Not Caught On Camera: More Bad News for Gus Puryear
Yesterday I talked with Rob McGuire, the local prosecutor who brought charges against four CCA guards in the death of inmate Estelle Richardson, who in 2004 was found in her solitary cell with a broken skull and four cracked ribs. McGuire ultimately dropped the case, after doctors for both CCA and Richardson's family determined that her head injuries might have been sustained before she was placed in solitary confinement.
Now, though, the Richardson case has taken center stage in the nomination hearings of Gus Puryear, the CCA general counsel who was nominated by President George W. Bush to a federal judgeship in Tennessee's Middle District. The Senate Judiciary Committee has grilled Puryear about his statements about the case—he falsely claimed the guards were “exonerated”—and how his company handled the investigation. On that count, McGuire has a rather interesting story to share.
And now we're going to have to jump.
McGuire says that when a Metro homicide detective began to investigate Richardson's death, he asked to see videotape of the extractions—i.e., those times when an inmate is ushered in and out of her cell. Instead, guards told him the camera had mysteriously malfunctioned. Wouldn't you know it, the detective was told, there's no footage available—which is not much different than when the suspect tells Lennie Briscoe he doesn't remember what he was doing the night of the murder. At that point, the detective examined the camera and could find nothing wrong with it.
“He turns it on and it appears to be working just fine,” McGuire says. “That was a significant problem for us; it did not help their cause.”
Of course, McGuire ultimately had to drop the case when it appeared that any number of different people—from inmates to guards—could have caused Richardson's head injuries. And because she was heavily medicated at the time, it was certainly possible that the inmate could have endured a serious injury without realizing until it was too late.
But none of this lets CCA off the hook. First, there's the issue that, no matter how you look at it, Richardson was almost certainly killed in a CCA facility, which Puryear glosses over in his correspondence with members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. In fact, Puryear makes her death out to be a veritable mystery, even though it's ludicrous to imagine how someone could break their skull and crack their ribs by simply slipping on the floor. So if—and we're using the word “if” lightly here—she was killed in jail, that doesn't reflect well on CCA.
Then, of course, there's McGuire's fresh anecdote about the supposedly malfunctioning camera, which makes you wonder if CCA took an awkward stab at a cover-up. CCA and Puryear are already under fire for last week's Time.com report, in which a former prison manager accused the company of lying to its government clients about the safety of its prisons. Is there a pattern here?
It's next to impossible to gleam objective data from CCA, even though it manages public facilities across the country. But with Puryear likely to face additional additional questions from the members of the judiciary committee about the Richardson case and other CCA matters, a little more transparency might be in order.
Developing....
Comments
For additional details, and to read the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that first raised the fact that CCA told investigators there was no videotape of Estelle Richardson's cell extraction the day before her death, please visit: www.againstpuryear.org.
Posted 03/21/2008 at 05:31:28 PMLet's see, the moral of this story is, don't do anything that gets you thrown in prison?
Posted 03/21/2008 at 08:04:15 PMHaven't we heard this before? "Keep moving folks, nothing to see here."
Would I be betraying my age if I asked if Rosemary Woods was operating that supposed "malfunctioning" camera?
Estelle Richardson had no contact I believe, with other inmates for 18 days before her death. She was isolated in a segregation cell with only CCA staff having access to her.
The notion that she could have lived for 18 days with four broken ribs isn't that hard to believe, but they would have started to heal by the time she died. Any competent medical examiner would have discovered that. The notion that she could have lived with her skull fractures for 18 days, is certainly more farfetched. But the notion that she might have lived that long with damage to her liver that could have only been caused by extremely violent trauma is ludicrous. Yet of all the unbelievable tales, the one that takes the cake is that a woman who somehow could have lived for so long through that sort of horrendous injuries, the kind one might sustain from being crushed in a building that had collapsed in an earthquake...that she would have somehow remained capabable of substantial resistance to those four husky and healthy men who extracted her from that cell, that has to be the biggest lie of all.
For Puryear to claim that those most likely responsible for that homicidal brutality were "exonerated" is beyond imagination. He owes an apology to the U.S. Senate and the people of Tennessee. He should withdraw his nomination immediately.
Posted 03/21/2008 at 09:05:40 PMNow children, the evidence of her injuries being what they were, there would seem to me to be a perfectly sound cause for Estelle Richardson's death in solitary. Entirely reasonable and believable. And would explain the absence of any video observation of her extraction from her cell. Baffles me that CCA has not revealed this to us before now. The lady committed suicide!
Posted 03/22/2008 at 09:33:23 AMOf course! Suicide! This Gus Puryear should not only NOT be a judge, he should be in one of his own hellish prisons. If he died there it would be fine with me.
Posted 03/23/2008 at 09:57:36 PMthis is just one of the nightmare stories, if the truth were told on how prisoners were abused, it would make ones hair stand up/// its unbelievable and most quards have background records of abusive thats why they go there, its heaven to them, they can do all the abusing and get paid for it to//inmates are afraid to look crooked as if a guard is in the mood, hes got a d.r. and away to solitary, and beaten all they want. get away scot clean, and go home feeling good// its an everyday thing, and the inmate had better not open his mouth, unless he wants more. try to prove it was a guard /thats a laugh////
Posted 03/24/2008 at 08:27:38 AM