In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
The Slow Rot at Supermax
HAIRY
Member Posts: 23,606
At Moussaoui's future home in Florence, Colo., inmates are reportedly not merely punished, but incapacitated and broken down.
By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer
May 5, 2006
COMMENT BY HAIRY: This is the appropriate punishment for the sob--much better than a quick and painless death. The jury did right! And, folks, AMERICA WON after all.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Halfway through the trial, prison expert James E. Aiken looked straight at jurors and told them what Zacarias Moussaoui could expect if they sent him away for the rest of his life.
"I have seen them rot," he said. "They rot."
Moussaoui was formally sentenced Thursday to life in prison after a federal jury rejected a death sentence for the admitted Sept. 11 conspirator.
Officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons said that Moussaoui was destined for the facility high in the Colorado Rockies.
Already there is a veritable "bombers' row" - Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center blast; Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski; Terry L. Nichols, an accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing; Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who Moussaoui testified was to join him in another Al Qaeda hijacking; and Eric Rudolph, who bombed abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympics.
All, like Moussaoui, are serving life without parole - spending their days in prison wings that are partly underground. They exist alone in soundproof cells as small as 7 feet by 12 feet, with a concrete-poured desk, bed and stool, a small shower and sink, and a TV that offers religious and anger-management programs.
They are locked down 23 hours a day.
Larry Homenick, a former U.S. marshal who has taken prisoners to Supermax, said that there was a small triangular recreation area, known as "the dog run," where solitary Supermax prisoners could occasionally get a glimpse of sky.
He said it was chilling to walk down the cellblocks and glance through the plexiglass "sally port" chambers into the cells and see the faces inside.
Life there is harsh. Food is delivered through a slit in the cell door. Prisoners don't leave their cells to see a lawyer, a doctor or a prison official; those visitors must go to the cell.
But prisoners can earn extra privileges, like a wider variety of television offerings, more exercise time and visitation rights, based on their behavior.
There are 1,400 remote-controlled steel doors. Motion detectors and hidden cameras monitor every move. The prison walls and razor-wired grounds are patrolled by laser beams and dogs.
The facility is filling up. Four hundred inmates are there now. There is room for 90 more.
Looking to restore order after a rash of prison violence at the federal maximum-security lockup in Marion, Ill. - the facility that replaced the notorious Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay - officials in 1983 put the prisoners on indefinite lockdown.
California was among the first states to copy the concept, opening super-secure units in Corcoran in 1988 and Pelican Bay in 1989.
The federal Supermax prison in Colorado was opened in November 1994. Nobody has escaped.
"We just needed a more secure facility," said Tracy Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. "We needed to bring together the most dangerous, that required the most intense supervision, to one location."
In his trial testimony, Aiken said the whole point of Supermax was not just punishment, but "incapacitation."
There is no pretense that the prison is preparing the inmate for a return to society. Like the cellmate of the count of Monte Cristo who died an old, tired convict, Aiken said, "Moussaoui will deteriorate."
The inmate "is constantly monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "He will never get lost in a crowd because he would never be in a crowd."
Christopher Boyce, a convicted spy who was incarcerated at Supermax, left the prison about 100 miles south of Denver with no regret. "You're slowly hung," he once told The Times. "You're ground down. You can barely keep your sanity."
Bernard Kleinman, a New York lawyer who represented Yousef, called it "extraordinarily draconian punishment."
Moussaoui might be a household name today, "but 20 years from now, people will forget him," Kleinman said. "He will sit there all alone, and all forgotten."
Ron Kuby, another New York defense lawyer, has handled several East Coast "revolutionaries" who went on a killing spree, and a radical fundamentalist who killed a rabbi in 1990. All were brought to Supermax.
He thought Aiken's description that prisoners rot inside its walls was too kind.
"It's beyond rotting," he said. "Rotting at least implies a slow, gradual disintegration."
He said there were a lot of prisons where inmates rot, where the staff "plants you in front of your TV in your cell and you just grow there like a mushroom."
"But Supermax is worse," he said. "It's not just the hothouse for the mushrooms. It's designed in the end to break you down."
By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer
May 5, 2006
COMMENT BY HAIRY: This is the appropriate punishment for the sob--much better than a quick and painless death. The jury did right! And, folks, AMERICA WON after all.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Halfway through the trial, prison expert James E. Aiken looked straight at jurors and told them what Zacarias Moussaoui could expect if they sent him away for the rest of his life.
"I have seen them rot," he said. "They rot."
Moussaoui was formally sentenced Thursday to life in prison after a federal jury rejected a death sentence for the admitted Sept. 11 conspirator.
Officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons said that Moussaoui was destined for the facility high in the Colorado Rockies.
Already there is a veritable "bombers' row" - Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center blast; Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski; Terry L. Nichols, an accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing; Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who Moussaoui testified was to join him in another Al Qaeda hijacking; and Eric Rudolph, who bombed abortion clinics and the Atlanta Olympics.
All, like Moussaoui, are serving life without parole - spending their days in prison wings that are partly underground. They exist alone in soundproof cells as small as 7 feet by 12 feet, with a concrete-poured desk, bed and stool, a small shower and sink, and a TV that offers religious and anger-management programs.
They are locked down 23 hours a day.
Larry Homenick, a former U.S. marshal who has taken prisoners to Supermax, said that there was a small triangular recreation area, known as "the dog run," where solitary Supermax prisoners could occasionally get a glimpse of sky.
He said it was chilling to walk down the cellblocks and glance through the plexiglass "sally port" chambers into the cells and see the faces inside.
