http://news.linktv.org Link TV News Videos (Filtered by topics: Prisoner abuse) en-us Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:31:00 -0800 Copyright 2011 Link Media, Inc. http://news.linktv.org/videos/un-israel-abuses-child-detainees?start=0 Israel systematically mistreats the hundreds of Palestinian children aged between 12 and 17 it detains every year, according to a report from UNICEF. Al Jazeera reports from the West Bank on abuses during recent protests.<br /> Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:31:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/un-israel-abuses-child-detainees Israel, Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Palestinians, UNICEF, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Prisoner abuse, United Nations Convention Against Torture, West Bank, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, United Nations Israel systematically mistreats the hundreds of Palestinian children aged between 12 and 17 it detains every year, according to a report from UNICEF. Al Jazeera reports from the West Bank on abuses during recent protests. http://news.linktv.org/videos/united-by-grief-israeli-and-palestinian-fathers-call-for-non-violent-intifada?start=0 As protests grow in the West Bank over the death of a Palestinian inside an Israeli prison, we speak to a pair of Israeli and Palestinian fathers who've responded to personal tragedies with activism for peace. Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan united after the killings of their daughters -- Aramin's at the hands of an Israeli officer and Elhanan's in a Palestinian suicide bombing. Once dedicated fighters for their respective causes, they have since renounced violence and become leading voices for peace. Their stories are told in the new documentary film, "Within the Eye of the Storm." With talk of a third intifada potentially breaking out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Aramin and Elhanan join us to discuss their shared journey and why they believe both Israelis and Palestinians should join a nonviolent uprising against the Israeli occupation. <br /> Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:28:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/united-by-grief-israeli-and-palestinian-fathers-call-for-non-violent-intifada West Bank, Nonviolence, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Israel, Third Intifada, Israeli-occupied territories, Palestinians, Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Civilian casualties, Palestinian territories As protests grow in the West Bank over the death of a Palestinian inside an Israeli prison, we speak to a pair of Israeli and Palestinian fathers who've responded to personal tragedies with activism for peace. Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan united after the killings of their daughters -- Aramin's at the hands of an Israeli officer and Elhanan's in a Palestinian suicide bombing. Once dedicated fighters for their respective causes, they have since renounced violence and become leading voices for peace. Their stories are told in the new documentary film, "Within the Eye of the Storm." With talk of a third intifada potentially breaking out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Aramin and Elhanan join us to discuss their shared journey and why they believe both Israelis and Palestinians should join a nonviolent uprising against the Israeli occupation. http://news.linktv.org/videos/west-bank-tensions-rise-following-palestinian-prisoners-funeral?start=0 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are burying a man who died in an Israeli jail. Israel says Arafat Jaradat died of a heart attack, but the Palestinian Authority says the autopsy report showed that he was tortured. His death has sparked days of protests in the occupied territories, including hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston reports from Jaradat's hometown, Sair, near Hebron in the occupied West Bank. Mon, 25 Feb 2013 10:36:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/west-bank-tensions-rise-following-palestinian-prisoners-funeral Palestinian prisoners in Israel, West Bank, Palestinian National Authority, Hebron, Israel, Hunger strike, Fatah, Autopsy, Funeral procession, Israeli-occupied territories Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are burying a man who died in an Israeli jail. Israel says Arafat Jaradat died of a heart attack, but the Palestinian Authority says the autopsy report showed that he was tortured. His death has sparked days of protests in the occupied territories, including hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston reports from Jaradat's hometown, Sair, near Hebron in the occupied West Bank. http://news.linktv.org/videos/teen-suicide-probe-exposes-prisoner-abuse-in-canada?start=0 Disturbing videos of a mentally ill teenager pleading with prison guards as she is tied up with duct tape and forcibly injected with sedatives have surfaced in Canada's probe into the suicide of 19-year-old Ashley Smith. After her arrest at age 15 for throwing apples, she spent years in solitary confinement at more than a dozen institutions.