Prison Inmate

A Folsom Prison inmate was fatally wounded by prison guards as he was stabbing another prisoner, officials said. Prison Lt. Cammy Voss said Joseph Prigley, 22, was shot once in the upper torso after failing to obey orders to stop fighting with three other inmates and ignoring a warning shot fired by officers. Prigley had cut another prisoner in the upper torso with a handmade, 6-inch knife during the fight in an exercise yard, Voss said.

SAN FRANCISCO - A prison inmate whose triple-murder arson conviction was overturned after he demonstrated "actual innocence" will be retried rather than released, prosecutors said. U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii ordered the state last month to release George Souliotes, 72, or retry him immediately. After finding that Souliotes had proved his innocence, the judge overturned his conviction on the grounds he had been incompetently represented by his lawyer. Souliotes has spent 16 years in prison for murder in the deaths of Michelle Jones, 31, and her two children, Daniel Jr., 8, and Amanda, 3. The three died when a fire erupted in the home the family was renting from Souliotes.

An inmate fell five stories to his death, but authorities said it was unclear whether the fall at the California Rehabilitation Center was a homicide, a suicide or a botched escape attempt. The body was found Wednesday morning at the medium-security prison. "They did a security check around 2 a.m. and found an inmate missing," said Riverside County Sheriff's Department Investigator Jerry Franchville. "He was found at the bottom of a five-story building." The name of the inmate was not released.

The veteran Italian directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani ("Padre Padrone," "The Night of the Shooting Stars") encountered casting difficulties with their latest film - not from demanding divas or control-freak actors but from hardened criminals serving time in the high-security section at Rome's Rebibbia prison. Directed in a semi-documentary style in both black-and-white and color, "Caesar Must Die" revolves around the auditions, rehearsals and performance by the prison inmates of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar.

A former prison inmate accused of raping and strangling a Port Hueneme woman in her townhome nine years ago will stand trial next year on capital murder charges. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Donald Coleman on Wednesday ordered Michael Schultz, 33, to stand trial on one count of first-degree murder and allegations that he killed Cynthia Burger, 44, during a rape and burglary.

SAN FRANCISCO - A prison inmate whose triple-murder arson conviction was overturned after he demonstrated "actual innocence" will be retried rather than released, prosecutors said. U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii ordered the state last month to release George Souliotes, 72, or retry him immediately. After finding that Souliotes had proved his innocence, the judge overturned his conviction on the grounds he had been incompetently represented by his lawyer. Souliotes has spent 16 years in prison for murder in the deaths of Michelle Jones, 31, and her two children, Daniel Jr., 8, and Amanda, 3. The three died when a fire erupted in the home the family was renting from Souliotes.

A prison inmate who grabbed a guard's gun held the guard hostage briefly before he was subdued by police Sunday, authorities said. The Holmesburg Prison inmate was being treated for a cut at a prison hospital unit when he reportedly grabbed the gun and shot the guard, who was listed in serious condition with a wound to the abdomen. The guard managed to kick the gun away from the inmate after being held hostage for about 30 minutes, police said.

A state prison inmate is in stable condition at Antelope Valley Hospital on Monday after castrating himself, a prison official said. Elijah Handley, 28, who is serving 24 years for attempted murder, burglary and conspiracy to commit mayhem, maimed himself on Thursday in his cell, Lancaster prison spokesman Lt. Ken Lewis said. Prison investigators don't know why, Lewis said.

When court clerks asked prison inmate Greg Gould Jr. to list his occupation for a marriage license, he replied "criminal." It was part of a ceremony last month in the basement of Pennsylvania's York County courthouse. "That was a joke. Did they write it down that way?" asked Gould, 30. Gould married Valentina Marie Natasha Roberts, the mother of his two children. Gould was convicted Jan. 10 of multiple robbery counts in a 1999 gas station holdup.

Two Hells Angels have been indicted by a federal grand jury for paying an FBI informant to kill a prison inmate, authorities said. The indictment charges that George Christie Jr., 39, Oak Park, president of the group's Ventura chapter, and Daniel J. Fabricant, 37, with conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of a violent crime.

