The Allan B. Polunsky unit (formerly Terrell Unit ) is a prison in West Livingston, unrelated Polk County, Texas, USA, located about 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Livingston along Farm to Market Road 350. The Texas Criminal Justice Department (TDCJ) operates the facility. This unit houses the death line of the State of Texas for men, and has a maximum capacity of 2,900. Livingston Municipal Airport is located on the other side of FM 350. The unit, along Big Thicket, is 60 miles (97 km) east of Huntsville.
Polunsky was named after Allan B. Polunsky, former chairman of the Texas Criminal Justice Council who is now chairman of the Public Safety Commission, Texas State Department's Public Security regulatory council.
Polunsky houses the "supermax" unit of Texas and is notorious for being the location of the death penalty of Texas for men (execution, though, done in Huntsville Unit in Huntsville).
Video Allan B. Polunsky Unit
Histori
The Polunsky Unit opened in November 1993. At the time of its opening, the public did not link the prison with the death penalty, as the inmate of the man convicted in the Ellis Unit near Huntsville. In November 1998 Martin Gurule, a death row in Ellis Unit, fled. He drowned in a nearby river and his body was found a week later.
After the incident occurred, the TDCJ considered removal of the death penalty for men, and the Polunsky Unit was a favorite choice for relocation. According to TDCJ, escaping from prison has accelerated the agency's decision to move a death row convict to a new location. The TDCJ official also stated that the density at Ellis is another factor in the death penalty. Six months after the escape attempt, TDCJ decided to move the death penalty. The Texas Coalition to Eliminate Death Penalty condemned the death penalty, saying that the conditions of the detainees were worse than those at a previous location. The Texas Criminal Justice Council approved the removal of the men's penalty on Friday, May 21, 1999.
Polunsky took death row inmate on Friday 18 June 1999, with 55 first prisoners classified as problematic. The death penalty transfer, which takes ten months, is the largest transfer of cursed inmates in history and carried out under tight security.
In February 2000, two death row inmates picked up a 57-year-old female caseworker, who forced negotiations involving the warden. One of the hostages, Ponchai Wilkerson (TDCJ # 999011), was scheduled to be executed on March 14, 2000, and, in fact, was later executed on that date. The other, Howard Guidry, does not have a scheduled execution date. Guidry remains on the death penalty.
On May 9, 2000, a 33-year-old convict, Juan Salvez Soria (TDCJ # 837), scheduled to be executed on July 26, 2000, withdrew the arm of William Paul Westbrook, a 78-year-old prison minister from Livingston, to his cell. The offender tied a sheet of paper around the priest's arm and tied the other end to the toilet; Soria began to cut Westbrook's arm with a razor blade. The perpetrator almost tore Westbrook's arm. Authorities used tear gas to stop the attack. Authorities treated Soria's former cell as a crime scene and moved Soria to a more limited area inside the prison. Soria is executed on schedule.
The Texas Board unanimously approved the grant of its former Terrell Unit, Allan B. Polunsky Unit , on July 20, 2001. The Council also chose to change the name of the Ramsey III Unit in Brazoria County, Texas to Terrell Unit. The former namesake, a Dallas insurance executive named Charles Terrell, asked for a name change because he did not want his name related to the death penalty for questioning about the death penalty administration. In addition he was reported ambivalent about the death penalty. Instead, the former Ramsey III Unit was renamed Unit Terrell.
In 2010, the TDCJ accused five people serving life sentences of trying to get out of the unit. Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire, said in 2010 that Polunsky "probably" was "the most difficult place to do in Texas." Perkinson added that while prisons are not in "bleak" locations and that the facility is not "heavily damaged", the "existential problem" of prisons is the fact that this is a series of state death penalty.
In May 2013, Mother Jones' magazine placed Polunsky as one of the top ten worst prisons in the US, based on testimony from former convict Anthony Charles Graves (TDCJ Death Row # 999127, released for reversing confidence on September 7, 2006 ) and research conducted by the magazine for a period of three years.
In 2014 the prison has 691 employees and 2,936 detainees. In that year there were 279 people in the Polunsky death row.
Maps Allan B. Polunsky Unit
Operation
The 584,000-square-foot facility (54,300 m 2 ) has twenty-three buildings, above 472 hectares (191 acres) of land. The surrounding area includes fields and forests. It has a capacity of about 3,900 prisoners.
