From: wes676767@aol.com
Subject: SNET: Amnesty International's Report On The US
Date: 4 May 2000 17:07:47 -0400
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Sixty-eight prisoners, including three juvenile offenders, were executed in 
18 states. More than 3,500 people remained on death row. There were 
continuing reports of torture and ill-treatment by police and prison 
officers, and of shootings by police in disputed circumstances. 

    In January the un Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or 
arbitrary executions issued a report on his 1997 visit to the usa. The report 
called for a moratorium on executions and concluded that “race, ethnic origin 
and economic status appear to be key determinants of who will, and who will 
not, receive a death sentence.” In February the un Special Rapporteur on 
religious intolerance visited the usa. In August the un Special Rapporteur on 
violence against women visited prisons and immigration detention facilities 
in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Georgia, California and Minnesota. The 
state authorities refused her entry to three Michigan prisons where it was 
alleged that female inmates had been sexually abused by guards. 

    The death penalty continued to be used extensively. Sixty-eight people 
were executed, bringing the total number executed since the end of the 
moratorium on the death penalty in 1977 to 500. 

    Three juvenile offenders were executed, the first in the usa since 1993. 
All three had serious mental health problems and were put to death for crimes 
committed when they were 17 and emerging from abusive, poverty-stricken 
childhoods. Joseph Cannon and Robert Carter were executed in Texas in April 
and May respectively. Dwayne Wright was executed in October in Virginia. At 
Joseph Cannon's execution, the needle delivering the chemicals into his arm 
“blew out”. Witnesses were removed while the needle was reinserted. Joseph 
Cannon's mother collapsed and needed hospital treatment after seeing her son 
killed. 

    Paraguayan citizen Ángel Francisco Breard was executed in April, despite 
an International Court of Justice (icj) order that his execution be 
suspended. Under the un Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the 
usa is a party, Ángel Breard had the right to assistance from Paraguayan 
consular officials. Paraguay took the case to the icj on the grounds that he 
had been denied this assistance, in breach of the Convention. Five days after 
the icj ordered the execution to be suspended until it had considered the 
case, Ángel Breard was executed. In November the us government issued an 
apology to the government and people of Paraguay for the violation of Ángel 
Breard's rights under the Convention. Seventy-three foreign nationals 
remained under sentence of death in the usa; almost all had been denied their 
rights under the Convention. 

    Eleven death-row prisoners were executed after abandoning their appeals 
and “consenting” to their execution. Jeremy Sagastegui was executed in 
Washington State in October. At his trial, Jeremy Sagastegui represented 
himself, refusing the assistance of an attorney, entered a guilty plea and 
requested that the jury sentence him to death. He had been diagnosed as 
suicidal three months before the crime for which he was condemned and had 
previously been diagnosed as a manic depressive and schizophrenic. 

    There were new reports of police shootings in disputed circumstances and 
of torture or ill-treatment of people by police and prison officers. Several 
unarmed teenagers were shot by police following car chases. They included 
14-year-old black teenager Jenni Hightower, who was killed in March in New 
Jersey after police officers fired 20 shots into the stolen car in which she 
was a passenger. In April, three young black and latino men received multiple 
gunshot wounds when police fired into a car stopped for alleged speeding on 
the New Jersey Turnpike. The incident reinforced accusations that police 
officers along the New Jersey Turnpike stopped black and Latino drivers 
solely on the basis of race. Such arrests for “driving while black” were 
allegedly common in several states. In June the Maryland branch of the 
American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit alleging racial 
bias in traffic stops. 

    In October sheriff's deputies in Humboldt County, California, applied oc 
(pepper) spray-soaked pads to the eyes of four female anti-logging protesters 
who had chained themselves together. Later that month, a federal judge 
dismissed a lawsuit brought by protesters who had received similar treatment 
in 1997 (see Amnesty International Report 1998) on the grounds that the 
procedure caused only “transient pain” and did not amount to excessive 
force. Amnesty International had condemned the treatment as torture in that 
instance and called for the use of oc spray against non-violent demonstrators 
to be banned (see Amnesty International Report 1998). 

