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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.

Florida: Judge sentenced man to death during relationship with prosecutor

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Reuters tells us the Florida Supreme Court disbarred former Broward Circuit Judge Ana Gardiner for having a personal relationship with the prosecutor during a death penalty trial in which she sentenced a man to death.

According to an investigation, Gardiner, while hearing a 2007 murder trial, happened to run across prosecutor assistant state attorney Howard Scheinberg at a restaurant. She proceeded to have drinks with him.

Between March 23, several days before a jury returned a guilty verdict against murder suspect Omar Loureiro, and Aug. 24, when Gardiner sentenced Loureiro to death, Gardiner and Scheinberg exchanged 949 cell phone calls and 471 text messages. That means she called Scheinberg more than six times a day, according to my poor math.

There’s no hard evidence of hanky-panky but the last time I called someone that often I married them.

Gardiner initially denied any involvement with Scheinberg but later admitted an “emotional relationship.”

She resigned in 2010, after 11 years as a judge, and was ordered to pay $8,117.18 in court costs. The Supreme Court suspended Scheinberg from practice for two years. He is now working as a paralegal.


Source: acj.com, George Mathis, June 10, 2014
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Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

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From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.
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