Deception

PART 1

At some point, society really needs to have a sitdown with how far too often prison staff and the courts seem, at times, to conspire to rob people of justice by the toying of words and phrases.

I have a personal belief that some of the greatest forms of inhumanity in the United States are well hidden in two distinct places: prisons and in the courts. I intend to open some doors on this accusation by talking “Prison 101” about a case involving prison deception.

As I share this with you, let me lay down three tactics that prisons and courts often use to overcome inmate complaints. Far too often, inmates make legitimate complaints of abuse and torture, but courts most times defer to the prisons, as if the inmate is lying. Courts are too often willing to believe a staff member, simply on the idea that “staff cannot lie” and that “inmates cannot be trusted”, even when the facts are plain.

Those three tactics that prisons use are:

1. Deny the accusation
2. State policy
3. Discredit the accuser

I have found that most times, when staff use these tactics, the court will most times give them the argument, even if all the facts show the opposite. So let me introduce you to a case law, Aguilar v. Peters.

This case involves the prison I am currently in, USP Tucson, and names staff members that I am quite aware of. Now, because their names ARE listed, they are free game to my comment, and I have no reason to protect these officers, knowing what I know about them.

We need not go through all the details, because I am not writing for the courts; I am writing to the average person, because most people know nothing about law. In truth, most inmates knew nothing about it while in court, and were given a court appointed defender who did the bare minimum for them. These inmates had to learn a term, “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel” when they entered the prisons, when they found out that their public defender made numerous mistakes, which cost them to lose their trial. But that is another story.

This particular case shows how staff often will use deception and count on the courts to simply believe them, simply because they are federal staff members. Aguilar, an inmate here at USP Tucson, was stuck in the SHU (Special Housing Unit) for a period of time, and was having mental issues. Aguilar (who is transgender) asked for help from the Psychology Department, but was not getting any help.

So, Aguilar attempted to sue on “policies of mistreatment” and many other conditions that are very common (and illegal) in the SHU here at USP Tucson. Aguilar complained of “near constant isolation in small cells with little to no out of cell time” and that the guards employed in different ways to cheat inmates from outdoor rec.

Why is this important? Because when you are in a “box” it is critical and humane that prisons allow inmates out to walk around, get outside the cell and get fresh air. I was in the SHU for 40 days, and I know how the staff are back there; don’t let ME get started about those officers back there. It is a horrible place to be, because let me be clear, staff will NOT take care of you. Some of the most horrendous acts in prison happen in the SHU, often by the hands of these officers. Aguilar was experiencing this, and wanted to make a difference.

These conditions had a very negative effect on her (remember, Aguilar is transgender) mental health, and she tried to file an Administrative Remedy, or a grievance, on the issue. She wanted to sue USP Tucson for their treatment of her.

The problem is that to do that, federal inmates MUST file an Administrative Remedy, called a BP. In most cases, a court will throw a case out if a federal inmate has not completed the procedure, which has many holes in it. I have written for years that the BOP staff, especially USP Tucson, have obstructed the procedure by losing the BPs, throwing it away and refusing to give them out. Hundreds of complaints have clearly demonstrated that.

But, to prevail in court, you MUST fill one out. But these remedies are time-based; you have a certain period of time to fill them out, and staff WILL fight you every step of the way. This is what happened to Aguilar. After attempting to file the Administrative Remedy, and failing at every step, she was eventually sent to another prison, but continued her lawsuit.

When it made it to court, the court dismissed it initially because she was time barred; she took too long to do the Administrative Remedy. But this was not Aguilar’s fault; she stated numerous times that staff refused to give her a BP, and it caused her to not be able to file in time.

One of the issues Aguilar mentioned was that she attempted suicide by hanging. Her cellmate screamed for help, and the inmates on the range all began making noise, to get the officers to come to the cell. Staff responded with no medical help, and instead, punished Aguilar and her cellie by opening the food slot and spraying them with mace.

