Slain Inmate Hugo Pinell Was a Target of Prison Gangs, His Lawyer Says
Inmate Hugo Pinell, 71, was killed Wednesday during a prison yard attack. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
By PAIGE ST. JOHN
To prison rights activists and black militants on the outside, Hugo Pinell was the imprisoned legacy of a violent movement from the 1970s, one of the San Quentin Six whose failed attempt at a prison break left six people dead.
To his prison lawyer, Pinell was a target, a "marked man," his life threatened by some of the very gangs he was alleged to have helped grow. That lawyer, Keith Wattley, says it was no accident Pinell was killed Wednesday just weeks after being released from isolation to a general prison yard.
"The only mystery is, why after all these attacks and threats against him, they would send him out to be killed," Wattley said by telephone Thursday.
California corrections officials said two inmates at the maximum-security prison outside Sacramento where Pinell was housed are suspected of stabbing to death the 71-year-old inmate. That in turn triggered a riot on the prison yard, involving some 70 inmates and lasting approximately 20 minutes, said department spokeswoman Terry Thornton.
A total of 29 inmates were injured, 11 taken to the hospital for treatment, and five admitted for care. One of those, a 29-year-old prisoner, remained in critical condition Thursday with severe head injuries and multiple stab wounds.
Thornton said that while the riot remains under investigation, she could not comment on Wattley's allegations that prison officials knew Pinell was in danger, and that he had asked several months ago that Pinell be protected.
"The safety and security of all inmates is of utmost importance to CDCR," she said.
Transcripts from a May 2014 parole board hearing contain references to threats against Pinell.
"There are multiple instances that show he's been actually the victim of assaults by whites, by members of the [Black Guerrilla Family]," Wattley told the board, according to the transcript.
Pinell had spent nearly 45 years in solitary confinement, longer than any other prisoner in the state system. He was moved out of isolation at Pelican Bay State Prison in January 2014 after the state adopted new policies making active gang participation a requirement for an inmate to be kept segregated. Two weeks ago at his new prison, he was transferred to a general cellblock of high-security inmates. He was killed on the exercise yard with those inmates.
Pinell was sentenced to a life with the possibility of parole for a 1965 rape, and in 1971 attacked and killed a corrections officer at prison in Soledad.
In August of that same year, he joined prison militant George Jackson and five others in a violent escape attempt from San Quentin State Prison, in which three officers and two white inmates were killed. Jackson was shot and killed during the attempt. Pinell was convicted of assault for slitting the throats of two officers.
Parole commissioners focused on Pinell's violent prison history, including multiple assaults on other inmates. Another prisoner in his own parole hearing testified that in 1978 Pinell attempted to recruit him to the Black Guerrilla Family. When the prisoner refused to join, he was set up for attack, according to allegations recorded in hearing transcripts.
"I could feel the knives going through me and chinking the cement on the other side," the inmate testified.
Wattley said that after landing in solitary confinement, Pinell changed. In three decades, he had no disciplinary actions, a record confirmed by parole commissioners at their hearing. He hoped to eventually win parole, Wattley said.
"The story that has come out so far is about the monster that was put down,'" Wattley said. "I have never known him to be that."
Hugo Pinell, infamous 'San Quentin Six' member, killed in prison riot
DON THOMPSON, Associated Press
7:05 PM, Aug 13, 2015
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Hugo Pinell, a notorious killer with ties to the 1960s and 1970s black revolutionary movement, spent the last 45 years in California's prison isolation units partly for his own protection. Just days after he was moved into the general prison population, fellow inmates stabbed him death in an exercise yard.
Now family members are demanding answers, arguing that authorities at the state prison east of Sacramento should have known he would be a marked man. Pinell, 71, became infamous a generation ago for his role as one of the San Quentin 6, helping to slit the throat of San Quentin prison guards during a failed 1971 escape attempt that killed six.
"He has been a target from just about every group in prison because of his notoriety and what he did years ago," Keith Wattley, his attorney, said a day after the killing on Wednesday. "This was foreseeable, which is what makes it so much worse and why the family is looking for answers as to why prison officials let this happen."
Pinell was the longest-serving inmate in California's prison isolation units until he became one of nearly 1,000 inmates moved out of those units and into the general population in recent months as the state responded to criticism that too many inmates were being held in solitary confinement.
Pinell, nicknamed "Yogi Bear," was killed Wednesday by two other inmates in an exercise yard at California State Prison, Sacramento, prison officials said. His family may consider a wrongful death lawsuit, his attorney said Thursday.
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that because the investigation is ongoing she could not respond to the criticism of his transfer to the general prison population, nor say if officials feared for Pinell's safety.
"They don't know why these two inmates attacked him yet," she said. "That's what we hope to learn from the investigation."
