Jessie Lee Williams, Jr., American citizen, beaten to death in custody

Sapphire Blue

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Fri Jul-14-06 10:41 AM
Original message

Jessie Lee Williams, Jr., American citizen, beaten to death in custody

Edited on Fri Jul-14-06 11:37 AM by Sapphire Blue

Jessie Lee Williams, Jr

Sunrise
November 30, 1965

Sunset
February 6, 2006

Transported to Memorial Hospital after fatal beating while in custody at Harrison County Jail

Cause of death: HOMICIDE

Witnesses describe beating similar to Abu Ghraib torture: "beating, on floor, sack on head, (black leather) gloves"

http://www.michaelwcrosby.com

Report: Treatment of US suspects at home mirrors that of terror suspects in military custody
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Thursday July 13, 2006

(excerpt)

Police Commander Jon Burge and homicide detectives of Areas 2 and 3 Police Headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, were charged with torturing nearly 200 African American men between 1972-1991. Admissions by detectives, eye-witness accounts and other evidence have indicated that Burge and his men “systematically tortured individuals during interrogations, also proves that officers throughout the chain of command were aware of the torture and condoned its practice,” Ritchie quoted in a summary of the case she provided to RAW STORY.

Evidence provided in the Burge cases paint a picture not unlike what has emerged from the Abu Ghraib scandal, or allegations relating to abuse by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and other US detention facilities in the Middle-East.

The techniques detailed in the Chicago torture cases included “electrically shocking men’s genitals, ears and lips with a cattle prod or an electric shock box, suffocating individuals with plastic bags, mock executions, and beatings with telephone books and rubber hoses,” according to court documents.

(snip)

Despite this, Ritchie points out that “not a single officer or member of the chain of command has been prosecuted for acts of torture or the conspiracy to obstruct justice required to cover up these crimes. In fact, most of the officers involved have never been sanctioned in any manner whatsoever.”

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Report__0713.html

Prisoner Abuse: How Different are U.S. Prisons?
By Jamie Fellner, Esq.

The sadistic abuse and sexual humiliation by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison has shocked most Americans—but not those of us familiar with U.S. jails and prisons. In American prisons today, wanton staff brutality and degrading treatment of inmates occur across the country with distressing frequency.

We know that two of the soldiers charged with abuse at Abu Ghraib were prison guards in the United States. Lane McCotter, who oversaw the reopening of Abu Ghraib prison last year, has a long—and somewhat troubled—history in corrections. For example, he resigned from his position as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1998 after a schizophrenic inmate died following sixteen hours of being immobilized in a restraining chair. The Pentagon has said it wants to send more people to Iraq who have U.S. prison experience. But before it does, it should look closely at the human rights records of their prisons.

A federal judge in 1999 concluded that Texas prisons were pervaded by a “culture of sadistic and malicious violence.” In 1995, a federal judge found a stunning pattern of staff assaults, abusive use of electronic stun devices guns, beatings, and brutality at Pelican Bay Prison in California, and concluded the violence “appears to be open, acknowledged, tolerated and sometimes expressly approved” by high ranking corrections officials.

In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars—not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.

Continued @ http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/14/usdom8583.htm

Elie Wiesel: The Perils of Indifference

(Excerpt)

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

(snip)

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ewieselperilsofindifference.html (text & audio)

Related thread...

Prisons at Center of Damning Report on U.S. Human Rights: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1621955