Florence, AZ—Currently there
are 121 men and three women on Death Row in Arizona. The killing here substantially exceeds larger states like
Texas for per capita executions. There
has been a number of exonerations here and certainly more are expected.
The State of Arizona like
several others has cut off TV news from access to any inmate for any
reason. Inmates can write letters but
letters don’t make watchable TV and prison officials know this. A huge percentage of inmates are illiterate and can't even write a simple letter.
Prison officials try and justify this by
suggesting that crime victims become traumatized whenever inmates appear on
TV. That’s hogwash unless of course
some "victim" falsely accused and obtained a conviction against an innocent
person. Yes, that does happen far more
often than we will admit.
The media does not like
wasting time listening to inmates whine about their troubles. They only will commute to the remote
locations where the prisons are for compelling reasons. These kinds of interviews happen rarely even in the jurisdictions that allow them.
Most lawyers hate for their
clients to talk to the media because they tend to incriminate themselves even
further during the appellate process.
Often an inmate can raise
issues of corruption or doubt that have real merit. Is there somehow harm when an inmate wants to make it
public that prosecutors and courts are refusing to administer DNA tests that
would exonerate him?
The inmate media embargo is
really about saving law enforcement agencies and prosecutors from embarrassment
in wrongful conviction cases. The claim
of saving victims from emotional harm rings deceptive, hollow and disingenuous.
Texas allows TV news crews full access
to their condemned inmates right up to death’s door. Often it is an inmate wanting to express
remorse. Sometimes it’s simply a
self-serving gesture to gain sympathy.
Other times it’s a frantic effort to get their cases reinvestigated with
today’s better tools before the death clock runs out.
When government hides their
inmates from the media it flies in the face of open government. Transparency is reduced to zero by solid
steel doors and high prison walls.
Our prisons are being reduced
to secret Gulags where anonymous inmates are housed in seclusion. When inmates are so isolated that nobody can
observe, horrible things begin to happen.
It’s time for Arizona and
California to return to the policies of the past where the media has reasonable
access. Our penal systems seem to be
headed for the policies of Devil’s Island or North Korea. This departure from civilization is dead
wrong.
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