The slaying at the maximum security facility east of Sacramento triggered a melee by about 70 other inmates that sent 11 prisoners to outside hospitals with stab wounds, corrections officials said. Five remained hospitalized Thursday, one in critical condition.
Despite spending nearly all of his adult life locked up, Pinell maintained a strong following outside the prison walls.
He wrote long letters posted to a website by supporters, addressing the civil rights movement and the decades of solitary confinement that he likened to being "buried alive," with no contact visits with relatives or friends since December 1970. He was allowed a 15-minute contact meeting to marry a woman, who has since died.
Pinell survived repeated assassination attempts over the years even while he was kept isolated from other prisoners, first in administrative segregation cells and later in Pelican Bay State Prison's security housing unit with other purported gang leaders.
"He's had other prisoners throw bombs into his cell, shoot him with prison-manufactured guns, stab him and otherwise physically attack him," Wattley said. Most attacks were in the 1970s and 1980s, but Pinell had death threats as recently as this year, after he was moved to the prison dubbed "New Folsom" that houses about 2,300 inmates in the suburb 25 miles east of Sacramento.
Many of the assaults and threats were by members of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, which wanted to kill Pinell for his purported involvement in the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang with San Quentin 6 ringleader George Jackson, who was killed in the escape attempt, Wattley said. Pinell long denied any gang connection, but decades ago he led other black inmates who refused to accept some prison policies.
"Being in this kind of confinement is terrible, yes, in many ways, but trying to make it in the streets is harder, more challenging, and we knew that, in the 60s, and that's why we were working hard to change and prepare for the streets reality," Pinell wrote in a letter posted on the website, which includes instructions on how to send him money and cards.
His supporters describe him as a political prisoner and "a revolutionary hero." In his letters, he described learning at San Quentin of the Black Liberation Movement and efforts to improve the lives of black prisoners.
"The story or the image about him and his leadership role morphed into an image of him as a leader of a prison gang, a violent prison gang," Wattley said. "At this point it's hard to discern what is fact and how much is fiction."
Pinell was initially sentenced to life in prison in 1965 for a San Francisco-area rape. He received a second life sentence for killing Correctional Officer R.J. McCarthy in 1971 at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, and a third life sentence for the San Quentin escape attempt after he was convicted of assaulting two correctional officers.
He was denied parole 10 times, most recently in May 2014.
Pinell's daughter, Allegra Taylor of Sacramento, would not comment when reached by telephone Thursday.
Pinell, who immigrated to the United States from Nicaragua as a child, is also survived by his mother, now in her 90s, and siblings, Wattley said.
___
Associated Press Correspondent Juliet Williams contributed to this story.
Death of infamous inmate triggers California prison riot
Some 70 state prison inmates wielding makeshift weapons were involved in the melee.
By Sanya Mansoor
Staff writer AUGUST 13, 2015
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation/AP/FileView Caption1 of 2
The slaying of a prisoner who was involved in a bloody 1971 San Quentin escape attempt triggered a riot in the maximum security prison in California, which involved 70 inmates, officials said.
The corrections department said inmate-made weapons were used in the stabbing melee. They would not identify the alleged attacker for his own protection.
Eleven prisoners were taken to hospitals with stab wounds and "numerous" others were injured during the incident at California State Prison-Sacramento just before 1 p.m., the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.
Officials identified the inmate killed as Hugo Pinell, who had been imprisoned for 50 years. Mr. Pinell was originally convicted of rape and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
He was later convicted in the March 1971 murder of a prison guard as part of an escape attempt, which resulted in the deaths of three guards, two inmate trustees and escape ringleader, George Jackson.
Correctional Officer Urbano Rubiaco Jr. survived the incident to later testify that Pinell used a knife made of razor blades embedded in a toothbrush handle to slash Officer Rubiaco's throat.
Pinell’s death did not come as a complete surprise to his attorney, Keith Wattley of Oakland, who told The Sacramento Bee he learned Tuesday that his client – the target of prison attacks in the past – had been moved into the general population shortly before his death.
“The threat of harm to him has been well known by prison officials,” Wattley said. He added that Pinell had been the target of “long-standing threats,” but said he could not elaborate Wednesday.
So what makes prison riots likely to occur?
The Christian Science Monitor recently probed the causes of prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
The story quoted a report on root causes of violence in Georgia’s prisons and found it includes “failures of basic security, inadequate supervision, and accessibility to lethal weapons and cellphones.” Many prisons around the nation face similar challenges, law enforcement experts say.
Another study by Karen F. Lahm at Wright State University on inmate-on-inmate assault investigated data from 1,054 male inmates in 30 prisons and revealed aggressive inmates were found to commit more assaults in prisoners that were more crowded and had a greater percentage of younger inmates.
