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| Long Planning Cited in Death of an Ex-Priest in Mass. prison |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 09/05/2003 |
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Massachusetts and local officials opened investigations last week into the prison killing of John J. Geoghan, a former priest convicted of child molestation, saying the suspect, a self-proclaimed homophobe, had been planning the killing for more than a month. As officials began examining things like staffing levels and protective custody procedures at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center where Mr. Geoghan was murdered on Saturday, a lawyer familiar with the case said that another prisoner had tried to warn officers that the suspect, Joseph L. Druce, planned to kill Mr. Geoghan. The lawyer, Jim Pingeon, director of litigation for Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, a prisoners' rights group, did not give details of when the inmate approached the officers but said they had taken no action. Mr. Pingeon said the inmate had also told him that Mr. Druce was standing outside Mr. Geoghan's cell door just before it was to be closed after the lunch break on Saturday, a violation of prison regulations. John J. Conte, the Worcester district attorney who will be prosecuting the case, said at a news conference that there was only one officer on duty at the time and that inmates from all 22 individual cells had been allowed out just before the incident. A second officer who should have been on duty was away helping a nurse give medication to an inmate, Mr. Conte said. 'This seems like something that shouldn't happen,' Mr. Conte said of the number of officers and the prisoners being out of their cells. Prison experts said officials appeared to have made a fundamental error in placing a vulnerable inmate like Mr. Geoghan, 68, in the same protective custody unit as Mr. Druce. Mr. Druce, 37, is serving a life sentence without parole for strangling a 51-year-old man in 1988 who he believed was gay. 'It's pretty unusual, pretty strange, to put people from such backgrounds together in protective custody,' said Chase Riveland, a former secretary of corrections in both Washington and Colorado and now a prison consultant. Gov. Mitt Romney convened a three-person task force to review prison policies. Edward A. Flynn, the Massachusetts secretary of public safety, who oversees the state Department of Correction, said, 'We must find out why and what lessons may be learned.' Mr. Flynn said that the prison had 300 surveillance cameras and that tapes from them were being reviewed. Mr. Geoghan, who was convicted in January 2002 of groping a 10-year-old boy, was in protective custody because he had complained that he felt threatened, Mr. Flynn said. State prison officers and Mr. Conte, the district attorney, questioned the low level of staffing in the protective custody unit at the time of the killing. The Massachusetts prison officers' union has complained about staff reductions, as the state prison budget has been cut in recent months, like prison budgets in virtually every state. The investigation into the prison's procedures is likely to focus on how the state deals with protective custody. As Mr. Flynn said today, both Mr. Geoghan and Mr. Druce had requested protected status because of fears about other inmates. The danger of mixing these two kinds of inmates in the same unit has been compounded by a decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which found that inmates in protective custody had not committed any infractions and were entitled to all privileges of regular inmates. In practice, experts said, this means inmates in protective custody are allowed out of their cells into a common room to watch television or make phone calls and cannot be confined in solitary. |
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