David Casstevens of Fort Worth Star-Telegram describes Polunsky as "an elaborate complex of concrete gray putty buildings trimmed in blue at 470 hectares fenced." Miriam Rozen from Houston Press said the unit was "in the middle of the lush, green and hilly Texan East field that surrounds the lake house of Governor Bush, 100 miles north of Athens." Marc Bookman of Mother Jones said the prison "looks like one might imagine a line of death will be seen - a series of impressive concrete structures surrounded by excessive razor wire and four guard towers." Alex Hannaford of The Nation describes it as "a dreary complex, a premonition".
The Polunsky Unit is designed to accommodate more problematic and dangerous prisoners; officials designed the unit to be more secure than the older TDCJ units. Throughout its history the unit has housed administrative separators (offenders in solitary confinement due to ill-treatment or violence). Residential buildings of death row convicts apart from the rest of the complex. Polunsky has a kitchen, medical care clinic, psychology interview room, and classification office space. Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire, says that Polunsky, a white-backed steel concrete building, is "functionally and asymmetrically designed" and that one would mistakenly think of building for a community college "if not for a three inch window slit."
Line of death operations
In March 2013 about 290 male death penalty detainees were stationed in Polunsky. As of March 2013, eight were placed in Unit Jester IV, a psychiatric unit near Richmond, Texas. Photographs taken in death row were provided by the State of Texas in response to a request from the Freedom of Information Act filed by lawyer Yolanda Torres in 2009.
Prisoners sentenced to death are in Building 12, a two-story facility opened in 1993 to accommodate administrative segregation prisoners in isolation cells. The building has three rectangular sections, and the recreation area, in the form of a circle, is in the center of each section. Violators of the death penalty live in one person, 60-square-foot cells (5,6 m 2 ), with each cell having a concrete window and concrete slit. There is a "tempered air" system intended to keep the inside temperature at 85 degrees Fahrenheit or below. The death line building has a total of 504 cells. Prior to the relocation of the death penalty of men, the prison authorities detained death-row inmates "administrative separators" in these cells. The prisoners were relocated when the male death line changed the location.
The death penalty clerk does not accept programming and is not allowed to work. The death penalty prisoners receive food through a peanut slot, a gate at the cell door. Whenever the perpetrator is taken from his cell, as when the offender goes to bathe, the offender is searched. The offenders receive individual recreation in the enclosed area. Depending on the level of detainee, a death offender may be eligible to have a radio. The death penalty prisoners wear white jumpsuits, and the death row uniform has a black "DR" letter on the back.
Perkinson said that waiting times by principals before the execution made the prison a stress for prisoners, visitors, and employees. Jonathan Bruce Reed (TDCJ Death Row # 642, now TDJC # 1743674 for a lifetime prison sentence reduction on November 3, 2011), a mortal offender, says that the death sentence unit mentality is "we made you a kennel till your date." Larry Todd , a prison spokesman, said that "when a person walks in the line of death, there is a sense of change, it's just a different atmosphere."
During the trial of the US Courthouse in solitary confinement, Anthony Graves, a former prisoner in the death penalty who was released in 2010, said that conditions make detainees lose their sanity. In 2013 James Ridgeway and Jean Casella of Mother Jones stated that "Some have been known to commit suicide or overrule their pleas rather than continue living under such conditions."
The 2012 book by Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian discussed the Polunsky Unit. According to one section: "Whenever a cursed prisoner goes anywhere outside his cell, he must return to the door, down to his knee, and extend his hand back through a narrow slit to be handcuffed, and then he stands, turns, and waits for the door to open The whole process of dropping to the knee and extending the arm back is very difficult and painful for older convicts with arthritis. "
Jackson and Christian point out that the laws of the state of Texas, and most other states, do not specify "the specific conditions under which prisoners are cursed alive."
Polunsky in media
Polunsky is the setting of the book Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell.
The popular novel by John Grisham, The Confession, is arranged around Polunsky. The Confession [John Grisham] Paperback: 464 pages; Issuer: Arrow (May 1, 2011); English; ISBN: 0099545799; ISBN: 978-0099545798
Leading Prisoner
Prisoners sentenced to death
All the death row inmates on this list are and are under the death penalty imposed by the State of Texas.
Executed
- John David Battaglia, executed on February 1, 2018.
- Lawrence Russell Brewer (killer James Byrd, Jr.) - was executed on 21 September 2011.
- Peter Anthony Cantu (convicted for the murder of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth PeÃÆ' Â ± a); transferred from Ellis Unit - was executed on August 17, 2010.
- James Lee Clark, was executed on April 11, 2007 in the Huntsville Unit despite questions from IQ Clark that did not meet the mental retardation
- Jeffrey Dillingham - The murderer of Caren Koslow, executed 1 November 2000
- James Garrett Freeman - Carried out January 7, 2016
- Gustavo Julian Garcia Executed February 16, 2016
- Humberto Leal Garcia, transferred from Ellis Unit - was executed on July 7, 2011.
