Letters from solitary confinement reveal DWI man's despair January 26, 2012 A man arrested for driving while intoxicated and then forced into solitary confinement for two years tried to get help by writing to the jail's nurse, but the only response he got was a dose of sedatives, his lawyer said. Stephen Slevin, 57, was arrested in August 2005 in New Mexico’s Dona Ana County, charged with aggravated driving while under the influence and possession of a stolen vehicle, although Slevin maintains the car was lent to him by a friend. On Tuesday, a federal jury in Sante Fe awarded him $22 million in damages for enduring inhumane conditions in the Dona Ana County jail, which he emerged from "hollow," Matt Coyte, his lawyer, told msnbc.com on Wednesday. [...] http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/26/10243856-letters-from-solitary-confinement-reveal-dwi-mans-despair [with comments]
At UK, Clarence Thomas talks about his upbringing, Supreme Court
By Jennifer Hewlett — jhewlett@herald-leader.com Posted: 10:37pm on Apr 5, 2012; Modified: 11:09pm on Apr 5, 2012
His joking remarks gave his audience little doubt about his political views.
After congratulating the University of Kentucky men's basketball team for winning the school's eighth NCAA national championship this week, Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, told a capacity crowd Thursday night at UK's Memorial Hall: "Maybe in this type of environment, we could redistribute some of those."
When asked whether he read The New York Times every day, Thomas replied, "Oh, God, no!"
Thomas was at UK to deliver the 13th Roy R. and Virginia F. Ray Lecture. But the lecture was more like a living-room chat, with UK law school dean David Brennen, American Bar Association president and UK law school alum William T. Robinson III and UK law professor Stephen Clowney asking Thomas a variety of questions while the four men sat onstage.
Thomas, 63, described himself as a "no-frills guy" who doesn't play golf or tennis, or drink or smoke. He said he went to a Cracker Barrel restaurant with three non-lawyer buddies for his 60th birthday.
As he left no doubt about his conservative leanings, Thomas also left no doubt about his feelings for his grandparents while talking about his autobiography My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir, or about his view of the Supreme Court.
The justice said he wrote his 2007 autobiography to honor his grandparents. When asked why he described his grandfather as the greatest man he ever met, Thomas responded, "Because he was."
Thomas said his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, with whom he and his younger brother lived in Savannah, Ga., while growing up, fought for racial change, was never embittered and considered education his "holy grail." Thomas said his grandfather was never harsh and always honest.
He said if his grandparents were present, he would "kiss their feet and thank them."
The justice also had good words for the community in which he grew up. He compared the rural Georgia area to the setting of the movie The Help.
Despite all of the troubles, he wouldn't trade the neighborhood for anything, he said, adding that there was order and peace there.
"I was treated a lot better in the South than I was ever treated in the North," he said. In his high school, where he was the first, or one of the first, black students, "nobody ever said I was inferior."
Thomas described the Supreme Court as a "wonderful place" that "might be better than we deserve." He said the other justices are "good people" and his friends; he's never heard an unkind word among the nine justices when they discuss legal cases. He said he would like to introduce each person in the audience to his colleagues.
There's more discussion about legal issues in writing than in spoken words among the justices, and sometimes unanimous rulings can be very tricky and very difficult, Thomas said.
He said he spends a lot of time reading about history, economics and other subjects, and reading old court opinions to help him in his job. Do this job long enough, he said, and the depth of your thinking increases.
As a law student at Yale, he said, he was a "meat and potatoes" guy who took traditional courses, such as tax law, and wasn't interested in "'what-am-I-interested-in' courses."
"I told my clerks I'm just a 'get rightest,"' he said, further explaining that he tries his best to get things right.
Stabbing at Orleans Parish Prison illustrates 'epidemic of violence,' critics say
1 / 3
Naomi Martin, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Naomi Martin, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Email the author | Follow on Twitter on June 18, 2013 at 8:15 PM, updated June 18, 2013 at 8:59 PM
The prison had a particularly bloody day on June 6, the day that U.S. District Judge Lance Africk issued a ruling .. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/06/federal_judge_rules_consent_de.html .. in support of a federal consent decree to fix the problems at the prison. That day, four inmates were taken to the emergency room for injuries related to violence, authorities said.
In one of those cases, Edward Dean, 18, who is awaiting trial on charges of murder and attempted murder, threw a plate of hot grits into 16-year-old Brian Ellis' face, then stabbed Ellis with a shank in his head and body more than 20 times, according to a Sheriff's Office incident report. Ellis is awaiting trial on a charge of attempted second-degree murder for allegedly beating a stranger in the Marigny with bottles .. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/03/from_hospital_bed_marigny_bott.html .. in March.
Gusman said in a statement that Ellis "sustained several superficial cuts," and was taken to the hospital "in an abundance of caution."
But a source at the prison said photographs taken shortly after the stabbing tell a different story. The photographs show a cell splattered with blood.
The stabbing illustrates what the federal judge called in his 104-page ruling .. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/06/orleans_parish_prison_consent_1.html .. an "epidemic of violence" in the prison. Much of the bloodshed, the judge wrote, results from understaffing, faulty policies within the jail that place power in inmates' hands, and the lack of investigations into crimes committed inside the jail.
In Ellis' case, he awoke about 5:50 a.m. to the hot grits being thrown on his face, the incident report says. Dean had access to the grits and Ellis' cell because of Dean's role as a tier representative, authorities said. Tier representatives are inmates who are allowed special duties, such as security supervision and serving food to other inmates. They are generally self-selecting and the biggest, most aggressive inmates, because no others will stand up to them, authorities say. The judge singled out the practice in his ruling, saying it is dangerous because "predatory or aggressive inmates may become tier reps."
After the stabbing, Ellis spent two days in the hospital, authorities said. At first, he didn't want to cooperate with detectives, telling them he was asleep and didn't see his assailant, according to the Sheriff's Office report. A few days later, the report says, Ellis told detectives he would cooperate because his mother had urged him to press charges.
Dean admitted to stabbing Ellis several times with a shank in retaliation for Ellis having tried to stab him two days earlier, the Sheriff's Office report says. Dean was rebooked into the Orleans Parish jail on a charge of aggravated battery, records show.
Inmate advocates questioned whether the incident would have resulted in charges had Ellis' mother not intervened and whether Dean's charge should have been attempted murder.
To address the urgent problems at the jail, Africk last week urged .. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/06/federal_judge_urges_mayor_mitc.html .. the mayor and the sheriff to set aside their differences to move the reforms along. The June 6 stabbing highlights the need for the reforms to happen as quickly as possible, said Katie Schwartzmann, Louisiana director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represents the inmates in the consent decree.
"The reforms cannot come soon enough for the people in there," Schwartzmann said. "The volume of calls we get out of the jail and severity of injuries -- it's obvious that people's lives are really on the line."
"On Tuesday, in Smith v. Cain, Justice Thomas was back at it again, coming to the defense of Orleans Parish and its corroded [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/us/supreme-court-rebukes-a-new-orleans-prosecutor.html] brand of justice. Only this time, the justice was unable to convince any of his colleagues to indulge the notion that judges should bend over backwards to protect cheating prosecutors. In Smith v. Cain, an 8-1 ruling [http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-8145.pdf] authored by Chief Justice John Roberts himself, Justice Thomas spoke alone. (The difference between Connick and Smith is easy to define: The first case was about money, the second about a man's freedom)."
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
