Arizona: State prisoner Brigido Montoya made the briefest of escapes from the State Prison Complex in Eyman on August 10, 2024, before he was recaptured 48 minutes later by Florence Police, the Florence Reminder & Blade-Tribune reported. The state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR) said that Montoya scaled a fence surrounding the medium-custody Meadows Unit at 7:30 a.m. and was back in custody by 8:18 a.m. Three unnamed guards involved in his recovery were treated for “heat-related concerns.” The high temperature recorded in nearby Phoenix that day was 112 degrees Fahrenheit. DCRR did not say if the heat affected Montoya, who will now likely have to stay in prison after his 15-year sentence for sexual misconduct with a minor expires in March 2030.

California: Guards formed a “skirmish line” at California Institute for Men in Chino on August 11, 2024, subduing prisoner Kevin G. Roby after he brandished a shank and threatened to kill “anyone left on the yard,” the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said. Roby, 60—wearing only his boxer briefs—had reportedly charged the line of guards and stabbed one in the head. The unnamed guard was transported to a hospital to treat his wounds and the effects of pepper spray that other guards on the line then used to take Roby down. CDCR said it was investigating the incident as an attempted homicide, but no charges had yet been filed. Roby has been in custody since 1988, serving a life term without the possibility of parole. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, Roby, then 23 and an Air Force Academy dropout, was convicted of raping and murdering his sister, Velmalin Hill, 25, after first saying that she’d been abducted by a trio of men dressed as ninja warriors; cops then went to the home that Hill shared with her mother and found her body stuffed in a trash can and covered with dog food. An averred Satanist, Roby was also convicted in 2006 of murdering Pelican Bay State Prison cellmate Lloyd Fernandez Avery, 36, a former film actor turned devout Christian, in what Roby reportedly said he intended as “a warning to God,” according to a report by the Chicago Defender.

California: CDCR prisoner Darryl Hudson, 40, died at a hospital after a fight with five others held at California State Prison near Folsom on August 23, 2024, the Sacramento Bee reported. Sacramento County prosecutors were weighing homicide charges against prisoners Darryn Mayberry, 30, Robert Keller, 38, Tray Watson, 58, Marcell Battiest, 29, and Otis Wyatt, 27. Three of the alleged attackers, Keller, Battiest and Wyatt, were serving life without parole for murder, like Hudson was. Watson is serving 18 years for assault and Mayberry has a 10-year sentence for robbery.

California: Jamar Jones, 35, a prisoner held by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Atwater, was charged on August 19, 2024, in a conspiracy to smuggle drugs that allegedly sickened two unnamed guards who touched them—killing one. KMOV in St. Louis reported that an unincarcerated Missouri man, Jermen Rudd III, 37, was accused of sending the letter fraudulently labeled “legal mail,” which arrived at the prison on August 9, 2024, containing five pieces of “waxy paper” that tested positive for amphetamines, fentanyl and synthetic cannabinoids, also known as “Spice.” Rudd was charged in the conspiracy, along with a third co-defendant, Stephanie Ferreira, 35, who is also unincarcerated. See: United States v. Jones, USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:24-mj-00095.

Florida: BOP prisoner Jessie Wooden, 36, was indicted on August 20, 2024, on charges of possessing 50+ grams of methamphetamine with intent to distribute it in the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman. An alleged unincarcerated accomplice, Janai Chanel Stephens, 38, was previously indicted on May 28, 2024, for supplying the contraband to the prisoner, who was caught with it in March 2024, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Florida. See: United States v. Wooden, USDC (M.D. Fla.), Case No. 5:24-cr-00065.

Georgia: Mayor Benjamin “Benji” Cary Cranford, 52, of the tiny town of Thomson (pop. 6,858), was indicted on August 21, 2024, for allegedly leaving a bottle of booze in a ditch for state prisoners on a work crew. WDRW in Augusta reported that Cranford bought a 750 ml bottle of Seagram’s Extra Dry Gin from Rimpy’s Store on June 4, 2024, and then left it in a ditch on Cobbham Rd., where prisoners from Jefferson County Correctional Institution were working. An unnamed Rimpy’s employee called the mayor a “regular” customer. Cranford was booked into McDuffie County Jail on charges including furnishing prohibited items to inmates and released on a $5,000 bond.