<br /> Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:14:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/teen-suicide-probe-exposes-prisoner-abuse-in-canada Canada, Prisoner abuse, Solitary confinement, Prison officer, Prison, Suicide, Al Jazeera English Disturbing videos of a mentally ill teenager pleading with prison guards as she is tied up with duct tape and forcibly injected with sedatives have surfaced in Canada's probe into the suicide of 19-year-old Ashley Smith. After her arrest at age 15 for throwing apples, she spent years in solitary confinement at more than a dozen institutions. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-22-2012?start=803 In the first hearing of its kind, a US Senate panel heard testimony this week on the psychological and human rights implications of solitary confinement in US prisons, including the intense suffering and mental illness it can cause. Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:33:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-22-2012 Solitary confinement, Incarceration in the United States, United States, US Senate, Anthony Graves, United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, Dick Durbin, Prison, James Ridgeway, Prisoner abuse In the first-ever hearing of its kind, a Senate panel heard testimony this week on the psychological and human rights implications of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. While defenders of solitary confinement claim it is needed to control the most violent prisoners, many of the people called to testify at the hearing described how it can cause intense suffering and mental illness. We're joined by Anthony Graves, a former Texas prisoner who was fully exonerated of a murder conviction after spending 18 years behind bars, the bulk of that time on death row and in solitary confinement, and by James Ridgeway, a veteran journalist and co-editor of Solitary Watch, a website that tracks solitary confinement and torture in American prisons. We begin today's show with a look at solitary confinement. On any given day, tens of thousands of prisoners in the United States are held in prolonged isolation for up to 23 hours a day. Many are kept in cells no larger than seven feet by 10 feet and have their only human contact when guards slide through meals in a slot in their cell door. These conditions were the subject of a historic congressional hearing Tuesday called by Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights. This is how Senator Durbin began the hearing. The United States holds far more prisoners in segregation or solitary confinement than any other democratic nation on earth. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that, in 2005, U.S. prisons held 81,622 people in some type of restricted housing. In my home state of Illinois, 56 percent of the prison population has spent time in segregation. If I had one request to my colleagues on this judiciary committee, it is to visit a prison. Do it frequently. See what it's like. I've done it, most recently in Pekin at the federal facility. But I've been to Tamms, which is our maximum confinement facility in the state of Illinois. It is an eye opener to understand what it means when you start talking about the sentencing aspects of Americans' criminal justice system. We don't always use solitary confinement at such a high rate, but in the 1980s, things started changing. We began creating expensive supermax prisons designed to hold people in isolation on a massive scale. These supermaxes, just like the crack cocaine sentencing laws, were part of a tough-on-crime policy that many of us thought made sense at the time. But we now know that solitary confinement isn't just used for the worst of the worst. Instead, we're seeing an alarming increase in isolation for those who don't really need to be there, and for many, many vulnerable groups like immigrants, children, LGBT inmates, supposedly there for their own protection. That was Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. While defenders of solitary confinement claim it is needed to control the most violent prisoners, many of the people called to testify at the hearing described how it can cause intense suffering and mental illness. Among those who testified was former Texas death row prisoner, Anthony Graves. