Thursday, July 16, 2009

Texas case brought widespread attention to prisoners' cell phone use

The New York Times has an article about efforts to jam signals from cell phones that have been smuggled into prisons.

National attention was brought to this problem after a situation involving death row inmate Richard Lee Tabler, who along with East Newton High School graduate Timothy Payne, was responsible for the murders of four people connected to a Killeen, Texas, strip club. Payne was sentenced to life in prison:

In 2008, Richard Tabler, a death row inmate in Texas, called State Senator John Whitmire directly on his cellphone. Mr. Whitmire, a Houston Democrat, is chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee.

“He wanted to talk about conditions on death row,” Mr. Whitmire said. “In my mind, I thought I was talking to a concerned guard. I said, ‘Where are you?’ And he said: ‘I’m on death row. I’m an inmate. I’m on a cellphone I bought for $2,100.’ ”

After several more calls from the inmate, Mr. Whitmire told law enforcement officials about the contraband phone, which they confiscated. They found that it had been used by nine other death row inmates for a total of 2,800 minutes. Officials locked down the entire state system, conducted a search for other cellphones and found about 400, Mr. Whitmire said.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How in the wide world of sports do death row inmates get cellphones in such large numbers? It has to be due to guards being paid off to allow them to be smuggled in. Looks like the prison system needs to clean house on guards to get this problem under control.

Anonymous said...

Happens all the time. I know a woman who gets a call every 30 minutes from her husband in a federal prison, he manages EVERYTHING from the comfort of his cell. I told her to drop the phone in the lake. It's nuts.

believeitornot said...

Happens all the time!!