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News in Brief:

California: On November 17, 2006, Orange county jail prisoners Garrett Aguilar, 23; Stephen Carlstrom, 38; Michael Garten, 21; Eric Miller, 21; Jared Petrovich, 22 and Christopher Teague, 30, were charged with the murder of jail prisoner John Chamberlain, 41, who was beaten to death on October 5, 2006. Chamberlain was in jail for possession of child pornography. His was the first murder in the Orange county jail since 1988.

Cambodia: On June 18, 2006, eight prisoners and one prisoner guard at the Battambang prison were killed when several dozen prisoners attempted to escape by taking a guard hostage. When police surrounded the prisoners and their hostage guard the prisoners? leader detonated a hand grenade killing himself and the other seven prisoners and their hostage. No prisoners escaped. A week earlier on June 11, 12 pre trial detainees escaped from the Prey Sar prison in Phnom Penh by cutting through the bars.

Illinois: On October 6, 2006, an autopsy on Dennis Lane, 35, who had collapsed while in custody at the Peoria county jail, discovered 8 ruptured plastic bags of unidentified drugs in his stomach. Lane had been arrested on drug charges earlier.

Iowa: On November 1, 2006, Deke Gliem, 75, an administrator with the Dallas county jail was arrested and charged with raping female prisoners in the jail. He is charged with forcing prisoners to have sex with him and spying on showering female prisoners through a porthole device.

Kentucky: On November 13, 2006, Shamoni Peterson, 32, a prisoner at the US Penitentiary Big Sandy was stabbed to death. On October 24, 2006, Calvin Speight, 42, another prisoner at the facility, was also stabbed to death. These are the first murders at the prison which opened in 2003. Both men were from Washington D.C.

Kentucky: On October 25, 2006, Alice Stapleton, 30, a guard at the US Penitentiary in Big Sandy, was indicted on charges she was paid $1,000 bribes on three occasions to smuggle heroin, marijuana and cell phones to Personne McGhee, a prisoner at the facility, after receiving them from his mother Clady McGhee. Also charged with Stapleton are prisoner Kenneth Bates, Maria Mims and Temeka Haliburton who allegedly helped transport the drugs to Kentucky. The McGhees were not charged.

New Jersey: On December 21, 2006, Bureau of Prisons guard Samuel Bethea, 41, was arrested at home on charges of smuggling cell phones and tobacco into the federal prison at Ft. Dix for a prisoner acting as a confidential informant in exchange for bribes. On October 26, 2006, FCI Ft. Dix guard Timberly Gamache, 35, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring with prisoner Hasan Thomas to smuggle cell phones and tobacco into the prison.

New York: On November 18, 2006, Rensselaer county jail guard David Rohrmiller was sentenced to 1 to 3 years in state prison for raping two female prisoners in the jail. He had previously been convicted in federal court of lying to FBI agents about the rapes and violating the prisoners? civil rights and sentenced to 8 years for those offenses. The state sentence will run concurrent to the federal sentence.

North Dakota: On October 26, 2006, Moe Maurice Gibbs, 34, a former jail guard at the Barnes County Correctional Center in Valley City was charged with six counts of raping female prisoners in his care at the jail. Gibbs was already in jail awaiting trial on unrelated murder charges when he was charged with raping the prisoners. Police have also linked him to a 2004 rape in Bismarck via DNA evidence. Gibbs legally changed his name in 2005 from Glen Morgan Jr.

Ohio: On December 29, 2006, Nicholas Diehl, 60, a civilian employee at the Hamilton county jail was charged with theft for stealing toilet paper from the jail.

Oklahoma: On October 31, 2006, Darrin Brewer, 39, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling drugs to other prisoners. Brewer?s wife LaShanda, collected over $60,000 in payments for the drugs that were smuggled in by guards for Brewer to sell at the Geo Corporation run Lawton Correctional Facility.

Texas: On November 1, 2006, Porsche Simon, a lieutenant at the Stiles Unit resigned after being notified she was being investigated for smuggling drugs into the prison.

Texas: On October 17, 2006, Roy Rogers Robinson, 25, a guard at the Telford unit prison, was arrested on charges of trying to steal money from an ATM machine at the Ambassador Inn hotel in Texarkana.

Texas: On October 19, 2006, death row prisoner Michael Johnson, 29, cheated the executioner by committing suicide 16 hours before his scheduled execution by slashing his jugular vein and an artery in his arm with a razor blade. Using his own blood Johnson wrote ?I didn?t shoot him? on the wall of his cell. Johnson had been condemned to death for a shooting death in which his accomplice, David Vest, who received an eight year sentence in exchange for his testimony against Johnson, was released from prison in 2003. Johnson is the seventh condemned prisoner in Texas to commit suicide since 1974.

Uruguay: On November 17, 2006, former military dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry, 78, and his former foreign minister Juan Blanco, were arrested and charged with four murders of political dissidents in 1976. The United States backed Bordaberry?s dictatorship and for years armed and trained the nation?s police in torture and murder techniques which were used to successfully crush all political dissent in the small nation between 1973-1985. The arrests come after the recent election of President Tabare Vasquez who promised to make human rights a priority and to end decades of impunity for military torturers and killers if elected.
Washington: On November 16, 2006, Kevin Achartz, 40, a prisoner at the Washington State Penitentiary, died of injuries suffered in a beating by other prisoners on November 19 without regaining consciousness. Achartz was convicted in 2005 of sexual exploitation of a minor after filming himself having sex with a 17 year old boy and was sentenced to life without parole due to prior convictions for rape, burglary, assault and theft, among other things under the state?s three strikes law. Prison officials are investigating the murder.

Washington: On November 3, 2006, Joel Diven, 72, a dentist at the McNeil Island Corrections Center, had his dental license suspended after he fractured the tooth of a prisoner on May 24 and then proceeded to extract part of the prisoners jawbone. The prisoner was sent to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle after Diven ?abandoned? the patient who was bleeding profusely, had dropping blood pressure and a blocked airway.
Diven resigned from his Department of Corrections job the same day his license was suspended. PLN has reported extensively on medical neglect in Washington prisons.

Wisconsin: On November 3, 2006, Columbia Correctional Institute guard Mary Gilmore, 25, was charged with stealing methadone pills from prisoners. Gilmore told prison investigators she stole the pills because she ?wanted to know what her sister, who had overdosed on it (methadone), was thinking.? Gilmore now claims investigators tricked her into falsely confessing to the theft of some 54 methadone pills over a six week period.

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