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Anthony Graves, and I am death row exoneree number 138. I was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in Texas back in 1992. Like all death row inmates, I was kept in solitary confinement, under some of the worst conditions imaginable, with the filth, the food, the total disrespect of human dignity. I lived under the rules of a system that is literally driving men out of their minds. I survived the torture. But I—but those 18 years was no way to live. I lived in a small eight-by-12-foot cage. I had a steel bunk bed, with very thin plastic mattress and pillow that you could only trade out once a year. I have back problems as a result. I had a steel toilet and sink that were connected together, and it was positioned in the sight of male and female officers—degrading. I had a small shelf that I was able to use as a desk to write on and eat on. There was a small—a very small window up at the top of the back wall. In order to see the sky, you would have to roll your plastic mattress up to stand on. I had concrete walls that were always peeling with old paint. I lived behind a steel door that had two small slits in it, the space replaced with iron mesh wire, which was dirty and filthy. Those slits were cut out to communicate with the officers that were right outside your door. There was a slot that's called a pan hole, and that's how you would receive your food. I had to sit on my steel bunk like a trained dog while the officers would place the trays in my slot. This is no different from the way we train our pets. The food lacks the proper nutrition, because it's either dehydrated when served to your or perhaps you'll find things like rat feces or a small piece of broken glass. When I was escorted to the infirmary one day, I was walking past where they fix the food, and I watched a guy fix his food and was sweating in it. That was the food they was going to bring me. There is no real medical care. I had no television, no telephone, and most importantly, I had no physical contact with another human being for 10 of the 18 years I was incarcerated. Today I have a hard time being around a group of people for long periods of time without feeling too crowded. No one can begin to imagine the psychological effects isolation has on another human being. That's former Texas death row prisoner Anthony Graves testifying Tuesday before the first-ever Senate hearing on solitary confinement. In a moment, Anthony Graves will join us now from Houston, Texas, to talk more about his experience. He was convicted in 1994, along with a man named Robert Carter, of killing a Texas woman, her daughter and her four grandchildren. In 2010, Graves was fully exonerated after spending 18 years behind bars, the bulk of that time on death row and in solitary confinement. We'll talk more about his case later in the broadcast. But first, we're joined by veteran journalist James Ridgeway, co-editor of Solitary Watch, a website that tracks solitary confinement and torture in American prisons. He writes regularly for Mother Jones magazine and is a 2012 Soros Justice Fellow, along with his reporting partner, Jean Casella. We welcome you, Jim, to Democracy Now! Start off by talking about the significance of this hearing. Well, I don't think anybody ever thought that Senator Durbin and the other members of that committee would actually get into this subject in such a forceful and direct manner. I mean, Senator Durbin's statement alone is highly unusual and, for the Senate or for the whole Congress, you know, brave. I mean, American politicians don't like criminals, and there are a lot of people in solitary confinement who are quite obviously criminals. So, to bring this up in an election year, I think, is really quite extraordinary. And, Jim Ridgeway, in terms of the response of the federal prison officials who testified, as well, your assessment of how they dealt with the questioning? Oh, it was absolutely terrible. I mean, Commissioner Samuels was unable to say how many mentally ill prisoners there are in the federal prison system. Now, he's a career corrections officer, and almost everybody who deals with this subject will say that perhaps 30 percent of the prisoners are mentally ill. And the idea that he doesn't know and—but he went further. He told Durbin that he had not made any studies. So, I mean, people want to know, I think, what goes on at the Bureau of Prisons. I want to play a clip from Tuesday's hearing, when Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota asked Charles Samuels about the long-term effects of solitary confinement. You know, what effect does this have on the mental health of people who are placed in solitary? And if they are released, do they present more of a danger to society for having been in solitary? But I don't think I'll get a good—I mean, you know, a definitive answer for that. If I may, I will respond that it was brought, you know, to my attention that the most recent and most rigorous, I mean, study that has been done was completed by the Colorado Department of Corrections as recent as 2009. And with their study, they identified that no negative effect on individuals in restricted housing has occurred. And now this is a clip of Senator Dick Durbin questioning the Federal Bureau of Prisons director, Charles Samuels, about the number of mental healthcare providers at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where there are about 490 prisoners. I'm going to zero right in to supermax here and ask you to separate those who would handle routine physical issues and those who are charged with dealing with the psychological, mental health state of the prisoners, the 490. How many at Florence? I have to submit that for the record, sir. I understand