Patuxent Institution

After years of bringing spiritual and uplifting messages to Patuxent Institution, about 30 volunteers were honored for the first time yesterday at the maximum security prison in Jessup.The volunteers from about 20 Maryland religious and self-help groups received certificates of thanks from prison officials. About 75 people offer hours of support, prayer and counseling every month."We are so grateful to have you here today. Without your dedication, we could not make this work," Chaplain Lena B. Banks said.

Inge Stocklin reflects back and says with a chuckle, "I always wanted to teach women to quilt in prison. ... I don't know why. " And for more than a decade that's what she's done -- coaching inmates at the Patuxent Institute for Women, a correctional facility in Jessup, through the weekly Circle of Friends quilting group. Now in its 12th year, the program has been a success for the inmates as well as the charities that benefit from their work, Stocklin says, based on feedback she receives from the participants.

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.

Joshua Watson would have been 6 years old on Dec. 1 if he'd survived the beatings that began soon after he was born. But he never even made it to his first birthday. He was pronounced dead on New Year's Day 2005, when he was just 1 month old — a homicide by blunt force trauma. His tiny body was covered with 27 separate contusions: skull fractures, welts, cracked ribs and a broken femur. His mother, Tanea Bullock, eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and child abuse resulting in death, and she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In a gray shirt with a collar low enough to show the word "murder" tattooed on his neck, Shane E. Pardoe stood before Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Pamela L. North yesterday and begged for a second chance. "I'm sorry a thousand times," the 20-year-old convicted murderer from Glen Burnie told the judge. "I know I need to be punished for the wrongful things I did do, but I beg you to have mercy on me." Calling Pardoe a "very, very dangerous person," North sentenced him to 55 years in prison for the killing of his neighbor, Robert E. Hightower, in February 2000.

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.

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.

Out near the guard tower, over by the big coils of razor wire and the high chain-link fence, Lisa Rubin checks the progress of the bulb garden. The crocuses have come and gone, but daffodils and tulips linger. Rubin will be around a while longer, too, here at Patuxent Institution. She will remain well after the bulbs have yielded to the pumpkin plants, and the tomato vines have yellowed and gone to ground. Six more growing seasons will pass before she is eligible for parole. Her conviction was for murder, after she took a life in 1990 at a time when her own was in ruins.

A Patuxent Institution inmate was indicted yesterday on four charges relating to a February prison-cell fire at Patuxent Institution that resulted in the death of his cellmate. Dwayne Enis Braswell, 41, was charged in Howard County Circuit Court with second-degree murder, arson, burning the personal property of another and malicious destruction. According to Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Braswell is accused of throwing paper and clothing immediately outside his cell at 10 p.m. Feb. 18 and setting fire to the pile.

The mother and son of a Patuxent Institution corrections officer killed by a fellow officer in a murder-suicide three years ago filed a $5 million suit yesterday against the killer's estate.Ernestine Rembert and Kenneth Anderson Jr. allege in Anne Arundel Circuit Court papers that the Nov. 4, 1990, shooting death of Vivian Anderson, 38, formerly of Severn, has caused them "mental anguish, emotional pain and suffering, loss of society, companionship, comfort, protection and care."The suit says that the day before the killing, Eugene K. Davis, 37, a lieutenant at the Patuxent Institution, broke through a front window of her Severn home at about 8 p.m. and "tore apart the house looking for a gun to kill Vivian Anderson," who also was a lieutenant at Patuxent.

A former Randallstown man was sentenced this week to 40 years in prison for the sexual assault in March 2009 of an employee at an Edgewater restaurant after she got off work, according to court records. Christopher Edward Taylor, 36, of Washington, D.C., was accused of forcing his way into the woman's car at gunpoint at about 11:30 p.m. March 31 after she left work at an Original Steakhouse, assaulting her and making her take him to an ATM to withdraw cash from her bank account.

A Glen Burnie teenager found playing a video game at home the day after killing his mother and leaving her body in her bedroom pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree murder. William Joseph Skiratko, 18, stood motionless while relatives watched as he admitted to Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Pamela L. North that he fatally stabbed Elizabeth Anne Skiratko, 45. Conditions of the plea include a recommendation that Skiratko be evaluated for treatment in the youthful offender program of Patuxent Institution.

A Glen Burnie teenager found playing a video game at home the day after killing his mother and leaving her body in her bedroom pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree murder. William Joseph Skiratko, 18, stood motionless while relatives watched as he admitted to Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Pamela L. North that he fatally stabbed Elizabeth Anne Skiratko, 45. Conditions of the plea include a recommendation that Skiratko be evaluated for treatment in the youthful offender program of Patuxent Institution.

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.

A former Patuxent Institution inmate who was charged with murder after he allegedly set a fire that induced another inmate's fatal asthma attack was deemed incompetent to stand trial yesterday and committed to Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital in Jessup. Dewayne E. Braswell, 41, will remain in custody of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene until he can be found competent to assist in his defense on charges stemming from the Feb. 18, 2000, fire and subsequent death of Joseph Jenkins, a 31-year-old prisoner, court officials said.

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.

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.