Kentucky inmate starves himself to death; doctor fired, hunger strike rules rewritten

4-22-2014 Kentucky:

A prison doctor has been fired and two other staffers are in the midst of being dismissed after an inmate at the Kentucky State Penitentiary starved himself to death, a case that has exposed lapses in medical treatment and in how hunger strikes are handled at the facility. Prison officials have asked prosecutors to investigate after The Associated Press began asking questions about the inmate’s death.

James Kenneth Embry, 57 and with just three years left on a nine-year sentence for drug offences, began to spiral out of control in the spring of 2013 after he stopped taking anti-anxiety medication. Seven months later, in December, after weeks of erratic behaviour — from telling prison staff he felt anxious and paranoid to banging his head on his cell door — Embry eventually refused most of his meals. By the time of his death in January of this year, he had shed more than 30 pounds on his 6-foot frame and died weighing just 138 pounds, according to documents reviewed by the AP.

An internal investigation determined that medical personnel failed to provide him medication that may have kept his suicidal thoughts at bay and didn’t take steps to check on him as his condition worsened. The internal review of Embry’s death also exposed broader problems involving the treatment of inmates — including a failure to regularly check inmates on medical rounds and communication lapses among medical staff.

The AP, tipped off to Embry’s death, obtained scores of documents under Kentucky’s Open Records Act, including a report detailing the investigation into Embry’s death, an autopsy report and personnel files. Along with interviews with corrections officials and correspondence with inmates, the documents describe Embry’s increasingly paranoid behaviour until his death and the numerous opportunities for various prison staff to have intervened.

Soldier turned rapist found dead in prison: Officials suspect suicide

2-18-2014 Kentucky:

Steven Dale Green, an Army private convicted of gang-raping an Iraqi 14-year-old girl and killing her family, died in an Arizona prison in what officials suspect was a suicide.

A former soldier, sentenced to life for raping and killing a teenage Iraqi girl and using a shotgun to gun down her family, died in an Arizona prison over the weekend in what officials suspect was a suicide.

Steven Dale Green was the first American soldier charged and convicted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act — a law signed in 2000 that gives the federal government jurisdiction to pursue criminal cases against American citizens and soldiers for acts committed in foreign lands.

The federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman John Stahley said staff members at the federal penitentiary in Tucson, Ariz., found the 28-year-old Green, of Midland, Texas, unresponsive in his cell on Saturday. Stahley said Green's death is being investigated as a suicide.

'Incestuous' Sex Images Found on Josh Powell's Computer Before Murder-Suicide

Posted in Related Deaths

2-10-2012 Washington:

(NewsCore) - Images depicting incestuous sex between a parent and child were found on Josh Powell's computer and handed over to Washington investigators just days before he brutally murdered his two children and then killed himself.

The material stored on the computer was deemed to be so disturbing that one psychologist working on the Powell's custody case recommended that the court prevent the children from being returned to their father, KING 5 reported late Thursday, citing Thomas Shapley of Washington's Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS).

The images included very realistic "lifelike" simulations of incestuous sex acts, Pierce County officers said, and may have prompted a judge to order that Josh Powell undergo a psychosexual evaluation, according to the report.

Police in West Valley, Utah, discovered the documents and sent them to the Pierce County Sheriff's Department under a restrictive court order Feb. 1.

On Feb. 5, Josh Powell blew up the family home in Graham, Wash., with his sons, seven-year-old Charlie and five-year-old Braden, inside. Authorities believe he hacked his sons in the head and neck with a hatchet before the explosion took place.

Mother wants understanding for her dead son

1-31-2012 Maine:

AUGUSTA -- In the early morning hours of Jan. 3, 2011, Scott Penney covered his recliner in plastic and carefully leaned plywood against the backrest.

He walked around his State Street apartment, pulling closed the window shades. He felt his way across the dark room and nestled into the recliner. There, on a coffee table in front of him, Penney left a note to his family that he hoped would explain his decision, even as it begged for their forgiveness.

