Patuxent Institution

Facing a potentially contentious legislative hearing, prison officials announced disciplinary action yesterday against four more corrections officers whose negligence contributed to the recent escape of two inmates from a Jessup prison.The firing of another guard, the demotion of a captain to lieutenant and written reprimands of a major and another corrections officer complete the internal disciplinary review at the Maryland Correctional Institution, officials said.That brought to nine the number of officers disciplined or transferred as a result of the May 18 escape.

An armed robber and his prison psychologist paramour are being investigated in a series of alleged mail order schemes through an Annapolis post office box, state police said.Fliers detailing the operation were found at the home of psychologist Elizabeth L. Feil, who is being investigated to determine whether she aided in the escape of her former patient, Byron Smoot, from Maryland Correctional Institution -- Jessup. Shoe boxes filled with correspondence between Feil and other inmates were discovered by her husband, Glenn Bosshard, at their Annapolis home and turned over to police.

Psychologist Elizabeth Feil grew up in a big brick house -- with an elevator and pool -- on the Main Line in Philadelphia. On Tuesday night, state police say, she wound up in a Pulaski Highway motel with a tattooed former patient who had just escaped from prison.Police, with help from her angry husband, Glenn Bosshard, who has been courting the media this week, have made the 43-year-old Feil -- a child of privilege with an Ivy League education -- the unlikely star of a tawdry prison escape drama.

Behind the 15-foot-high barbed-wire fence at Patuxent Institution in Jessup, inmates are making weapons.Weapons to fight the spread of Lyme disease, that is.In the past month -- with $100,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- the inmates have built 100 metal feeding stations designed to attract deer and kill their ticks.The project, which is said to be one of the largest undertaken by Maryland prisoners, is part of a $2 million experiment to deal with one of the fears accompanying the burgeoning suburban deer population -- the rising number of cases of Lyme disease, which can be transmitted by ticks.

A 32-year-old convicted killer serving a life sentence failed to return from a weekend leave to a halfway house yesterday, renewing controversy over whether "lifers" sentenced to the Patuxent Institution should be allowed leaves.Charles Elmer Carpenter, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the 1982 shotgun slaying of his grandmother in rural Washington County, was supposed to return by 11: 59 p.m. Sunday from a weekend leave with his sister in Arbutus, said Joseph Henneberry, director of the Patuxent Institution in Jessup.

An autopsy was planned on an inmate at Patuxent Institution who was found foaming at the mouth in his cell early yesterday by an officer making rounds, a state prisons spokesman said.The inmate, Leon Hardy, 37, of Baltimore -- who was serving a life term in the 1980 robbery and slaying of Glenn Harrod, an employee at a McDonald's restaurant in the 5100 block of York Road -- was found unconscious about 3: 30 a.m. in his single-bed cell in the Jessup institution's mental health unit, corrections spokesman Leonard A. Sipes Jr. said.

Hoping to avoid a $500,000 shortfall, officials at Patuxent Institution have reduced security overtime -- cutting some inmate activities and leaving some security posts with fewer or no officers.The state had limited the maximum-security prison in Jessup to $1.6 million in overtime for the fiscal year that began July 1. But prison officials say overtime spending was on a pace to exceed $2 million.The reduction in overtime, announced in a prison memorandum obtained by The Sun, took effect Oct. 20.Union officials, who met last night with correctional officers from Patuxent and other state prisons, said they are concerned that such security-force reductions are threatening the staffs' safety.

Rhonda Douglass had some simple advice for the dozen teen-age girls who have been visiting her for the past month at her home at the Patuxent Institution in Jessup."

Clifton Waddell Johnson, 61, Patuxent Institution majorClifton Waddell Johnson, who retired last year as a major on the Patuxent Institution state prison staff, died of heart failure Monday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 61.A native of Baltimore and a 1953 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School, Mr. Johnson served in the Marine Corps and attained the rank of sergeant. He began his career at Patuxent in 1961. He also was a tax preparer for H&R Block for many years.At New Friendship Baptist Church in East Baltimore, Mr. Johnson was treasurer, spiritual adviser to the children's ministry and music department, and was ordained as a deacon in 1987.

A man confined to a psychiatric institution after killing a Baltimore police officer and wounding seven others in a 1976 shooting spree has asked to be granted daily outings from prison.The inmate's recent request -- permitted by a quirk in state regulations -- has produced a storm of outrage from the slain officer's family and police, prompting state prison officials to say the plea has no chance of winning approval. A formal hearing is not expected for some 12 months.John Earl Williams, who is 37, was sentenced to a life-plus-60-year sentence and sent to the Patuxent Institution on the premise that he could be rehabilitated.

