News Stories 2

Voting-rights groups say state officials have backed out of an agreement to notify felons around the state that they can register to vote if they are on parole.

State officials, however, say they didn't have a deal in the first place. The dispute means that many felons in Ohio may not learn that they have the right to vote, the key goal of a lawsuit filed last month against the secretary of state and 21 county elections boards.

The lawsuit claimed that county elections workers were giving out misleading information about the voting rights of felons. Felons can vote in Ohio as long as they are not in prison.

The suit originally asked for Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to send notices to 100,000 felons to inform them of their voting rights. But the lawyers who filed the suit said they thought they reached an agreement with Philip King, a lawyer in the Ohio attorney general's office, to notify some 34,000 felons through their parole officers. During a Sept. 3 telephone conference with a federal judge, King told the plaintiffs' lawyer that the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction "will support your efforts," according to a transcript of the hearing.

"Through this settlement, they [parole officers] can make the notice available as these individuals come in to report," King said during the call.

David Singleton, director of the Prison Reform Advocacy Center, said he confirmed the agreement in a conversation with King a few days later. Then Singleton dropped the suit against Blackwell and the counties.

But on Sept. 15, another lawyer from the attorney general's office, Richard Coglianese, informed Singleton that there was no agreement because the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction was not named in the lawsuit.

Bob Beasley, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said in an interview Thursday that King's comments on Sept. 3 did not amount to a deal.

"It's not an agreement," Beasley said. "That's a discussion."

Singleton said he took King at his word. He wanted to move the lawsuit along quickly so the state could notify as many felons as possible before Oct. 4, the registration deadline.

Singleton blames Blackwell for the dispute, and believes that partisan politics are at play. Blackwell is a Republican, and felons are assumed to be more likely to vote for Democrats. Coglianese represents Blackwell's office.

The 21 county elections boards named in the suit have agreed to post signs in their offices informing felons that they can register while on parole or probation. Testers working on behalf of the Prison Reform Advocacy Center found that workers in the county offices were often misinformed about felons' voting rights.

The Cost of Conjugal Visitation Outweighs the Benefits

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (Corrections Today, June 2003) 9/24/04

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) has long-since valued the preservation of stable family and community ties as part of the rehabilitation of offenders. As research as shown, a strong community support system is a vital element in the successful transition of offenders from incarceration back into the community. Arguably, the most important correctional tool to assist offenders in maintaining stable family relations is a visitation program that allows for meaningful interaction with the significant persons in their lives. Visitation privileges have been linked to increased positive adjustment while incarcerated and lower recidivism rates upon release. While many states have adopted conjugal visitation programs to further promote family relations, Ohio has not found that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and financial cost to prison administrators, families of offenders and the community.While conjugal visitation is mostly advocated to assist the offender in maintaining strong family bonds, the usefulness of the program in promoting this goal has not been clearly established. Conjugal visits may be more beneficial to maintaining already functional families than addressing the needs of a dysfunctional family, which is often the case for families of incarcerated individuals. While disputable, the majority of programs tend to place undue emphasis on the sexual aspects of a relationship rather than promoting emotionally healthy relations, such as when families are involved in communal family visitation. In addition, most conjugal visitation programs recognize only legal marriages between heterosexual couples. The establishment of non-traditional family support systems has become more common yet conjugal visitation programs do not recognize these relationships, opening administrators to claims of discrimination.Instead of promoting healthy family bonding, the unsupervised nature of conjugal visits may actually lead to an increased risk to the physical safety of family members in some cases. While the literature is scant to document the incident of family violence during conjugal visits, evidence suggests that male perpetrators of family violence remain predisposed to committing further violence during conjugal visits. Supervised visitation that enables interaction in a more secure environment may better serve families involved in such dysfunctional relationships.The risk to individuals who participate in conjugal visitation is not limited to dysfunctional family interactions. Clearly, conjugal visitation increases the risk of spreading sexually transmitted diseases by an already identified high-risk population. While prison administrators can provide education and the means to practice safe sex, there is in inherent inability to ensure adherence to safe sex practices. Conjugal visitation requires administrators to give careful consideration to the legal liabilities in fostering sexual interaction among potentially infected offenders and/or their partners. States that have initiated such visitation programs are forced to address the tough moral and ethical dilemma of permitting conjugal visitation for offenders known to be infected, while being unable to know about or prevent such privileges with infected visitors. The prison and, thus, the taxpayer, bears the increased cost of treating individuals who become infected with STDs.Conjugal visitation also presents an ethical dilemma by increasing the chance of pregnancy when the incarcerated partner often lacks the ability to provide financial and emotional support to the partner and resulting child. Children born as a result of conjugal visitation are denied important emotional bonding with the incarcerated parent. With female offenders, the prison is also forced to finance the cost for medical care of the mother during her pregnancy.The high-risk nature of conjugal visitation also makes it an expensive program when providing for necessary security precautions. Conjugal visitation programs present an increased cost to provide adequate space to offer such privileges in a dignified, yet secure, manner. Most states that have implemented conjugal visitation programs have had to build or supply dedicated space to accommodate private visits. Increased access for conveying contraband due to the relaxed security conditions also presents a valid concern.One of the most persuasive arguments against the implementation of conjugal visitation is the disinclination of the public to accept programs that provide extra privileges to convicted felons at a cost to the taxpayer. The "get tough" stance on punishing offenders has led to a re-emphasis on the punitive nature of prison sentences, unfortunately making programs, such as the use of tobacco products and recreational equipment, highly unpopular. With this shift in paradigm, there is a public demand for limiting all extraneous inmate privileges that appear to only benefit inmates.To further advance the effort to increase strong family bonds, ODRC has included family involvement in its newly adopted offender re-entry philosophy. ODRC is in the process of developing new avenues for engaging families during an offender's incarceration through the adoption of a family orientation program, the formation of a Family Council, and innovation policy changes calling for greater family involvement during confinement and/or any period of community supervision that follows.

