This story is unbearable. It is common. It's a sorry reflection of our society and culture

[cali]

Half a Life in Solitary: How Colorado Made a Young Man Insane

A young man was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a dubious trial. And then things got worse.

The story of Sam Mandez is appalling on so many different levels it's hard to know where to begin. Convicted for a murder no one has ever proven he committed, sentenced to life without parole at the age of 18 because the judge and jury had no other choice, confined for 16 years in solitary for petty offenses in prison, made severely mentally ill by prison policies and practices, left untreated in that condition year after year by state officials, Mandez personifies the self-defeating cruelty of America's prisons today.

And yet Mandez is not alone in his predicament. All over the nation, in state prisons and federal penitentiaries, officials are failing or refusing to adequately diagnose and treat inmates who are or who are made mentally ill by their confinements. The dire conditions in which these men and women are held, the deliberate indifference with which they are treated, do not meet constitutional standards. And yet there are thousands like Mandez, symbols of one of the most shameful episodes in American legal history.

The Crime

On July 26, 1992, an elderly woman named Frida Winter was murdered in her home in Greeley, Colorado. The police recovered fingerprints from the scene and later found some of Winter's things in a culvert near her home. But for years the investigation went nowhere in large part because it was flawed in nearly every way. Other fingerprints from Winter's home were not recovered. Leads were not adequately pursued. Logical suspects were not properly questioned. At the time of Winter's death, Sam Mandez was 14 years old.

Four years later, the police caught what they considered a break. Fingerprints from Winter's home finally found a match in a police database—and the match was Sam Mandez, who had just turned 18. They brought him in for intense questioning. But Mandez had a strong alibi. He and his grandfather had painted part of Winter's home in 1991, a year before her death. There was good reason for his prints to have been on the window that was broken on the night of Winter's death. Mandez had been in trouble with the law before—but never for a violent crime.

<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/half-a-life-in-solitary-how-colorado-made-a-young-man-insane/281306/

This is a long piece but it's well worth the painful read.

[cali]

1. the ACLU has produced a film about Sam Mandez

It can be viewed at the link.

[malaise]

8. Where I live a young man was in a police lock up

Last edited Fri Nov 15, 2013, 09:35 AM - Edit history (1)

for petty theft when Hurricane GIlbert struck the island.

They moved all the prisoners in the lock ups to more secure prisons as the hurricane approached. Twenty two years later they remembered this poor man who was insane by then.
The state had to pay a huge amount of money for that atrocity, but the man's life was already destroyed.
There is way too much cruelty on this planet and we pretend to defend human rights.

[cali]

12. there is no restitution for these atrocities

It just can't be done.

[malaise]

13. +1,000 n/t

[heaven05]

16. the point is, we are,

as the human race, cruel and vicious to each other since time immemorial. We're not getting better, anyone who believes that, stay in your bubble. The human race, is sad. Yesterday I read about Atomic Kitten as posted by her son. I can relate. I've been to war(vietnam), seen things no human should have to and in the intervening years from 1969, just more of the same with ever increasing lethal violence and destruction. Wars and death perpetrated on lies, yeah Kissinger's "Domino Theory' all the way up to and including Iraq2 brought to us by Shrub and Darth with a little Rice thrown into the pot. I am saddened still when reading accounts such as this and I guess if we still get sad, outraged and yes like Atomic Kitten, driven to despair, there's hope. But my hope is fading. End of rant. Sorry.

[malaise]

19. Sadly you're correct

Still not all of us are cruel and inhumane

[CrispyQ]

32. "We're not getting better, anyone who believes that, stay in your bubble."

I don't see much kindness in the world. In fact, I see a culture that takes kindness as a weakness, something to exploit. I think that collectively we know we're fucked & we're just going to party like it's 1999. It's bringing out the worst in us.

Thom Hartmann has a mini-documentary, about 12 minutes, where he actually mentions the E word.

The Last Hours of Humanity: Warming the World to Extinction - See more at: http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/last-hours-humanity-warming-world-extinction-1#sthash.dfQxaR1G.dpuf

http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/last-hours-humanity-warming-world-extinction-1


Chasing Ice, another great docu, has the most incredible footage of a glacier calving! You can barely grasp the scope of it, until they superimpose Manhattan over the calving section. Stunning visual evidence of climate change & we do essentially nothing. I could hardly watch the dignitary from the Philippines talking about climate change & the devastating impact it is having on the developing countries & how the developed world does nothing.

A down head post, so I will leave you with this:

[heaven05]

34. thanks

I had seen that ice shelf collapsing before somewhere in my internet travels. And their RW response. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

[Laelth]

2. Both our criminal justice system and the prison-industrial complex ...

... are serious problems we need to address.

Thanks for the post.

-Laelth

[cali]

4. It's horrendous. I just posted an excerpt of another article

by Cohen from The Atlantic about the pitiful joke of a federal prison 'oversight' hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I am more convinced than ever that this kind of solitary confinement is torture.