Penney covered his head with a tarp, grabbed a rusty shotgun, and put the barrel under his chin. He pulled the trigger.

"He didn't want to make a mess for the landlord," his mother, Linda Penney, said. "He planned it right to the letter."

Scott Penney, 45, was a trusted employee, a loyal friend, a beloved son and a proud father.

But he also was a convicted child molester.

It was this sordid past that darkened Penney's life. Everyone knew, or could easily find out, the worst thing Penney had ever done. It became who he was: Scott Penney, sexual offender.

"I will never have my life back," Penney wrote in his final letter. "I can't deal with all this around me and what has happened."

Linda Penney has her reasons for telling her son's story, but gaining sympathy isn't one of them. She doesn't offer excuses for the crimes her son committed and is not mad at the judicial system for punishing her son.

But Linda Penney hopes others will see her son as she did. She hopes others will understand the crushing social stigma he experienced as a convicted sex offender. Linda Penney also hopes that experience is understood by a probation officer assigned to supervise her son whom she believes mishandled of the case and contributed to her son's decision to end his life.

"I want people out there aware that not every child molester is a bad person," she said.

Essay: Sex and Justice

Essay: Sex and Justice - 11.16.2010

A recent horrifying case involving teen suicide has gotten wide attention. The case got Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinking about the state’s sex offender registry.

If news is what people are talking about, then the big story in Michigan last week wasn’t the budget deficit, or Governor-elect Rick Snyder’s efforts to put together an administration.

No, the big story was a horrifying case where a fourteen-year-old girl killed herself after having sex with an eighteen-year-old boy.

And it ought to make us all think about a lot of things, including whether the Michigan Sex Offender registry makes any sense.

In this tragic case, both teens at first told police the act was consensual, but later the girl appeared on local TV news, and said she had been raped. Following that, the kids in her high school evidently turned on her. Eventually, the child went home and hung herself. This story is distressing on too many levels to count.

Whatever actually happened between the teens is hard to determine, though police say the girl said she told the boy she was eager to lose her virginity. If so, she later had second thoughts. As a journalist, I am appalled that a local so-called news station put this child on TV, identifying her by name, as she talked about her sex life.

Grownups ought to know how cruel the world can be.

But this whole episode really ought to draw attention to an appalling institution called the Michigan Sex Offender Registry.

Since the 1990s, the registry has listed anyone convicted of a so-called sex crime and indicates where they live. The idea was to protect children by allowing families to discover if a convicted sex offender lives in the neighborhood.

That may make some sense in the case of serious pedophiles, though it also could be seen as a dangerous invitation to vigilante action. But the registry also includes those convicted of a wide variety of far lesser offenses, including drunk frat boys who relieved themselves in public. They are on there with the serial rapists.

The main problem is in cases like this one. In Michigan sixteen is the legal age of consent. But in our highly sexualized society, there are many sixteen year old boys who are active with their almost sixteen year old girlfriends. Legally, they are committing a felony.

Convicted child molester hangs himself in ACI cell

Note comments by lawyer, posted to this suicide.

9-28-2010 Rhode Island:

CRANSTON — A 52-year-old convicted child molester hanged himself Friday in his cell in the Adult Correctional Institutions’ intake center, a department spokeswoman said Monday.

The man was not identified because the case is still under investigation by state police, Corrections Department spokeswoman Tracey E. Zeckhausen said. State police could not be reached Monday afternoon for comment on the status of their investigation.

The man was initially classified as a suicide risk after he was brought to the intake center on Sept. 16, Zeckhausen said. That classification was lifted after Corrections Department psychiatrists examined him and said they felt he was no longer a threat to himself, she said. The most recent visit with him had been Friday morning, the day he died.

The man was found hanged by a bed sheet in his single-occupant cell at around 2:30 p.m., Zeckhausen said.

