Prisoners Northern California

The nation's most famous "country club prison," once the domain of such celebrity felons as inside trader Ivan Boesky and Watergate figure H.R. Haldeman, is shutting down. The Lompoc Federal Prison Camp is being converted into a higher security federal prison. A prison with fences and razor wire instead of small "off-limits" signs around the property. A prison where inmates have to wear khaki uniforms instead of shorts and T-shirts. A prison where inmates can't play tennis in the afternoon.

After spending 17 years behind bars, Glen "Buddy" Nickerson walked out of San Quentin State Prison with a smile, saying that it's time to start living again as a free man. Nickerson has maintained his innocence since being sentenced to life in prison for committing a double murder in 1984. Recent developments have prompted a federal judge presiding over Nickerson's appeal to release him until court proceedings before her are concluded.

In graphic and tearful testimony, former inmate Eddie Dillard told a jury here Tuesday that he knew the fate that awaited him when guards transferred him to the cell of Corcoran State Prison's notorious "Booty Bandit." Telling jurors that his account was too painful to recall in every detail, Dillard said he pleaded with Officer Anthony Sylva that inmate Wayne Robertson was his documented enemy and a well-known rapist as Sylva led him to Robertson's cell that day in March 1993.

No one disputes that what prisoners heard spewing out of the intercom at Monterey County Jail was a string of vile, racist epithets. What still baffles people around the picturesque coastal enclave south of San Francisco is why was the offending tape recording made? And who would be dumb enough, or vicious enough, to play it several weeks ago for an inmate population already on edge over racial tensions?

David Rothenberg met privately with his jailed father Friday for the first time since the man set fire to David's bed in a Buena Park motel room in 1983, burning over 90% of his body. Alameda County Sheriff's officials said that Charles Rothenberg, who is awaiting trial on separate charges that he shot a man, met with his son for 35 minutes in a special arrangement after visiting hours at Oakland's North County Jail.

The state has agreed to pay $1.7 million to whistle-blower Richard Caruso, a former guard at Corcoran State Prison who broke the code of silence and exposed a pattern of deadly shootings of inmates, only to lose his career. The settlement, one of the largest damage awards to a state whistle-blower, came together late Wednesday after months of negotiations in which top officials, including Gov. Gray Davis, had urged a resolution of Caruso's five-year ordeal.

Four months after three Yosemite sightseers were abducted and killed, federal authorities say they have found physical evidence--including clothing and other fibers--that appears to connect the slayings to a group of Central Valley ex-convicts with violent pasts. Investigators say their murder investigation is coming together well, but they remain frustrated by important gaps in evidence and don't expect to file criminal charges for weeks, perhaps months.

State investigators are returning to troubled Corcoran prison to probe the fatal beating of a homosexual inmate who was pummeled and strangled for nearly 50 minutes in an open exercise yard directly below a guard post. The July 2 killing, captured on videotape, was carried out by a prisoner who strangled his cellmate only months earlier and was deemed too dangerous to mix with fellow inmates, according to corrections officials and a local prosecutor.

Andy Lowery thought he had seen the type before when Wayne Adam Ford first walked into his Christian book and music shop a couple of years ago. "People who have problems come to see the Christian people," Lowery says. Ford, who had lived and worked in Orange County before moving north, told Lowery his life was adrift, his marriage had busted up, he was losing touch with the toddler son he adored.

Two former supervisors and a former guard at Corcoran State Prison told a legislative hearing Wednesday that their attempts to draw attention to questionable inmate shooting deaths by guards were ignored at the highest levels of the state Department of Corrections, as well as by an official in the Wilson administration. With nowhere else to turn, Facility Capt. Ralph Mineau, former Lt.

Jails, it turns out, are not like mousetraps. Just because you build a better one, that doesn't mean the world will beat a path to your cell door. Take the Turning Point Academy, set among the rolling green hills of the National Guard's Camp San Luis Obispo. Officials with the residential detention center for juveniles like to say they've combined the best elements of boot camp discipline with the best ideas from the therapeutic, educational model for handling criminal youths.

Dist. Atty. Robert J. Drossel of Del Norte County said Wednesday he will charge a prisoner with murder in the shooting of another inmate during a racial disturbance last year at Pelican Bay state prison. The fatal shot was fired by a guard, who authorities said acted to protect a prisoner who was being attacked by another with a knife. The guard's action was ruled to be justifiable homicide by Drossel last summer because the officer feared for the life of the inmate who was being attacked.

What first looked like a terrifying tragedy--young woman killed by rogue dog--has revealed an illegal guard dog-breeding operation run from behind the walls of the state's most secure prison, law enforcement officials said Tuesday. Authorities investigating the death of Diane Whipple, 33, are on the trail of a bizarre story, complete with white supremacists, a surprise adoption and the Mexican Mafia.

One of three inmates who died mysteriously at a Chowchilla prison died of heart problems, a Madera County coroner's investigator said Friday. Pamela Coffey, 46, of Los Angeles died Dec. 2, the first of three unexplained deaths at Central California Women's Facility.

A federal court judge has dismissed a civil rights lawsuit by one of the main whistle-blowers in the Corcoran prison scandal, rejecting a former guard's claims that he was retaliated against after exposing brutality and a cover-up inside the prison. U.S. District Judge David Levi granted the state's motion to dismiss the lawsuit Tuesday, ruling that former Lt. Steve Rigg had failed to show any evidence that top corrections officials created a hostile work environment in 1994.

A court-appointed monitor says Pelican Bay State Prison has failed to move quickly or firmly enough against guards and other staff who used excessive force against inmates.

Junk bond king Michael Milken spent his first full day in prison Monday, rising early on a rainy day and being led through a daylong orientation before receiving a work assignment. Milken reported to the Federal Prison Work Camp at Pleasanton after dinner on Sunday, a day before the court-imposed deadline for him to present himself at the front gate of the minimum security facility, Associate Warden Monica Wetzel said. As first days go, Milken's was uneventful, she said.

A former associate warden and five other high-ranking officers at Corcoran State Prison, disciplined in a highly publicized inmate abuse case, had their jobs restored Friday with back pay. A Sacramento Superior Court judge set aside the discipline that followed the alleged beating of 36 black inmates in 1995, saying prison officials failed to adequately spell out the charges against the officers.

Eight prison guards purposely invited violent brawls by putting rival gang members together in a cramped recreation yard and waiting for them to fight, a prosecutor told a federal jury Friday. "This unit had over five times more fights than every other unit and every other shift," Assistant U.S. Atty. John Conklin said in his opening statement.

A country journalist who refused to disclose his sources began a five-day jail sentence Saturday for contempt of court, led into custody by a sheriff's sergeant who patted him down as friends, colleagues and reporters watched. "I'm at peace," Tim Crews, 57, said moments before he entered the gated enclosure at the rear of the Tehama County Jail, about 220 miles northeast of San Francisco.