Life there is harsh. Food is delivered through a slit in the cell door. Prisoners don't leave their cells to see a lawyer, a doctor or a prison official; those visitors must go to the cell.
But prisoners can earn extra privileges, like a wider variety of television offerings, more exercise time and visitation rights, based on their behavior.
There are 1,400 remote-controlled steel doors. Motion detectors and hidden cameras monitor every move. The prison walls and razor-wired grounds are patrolled by laser beams and dogs.
The facility is filling up. Four hundred inmates are there now. There is room for 90 more.
Looking to restore order after a rash of prison violence at the federal maximum-security lockup in Marion, Ill. - the facility that replaced the notorious Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay - officials in 1983 put the prisoners on indefinite lockdown.
California was among the first states to copy the concept, opening super-secure units in Corcoran in 1988 and Pelican Bay in 1989.
The federal Supermax prison in Colorado was opened in November 1994. Nobody has escaped.
"We just needed a more secure facility," said Tracy Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. "We needed to bring together the most dangerous, that required the most intense supervision, to one location."
In his trial testimony, Aiken said the whole point of Supermax was not just punishment, but "incapacitation."
There is no pretense that the prison is preparing the inmate for a return to society. Like the cellmate of the count of Monte Cristo who died an old, tired convict, Aiken said, "Moussaoui will deteriorate."
The inmate "is constantly monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "He will never get lost in a crowd because he would never be in a crowd."
Christopher Boyce, a convicted spy who was incarcerated at Supermax, left the prison about 100 miles south of Denver with no regret. "You're slowly hung," he once told The Times. "You're ground down. You can barely keep your sanity."
Bernard Kleinman, a New York lawyer who represented Yousef, called it "extraordinarily draconian punishment."
Moussaoui might be a household name today, "but 20 years from now, people will forget him," Kleinman said. "He will sit there all alone, and all forgotten."
Ron Kuby, another New York defense lawyer, has handled several East Coast "revolutionaries" who went on a killing spree, and a radical fundamentalist who killed a rabbi in 1990. All were brought to Supermax.
He thought Aiken's description that prisoners rot inside its walls was too kind.
"It's beyond rotting," he said. "Rotting at least implies a slow, gradual disintegration."
He said there were a lot of prisons where inmates rot, where the staff "plants you in front of your TV in your cell and you just grow there like a mushroom."
"But Supermax is worse," he said. "It's not just the hothouse for the mushrooms. It's designed in the end to break you down."
Comments
Give him a bullet to the head. We'd get more justice by forking out all that money to keep him in a lighted room?
What a waste of electricity.
Far better to let him waste away in Supermax.
I heard speculation on the radio that an inmate would do a hit on Moussaoui.
No way, he will never speak to, or even see, another inmate.
Ha Ha Ha ... NICE touch!
I wonder who thought THAT up!??
".. yes, Virginia, there ARE worse things than death!" [:D][:D][:D]
quote:and a TV that offers religious and anger-management programs.
Ha Ha Ha ... NICE touch!
I wonder who thought THAT up!??
".. yes, Virginia, there ARE worse things than death!" [:D][:D][:D]
I think they should play him "Barney" videos 24 hours a day
This is one time I agree with Hairy, if we execute the sob he becomes a martyr, let him rot for 20 years and then let another inmate do the "execution" (I think a broom stick up the * would be appropriate)
Don
What Don said. [^]
"Blood thirst?" NO !! Reciprocity. Moussaoui and those who think like him (seemingly a good-sized majority of the practitioners of the "peace-loving" religion of Islam) are the ones who sought this "jihad" and they need to learn it is not a one way street. The only thing these scum understand is force - no different than Hitler, Stalin or others of that ilk. Force is also the only thing which will stop them - more brutal, more terrible, than they can comprehend. Any attempt to compromise, to negotiate, is only seen as a sign of weakness, something to be exploited. The way to stop them is to make the pain of harming - or attempting to harm - us so unbearable it becomes unthinkable. Then, and only then, they may begin to evolve into civilized beings with whom it is *possible* to have a rational dialogue.
Given enough years, that place could take his FAITH from him. for someone desperate to become a religious matyr, that is like a sentence in hell without the luxury of dying first.
I hope in that cold, dark place (and no matter how well equppied it will be cold and dark for him), he loses his islam, and knows it. I hope he tastes the perfect despair of sacrificing his life and freedom for somehting which abandons him in a concrete cave, alone and shattered.
But I am a evil meanie like that. Simple death is too good for him. Letting him sit in there means we get a shot to in effect execute his soul as well as his body.
I wonder if 24 hour a day Martha Stewart shows would be considered "cruel and unusual punishment"...[:D]
Got to agree with Hairy on this one. At first I felt that we had lost sight and the impact of 9-11 when they gave the sentence, but after thinking a bit I realized that death was his ultimate goal to portray the image of a religious hero/martyr.
I wonder if 24 hour a day Martha Stewart shows would be considered "cruel and unusual punishment"...[:D]
How about if it's just one show, on a loop circuit.[^]
As Larry the cable guy would say, "Lord, forgive me, that just ain't right!"[:D]
[}:)]It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all...................................................."[}:)]
Which way is East? Man, he can pray in ANY direction, and Allah is not going to get him out of there! But from what we've heard, he is probably non the praying type ... yet!
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000836.html
I don't fully disagree, but the fast rot option sounds good too. I want to be sure he is sucked dry of any intelligence first, then after he's given us all he knows, I would prefer a quiet execution. By that I mean shot while escaping or a nasty fall in the shower, etc. If for no other reason than to save $$. Otherwise he is useless and expensive.