PRESS RELEASE


November 14, 2007

FLORIDA STATE PRISON


In an email sent to prison reform organization Iron Triangle Accountability Project, Inc. today, Florida Department of Corrections Public Information Officer Jo Ellyn Rackleff confirmed that four inmates commenced a hunger strike last week protesting the conditions of confinement under which they are being held at Florida State Prison.

Participating inmates Dwight Eaglin, Stephen Smith, Shawn Johnson and Allan Scott are being housed on Q-Wing where they are denied virtually all privileges afforded other inmates.

Eaglin and Smith are sentenced to death by lethal injection stemming from their failed escape attempt from Charlotte Correctional Institution on June 11, 2003 in which Correction Officer Darla Lathrem and fellow inmate Charles Fuston were murdered. Johnson is serving a life sentence for a 1994 murder in Miami. Scott is serving two life sentences, one from a 1989 armed robbery in Brevard County, the second for attempted murder at Okeechobee Correctional Institution in 2000 involving an incident during which he fought with staff.

Both Eaglin and Smith have been classified as Maximum Management inmates under the DOC’s Administrative Code. In relevant part, hunger strike organizer Eaglin notes, Maximum Management is defined as “a temporary status for an inmate who through a recent incident or series of incidents, has been identified as being an extreme security risk and requires an immediate level of control beyond that available in close management or death row.”

It is the terms “temporary status” and “recent incident or incidents” with which Eaglin and the others take issue. Petitioning for regular outdoor exercise, non-contact visits and the very few other “privileges” afforded regular death row inmates, on many occasions Eaglin has reminded prison officials that it has been over four years since he’s been accused of violating prison rules. “Temporary means temporary,” he says; “there are no recent incidents of misbehavior in my record to justify my continued Max Management confinement.”

In letters to friends and prison reform activists Eaglin makes clear that he accepts his death penalty punishment in accordance with law, and that his grievance is grounded on the DOC not following the law, “its own rules and regulations,” he observes. “I’m held accountable under our laws, they should be too. They’re depriving me of what the law entitles me to because I’m convicted of murdering one of theirs; it’s a form of illegal punishment because they dropped the ball,” he claims, referring to the DOC’s own investigation into the incident resulting in a report authored by DOC Investigator General Daryl J. McCasland dated January 15, 2004 concluding that no less than six different DOC security measures were violated by DOC personnel the night of the incident.

The former Warden of Florida State Prison, Ron Mc Andrew, once opined: ‘people go to prison as punishment, not to be punished. That’s how the law reads and anyone who steps beyond that point is a lawbreaker too.”

In addressing Eaglin’s complaints, by letter dated June 4, 2007 DOC Secretary James McDonough wrote: “My legal staff advises me that there are no statutory or rule definitions for the terms ‘temporary’ or ‘recent’ [and] I am unaware of any plans to clarify those terms by rule modification, regulation, policy or procedure.”

Eaglin makes a good point: if Florida inmates are to be held accountable under law for their actions, then so too should be the law enforcement officials to whose supervision and control they have been committed by law.