Prisoners Deaths

The 3-year-old daughter of a man who died of meningitis while he was an inmate at a Los Angeles County jail in Castaic sued the county and the Sheriff's Department on Thursday, alleging negligence and violation of civil rights. Alexander Betancourt, a 45-year-old inmate at the South Facility of the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, died in February, 1993.

JERUSALEM -- The sudden death of a 30-year-old Palestinian man being held in an Israeli jail sparked another day of protests and rioting across the West Bank on Sunday as fears heightened that Palestinian frustration levels are nearing a boiling point. Clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers erupted in the West Bank city of Hebron and nearby villages following the death of Arafat Jaradat, a gas station attendant who was arrested Feb. 18 for throwing rocks and firebombs at Israelis near Hebron.

JERUSALEM -- The sudden death of a 30-year-old Palestinian man being held in an Israeli jail sparked another day of protests and rioting across the West Bank on Sunday as fears heightened that Palestinian frustration levels are nearing a boiling point. Clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli soldiers erupted in the West Bank city of Hebron and nearby villages following the death of Arafat Jaradat, a gas station attendant who was arrested Feb. 18 for throwing rocks and firebombs at Israelis near Hebron.

He was chained to a cot, a lone prisoner in a small cell facing eight guards who beat him while a summoned ambulance crew was kept waiting outside. When the doctors were finally admitted to the prison, they found Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky dead, his body bruised, most of his knuckles smashed, one of his arms dark blue from a grip of the handcuffs lying nearby. The attorney's death in Moscow's infamous Sailor's Silence prison was described Tuesday in a report delivered to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by his advisory human rights council.

Re "Deadly medical lapses in prison," Sept. 20 It's been nearly two years since U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson appointed Robert Sillen as federal receiver for California's 32 state prisons, specifically to upgrade health and medical care for the state's 173,000 inmates. Yet The Times cites a report that states "one in six deaths of California prison inmates last year might have been preventable." California taxpayers in 2006 paid $1.

Plans for a $220-million expansion of San Quentin State Prison's death row are moving forward, despite opposition from a number of elected officials. Public comment will be sought this month on issues that should be addressed in the project's environmental impact report. Funding was included in this year's state budget for the project, which calls for construction of a 535,000-square-foot death row complex with 1,024 prison cells in the southwestern portion of the 432-acre prison.

A prisoner whose death in Uzbek custody sparked a high-level investigation hanged himself, as authorities had said, and his body showed no signs of serious torture, international experts concluded. Andrei Shelkovenko, 36, died May 19 in a holding cell at a police station in his hometown of Gazalkent. The family and international human rights groups called for an independent investigation, saying that marks on his body might have been evidence of torture. Dr.

The military equivalent of a preliminary hearing is set for Monday at Ft. Carson, Colo., for an Army private accused of premeditated murder in the shooting death of a senior Taliban commander being held prisoner in Afghanistan. Pfc. David W. Lawrence, 20, is accused of shooting Mullah Mohebullah in the head Oct. 17 while assigned to guard duty at a detention center in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province. Under military law, premeditated murder can carry the death penalty.

He was chained to a cot, a lone prisoner in a small cell facing eight guards who beat him while a summoned ambulance crew was kept waiting outside. When the doctors were finally admitted to the prison, they found Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky dead, his body bruised, most of his knuckles smashed, one of his arms dark blue from a grip of the handcuffs lying nearby. The attorney's death in Moscow's infamous Sailor's Silence prison was described Tuesday in a report delivered to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by his advisory human rights council.

A Phoenix judge dismissed charges against three men who allegedly plotted to kill the Arizona prison director after the main witness refused to answer questions during cross-examination. When asked about killings he committed while a member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang, the witness refused to testify unless he was granted immunity. Prosecutors denied the request, and Judge Gregory Martin dismissed the case.

California continued to buck a nationwide trend away from costly and litigious death sentences in 2010, adding 28 new prisoners to the country's most populous death row, according to correction officials and a national database on capital punishment. Los Angeles County alone condemned eight defendants to death this year, the same number as Texas, and Riverside County sent six men to await execution, officials said. The state's death chamber was idle for a fifth year, though, because of protracted legal challenges of lethal injection practices and a nationwide shortage of the key drug used in the three-injection procedure.

The military equivalent of a preliminary hearing is set for Monday at Ft. Carson, Colo., for an Army private accused of premeditated murder in the shooting death of a senior Taliban commander being held prisoner in Afghanistan. Pfc. David W. Lawrence, 20, is accused of shooting Mullah Mohebullah in the head Oct. 17 while assigned to guard duty at a detention center in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province. Under military law, premeditated murder can carry the death penalty.

While the debate over capital punishment rages in Texas, the number of inmates sentenced to death row in 2009 is at a 35-year low. Prosecutors have been pushing for fewer death sentences and, many observers believe, juries have become less willing to give them. The biggest game-changer, several prosecutors and defense lawyers said, appears to be the introduction in 2005 of life without parole as an option. Jurors in capital cases previously were responsible for choosing either the death penalty or a life sentence in which a convicted killer could be eligible for parole in 40 years.

Getting big-boxed in Re "Politically correct, he isn't," Sept. 20 Thank you for your article about R. Rex Parris. We shop in Lancaster, and relatives live in Quartz Hill near where the proposed Wal-Mart is supposed to go up. I wrote Parris a letter protesting that decision because there is another such store only a few miles away; I think we have too many big-box stores too close already. From what I've read, Parris also is fond of "legislating morality" at Lancaster city meetings.

Walking across the parking lot of a Hollywood diner, Roderick Poole was on his way to dinner with his wife on Mother's Day when a car backed out of a parking space and bumped into a restaurant worker standing nearby. "Watch it!" Poole called out. The vehicle's driver apologized to the worker but exchanged angry words with Poole.

The head of Adelanto's animal control office has been charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty after investigators said he systematically drowned dozens of kittens over four months last year. Kevin Murphy, 36, was charged Monday with six counts of killing, maiming and abusing animals and faces up to six years in prison if he is convicted.

A 55-year-old drunken man who was taken into custody at a relative's request died in his cell early Tuesday after stuffing his shirt down his throat, police said. Pedro Martinez Gonzalez was pronounced dead at 5:16 a.m. in the Police Department's booking cell, said Deputy County Coroner James Baroni. Gonzalez had stuffed part of his shirt and pieces of his shirt sleeve down his throat, Baroni said. He ruled the suffocation death a suicide.

Authorities arrested a retired deputy interior minister who ran a camp in northern Bulgaria in which hundreds of prisoners may have been killed during Todor Zhivkov's Communist regime. The arrest of 80-year-old Gen. Mincho Spassov followed a series of reports about the camp that have stirred memories of Stalinist repression.

Re "Deadly medical lapses in prison," Sept. 20 It's been nearly two years since U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson appointed Robert Sillen as federal receiver for California's 32 state prisons, specifically to upgrade health and medical care for the state's 173,000 inmates. Yet The Times cites a report that states "one in six deaths of California prison inmates last year might have been preventable." California taxpayers in 2006 paid $1.

Relatives of former Jewish Defense League activist Earl Krugel are calling for an investigation into his death at a federal prison in Phoenix. FBI agents on Monday interviewed inmates and prison guards at the medium-security prison, where Krugel, 62, was imprisoned for plotting to bomb a Culver City mosque and the field office of Arab American Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R-Vista). But an FBI spokeswoman declined to provide additional details on Krugel's death, which occurred about 5:30 p.m.