Oregon State Penitentiary's Intensive Management Unit, designed to tame the state's toughest convicts, has been rocked by a rash of suicidal acts by inmates in the past 2 1/2 years. Aaron Munoz, 21, hanged himself in his cell in January 2005. Jeremy Ayala attempted to hang himself in October. He survived, only to hang himself at a different Salem prison in May. He was 24. And Randall James, 46, died in November after he was found bleeding in his cell from self-inflicted wounds. An Oregon State Police investigation into James' death uncovered lax supervision of inmates and falsified cell check logs by officers.
Prison officials said recent changes in the IMU - known as a "super max" to denote conditions beyond maximum security - are designed to bolster inmate supervision and safety in the top-security unit.
But critics adamantly say the IMU isn't safe, especially for depressed or mentally ill inmates who can't cope with extreme isolation. "If you didn't have psychiatric problems, it'll probably cause psychiatric problems," said Steve Gorham, a Salem defense lawyer who has represented inmates in the IMU. "And if you do have psychiatric problems, it exacerbates them."
Gorham said inmates are subjected to sensory deprivation while they are kept in their cells for more than 23 hours per day. Amplified noise that seems to bounce off concrete and steel poses a double whammy for inmates, he said.
"It's all metal cells, with metal doors," he said. "There's no insulation to suck up the noise, so the overload in IMU is just horrendous. The sensory deprivation comes in not having a lot of contact with people, being locked in that room for 23 1/2 hours a day and not being able to get outside."
Munoz brooded in his cell, said his aunt, Kelly Ann Mills of Portland. Isolation fueled his anger, she said, along with shame and depression caused by sexual abuse inflicted on him as a teenager by a juvenile parole officer.
Munoz, 21, was discovered hanging in the back corner of his "D" unit cell shortly before 9 p.m. on Jan. 28, 2005.
"When I approached cell D-12 I saw inmate Munoz standing in the back of his cell," reads a corrections officer's report. "At first I thought he was just standing there with a sheet around his neck pretending that he was hanging. I said, 'Munoz, knock it off.' When I realized that he wasn't faking, I called on the radio that we had a 'man down' and that we needed a nurse in the unit."
Emergency life-saving efforts failed.
As Mills tells it, Oregon's top-security prison unit let down its guard.
"I would think that the Intensive Management Unit is just that, intensive management, where you know what your inmates are doing," she said. "I just don't see how he could have committed suicide in a place where you're supposed to be watched 24 hours a day."
The state police, as with all prison suicides, investigated Munoz' case. The agency denied a Statesman Journal public-records request for release of the report, citing pending litigation.
Early this year, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the state in connection with Munoz' suicide. A mediation process aimed at producing an out-of-court settlement is close to being resolved, according to a state lawyer.
Mental health officials now have a say in determining which inmates get placed in the IMU, prison officials say. They described it as a measure designed to avert long stints of isolation for severely depressed or mentally ill inmates.
'Super max' developed
The IMU opened in 1991 as one of the nation's first so-called "super-max" prison units.
Costing about $10 million, the 192-bed facility was designed to take the steam out of rebellious inmates who "compromised the safety of the prison system."
Tucked away in a two-story building near the pen's northeast wall, the self-contained facility houses its own clinic, laundry, law library and exercise area.
Security protocols go to extraordinary lengths in the IMU. When an inmate leaves his cell, usually to shower or exercise, he is handcuffed, tethered with a leash and escorted by two officers.
Prison officials say the IMU has paid safety dividends by removing assaultive and disruptive convicts from the general prison population, thereby helping to keep the peace behind prison walls.
Concurring with that view is Frank Colistro, a psychologist who has worked for the prison system for almost 30 years as a private contractor and consultant.
"It took those people who are responsible for a disproportionately high level of threat to other inmates out of circulation and put them in an area where they can be controlled effectively," he said.
Gorham takes a dissenting view. "It certainly doesn't make it safer for the people who are in it, or those who for whatever reasons want to kill themselves," he said.
Like the IMU, another mini-prison within the penitentiary, the 90-bed Disciplinary Segregation Unit, also has been rocked by multiple suicides. Four inmates have hanged themselves in the DSU in the past four years.
Inmates get sent to the DSU, known to them as "the hole" or "the bucket," for violating prison rules, incidents such as fighting, dealing drugs or mouthing off to a corrections officer. They, too, can spend months in extreme isolation, locked into their cells for more than 23 hours a day.
Historically, prison officials said, monitoring of inmates in the DSU was hampered by its old-fashioned design. Corrections officers checked cells every half hour. Otherwise, direct observation into cells was limited along long tiers.
