THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 20, 1996 TAG: 9604200330
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LaFAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
As summer weather approached and temperatures in the state neared 80, officials at Mecklenburg Correctional Center in Boydton this week confiscated every electric fan in the prison.
The decision to take all fans away from the 326 inmates housed in the un-airconditioned, maximum-security prison came Wednesday after correctional officers discovered that death row inmate Michael Williams had used his fan to try to drill a hole in a concrete wall behind his bed.
On Thursday, inmates received a memo from the facility's warden, J.D. Netherland: ``Due to the increase of weapons fashioned from shafts of fans, fans will no longer be allowed in the Mecklenburg Correctional Center.''
Department of Corrections officials have launched an investigation into the incident involving Williams and into the improper use of fan parts at Mecklenburg and all other state prisons, said Bill Cimimo, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety.
If inmates at other prisons are also found to be using their fans as drills or fashioning weapons from fan parts, he said, their fans will be confiscated, too.
``If (a fan) can break apart concrete, what harm could it do to another inmate or a correctional officer?'' said Cimino. ``It's a constant battle. Inmates are always trying to find ways to beat the system, be it fashioning weapons or gaining an advantage over correctional officers.''
Mecklenburg inmates say the fans are the only source of cool air in the prison, where summertime temperatures often soar above 100 degrees. Even with the fans, which inmates purchase from the prison canteen for about $22, prisoners with asthma and other respiratory illnesses routinely faint, they say.
``Dudes that don't have a fan actually be getting physically sick in here,'' said John Colclasure, an inmate serving life plus 156 years in Mecklenburg's Building 2 for murder and other crimes.
``That's why the first thing, before they buy a radio, before they buy a TV, dudes at Mecklenburg buy a fan. Because these cells are ovens.''
On Friday morning, inmates in the prison's punitive segregation unit expressed their fury by throwing urine and feces at correctional officers. The officers ran from the unit, said Joe O'Dell, an inmate on death row, which is adjacent to the punitive segregation unit. A second group of officers soon returned with electronic shields to take the inmates from their cells.
``Everybody is completely upset because these cells get extremely hot in the summertime,'' said another death row inmate, Lem Tuggle.
``There are absolutely no exhaust fans, half the windows don't open, and there's one circulator per pod that pulls air from the pod area and pushes it into the cells. Right now, they still got the heat on and it's 80 degrees outside.''
According to Cimino, the air flow in the prison is adequate and in keeping with regulations set by the Virginia Board of Corrections. Those regulations call for ``at least seven cubic feet per minute of outside air or recirculated air containing no less than 25 percent outside air per minute per occupant.''
Some inmates questioned the fairness of punishing the entire prison population because Williams tried to drill a hole. Williams, who is on death row for killing an elderly couple in Cumberland County and four men in Prince Edward County, is mentally ill, they say.
Other inmates, like Colclasure, scoffed at the idea that any part of the fans available at the prison canteen could have value as a weapon or tool.
``I mean, let's be real,'' he said. ``You can take your hand and grab a hold of that a fan blade while it's moving. . . . It don't have enough power to drill no hole through no wall. 'Cause if it did, escape-prone inmates such as myself would have tried it. What done happened is the dude probably watched that old movie, `Escape from Alcatraz,' and he figured he'd try it out.''
Williams has been on death row since 1994. In March 1994, he and O'Dell wrote a letter to Gov. George F. Allen asking to have their bodies stuffed by a taxidermist after their executions and displayed in public to deter crime.
A year later, in April 1995, Williams and another inmate were hospitalized after attempting suicide together. by CNB