate with their oppressors. Many, like Castillo, are active jailhouse lawyers who give aid to others and are considered prison leaders, revolutionaries, and prisoners of conscience. Noted criminals convicted of heinous crimes are never sent to Pelican Bay but are put in protective custody elsewhere and given better treatment. They have more in common with the oppressor than with other prisoners.
Pelican Bay opened in 1989 and has been the subject of many lawsuits won by prisoners, but little has changed there. Conditions remain deplorable. PBSP is presently under federal investigation for a string of senseless deaths inside SHU cells last year.
This is the first time the prison system has been successfully challenged by an inmate on the issue of debriefing. For the first time, the CDC has been found to be in violation of its own regulations because of failure to legalize them as required by law.
For the sake of perpetuating itself and its $5 billion annual budget, the prison-industrial complex has resorted to unconstitutional methods.
Castillo's jailhouse activism has set in motion what is hoped will be an avalanche of petitions by prisoners for release from warehousing at Pelican Bay and throughout the prison system. To date, thousands of prisoners in the SHU system remain entombed for life.
Further legal action by Castillo is pending before the same judge.
End indefinite lockdown.
STOP VALIDATION!
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SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA
COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO
JUNE 11, 1999, 9 a.m. DEPT. NO: 18
JUDGE RONALD W. TOCHTERMAN
IN RE THE MATTER OF
STEVEN M. CASTILLO, Petitioner Case No.: 98F05216
PRESENT:
GRAHAM NOYES, ATTY.
CATHERINE CAMPBELL, ATTY.
M. ALLEN HOPPER, ATTY. representing the Petitioner(s)
Nature of Proceedings: EVIDENTIARY HEARING ON PETN. FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS
The above entitled matter comes before the court with the Petitioner and above named counsel present.
Counsel give arguments.
The court's tentative order after an evidentiary hearing is as follows:
The court finds and concludes as follows based on the pleadings and the undisputed evidence it now has before it and on the failure of Respondent to comply with the November 20 show cause order (that it "[I]dentify and specify the contents of all regulations, guidelines, criteria, bulletins, manuals, instructions, orders, standards of general application, or other rules, which are department-wide or applied at two or more prisons or correctional facilities and related to (a) procedures for the management of gangs; (b) retention and release from segregated housing units based upon gang affiliation; and (c) details of the debriefing procedure).
Respondent has, and during the relevant period of time has had, written and unwritten detailed rules, policies, and procedures for placing validated gang members and associates in security housing and for retaining them in such housing until they "debrief" (give a statement disclosing sufficient verifiable information which adversely impacts the gang so that the gang will no longer accept them as members or associates) satisfying the interviewer that they have dropped out of the gang (debriefing may not be an absolute requirement for release from security housing but it is at a minimum an important consideration).
Some of these policies and procedures are set forth in documents other than the promulgated portions of the Department Operating Manual and other than the emergency regulations approved in January of this year. Respondent's legal arguments are unpersuasive. They are rejected. The rules and policies in question are not exempt from disclosure and promulgation under subdivision (f) of section 6254 of the Government Code. There may be "security procedures," but Respondent is not "a state police agency." They are not "investigatory or security files compiled by (a) state... agency for correctional...purposes." The rules and policies in question are "regulations."
They (a) implement, , interpret, and make specific the law that respondent enforces and administers and (b) are of general application. Section 3321 of Title 15 (specifying "types of information . . . classified as confidential," including information that would endanger someone if it were known to an inmate and information that would compromise the safety of an institution) does not exempt Respondent from the Administrative Procedure Act's promulgation requirements. It does not give Respondent a blanket right not to disclose information simply because it deems the information to be confidential.
Petitioner is not arguing for disclosure of substantive information obtained from debriefed inmates, in any case. The rules and policies in question are of general applicability. That the debriefing "policy affects less than one percent of the prison population" is not determinative. Placement of gang members and affiliates in security housing and retention based, at least in significant part, on willingness to debrief occurs at Pelican Bay State Prison and at Corcoran State Prison and the Department Operating Manual states that its gang management provisions are to be uniformly applied department-wide. The rules and policies in question here clearly are not within the single facility exception provided for in subdivision (c) of section 5058 of the Penal Code. There are no material issues of fact.
