Bad Boy From Rosebud by Gary M. Lavergne Page B

3536.

 

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35 Furman v Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, June 29, 1972, from the Villanova Center for Information and Policy, www.law.vill.edu , pgs. 1, 23, 38, 93.
36 Ibid., pg. 41; Waco Tribune-Herald, April 27, 1992.

 

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4
Freed to Kill Again
"You know, when you're on parole and you been on death row, it's hard to find a date." Kenneth Allen McDuff
I
Furman v Georgia was not the only significant development affecting the prison life of Kenneth McDuff in 1972. That year, a disgruntled Texas prison inmate named David Ruiz, who was serving a twenty-five-year sentence for armed robbery, initiated a handwritten lawsuit alleging a variety of violations of his civil rights in the prison system. His complaint alleged overcrowding, poor medical care, and the use of Building Tenders as guards of other inmates. The Building Tenders kept control of their area, and in turn, received preferred treatment by guards and prison officials. Ruiz alleged that Building Tenders beat other prisoners to keep them in line. 1 The Ruiz case went before United States District Judge William Wayne Justice of Tyler. Thus began the longest and most expensive trial in the history of Texas.
Years later, during the early to mid 1980s, Judge Justice, in effect, seized the prison system from the people of Texas. His ruling concluded that the system violated inmate rights through crowding, poor medical care, using inmates as guards, brutality by professional guards, and unconstitutional grievance and discipline procedures. He ordered a complete overhaul of the prison system and set up federal monitors and "masters" to assure compliance. The Ruiz controversy lasted over twenty years; Judge Justice's reign over Texas prisons lasted over nine. 2
Before the prison construction boom that resulted from the Ruiz lawsuit, the immediate problem of overcrowding had to be addressed. The

 

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state scrambled to comply with Justice's order, which did not even allow for full occupancy of a facility. In 1987, Justice ruled that occupancy above ninety-five percent capacity, or about 48,400 inmates, was a violation of prisoners' rights. As a result, county jails became filled with backlogged state prisoners awaiting transfer to prisons that had no space. In some areas, county jails became so crowded that "tent cities" of prisoners were seriously discussed. In frustration, Bob Ozer, an assistant attorney general, lamented, "Federal court orders control. [If] we go over the cap [we] risk $800,000-a-day in fines." 3
The enormous cost of satisfying Judge Justice's order caused even the Texas State Legislature to halt its traditional tough-guy attitudes toward crime and criminals. During the 1991 legislative session, fewer than sixty bills were filed creating new crimes and felonies, and of those, less than a dozen passed. Chairman of the House Corrections Committee Allen Hightower suggested that, "Maybe we finally realize that if we only have 50,000 prison beds, that we need to keep only the worst 50,000 criminals there and not keep trying to lock everybody up." 4
During a time of reduced spending and a war against big government, Texas prisons overflowed and resistance to raising taxes or passing bonds continued. As the backlog of felons clogged county jails and the populace reacted in horror to the notion of criminal "tent cities" surrounded by chain-linked fences near their neighborhoods, public officials had only one tool left to ease overcrowdingparole.
Parole seemed like the answer. Prisoners who had served some time could be released quietly into a society mostly unaware of the parolee's past. Parolees had no identifying scarlet letters or tattoos, and parole hearings seldom, if ever, generated public interest. Very few Texans knew anyone on the parole board, and thus, there was little oversight or public accountability. Without much fuss and with near anonymity, a few board members could release prisoners and relieve the governor and legislators of the burden