    In July a police Use of Force Review Board report concluded that police 
in Eugene, Oregon, had acted within policy when they sprayed demonstrators 
with oc spray during a non-violent protest in June 1997 (see Amnesty 
International Report 1998); however, the report was critical of some aspects 
of the operation. 

    In October a former New York City Police Department (nypd) officer was 
sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by a federal judge for 
violating the civil rights of Anthony Baez who died after a confrontation 
with officers in 1994 (see Amnesty International Reports 1996 to 1998). An 
appeal by the officer was pending at the end of the year. 

    The trial of four nypd officers for the 1997 assault on Abner Louima was 
still pending at the end of the year (see Amnesty International Report 1998). 
In December, two other nypd officers were arrested and charged with lying to 
federal investigators in the case. 

    There were reports of abusive use of restraints and of electro-shock 
weapons, and allegations of sexual and physical abuse in several prisons and 
jails. A prisoner in the El Paso Criminal Justice Center in Colorado died in 
May after being strapped for hours to a restraint board. Other prisoners in 
the Center alleged in a lawsuit filed in May that they had been strapped to 
the board for up to 12 hours during which time they had had difficulty 
breathing, were forced to urinate and defecate in their clothing, and were 
taunted by guards. Use of the board was suspended in the prison following the 
death, and a review of the jail's restraint policies was undertaken. 

    In July the Immigration and Naturalization Service (ins) removed 34 
detainees from Jackson County Jail in Florida following allegations that they 
had been tortured with electro-shock shields while held in four-point 
restraints, and subjected to beatings and excessive periods of punitive 
solitary confinement. The case was still under investigation by the Justice 
Department at the end of the year. 

    There were allegations of sexual abuse of women prisoners in states 
including California, Michigan and New York. There were allegations that 
prison staff in Michigan had threatened or harassed inmates and staff who 
reported complaints. In March a federal court agreed to pay three women 
us$500,000 to settle a lawsuit in which they claimed that they had been 
beaten, raped and sold for sex to male inmates by guards at the Federal 
Detention Center in Pleasanton, California. 

    In February, eight guards were indicted on federal charges for staging 
fights between rival inmates in Corcoran State Prison in California, between 
1988 and 1994, during which seven inmates were fatally shot by guards (see 
Amnesty International Report 1997). In October, five guards at the prison 
were indicted on state charges for arranging and covering up the rape of an 
inmate by another prisoner in 1993. In October state legislative hearings on 
systematic brutality in the prison ended with recommendations for a series of 
policy changes, including tighter guidelines controlling the use of lethal 
force and more training for prison guards. 

    In February inmates beaten and injured by guards at Hays State Prison in 
Georgia in 1996 received us$283,000 in damages to settle a federal lawsuit 
against the authorities (see Amnesty International Reports 1997 and 1998). 

    An appeal lodged by the State of California against a 1997 ruling by a 
lower court that Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) should be granted a retrial (see 
Amnesty International Report 1998) was heard by the California Court of 
Appeals in December. No ruling had been given by the end of the year. 

    Amnesty International launched a worldwide campaign against human rights 
violations in the usa with the publication in October of a 150-page report, 
usa: Rights for All. The report focused on police brutality, ill-treatment in 
prisons and jails, the treatment of detained asylum-seekers, the death 
penalty, the us government's failure to abide by international standards, and 
concerns surrounding us arms trading. Amnesty International made over 40 
recommendations for changes to bring us policies and practice into line with 
international standards at the federal, state and local level. It 
recommended, among other things, establishing independent monitoring bodies 
to investigate allegations of police brutality and abuses in jails and 
prisons; a ban on electro-shock stun belts and other dangerous restraint 
procedures as well as on the routine shackling of pregnant women; 
restrictions on interactions between male staff and female inmates to prevent 
rape and sexual abuse in jails and prisons; a ban on the death penalty for 
juvenile offenders and a moratorium on executions as a first step toward 
total abolition; the adoption of a binding code of conduct covering transfers 
of military, security and police equipment, services and expertise; and 
ratification, without reservation, of the un Conventions on the Rights of the 
Child and on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. 

