‘The Worst Thing You Could Imagine Was There’
While Parchman prison still stands on its original grounds, the living conditions that Howard lived through for 26 years are still just as shocking as they were in the early 1900s. Notorious for its health and safety violations, one prison expert called the Mississippi State Penitentiary “
the worst jail or prison I’ve seen in the United States in 20 years.”
In the last year, inmates have leaked cellphone videos and pictures that show
black mold, backed up sewer lines, roof leaks and
live electrical wires floating in standing water. In a Jan. 31, 2020, pre-COVID tour of the prison with a congressional delegation, Rep. Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus, described “what we saw was really, really, really horrific. … The worst thing you could imagine was there.”
“When I led a delegation to the Mississippi Penitentiary at Parchman early last year, the suffocating stench of feces hung in the air. Blood was still visible on the floor from the recent rash of violence. Water was ankle-deep with live wires floating like electric eels,
Karriem wrote in a recent MFP Voices essay.
Rep. Kabir Karriem toured Parchman Prison in 2020 as a member of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus. He and other members of the Caucus are determined to find bipartisan solutions to Mississippi’s criminal justice system. Photo courtesy State of Mississippi
Since Howard’s incarceration in 1992, Parchman has violated the Safe Water Drinking Act
over a hundred times for excess amounts of dangerous bacteria such as coliform and for routinely having radiologicals in the water such as Uranium and Radium-226. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly spread throughout Mississippi’s prisons and jails with
87 Parchman inmates testing positive for the virus as of late December 2020. Since 2014, Mississippi has cut funding to the Mississippi Department of Corrections by
$215 million.
No Counseling Through 26 Years on Death Row
As an inmate on death row for over a quarter-century, Howard was given no mental-health counseling or vocational and educational training, attorney Carrington said. “Many of these folks (on death row) are decompensating during the years that they’re appealing their cases up until their execution,” he added.
Per Mississippi state law, inmates on death row
are not allowed contact visits or group recreation, and they spend a minimum of 22 hours everyday in solitary cells. Physical exercise is strictly regimented, and when it is allowed, prisoners exercise individually. For 26 years, the only tangible and long-term social interaction Howard had was with his two neighboring inmates.
As of October 2020, more than
half of Mississippi’s death row inmates were Black. A 2003 University of California Santa Cruz study determined that nearly half of inmates housed in solitary confinement
“suffered from “perception disorders, hallucinations, or suicidal thoughts.” An additional study found that about one-in-three solitary confinement inmates develop “
severe mental illness.”
Rep. Karriem told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 28 that “[for] people living in those conditions; it was just inhumane.” He noted that the conditions at Parchman were so bad that “I had to leave the group and say a little prayer. And pray for the people who were incarcerated, but I also prayed for Mississippi because I know we can do a lot better than what we’re doing now in our criminal justice system.”
Carrington said Howard, who is not yet giving interviews, has essentially been cut off from family and friends and the world for close to three decades. “You can imagine what it’s like to try and successfully integrate into the free world after you’ve been institutionalized in that way,” he said.
In addition to Howard’s isolation from the outside world and his social circles, he left prison with nothing. “No clothes, no money, no place to sleep, nothing to restart his life with,” Carrington said.
Compensation, or Trial, for Wrongful Imprisonment?
One way for Howard to begin to reacclimate to the free world is through Mississippi’s compensation statute for wrongful imprisonment. Under the law,
people who have been wrongfully imprisoned can petition the state for up to $50,000 for each year they were incarcerated, up to $500,000 in total. Professor Carrington believes that Howard would qualify for this compensation.
Missing and inoperable sinks are shown in Parchman prison. Photo courtesy Mississippi Department of Health
Testimony from Dr. Michael West has sent at least seven innocent people to prison in which they have spent over a combined 75 years in prison. Recently, calls have arisen for Dr. West to face trial in order to be potentially held accountable for his incorrect testimonies. Dr. Michael West could not be reached for comment.
Carrington said witnesses like West have qualified immunity for their testimony they provided in court. Because of this, in order for the court to convict Dr. West, prosecutors would have to clearly show that he or Dr. Hayne, who died in 2020, acted with blatant malice, which in this case would mean “you would have to show that they were making (the bite-mark evidence) up, and that they knew they were making it up.”
“It’s almost impossible,” he continued. “Because you would almost have to have Dr. West say ‘yes, I made it up,” and that’s just not going to happen.”
Note: District Attorney Scott Colom, quoted above, was an early donor to the Mississippi Free Press with his father Wilbur Colom. Donations do not influence Mississippi Free Press reporting.