Free Republic

SAN QUENTIN — A condemned murderer who was one of just 16 inmates on California’s Death Row to have exhausted his appeals died of unknown causes, prison officials announced this week. San Quentin officials are investigating the death of Fernando Belmontes, 56, but say there was no obvious cause. More details about his death have not been released. Belmontes was one of 16 condemned inmates — out of California’s nearly 750 — who had exhausted his appeals. As such, he was considered a top priority for execution. Belmontes was sentenced to die at 20 years old, a year after he...

FULL TITLE: Convicted killer who was first US inmate to receive state-funded sex reassignment surgery is finally moved to a women's prison The first US inmate to receive state-funded sex reassignment surgery has been moved to a women's prison. Convicted killer Shiloh Heavenly Quine, 57, was taken to the Central California Women's Facility on Wednesday, after previously serving time behind bars at a men's prison. Quine, who has been living as a woman since 2009 and is serving a life sentence, underwent the sex reassignment surgery in December. California prison officials agreed to pay for her operation in 2015 under...

SACRAMENTO (CBS SF/AP) — Shiloh Heavenly Quine, a 57-year-old convicted killer serving a life sentence in California, has become the first U.S. inmate to receive state-funded sex-reassignment surgery. The prisoner’s attorneys told The Associated Press on Friday that California prison officials agreed in August 2015 to pay for Quine’s surgery. Quine was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery for ransom and has no possibility of parole.

(CN) – A formerly incarcerated woman claims Indiana prison officials delayed and blocked her request for an abortion, only transporting her to a clinic when she was too far along to terminate the pregnancy. The woman, identified only as Jane Doe in her civil rights complaint filed Friday in Indianapolis federal court, was jailed for six months at Indiana Women’s Prison beginning Jan. 20 of this year. She found out she was pregnant just days before her incarceration, but was unable to get an abortion before her prison term began. Doe claims she wanted an abortion due to her prior...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A condemned Ohio killer who survived a 2009 botched execution is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that a second attempt to put him to death would be unconstitutional. Lawyers for death row inmate Romell Broom argue that giving the state prisons agency a second chance would amount to cruel and unusual punishment and double jeopardy. A divided Ohio Supreme Court rejected Broom's arguments in March. Broom's attorneys appealed that ruling earlier this month to the U.S. Supreme Court and filed notice of that appeal on Monday with the state court. The state stopped Broom's execution...

California Gov. Jerry Brown denied parole for the youngest follower of murderous cult leader Charles Manson who is serving a life sentence for killing a wealthy grocer and his wife more than 40 years ago. Brown overturned the recommendation of a parole board on Friday that found Leslie Van Houten was no-longer the violent young woman who committed a gruesome murder and was now fit for release. She has completed college degrees and been a model inmate. The Democratic governor acknowledged her success in prison and her youth at the time of the murders. However, he wrote in his decision...

WILKES-BARRE — Luzerne County corrections officer Kristopher Moules and inmate Timothy Darnelle Gilliam Jr. smashed through a closed elevator door at the county prison and fell several floors down the elevator shaft to their deaths Monday night, county Manager C. David Pedri said Tuesday. Describing the situation as a “freak accident,” Pedri said at a news conference that “something happened” to cause the door to jump off its track and open. He said the county has retained a state expert to identify the problem, and he promised to publicly release the expert’s findings and implement any recommended corrective action.

Toronto Police Services and correctional officers must revamp their policies on interacting with transgender inmates — especially at the point of arrest — after a historic settlement with a man who was stripped of men's clothing, forced into women's underwear and put into a holding cell for women. The documents that confirm his gender identity were updated roughly 20 years ago when he transitioned from female to male. Kodak has facial hair, wears male clothing and has a deep male voice. But after a strip search, he was moved to the female holding cells. A day later, he was transferred...

SACRAMENTO (AP) — California prison officials must let transgender inmates have more female-oriented commissary items including nightgowns, robes, sandals, scarves and necklaces as part of a settlement that will make California the first state to pay for an inmate’s sex reassignment surgery, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Aside from providing the surgery for 56-year-old Shiloh Quine, the state agreed in August to provide some items to transgender inmates such as Quine who are housed in men’s prisons. The proposed policy doesn’t go far enough, ruled U.S. Magistrate Judge Nandor Vadas. He said transgender inmates housed in men’s prisons should have...