This report includes material from Reuters and The Associated Press.
By PAIGE ST. JOHN
To prison rights activists and black militants on the outside, Hugo Pinell was the imprisoned legacy of a violent movement from the 1970s, one of the San Quentin Six whose failed attempt at a prison break left six people dead.
To his prison lawyer, Pinell was a target, a "marked man," his life threatened by some of the very gangs he was alleged to have helped grow. That lawyer, Keith Wattley, says it was no accident Pinell was killed Wednesday just weeks after being released from isolation to a general prison yard.
"The only mystery is, why after all these attacks and threats against him, they would send him out to be killed," Wattley said by telephone Thursday.
California corrections officials said two inmates at the maximum-security prison outside Sacramento where Pinell was housed are suspected of stabbing to death the 71-year-old inmate. That in turn triggered a riot on the prison yard, involving some 70 inmates and lasting approximately 20 minutes, said department spokeswoman Terry Thornton.
A total of 29 inmates were injured, 11 taken to the hospital for treatment, and five admitted for care. One of those, a 29-year-old prisoner, remained in critical condition Thursday with severe head injuries and multiple stab wounds.
Thornton said that while the riot remains under investigation, she could not comment on Wattley's allegations that prison officials knew Pinell was in danger, and that he had asked several months ago that Pinell be protected.
"The safety and security of all inmates is of utmost importance to CDCR," she said.
Transcripts from a May 2014 parole board hearing contain references to threats against Pinell.
"There are multiple instances that show he's been actually the victim of assaults by whites, by members of the [Black Guerrilla Family]," Wattley told the board, according to the transcript.
Pinell had spent nearly 45 years in solitary confinement, longer than any other prisoner in the state system. He was moved out of isolation at Pelican Bay State Prison in January 2014 after the state adopted new policies making active gang participation a requirement for an inmate to be kept segregated. Two weeks ago at his new prison, he was transferred to a general cellblock of high-security inmates. He was killed on the exercise yard with those inmates.
Pinell was sentenced to a life with the possibility of parole for a 1965 rape, and in 1971 attacked and killed a corrections officer at prison in Soledad.
In August of that same year, he joined prison militant George Jackson and five others in a violent escape attempt from San Quentin State Prison, in which three officers and two white inmates were killed. Jackson was shot and killed during the attempt. Pinell was convicted of assault for slitting the throats of two officers.
Parole commissioners focused on Pinell's violent prison history, including multiple assaults on other inmates. Another prisoner in his own parole hearing testified that in 1978 Pinell attempted to recruit him to the Black Guerrilla Family. When the prisoner refused to join, he was set up for attack, according to allegations recorded in hearing transcripts.
"I could feel the knives going through me and chinking the cement on the other side," the inmate testified.
Wattley said that after landing in solitary confinement, Pinell changed. In three decades, he had no disciplinary actions, a record confirmed by parole commissioners at their hearing. He hoped to eventually win parole, Wattley said.
"The story that has come out so far is about the monster that was put down,'" Wattley said. "I have never known him to be that."
Hugo Pinell, infamous 'San Quentin Six' member, killed in prison riot
DON THOMPSON, Associated Press
7:05 PM, Aug 13, 2015
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Hugo Pinell, a notorious killer with ties to the 1960s and 1970s black revolutionary movement, spent the last 45 years in California's prison isolation units partly for his own protection. Just days after he was moved into the general prison population, fellow inmates stabbed him death in an exercise yard.
Now family members are demanding answers, arguing that authorities at the state prison east of Sacramento should have known he would be a marked man. Pinell, 71, became infamous a generation ago for his role as one of the San Quentin 6, helping to slit the throat of San Quentin prison guards during a failed 1971 escape attempt that killed six.
"He has been a target from just about every group in prison because of his notoriety and what he did years ago," Keith Wattley, his attorney, said a day after the killing on Wednesday. "This was foreseeable, which is what makes it so much worse and why the family is looking for answers as to why prison officials let this happen."
Pinell was the longest-serving inmate in California's prison isolation units until he became one of nearly 1,000 inmates moved out of those units and into the general population in recent months as the state responded to criticism that too many inmates were being held in solitary confinement.
Pinell, nicknamed "Yogi Bear," was killed Wednesday by two other inmates in an exercise yard at California State Prison, Sacramento, prison officials said. His family may consider a wrongful death lawsuit, his attorney said Thursday.
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that because the investigation is ongoing she could not respond to the criticism of his transfer to the general prison population, nor say if officials feared for Pinell's safety.
"They don't know why these two inmates attacked him yet," she said. "That's what we hope to learn from the investigation."