A federal judge ruled Friday that a former Santa Clarita Realtor charged with laundering money in a kidnap-and-murder scheme must remain behind bars until her trial Nov. 16.

The judge denied bail for Gitte Lellan, 42, who will remain in custody in downtown Los Angeles until the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugdale said. Lellan posed a flight risk, Dugdale said. Her attorney, Philip Deitch, did not return calls for comment.

Lellan's son, Marcus, was ordered deported to his native Denmark on July 28. He served time in state and federal prisons for the deaths of four people in a car crash in February 2000 that killed three Canyon High School students.

Gitte Lellan was arrested July 29 and faces three counts of money laundering, conspiracy and aiding and abetting.

A federal grand jury said Lellan, a Beverly Hills resident, conspired with and laundered money for five people suspected of killing Russian immigrants after ransoms were paid by friends or family in 2002.

The indictment states that Lellan laundered $48,730 of the alleged $969,000 in ransom money.

Three of the men accused of murder in the case could face capital punishment. Their victims included three men and one woman, whose bodies were found submerged in a Northern California reservoir.

Lellan emigrated from Denmark in 1988 with her now ex-husband and two children.

Marcus Lellan was driving his car at a high rate of speed on Soledad Canyon Road in Canyon Country on Feb. 17, 2000, when the car went airborne and crashed into oncoming traffic.

Killed in the crash were Rodney Adams, 45, whose car was hit head-on, and three teenage passengers in Lellan's car: Dominick Ianozzi and brothers Timothy and Danny Reynolds.

CORSICANA - A state trooper resigned hours before he was arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault against a minor, officials said today

Former Department of Public Safety Trooper Josue Velasquez, 25, was arrested Friday after about a year as trooper in Corsicana, DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said. He remained jailed at the Navarro County Justice Center on bonds
totaling $100,000.

Texas Ranger Steve Foster, who is investigating the case, told The Associated Press Monday that Velasquez's 14-year-old stepdaughter "made an outcry" to her school counselor, alleging that the former trooper had abused
her for about a year.

A message left for Velasquez's attorney was not immediately returned today.

Officials said such charges against troopers are rare but distressing.

"It's not ever good to have one of your employees who's supposed to be upholding the law to be charged with an offense of this kind," said Foster, who is based in Athens.

Mange said Velasquez graduated from recruit school in September of 2003 and had been stationed in Corsicana since then.

"Certainly, we're very disappointed," she said. "We are going to assist the agencies investigating in any way that we can to see this come to an appropriate end."