Late last month, DSU inmates moved into the IMU's high-tech cellblocks. The old segregation unit they left behind was refurbished and occupied by other inmates as part of a sweeping overhaul of the prison's segregation housing units.
As part of the makeover, 34 condemned killers on Oregon's Death Row exited the IMU building. They moved into the refurbished cellblocks in the old DSU.
Generally, Death Row inmates pose few headaches for prison managers because they rarely act up.
"Death Row actually is a pretty peaceful place," Colistro said. "Those guys rarely cause any problems because their cases are pending until the last moment of their lives. They know better than to make problems."
Corrections officials said the massive reshuffling of inmates was intended to provide better observation of the highest-risk prisoners, most notably in the IMU.
On a recent day, 114 prisoners were confined in the super-max facility. Four cellblocks make up its core. Each cellblock is controlled by an officer who sits in an elevated control station and operates the electronic switches for all the cell doors and the doors leading to each section.
Officially, it's known as a "programming" unit, where inmates can participate in anger management classes and behavior-modification programs. Inmates who conform with the program go back to the general population.
"It's known to everybody who goes in that the way to get out as quickly as possible is to keep busy, and most of them do," Colistro said.
But Gorham said some prisoners either refuse to participate or can't.
"Most of it's filling out forms, saying 'I'll be good. This (behavior) is what got me here,'" he said. "It's cognitive stuff. Some of it can be very good. But the mentally ill people there can't do it because they're mentally ill. And the people who may have done some really bad stuff can't do it because they'd be incriminating themselves."
Inmate's death retraced
Shortly after 11 p.m on Nov. 27, a corrections officer making cell checks in the IMU made a beeline to James' cell when he heard inmates yelling about "a man down," investigative reports show.
Peering into James' cell through holes in a mesh screen, the officer saw that the inmate was covered by a blanket. He observed a pool of blood on the floor and called for help on his radio.
For security reasons, five staff members entered the cell together, one brandishing a shield. They saw that James had cuts on his arms and legs. Blood was spurting out of his right arm. He was moaning and slipping in and out of consciousness.
James reportedly told a corrections officer that he cut himself because "he didn't want to live like this and that you wouldn't want to live like this."
After calling for emergency medical personnel, officers tried to stop the worst bleeding by tying a towel around James' right arm.
James shouted a profanity and raised his middle finger as he was carried out of the IMU on a gurney, a corrections officer reported. A search of his cell did not turn up any weapons.
Taken by ambulance to Salem Hospital, James died at 7:35 a.m. the next morning. Prison officials initially called it an apparent suicide.
However, an autopsy found that James' self-inflicted wounds were superficial and did not cause or contribute to his death, said Dr. Karen Gunson, the state medical examiner. Official cause of death: brady arrhythmia, a slow heart rate linked to a failure of the heart's normal electrical cycle.
"He came into the hospital with that slow heart rate and they never could get it up," Gunson said.
Had James lived, he would have faced a murder charge, according to a Marion County prosecutor.
Deputy district attorney Matt Kemmy told the Statesman Journal that strong evidence linked James to the slaying of his former cell mate, John L. Richards.
Richards, 63, was strangled to death in the general-population cell he shared with James in September 2006. James was moved to the IMU in the wake of the slaying.
Lax supervision exposed
State detectives turned up no foul play in connection with James' death.
However, they uncovered lax supervision of inmates, along with reports of corrections officers falsifying records of cell checks.
Corrections officers reportedly skipped two rounds of cell checks on the night James was found in a pool of blood.
They told detectives that they didn't have enough time to conduct the checks between 7 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. because they were busy with other duties, including moving inmates into cells. As they explained it, the missed checks happened several hours before James' attempted suicide.
Investigative reports released to the Statesman Journal through a public-records request indicate that corrections officers in that part of the IMU routinely skipped cell checks for dubious reasons.
One corrections officer told detectives that he and his coworkers relaxed in a training room, socializing and playing paper football games, when they were supposed to be monitoring inmates, reports show.
The same corrections officer told detectives that IMU staffers routinely falsified log reports to cover up tardy or skipped cell checks. By his account, "pretty much everyone" who worked in 'A' unit, one of four cell blocks in the IMU, falsified log records.
Two other corrections officers provided similar information about logs being altered.
No criminal charges were brought against any officers. However, an internal Corrections Department investigation delved into the officers accounts of shirked cell checks and altered logs. Administrative action is pending in the case, said Perrin Damon, a Corrections Department spokeswoman.
To iron out problems with cell checks and record keeping, prison officials said the IMU now has a card-activated system. Officers insert cards into a device to electronically record their cell checks.
(statesmanjournal.com)