Mt. Olive - OLIVE, W.Va. (AP) - State officials say an inmate has stabbed another inmate to death at Mount Olive Correctional Complex. West Virginia State Police spokesman Lt. Michael Baylous tells The Charleston Gazette-Mail that troopers believe 40-year-old Steven Branscome stabbed 47-year-old Russell Hager several times in the head and neck using a metal shank on Saturday afternoon. Sgt. J.L. Milam responded to the incident around 2:15 p.m., where he found Hager in the prison's weight yard. Baylous says he didn't know the motive or charges.

Two convicted killers were charged with murder Tuesday in the August slaying of a notorious California inmate, just days after he was released into the general prison population. The Sacramento County district attorney’s office charged the pair with killing 71-year-old Hugo Pinell at a maximum security prison east of Sacramento.

Whole Foods will stop selling products made using a prison labor program after a protest at one of its stores in Texas. The company said the products should be out of its stores by April 2016, if not sooner. Whole Foods said it has sold tilapia, trout and goat cheese produced through a Colorado inmate program at some stores since at least 2011. Michael Silverman, a Whole Foods spokesman, said the company had sourced the products because the program was a way to "help people get back on their feet and eventually become contributing members of society."

California is first in the nation to agree to pay for a transgender inmate's sex reassignment operation, but the state's settlement of a recent court case sidesteps the question of whether such surgery is a constitutional right. The state concedes that Shiloh Quine, who entered the California prison system in 1980 as Rodney, suffers severe gender dysphoria that can be treated only by physically conforming her body to her psychological gender." The agreement to settle Quine's federal lawsuit seeking the surgery was announced late Friday, with a brief statement from the corrections department that "every medical doctor and mental health...

SACRAMENTO — Nearly 15 hours after a riot at a San Francisco Bay Area prison, guards found a missing inmate sawed nearly in two, with his abdominal organs and most chest organs removed, his body folded and stuffed into a garbage can in a shower stall a few doors from his cell.

The Scientist Who Wanted To Bring A Death Row Inmate Back From The Dead Dr. Robert E. Cornish is probably best known for his 1930s revivification experiments with dogs, in which he claimed to bring dogs back from clinical death. He wanted to try a similar procedure on humans — and when a death row inmate volunteered, Cornish petitioned the state of California to let him play re-animator. Cornish's dog experiments would make most dog lovers cringe. Cornish would suffocate the dogs until they were clinically dead, and then he would place the bodies on a teeter board, rocking the...

The man sitting in the back of the vehicle is wearing a light-colored shirt, a patterned tie and an air of authority. He's headed to a conference in Anaheim to give a speech and, as trees, hedges and apartment buildings flash by, he rattles off a list of accomplishments — his book, his expert witness testimony. "This has been a dream of mine," he says in the online video, referring to his speaking invitation. "You know how many people have said, 'You can't do it'?" There was every reason to doubt Rene "Boxer" Enriquez could. Enriquez, 52, is serving a...

Me and a few friends will be spending 3 weeks in Europe Early next summer.... Has anyone here been over there? What are a few things "We shouldn't miss"?

The extortion case against Thomas DiFiore, a reputed boss in the Bonanno crime family, encompassed thousands of pages of evidence, including surveillance photographs, cellphone and property records, and hundreds of hours of audio recordings. But even as Mr. DiFiore sat in a jail cell, sending nearly daily emails to his lawyers on his case and his deteriorating health, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn sought to add another layer of evidence: those very emails. The prosecutors informed Mr. DiFiore last month that they would be reading the emails sent to his lawyers from jail, potentially using his own words against him. Jailhouse...

Police: Inmate hid in laundry basket to escape ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Authorities say a New Mexico inmate has been captured after he escaped from jail by hiding in a laundry basket. Officials say 28-year-old Kevin Matthew Perkins packed himself in the basket on Monday to get away from the Metropolitan Detention Center. Authorities say the laundry basket was headed to another facility. When an officer opened a truck door, officials say Perkins jumped out of the basket and ran. Albuquerque police later received a breaking and entering call at an assisted living complex. That's where they found broken glass from...

WV State Regional Jail Authority Director, Joe DeLong, confirms that four correctional officers and four other inmates are now charged after they plotted to kill another inmate. DeLong, who is currently Boston attending the marathon, says the information surrounding the investigation came out Friday when the indictment was unsealed in Cabell County, WV. DeLong adds the correctional officers involved in the incident which occurred in October of 2013 are no longer with the West Virginia Regional Jail Authority. Steven D. Adkins of Milton, WV is one of the correctional officers charged. He has been charged with accessory before the fact...