Driven by demons perhaps even he did not understand, 15-year-old Nicholas W. Browning approached his sleeping father a year ago and shot him in the head. One by one, he did the same to his mother and two brothers, the youngest of whom raised a hand in a futile attempt at warding off the bullet that killed him. Today, in a Towson courtroom, Browning, now 16, will be sentenced for his acts, which stunned his Cockeysville community and his classmates at Dulaney High School, where he had played lacrosse and displayed a keen intelligence.

Boy, 13, is charged in stabbing of brother, 16 A 13-year-old Rosedale boy was arrested after his 16-year-old brother was stabbed in the abdomen with a kitchen knife Thursday evening during an argument over a PlayStation, Baltimore County police said yesterday. The older boy was taken to Johns Hopkins Children's Center Pediatric Emergency Department, where he was listed in good condition, said Cpl. Michael Hill, a county police spokesman. The stabbing occurred about 5:30 p.m. Thursday at a home in the 7900 block of 33rd St., he said.

It wasn't the typical scene on the grounds of a state prison. Inmates in matching blue outfits and hats, alongside the governor, bent over in a muddy field to plant hundreds of seedlings behind the barbed wire-lined fencing of a maximum-security prison. But with the help of those couple of dozen inmates - and the seedlings - Howard County will be turning a little greener. Officials announced last week a new initiative that calls for inmates at Patuxent Institution in Jessup to tend to 1,100 seedlings until they mature into trees that will be replanted at local parks.

A 17-year-old Dundalk boy pleaded guilty yesterday to first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a teenager whom he and his friends picked at random to beat up in January. William R. "Billy" Ferandes could receive a sentence of up to 60 years in prison, according to the terms of a plea agreement reached between prosecutors and the defendant's lawyer. Baltimore County prosecutors had been seeking life in prison without the possibility of parole. But Baltimore County Circuit Judge Patrick Cavanaugh agreed to impose a sentence of no more than life in prison with all but 60 years suspended and a concurrent 20-year prison term for a handgun charge to which the teenager also entered a guilty plea.

It's the kind of theft that Cindy McKay knows well. Except this time, investigators say, she is the victim. An employee in the state prison system's finance department is set to go to trial next month in Howard County for allegedly forging the endorsement on a check made out to McKay, a serial swindler who will be sentenced tomorrow after pleading guilty to murder. CherRon Nichole Johnson, 36, was charged last month with cashing a $426 state income tax refund check intended for McKay, a 52-year-old inmate at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women who has been convicted more than a dozen times for theft and embezzlement and was the focus of a three-part series in The Sun this year.

Robert Lee Johns, retired acting director of the Patuxent Institution, died Friday in a Reisterstown Road automobile accident. The Pikesville resident was 81. Born in Baltimore and raised on Fremont Avenue, he graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in 1944. During World War II, he served in the Marine Corps in the Pacific. After the war, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Morgan State University and joined Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. He earned a master's degree in social work from Howard University.

Grover Cleveland Bradley Jr., a financial officer for the Patuxent Institution and a longtime high school football official, died of a heart attack Tuesday at Howard County General Hospital. The Columbia resident was 59. Mr. Bradley had been employed as the chief fiscal officer at Patuxent Institution since 2002. He began working for the state in 1997, in accounting and management at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. And for more than 30 years, until his retirement last year, he was an umpire and referee with the Washington District Football Officials Association.

Called a "sexual predator" who merited "no mercy" by an Anne Arundel County judge, a 61-year-old man was sentenced yesterday to the maximum 20-year term for a second-degree sex offense for molesting a friend's adolescent grandson in January 2004. Michael A. Damasiewicz, a mechanic who previously had been imprisoned for molesting an adolescent girl, told Circuit Judge Joseph P. Manck that "I just had no willpower" and blamed his actions on prescription drugs he took for several health problems and manic depression.

TWENTY-FIVE handmade quilts adorn the walls of the central library this month. Library shelves serve as display tables for hand-crocheted baby blankets and hats. Most of the quilts are in bright colors, some with images of baby animals, some in traditional Amish patterns, and others showing Spiderman and other characters beloved by children. Some are more unusual -- decorated with heartfelt poetry and messages from mothers to their children and children to their mothers. All were made by women prisoners.

Donald Jones, director of a state commission on prison conditions, died of cancer Saturday at his Randallstown home. He was 48. Mr. Jones was a staff member of the Commission on Correctional Standards for five years before being named its executive director in 1993. The commission monitors standards regarding constitutional issues, health and safety in prisons, jails and other correctional institutions. "He was fair, objective and a pleasure to work with," said Marie Henderson, chairwoman of the commission for the past 23 years.