- Juan Martin Garcia - Carried out October 6, 2015
- Gary Graham a.k.a. Shaka Sankofa - executed June 22, 2000
- Jermaine Herron - was executed on May 17, 2006.
- JesÃÆ'ºs Ledesma Aguilar - was executed on May 24, 2006.
- JosÃÆ'Â © MedellÃÆ'n (convicted for murder Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth PeÃÆ' Â ± a) - Moved from Ellis Unit - executed on August 5, 2008.
- Donald Keith Newbury (member of Texas 7) was executed on 4 February 2015
- Derrick Sean O'Brien (the murderer of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth PeÃÆ' Â ± a); transferred from Ellis Unit - was executed on July 11, 2006. Michael James Perry - convicted of murder of Sandra Stotler, who allegedly murdered her son James Adam Stotler (Age 16) and Arnold Jeremy Richardson (Aged 18) - was executed July 1, 2010
- Robert Lynn Pruett. executed October 12, 2017, in the Huntsville unit.
- ÃÆ' ngel Maturino ResÃÆ' Â © ndiz - was executed on June 27, 2006.
- George Rivas (member of Texas 7) - was executed on February 29, 2012
- Michael Anthony Rodriguez (member of Texas 7) - was executed on August 14, 2008.
- Rosendo Rodriguez III (Suitcase Killer) - executed on March 27, 2018
- Tommy Lynn Sell - executed on April 3, 2014.
- Shannon Charles Thomas - transferred from Ellis Unit and executed on November 16, 2005.
- Edgar Tamayo, executed on January 22, 2014
- Pablo Lucio Vasquez - was executed on April 6, 2016
- Adam Kelly Ward - Running on March 22, 2016
- Coy Wesbrook - Running on March 9, 2016
- Melvin White - Carried out on 3 November 2005
- Ponchai Wilkerson - was executed on March 13, 2000.
- Cameron Todd Willingham - transferred from Ellis Unit - was executed on February 17, 2004.
- Steven Michael Woods, Jr. - was executed on September 13, 2011.
- Marvin Lee Wilson, executed on August 7, 2012 in the Huntsville Unit.
Pending execution
- Billie Wayne Coble - punished for the murder of the Vicha family.
- Edgardo Cubas, perpetrator of the 2002 East End murder
- Joseph C. Garcia (member of Texas 7)
- Gabriel Hall a.k.a. Paul Hall
- Randy Ethan Halprin (member of Texas 7)
- John William King (killer James Byrd, Jr.)
- Patrick Henry Murphy, Jr. - Member of Texas Seven
- Váctor SaldaÃÆ' Â ± o
- Hank Skinner, moved from Ellis Unit
- Walter Alexander Sorto, perpetrator of the 2002 East End murder
- Faryion Wardrip - Serial Killer. Killed five women between 1984 and 1986.
- Eric Lyle Williams - The murderer of Kaufman County where he killed Kaufman County, Texas attorney Mark Hasse, along with his wife Cynthia. Williams is a former Justice of Peace who was previously accused of stealing. Williams killed Mr. Hasse out of revenge for the guilty verdict he had received on the alleged robbery, carried by Mr. Hasse.
Waiting for execution but moving from Polunsky:
- Andre Thomas - Moved to Jester IV Unit due to mental health problems
Commuted
- Kenneth Foster
- Thomas Bartlett Whitaker - Poisoned to live in prison
Non-off line
- Matthew Dee Baker - a former pastor convicted of murdering his wife
- Venancio Medellin - a rapist accused of murder Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth PeÃÆ'Â ± a
- Steven Jay Russell - a recurring runaway and a con man.
- Boobie Miles - High School soccer star is featured in the Friday Night Lights (movie) movie series
See also
- Capital punishment in Texas
References
Further reading
- Hannaford, Alex. "Letter from Death Row: The Book Behind the Precepts" (Archive) (Archive). Texas Observer . Friday, January 9, 2015.
- Hannaford, Alex. "Letter from Death Row: Alone on the Inside" (Archive). Texas Observer . Monday March 16, 2015.
External links
- Polunsky Unit, Texas Criminal Law Department
- List of inmates at Polunsky Unit, The Texas Tribune
- Mann, Dave. "Solitary Men". Texas Observer . Wednesday, November 10, 2010.
- Desel, Jeremy. "Authorities: Police killers among inmates in an attempt to escape from prison". KHOU . January 30, 2010.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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