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| New prisons chief to enforce no-interview rule on death row |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/06/2003 |
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Alabama Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell will continue his predecessor's court-tested policy of not allowing face-to-face interviews by news reporters with state inmates awaiting execution in Alabama, his spokesman said. Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said Campbell would follow a 1985 state law that specifies who may visit a condemned prisoner. Reporters are not on that list, which includes an inmate's lawyer, physician, relatives, friends and spiritual advisers. 'He has stated to me that he plans to follow the law,' Corbett said. Former Commissioner Mike Haley won a lawsuit last year over his refusal to allow a television station to interview Lynda Lyon Block prior to her execution. Brenda Bowser, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, said reporters seek death row interviews particularly in cases of possible innocence. 'As far as a legal right to access, that's something states dictate and whether an inmate agrees,' she said. Former Ku Klux Klansman Henry Francis Hays was interviewed at Holman Prison by The Associated Press prior to his June 6, 1997, death in the electric chair. That apparently was the last face-to-face interview with a condemned inmate in the state beyond court appearances. Reporters still can conduct written interviews by mail, telephone or possibly pass on questions through attorneys, but that indirect and impersonal approach can be unreliable and lacking in details. Inmate visits also are controlled by prison rules and regulations. Inmates typically are not allowed to make changes in the names on their visitation list but once every six months. When an execution takes place, condemned inmates are allowed to make a brief statement to reporters and others witnesses moments before it is carried out. Alabama, which now has 184 men and three women on death row, isn't alone in preventing media interviews with them. Georgia and Mississippi also prohibit face-to-face interviews with death row inmates. But in Tennessee, where Campbell worked as prisons chief before joining Gov. Bob Riley's administration, media interviews with condemned inmates are allowed. 'We just had one interviewed last week,' said Tennessee Corrections spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson. She said the interview policy was signed by Campbell and became effective July 1, 2001. Last year, Montgomery television station WSFA waged an unsuccessful court fight in seeking an interview with Block prior to her execution. The station argued that Block was denied her First Amendment constitutional protection by then-Commissioner Haley, now Mobile County's jail warden. While the state claimed the Block interview was denied for security reasons, Haley had written a memo saying he blocked the interview because he didn't want Block to get any recognition for the 'heinous' murder of Opelika police officer Roger Motley. Attorney Richard Ball, who represented WSFA, said the prison system may use its discretion on media access, but 'it can't be arbitrary.' |
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تنزيل العاب كرة
I am also in favor of no-interview rule for such inmates who are in death row. Students are advised to read more on how to write introduction. Previously taken interviews have not given pleasant reviews which we were expecting that’s why making this rule was necessary.