Supermax

Washington -- The parents of John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the country's toughest federal prison, stepped up their request for his release, noting yesterday that the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, recently resulted in a sentence of just nine months for an Australian detainee held since late 2001. "John has been in prison for more than five years," said his mother, Marilyn Walker. "It's time for him to come home." This, said his lead attorney, James J. Brosnahan of San Francisco, "is a simple cry for justice."

Several of a Jessup prison's worst inmates attacked a group of corrections officers yesterday afternoon, stabbing two of them in what prison officials say was an isolated and unprovoked assault.The two officers from the Maryland House of Correction were flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, where they were treated for stab wounds to the head and back and released last night. Officials identified them as Gregory McGowen and Officer Alonzo Galloway.Two other officers suffered minor injuries in the assault.

A federal jury found yesterday that a group of guards violated the civil rights of a former inmate at Maryland's Supermax prison when they placed him in special leg and hand irons in the prison's now-closed "pink room" isolation cell for disruptive prisoners.Jurors awarded Quentin L. Jackson $9,501 in compensatory and punitive damages from five correctional officers.After a four-day trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, the jury found that the guards acted improperly when they placed Jackson in shackles in the isolation cell.

A federal jury found yesterday that a group of guards violated the civil rights of a former inmate at Maryland's Supermax prison when they placed him in special leg and hand irons in the prison's now-closed "pink room" isolation cell for disruptive prisoners.Jurors awarded Quentin L. Jackson $9,501 in compensatory and punitive damages from five correctional officers.After a four-day trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, the jury found that the guards acted improperly when they placed Jackson in shackles in the isolation cell.

An armed robber, who had been moved to the state's maximum security prison because of previous escapes, escaped yesterday from the so-called "Supermax" in Baltimore and was recaptured minutes later a half-block away, a prisons spokesman said.He was the second prisoner to escape from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center and the first since security was strengthened after a 1991 escape stunned officials.John Lloyd Wells, 37, formerly of Middle River, climbed over the prison wall on Madison Street at 3: 18 a.m. and was immediately spotted by a correctional officer, who drew his weapon and ordered Wells to stop, said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services.

The only inmate ever to escape from the state's "Supermax" prison has been transferred to lesser security, after officials said he showed he was complying with the prison's behavior modification program.Harold Benjamin Dean, who is serving a sentence of life plus 105 years for a 1981 robbery and murder and for escape, was transferred Jan. 24 to the Maryland House of Correction Annex in Jessup, a maximum-security prison.Dean, 45, escaped Nov. 30, 1991, from the East Baltimore prison, formally called the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center, by squeezing through an 8-inch by 22-inch cell window, then jumping onto the roof.

Maryland prison officials agreed yesterday to extend a lockdown of the House of Correction Annex in Jessup, the scene of a violent inmate uprising last week.The maximum-security prison will remain locked down until a thorough "shakedown" of its cells has been completed and a task force made up of employee representatives and prison officials makes recommendations on improving security."We can't overemphasize what a significant step this is," said Joe Lawrence, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, part of a union coalition representing state prison guards.

After a two-year civil rights investigation of Maryland's toughest prison, officials at the U.S. Department of Justice have lauded improvements in conditions there and are close to ending their probe.In a July 29 letter, Justice Department attorney Judith C. Preston commended state prison officials and staff at Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center for making "a real effort to improve the institution, and it shows." She wrote that if some final improvements in mental-health treatment for inmates are made within a year, "we will recommend closure of the investigation."

Flint Gregory Hunt was married yesterday at the Supermax prison in Baltimore, across the street from the Maryland Penitentiary where he is to be executed in the gas chamber next week.The Muslim ceremony was attended by Hunt's mother, sister, son and six corrections officials, said Leonard A. Sipes Jr., a state prisons spokesman.Sipes said that by law, he could not identify the bride.After the 15-minute ceremony, Hunt hugged his new wife and was taken back to his cell in the state's most secure prison.

JESSUP -- The winter wind seems as lacerating as the razor wire through which it whistles. Upward of 100 miles of such wire, atop the several high fences and in coils between those fences, discourage inmates from trying to leave the maximum security prison here.But some of the prisoners are more easily confined than controlled in confinement, and a few must be controlled by the threat, or fact, of confinement elsewhere, in what is called Supermax. That is an even more strict regime prison that fills a block in downtown Baltimore.