I cannot tell you how common this is in the SHU, but staff will never admit to that.

If I knew the names of those officers, I would gladly share them to hold them accountable, but I don’t have them. I DO, however, have names of the officers that refused Aguilar a BP, because in the case law, they are mentioned. These include, as mentioned in the case law, Case Manager Kendryna and Case Manager Mack… amongst others.

What I hope to share in this essay is how staff maliciously refuse inmates the access to the Administrative Remedy, but when it gets to court, they lie and state policy, hoping that it will be enough to discredit the inmate, and have the court toss out the argument for the inmate. Sadly, this works MOST of the time, but in this particular case, as I will share shortly, the inmate was able to prevail.

But it gives us an important lesson on the tactics of federal staff, in how they attempt to deceive the courts, and how too often, the courts buy into it. We’ll pick up with Part Two next…

PART 2

In the previous entry, I mentioned how, in a study of case law, staff have tactics they use to prevent inmates from prevailing when they file an Administrative Remedy, which in federal prisons, is called a BP.

I mentioned three tactics:

1. Denying the accusation
2. Stating policy
3. Discrediting the accuser.

This formula has been so successful that you can read hundreds of case laws where the verbiage is exactly the same in how the courts defeat an inmate’s argument on appeals, such as the Administrative Remedy.

To recap, the inmate here, Aguilar (who is transgender) is filing against USP Tucson for the treatment she received while in the SHU. There are hundreds and hundreds of cases where staff mistreat inmates; I have written many on torture, rape and even death of inmates while they were in the SHU. But many of these incidents never make it to court. I’d like to share some reasons as to why.

When it comes to filing an Administrative Remedy, or a grievance, the courts are extremely strict on what an inmate can do. This comes from the PLRA, or Prison Litigation Reform Act, which has, in many ways, crippled inmates’ abilities to reasonably get to court. Granted, the PLRA was designed to prevent frivolous lawsuits. I will concede that an inmate suing because his hamburger was not hot is hardly a legitimate case.

But the problem with the PLRA is that it created gaping holes for federal staff to take advantage of. And, if an inmate fails in one point, he loses his chance to get to court. The main way staff does this is by simply denying inmates the BP form. This is extremely common in prisons, yet staff will never tell you this.

Yet, to cover themselves, they quote policy, such as “PLRA requires prisoners to exhaust administrative remedies that are available to the prisoners before filing any suit regarding conditions of confinement…”

You can search that very line and find it used many, many times. Yet in their statement, they inadvertently give staff a loophole… “available to the prisoners…” It is here that we ASSUME that staff are actually giving inmates the BPs, when this is hardly true.

So, we go to Aguilar v. Peters, where she attempts to file a BP. From the case law, it states: “Aguilar also alleged in her complaint that she requested Administrative Remedy forms BP-8 and BP-9 from numerous BOP guards. But these guards informed Aguilar it was a ‘Unit Team issue’. But when she requested the forms from Unit Team staff – including Counselor Flores and Case Manager Kendryna – they told Aguilar they were not part of Aguilar’s Unit Team. And when Aguilar then repeatedly requested the forms from her Unit Team, including Case Manager Mack, Mack provided only one BP-8 form for an unrelated issue regarding her medication. Mack routinely failed to provide Administrative Remedy forms, stating she would bring the forms, “the next time she did her rounds,” but never brought them.

There’s a lot of meat on the bone here, but to be technical, let’s reference this: Aguilar v. Peters, Nov. 22, 2024 (9th Circuit), No. CV-23-00268-TUC (SHR) 2024 U.0. Dist. Lexis 212750, 2024 WL 4070490, at *13(D. Ariz, Nov. 22, 2024)…

Now, I did that for a reason: the average person will NEVER look for this case, which is also why most people never get to read about the abuses that happen in prisons. As I mentioned earlier, some of the most inhumane acts against people are hidden in the courts and prisons, because very few people outside of prisoners or lawyers can even find this kind of information. This is why I wanted to try to share it in normal terms.

