Hembree

New York Law School professor Robert Blecker says life on death row is TOO COMFORTABLE

June 21, 2012  Source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Most people expect life on death row to be harsh and isolated but a prison expert claims many convicted murderers are living the life of Riley behind bars.

Killer Danny Robbie Hembree Jr sparked a public uproar in January when he wrote to his local newspaper, the Gaston Gazette, gloating about how cushy his life was at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.

‘Is the public aware that I am a gentleman of leisure, watching color TV in the A.C., reading, taking naps at will, eating three, well-balanced, hot meals a day,’ Mr Hembree wrote in the letter, which he concluded with ‘Kill me if you can, suckers. Ha! Ha! Ha!’

Gloating: Convicted killer Danny Robbie Hembree Jr, pictured, bragged about how cushy life was in prison Danny Robbie Hembree Jr

But New York Law School professor Robert Blecker believes this level of comfort is the norm for prisoners inside America’s maximum-security prisons.

He said life can be undeservedly pleasant for many of the country’s most dangerous rapists and murderers.

They’re playing on softball fields with lined base paths and umpires in uniforms, while other guys are hanging out, getting a suntan,’ he told ABC News. 

‘Those who committed the worst crimes, who deserve to suffer the most, generally suffer the least.’

Mr Blecker said some inmates even claimed to have killed purely to get put behind bars.

‘I can play pool or basketball,’ said Robert Pitts of Woodbury, Tennessee, who told Mr Blecker he bludgeoned to death a 63-year-old grandmother so he could go to jail.

‘Softball when it’s softball season. Run, you can go out and jog, lift weights, play cards.’

But the murder victim’s families are struggling with the revelation that prison is something of a paradise for their loved ones’ killers.

Nicholas Catterton and Stella Holland’s 17-year-old daughter Heather Catterton was strangled to death by Mr Hembree, 50, in 2009, and then he dumped her body in a ravine.

Ms Holland told ABC that hearing her daughter’s murderer was so content with his living arrangements was like Mr Hembree ‘sticking a knife in there and just turning it all over again’.

‘We can’t even take care of our own poor people, but we can take care of him sitting on death row. Come on,’ Mr Catterton told the station.

‘You might be able to read a few books. But sit there and watch color TV and watch your favorite Jerry Springer Show? When you start caring and giving more rights to the criminals than you do the victims there’s something wrong with America.’

Such privileges are routine and help create a safe environment, prison officials told ABC, while advocates for the rights of prisoners said being deprived of freedom was punishment enough and that most inmates were not ladies or ‘gentleman of leisure’ as Mr Hembree claimed to be.

‘These prisons are just absolutely horrific places to be, there is violence throughout them, absolute overcrowding, the noise is deafening, no one would voluntarily choose to be there,’ Jon Gould, a criminal justice professor at American University said.

‘We are fooling ourselves if we allow ourselves to believe that one picture of a domino’s game suggests this is a something other than a horrific life to live.’

But Blecker said the public needed to be aware of some of these conditions and while prisoners shouldn’t be stripped of their rights the punishment should better fit the crime.

‘For the worst of the worst of the worst, the ones who are raping and murdering children, there should be punishment,’ Mr Blecker told ABC.

‘That quality of life that they experience day to day should be a direct reflection on the heinousness and seriousness of the crime.’

NORTH CAROLINA – North Carolina House committee votes to remove TVs for death row inmates

June 7, 2012  Source : http://www.fayobserver.com

RALEIGH – A divided House committee agreed Wednesday to prohibit North Carolina death-row prisoners from watching television despite the warning by Central Prison’s warden that removing TVs could increase violence among the condemned inmates.

The measure is a direct response to a convicted killer’s letter – printed in a newspaper in January -in which he boasted of being a “gentleman of leisure” on death row, watching color TV and taking frequent naps. He wrote, “Kill me if you can, suckers.”

Republican Rep. Tim Moore, who is shepherding the bill through the House, said Danny Hembree’s letter was galling and caused a ruckus in Gaston County, where Hembree was convicted last year of killing a 17-year-old girl and dumping her body in South Carolina. Moore told the judiciary subcommittee hearing the bill none of the 156 prisoners awaiting execution should receive the TV privilege.

“To think he’s there watching TV, that other murderers are there watching television, having that benefit, that’s just not right,” said Moore, who lives in nearby Cleveland County. “Anything we can do to make death row a less pleasant place, we should.”

Moore said he and other legislators recently visited Central Prison, a maximum-security prison for male offenders where nearly all of the state’s death-row prisoners reside. The four women are at the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women, also in Raleigh.

Hembree is segregated from other death-row prisoners and doesn’t have access to TV, the state Division of Adult Correction said.

Central Prison Warden Kenneth Lassiter told the committee that television is a management tool for prisoners and its privilege is already limited. Lassiter said the bill, if approved, would have “the potential to escalate security issues at the facility.”

“It will create an environment that violence could increase due to the fact that the inmates are idle,” he said. “It’s an isolated situation on death row, so inmates don’t have the normal movement of other inmates inside the facility.”

Death-row inmates at Central Prison share common areas in housing pods where they can watch television.

Prisoners must purchase ear buds and a small radio to listen to the television audio over a certain frequency, division spokeswoman Pamela Walker said. A Central Prison prisoner committee makes recommendations to administrators about which shows they’d like to watch on over-the-air channels. Prison officials decide which shows are appropriate.

“They’re not living the life of luxury,” Lassiter said.

Several Democratic committee members voted against it, apparently in deference to Lassiter’s concerns. Rep. Jennifer Weiss, D-Wake, said she was worried about the effect the lack of television could have on the state workers staffing the prison.

“I hear regularly about the dangers they put themselves in every day to keep all of us safe,” Weiss said, adding she wants “to make sure whatever we do here doesn’t jeopardize their safety.”

The bill’s next stop is the House, where lawmakers are expected to weigh that warning against trying to make a get-tough statement on criminals.

A judge earlier this year declared a mistrial in another murder trial involving Hembree, who was accused of strangling another woman, storing her body in the basement of his mother’s home and later dumping the body and setting it on fire to cover up evidence.

Hembree, 50, mocked in his letter how what he called the very slim chances that he would be executed in the next 20 years.

“Is the public aware that I am a gentleman of leisure, watching color TV in the A.C., reading, taking naps at will, eating three well-balanced meals a day?” Hembree asked.

Hembree’s sister said later that his brother wrote another letter to his family that talks of his despair on death row.