Haiti: Protesting a lack of food and rotten conditions, prisoners set fire to a lockup in Saint-Marc on August 16, 2024, and 12 of them then died in the blaze, Reuters News reported. It was the third prison uprising since armed gangs freed 4,500 prisoners from the country’s two largest lockups in March 2024; that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry from exile in Los Angeles. A transitional council sworn in on April 25, 2024, is tasked with choosing his replacement. Meanwhile, 109 deaths in the first eight months of 2024 have whittled the country’s prisoner population to 7,500, most of whom are quadruple-celled in spaces designed for two.

Illinois: Cook County Jail guard Shadonna Jones, 54, was arrested on August 15, 2024, and charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance inside the Chicago jail, WGN reported. Tipped-off investigators executed a search warrant at her home on July 25, 2024, finding 48 sheets of paper that later tested positive for synthetic cannabinoids. They also found a letter addressed to the guard in which a detainee discussed paying $2,500 for each ream of drug-soaked papers that Jones delivered, planning to cut up the sheets to be resold for a total of $10,000. Jones denied planning to deliver the contraband but admitted accepting a $1,000 bribe; she was de-deputized that same day. Deputies of Sheriff Tom Dart are also conducting an investigation, which could result in Jones’ firing.

Indiana: State DOC guard Lauren Bush, 30, was booked into the La Porte County Jail on a $15,000 bond on August 20, 2024, after investigators searched her phone and discovered a $200 payment was taken from an unnamed Westville Correctional Facility prisoner. WTTV in Bloomington reported that Bush faces charges of bribery and official misconduct for allegedly agreeing to deliver a cellphone and marijuana to the prisoner, who named her in a recorded call with his brother as the Cash App recipient of the payment. To that, the brother replied, “Shut up, man!” But it was then too late to hide the guard’s identity from investigators.

Italy: The suicide of an unnamed 37-year-old prisoner in a Venice jail on July 15, 2024, raised the number of Italian prisoners who have killed themselves this year to 60, according to ANSA, the National Associated Press Agency. The government of Premier Georgia Meloni has introduced some measures to relieve overcrowding in Italian prisons, but Sen. Andrea Martella of the opposition center-left Democratic Party filed a parliamentary question calling for swifter response because “[t]he heat, the overcrowding, the lack of personnel and the well-known structural shortcomings are putting inmates and staff to a huge test.”

Louisiana: On July 30, 2024, the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) fired Elayn Hunt Correctional Center (EHCC) guard Arial Anderson, 26, after a Texas Amber Alert led to his arrest with a missing 12-year-old girl. WWL in New Orleans said that the girl took the family car, and her mother used an app to track the child’s cellphone to a Houston hotel. Surveillance video captured her there with Anderson and later at his Baton Rouge apartment, where deputies of East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid J. Gautreaux arrested Anderson and returned the girl to her home. Anderson, who had worked for DPSC since September 2023, told investigators that he thought the girl was 18 or 19. Houston District Attorney Kim Ogg (D) also charged the former guard with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Days later, two more EHCC guards were also accused of misconduct, The Advocate reported. Arraneisha Valentine, 22, was arrested on August 7, 2024, for having sex with an unidentified prisoner; the incident happened before she left DPSC in May 2024. Ja’Camry Davis, 22, was fired and arrested on August 9, 2024, after investigators determined she also had a sexual relationship with at least one unnamed prisoner and smuggled cellphones to another. Davis had worked for DPSC since August 2022. Both guards were booked into the Iberville Parish jail.

Massachusetts: On August 14, 2024, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts announced that a Boston-area woman was sentenced and her prisoner accomplice convicted on charges of smuggling contraband into his Virginia prison. Sathtra Em, 37, was ordered to serve 21 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release by the federal court for the District of Massachusetts for smuggling Suboxone strips into the Virginia DOC’s Buckingham Correctional Center, where co-defendant and state prisoner Michael Mao, 38, pleaded guilty to distributing the drugs. Muling the contraband between the two, allegedly for a $1,600 bribe, was a third defendant, DOC guard Kenneth Owen. He has not yet been convicted, and his employment status with DOC was unclear. A fourth defendant, Samantha Yut, was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison in October 2023, after pleading guilty to using Em’s mortgage payments on the house they shared to launder drug proceeds from the One Family Clique, a crime ring that Yut ran in Lowell.

