DOC Head Jones Calls For Release Of Findings Into Mentally Ill Inmate’s Death | WFSU
In 2012, Darren Rainey died, after he was allegedly locked in a scalding, hot shower at Dade Correctional Institution in South Florida …
… Now, newly appointed Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Julies Jones is asking Miami Dade County Medical Examiner’s office to expedite the release of its findings into the death of Rainey, saying it’s “time for the true facts resulting from the investigation to be known.”
via DOC Head Jones Calls For Release Of Findings Into Mentally Ill Inmate’s Death | WFSU.
Like a lot of other people, I have a copy of the press release that Florida State University based its story on. I’m not publishing it. The release doesn’t appear on the Department of Correction’s website, and its content is troubling. It’s puzzling, but not surprising, that scandal-ridden FSU was comfortable running with a story about it, seeing as newspapers aren’t yet comfortable. As time goes by, much more will come to light about the darkly disturbing relationship between Florida’s higher education and too many state and federal government agencies to count. I can shed a bit of light, today.
As it happens, one of the the biggest bones I’ve picked to date about Florida’s higher education antics is with Florida International University. I’ve bemoaned FIU’s Kenneth Furton’s receipt of multiple federal grants to study “scent evidence,” and his “expert witness” testimony on behalf of DNA-discredited Texas dog handler Keith Pikett, and on behalf of Casey Anthony. I believe that Furton’s being named to Provost has much to do with the FBI desperately wanting to keep their use of many DNA-discredited dog handlers – including Pikett – under wraps, because the Florida Department of Law Enforcement shared the same goal as the FBI, due to DNA-discredited dog handler John Preston perjuring himself likely a hundred or more times in Florida cases, and the FDLE wanting the rest of the frame-ups, including Gary Bennett’s, to remain buried.
Another bone I’ve picked with Florida higher education concerns the college in the county where Gary Bennett was framed – Brevard. Eastern Florida State College employs (or employed) those who were deeply involved in frame-ups, including Dr. Jim Richey (who served on the 5th District Court of Appeals Nominating Commissions, no less), former Florida Today editorial page editor John Glisch, former Brevard sheriff Jack Parker, former Florida legislator and son-of-an-FBI agent Mike Haridopolos, etc.
I’m not the only blogger that’s sunk my teeth into the bogus dog handler bone … so has the far more talented author of Grits for Breakfast. It’s my hope that he picks up on their being several – not two – DNA-discredited dog handlers that the FBI and other federal agencies were directly involved with nationwide, likely giving many states’ top law enforcement agencies permission to pretend that this forensics scandal is solved. Like the FBI’s debunked Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis and debunked hair and fiber analysis, it clearly isn’t.
The FBI never solves its forensics scandals, it instead enlists the aid of the Washington Post and others to spin the scandals silly. The biggest, baddest “for instance” is the FBI’s debunking of their hair and fiber analysis, in use for over 30 years, and taught to techs nationwide. It clouds tens of thousands of convictions, but WaPo’s P-U-litzer prize winner Spencer Hsu is now pretending only hair was discredited and that only a couple thousand cases were involved. Here’s some of what Hsu knew in 2012:
In the discipline of hair and fiber analysis, only the work of FBI Special Agent Michael P. Malone was questioned. Even though Justice Department and FBI officials knew that the discipline had weaknesses and that the lab lacked protocols — and learned that examiners’ “matches” were often wrong — they kept their reviews limited to Malone.
But back to the deadly business of the actual press release about Darren Rainey that only FSU decided to run with: there are hundreds of Florida families waiting for answers about in-custody deaths, and thousands more Florida families with every reason to fear that someone they love could be the next person to die an unnatural death behind bars … as nightmarish as Darren Rainey’s scalding homicide was, it was not the worst in-custody death I have heard of: 17-year-old Omar Paisley was ignored for three days while he died from a ruptured appendix in Miami-Dade Regional Detention Center, in 2004.
A grand jury made many recommendations. Then everyone moved on. And nothing changed.
That can’t happen again.
This time, each of Florida’s suspicious in-custody deaths have to get the attention they deserve, and not from Florida’s corrupt higher education system.
