Amnesty International Report 1996 - United States

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Fifty-six prisoners were executed in 16 states. Two states carried out their first executions in more than 30 years. More than 3,000 prisoners were under sentence of death in 38 states. At least 14 prisoners were under sentence of death under federal law. Political activists in San Francisco continued to be repeatedly arrested. There were reports of police shootings and deaths in police custody in disputed circumstances, and widespread allegations of torture and ill-treatment by police and prison officers. Chain-gangs, which constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, were introduced in prisons in several states.

The UN Human Rights Committee considered the initial report of the USA on implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In its comments in April, the Committee expressed concern about the extension of the death penalty under federal law as well as state laws to permit the execution of offenders aged under 18 at the time of the crime. Deaths in custody and ill-treatment by the police, conditions of detention in maximum security prisons, and state laws which criminalize homosexual relations between consenting adults in private, were also exposed as matters of concern. The Committee recommended that the USA withdraw reservations to the ICCPR (including to Article 6(5) which prohibits death sentences on people under 18), which the Committee said were incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty.

New York reinstated the death penalty in September, becoming the 38th state to authorize its use.

The death penalty continued to be used extensively. Fifty-six prisoners were executed, a record number in any one year since executions resumed in 1977. This brings the total number of executions since 1977 to 313. Two states – Pennsylvania and Montana – carried out executions for the first time in more than 30 and 50 years respectively. Texas carried out 19 executions. Executions were also carried out in Missouri (six), Illinois and Virginia (five each), Oklahoma and Florida (three each), Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina and Georgia (two each) and South Carolina, Delaware, Arizona and Louisiana (one each).

Jesse Jacobs was executed in Texas in January. He was sentenced to death in 1986 for murder. Seven months after his trial, Jesse Jacobs appeared as a prosecution witness at the trial of his sister for the same crime. The prosecution, having earlier portrayed Jesse Jacobs as being solely responsible for the murder, now argued that his sister, not he, had shot the victim. His sister was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. Although the state had presented two opposing versions of who had committed the murder, the authorities refused to review Jesse Jacobs' conviction or commute his death sentence.

Varnall Weeks, a black man, was executed in Alabama in May. He had been diagnosed as being severely mentally ill with paranoid schizophrenia. No evidence of Varnall Weeks' mental condition had been introduced at his trial. An Alabama judge acknowledged that Varnall Weeks was "insane" and suffered from delusions, but he refused to stay the execution, ruling that Varnall Weeks' ability to answer a few questions about his execution proved that he was legally competent.

us Army Captain Lawrence Rockwood was court-martialled in May for making an unauthorized visit to a prison while serving as an officer with the US-led Multinational Force in Haiti in September 1994. He argued that he was compelled to act to stop human rights violations that he suspected were being committed in the prison. He was dismissed from the army after being convicted of charges including "conduct unbecoming to an officer".

There were new reports that members of Food Not Bombs (FNB), a group distributing free food and information to the homeless in San Francisco, were repeatedly arrested and that some were beaten and ill-treated while in police custody (see Amnesty International Report 1995). One FNB member, the Reverend Al Craig, was alleged to have been repeatedly thrown to the floor and hit on the back, head and neck after his arrest in June.

There were reports of police shootings and deaths in police custody in disputed circumstances, and allegations of torture and ill-treatment by police and prison officers. Lawrence Meyers, an unarmed black teenager, was fatally shot in the back of the head by a white police officer in Paterson, New Jersey, in February, when he tried to flee from a car which was under police surveillance. A grand jury voted not to file criminal charges against the officer, who said the gun went off accidentally during a struggle, a version which was disputed by several witnesses. Lawrence Meyers was one of more than a dozen black and latino youths to have been shot dead or injured by New Jersey police officers in disputed circumstances since 1990.

In March an officer from the New York City Transit Police Department was charged with first-degree assault for "recklessly shooting" and wounding a black undercover police officer, Desmond Robinson, in August 1994; his trial was still pending at the end of the year. In April a former officer with the New York City Housing Police was convicted of criminally negligent homicide. He had shot dead an unarmed black man, Douglas Orfaly, as he sat in his car in March 1992. The former officer was sentenced to one to four years' imprisonment.

In May a New York City police officer was charged with criminally negligent homicide in the case of Anthony Baez, who died from asphyxia during an altercation with six police officers in December 1994, after his football had accidentally hit two parked police cars. A judge later dismissed the charge because of an error in the indictment papers, but the Bronx District Attorney announced in October that he would seek a new indictment. A trial was pending against the same officer on a charge of assaulting a teenager in 1993.

Sixteen other police officers from the Bronx area of New York City were also charged in May with serious assaults on suspects, perjury and theft. Trials in these cases were pending at the end of the year.

In February an investigation conducted by the Los Angeles District Attorney's office found there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the officer who had been video-taped beating teenager Felipe Soltero in July 1994 (see Amnesty International Report 1995).