there are two. Do you know? That's OK. I'm not going to put you on the spot. Get back— The numbers that you provided me for the staff that are there, and what I wanted to articulate is that, bureau-wide, we utilize the resources for the staff who are spread out, and that was one of the references I made with telepsychiatry. But the on-site staff would fall within the number that you referenced. Two. Yes, sir. That was Charles Samuels again, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He later suggested there may be nine psychologists in total at the complex. Jim Ridgeway, your response, again, to his answers? Well, the fact that he doesn't know—I mean, he's been a career corrections officer for his working life, and he's now head of the Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department. And this is a topic that, you know, is widely discussed amongst lawyers, judges, everybody in the criminal justice system. And here we have the head of the Bureau of Prisons, and he doesn't know. And as a matter of fact, the two people he's talking about, as I recall, are not, you know, shrinks. They are—I think he referred to them as mental health professionals, which oftentimes are just staff members who have had routine training and who stand outside the cell and yell at the prisoner, you know, "How are you doing?" So, I just think it's appalling. http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-22-2012?start=1570 In the first hearing of its kind, a Senate panel heard testimony this week on the psychological and human rights implications of solitary confinement in US prisons. In a rare interview, former Texas death row prisoner Anthony Graves joins Democracy Now! to recount his experience in solitary confinement and how he was fully exonerated and released. And the 2012 presidential election is set to become the most expensive race in history, so will it be decided by the secret spending of the super-rich? Plus headlines, and more. Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:33:00 -0700 http://news.linktv.org/videos/democracy-now-june-22-2012 Solitary confinement, Incarceration in the United States, United States, US Senate, Anthony Graves, United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, Dick Durbin, Prison, James Ridgeway, Prisoner abuse In a rare interview, former Texas death row prisoner Anthony Graves joins us to recount his experience in solitary confinement and how he was fully exonerated and released from prison in 2010. Graves was convicted in 1994 of assisting Robert Carter, a man he barely knew, in the brutal murders of six people. There was no physical evidence linking Graves to the crime, and his conviction relied primarily on Carter's testimony. Before he was executed, Carter twice admitted he had lied about Graves's involvement in the crime. In 2006, an appeals court overturned Graves's conviction and ordered a new trial, saying prosecutors had elicited false statements and withheld testimony. After 18 years in prison, most of them on death row, Graves was exonerated and reunited with his family after a special prosecutor concluded he was an innocent man. Graves is now an active member of the movement to abolish the death penalty. "My experience was hell," Graves says. "I always liken it to something that you would consider to be your worst nightmare. I had to go through that experience every day for 18-and-a-half years. And it was just no way to live." Urging an end to the death penalty, Graves says: "They're killing in your name. And I say to you, stand up and tell these people, 'Not in my name anymore.'" Our guests are Jim Ridgeway—he is the co-editor of SolitaryWatch.com. We're also joined by Anthony Graves, a former Texas death row prisoner who testified Tuesday at the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. He was convicted, along with a man named Robert Carter, of killing a Texas woman, her daughter and her four grandchildren. Graves was fully exonerated in 2010 after spending 18 years behind bars, the bulk of that time on death row and in solitary confinement. He's now an investigator the Texas Defender Service and an active member of the movement to abolish the death penalty. Anthony Graves, thank you very much for coming to Democracy Now! to talk about your story. In a moment, we're going to talk about the case and how you ultimately got exonerated. But for now, if you can describe your time on death row and in solitary confinement and what it meant for you to testify in this first-ever hearing in the Senate. Well, first of all, thank you, Amy, for having me on your show. I'm a fan of yours. We listen to your show all the time. My experience was hell. I always liken it to something that you would consider to be your worst nightmare. I had to go through that experience every day for 18-and-a-half years. And it was just no way to live. And, Anthony Graves, in terms of—you described to the members of Congress the conditions on death row. The other prisoners in solitary, what did you know about what was going on with them? And you've also graphically have described