Frank Smith private prison expert talks about McCluskey murder trial == Kingman escape

My friend Frank Smith left this feedback below at the Tri-Valley Central/Casa Grande Dispatch, and similar feedback at the Cody, Wyoming paper.

I drove to Albuquerque twice and listened to the testimony among many others, of the hijacked East Indian driver and McCluskey's ex-wife last week, and Charlie's fellow escapee Tracy Province this week.  Lots of law enforcement officers testified.

This case has already cost taxpayers over a million dollars and will cost millions more.

McCluskey and his fellow escapees should never have been sent to Kingman, one of many shoddy spec prisons built by hustlers from Oklahoma.

It was patently unsafe, poorly built, horribly maintained, and staffed by guards whom the warden admitted were "80% new, or newly promoted." A single fence, burned out yard lights, alarms that hadn't worked in years and guards who couldn't count stood between the convicts and the public.

The Arizona DOC provided only a fig leaf of oversight for the incompetent operators, Management and Training Corporation of Utah.

Jan Brewer and DOC director Chuck Ryan sent murderers, rapists, kidnappers and member of security threat groups to Kingman.

Her relationship with the for-profit prison industry got her elected governor.

Province, a lifer, and McCluskey who was doing 15 years and had a parole hold from Pennsylvania, were members of the Aryan Brotherhood gang.

A flood of campaign contributions kept the flow going to this crackerbox presenting to be a secure facility.

It took many hours for the escape to be discovered, still longer before outside law enforcement was notified but even then, the prison didn't know which prisoners had gotten out. The ensuing search would have embarrassed the Keystone Kops.

The bungling continued for three weeks as the escapees hijacked, robbed, shot it out, kidnapped and murdered their way across the west.

FBI Agent "Mac" McCaskill seemed to see an opportunity for career advancement as he had Province, the second escapee, retrace the steps of himself and his companions, and he partied with Tracy. There was audio played at the trial of the two laughing it up in state after state, with an abundance of promises for leniency made to Province even before McCluskey and his accomplice cousin were captured.

When the nationwide chase came to an end in an eastern Arizona campground, there was still more million dollar bungling. McCluskey admitted his guilt, but only after asking for an attorney and not being provided with one. All his admissions were consequently thrown out.

Now the District Court in Albuquerque is expected to be jammed for four months after McCaskill and another self-promoter, U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, Kenneth J. Gonzales went forward with the death penalty trial McCaskill had plotted for from the beginning.

Gonzales has already gotten his reward. Eric Holder, who refused plea mediation offered by a retired judge signed off on the capital trial, then got Gonzales appointed to a federal judgeship in New Mexico two weeks ago.

Taxpayers need to be told why no one seems to be both literally and figuratively minding the store