JUDGE SUMMONS PRISON OFFICIALS

Wilters Wants To Know Why Women's Drug Treatment Program He Ordered Has Not
Been Started

BAY MINETTE -- A Baldwin County judge has ordered officials from the
Alabama Department of Corrections to explain why they have failed to comply
with his order to create a drug treatment program for women prisoners that
is comparable to the one available to men.

But it remains unclear whether a county judge has the authority to do so.

"That's not the normal place that you argue these issues," said Baldwin
County District Attorney David Whetstone, who suggested that lawyers for
the state prison system are likely to contend that the judge cannot order
changes to internal programs.

Wilters issued his directive in April, when he revoked the probation of
Collene Dyas, 40, who tested positive for illegal drugs in February.

The judge ordered the Mobile woman to serve her 10-year prison sentence on
a 2000 cocaine possession conviction but also gave the Department of
Corrections 30 days to offer treatment comparable to the New Outlook
Therapeutic Community program available to male pris oners.

When that deadline passed without any action from the Corrections
Department, defense attorney John Beck filed motions asking that Wilters
force state officials to "show cause" why they have not complied with his
order and to amend his April probation revocation to allow Dyas to enter a
private recovery facility.

"We just wanted to get her into treatment," Beck said.

Wilters has scheduled a hearing for July 31 and sent subpoenas to
Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell, Ralph Hook, the warden at the St.
Clair Correctional Facility, and Wade Wofford, director of the Therapeutic
Community program at that prison.

Lawyers for the prison system have not yet responded to the subpoena. Brian
Corbett, a spokesman for the agency, said he does not know how officials
will answer. He did say that funding constraints make it impossible to
offer every program at every prison.

Corbett said the Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, where Dyas was
transferred June 18, offers a federally funded drug treatment program that
is identical to the Therapeutic Community regimen except that it lasts six
months as opposed to a year.

Whetstone said Beck's motion to compel the state to comply with Wilters'
order probably is not valid from a legal standpoint.

"From a moral standpoint, from a right-thing-to-do standpoint, the judge
will have to look at that," he said.

As far as amending the probation revocation, Whetstone said, he would have
to examine Dyas' record to determine whether she posed a risk to the
public. If not, he said, "We would probably leave it up to the judge with
no great argu ment one way or another."

Beck said his client has struggled with drug abuse ever since her husband,
Mobile car dealer Stephen Russell Dyas, was gunned down in a triple
homicide in 1997. He said Dyas never has received the kind of intensive
treatment she needs but is not a violence risk.

"The only threat she has ever been to anyone is to herself," he said.

Whetstone said a more proper way to force changes in the state prison
system is private lawsuits against the Department of Corrections, not
directives attached to sentencing orders.

"The judges have become frustrated at the lack of programs available for
them to utilize. So they try to create them by judicial order," he said.
Whetstone said Wilters takes a personal interest in helping defendants beat
drug addictions because of his experience as a former assistant district
attorney in charge of drug prosecutions.

"Judge Wilters' motives are good," Whetstone said. "He saw firsthand as a
DA, an FBI agent, a district judge and now a circuit judge the terrible
scourge drugs have on families."