Prison Deaths

Sixteen Arizona corrections employees have been fired, suspended or otherwise disciplined for their roles in the death of an inmate left in an outdoor holding cell for four hours in triple-digit heat, and for a punishment practiced at the prison where she died. Three of those disciplined were fired, two stepped down rather than be dismissed, 10 received suspensions ranging from 40 to 80 hours, and one was demoted. Two others are to be disciplined after they return from medical leave.

The killer of a 12-year-old Orange County girl who has spent 22 years fighting execution has died on death row, escaping what the victim's father termed "the justice the world deserved." Thomas Francis Edwards, 65, died of natural causes Saturday at San Quentin State Prison's medical facility, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported Monday.

The day after the family of an inmate beaten to death in Orange County Jail received a $600,000 settlement, an attorney for one of the men accused in the killing said he is seeking the personnel files of the deputies on duty at the time. John Chamberlain, a 41-year-old computer technician from Mission Viejo, was awaiting trial on charges that he possessed child pornography. Instead, he was killed by other inmates in 2006 in the first slaying in an Orange County jail in two decades.

An Orange County Jail inmate who had turned himself in Friday to begin serving a 35-day sentence for driving under the influence died in his sleep early Sunday morning, a sheriff's official said. Scott McCollum, 47, of Huntington Beach was found dead in his cell at Central Men's Jail at 4:45 a.m., said Lt. Ted Boyne of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

Transcripts from a grand jury investigation into the beating death of a jail inmate are scheduled to be unsealed no later than April 7 under the orders of an Orange County judge who found the Sheriff's Department had no legal standing to block their release. In finalizing a preliminary ruling reached earlier this week, Superior Court Judge James A.

A convicted hotel bomber from California who modeled himself on a fictional vampire has died after becoming ill in prison, officials said Tuesday. Triston Jay Amero, 26, was serving a 30-year sentence for the 2006 bombing of two low-rent hotels in this capital city. Two Bolivians died in one of the attacks. Juan Carlos Limpias, a senior official in the national prison service, said Amero complained of stomach pains Monday night and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Thirty-six years have passed since she saw him last, but Leontine Verrett has never forgotten the face of the man she still calls her true love. His name was Brent Miller. He was lean and cocksure and strummed his guitar a little too loud. Their romance blossomed on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the plantation turned prison built along a bend of the Mississippi River. He came from a clan where men had served as prison guards for generations.

Seeking to defuse growing racial tensions in the small Louisiana town of Winnfield, the district attorney announced Monday that he would seek an indictment against a white officer in the death of a black man who was shocked nine times with a Taser while handcuffed. Winn Parish Dist. Atty. Chris Nevils said he would convene a grand jury Aug.

As the death toll mounted after two separate riots at a prison here, Baja California state authorities came under fierce criticism Thursday for allegedly brutal tactics used by police on inmates and the treatment of inmates' relatives who had gathered outside the prison.

A Japanese businessman who reportedly committed suicide in a Los Angeles jail cell suffered wounds consistent with a choking and beating, his lawyer said Monday. Mark Geragos hired an independent pathologist to examine the body of his client, Kazuyoshi Miura, after the L.A. County coroner's office released it. Geragos said the pathologist found injuries to the middle and lower parts of the back as well as to the larynx. "Clearly it was missed by the coroner," Geragos said.