I mentioned some of the staff members; a couple you’re gonna wanna remember. But let’s go back to the section from the case law. Aguilar was trying to file a BP, and as she describes, staff was making up excuses so they would not give it to her. I say again, this happens ALL THE TIME. Every prison has this happen hundreds of times, because staff often refuse to give us a BP to file against them. It kinda makes sense: why would my adversary give me a bullet to shoot them with?

Courts blindly believe that federal staff are too honorable to do that, that because they want to be transparent, they would gladly give inmates an Administration Remedy form… I don’t want to insult the courts, but truly, they are greatly deceived if they really believe that.

So Aguilar first tries to ask guards, they defer to the “Unit Team”. In federal prisons, the Unit Team consists of a Unit Manager, a Case Manager and a Counselor, ranked in that order. The staff told Aguilar that they could only get a BP from her Unit Team, not any other. This is absolutely incorrect. Any staff member should, at request, hand an inmate who needs a BP that form.

So, Aguilar tries to ask her own Unit Team, and they deny her by making up excuses. One of these staff members, Case Manager Ms. Mack, told Aguilar that she would give her one on her next round…

Okay, let’s touch on this for a second. Staff members are required to make weekly rounds of their inmates in the SHU. They MUST go back there and see if those inmates need anything. I have already made it very clear how dangerous the SHU is; one of the most common requests by inmates in the SHU is an ADMINISTRATIVE REMEDY FORM.

Knowing this, every staff member that goes to the SHU has to know that if nothing else, they need to take copies of Administrative forms, because there is a great chance that somebody is going to request one. To NOT have any forms is to imply that either the Case manager in this case is incompetent, or decided that she was not going to give any inmate any Administrative Remedy Form.

Which begs the question, why would you do that? Yet, this is what Aguilar was going through, as she continually was denied these forms by staff. We’ll continue with more on the third part, and share the tactics staff used when this went before the courts.

PART 3

So, Aguilar has attempted to get BPs from staff, but they keep denying her the forms. Let’s add another part of the case law:

“Aguilar attached to her complaint a declaration from her cellmate Robert Velez, in which said he observed Aguilar request BP-8 and BP-9 forms multiple times from Unit Team staff, including Mack and Kendrya, but Aguilar never received the forms. Velez also averred that Counselor Wright made rounds in the SHU about once a month, but BP-8 forms had to be submitted within 20 days of the incident, giving rise to the complaint”.

Aguilar attempted to go to court on these issues, but was initially countered by staff, led by USP Tucson’s legal assistant, Lorri Mitchell, who used one of the tactics: stating policy. She said:

Prisoners “can obtain administrative remedy forms from any Unit Team member, including Unit Managers, Case Managers, Correctional Counselors and Unit Secretaries”.

The implication here is that the legal assistant is saying that Aguilar clearly didn’t do what she said. She couldn’t have requested the BP forms, for if she did, she CERTAINLY would have gotten one. So, it’s clear that Aguilar DIDN’T request any forms at all…. Aguilar is lying (as the assumption).

This goes further in how staff responds: Counselor Wright declared, according to the case law, “If requested, [he] would have not denied the Plaintiff an Administrative Remedy form” and “never denied any inmate, including Plaintiff, an Administrative Remedy Form”. The last statement is so outlandishly absolute (“never” and “any”) that surely it raises doubt of sincerity.

Case Manager Mack declares she: “would not deny access to Administrative Remedy Forms” and “does not routinely carry forms with her…”

I made mention earlier that staff going to the SHU clearly must know that it is a dangerous and violent place. Requests for BPs are extremely common – why would you NOT bring them, if you KNOW people are going to ask for them?