In July a court awarded substantial damages to three black men who were the first among scores of plaintiffs to file a civil rights lawsuit alleging a pattern of brutality and racism by Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies in Lynwood, California (see Amnesty International Reports 1992 and 1993).

In January a federal court ordered the authorities to discontinue what it described as a pattern of brutality and neglect at Pelican Bay State Prison, California, including repeated assaults on prisoners by guards; the punitive shackling of inmates to toilets or other cell fixtures; and grossly inadequate medical and mental health care. The court also stated that conditions in the prison's Special Housing Unit (SHU), where inmates were isolated in sealed, windowless cells with no work, educational or recreational programs, "may press the outer bounds of what most humans can psychologically tolerate". However, it fell short of ruling that conditions in the SHU violated the Constitution, although it ordered the removal of mentally ill prisoners from the unit. Amnesty International had earlier written to the authorities expressing concern at conditions in the prison (see Amnesty International Reports 1993 and 1994).

More than a dozen female prisoners and former inmates alleged that they had been subjected to systematic sexual abuse by guards in five prisons in Arizona between 1987 and 1995. The allegations – which formed part of a lawsuit which was still pending at the end of the year – included rape and sexual assault and claims that women who reported abuses suffered reprisals by guards.

Chain-gangs, last used in the USA 30 years ago, were reintroduced into the prison systems of Alabama, Arizona and Florida and legislation permitting the use of chain-gangs was passed in Utah. The practice – in which prisoners are shackled together with leg-irons and forced to do hard labour such as rock-breaking for hours at a time – constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

In January the US authorities began to forcibly repatriate 3,900 Haitian asylum-seekers held at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (see Amnesty International Report 1995), without following internationally accepted procedures for considering asylum claims. By July the majority (including unaccompanied minors) had been returned to Haiti, although a few were admitted to the USA as refugees.

In May the Attorney General announced that most Cubans remaining in the Guantánamo base (some 21,000 at that time) would be gradually paroled into the USA and that all Cubans intercepted at sea attempting to enter the USA, or who entered Guantánamo illegally, would be returned to Cuba where they could apply for refugee status. Those who claimed a "genuine need for protection" would have their claims examined before return.

Amnesty International made numerous appeals on behalf of prisoners sentenced to death, urging clemency in all cases.

In March Amnesty International published a report, usa: Human Rights Violations – A Summary of Amnesty International's Concerns, which it submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee. The issues covered in the report included the death penalty, torture and ill-treatment by police and prison officers, and conditions in maximum security prison units.

Amnesty International sent an observer to the court-martial of Lawrence Rockwood in May.

In June Amnesty International wrote to the Governor of Louisiana urging that he follow the recommendation of the Board of Pardons in March that Gary Tyler's life sentence be commuted to 60 years' imprisonment, making him eligible for parole (see previous Amnesty International Reports). The Governor, however, failed to implement the recommendation.

In June Amnesty International wrote to the US Attorney General reiterating its concerns regarding the trial of Leonard Peltier and urging that there be a special executive review of the case (see previous Amnesty International Reports). The Attorney General replied in July stating that the case was being reviewed.

In November Amnesty International wrote to the San Francisco authorities expressing concern at continuing arrests and ill-treatment of FNB members and asking for a response to the questions raised in its October 1994 communication on this issue. No reply was received by the end of the year.

Amnesty International wrote to the New York City authorities several times to inquire about investigations into deaths in police custody, ill-treatment and disputed shootings, including the case of Anthony Baez.

In August Amnesty International wrote to the Texas authorities to express concern about reports that some 30 guards had systematically ill-treated inmates in four prisons and that a prisoner in Terrell Unit had been beaten to death by guards in November 1994. The allegations were under investigation by state and federal authorities at the end of the year. Amnesty International also wrote to the authorities in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Virginia and to the federal authorities about other allegations of deaths and ill-treatment in custody. Cases included police shootings of black and latino teenagers in New Jersey; the allegations of sexual abuse in Arizona; and the case of Ulysses Kurt Kim, a prisoner in the Halawa Correctional Facility in Hawaii, who required hospital treatment in August for 20 open sores caused by being held in wrist and leg shackles for two weeks in a bare cell.

Amnesty International condemned the introduction of chain-gangs and also wrote to the Alabama authorities to express concern that prisoners who refused to work on a chain-gang were punished by being handcuffed to a "hitching rail" (a metal rail used for tying up horses) where they were reportedly left to stand in the sun all day with their limbs stretched taut.

In January Amnesty International testified at a meeting of the American Correctional Association (ACA) about conditions in H-Unit, Oklahoma State Penitentiary (see Amnesty International Report 1995). The ACA had delayed accrediting the prison after receiving Amnesty International's report criticizing conditions in H-Unit but it reaccredited the prison in January without any changes having been made.

In January Amnesty International called for a halt to the forcible repatriation of Haitians because of serious security concerns in Haiti at that time and because the procedures did not conform to internationally accepted standards.

In May Amnesty International wrote to the Attorney General seeking clarification of the procedures for evaluating asylum claims from Cubans intercepted at sea, which it feared might not conform to international standards.