Michigan: Former state DOC guard Joshua Evans, 46, was arrested on July 11, 2024, when he was found with 151 Suboxone strips inside the visiting room at Parnell Correctional Center, WILX in Lansing reported. He was arraigned on drug smuggling charges on August 6, 2024.

Michigan: On August 16, 2024, Wexford County Jail detainee Michael James English, 34, was charged with punching an unnamed guard in the head and then falsely accusing him of sexual assault, MLive Media Group reported. English made the sexual assault accusation in June 2024, but Michigan State Police investigators reviewed jail surveillance video and found no evidence of sexual assault—instead watching as English ambushed and assaulted the guard. He was charged with a false report of a felony, lying to a police officer and assault on a prison employee, as well as resisting and obstructing police, with an enhancement for being a four-time habitual offender. The charges that had landed English in the jail were not reported. But his third conviction in 2012 was handed down for sending revenge porn of a former girlfriend that was made when she was underage; English saved the video on his cellphone for several years before sending it to the woman’s new boyfriend in a fit of pique—only to find that he’d texted the wrong number, and the video went to the boyfriend of the woman’s mom. For that, English got a sentence of 13 to 48 months.

Minnesota: Claiming that “they signed up for this,” Hubbard County Jail detainee Cole Pigeon, 23, ran from his cell and stabbed an unnamed guard with a shank on August 7, 2024. KSTP in Minneapolis reported that the guard was wounded in the face and head, but he was able to fight off the attack long enough for other guards to intervene. The guard was then treated at a local hospital, Sheriff Corey Aukes said. Investigators determined that Pigeon fashioned the weapon from a bracket torn off a table in the jail recreation room. He admitted stalking the guard and threatened to attack other jail staffers, too, “every chance he gets.”

Mississippi: Deputies of Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones made a startling discovery when attorney Daniel Sydney Dale, 49, came to visit clients at the county jail on August 8, 2024: his briefcase was stuffed with marijuana, tobacco products, scales and two cellphones with chargers, all allegedly bound for unnamed detainees who were not actually his clients after all, the New York Post reported. Dale was arrested and charged with two counts of conspiracy and three counts of introduction of contraband into a correctional facility. His mugshot quickly viral on the internet for his “bug-eyed” expression, stringy damp hair and prominent drops of sweat on his brow that the newspaper said left him looking “soaking wet.”

Montana: Prisoners Bradley Crisman and Michael Spell were charged on August 6, 2024, with felony kidnapping and aggravated rape of an unnamed guard at Montana State Prison, KXLF in Butte reported. The incident occurred on June 8, 2024, when the guard was checking cell doors and Spell allegedly pulled her into his cell, after which Crisman blocked the door to keep the other guard performing cell checks from entering. That guard called for backup, and pepper spray was deployed on the Spell; Crisman continued to struggle with the abducted guard another minute before guards realized she was still in danger and freed her. Spell is serving 100 years for the 2012 kidnapping and murder of schoolteacher Sherry Arnold. Crisman is serving a 75-year term for the 2012 assault of a Great Falls real estate agent.

New Hampshire: The sexual assault trial of former Grafton County House of Corrections guard Max Fournier, 30, was canceled on July 22, 2024, one day before it was scheduled to begin, the Union Leader reported. Fournier, who was a corporal at the jail, is accused of sexually assaulting two detainees, identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2. Assistant Belknap County Attorney Sheldon Nason told Grafton County Superior Court that he withdrew charges related to Doe 1’s alleged assault because the facts laid out in the indictment no longer aligned with the victim’s now-five-year-old memories of the incident. Fournier’s trial for assaulting Doe 2 will proceed in October 2024, according to Nason, who promised to revise and refile the dropped charges. Fournier’s current job status was unclear; the Union Leader reported that he left the jail when the criminal probe began in May 2020, while In Depth N.H. said he has been on leave.

New Hampshire: WMUR in Manchester reported that former Hillsborough County House of Corrections guard Todd Gordon, 52, was sentenced to 30 days in jail on August 27, 2024, after pleading guilty three months earlier to sucker-punching a detainee in the back of the head in January 2023. As PLN reported, Gordon was charged in May 2023 with two counts of second-degree assault, one count of witness tampering and one count of criminal threatening. [See: PLN, July 2023, p.63.] He got off with guilty pleas to two counts of simple assault. Apologizing “for betraying any public trust,” the disgraced guard said he was thinking only about his fellow guards and felt bad “for letting them down.”

