Half a Life in Solitary: How Colorado Made a Young Man Insane

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/half-a-life-in-solitary-how-colorado-made-a-young-man-insane/281306/



The story of Sam Mandez is appalling on so many different levels it's hard to know where to begin. Convicted for a murder no one has ever proven he committed, sentenced to life without parole at the age of 18 because the judge and jury had no other choice, confined for 16 years in solitary for petty offenses in prison, made severely mentally ill by prison policies and practices, left untreated in that condition year after year by state officials, Mandez personifies the self-defeating cruelty of America's prisons today.

And yet Mandez is not alone in his predicament. All over the nation, in state prisons and federal penitentiaries, officials are failing or refusing to adequately diagnose and treat inmates who are or who are made mentally ill by their confinements. The dire conditions in which these men and women are held, the deliberate indifference with which they are treated, do not meet constitutional standards. And yet there are thousands like Mandez, symbols of one of the most shameful episodes in American legal history.

The Crime

On July 26, 1992, an elderly woman named Frida Winter was murdered in her home in Greeley, Colorado. The police recovered fingerprints from the scene and later found some of Winter's things in a culvert near her home. But for years the investigation went nowhere in large part because it was flawed in nearly every way. Other fingerprints from Winter's home were not recovered. Leads were not adequately pursued. Logical suspects were not properly questioned. At the time of Winter's death, Sam Mandez was 14 years old.

Four years later, the police caught what they considered a break. Fingerprints from Winter's home finally found a match in a police database—and the match was Sam Mandez, who had just turned 18. They brought him in for intense questioning. But Mandez had a strong alibi. He and his grandfather had painted part of Winter's home in 1991, a year before her death. There was good reason for his prints to have been on the window that was broken on the night of Winter's death. Mandez had been in trouble with the law before—but never for a violent crime.

[sorefeet]

1. America, the most corrupt

country on the planet. It's all about the money. You know the stuff that Christians worship, the stuff that they can't get in Heaven with but insist God has given it to them because they are his favorite. It's estimated between 60 and 100,000 innocent people are in our prisons and the country isn't in an uproar???? LAND OF THE FREE????? People who have made our justice system need a taste of justice. The thought of private prisons is cruel and unusual, UNLESS you are a greedy, selfish, inhumane creep. State governors should be ashamed and should ban all solitary confinement.

[seveneyes]

2. Prosecutor misconduct should be punished with life in prison

I don't know if prosecutor misconduct is in play here or not, but it is something that does not get enough attention and has ruined many peoples lives. One way to eliminate it is to make it too costly to perform.