NEWS RELEASE: The SHU Syndrome
News Release September 2003 UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE
CONTACT:
Durk Krieger epoch3@nocharge.com
Please forward this news release as appropriate
THE SHU SYNDROME
In February of 2004 the media and the public will get a close look at an oft-occurring but carefully concealed mental illness caused by Washington State's Department of Corrections "intensive management units" (IMUs):
The Special Housing Unit (SHU) Syndrome.
The complete story of this extremely dangerous state-induced mental illness will be presented at the 3-STRIKES TRIAL OF JAMES CURTIS.
THIS TRIAL HAS BEEN DELAYED FOR NEARLY FIVE YEARS!
This is why:
Like the great majority of "3-strikes" defendants, James Curtis was assigned a public defender because he had no resources to hire an attorney. While there are certainly some public defenders who do not fit the common notion of the "public pretender," they are rare. The very low pay earned by public defenders guarantees that most indigent defendants will get a "going through the motions" defense -- while the state is free to spend as much taxpayer money as it sees fit for very costly things such as extensive legal research, investigators, expert witnesses, etc. The typical public defender, even when prodded to do such things, seldom follows through. The typical defendant seldom realizes the critical importance of such prodding.
This defendant came to realize it though, and thus he fired several public defenders in succesion. Each replacement of a defender caused yet another long postponement.
Finally a donor came forward who, realizing the desperate situation of the defendant, and the innate gross injustice of the 3-strikes law (which is essentially a "full-employment act" for over-paid under-worked union guards, Department of Corrections bureaucrats and demagogueing politicians), donated $20,000 to hire the well-known and highly effective attorney, Mr. Bernie Potter, to take the case.
There was then another delay of nearly a year because of a medical condition with a very long recuperation period which has disabled Mr. Potter -- until the February 2004 court term.
Because of James' great good fortune of gaining the services of Mr. Potter, if the case goes forward with this very capable and conscientious defense against the state (instead of the typical underpaid public defender, himself an employee of the state), there is a good chance that the state will lose. This would SET A LEGAL PRECEDENT which would BRING UNDER LEGAL AND PUBLIC SCRUTINY THE ENTIRE PRIMITIVE AND COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE SOLITARY-CONFINEMENT-BASED PRISON SYSTEM -- not only in Washington state, but in all the other states and in the Federal prison system.
Although the state has offered James a plea bargain which would add only a negligible amount of time to his sentence he, being innocent, has refused to plead guilty for any reason.
"Conscience is a severe task-master, and I accede to its demands." --Erwin Knoll
MORE ABOUT THE CASE
Mr. Curtis is being charged under the Persistent Offenders Statute (three strikes and you're out law) for allegedly assaulting a correctional officer (C/O) while being extracted from his isolation cell by six armor-clad C/Os.
DIMINISHED CAPACITY DEFENSE
Mr. Curtis' attorney is presenting a diminished capacity defense, meaning that Mr. Curtis' mental condition at the time of the alleged incident was so diminished that he was unable to form the intent to commit the crime of second degree assault. Evidence supporting Mr. Curtis' defense will include various dramatic testimonies about the cruel and inhumane way he and other prisoners were treated by correctional staff during the first 16 months of his 30 month stint in isolation, about how he was soaked with extreme amounts of a burning chemical agent and denied the legally mandated opportunity to have it washed off before it seeped into the pores of his skin; about how he was stripped naked and forced to sleep in his unbearably cold "strip cell" during the winter months; how he was subjected to excessive use of force; how he was placed on the infamous "A-Tier Modification Program," an illegal and arbitrarily implemented "behavior modification" program, and denied food, water, clothing, outside contact, legal recourse and other things to be named at the trial; and about how he began to lose touch with reality and exhibit signs and symptoms of psychiatric decompensation.
Mr. Curtis' defense will also include expert testimony from the well known Dr. Terry Kupers, a practicing psychiatrist and professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. In addition to an M.D. degree, Dr. Kupers holds a masters degree in Social Psychiatry. Well versed and extremely active, he's a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (Psychiatry, 1974, for life), co-chair of the Committee on The Mentally Ill Behind Bars of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists, a fellow of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Orthopsychiatric Association, and a staff member of the Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley.
A tireless healer, he's also testified in over a dozen criminal and civil proceedings, including local, state and federal courts, regarding analysis of jail and prison conditions and the quality of mental health services. He's served as consultant regarding prison conditions and the quality of correctional mental health care to the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, and to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. He's written over two dozen articles and book chapters, edited two books and written five himself, including his current best-sellers PRISON MADNESS: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It (Jossey-Bass, 1999), and PRISON MASCULINITES.
THE SYMPTOMS
After interviewing Mr. Curtis several times, watching the videotape of the alleged assault as well as reviewing a vast collection of written documents, and visiting with Mr. Curtis, it is expected that Dr. Kupers will testify that his capacity to form the intent to commit the crime was severely diminished at the time of the incident; and that his diminished capacity was a result of the "SHU syndrome," which was defined by Dr. Stuart Grassian, a Harvard University psychiatrist who examined a large number of prisoners during their stays in segregated, solitary confinement units, and concluded that THESE UNITS TEND TO INDUCE PSYCHOTIC STATES.
Dr. Grassian named the psychosis-like symptoms "the SHU syndrome." (SHU = Special Housing Unit). The symptoms of this syndrome include massive free-floating anxiety, hyperresponsiveness to external stimuli, perceptual distortions and hallucinations, a feeling of unreality, difficulty with concentration and memory, acute confusional states, the emergence of primitive aggressive fantasies, persecutory ideation, motor excitement, and violent destructive or self-mutilatory outbursts.
THE TESTIMONY
Dr. Kupers' testimony will include testifying about the devastating psychiatric effects of long-term solitary confinement in punitive segregation; about Mr. Curtis' developmental and psychiatric history; about patterns in Mr. Curtis' disciplinary record and his experiences in long term punitive segregation including the time he spent in the abovementioned infamous "A-Tier Modification Program"; about the destructive psychiatric consequences of Mr. Curtis' experiences in prison prior to the incident of April 21, 1998; about his state of mind at the time of the incident of April 21, 1998, including intense fears and panic about his safety and survival, an inability to rationally assess the degree of danger he found himself in, irrational but extreme fears and uncontrollable aggressive feelings; about his incapacity to form intent at the time of the incident due to his psychiatric condition, the intensity of past traumas and the level of stress he was under at the time; and about certain events subsequent to the incident of April 21, 1998, that bear on his reliability in reporting his state of mind as well as the treatment he was subjected to throughout the period of his incarceration in the Washington Department of Corrections.
PEOPLE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING THIS TRIAL or learning more about the case should contact Durk Krieger. the media co-ordinator for Politics of Prisons and the Families of Prisoners Civil Rights Foundation, at epoch3@nocharge.com for the contact information for Mr. Curtis' attorney, for Dr. Kupers, etc., and for the SCHEDULED COURT DATES AT MASON COUNTY COURT HOUSE in Shelton, Washington in February of 2004.
For more information or to arrange for phone or visit interviews please write directly to:
James Curtis # 984533 FND 19
Stafford Creek Corrections Center
191 Constantine Way
Aberdeen, WA 98520
Also: For MUCH MORE information on the SHU syndrome and about James Curtis visit his NEW website which we maintain for him at http://walterkarp.tripod.com/jamescurtis
ONE FINAL FACT: Juries are not allowed to know that they are trying a 3-strikes case -- until after they have returned their verdict!
END OF NEWS RELEASE
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