Thread: 2 notorious Calif. inmates commit suicide

2 notorious Calif. inmates commit suicide

By DON THOMPSON, The Associated Press
7:02 p.m. August 18, 2009

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Two California inmates, both serving life sentences for notorious murders in 1970, died in their cells of apparent suicide over the past week.

Coroners in Amador and Kern counties ruled that both killed themselves through asphyxiation. A state corrections spokeswoman said the inmates died alone in their cells.

The deaths of John Linley Frazier, 62, and Bobby Augusta Davis, 67, come as the state is under federal court order to improve its care of sick and mentally ill inmates. An inmate advocate who was familiar with both prisoners said they had been receiving mental health care.

Frazier was found dead at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento, spokeswoman Michelle Hamilton said Tuesday.

The local coroner's office said he died from "asphyxia due to strangulation" but would not elaborate.

He was convicted of murdering ophthalmologist Victor Ohta, his wife, two young sons and Ohta's secretary in October 1970 in Santa Cruz County. The bodies were found floating in the swimming pool at the family's home in the Soquel area with a note saying the killings were intended to start a war against materialism.

Frazier's body was found last Thursday. Delays in the prison system's internal reporting process combined with three-day-a-month employee furloughs led to the five-day lag in announcing the death, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

On Monday, officials announced that Bobby Augusta Davis, 67, had died a day earlier at Kern Valley State Prison, in the heart of the Central Valley. Davis was found hanging in his cell.

Davis was serving four consecutive life sentences for the April 1970 murders of four California Highway Patrol officers. The so-called "Newhall Incident," which killed George Alleyn, Walt Frago, Roger Gore and James Pence, had been the deadliest encounter for California law enforcement until the fatal shooting of four Oakland police officers in March.

Both men initially were sentenced to death, but their sentences were changed to life in prison in 1974 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down California's capital punishment law.

Jane Kahn, an attorney who monitors inmate suicides and prevention efforts as part of a class-action lawsuit settlement, said both prisoners had been receiving mental health treatment.

Her office received word that Frazier recently had been transferred out of an intensive mental health program into the general prison population. Frazier also had a physical disability, she said.

She blamed prison crowding and a shortage of mental health treatment facilities within the prison system.

"There's a lot of pressure in the system right now to move people ... to the lower level of care because there's just this shortage," Kahn said. "Sometimes people aren't ready to be moved out."

State prisons have had an ongoing problem with inmate suicides, which experts blame in part on severe crowding. It can increase stress and make it more difficult to provide inmates with medication, counseling and other services.

Thornton, the corrections department spokeswoman, said she could not give details of the inmates' deaths or previous care because the investigations were ongoing.

Officials with the prison system's independent inspector general and with a federal court-appointed receiver who oversees inmate medical care said they were just beginning their own investigations and had no further information.

Earlier this month, a federal judicial panel ordered California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 to improve treatment of sick and mentally ill inmates. The panel said the billions of dollars the state has spent on prisons has not prevented inmates from dying regularly from suicides or medical neglect.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... dex=151585

State prisons have had an ongoing problem with inmate suicides, which experts blame in part on severe crowding. It can increase stress and make it more difficult to provide inmates with medication, counseling and other services.

Stress? What about the stress the victims' friends and families have gone through?

Did they get counseling from the Death Panels?

Think how much money we could save if all of them checked out.