When FSU’s Sandy D’Alemberte served as American Bar Association President, he ignored his U.S. Supreme Court-assigned obligation to hold public attorneys accountable for deliberate trial misconduct, allowing rogue prosecutor John Dean Moxley and rogue public defender Norm Wolfinger – both of whom were involved in Gary Bennett’s frame-up – to move up instead of being thrown out of the profession. Moxley became a judge; Wolfinger became the 18th Judicial Circuit State Attorney.
Florida can afford investigations and prosecutions of homicidal prison personnel, corrupt public attorneys, and even educators that assure only ensure themselves Bright Futures.
How? For starters, our legislature can close the legislated loophole that allows some of Florida’s highest paid public servants to collect one or more ridiculously generous, too-easily acquired state pension(s) at the same time they are drawing a salary (which will simultaneously reduce the job hopping from agency to agency that has served to amplify cronyism and corruption). Julie Jones received a $621,980 lump sum payout from this pension plan, and is now collecting a monthly pension of close to $10,000 … while being paid a $160,000 per year salary.
John Dean Moxley was a double dipper, too: the legislated loophole link above states that he received a monthly retirement payment of $8,359.79 while collecting a salary of $143,684.34, which likely went up after the database was published. Moxley began double dipping in 2000, and actually retired in January. Wolfinger was a double dipper, too, and so was 9th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Lawson Lamar, who accepted the transfer of Gary Bennett’s prosecution, under an incurable taint – his circuit had used John Preston, with FBI participation, to convict Linroy Bottoson, who was wrongly executed in 2002.
The costs of Sandy D’Alemberte not going after Moxley and Wolfinger as American Bar Association president are ever-increasing, not only in dollars, but in blood and tears. Still-framed Gary Bennett remains in mortal danger in his 31st year of wrongful incarceration, and others remain framed. Juan Ramos – although he was the first Brevard Preston perjury victim to be exonerated – is still being denied compensation: Floridians are forced to fund the fight against his being compensated like Brevard’s Caucasian exonernees – Wilton Dedge and William Dillon – were. Wilton’s compensation, given what his parents spent trying to free him, is a twisted joke, and William would have to live two lifetimes – on quadruple the amount of compensation he received – to recover from the prison rapes he lived through. Moxley participated in all four cases.
If Moxley collected $8,359 a month for 14 years, he raked in @ $1.4 million in pension benefits alone while working harder to bury his frame-ups than to ethically adjudicate the matters that were before him, resulting in a murder/suicide and multiple miscarriages of justice.
I think there is a “carrot and stick” solution for ending public corruption rapidly, as attorneys are its architects, construction crews and maintenance staff, including attorneys in Florida’s legislature that stubbornly keep our welfare-for-the-wealthy pension system in place, a governor who files lawsuit after lawsuit – on our dimes – to establish assorted legal basis NOT to serve us, an attorney general who campaigned on the false promise to investigate frame-ups involving John Preston, and attorneys that are on staff at media outlets that mislead us by underplaying forensics foul-ups that keeps innocents serving rapists, armed robbers and killers’ time, while overplaying being “tough on crime” to keep prison profiteers rolling in taxpayers cash from an escalating influx of people that don’t belong in prison, especially the mentally ill … like Darren Rainey.
The Carrot: The Department of Justice can offer amnesty to attorneys that admit to all of their misconduct within a short time period, just as Vietnam draft-dodgers were offered amnesty.
The Stick: We can stand together and force the IRS Oversight Board to retroactively revoke Bar associations’ exemptions for failing to address misconduct, just as California recently revoked Blue Shield’s tax exemption.
It seems to me that we need to apply the stick first if we want the offer of amnesty to be taken seriously. Please sign my petition, and share this post. Thank you.
Wobbly Warrior's Blog 
Reblogged this on Helpmybrotherharoldhempstead's Blog and commented:
This is getting old our citizens want justice we want abusive guards arrested and we want the Florida prison system to change so that we don’t have to worry about our inmates being beat, set up, raped, starved or killed! Since Julie Jones has all this money why doesn’t she use some of it to fix these problems.These inmates that have died at the hands of prison guards or by being set up by prison guards deserve justice. Their families deserve closure.Florida demands answers!
LikeLike