By Phaedra Haywood
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE, N.M. — Hearings are scheduled Friday in state District Court for two Penitentiary of New Mexico inmates who have filed petitions that they hope will lead prison officials to remove them from solitary confinement.
The men’s circumstances, crimes and petitions are quite different, but their stories illustrate the importance of a growing national conversation about a practice that is increasingly viewed as cruel and unusual punishment.
Jacob Steven Chavez, 36, has been held in solitary for at least the last decade, alone in his cell for at least 23 hours a day. On weekdays he is allowed one hour by himself in an exercise cage.
In 1999, at the age of 20, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a gang-related shooting in Albuquerque’s South Valley. Chavez claims in his court pleading that the man he killed was his best friend. He was sentenced to spend 25 years in prison for the crime and seven other counts including conspiracy, aggravated battery and trafficking.
Court documents specified that Chavez be confined out-of-state “for the protection of his life against retaliation by imprisoned gang-members.”
Corrections Department spokeswoman Alex Tomlin said department records indicate he was kept outside New Mexico from 2003 to 2005, when he was returned to the state.
Since his return to New Mexico in 2005, Chavez has spent all but a few days in solitary confinement.
“I have did all my time locked down,” Chavez wrote in a hand-written habeas corpus petition filed in May 2014. “Have not got treated any different than a man on death roll (sic)”
Chavez notes in his petition that some of the time he spent in solitary resulted from his own efforts to keep from being killed by other inmates.
“Most of the reports I got in my file are do (sic) to me keeping myself safe or getting moved out of a pod before something happens to me,” he wrote. “But no one is willing to look into that... in Boston after the inmates found out who I was... I did anything to get locked up and stay locked up... that just shows I’m not trying to hurt anyone.”
Chavez said his co-defendant in the murder case -- whom Chavez fears has the clout both inside and outside of prison to have him killed -- has been released.
“I am in fear of being set up by officers or even being killed at the hands of an inmate,” wrote Chavez, who is asking the court to enroll him in a witness protection program. Tomlin said there is no such program for inmates.
It’s unclear if Chavez had mental health problems going in to prison. According Tomlin, he lives in the department’s “Alternative Placement Area,” which houses inmates who have been classified as having both predatory behavior and a mental health diagnosis.
Chavez says in his petition he needs more mental health care than he is getting.
“I took the life of my best friend,” he wrote. “That ... hurts. I have to live with that for the rest of my life. That eats me up inside. To try and get any kind of treatment in prison, that’s not going to happen. A hand full of pills, is what thay (sic) call treatment in prison. I wouldn’t mind going to some kind of place to deal with these issues that I have before I get out. That’s what I need. Not only that but just being around people. It will be 15 years in June.”
Tomlin said the department does have comprehensive mental health care. She also said corrections administrators are beginning to create special populations within the prison system in which people who fear other inmates but don’t want to live in solitary confinement can live among similarly situated inmates.
Timothy Martinez, 32, has been in and out of prison and solitary confinement since about 2003. His crimes have included attempted aggravated burglary, assault with a deadly weapon and armed robbery.
In March 2014, Martinez was implicated in the stabbing death of inmate Javier Molina in the medium-security wing of Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility in Las Cruces. He was later cleared and two other inmates were charged with the killing.
But, Martinez says in a petition filed in state District Court, because of the incident, he still lost 2,000 days of good time credit, which could shorten his prison time by more than five years. He also was reclassified as a Level VI prisoner and has been in solitary confinement ever since.
Martinez argues that he never had an opportunity to dispute the allegations against him because the Department of Corrections “provides no meaningful avenue for reviewing deprivations of good time that are based upon a hearing officer’s findings. They are, as in this case, routinely denied.”
Incarceration as a Level VI prisoner “is synonymous with extreme isolation,” Martinez wrote in his petition, which seeks to have his good time credit restored and Level VI classification declared improper.
“Inmates must remain in their cells, which normally measure 7 by 14 feet, for 23 hours per day,” he wrote. “A light remains on in the cell at all times ... Usually, cells have solid metal doors with metal strips along their sides and bottoms which prevent conversation or communication with other inmates. All meals are taken alone in the inmate’s cell ... Opportunities for visitation are rare and in all events are conducted through video conferencing ... inmates are deprived of almost any environmental or sensory stimuli and of almost all human contact.”
While Martinez has a lawyer, many inmates do not, forcing them to try to navigate on their own through a classification system that one prisoner’s petition called “cunningly designed to maintain all inmates in some form of indefinite segregation.”
Tomlin said New Mexico’s rate of solitary confinement has dropped to about 6.6 percent of inmates in February from about 10.1 percent when Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel first turned a critical eye to the problem in 2012.
She said reducing the numbers was easy at first because some people who clearly didn’t need to be in solitary were moved to the general population as soon as their cases were reviewed. She said the rate now is falling more slowly, because inmates who are in solitary due to misbehavior need to work through the “steps” for gaining privileges incrementally and earning less restrictive classification through good behavior.
Prison reform advocates nationally have called for an end to the use of solitary confinement. California recently made sweeping changes to its use after four years of inmate hunger strikes. Timothy Williams of The New York Times reported this week that prison and jail administrators in that state say solitary should should be limited or ended altogether.
In New Mexico, a bill that would have barred the use of solitary confinement for juveniles and mentally ill patients, and limited its use to 15 days at a time or 60 days per year for other inmates, died in committee during the last session of the state Legislature.
Marcantel spoke against passage of the bill, saying doing away with the practice would take away one of the “tools” corrections officers have for running a safe facility.
Connie Derr, executive director of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees New Mexico Council 18, said in statement Thursday that the union -- which represents more than 2,200 corrections, detention and juvenile officers statewide -- also opposes doing away with solitary, under current conditions.
The statement said:
“AFSCME agrees with the scientific evidence on the harmful long-term impacts which solitary confinement has on inmates, officers, and the public,” Derr said. “The current reality at corrections however, with high vacancies and mandated 72 hour work weeks, make short term use of solitary absolutely essential. Officers must be able to separate and extricate individuals from violent situations happening every day.
“Solitary has cyclical consequences for everyone. Inmates are less capable of handling life in the general prison population after long periods in solitary. That’s a factor for inmate, officer, and public safety.
“The push to go cold turkey on use of solitary, without addressing systemic issues first, would represent a powder keg for our officers. Until New Mexico dedicates adequate resources to the corrections system around inmate mental health care, and proper, safe staffing levels, then solitary confinement is a tool you mustn’t take away.”
Tomlin said Thursday that about one in every five corrections officer positions at the Penitentiary of New Mexico is vacant, meaning officers must work overtime to cover those shifts. She said the department is trying to hire more officers by running back-to-back training academies. But, she said, the work is so difficult that half of new recruits usually don’t last through the first year.