Inmate

Colleagues of slain Maryland Correctional Officer David W. McGuinn have done his memory a disservice. In trying to explain away the beating of an inmate, they may have seriously compromised an investigation into the officer's murder. Add to that the slipshod handling of a piece of evidence, and the prosecution's job of convicting his accused killers becomes exceedingly harder. That's no formula for justice. The aftermath of Officer McGuinn's July 25, 2006 death at the House of Correction in Jessup was a chaotic and dangerous affair, as reported by The Sun's Greg Garland.

A state prison inmate who was hit by a truck and killed Thursday while working along the Capital Beltway was identified yesterday as Rodney Jennings, 28, who had been serving a two-year sentence for possession of drugs with intent to distribute. Maj. Priscilla Doggett, a spokeswoman for the Division of Correction, said the prison system is suspending road work crews from the Herman L. Toulson Boot Camp in Jessup until better safety standards can be established. The incident was the second fatality involving a Division of Correction highway crew member in the past three months.

WORLD Sunni family targeted Gunmen rounded up a Sunni family that had received death threats for joining U.S.-organized talks with local Shiites, hauling away the men and boys and killing all six yesterday as insurgents expanded a campaign of fear against opponents. pg 17a Crackdown on Russian protest Police in St. Petersburg, Russia, clubbed protesters and dragged them into buses yesterday in response to a demonstration against the Kremlin in the heart of President Vladimir Putin's hometown.

NEWS ITEM: A number of U.S. prisons plan to be more 'inmate-friendly' in 1998.Inmate schedule, U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth:7 a.m.: Rise and shine! (optional)7: 15-7: 20: "Good morning from Warden Hawkins!" News 'n' notes. (PA system)7: 30: "Tai Chi with Crazy Ike." Pagans gang leader "Crazy Ike" Morris leads inmates in centuries-old discipline of harmonizing body and mind. Today's movements: White Crane Spreading Wings, Parting the Wild Horse's Mane. (Exercise Yard)8: Breakfast. Fresh muffins, orange juice, melon slices, eggs, pancakes prepared by Chef Wilfredo, formerly of New York State Correctional Facility at Ossining (Sing-Sing.

When guard Tonya Jackson found an inmate at the Baltimore County Women's Detention Center hanging in a cell, she had two choices: go down the hallway to phone for help or try to free the inmate.Jackson rushed to the hanging inmate and let two other inmates out of their cells to help, a decision that triggered a three-day suspension for her this week for violating jail procedures.Union officials are protesting Jackson's suspension and overall staffing at the county's two jails."She tried to do what any human being would do," said James L. Clark, president of the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees.

State police and correctional officials are investigating the fatal stabbing yesterday afternoon of an inmate at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, a spokesman for state police said.Spokesman Pete Piringer said the 36-year-old inmate was in a dayroom on the second floor of the west wing about 1: 20 p.m. when he was stabbed several times.Piringer said the inmate was pronounced dead about 10 minutes later in the prison infirmary.He said the victim's name was being withheld pending notification of relatives.

Guards found an inmate with stab wounds in the neck and chest about 8: 25 p.m. yesterday in a recreation yard at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, a state Division of Correction spokesman said.The inmate, 37, whose name was not released, was in stable condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, spokesman Dave Towers said.No arrest had been made and no weapon was found, he said. Inmates will be confined to their cells during an investigation, he said.Pub Date: 8/26/97

For the second time in three months, jail Capt. Thomas V. Kimball leapt to his feet with joy in a Howard County courtroom as a judge ruled that in a confrontation with an inmate, Kimball was just doing his job.Kimball's trial on charges of beating a handcuffed inmate was the last of three brutality cases against two jail officers that essentially put the Howard County Detention Center on trial.And yesterday, when the decision by Circuit Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr. made it two acquittals and one case dropped by prosecutors, the verdict came down in favor of the jail.

An inmate at the Baltimore City Detention Center was hospitalized yesterday after he was stabbed by other prisoners during a fight -- the latest of several violent incidents at the jail and two of the state's prisons.Inmate Durell Barry was taken to University of Maryland Medical Center with wounds to his chest and lower back, said Barbara Cooper, spokeswoman for the detention center. His condition was not released.Barry was injured during a fight about 9 a.m. in the detention center's courtyard, Cooper said.

YOU SIMPLY REFUSE to stop heeding cheap politicians.Years ago, they came up with the senseless idea to allow victims of crimes to be present at the perpetrators' parole hearings. The supposed aim was to let victims vent their ire at the inmates being heard by the Maryland Parole Commission, and if possible, prevent parole approval.It was an idea guaranteed to do little, if any, good. The potential for harm was great. I have personal knowledge of such sessions.A nervous but hopeful inmate, imprisoned for many years, is led by guards into a spacious, well-lighted room.