what happened to some of them and drove them to near madness at times. Well, I mean, you know, it's the culture down there. And what I mean by that is that, for some reason, we feel that we have to punish people. The sentences isn't enough. So, when I was down there, I mean, I witnessed guys just, you know, going insane. I witnessed officers doing things that they just felt that they had to do; otherwise, they would be considered to be soft with the inmates. So, it's just a—it's a culture of madness, and it's designed to drive those guys totally insane. And, I mean, you know, I used— I want to play a clip of you, Anthony, testifying at the Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday about the self-mutilation committed by other prisoners. This is a warning to our listeners and to our viewers, this is quite graphic. I watched men literally self-mutilate themselves. They had to be put on razor restrictions, because if they're given a razor, they will cut their own throat, their own neck, wherever they could cut at on their own bodies. They just stand there in front of you and cut themselves. And this one man in particular that I watched do this, they took him over to what they call the psychiatric ward. A few days later, he hung himself, all because of the conditions. There's a man right there sitting on Texas death row right now who's housed in solitary confinement, pulled his eye out and swallowed it—all because of the conditions. Solitary confinement dehumanizes us all. I want to also play a clip from Tuesday's hearing, when Senator Durbin asked the Federal Bureau of Prisons director, Charles Samuels, about federal prisoners held in solitary confinement who engage in self-mutilation. Let me get down to some of the more graphic—and I won't go into detail here in the hearing, but it's there on the record. I've read stories about federal inmates and inmates at state facilities, in isolation, who have clearly reached a point where they're self-destructive. They are maiming themselves, mutilating themselves, doing horrible things to themselves. They are creating an environment within that cell which is awful by any human standard. What happens next, in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, when someone has reached that extreme in their personal conduct? If an individual is exhibiting that type of behavior due to suffering from, you know, serious psychiatric illness, those individuals are not, within our policy, individuals that we would keep at the ADX or in a restrictive housing. These individuals are referred to our psychiatric medical centers for care. And we believe that that's important. And we would never, under any situation, believe that those individuals should be continued to be housed in that type of setting. ADX is the administrative maximum detention facility, the supermax, at Florence, Colorado. Anthony Graves, respond please. Yeah, he's speaking about the guidelines that are written on paper. But in actuality, those things are not practiced. As I say, there's a culture of madness down there. And officers feel that—you know, matter of fact, I spoke with one officer, and I asked him. I said, "Man, why do you treat people the way you treat them down here?" He said, "Man, because I feel like I'm doing society a favor." You know, so that's the kind of attitude they have toward the inmates. So this whole notion of them following these guidelines that this guy is talking about on paper is just—it doesn't exist. You know, it just doesn't exist. I'd like to bring Jim Ridgeway back into the conversation. Jim, you've said that you believe that solitary confinement in our prisons is one of the most pressing domestic human rights problems to which most Americans remain largely oblivious. Well, yes. I mean, there are 2.3 million people in prison. There are at least 80,000 people, probably more, in solitary. And, you know, that's an awful lot of people. It's not just, you know, incidental examples of torture. But I wanted to further what Anthony said. I'm not—I have never been a prisoner, but I'm writing to a young man now in upstate New York. He tried to burn his house down when he was five years old. He's been in and out of mental institutions all his life. He's in his early twenties. He's threatened to kill himself. He's tried to kill himself. And he's put in a mental ward in—I think it's Attica prison. And inside this mental ward, he's continued to try to kill himself. He was put in a solitary cell, so he tried to burn the solitary—burn it down. So what was the response in this mental ward? They sent him back outside to Utica district attorney, and they reindicted him on arson charges and then sent him back to the same place. Now, is it crazy to think that somebody, somewhere, could step in and stop this? I mean, he has a public defender. And this public defender won't even call his family, won't talk to his mother. It's just—it's incredible. The situation in state and federal prisons in this solitary confinement is absolutely out of control. Obama says there's no torture in America. Well, I mean, you