Are you in favor of housing Maryland's federal detainees (now spread among two dozen facilities in multiple states) at the former "Supermax" prison in downtown Baltimore? Yes 7% No 92% Not sure 1% (4,486 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Should Baltimore's zoning laws be changed to allow many more venues to offer live entertainment such as concerts and poetry readings? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

Do you think that recent positive signs for the economy mean that the recession is almost over? Yes 81% No 17% Not sure 2% (7,558 votes, results not scientific) Next poll: : Are you in favor of housing Maryland's federal detainees (now spread among two dozen facilities in multiple states) at the former "Supermax" prison in downtown Baltimore? Vote at baltimoresun.com/vote

Cell phone planted at prison yields two arrests A contraband cell phone planted by law enforcement and corrections officials in Baltimore's Supermax prison was used to record inmate conversations, uncovering multiple crimes, including a home invasion plot that resulted in a killing. Kevin Dorsey, 26, and Rodney Lockett, 25, were charged Tuesday with the armed robbery in which two people were shot and one died. More charges will likely follow from the investigation, dubbed "Operation Dial-a-Cell," said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein.

A convicted killer with a history of mental illness was found dead in his cell Monday in what authorities say was an apparent suicide, an outcome the inmate's lawyers called tragically predictable. Kevin G. Johns Jr., 26, was found at the Supermax prison in Baltimore just after midnight during a routine security count, according to the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. He was being held at the prison after being found not criminally responsible for the death of another inmate during an attack aboard a prison transportation bus in 2005.

A convicted killer who was found not criminally responsible this month for his third homicide will remain incarcerated at a maximum-security prison while receiving treatment for his psychiatric illnesses from the state health department - a decision that defense attorneys say effectively "guts" the laws designed to protect the criminally insane. The determination to keep Kevin G. Johns Jr. at the Supermax prison in Baltimore came after the prison's warden and the security chief of the state's maximum-security psychiatric hospital concluded that the medical facility would not be able to keep its staff or patients safe with Johns there, even if he is confined to the ward reserved for the hospital's most dangerous patients.

Just five days before twice-convicted killer Kevin G. Johns Jr. is accused of strangling to death a fellow inmate on a prison bus, he told a psychologist at Baltimore's maximum-security prison that he was struggling with an "evil force" and that he might want to discontinue his therapy to protect the therapist, a forensic psychiatrist testified for the defense yesterday. "I like you. I don't want to hurt you. But I don't know what this thing can do," Dr. David A. Williamson quoted Johns as telling the psychologist Jan. 27, 2005.

SUPERMAX VISIT -- During a rare tour of Maryland's "SuperMax" prison, the daughter of murder victims talks about her parents' killer, who is held in the facility. Watch a video at baltimoresun.com/supermax ALSO ON baltimoresun.com Minding your business a '60s-era student group with thousands of members at its peak is making a comeback. SUN BLOGS "A music video for milk? Why not? It's a shame my parents make me drink a giant glass of it every night with dinner. Otherwise I'd probably still enjoy the stuff."

For Phyllis Bricker, a rare tour yesterday through the Supermax prison - where her parents' killer is housed on death row - was the latest step in a painful odyssey as she awaits an execution that has been on hold for years. "My parents are gone, and he's still here," Bricker said while standing inside the fortified building north of downtown, at the state prison complex on East Madison Street. For Lisa Spicknall, whose husband killed their two children in 1999 and was later slain by another inmate in prison in Jessup, there was some relief.

About 350 Amnesty International members marched outside Baltimore's Supermax prison yesterday to call for an end to Maryland's death penalty. Organizers and speakers at the event praised Gov. Martin O'Malley for publicly supporting efforts to repeal the state's death penalty, a move the General Assembly rejected in March. Folabi K. Olagbaju, director of Amnesty International's Mid-Atlantic regional office, said the group will try again when the legislature meets next year and was encouraged by O'Malley's support.

Washington -- The parents of John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the country's toughest federal prison, stepped up their request for his release, noting yesterday that the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, recently resulted in a sentence of just nine months for an Australian detainee held since late 2001. "John has been in prison for more than five years," said his mother, Marilyn Walker. "It's time for him to come home." This, said his lead attorney, James J. Brosnahan of San Francisco, "is a simple cry for justice."