New York: Broome County Sheriff Fred Ashkar suspended two guards from the county jail without pay on July 31, 2024, after an investigation into their alleged use of unnecessary force on an unnamed detainee. Only one of the guards was charged, according to WIVT/WGBH in Syracuse: James Woodard, 39, faces charges of official misconduct and second-degree harassment. The incident unfolded on July 23, 2024, when surveillance video captured the unnamed guard forcefully escorting the detainee to the jail medical unit, where Woodard put him in a “gooseneck” wrist restraint even though he was already handcuffed and safely seated. The other suspended guard was not named. Ashkar promised to put all staff members through a formal training review on use of force, de-escalation and their duty to intervene.

New York: Niagara County Jail guard Deonte Paige, 28, was arrested on August 1, 2024, and charged with second-degree harassment of an unnamed detainee. According to the Niagara Gazette, Paige was also charged by the office of County Sheriff Michael Filicetti and suspended pending the outcome. The Sheriff would only say that the guard “acted inappropriately, hence the criminal charge.” Paige was not jailed but issued an appearance ticket for an arraignment two weeks later.

New York: WPTZ in Plattsburgh reported that former state Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) guard Brian Mills, 39, pleaded guilty on August 21, 2024, to trading a shotgun, rifle, ammunition and two body armor vests to Dustin Manor, who was banned from possessing them by a previous felony conviction that incarcerated him for a five-year term in 2014. Manor is now back in prison serving 57 months for accepting the materiel. Mills resigned from DOCCS shortly after it was seized from Manor’s Plattsburgh apartment.

New York: On August 22, 2024, BOP guard Fabienne Osias, 40, resigned from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn before pleading guilty to attempting to smuggle cellphone chargers to detainees in February 2023. The New York Daily News said that Osias, who had worked at the lockup since 2021, could spend a year in prison, but likely will face no more than six months when she is sentenced in January 2025.

North Carolina: State Department of Adult Correction (DAC) guard Destiny Griggs resigned just before she was arrested on August 1, 2024, for possession of a controlled substance on prison premises. WITN in Greenville said that fellow Maury Correctional Institution guards found Griggs with K2 “Spice” synthetic cannabinoids. She had worked for DAC since October 2022.

Ohio: On July 27, 2024, Miami County Jail guard Sgt. Kenneth Welbaum, 37, was arrested on two counts of using a communication device to facilitate offenses involving children, after an Internet Crimes Against Children investigation by police in Virginia’s Albemarle County. WHIO in Dayton said that Welbaum was placed on administrative leave after he was charged with the crimes, which allegedly occurred when he was off-duty.

Ohio: After an unnamed Clark County Jail detainee became upset with a jail nurse on August 5, 2024, he was laid out and restrained on his cell bench by guards, one of whom sucker-punched him. WHIO in Dayton said that Steven Jordan, 20, allegedly hit the unnamed detainee “multiple times in his shoulder and back area with a closed fist.” When the detainee got up and came after him, Jordan allegedly pushed an unnamed fellow guard into the cell to stop him, causing both to fall and the guard to hit her head. He was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault on August 22, 2024, after which he was placed on unpaid leave by Sheriff Deborah K. Burchett.

Oregon: Before U.S. Marshals finally caught up with him in Georgia on July 16, 2024, Steven Craig Johnson, 70, spent 30 years on the “most wanted” list of the Oregon DOC, which was no doubt embarrassed that he ran away from a prison work crew where he’d been assigned in 1994 despite a reportedly “high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys” were he released back into the community. The New York Times reported that Johnson assumed the identity of a dead Texas child named William Cox to obtain driver’s licenses, first in Texas and then in Georgia. U.S. Marshals Inspector Chris Wright credited new investigative technologies and cooperation from the Diplomatic Security Service for locating the fugitive. Johnson reportedly lived reclusively in a Macon apartment complex for 10 years, though with no record of a job it was unclear how he supported himself. He was booked into the Bibb County Jail to await extradition to Oregon.