just have to go, you know, a mile, three miles; just around—all around you, there's stuff going on. Now, I'm not saying that all corrections officers, you know, are torturers or anything like that. I'm just saying there are no standards. The wardens can operate at their whim. And this becomes a second sentence. In other words, the judge sentences a guy to three years, and he gets inside the prison; the warden or the guard decides that the guy's a problem, they throw him in solitary. And he can stay in solitary, like Billy Blake, for example, who's a murderer. He's in upstate New York. He's been in solitary for 22 years. The guys in Louisiana, the Angola Two down there, 40 years in solitary confinement. I mean, doesn't—doesn't a judge look at this and say, "Well, what's going on here?" Apparently not. Attorney Stuart Andrews also testified at Tuesday's hearing. He represents a group of South Carolina prisoners with serious mental illnesses, many of whom have been kept in solitary confinement. The prisoners filed suit several years ago against the South Carolina Department of Corrections, alleging violations of the state constitution and seeking adequate mental health services. STUART ANDREWS: To illustrate some of what we've learned about the operation of solitary confinement in our state's prisons, I would like to call your attention to two individuals who have been members of our class. The first is Theodore Robinson, who is a 50-year-old man with paranoid schizophrenia serving a life sentence. Mr. Robinson's speech is highly disorganized, and he has a history of bizarre behavior, such as drinking his own urine. Like many people with schizophrenia, he suffers hallucinations and delusions. For example, he believes that at night, while he sleeps, doctors secretly enter his cell and perform surgery on him. From 1993 through 2005, a period of 12 consecutive years, Mr. Robinson was kept in solitary confinement. That's attorney Stuart Andrews. He said mentally ill prisoners in South Carolina are actually twice as likely as others to be in solitary confinement and two-and-a-half times as likely to receive a sentence in solitary that exceeds their projected release date from prison and over three times as likely to be assigned to an indefinite period of time in solitary confinement. Jim Ridgeway? Yes. I mean, that's—that's par for the course. I mean, this guy Adam that I'm talking about, this young guy, he wrote me in a letter, OK? He wrote me in a letter, I think last week or the week before. He said, "Don't tell my mother, but each—every night I'm cutting into my arm. Each night I cut further and further. Last night I reached the muscle. I'm cutting, and I hope pretty soon that I'm going to cut deep enough to bleed out." In other words, kill himself. You know, this is in a letter to me. You know, and I'm saying, "Please, hang on, Adam. Don't do this." And you can't get his public defender on the telephone? I mean, what in the world? This is New York state. I want to turn to former Texas death row prisoner Anthony Graves about his experience in solitary confinement. We want to turn to the story—we heard about how he was in prison for 18 years, now to how he was fully exonerated and released from prison in 2010. Graves was convicted in 1994 of assisting Robert Carter, a man he barely knew, in the brutal murders of six people: Bobbie Davis, her 16-year-old daughter Nicole, and Davis's four grandchildren. The victims were stabbed, bludgeoned, shot to death. Their house was set on fire. There was no physical evidence linking Graves to the crime. His conviction relied primarily on Carter's testimony. Two weeks before Robert Carter was scheduled to be executed in 2000, he provided a statement saying he lied about Graves' involvement in the crime. He repeated that statement minutes before he was executed. Then in 2006, an appeals court overturned Graves' conviction and ordered a new trial, saying prosecutors had elicited false statements and withheld testimony. After 18 years in prison, most of them on death row, Graves was exonerated and reunited with his family. He's now an investigator at the Texas Defender Service and an active member of the movement to abolish the death penalty. Can you tell us, Anthony Graves, when you were first jailed, how—how you were accused of the guy—with the guy who actually committed the crimes and how you knew him and whether you had any hopes, initially, of being judged not guilty? Well, first of all, I'd like to just correct you and say I no longer work with the Texas Defender Service. I've started my own foundation, and—AnthonyBelieves.com—and it's designed to fight for criminal justice reform. Now, as how I came—how they brought me into this whole mess, you know, of course there was the actual crime, and the guy showed up at the funeral with bandages all over his body, so they assumed that he was a person of interest. And after the funeral, they followed him home, so that they can talk to him. Well, when they took him to the DPS office to talk with him, according to Mr. Carter, he thought he'd seen four young