He had been convicted of first-degree child molestation and had been in the prison part of the ACI from May 2002, until May 2009, when he was released on probation. He was scheduled to be on probation until 2027, Zeckhausen said.

MI- Accused teacher dies from hanging!

6-9-2004 Michigan:

A former Homer teacher was found dead Monday, hours before he was scheduled to be sentenced to prison for having sex with a student. Brian K. Corbitt, 28, was found hanged to death in an apparent suicide Monday in his home near Adrian.

Although the age of consent to have sex in Michigan is 16, Corbitt was charged under a law enacted in June 2003 making it illegal for a teacher to have sex with a student in the same school. Corbitt was the first person charged in Calhoun County with that violation and Hotchkiss said his client may be the first person charged similarly in Michigan. In a written statement to the court, Corbitt said he and the girl, now 17, began their relationship at school and first started having sex in March.

"It was absolutely consensual," Hotchkiss said. "That has never been disputed." In his written statement, Corbitt said, "I thought we were genuinely in love. I didn't know it was a crime." Corbitt, a graduate of Michigan State University, who received his master's degree this year, had been a teacher at Homer for three years and was the FFA adviser. ..Source.. by Trace Christenson

MI- BRIAN DICKERSON: A plea deal thwarted, a life is ended

3-24-2004 Michigan:

Ernest Hemingway wrote that every true story ends in death.

This is a true story.

It begins two years ago with a troubled 14-year-old girl who documented her sexual exploits in a diary. She called herself a predator. But Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca was more interested in her slightly older sex partners. He charged four of them with criminal sexual conduct, a felony.

In May 2002, when what became known as the Bloomfield Sex Diary case broke, I argued that Gorcyca had overreacted by bringing criminal charges for what amounted to consensual sex between promiscuous teenagers. I noted that, if convicted, the defendants would be listed on Michigan's sex-offender registry until they reached middle age.

After a public uproar, Gorcyca relented. Under a plea agreement blessed by two sentencing judges, all four defendants were permitted to plead guilty to a lesser charge of seduction. The prosecutor and defense attorneys agreed that none of the defendants would be imprisoned or listed on the sex-offender registry.

The 14-year-old girl and her parents were relieved by the deal. "We didn't have an ax to grind," the girl's attorney, Mayer Morganroth, recalled this week. "Nobody wanted to see these young kids stigmatized for life."

It should have ended there -- a fiasco averted, a case of overzealous prosecution brought to a sane resolution.

But it didn't.

Last month, more than a year after the charges against them were resolved, all four defendants were notified they'd be registered as sex offenders after all.

One of them, 20-year-old Justin Fawcett of West Bloomfield, was particularly devastated. On Feb. 27, three days after Fawcett's probation officer broke the news that he'd be publicly branded for the next 23 years, Fawcett's father e-mailed me to express his fear that Justin would kill himself.

ME- Caught by the past, a child molester kills himself

1998 Maine:

In the dying hours of 1997, in the bleak and black Maine night, Thomas Varnum drank half a bottle of liquor, propped a shotgun between his legs and blasted the top of his head off.

There were very few mourners.

"It may be a terrible thing to say, but I don't think it's a big loss," says David Farley, a lobsterman who lives down the road in Seal Cove.

Not that he knew Varnum well. Not many people around here did. Varnum had moved into the small apartment over Tim Butler's garage in October, just a couple of months after he came to Mount Desert Island.

Nobody paid much attention until Dec. 29, when sheriff's deputies arrived on Kelley Town Road with fliers bearing Varnum's mug shot and his history: He had been convicted of gross sexual assault.

It didn't say precisely what he had done. It didn't say that he had served his time in prison and had been free for a year and a half.

But in the spirit of Megan's Law -- the nationwide movement to ensure that no community should unknowingly harbor a molester -- local officials publicized Varnum's past.

Very few residents saw the fliers. Most of them weren't home when they were distributed. Farley says he didn't learn about Varnum's crimes until later, and the facts unnerved him; he has a 15-year-old daughter who often walked past the house where Varnum lived.

