State Prison

It was, an appeals attorney said, "a dirty little murder." Ronald Lee Sanders is not a notorious killer. Like most of the 167 condemned men living on San Quentin's two Death Rows, Sanders is virtually anonymous. The murder for which he was convicted did not make the pages of The Times. It was not even a big story in Bakersfield, where it occurred. The judge who sentenced Sanders to the gas chamber couldn't remember the details of the case 3 1/2 years later.

A crew chief for the Mexican Mafia prison gang has been captured after fleeing to a rural town in Missouri, authorities said. Albert "Spanky" Amaya is accused of cutting off his GPS ankle device while on probation in San Bernardino County to evade authorities while he tried to relocate.  The 45-year-old Amaya was convicted of extortion in 2008. It was his third felony conviction and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison. But under a measure approved by voters last year that allowed "three strikes" inmates to seek re-sentencing, Amaya was released in June to the supervision of the San Bernardino County Probation Department, authorities said.

California risks repeating past mistakes as it doles out hundreds of millions of dollars to help county jails house inmates who once would have ended up in state prisons, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released Wednesday. The report highlights a recurring concern of advocates: Rather than pursuing cheaper ways of protecting public safety, the state is shifting the problem of prison overcrowding to the local level. "Left unchecked, these counties will build larger jail systems that will cost more tax dollars than they do now and hold more people than they do now," the report said.

This post has been corrected. Please see the note below for details. A reputed prison gang leader who is accused of cutting his GPS ankle device while on probation in San Bernardino County has been captured after fleeing to Missouri, authorities said Tuesday night. Albert "Spanky" Amaya was validated by state corrections authorities as a crew chief for the Mexican Mafia prison gang, according to the San Bernardino County Probation Department. Amays, 45, was convicted of extortion, his third felony conviction, and sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison in 2008.  But under a voter-approved measure last year that allowed "three strikes" inmates to seek re-sentencing, Amaya was released in June to the supervision of the Probation Department, authorities said.

Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf has been moved from a drug treatment center to the state prison in Deer Lodge, Mont., after being kicked out of the center for poor behavior. "The Montana Department of Corrections terminated Leaf from the treatment program and placed him in prison after he was found guilty of behavior that violated conditions of his drug treatment placement," Dawn Handa, regional probation and parole administrator in Great Falls, said in a statement. "The violations included threatening a program staff member.

Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to a plan to cut the state's giant prisons budget, passing a hard-fought measure that would reduce the inmate population by thousands but stop far short of solving the overcrowding crisis. It would also leave California's budget with $200 million in red ink. Administration officials said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to sign the measure nonetheless. But as the lawmaking calendar drew to a close, the only other major legislation heading toward the governor appeared to be destined for a veto.

A crew chief for the Mexican Mafia prison gang has been captured after fleeing to a rural town in Missouri, authorities said. Albert "Spanky" Amaya is accused of cutting off his GPS ankle device while on probation in San Bernardino County to evade authorities while he tried to relocate.  The 45-year-old Amaya was convicted of extortion in 2008. It was his third felony conviction and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison. But under a measure approved by voters last year that allowed "three strikes" inmates to seek re-sentencing, Amaya was released in June to the supervision of the San Bernardino County Probation Department, authorities said.

State parole officials missed many chances to capture convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and find Jaycee Dugard, whom he is accused of kidnapping 18 years ago and harboring in his Antioch backyard, a prison watchdog has concluded in a highly critical report to be released today. Inspector General David R. Shaw said a two-month investigation found that the state parole division supervising Garrido for the past decade could have discovered Dugard, and her two children fathered by him, much earlier than August, when he was arrested.

For the first time since the nation's prison boom began, the state prison population declined for a six-month period last year, the Justice Department said Sunday. Thirteen states--including Texas and New York--housed fewer prisoners on Dec. 31 than they did when the year began. The combined population of state and federal prisons grew slightly when calculated for the entire year, but the 1.3% increase was the smallest since 1972.

Foes of a state prison planned for Lancaster said Thursday that the city should file suit to block construction of the facility, which cleared a key bureaucratic hurdle this week despite community protests. The state Department of Corrections has approved an environmental report on the prison, to be near Avenue J and 60th Street West, a department spokeswoman said.