A former prison guard and her incarcerated lover, a Black Guerrilla Family gang member, pleaded guilty Monday to extorting thousands of dollars from prisoners and their relatives, often using contraband cell phones to call the victims from jail. According to their plea agreements, Fonda Deneen White and Jeffrey Fowlkes, both 41, made dozens of threatening calls to an inmate's mother in 2007, "demanding money in exchange for her son's safety." The mother sent 27 payments totaling more than $7,000 before the FBI stepped in. The agency's investigation revealed that White had deposited into her bank account roughly 180 other prisoner payments beginning in October 2005, shortly after she was fired for having an "inappropriate relationship" with an inmate.

Authorities are searching for a man convicted of first-degree murder who escaped from the Maryland Correctional Institution at Hagerstown yesterday morning by climbing over the prison's perimeter fence using clothing to cover the razor wire. The escape occurred between 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. Kanderlario Garcia-Ramos is serving a life sentence with all but 40 years suspended from a court case in Prince George's County in June 2008. Garcia-Ramos, 24, escaped from the prison while inmates were on their way to the dining hall for breakfast, authorities believe.

An inmate at the Brockbridge Correctional Center in Anne Arundel County was stabbed yesterday afternoon and remained hospitalized while the attack is being investigated, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said. The 35-year-old inmate, whose name was not released, was stabbed multiple times during an incident with another inmate at the minimum-security facility and pre-release center and was taken by ambulance to University of Maryland Medical Center in downtown Baltimore.

Two separate stabbings at the Jessup Correctional Institution on Thursday sent two inmates of the maximum-security prison to Maryland Shock Trauma Center with multiple wounds, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said yesterday. Neither of the stabbings was life-threatening, said Mark Vernarelli, the spokesman, in an e-mail. One victim has been released from the hospital, and the other was in stable condition, he said. Their names were not released.

A convicted murderer sentenced to an added 15-year term for assaulting a fellow inmate told an Anne Arundel County judge yesterday that he is being threatened in prison by gang members and was forced to resort to violence to protect himself. Richard Janey, 43, is serving a 30-year sentence at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland for the murder of an Annapolis woman in 1994. Janey was convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of 29-year-old Susan McAteer, who was stabbed 58 times.

When a twice-convicted killer in solitary confinement spent an entire night standing at his cell door talking to himself, a physician ordered that he be returned to the prison system's psychiatric facility. That decision was overturned. Sixteen days later, he was seated among other prisoners - not in an isolation cage - for an early-morning drive along the dark interstates that stretch between Hagerstown and Baltimore while correctional officers read the paper and watched TV. Kevin G. Johns Jr. emerged from the bus in a bloody shirt and restraints so loose that an assistant warden worried that he would step right out of them.

A Southwest Baltimore man who wrote notes, made threats and tried to arrange the poisoning of witnesses who were to testify at his murder trial pleaded guilty yesterday to murder and witness-intimidation charges and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles G. Bernstein acknowledged that Ray "Lucky" Williams' 30-year sentence, with all but nine years suspended, is "very, very lenient." Williams' previous trial ended with a hung jury, and the case against him was rife with difficulties common in Baltimore murder cases.

You probably shouldn't take his word on it, but a fellow inmate diagnosed Kevin Johns thusly: "He was zapped out." Over the years, professionals with a more scholarly lingo at their disposal have diagnosed Johns as depressive, delusional, suicidal, homicidal, hallucinatory, bipolar, alcohol-poisoned in the womb, lead-poisoned as a child, post-traumatically stressed and schizo-affectively disordered. As the guy the next cell over from Johns said, "Zapped out." But what was clear to everyone from fellow prisoners to psychiatrists to Johns himself seems to have eluded correctional officials who over the years have confined him not in psychiatric facilities but regular prisons - to fatal consequences.

Two inmates who have been housed in the same prison tier as twice-convicted killer Kevin G. Johns Jr. testified yesterday that he acted strangely in the months before authorities say he strangled another prisoner on a bus traveling from Hagerstown to a maximum-security prison in Baltimore. The two men, who are both serving time for murder convictions, told the judge hearing the case that Johns covered the walls of his cell with writing and drawings, often could be heard talking to himself and sometimes refused to eat prison food or candy from his friends for fear that it was poisoned.

A tree grows in Hurlock. And while this is not a tale of lost innocence as recounted in a New York borough by novelist Betty Smith, self-improvement and redemption do figure in this account. Improving the world in which we live and giving back - that's how Maryland Public Safety Secretary Gary D. Maynard would describe his inmate-staffed conservation corps that is planting trees and seedlings across Maryland. At last count, they had planted about 11,567 trees, including 1,650 in Hurlock.