The court, therefore, orders that no evidence be presented at the June 11 hearing except for any evidence Respondent may wish to present to show that some of the undisclosed matter (rules, directives, bulletins, etc. on the subject in issue here) in fact is unique to just Corcoran State Prison or just Pelican Bay State Prison so that failure to disclose it was not a failure to respond to the November 20 show cause order and so that it should not be invalidated as an undisclosed underground regulation.
If no such evidence is presented, the court intends to order that debriefing not be required or used as a determinant, for release from security housing (including the January emergency amendment to section 3341.5(c)(4) of Title 15, which is so broad as to be meaningless and unenforceable without reference to the unpublished underground regulations) until such time as the relevant rules are properly promulgated under the APA. The court will defer a decision whether to broaden the order to prohibit placement in security housing because of gang membership or affiliation until the parties' letter briefs have been received, within ten days from today. The matter remains under submission.
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PRISONERS & FAMILIES< WRITE SUPPORT LETTERS!
The California Dept. of Correction's debriefing policy has been practiced illegally for the last 10 years in SHU units at Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) and elsewhere. The judge's final order states "that debriefing not be required or used as a determinant for release from the Security Housing Unit" (SHU). Shortly thereafter, the CDC issued a moratorium on debriefing at PBSP. "Debriefing" is the correctional term for becoming a state informant in exchange for being let out of SHU. BUT will the moratorium last? Will the prison system find a way to circumvent the court order? This is all very likely.
For supporters, the next step is to have "gang validation" and "indefinite SHU placement" also declared "underground regulations" and demand that they too be stopped. The Castillo case remains under submission. Prisoners in SHU at Pelican Bay (but, also at SHU units in Corcoran (CSP) and at Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) who are held on SHU status because of alleged gang affiliation should write the following listed officials and ask that Sacramento State Court Judge Tochterman's Court Order (on debriefing) #98F05216 in re Castillo be implemented and prisoners given new classification hearings for release from SHU.
Families are urged to help by writing/lobbying state legislators about this prison development which will bring relief to prisoners buried in indefinite hell. A list of some state legislators follow, but people should also write to other elected officials they think can help.
Also, please let inmate Steven Castillo (D89028, PBSP P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532) know you support his efforts on behalf of all prisoners similarly situated.
· Senator John Vasconcellos, State Capitol Rm. 4061, Sacramento, CA 95814. (916) 445-9740.
· Senator Liz Figueroa, State Capitol Rm. 2057, Sacramento, CA 95814-4906. (916) 445-6671.
· Assemblywoman Carole Midgen, 455 Golden Gate Ave. #14300, San Francisco, CA 94102 (415) 557-3000.
· Senator Richard Polanco, State Capitol Rm. 313, Sacramento, CA 95814. (916) 445-3456.
· Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, 1225 Corporate Center Dr. #PH9, Monterey Park, CA 91754. (916) 319-2049.
· Senator John L. Burton, State Capitol Rm. 500, Sacramento, CA 95814-4906. (916) 445-1412.
· Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes, 2550 Mariposa Mall #5006, Fresno, CA 93721. (559) 445-5532.
· Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa, 1910 West Sunset Blvd. #500, Los Angeles, CA 90026. (213) 483-2730.
· Assemblywoman Denise Moreno Ducheny, 2414 Hoover Ave. #200-A, National City, CA 91950 (916) 319-2079.
· Senator Jackie Speier, State Capitol Rm. 2032, Sacramento, CA 95814.
Note: Copies of letters written to state legislators should be sent to CDC Director C.TERHUNE, California Dept. of Corrections, P0 Box 942883, Sacramento,CA 94283.
Several other Castillo-related prison cases are before the courts.