    Amnesty International had not received a direct response from the 
government to its report by the end of the year. 

    During the year, the organization published several other reports. In May 
it issued usa: Human rights concerns in the border region with Mexico, on 
ill-treatment by Border Patrol ins officers. In October Amnesty International 
delegates met senior ins officials in Washington dc to discuss the 
organization's concerns. 

    Amnesty International published usa: The death penalty in Texas, lethal 
injustice in April, and On the wrong side of history: children and the death 
penalty in the usa, highlighting the cases of juvenile offenders on death 
row, in October. In November Amnesty International launched usa: Fatal flaws 
_ innocence and the death penalty at a major conference in Chicago attended 
by nearly half the 75 wrongfully convicted prisoners released from us death 
rows since 1973. 

    Also in November, Amnesty International released usa: Betraying the young 
_ human rights violations against children in the us justice system which 
described ill-treatment of children in both the juvenile justice and the 
general criminal justice systems. 

    During the year Amnesty International wrote to numerous federal, state 
and local authorities about issues including the death penalty; police 
shootings and brutality; ill-treatment in prisons, jails and juvenile 
detention centres; and the cruel use of restraints and stun weapons. It 
called for a ban on the use of oc spray against non-violent demonstrators. It 
raised concern about the shackling of pregnant women and called for an 
independent, comprehensive inquiry into the Maine Youth Center, in Portland, 
Maine, following reports of ill-treatment. 

    In March Amnesty International wrote to the Federal Bureau of Prisons 
expressing concern about the alleged punitive conditions under which Oscar 
López Rivera, a supporter of Puerto Rican independence imprisoned on criminal 
charges, was held at Marion Federal Prison; he was subsequently transferred 
to another facility where conditions improved. 

    In July Amnesty International submitted an amicus curiae brief to the 
California Appeals Court concerning the case of Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), 
arguing that the failure to disclose crucial information about a key 
prosecution witness to the defence should result in a final reversal of his 
conviction. 

    Amnesty International wrote to the Los Angeles court authorities and the 
Los Angeles Sheriff's Department calling on them to ban the use of remote 
control electro-shock stun belts after a defendant Ronnie Hawkins was stunned 
with the belt on the order of a judge during a Los Angeles court hearing in 
June; the order was given after he had repeatedly verbally interrupted the 
proceedings. Amnesty International said that use of stun belts constituted 
inherently cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and that, in Ronnie Hawkins' 
case, the deliberate infliction of pain as punishment, by or at the 
instigation of a public official, fell within the definition of torture under 
international standards. The organization reiterated its concerns in October 
in an amicus curiae brief to a federal district court, which heard a lawsuit 
filed on behalf of Ronnie Hawkins and others, seeking, among other things, a 
preliminary injunction to prevent the use of the stun belt in Los Angeles 
county and municipal courtrooms. A ruling on the case was pending at the end 
of the year. In November Amnesty International raised concern with the 
authorities about the use of stun belts on low security hiv-positive inmates 
in New Orleans Parish Jail in Louisiana, while they were being transported to 
hospital and awaiting treatment. 

    In September Amnesty International wrote to the us government about the 
air strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan, seeking clarification on the measures 
taken to protect civilian lives. Amnesty International also wrote to the un 
Secretary-General asking for an investigation into the bombing of Sudan. In 
December the organization called on the us government to ensure maximum 
protection of civilian lives in accordance with international humanitarian 
law in its air strikes against Iraq after un weapons inspectors reported 
non-cooperation by the Iraqi authorities. 
 

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