Oscar Giles – Served nearly four decades for non-violent offenses before dying at Tomoka Correctional Institution. He was 68 years old, 6’4″ and 186 pounds, or less … likely much less
Update 5/1/17: Once again, I noticed “hits” on Oscar Giles on my blog, and checked the Florida Department of Corrections website to see if he is okay. He’s not. Oscar died on February 2nd, a little over a month past his 68th birthday. The “Investigation Status” is “open,” and there’s already a huge red flag flying over it: Oscar’s weight is now showing as 186 on his inmate information page, and it’s not bloody likely that he gained 34 pounds from October 30th to February 2nd, not on what Florida feeds inmates. Tomoka Correctional Institution has a high rate of closing death investigations, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. It could just signal corruption within local law enforcement, the local medical examiner’s office and/or the state attorney’s office. I checked Prentice Hobbs’ Tomoka CI 2014 “natural” death, and found he died days before his 53rd birthday … another red flag. A third red flag is the still-pending 2014 investigation of Edwin Holt’s death … per my previous posting regarding the Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office Close-Out Memo on the scalding homicide of Darren Rainey, the longer the investigation of a inmate’s death stays open, the more room there is for error. And fiction. May we Floridians finally mange to start electing public servants that serve the public (instead of other public servants) so that all Florida’s dead inmates can rest in peace.
Prentice Hobbs died a “natural” death days before his 53rd birthday at Tomoka CI in 2014
Edwin Holt’s 2014 death at Tomoka CI is still under investigation. He was 57.
Update 11/4/16: I became concerned about Oscar due to an inordinate number of “hits” on his name on my blog. I checked the Florida Department of Corrections website, fearing he had died. The corrections site says that he is still alive (at least as of October 30th), but now weighs just 152 pounds. Please pray for Oscar, and please sign the petition below to reinstate parole in Florida. We’re better than this. We have to be. Thank you.
Please Note: The original post – below – was initially titled, “Oscar Giles: 37 years (and counting) for non-violent offenses.”
Oscar Giles is 6’4″ and weights just 172 pounds … it seems the 67-year-old is serving not just life, but hard life here in Florida.
Floridians’ hard-earned tax dollars are ending up in the hands of predatory prison privatizers and vendors who successfully lobbied for ridiculous sentence lengths and an end to parole. These leeches celebrate recidivism as openly as Floridians would celebrate rehabilitation, if they would remember that most failures to rehabilitate result in new crimes, often in their own communities. And that the new crimes by re-offenders are likely to be more serious, after long-term association with hardened felons.
This isn’t thinking outside the box; it’s just thinking, period. In reality, there is no box. You either think, or you don’t.
Please do think, and sign this petition to reinstate parole in Florida. Thank you.
https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/reinstate-florida-s-parole-system.html
Oscar Giles serving life for burglary. Just one visitor in 37 years. Wants to see his mother before she dies.
Giles broke into a liquor store at 3:30 a.m. in Lakeland, Florida when no one was present. He says that when officers arrived on the scene, he ran and was caught shortly thereafter.
Officers found a gun on the ground about three blocks away from the store and attributed the gun to him; he says his fingerprints were not found on it.
Giles said he committed the burglary because he was “young and stupid”. Since he was incarcerated 37 years ago, Giles says he has had only one visitor.
He hopes to be released from prison so that he can spend time with his 90-year-old mother before she dies. She lives in Alabama and is not physically able to visit him.
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