"I'd a killed him if he'd a touched my daughter," Farley says.

Of course, Farley was speaking theoretically. By that time, Varnum had killed himself.

Local interest came and went. "People die here all the time -- by sickness, at sea, in accidents," says Alison Price, chairman of the Tremont Board of Selectmen.
But no one had ever died by Megan's Law -- by the fear that they would be hounded forever for the crimes of the past.

If, in fact, that is what killed Thomas Varnum.

Mount Desert Island is best known as a summer playground-- favored by the Rockefellers, renowned for the beauty of Acadia National Park and the high style of Bar Harbor.

But there is another side of Mount Desert Island, more typical of Downeast Maine. Many of the 10,000 year-round residents struggle. They lobster or fish, work construction, take on odd jobs.

Richard Donovan runs Acadia Muffler and Brake. A bear of a man with gray-blond, shoulder-length hair and a full beard, he employed the 31-year-old Varnum as a mechanic on weekends. He was, he says, Varnum's best friend.

"He loved it down here. He loved the island," says Donovan. "He just liked the people down here. They left him alone."

Is it true that you met in prison?

"I won't talk about that. And I'll tell you what I told another reporter: If you print that, I'll sue you."

An hour later, Donovan is talking all about how he was convicted of sexually assaulting a stepdaughter, a charge that he emphatically denies.

Yes, he says, he met Varnum in prison. No, he insists, he did not know Varnum was a sex offender -- Varnum claimed he was convicted of passing bad checks and beating his wife. Donovan says he believed him.

When Varnum got out, in June 1996, he worked for a mechanic in Bangor but spent his weekends at Donovan's shop in Tremont. He was alone. While he was in prison, his wife divorced him and moved to North Carolina with their daughter.

Last August, Varnum took a construction job in Tremont and moved into Donovan's house, next to the shop.

"As far as I'm concerned, he was a good kid," Donovan says. "He never bothered anybody. He was a funny kid -- a real comical kind of guy."

With that, he comes out from behind the counter and tracks down a battered photo album. Here's a picture of Varnum sitting in a rear seat yanked from a car, a V-6 engine in the wheelbarrow in front of him. Here's another of Varnum, feigning unconsciousness on the driveway, his head on a pompon, a cane on the ground next to him.

"All he was trying to do was to get on with his life," Donovan says. "He made a mistake. Anybody can make a mistake. YOU can make a mistake."

But can Varnum's crimes be described as a single blunder?

FL- On eve of execution, murderer feels 'glad'

This very ODD case is posted here in suicides and in the murders blog, because RSO-A inmate murdered another (RSO-B) so that RSO-A could get the death penalty. i.e., RSO-A suicide by murdering someone.

5-26-2004 Florida:

John Blackwelder tells the media he killed another inmate just so he could get the death penalty, and Gov. Jeb Bush "will get another kill."

STARKE - John Blackwelder, who is scheduled to die today for a prison killing, apologized Monday for the murder but said it was the only way to manipulate the state to get the death penalty.

"I will be glad tomorrow to lay on the gurney and tomorrow you (Gov. Jeb Bush) will get another kill," Blackwelder, 49, formerly of Fort Pierce, said in a media interview.

Blackwelder pleaded guilty to murdering convicted killer Raymond Wigley, 39, of Fort Worth, Texas, who was strangled on May 6, 2000, at Columbia Correctional Institution. After luring Wigley into his cell with the promise of a sex act, he tied Wigley to the bed and strangled him as Wigley begged for mercy.

"I am sorry for killing Wigley, but to get what I wanted I had to," Blackwelder said.

Wigley was convicted of the rape, torture and murder of Adella Maria Simmons, 47, in 1983.

Blackwelder noted that he will die on the 25th anniversary of the execution of John Spenkelink, the first Florida inmate and the second in the country to be executed after the Supreme Court made states redo their death penalty laws.