The slaying at the maximum security facility east of Sacramento triggered a melee by about 70 other inmates that sent 11 prisoners to outside hospitals with stab wounds, corrections officials said. Five remained hospitalized Thursday, one in critical condition.
Despite spending nearly all of his adult life locked up, Pinell maintained a strong following outside the prison walls.
He wrote long letters posted to a website by supporters, addressing the civil rights movement and the decades of solitary confinement that he likened to being "buried alive," with no contact visits with relatives or friends since December 1970. He was allowed a 15-minute contact meeting to marry a woman, who has since died.
Pinell survived repeated assassination attempts over the years even while he was kept isolated from other prisoners, first in administrative segregation cells and later in Pelican Bay State Prison's security housing unit with other purported gang leaders.
"He's had other prisoners throw bombs into his cell, shoot him with prison-manufactured guns, stab him and otherwise physically attack him," Wattley said. Most attacks were in the 1970s and 1980s, but Pinell had death threats as recently as this year, after he was moved to the prison dubbed "New Folsom" that houses about 2,300 inmates in the suburb 25 miles east of Sacramento.
Many of the assaults and threats were by members of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, which wanted to kill Pinell for his purported involvement in the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang with San Quentin 6 ringleader George Jackson, who was killed in the escape attempt, Wattley said. Pinell long denied any gang connection, but decades ago he led other black inmates who refused to accept some prison policies.
"Being in this kind of confinement is terrible, yes, in many ways, but trying to make it in the streets is harder, more challenging, and we knew that, in the 60s, and that's why we were working hard to change and prepare for the streets reality," Pinell wrote in a letter posted on the website, which includes instructions on how to send him money and cards.
His supporters describe him as a political prisoner and "a revolutionary hero." In his letters, he described learning at San Quentin of the Black Liberation Movement and efforts to improve the lives of black prisoners.
"The story or the image about him and his leadership role morphed into an image of him as a leader of a prison gang, a violent prison gang," Wattley said. "At this point it's hard to discern what is fact and how much is fiction."
Pinell was initially sentenced to life in prison in 1965 for a San Francisco-area rape. He received a second life sentence for killing Correctional Officer R.J. McCarthy in 1971 at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, and a third life sentence for the San Quentin escape attempt after he was convicted of assaulting two correctional officers.
He was denied parole 10 times, most recently in May 2014.
Pinell's daughter, Allegra Taylor of Sacramento, would not comment when reached by telephone Thursday.
Pinell, who immigrated to the United States from Nicaragua as a child, is also survived by his mother, now in her 90s, and siblings, Wattley said.
___
Associated Press Correspondent Juliet Williams contributed to this story.
Death of infamous inmate triggers California prison riot
Some 70 state prison inmates wielding makeshift weapons were involved in the melee.
By Sanya Mansoor
Staff writer AUGUST 13, 2015
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation/AP/FileView Caption1 of 2
The slaying of a prisoner who was involved in a bloody 1971 San Quentin escape attempt triggered a riot in the maximum security prison in California, which involved 70 inmates, officials said.
The corrections department said inmate-made weapons were used in the stabbing melee. They would not identify the alleged attacker for his own protection.
Eleven prisoners were taken to hospitals with stab wounds and "numerous" others were injured during the incident at California State Prison-Sacramento just before 1 p.m., the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.
Officials identified the inmate killed as Hugo Pinell, who had been imprisoned for 50 years. Mr. Pinell was originally convicted of rape and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
He was later convicted in the March 1971 murder of a prison guard as part of an escape attempt, which resulted in the deaths of three guards, two inmate trustees and escape ringleader, George Jackson.
Correctional Officer Urbano Rubiaco Jr. survived the incident to later testify that Pinell used a knife made of razor blades embedded in a toothbrush handle to slash Officer Rubiaco's throat.
Pinell’s death did not come as a complete surprise to his attorney, Keith Wattley of Oakland, who told The Sacramento Bee he learned Tuesday that his client – the target of prison attacks in the past – had been moved into the general population shortly before his death.
“The threat of harm to him has been well known by prison officials,” Wattley said. He added that Pinell had been the target of “long-standing threats,” but said he could not elaborate Wednesday.
So what makes prison riots likely to occur?
The Christian Science Monitor recently probed the causes of prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
The story quoted a report on root causes of violence in Georgia’s prisons and found it includes “failures of basic security, inadequate supervision, and accessibility to lethal weapons and cellphones.” Many prisons around the nation face similar challenges, law enforcement experts say.
Another study by Karen F. Lahm at Wright State University on inmate-on-inmate assault investigated data from 1,054 male inmates in 30 prisons and revealed aggressive inmates were found to commit more assaults in prisoners that were more crowded and had a greater percentage of younger inmates.
This report includes material from Reuters and The Associated Press.
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