The injustice system in Florida

MIAMI.- Gov. Rick Scott says his administration got it right when it decided not to investigate the ghastly death of an inmate at a state prison in 2010. According to an account in the Miami Herald, “Gov. Rick Scott’s office came to the defense of his chief inspector general Friday, claiming that the reason she couldn’t investigate claims of a suspicious inmate death brought to her by an anonymous letter nearly two years ago was because the case was under an open investigation.”

That was a boldfaced lie, as the same Miami Herald report demonstrates.  

“…According to a detailed timeline released by the media office in response to a Miami Herald report, there was no investigation pending in the gassing death of Randall Jordan-Aparo when Melinda Miguel received the letter.

The 27-year-old inmate died in September 2010 after being doused with chemical agents three times in 13 minutes while in a confinement cell. Florida prison officials and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had closed the case in July 2012, concluding there was no relationship between the gassing and the inmate’s death.”

I have a hard time deciding what angle of this story deserves the closest analysis. Is it the grotesque brutality of the guards who subjected Jordan-Aparo to what amounts to torture resulting in a homicide? What were they thinking and what previous experiences led them to believe they could get away with it?

Is the question then how often does this kind of treatment takes place in the Florida corrections system without ever coming to the attention of the media or the public?

Or should I examine more closely Rick Scott’s integrity or, more accurately, lack thereof? From the time when was up to his neck in a colossal health care fraud against the federal government and developed a convenient case of amnesia (“I cannot recall’ was his mantra) plus a new-found attachment to at least one Constitutional right (the right against self-incrimination), it should have been clear that Scott was a quintessential con man. His latest attempt to mislead as to the reason his chief inspector general did not investigate the death of Randall Jordan-Aparo fits his modus operandi.

The chief-inspector general’s unjustified inaction attests to another aspect of the picture, namely the impunity that seems virtually the norm when guards inflict extreme, even lethal, violence against inmates. An inmate dies after being gassed. Another perishes after a prolonged scalding-water shower in a locked stall. Prison or state investigators fail to find a causal connection. Such coincidences! The Corrections Department inspector general works to prevent a real investigation. The governor’s inspector general becomes aware of the situation and comes up with a bogus excuse to do nothing. The Governor backs her up.

It’s clear that this is more than a few bad apples working nights at a prison in the boonies. It’s a systemic problem involving everyone from the governor to the lowest ranking guard. As such, it requires a comprehensive investigation in order to come up with system-wide solutions. But is Florida ready for that? The extreme conservatives that run both the legislative and executive branches of government would almost certainly torpedo a serious inquiry and virtually any reform.

Then finally there is the racial angle. Although white, black and Latino prisoners all have been the victims of abuse at the hands of corrections personnel, there is little doubt that in general minorities, especially blacks, suffer the worst treatment in prison.

Florida long has enjoyed a reputation as a state where virulent racism was not as much of a factor as in other southern states. The reality could not be more different from the image. In the early decades of the twentieth century, there were more people lynched in Florida than in any other southern state. At one time there were more members of the Ku Klux Klan here than in all the other southern states combined. And in Florida nowhere was racism more firmly institutionalized than in the administration of justice.

Much has changed but that legacy has not gone away. Start with the fact that as governor Rick Scott has appointed very few black judges. The Republicans that run the legislature are a lily-white bunch–even the Cubans. They enact laws like the infamous “stand your ground,” which already has cost one unarmed teenager his life and allowed the killer to mount a successful defense.

Like our governor, Florida has always had two faces. The one the state presents to the world is all about sun and fun. The other, hidden face is about white power and privilege, maintained by the ballot or the bullet.