WASHINGTON -- Things have been looking so good for President Obama lately that he's starting to worry they might be too good. Speaking at a fundraiser on Friday night, Obama told his supporters not to pop the champagne too early.  "This is going to be a race,” the president told a group of donors at the home of Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) “We're going to have to work our hearts out over the next 39 days. " "I don't want anyone to feel that somehow we're done six weeks out.” Obama has enjoyed a string of improved polling numbers in important swing states this week, while his opponent, Mitt Romney, continues to struggle with fallout from his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad last week.

SACRAMENTO - California's practice of isolating prison inmates it suspects of gang affiliations and keeping them that way for years is being challenged in federal court by a national civil rights group. Inmate advocates say California is the only state that makes such extensive, harsh use of solitary confinement, which amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. The inmates are segregated based on thin evidence and prevented from seeking parole, the advocates say, and their isolation leads to mental and medical problems.

Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003 hoping to contain a national epidemic. Nearly a decade later, however, the problem apparently persists. The Department of Justice this month finally got around to releasing a 2008 survey in which 1 in 10 state prison inmates reported that they had been sexually assaulted while serving time. But there is some good news. Last week the Justice Department finalized regulations to address the problem of abuse. And although its new rules do not apply to federal immigration detention facilities, where detainees are just as much in need of protection, the Department of Homeland Security now says that it will move to adopt new regulations to cover those facilities as well.

When Congress enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act, it did so in the hope of curbing sexual assaults in facilities across the country. But today, with new rules to protect prisoners being finalized, the Department of Homeland Security is demanding that immigrants held in detention centers be exempted. That's outrageous. Of course Congress expected the law, and any regulations drafted as a result of it, to cover immigrants detained while they fight deportation cases. The plain language of the bill says so. The co-sponsors of the bill, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.)

When author Robert Greene wrote his bestselling book "The 48 Laws of Power," his win-at-all-costs message turned him into a cult hero with the hip-hop set, Hollywood elite and prison inmates alike. Crush your enemy totally, he wrote in Law 15. Play a sucker to catch a sucker, he said in another. Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit. Greene's warrior-like take on the quest for power, written more than a decade ago, would eventually attract another devotee: Dov Charney, the provocative and sometimes impish chief executive of Los Angeles clothing company American Apparel Inc. The 52-year-old Greene — a former screenwriter who speaks five languages and worked 80 jobs before writing "The 48 Laws" — has become Charney's guru, a trusted confidant to the 42-year-old entrepreneur and, insiders say, a voice of reason on American Apparel's board of directors.

Inmates in at least 11 of California's 33 prisons are refusing meals in solidarity with a hunger strike staged by prisoners in one of the system's special maximum-security units, officials said Tuesday. The strike began Friday when inmates in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison stopped eating meals in protest of conditions that they contend are cruel and inhumane. "There are inmates in at least a third of our prisons who are refusing state-issued meals," said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

A prison inmate who wrote threatening letters to his mother-in-law may be convicted of making threats of bodily harm, even though he could not carry them out, a state appeals court ruled Monday. The justices upheld the conviction of Gerald Ditsch, 45, who is serving a 2 1/2-year sentence in the Norfolk County House of Correction in Dedham for raping his 12-year-old daughter, and sentenced him to an additional six-month term for writing the letters.

More than 12 years after a Santa Ana man was found stabbed to death in a dirt planter, investigators say they have identified his killer: a prison inmate serving time for another crime. On Friday, a Westminster judge issued an arrest warrant for Jerry Glenn (Red Dog) Williams, 41, for the murder of Clyde Dwain Ward in October, 1981.

Ten of California's sickest and most costly inmates ? some are in comas, some are paralyzed ? will be promptly scheduled for parole hearings, corrections authorities announced Wednesday. An article in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times detailed how, despite being chained to bed frames, such inmates are guarded around the clock by multiple corrections officers at an annual cost to taxpayers of roughly $800,000 per inmate. "You look at these inmates and say, 'This person is not going anywhere,'" said J. Clark Kelso, the receiver appointed by a federal court to oversee California's troubled prison health services.