Two convicted murderers who escaped from a Florida prison have given new meaning to the word chutzpah by registering with local officials and having their fingerprints taken after their release using forged documents. The inmates went back to Orange County in Florida and registered as convicted felons and had their fingerprints taken in a required move that seems designed to decrease official concern about their actions. State officials are investigating the entire chain of events while law enforcement is seeking to recapture the men, Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker.

A Los Angeles firefighter is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on charges he and his mother beat a woman feeding stray cats in the West Adams district after she threw cat kibble at him during a verbal altercation. Fire engineer Ian Justin Eulian, 37, is charged with a felony count of battery with serious bodily injury, assault likely to produce great bodily harm and an enhancement of causing great bodily harm. He's being held in lieu of $50,000 bail. His mother, 70-year-old Lonieta Antonietta Fontaine, is due in court Friday.

Los Angeles County officials were alarmed by Tuesday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear Gov. Jerry Brown's appeal of court-ordered prison crowding caps, fearing that if the state is forced to release prisoners early, the county's ability to monitor them would be strained and public safety would be jeopardized. State officials have said they have no intention of releasing prisoners early and are working to transfer inmates to private prisons or find other solutions. County probation chief Jerry Powers said Tuesday that though he didn't believe California would be forced to release prisoners early, under the worst case scenario, 1,000 to 1,200 could be released to Los Angeles County.  He said that state officials have assured the county that if it had to release prisoners early, they would not be placed under the supervision of the county probation department but would be on state parole.

The hiring of new Los Angeles County probation workers has been significantly complicated, officials said Tuesday, because stricter standards imposed over the last year have disqualified applicants convicted of certain crimes and required others to submit to polygraph tests and extensive background checks. Probation officials said that only about 10% to 20% of applicants are making it through the new hiring and screening process at a time when the department is racing to add officers to cope with an influx of state prison inmates.

The office manager for a police union in Anaheim was sentenced Friday to four years in state prison for embezzling more than $360,000 by using a typewriter to change the amount on her paychecks. Cindy Ann Su'a of Whittier was the only paid employee of the Anaheim Police Assn. and was supposed to earn an annual salary of about $65,000. She was responsible for writing checks, tracking company credit cards and bookkeeping. In 2007, she began increasing her bi-weekly paycheck by thousands of dollars.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court rebuked California officials Friday for refusing to protect disabled parolees the state has shifted to county jails. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9thCircuit Court of Appeals said disabled inmates have been engaged in “a seemingly never-ending struggle” with state officials to obtain wheelchairs, sign-language interpreters, accessible beds and toilets, tapping canes for the blind and other accommodations. California prison officials “have resisted complying with their obligations at every turn,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the panel.

Records on notorious gangster John Dillinger have been discovered in a state prison, including a confession and early mug shots. "This material is extremely valuable," state archivist Jerry Handfield Jr. said Tuesday. "There are some unique items that to my knowledge have not been researched." The documents include Dillinger's confession to a botched robbery in Mooresville that first landed him in the Indiana Reformatory at Pendleton in 1924, and his initial prison mug shots.

L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, the former Tyco International executives convicted of improperly obtaining $600 million at the expense of shareholders, entered New York state's prison system Thursday to serve their sentences. The two arrived by bus at Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, N.Y. -- one of three reception centers where male inmates stay for several weeks while being evaluated and waiting to be assigned to a prison.

Two teenagers and a 23-year-old woman were charged with human trafficking in Orange County for allegedly luring a 17-year-old girl on Facebook and forcing her to work as a prostitute. According to the Orange County district attorney's office, 19-year-old Dejon Pierre Moore initiated an online relationship with the girl on the social media site. In late September, Moore picked the girl up in Los Angeles and drove her to Orange County, where she was forced to work as a prostitute, prosecutors said in a written statement.

A 70-year-old convicted robber who escaped from state prison in Chino in 1977 was captured in Arkansas, the FBI said Tuesday. Michael Ray Morrow  was sentenced in 1973 to five years to life or 10 years minimum in state prison for armed robbery in Long Beach, according to an affidavit filed in federal court.  He escaped from the California Institute for Men in Chino on Aug. 27, 1977, federal authorities said.  The FBI said Morrow was...