[IrishAyes]

3. It's very sad indeed, and infuriating as well.

Although I haven't yet followed the link - promise to shortly - I know this sort of thing is not uncommon. Besides the fact that Mandez would've fared much better if he'd been richer and therefore able to secure adequate defense, it's the nature of privitization to pack the prisons with as many bodies as possible, who cares about justice when so much $ is at stake? Nothing excuses the obvious official misconduct, of course. Even if the Innocence Project later secures Mandez' release, his life has effectively been ruined beyond repair.

[zeemike]

14. Are you kidding me?

When was the last time you heard of a rich person being slammed in prison for life?...that don't happen because they can afford justice, and if you can't afford it you are just meat in the grinder.

[Ranchemp.]

20. The Menendez brothers come to mind.

[cali]

21. the exceptions are far and few between

yes, they exist but they certainly aren't evidence that the system is horribly skewed against the poor.

[Ranchemp.]

22. That is absolutely correct.

If you've got money, chances are you're not going to prison.

[zeemike]

23. And so does OJ.

If he had been a poor black man his trial would have lasted a day, and he would have went to jail for the rest of his life...if not receiving the death penalty...and the examples of that are too numerous to mention...

[IrishAyes]

25. Kindly re-read my post #3 - I think you might've misunderstood.

I wrote in part, " Mandez would've fared much better if he'd been richer and therefore able to secure adequate defense"

We're on the same page, pal. If you still have questions after revisiting the post, please point out exactly where you think we're not and perhaps I can correct one or both of us. I truly don't understand where you see a conflict.

[zeemike]

27. Yes I think I did...and I apologize for it.

I guess I have been conditioned to expect apologist to show up to make excuses for it, and jumped to conclusions.

[IrishAyes]

29. It's a natural and forgivable mistake; at least it had better be, because all of us trip ourselves

from time to time. You're very kind to oblige me; sometimes people won't.

Another reason I appreciate questions is because sometimes a missed typo will technically skew what we meant to say; the reader read correctly.

[Ranchemp.]

28. I was answering zeemike's post.

And I'm not sure, but I was talking about the Menendez brothers, not Mandez.
But, yeah, we are on the same page here as far as being rich, the rich have a much better chance of walking than the poor do.

[idwiyo]

5. k&r Disgraceful, Horrendous. Torture, pure and simple. Institutionalised TORTURE.

[cali]

6. yes it is torrture. I'm always taken aback at how many people here scoff at that

[zeemike]

15. Well if you scoff at waterbording being torture

What else can you expect?

[idwiyo]

30. I find it sickening how many embrace torture if it's done against the people they don't like.

Never mind that majority of supporters of torture are religious. The very people who can't stop yapping about their superior values. Never mind how many of the are forced-birthers who scream about "sanctity of life" every damn chance they get! Friggin hypocrites every single one of them.

[txwhitedove]

7. K&R

[brer cat]

9. Thank you for bringing this forward, cali.

I am adding a quote from the Postscript.

"...It takes many people, including many people who believe they are well-meaning, to generate a result like this. We are all responsible for what has happened to this man. We enacted the laws, and upheld the rules, and supported the officials, responsible for his dire state. None of it happened by accident. None of it was ordained by fate. We all did this to him and now the question is whether we are going to do something about it."

There is a lot of discomfort in the statement above. However, unless we are willing to assume some of the responsibility, nothing is going to change. "I" didn't make the rules that allowed a Colorado prison to keep this young man in solitary confinement, but "I" certainly haven't spent much time trying to change the system that allowed this abuse to happen, or the subsequent failure to provide adequate mental health treatment.

"Out of Sight, Out of Mind" indeed.

[cali]

11. thank you, brer cat, for adding that quote. The author is so right

btw, he does the best reporting on this issue that I've seen.

[brer cat]

10. Wow. Compare and contrast.

a thread by unhappycamper: What's Right with Sweden?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/111643627

[adirondacker]

18. +1000. nt

[idwiyo]

31. +1

[mountain grammy]

17. These stories are horrifying and, ever worse, not rare.

Support the ACLU any way you can! That is one thing we can all do.
We also must spread these stories far and wide and get out the word. Thank you for sharing this one, Cali.

[cali]

24. this kick is for those who deny that solitary is torture,

for those who don't have a problem with this form of torture.

[Fawke Em]

26. They're doing it to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and he's not even been convicted, yet!

It's unConstitutional, in my opinion and equals torture.

But, how do we wrest this power away when the general populace roots for it or doesn't care?

Hell, Judge George O'Toole kept the ACLU from even FILING an amicus brief in Tsarvaev's case. I'm sure this isn't the first time a judge has done this, either.

[intaglio]

33. Check the Human Rights Watch of Oct 2012

http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us1012ForUpload.pdf (lots of scrolling)

On pages 131 through to 133 are various statements and tables about New York including this gem;

New York City jail officials reported to Human Rights Watch that 14.4 percent of
adolescents between age 16 and 18 at Rikers Island spend at least one period of time in
punitive segregation

It has been known since at least 1860 that solitary drives people mad