men in a jeep coming off the feed of the highway, and he thought one of those men were me. So when they went—they took him and interrogated him for over, like, 14 hours. And according to Mr. Carter, they threatened him, told him that they would look it—make it look like it was an escape and shoot him in the head, and who would care about a baby killer? But that if he named someone that did the crime with him, they would let him go. So, Mr. Carter, feeling this pressure to name someone, named me, because he said he had just seen me in the jeep. And so, he thought that if he gave them a crazy story, that they wouldn't come and arrest me, but they would also let him go. Well, that led to me losing 18-and-a-half years of my life and two execution dates. I was on death row for 12 and a half of those years. And when I—I tell people that—I hear everybody try to give a professional opinion about death row and solitary confinement, but I say that you can never, never, ever give it accurate unless you actually lived there. It is hell, it is hell, and it's hell every day. I mean, I'm telling you, guys—I was there when over 300 men were executed. And I listened to guys who were happy to be executed instead of existing up under those same conditions. One guy told me, he said, "Man, I'm ready to go. You have to live with this madness tomorrow." I mean, he would rather die than exist up under them inhumane conditions. I mean, what has happened to our country where we're treating each other like that? We have definitely crossed the line when it comes to punishment, crime and punishment. The guy gets sentenced at his initial trial, and then he goes and gets sentenced while he's down there to punishment and torture, you know? And, you know, we laughed when we was down there, would talk—we heard people talking about other countries' human rights, and you're sitting here torturing us. I mean, we have an opportunity to educate a mass of people that are behind—that are incarcerated and move this thing to a positiveness, so that when they come out, there's no recidivism anymore. But yet, we are so ingrained in punishment, because it's our culture. And it stems from our past, you know? This is the way we was treated before we got any kind of rights in this country. And we're still being treated like that now. You know, there's not much difference. Anthony Graves— This is just modern-day slavery. Can you talk about why it was—there were several people who would have testified that you were at your mother's house the night of these brutal murders. Why didn't they testify? Well, they were threatened. They were threatened by the prosecutor that if they came forward, then it was highly likely he would seek an indictment of capital murder against them. So, I mean, they were actually at the trial to testify, and he threatened them. And when my brother testified to my whereabouts, because he was at home and my sister was there, well, he made it look like my family were liars, to me, you know. And he was speaking to basically an all-white jury, saying that, you know, basically, you know, his brother was protecting, which my brother was just being honest, you know, because my brother would not protect a murderer. But my brother was trying to tell them the truth. But the prosecutor, he manipulated every aspect of the case for a conviction, you know, and that's how I ended up losing my freedom. I had a prosecutor that seeked a conviction. And it's sad because, you know, that's the culture. You know, we elect them, and they feel that this whole notion of being tough on crime is what's going to keep them in office, so they start taking shortcuts and become blindsided. And as a result, those without the resources end up losing their freedom for crimes they did not commit. And that happened to me. And how were you able, all those years, day after day, month after month, in solitary, to hold it together, to keep maintaining your innocence? And then, of course, when—your reaction when you heard the news that you'd been exonerated? Well, you know, it wasn't no magic pill or nothing. I just knew that—when I got down there, you know, I knew that I was—I wasn't a murderer, and that I was a father, I was a son, I was a brother. You know, I was many things, but I was not a murderer. And so, I said to myself, you know, they have taken my freedom, but the things that they can't take from me, I'm not going to give them. And they couldn't take my dignity. They couldn't take who I was as a man. And I was not going to allow them to define me by their labels. I knew I was Anthony Graves and I was not a murderer. I was my mother's child, someone that they kidnapped and put on death row and tried to murder. So, I was defiant in not giving something that they couldn't take from me, and that kept me sane. Eighteen years, Anthony. When you were released, your mom did not know. What was your first act when you got out of jail? Well, you know, my mother and I, when I was able to talk to her on the phone, because I was—I was also in isolation for four years when I got back to the local county