Blackwelder said Wigley was the only person he ever killed and claimed he was innocent of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in St. Lucie County, the crime that put him in prison for life without the possibility of parole.

Blackwelder said he was fearful that his execution would be put off until fall so it could be used politically by Gov. Bush and President Bush.

"I did not want my execution to become a political statement for any Bush," Blackwelder said.

Gov. Bush did not directly comment on Blackwelder's statements.

"People have to remember what actually happened here," Bush said. "This was a man who was on death row because he murdered somebody."

"I am sorry for what I've done; now I have to pay the price," said Blackwelder, who admitted threatening Vice President Dan Quayle "because I was homeless."

Blackwelder is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. today at Florida State Prison.

He will be the fifth Florida inmate executed by injection, the second this year. He will be the 59th inmate executed since Florida resumed executions on May 25, 1979, when Spenkelink was put to death for slaying a traveling companion in Tallahassee.

Psychologists claim Blackwelder has been diagnosed as having impulse control disorder, antisocial personality disorder and pedophilia.

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed Blackwelder's conviction and death sentence in July after an automatic appeal. Blackwelder then filed a motion to waive any more appeals.

Death penalty opponent Abe Bonowitz, with Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said Blackwelder's death wish was "suicide by governor."

Six of the last 10 inmates have opted to drop their appeals to speed up their executions.

Blackwelder said he became a Christian while on death row. "After I die, I feel I will go to heaven," he said.

Throughout the interview his impending death was on his mind.

"It's time to do away with the death penalty," he said at one point.

But he abruptly ended his interview, saying, "I can't kill myself. I'm not suicidal. I can get the state to do it for me." ..more.. by Associated Press

SEX OFFENDERS: Town torn over molester's suicide

Neighborhood 'Child Rapist' Signs Blamed For Sex Offender's Suicide: Authors Of Signs Could Face Jail Over Flyers

Residents in a Ocala neighborhood could face charges after a convicted sex offender apparently committed suicide in despair over signs labeling him a "child rapist" posted in his neighborhood, according to Local 6 News.

Bright yellow, laminated signs displaying Claxton's picture, date of birth, address and the words "child rapist" hanging on power poles in his neighborhood. A county commissioner proposed posting such information in the community but Sheriff Ed Dean rejected the idea.

Clovis Ivan Claxton, 38, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a child in Washington in 1991, had lived at 3230 SE. 45 Street in Ocala for about two years.

Tuesday, Claxton noticed bright yellow, laminated signs displaying his picture, date of birth, address and the words "child rapist" hanging on power poles in his neighborhood. A county commissioner proposed posting such information in the community but Sheriff Ed Dean rejected the idea.

After seeing the signs, Claxton called the sheriff's office and said that he felt "extremely scared and feels that people in the neighborhood are now out to possibly hurt him."

"Once he made these type statements our deputies took this man into custody under the Baker Act law and transported him to a local mental health facility for evaluation," Marion County Sheriff's Capt. Denis Strow said. "He was later released."

Tuesday morning, Claxton's parents found him dead of an apparent overdose with one of the child rapist flyers by his side.

After seeing the signs, convicted sex offender Clovis Claxton called the sheriff's office and said that he felt "extremely scared and feels that people in the neighborhood are now out to possibly hurt him."

Jane Claxton blames County Commissioner Randy Harris, who proposed the flyers, for her son's death, according to a report.

"Just don't get on the bandwagon," she said. "There's going to be other (deaths) if Randy Harris has his way. He hasn't been in trouble for 18 years, and he's branded for life."

Harris said sex offenders need to take responsibility for their actions.

"I don't blame his death to the signs," he said, adding he was undeterred in his quest to alert people to sex offenders living in their neighborhoods.

Dean said it is an example that police work should be left to authorities.

"We need to keep calm, do the right thing," Dean said. "Not go overboard with it. Protect our children. Use all of the resources we can but not stir a community up to a frenzy."