From: "Landrum" <landrum@pdq.net>

TEXAS:

The common threads among the recent spate of disturbances at Texas
prisons -- including the December slaying of a correctional officer --
were employee mistakes and a shortage of staff, state prison board
members were told Thursday.

Texas Board of Criminal Justice Chairman Alfred "Mac" Stringfellow said
officials are planning to address the staffing shortages by significantly
increasing the pay for correctional officers. Stringfellow said
legislative and prison leaders want to raise the annual salaries of the
state's 27,377 correctional officers to near the national average over
the next two years. Last year, Texas' correctional officers earned an
average annual salary of $26,724. The national average annual salary for
a prison guard last year was $34,404.

"We talked with the governor's office, we've talked with the speaker's
office, the lieutenant governor's office, the legislative leaders. I
think they're all very supportive of it. And we're just now working out
some of the details," Stringfellow said. "We have not reached a final
decision yet."

The pay raises could arrive as early as September by borrowing from next
year's appropriation, Stringfellow said.

Stringfellow's remarks came as a subcommittee of the Texas Board of
Criminal Justice listened Thursday to the results of investigations into
several recent prison disturbances: the Dec. 17 slaying of a prison guard
at the McConnell Unit near Beeville; a Dec. 20 riot at McConnell; the
Feb. 22 hostage-taking of a guard by two death row inmates at the Terrell
Unit near Livingston; and the March 14 execution in which a condemned man
spit out a handcuff key as he succumbed to the flow of lethal drugs.

Gary Johnson, director of the prison division within the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice, acknowledged that staffing shortages were, in part,
to blame for the incidents. The Department of Criminal Justice is short
nearly 2,000 correctional officers.

"I would be less than honest" to say it played no role, Johnson said.

"Any time we have a facility that is running short of staff, running less
than the optimum of their staffing allocation, then it does have an
impact on operations of that facility," Johnson said. "Cell searches
become more difficult to do on a frequent or routine basis because you're
not running at 100 percent of your staffing."

Of the reports presented to the subcommittee Thursday, the details of how
correctional officer Daniel Nagle died proved the most compelling.

Most surprising is that the 37-year-old Nagle died not from the three
stab wounds to his neck but from a heart attack, according to the autopsy
report prepared by Nueces County Medical Examiner Dr. Lloyd White.

"None of the stab-puncture wounds ... would ordinarily be expected to be
fatal," White's report stated, " ... They undoubtedly produced death by
cardiac dysrhythmia."

Nagle, according to the autopsy report, was mildly obese and suffered
from advanced coronary artery disease. Friends said he smoked cigarettes.

"It's still murder," said Bee County Justice of the Peace Joe Lyvers. "It
happened as the result of the beating."

A 20-year-old Houston-area man already serving a life sentence for the
1995 slaying of his trailer-park neighbor was indicted last week on a
charge of capital murder in connection with Nagle's death.

According to the investigative report, inmate Robert L. Pruett became
incensed when Nagle began writing a disciplinary report on Pruett for
trying to take his dinner outside.

As Nagle sat alone at the front desk of a cellblock, Pruett apparently
grabbed the disciplinary report from Nagle and ran into a nearby
bathroom. Nagle chased him inside and was attacked. He was stabbed with a
knife crudely fashioned from an 8-inch piece of metal and collapsed to
the floor, where he lay for nearly 20 minutes before another inmate
discovered him.

The riot on Dec. 20 at the McConnell Unit lasted 3 1/2 hours but caused
more than $44,000 dollars in damage to a maximum security cellblock. It
started when an inmate disabled the lock on his cell and freed 80 other
inmates. The report said the incident happened, in part, because
correctional officers did not lock a gate.

A report into how death row inmate Ponchai Wilkerson, 28, managed to open
his cell door and along with fellow death row inmate Robert Guidry, 23,
take correctional Officer Jeanette Bledsoe, 57, hostage for 13 hours in
February proved less enlightening. Prison officials were unable to
determine how Wilkerson dismantled the lock in his cell. Bledsoe,
however, should not have been escorting Guidry alone, the report said.

It was Wilkerson who spit out the handcuff key as the flow of lethal
drugs began during his March 14 execution. The report did not determine
how Wilkerson obtained the key but recommended that the cells of death
row inmates be searched every 2 days for contraband.

(source:  Houston Chronicle)