Pennsylvania: Former state DOC guard Alfonzia Newsome, 49, was arraigned in state court on July 30, 2024, on charges he sexually assaulted two prisoners at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) in Camp Springs. The Meadville Tribune reported that the guard allegedly stood outside their cells and touched them below the waist on at least two occasions between December 11, 2022, and August 16, 2023—one month after state police began investigating the two prisoners’ complaints. Newsome’s employment ended in late 2023, DOC said, though how it ended as undisclosed. If convicted on all charges—institutional sexual assault, indecent assault forcible compulsion and harassment—Newsome faces up to 12 years in prison and fines over $25,000.

Pennsylvania: After tipped-off investigators at George W. Hill Correctional Facility watched guard Jazzmaine Lancit put some things into her locker on August 2, 2024, they searched it and found inside three large sheets of paper soaked in synthetic cannabinoids, also known as K2. As the Delco Times reported, Lancit, 27, was then arrested and charged with possession with intent to deliver the drug into the Delaware County lockup. She posted $2,500—10% of her $25,000 bond amount—and was released.

Pennsylvania: On August 6, 2024, former Philadelphia Department of Prisons (DOP) guard Ivory S. Cousins, 35, was arrested on federal criminal charges for failing to render aid to an unnamed prisoner after fellow prisoners assaulted him in August 2019 at Curran-Frumhold Correctional Facility. Cousins also allegedly tried to prevent her unnamed supervisor from discovering the injured prisoner, the Delaware Valley News reported; then, after another guard found the injured man and called for help, she allegedly pepper-sprayed the prisoner. But she wasn’t done; after he was taken for treatment, she allegedly helped one of his prisoner-assailants get into his cell and steal his belongings, and she also wrote a false report about the incident, blaming the prisoner for starting a fight in which he was injured. For all that, she faces up to 41 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine. It was unclear when or how her employment with DOP ended. See: United States v. Cousins, USDC (E.D. Penn.), Case No. 2:24-cr-00279.

Pennsylvania: Westmoreland County Prison surveillance cameras captured prisoner John Michael Crowe, 37, as he broke his cell door lock and stepped outside, punching an unnamed guard doing rounds early on August 12, 2024. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the guard punched back and ultimately subdued Crowe, after other staffers were able to distract the prisoner. Crowe was serving a six-to-23-month sentence for resisting arrest and public drunkenness, but he also faced additional pending charges of making terroristic threats, simple assault, strangulation and harassment. To those were added counts for aggravated assault, simple assault and escape. His bail was set at $50,000.

Russia: On August 23, 2024, National Guard Special Forces fatally shot four self-described “Islamic militants” held at a Volgograd prison after they took a dozen hostages, including four guards who were fatally stabbed. Another four employees and four other prisoners survived the incident, Reuters News reported. No one involved was named. The prisoners, reportedly from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, were armed with knives, hammers and a makeshift explosive vest. They carried mobile phones to film themselves, posting video online before they were killed. It was unclear how they got the contraband or what their motive was.

South Carolina: When he finishes a 25-year sentence for cocaine trafficking begun in 2012, state DOC prisoner Benjamin Newman, 38, will head to federal prison after he was sentenced to serve another 26 years there on August 13, 2024. WIS in Columbia reported that 16 contraband cellphones were seized from Newman that he used to run a trafficking ring from his cell, moving 350 kilograms of methamphetamine, four kilograms of heroin, nearly one kilogram of cocaine, 18 kilograms of marijuana and 250 grams of crack cocaine from Mexico through Georgia, Florida and Texas to stash houses in Lexington County before distributing them throughout the state. Seven unincarcerated co-defendants were also convicted in the scheme. State DOC Director Brian Stirling said Newman’s conviction pointed to the need for cellphone-jamming equipment in state prisons—for which an $11 million budget request is currently pending before state lawmakers.

South Carolina: State prisons aren’t the only Palmetto State lockups dealing with contraband cellphones; The State in Columbia reported that Lexington County Detention Center guard Yvette Constantino Wiggins, 57, was fired on August 13, 2024, and arrested two days later for smuggling contraband cellphones to a detainee. The office of Sheriff Brian “Jay” Koon said that Wiggins was hired in October 2021, before her alleged smuggling took place between November 5, 2023, and January 31, 2024. That’s when Koon said he became aware of it and called investigators from the state Law Enforcement Division, leading to Wiggins’ arrest. She was not listed on the jail’s inmate roster as of August 17, 2024, and it was unclear if or where she was being held.