jail. Imagine why. But we would talk on the phone. I would always ask her what she was cooking. So, when I was released, she didn't know. You know, no one knew. And they was asking me about, you know, "Do your mom know?" And I said, "No, she doesn't." And they was like, "Well, call your mom." And, of course, they put cellphones in my face, and I didn't know anything about a cellphone—you know, 18 years, right? So, when I called my mom, and she answered the phone, you know, and I said, "Mom." And, of course, she is like, "What?" And I said, "What are you cooking?" And she said, "Why?" And I said, you know, "Your son coming home." And, you know, it was an emotional moment, but at the same time, what I was saying to her was that, "We are both now off of death row. We can now live again." You know? And that's what I was saying to her, when I was telling her I was coming home, because she'd done 18-and-a-half years with me. My children done 18-and-a-half years with me—my siblings and everyone that loved me. This thing has a ripple effect. It affected my family, and they'll have memories of this here for the rest of their life. And I just say, you know, is it worth it? You know, you put a whole family on death row. You created another set of victims, you know, and is it worth it? I don't think so. I don't think my mother would think so, either. You know, my children can never get back their father. You know, I can never raise them. And so, it's not worth it. And then, on top of that, you're torturing me. You know, and then my mother had to come see me. And then she looks at me, and she can't hold me, and she knows that I'm going through a lot. But all she can do is just stare at her child and pray that, you know, someday that justice will prevail and that we'll stop treating human beings this way. You know, so... And, Anthony Graves, the state of Texas, did they ever apologize to you or compensate you for the injustice that was visited on you? Well, you know, the state, they compensated me, but you can never compensate it—compensate me enough for what you stole from me. An apology, it's never been official, but several people higher up in the government has apologized to me. And I—I mean, you know, I thank them for that, you know, but a true apology would to be—would be to really sit down and analyze our system and realize that we have a big, big problem in our system and that we're sentencing men to death row and just in prison for crimes that they did not commit, because we have gotten so off track with seeking justice, because we've placed the politics over it. And I just wish that, you know, if they're going to be sincere about an apology, then that would be the way to be sincere about it, is to really take in consideration that our system is definitely broken, and we need to reform it. We need to fix it, because it's for all of us. It's not just for those; it's for all of us, because the minute you start thinking that it doesn't affect you, next thing you know, your neighbor is going to jail for something he didn't do, and you realize that, you know, it's just right next door to you. When does it come to you next? Then that's when you start to realize that it's part of us all, and we all have a part in this. I'm talking about from the voters, you know, and to the judge, to the jury. We all have a part in this here. And if it's going to work, we all have to play our hand. I mean, the citizens of our nation, we have to hold those that we elect accountable. We definitely have to. We have to start being the overseers, because our system has gotten way off track, and it threatens all of us now. And I say to you— Anthony Graves— Yes, ma'am. What do you say? No, I just tell people to, you know, use your vote as your voice and say—you know, they're killing in your name. And I say to you, stand up and tell these people, "Not in my name anymore. Not in my name anymore." I want a system that works for all of us, you know, and you demand that. Anthony Graves, thank you so much for being with us, former Texas death row prisoner, testified Tuesday at the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. He was exonerated after 18 years in prison, most of that time on death row in solitary confinement. http://news.linktv.org/videos/hospital-medical-staff-torture-patients-in-homs?start=0 WARNING: Graphic Content. Video footage filmed in secret apparently shows medical staff at the military hospital in Homs torturing patients in their beds, corroborating allegations being made by many opposition figures inside Syria. Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:23:00 -0800 http://news.linktv.org/videos/hospital-medical-staff-torture-patients-in-homs Syria, Homs, Military hospital, Syrian Civil War, Torture, Prisoner abuse, Civilian casualties, Physical abuse, Patient, Human rights WARNING: Graphic Content. Footage filmed in secret and obtained by Channel 4 News apparently shows medical staff at the military hospital in Homs torturing patients in their beds, corroborating allegations being made by many opposition figures inside Syria.