State prisons open doors of X Wing to the media

In response to abuse complaints in the wake of an inmate's death, reporters are allowed to view the wing.

By JO BECKER

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 19, 1999

STARKE -- The door to cell 2202 on Florida State Prison's X Wing is tightly shut and taped with small, red crime scene stickers.

Warden James Crosby watches a video of a confrontation between an inmate and guards Wednesday. The cameras are one reform at Florida State Prison. [AP]

Guards stand at attention every few feet, but all the prisoners in this section of the hard-core disciplinary wing are gone. Silence has replaced the groans and blows some claim to have heard July 17.

This is the bleak place where law enforcement officials believe guards beat inmate Frank Valdes to death. The tiny cells also are at the epicenter of a storm of abuse complaints that have prompted a civil rights investigation and a legislative inquiry.

So far, the nine guards criminal investigators most want to talk to about Valdes' death are refusing to cooperate. No one has been charged.

But top officials at the state Department of Corrections and the warden of Florida State Prison say they want no part of the "code of silence" that some say pervades prisons when it comes to talking about abuse.

"We all believe we need to be more open," Warden James Crosby said. "We're here for the truth to come out; we're here for the truth to be told."

Hoping to polish its badly tarnished image, the Department of Corrections arranged for dozens of reporters and a television camera crew to tour three state prisons Wednesday. The eight-hour tour offered a rare glimpse at Florida's death row, its electric chair and the daily effort to keep the state's most troublesome inmates showered, fed, healthy and in line.

X Wing, or X-Ray Wing as it is officially called, is the end of the line for prisoners who refuse to follow the rules. Criticized by human rights activists as a form of cruel and unusual punishment, it is at the end of a vast hallway separated by numerous sliding, locked gates.

Just inside the first door of the cell wing, chains and handcuffs hang from a towel-type bar. Just three inmates now occupy the 24-cell wing. None says a word, though one flicks on his dull fluorescent light so his cell can be seen more clearly.

The heat is stifling in the windowless, 7- by 9-foot cells. There's a metal bed with a thin mattress, a stainless steel combination sink and toilet, and little else. A heavy metal door about 31/2 feet outside the reinforced mesh metal bars can be shut, leaving the inmates a view of only their own yellowing walls and concrete floor. It is a form of punishment that Crosby said is rarely used.

Crosby pointed out the cameras that are now rolling in X Wing, one of several reforms the Department of Corrections instituted after Valdes' death. Then the tour moved on to the death chamber, a room just off X Wing where Valdes was expected to wind up for killing a corrections officer.

With its clean Shaker-inspired lines, Florida's wooden electric chair is startlingly simplistic. Ten leather belts dangle from its arms, legs and back. Behind it sits a large metal box with yellow stickers that reads simply, "Caution High Voltage Keep Out."

On death row, or Golf Wing, 53 prisoners are waiting for their appointments with that chair.

Some sit quietly in the dark, while others watch television or do crossword puzzles. Danny Rolling, a clean-cut blond who was convicted of killing five Gainesville college students in 1990, intently peers over his glasses at a book. "This is it," the serial killer tells one reporter, as though it is he who is conducting the death row tour. Paul Hill, who shot and killed a doctor and a volunteer outside a Pensacola abortion clinic in 1994, waves shyly.

Just down the road at Union Correctional Institution, the other state prison to house death row inmates, the condemned are more lively. Some, wearing their trademark orange, sit in confessional-style booths where law clerks can slide reading material under a divider. On the row itself, the cells are adorned with calendars, newspapers, books and toiletries. One inmate plays music and calls out, "You look chipper today." Another complains of the heat. A third politely inquires, "Are you with Mr. Moore's group?" referring to the secretary of the Department of Corrections, Michael Moore.

Despite all the good behavior, the threats the inmates can pose is a subject that is raised repeatedly. Standing outside the courtyard of the half-demolished Union building inmates and guards affectionately called "the Rock," Capt. Randall Branham recalled the two months in 1983 that 10 officers were stabbed there.

An inmate collapsed Branham's lung with a 12-inch knife. Another killed his best friend, Officer John Dennard.

To take his mind off his work, Branham gardens and tries other stress relief. And he said he gives the guards that work for him a simple message about abusing prisoners:

"Everyone has been to that point, and I tell them I know I have," Branham said. "But this guy isn't worth your family and your career."

Branham isn't sure what to believe about Valdes or the guards that insist he died from flinging himself headfirst onto his metal cell bed.

"We feel sorry for those guys over there," Branham said. "You can only speculate about what happened."

But Branham and Union Prison Warden Dennis O'Neill said they do know this: Inmates are well aware of what happened at Florida State Prison. And they are smart enough to try to take advantage of it. Although O'Neill said guards haven't resisted a new policy to tape incidents in which guards must use force on inmates, some worry that officers will hesitate to act when necessary.

"They (the officers) feel under microscopic scrutiny right now," O'Neill said.

Crosby said it would be foolish to say that abuse never takes place. Already, though, Crosby said the new videotaping policy has helped clear officers at Florida State Prison.

In the first filmed use of force under the new policy, inmate Duane Leach is shown refusing to obey his guards. "I ain't going to do nothing," Leach yells. The guards grab his legs and feet and take him to an empty cell. Struggling to close the door, one guard pushes Leach's head. Leach immediately calls that a "cheap shot," and alleges that he was abused.

"At least now you'll get to see what's being called abuse," Crosby said. "Now you'll have a record."

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