Prison Murders

Prosecutors seeking justice for Terry Lamar Walker in death found little good to say about him in life. A convicted burglar, stickup man and bank robber, Walker spent much of his adult life behind bars. His killing in May 1999, at the high-security federal prison in Marion, Ill., was anything but discreet. A guard reported seeing one inmate grab the unarmed Walker from behind while another lunged at him, over and over, with a 4-inch shiv.

A Compton gang member already sentenced to life in prison for murder and awaiting trial in a second slaying is being investigated in the strangling of his Twin Towers jail cellmate. Jamar Lavon Tucker, 28, was found inside his two-man cell next to the body of William Levell Hansbrough during a security check Thursday at the downtown L.A. jail, officials said. Tucker told deputies he had just killed his cellmate, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

The case against two alleged leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang in California went to a jury Tuesday after six weeks of gruesome and bizarre testimony that painted prison gang life as a predatory dystopia where one must kill or be killed. Robert "Blinky" Griffin, 59, and John "Youngster" Stinson, 52, are accused of ordering a series of murders to maintain discipline within the gang and, in doing so, strengthen its power and expand its drug-trafficking and extortion rackets.

Los Angeles County homicide detectives are continuing to investigate the death of an inmate last week. William Hansbrough, 36, was declared dead just after 10 a.m. Thursday at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said Sunday. Hansbrough had been strangled, according to the county coroner's office. Guards conducting a security check were "told by an inmate that he had killed his cellmate," according to the Sheriff's Department. The men were housed in a jail module designated for mentally ill inmates, sheriff's officials said.

David Paul Hammer appears fated to die the way he killed his cellmate, Andrew Hunt Marti--inside a small prison room, his arms and legs strapped down, lying face up to a world that will do just as well without him. Hammer murdered Marti nearly five years ago, slowly strangling him in his lower bunk in cell 103 of the Allenwood penitentiary. With the federal government soon to begin executing prisoners again, Hammer at this moment is the first in line.

The fatal stabbing of an officer by an inmate at the Chino men's prison might have been prevented if guards had not routinely violated security protocols and if managers had properly housed the alleged assailant in a cell for violent convicts, an investigative report concluded Wednesday. In response to the findings, state corrections officials placed Warden Lori DiCarlo and two chief deputies on paid administrative leave and launched a widespread audit of prison operations.

State prison officials on Friday removed the warden and two deputy wardens from their posts at the California Institution for Men in Chino after an investigation determined that mismanagement and security lapses contributed to the slaying of a guard in January.

A Los Angeles County Jail inmate beat his cellmate to death, the fourth homicide in the nation's largest jail system in the last year, authorities said Thursday. Sheriff's officials said they did not know what prompted the assault late Wednesday or how long it lasted. Deputies said they learned of the beating from inmates who reported that a man was down in the fifth-floor mental health module at downtown's Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

Six current or former Orange County jail inmates were charged with murder Friday in the beating death last month of another prisoner, the first homicide inside the jail in 20 years. John Chamberlain, 41, who had been charged with possessing child pornography, was severely kicked while in the showers, then dragged -- apparently unnoticed by guards -- to another section of the jail, where the beating continued.

Two convicted murderers who disappeared after allegedly beating another inmate to death were found still inside the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Inmates Christopher Sims and Shannon Phillips were discovered hiding behind a false wall they had constructed in the prison ice plant where they are believed to have killed Toby Viles four days earlier, a corrections department spokesman said.

A Supreme Court case testing whether a prosecutor can be sued for framing suspects for a murder ended Monday when an Iowa county agreed to pay $12 million to two men who were freed after spending 26 years in prison. In the past, the high court had said prosecutors could not be sued for doing their jobs, even if they sometimes convicted the wrong defendant. And in November, an Obama administration lawyer argued on behalf of Pottawattamie County, asserting that there is no constitutional "right not to be framed."

A Los Angeles federal judge took the highly unusual step of closing a two-day trial this week in a case involving the 2005 prison killing of Jewish Defense League activist Earl Krugel. Constitutional scholars and press-freedom advocates deemed the broad secrecy accorded the trial by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson perplexing -- and a likely violation of the 1st Amendment. Wilson issued a protective order covering U.S.

A federal judge in Baton Rouge overturned the conviction of a former Black Panther in the 1972 stabbing death of a state prison guard. Albert Woodfox, who was held in solitary confinement for more than 30 years, is one of three former Panthers known as the "Angola Three." He and two others at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola were convicted in the killing of guard Brent Miller in 1972. U.S. District Judge James Brady approved a federal magistrate's June recommendation that Woodfox's conviction be overturned because his former lawyers had failed to challenge some testimony against him. Prosecutors could retry him.

Among the inmates at the Clark County Detention Center in the summer of 2006 was a local celebrity, an ex-cop whose long fight to reverse his murder conviction still intrigued his hometown. Ronald L. Mortensen had been a rookie Las Vegas police officer the night he and his partner went on a drunken off-duty spree. It ended with a fatal shooting. Was it Mortensen or his partner who pulled the trigger? The question dominated a sensational trial in 1997.

A special grand jury that reviewed the fatal beating of a Theo Lacy Jail inmate scolded the Orange County Sheriff's Department for investigating the death itself rather than turning the case over to the district attorney, violating a 20-year-old policy "through conscious choice or negligent action." In a letter made public Wednesday, the panel pointed out that the policy adopted in 1985 had been honored in 129 out of 130 custodial death investigations.

A nine-month grand jury investigation into the beating death of an Orange County jail inmate found that no crimes were committed by sheriff's deputies accused of instigating the assault and ignoring the victim's cries for help, Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said Friday. But Rackauckas said the 2006 slaying of John Chamberlain could have been avoided and admonished the Sheriff's Department for not following its own procedures to ensure inmate safety, although he wouldn't elaborate.

A jailed homicide suspect was found guilty Monday of murdering another inmate who was set to testify against him. Santiago Pineda, 25, was convicted by a downtown Los Angeles jury of two counts of murder. Pineda strangled Raul Tinajero in a cell at the Men's Central Jail on April 20, 2004. Tinajero's jailhouse slaying was one of several that triggered scrutiny of security in the system. A county review showed that Pineda roamed undetected throughout the jail from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m.

A former Jewish Defense League activist imprisoned for plotting to bomb a Culver City mosque and the field office of Arab American Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R-Vista) was killed in a federal prison in Phoenix, FBI officials said Saturday. Earl Krugel, 62, was attacked and killed at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution, said Agent Richard Murray, an FBI spokesman in Phoenix.

Hector Febres was the man who knew too much. And, like a character in a spy novel damned with an excess of secrets, Febres met an untimely and grisly end: He was poisoned last month in his cell. That is the conclusion of Argentine officials investigating the death of the former coast guard officer, who was awaiting a verdict on charges of torture. The case arose from Febres' service under a military dictatorship decades earlier at the country's most notorious clandestine detention center.

The Orange County district attorney's office is investigating the death of an inmate who had been hospitalized with an illness. The 43-year-old Westminster man, an inmate at the medical ward of Theo Lacy Jail, had severe anemia and was transferred to UCI Medical Center in Orange on Oct. 9, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino. The inmate's health worsened, and he died at 2:35 p.m. Sunday. The man, whose name was being withheld until his family was notified, was arrested Oct.