Mack also said in the case law that she “would not deliberately frustrate the Plaintiff, and her access to the Administrative Remedy program by continually responding to her request for Administrative Remedy Forms by stating [that] ‘I don’t have one with me right now. I’ll bring you one next time’ and never doing so”.

This was one declaration by Case Manager Mack… I’d like to share a reference from another case law, Rene v. Gutierrez, from October 17, 2023, where this same person told an inmate “file it in court” and that he could not have the Administrative Remedy forms he requested. As stated:

“Petitioner states that his Counselor, Ms. Mack is the only one that can issue him the necessary appeal forms for the incidents in question, and that when he asked her for the forms, she advised him to ‘file it in court’ and that he could not have them…”

This is the same person. But in this I hope you are noticing the tactics that staff were using: to quote policy, as if doing so means they are right, and to deny the allegation. In doing these two, they hope to discredit the accuser, and bank on the idea that just because a person is an inmate, they are subject to lying. If they can discredit the accuser, the court might (as they often do, sadly) side with the prison staff, even when all the evidence sways to the side of the inmate.

Oftentimes, courts deny petitioners because they don’t provide enough facts, or they simply believe the prison staff. In a case law, Davenport v. Unknown Birkholz (Dec 2023, 9th Cir), it is said, “Likewise, Petitioner fails to provide any facts to indicate who denied him the necessary forms. In contrast, Respondent (prison staff) has provided a declaration explaining the administration review process and adequate access to such by inmates at BOP facilities such as the one where Petitioner has been housed”.

In other words, they simply stated policy, and the court bought it, hook, line and sinker. And this might have worked for USP Tucson, except they made a mistake. USP Tucson tried to introduce new evidence, which was their downfall:

“In the instant case, Defendant was aware of Aguilar’s allegations regarding the named and identified BOP staff who had failed to provide her with the administration remedy forms. Defendant failed to respond to these allegations in its motion for summary judgment. Instead, Defendant (prison staff) presented this new evidence after Aguilar’s response pointed out that Defendant had failed to respond to, or rebut, those allegations. Therefore, the Court refused to consider the declarations submitted in Defendant’s Reply.

The “new” evidence they tried to submit was a declaration from Mack, swearing that she “would not deny access to Administrative Remedy forms” and that she “did not recall” an occasion when she denied a form to Aguilar. Counselor Wright also sent a declaration claiming he “never denied any inmate, including Aguilar, an Administrative Form”.

USP Tucson was counting on simply stating policy and denying the accusation, and with their declaration (which is untrue, by the way), hoped to discredit the inmate, because they are claiming that they have integrity by always going by the rules. And if they are ALWAYS going by the rules, then they can’t be wrong. This is what they are counting on, and unless an inmate is extremely good at law (and most aren’t), or lucky, staff usually prevails, not because they are right, but because the strategies are almost impossible to beat.

In this case Aguilar won, and she was able to proceed with her lawsuit about prison abuse. But far too often, inmates lose because Courts are looking too much at the “letter of the law”, instead of the “spirit of the law”. But, there are ways to counter these accusations, namely being very specific in detail. Times, names, dates and places are paramount when documenting incidents. Following through, even when staff become retaliatory, is essential, and if a person can do these things, they can overcome prison’s tactics of deception.

There ARE other strategies, but I cannot reveal them here, part of the counter is to keep your enemy guessing, and not to telegraph your moves. Prisons retaliate as soon as they know you are a threat, so move fast in your work.

We need more stories like this, to help the average person understand what is really going on in prisons. As I said, because much of this is buried in legal cases and behind prison walls, most have no idea what federal and state prisons are doing to inmates, because we rarely prevail in court. For every case of abuse that inmates win, there are HUNDREDS of equal value that are ignored because the courts often look for flaws in an inmate’s argument, and give the benefit of doubt to prison officials, even when the evidence is almost absolute.

Hopefully, this essay opens some doors on what goes on in prisons. I have over 700 essays out there, look for them… until next time.