Terry Goddard, Arizona's do-nothing Attorney General, responds

Thank you for contacting the Attorney General's Office. Our Civil
Rights Division may be reached at (602) 542-5263.

>>> "***************" **************@************* 12/11/05 3:28 PM >>> My friend is a political prisoner jailed in the Arizona State Prison in Tucson.

Every month the Aryan Brotherhood forces him to pay a 1 stamp tax.

He also says that the Aryan Brotherhood makes a lot of extra rules in addition to the rules in the prison. For example, you're not allowed to sit down next to a person who is a different race than you. Another odd thing is he says each cell block has an Aryan Brotherhood coordinator who reviews all the paperwork that he gives to the prison officials. He says this is to prevent people from snitching on the Aryan Brotherhood.

Last the Aryan Brotherhood was holding an raffle for a porn magazine. He refused to pay one stamp entry fee.

[Actually it was a two-stamp entry fee. It always makes me laugh. These people wear Swastika tatoos and spout white pride, yet they spend their time poisoning their own race with narcotics and promoting pornography. If they had lived in Nazi Germany and done such things, they would have ended up more or less where they were: prison. --Kevin Walsh]

Later an Aryan Brotherhood member told him it was mandatory to participate.

[This particular Aryan Brotherhood member wasn't even white. He looked like a Mexican or a Native American. His name was Kenneth Curtis, and he was doing four months for a probation violation. --Kevin Walsh]

He refused, and now he is afraid something bad will happen as a result of this.

[My cellmate said that he might be ordered to beat me up and that if he was, he would do it. That's when I concluded he was a completely anti-social piece of shit. Nothing came of it, however. No action was taken against me. --Kevin Walsh]

He also mentioned that one person in his cell block may get beaten up as a result of a cocaine debt.

[That was the above-mentioned Kenneth Curtis. --Kevin Walsh]

My question to the attorney general is can you stop these criminal practices? And why do you let this nonsense go on in the state prison?

If you're a reporter, I have a whole bunch of letters that he has written me documenting this stuff. Maybe you could write a story on it.

Is he being rehabilated? No. He is locked in a cell 23 hours a day like the other convicts. Of course he doesn't really need it. He has a master's degree in meteorolgy from the U of A and almost got his PhD, but that is very unusual. Most of the inmates don't have grade school or high school degrees and probably would be much better if they got some education instead of being locked down for 23 hours a day.

[Actually education classes for eighth-grade level literacy and GED were offered to inmates. --Kevin Walsh]

Why is he in jail? When a Republican telephone solicitor called him and asked his family to vote for Bush he said he "wished Bush were dead". The Secrect Service had the Phoenix Police lock him up in Desert Vista mental hospital for that and said he was insane.

After the Secret Service lost interest in him being a threat to the president, he was charged with resisting arrest and jailed in the Maricopa County Jail and after waiting for a trial for about a year he took a plea bargin which will get him out in 6 months instead of facing the 21 years going to trial could have gotten him.

Thanks

[I was never charged with resisting arrest, although my lawyer said that was a potential charge on which I could plea-bargain. I was initially charged with three counts of assaulting a peace officer with a deadly weapon, and the maximum sentence I could have faced if convicted of those counts was 63 years, not 21. --Kevin Walsh]

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