Prisoners California

Convicted murderer Robert Rosenkrantz will remain in prison while an appeals court reviews a judge's order that he be freed. On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court ordered that Rosenkrantz stay in state prison in San Luis Obispo at least until the 2nd District Court of Appeal weighs in on the case. Last month, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Paul Gutman said Rosenkrantz had been unlawfully denied parole by Gov. Gray Davis.

It may come as a disappointment to Gov. Jerry Brown - but it certainly should not come as a surprise - that a panel of federal judges rejected his request that they return control of California's still-overcrowded prison system to the state. The network of 33 state prisons continues to hold more than 9,000 inmates beyond the court's mandated cap, and Brown's administration has not presented a realistic plan to eliminate that excess, even though the court has extended the deadline for compliance from June 30 to the end of the year.

David Rothenberg has dreaded this day since kindergarten. The father who doused him with kerosene and set him afire seven years ago is getting out of prison Wednesday. And although Charles Rothenberg has vowed never again to hurt his son, David doesn't buy it. He has practiced self-defense and all the best ways to flee his Orange County home. He knows the fastest routes on his bicycle from his junior high school.

SACRAMENTO - A combative Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday declared that "the prison crisis is over in California" and demanded an end to years of intervention by federal judges and expensive edicts designed to reduce crowding and improve inmate healthcare. "At some point, the job's done," Brown said at a Capitol news conference before catching a plane for Los Angeles, where he repeated the message. "We spent billions of dollars" complying with the court orders, the governor said. "It is now time to return control of our prison system to California.

The battered body of a 15-year-old girl was found along the bank of a sand pit in a small New Jersey town. Her skull had been crushed with a 44-pound boulder and her body beaten with a baseball bat. Edgar Smith, a 23-year-old acquaintance of the girl, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair. While on Death Row in a New Jersey prison, he began corresponding with conservative columnist William F. Buckley, who eventually became convinced of Smith's innocence.

David Rothenberg is bound for the Pipeline, an acre of concrete craters in Upland where hordes of teen-age boys flock every day to ride, "tube" and "shred" the walls on skateboards. The most famous burn victim in America and his driver are temporarily lost on a freeway cutting through the Inland Empire. "Uh, I think we passed it," David mutters in that aren't-adults-dumb-sometimes tone that 11-year-olds have.

It is penal service hiding behind coy euphemisms. Work release. Celebrity diversion. Special programs. They are, in essence, chain gangs without shackles. "I sentence a lot of people to work with Caltrans," said a Los Angeles municipal court commissioner. "Because it is hard work that in the heat of summer becomes hard labor."

A videotape of the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris, prepared for a lawsuit challenging the use of the gas chamber but never shown in court, has been destroyed at a judge's order, court records show. Newly unsealed documents in federal court disclose that the tape was destroyed after state lawyers agreed that they would not offer any new witnesses' testimony about executions if the gas chamber suit is retried.

Each time the heavy gates clank shut behind him, prison guard Robert Trono enters a violent realm of bitter men with nothing left to lose. The 39-year-old sergeant works in a cramped concrete cellblock that houses 85 killers awaiting execution. It is a place where riot gear, stab-proof vests, biohazard body suits and fear are standard issue. Trono helps oversee inmates known as the Grade-B condemned, the most dangerous of San Quentin prison's 580 death row prisoners.

Edmund Kemper III--convicted of killing and beheading eight women, including his mother--was denied parole from prison for the sixth time. A three-member Board of Prison Terms panel cited the "extraordinary degree of violence" in deciding that the 6-foot, 9-inch former construction worker should remain in custody at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville for at least three more years.

An Orange County man who swindled elderly people out of their homes after promising to help them avoid foreclosure was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison under California's tough three-strikes law. Defense lawyers and prosecutors across the state could not recall any other case in which a white-collar offender received such a lengthy sentence under a statute typically applied in violent crime cases. The sentencing of Timothy Barnett was unusual because his entire criminal record involved fraud.

My initial gut reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court's ordering California to empty its prison cells of 33,000 criminals was that Gov. Jerry Brown should respond: "Easy for you to say. You have bodyguards. "And you don't have to run for reelection. "Forget it. No way. Not today. Not ever. " Sort of like President Andrew Jackson purportedly said about a Supreme Court ruling favoring the Cherokees, whom he was trying to boot from the Smoky Mountains and onto the "Trail of Tears": Chief Justice "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it. " Jackson apparently never said that exactly, and the actual court case didn't really fit the tale.

The cages must go Re "Inmates caged for therapy," Dec. 28 If the vision of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is "a safer California through correctional excellence," then citizens and legislators should demand that this therapeutic practice of caged group therapy for mentally ill inmates end. As a matter of public safety, we all ought to be very concerned that this inhumane practice occurs without a...

Eddie Lemon has an associate's degree from Taft College near Bakersfield. He's certified to work as a sheet metal operator and to drive a forklift. He has experience as a dishwasher and a cabinetmaker. He also has a criminal record. The 47-year-old Lemon believes that has made it all but impossible for him to find a job in one of the worst economies in decades. And as prisons are forced to reduce their inmate populations because of overcrowding and budget shortages, some economists fear that could lead many of them back to a life of crime.

Timothy Barnett spent nearly five years in state prison for a 1990s foreclosure rescue scam in which he conned homeowners out of tens of thousands of dollars. Now, prosecutors say, he has been at it again, targeting residents in the same South Los Angeles neighborhood he fleeced before. But this time, the state is unleashing one of its more powerful weapons against him. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office has charged Barnett under California's much-debated three-strikes law. Usually aimed at offenders with a history of violent crime, it is rarely used for white-collar offenses such as fraud.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy criticized California sentencing policies and crowded prisons Wednesday night, calling the influence that unionized prison guards had in passing the three-strikes law "sick." In an otherwise courtly and humorous address to the Los Angeles legal community, Kennedy expressed obvious dismay over the state of corrections and rehabilitation in the country. He said U.S. sentences are eight times longer than those issued by European courts.

A woman convicted three days ago of killing a mother and unborn child committed suicide early Saturday in her one-person jail cell, saying the humiliation was too much to stand. Josefina Sonia Saldana hanged herself with a sheet and left two messages written in lipstick on her cell wall: "Fresno, may God forgive you" and "babies, I am not a murderer. I love you," said Fresno County Sheriff Richard Pierce. Saldana was convicted Thursday of kidnapping and two counts of murder.

San Quentin's death row attacks illustrate the tensions present at many of California's 33 state prisons. One reason: Housing about 160,000 inmates, the state penitentiary system--the nation's largest--is bursting at the seams with some prisons handling double their capacity. Death row is no different. California leads the nation in the number of condemned prisoners--580 men and 12 women--more than Texas, which has 450, and Florida with 372. There are 38 states with death rows.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday asked a panel of federal judges to delay their order that the state produce a plan to reduce prison crowding, saying he would take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court if they did not grant the request. In the motion filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the governor said the order should be delayed pending an appeal to be filed Thursday in the Supreme Court, arguing that the state would probably win in the nation's high court. The order was issued Aug. 4 by judges overseeing two lawsuits filed by inmates complaining of inadequate medical and mental health treatment.

. -- Mark Childress knows prisons -- from the inside. Though only 36 years old, he's done stretches in 10 state lockups, including some of the toughest around. And now California has locked him up again -- this time in Arizona. Childress is a part of a first wave of about 700 male convicts that California has shipped to privately owned and operated prisons in Arizona, Tennessee and Mississippi. "I feel good, like I could do another 10 years," he said, half-jokingly.