Texas: El Paso County Jail guard Lt. Lance Brown, 57, was arrested on July 30, 2024, and charged with organized criminal activity, the El Paso Times reported. The 35-year veteran is accused of smuggling synthetic cannabinoids to a detainee member of the Gangster Disciples street gang. Fellow guards monitoring his calls used a K-9 dog, “Walter,” to catch Brown with sheets of drug-soaked paper that had been prepared by the detainee’s sister and delivered by his girlfriend. On that delivery, Brown reportedly told the girlfriend, “This is the last time I’ll be doing this.” Neither woman was named, and it wasn’t clear whether either was charged. Brown was freed on $10,000 bond.

Texas: My Rio Grande Valley reported that former East Hidalgo Detention Center guard Jose Martin Espinoza, Jr., 28, was sentenced on August 5, 2024, to two days of time served and two years of supervised release—the first nine months on home confinement—for participating in a smuggling scheme at the lockup, which is privately operated for the U.S. Marshals Service by GEO Group, Inc. As PLN reported, Espinoza was caught by fellow guards in May 2022 with a cellphone taped inside his cap, and the contraband was headed to Sixto Gonzalez, Jr., 28, who was being held for kidnapping an unnamed 19-year-old to Mexico and attempting to extort a ransom from his family. Gonzalez then pleaded guilty in May 2023 to smuggling phones and accepting $500 for each from accomplice Abel Angel Solis, 26, who also pleaded guilty. [See: PLN, July 2023, p.63.] Solis was sentenced to 785 days of time served and two years of supervised release on July 31, 2024.

Texas: On June 19, 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals exonerated former state prisoner Kerry Cook, 68, who spent 20 years on the state’s death row for the 1977 rape and murder of his Tyler neighbor, Linda Jo Edwards, 21, before the Court tossed that sentence in 1996, citing prosecutorial misconduct. After a 1999 DNA test cleared him of the rape, and the state’s star witness admitted lying to get leniency, prosecutors took a no-contest plea, and Cook was released. But he continued to maintain his innocence. Cook and Edwards lived in the same apartment complex, and his fingerprints were found on her patio door. Despite testimony that they had not been left recently, he was convicted of killing her after a fellow Scott County Jail detainee, Edward Scott Jackson, testified that he heard Cook confess. Cook was sentenced to death. When that conviction was overturned on appeal in 1992, he was retried, and the jury hung. On his third trial two years later, Cook was again convicted and sentenced to die—until the Court vacated that sentence and he took the plea deal that freed him. Almost 25 years later, Judge Bert Richardson agreed that “when it comes to solid support for actual innocence, this case contains it all,” including “proof of false testimony, admissions of perjury, and new scientific evidence.” See: Ex parte Cook, 2024 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 468.

Turkey: A Turkish prisoner on temporary furlough was caught trying to flee the country on August 14, 2024—by swimming from Başak Island to the Greek island of Kastellorizo, about 3.5 miles away. Gazette Duvar reported that the Turkish coast guard detained the swimmer, identified as “M.H.K.” No information was available about his criminal record nor about his physical condition after attempting the open-water swim.

Washington: Luis Andre Perez, 36, must remain in Stafford Creek Correctional Center after the state Court of Appeals denied an objection to his parole revocation on March 11, 2024. Perez admitted violating DOC rules against having sex with its employees but blamed former Airway Heights Correctional Center guard Andrea Porter for their affair. He also admitted using cocaine with her and was arrested for DUI. Porter resigned from DOC and accused him of choking her and stealing her credit cards, then using them to sign up for dating websites where he pursued other women. Perez countered that she was guilty of “outrageous government conduct” in carrying on their affair, which he called “toxic.” The Court wasn’t buying that, though, and denied his petition. See: In re Pers. Restraint of Perez, 2024 Wash. App. LEXIS 442 (Ct. App.).

Wisconsin: Waupun Correctional Institution prisoner Christopher McDonald’s suicide on August 5, 2024, was the fifth prisoner death in 14 months at the lockup, AP News reported. The following day, former Warden Randall Hepp pleaded not guilty to a felony misconduct charge; as PLN reported, he resigned two days before he was arrested on June 5, 2024, along with eight other prison staffers charged in at least two of the deaths. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.36.] McDonald, 57, was serving sentences totaling over 2,000 years, WJFW in Rhinelander said, for 1993 convictions for homicide and robbery with an habitual offender enhancement.  

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