LOCKED ALONE IN X WING

Critics say system impairs ability to rejoin society

Prison officials insist punishment is not point of solitary confinment

Prison officials defend solitary confinement; human-rights advocates call it
cruel punishment For convicted murderer Askari Muhammad, formerly Thomas
Knight, one of the happiest moments of his life came when he was moved back
onto Death Row.

Back into an 8 x 10 cell with a cot and a metal toilet. Back to cell bars he
could see through into a narrow, dim hallway. Back to two visits in the yard
a week. Back to a few books and a 13-inch black and white TV. And, most
important, back to the sounds of life. After 12 years in solitary
confinement -- the record at Florida State Prison (FSP) in Starke --
Muhammad moved to a small, bleak cell to await execution, a move that was a
definite step up.

FSP is the end of the line for prisoners in Florida. It is the strictest,
bleakest, most prison-like prison in the state -- a treeless, wind-swept
compound of metal, concrete and surgically sharp razor wire. It is home to
Death Row and the electric chair.

And in the bowels of FSP is X Wing: a prison within a prison. Mini-storage
containers off a narrow corridor where inmates cannot be seen or heard. Nor
do they see or hear. Instead, they sit and stare at four closed walls.
Sometimes for years. For Muhammad, it was 12 years -- longer than anyone.

Correctional officers call X Wing "the worst of the worst for the worst of
the worst." Human-rights investigators call it "cruel and unusual
punishment." Psychiatrists study it and write about the irreversible mental
damage to those held there for more than a few months.

Twenty-three inmates now are incarcerated on X. Some have been there for
years, though none for as long as Muhammad. Like him, they are put there
because of something they did in the prison: Maybe they killed someone, as
he did. Maybe they hurt someone or threatened to do something that would
disrupt the prison. Maybe they damaged property or tried to escape. Or got
caught with contraband, more than once. But whatever they did, like
Muhammad, it is usually something else that keeps them there: breaking
prison rules while they are in solitary confinement.

"My former experience with the conditions in solitary at FSP and the
arbitrary decisions that keep people there raised questions about how much
power the Department of Corrections should have beyond the jurisdiction of
the courts," says Randall Berg, executive director of the Florida Justice
Institute, a public-interest organization.

In 1993, Berg represented X Wing inmate William Van Poyck, who sued the
Department of Corrections for "imposing unduly harsh conditions of
confinement . . . in solitary confinement . . . that caused serious
psychological problems." The department settled and Van Poyck, got an
undisclosed amount of money. But, still, X Wing continues -- currently with
Van Poyck back for 30 days.

Debbie Buchanan, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections:
"Inmates are kept on X Wing because they have become huge management
problems. An inmate works his way onto X, and he can work his way out. X
Wing is not to punish; it is to manage inmates who are dangerous or a
security risk or a disciplinary problem. It is there because we have inmates
we can't keep under control in any other way."

`LIKE LIVING IN A COFFIN' 7 by 8 feet, a solitary cell is a windowless vault

X Wing consists of 24 seven-foot by eight-foot sealed vaults on the wing
that ends with the electric chair. Each vault has two doors, one in front of
the other. The inside door is barred and covered with steel mesh, the other
solid steel. The windowless boxes have beige concrete floors and beige
concrete walls. Instead of furniture, there is a concrete slab with a pad
for a bed, a metal toilet, a metal sink and a metal box.

In his recent book, Black's Law, Miami attorney Roy Black, who represented
Muhammad in the mid-'90s, described X-Wing: "No window, no breeze, no air
conditioning to get through the brutal Florida summers, no one to talk to
and only that solid steel door to look at . . . like living in a coffin."

According to prison rules, inmates on X for being disciplinary problems
could possibly get off the wing in six months or less. But if they receive
disciplinary infractions while there, which most do, they stay put, and
their rights continue to be restricted: No reading materials other than
their own legal documents. No visits. No exercise and no going outside.
Sometimes, no open outer door or way to see out of the cell. Sometimes,
three "management meals" a day -- a loaf of bread with imitation cheese and
grated carrots baked into it and a big glass of water. The only right that
inmates on X are guaranteed is a five-minute shower three times a week.

"The extreme isolation causes substantial mental deterioration in a short
amount of time, which makes inmates more impulsive and uncontrollable. This
sends them further and further into the belly of the beast with no way out,"
says Harvard psychiatrist Stuart Grassian.

Human Rights Watch described X Wing in 1991 as "a particularly glaring
example of . . . a maxi-maxi [maximum security confinement cell] with
conditions particularly difficult to bear." They concluded that
incarceration there "clearly amounts to corporal punishment explicitly
prohibited under the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
Prisoners." BREAKING PRISON RULES Response to infractions called `draconian'

Mark DeFriest, 39, is on X Wing right now. He has been in the vault for
about eight years -- except for less than a year off in 1996, when he got an
amnesty. The original crime that put DeFriest in jail in 1978 was stealing a
truck, for which he served a year. Then, while on probation, he was arrested
for having a gun in his possession. For this, he got four more years. He
then escaped from jail and stole another truck, robbed some stores and ran
up a string of felonies including armed burglary, which got him a 49-year
sentence.

Back in the slammer, DeFriest became notorious for stashing contraband in
his mouth and rectum: packets of cocaine and marijuana, cell keys, handcuff
keys, hacksaws, knives, razor blades and cash. Even a Walkman with
earphones. He also became notorious for finding creative ways to get out of
his cell. Because of this, he was moved to X Wing from 1991 to 1996 and back
again in 1997.

He is the only inmate to have escaped from X Wing, which he did by
fashioning a fragment of aluminum into a master key. But he got caught
before getting out of the prison. He is also the only inmate to have spent
so much time at FSP and on X, without ever having physically harmed another
person.

Now, both doors of DeFriest's cell are usually kept shut and he can't see
out. Nor does he get any exercise or books. His most recent disciplinary
infraction on Feb. 17 further extended his stay on X: A guard found a prison
library book in his cell -- Tom Clancy's Power Plays. To make matters worse,
some pages were missing. Corrections officials won't say when DeFriest will
get off X. He is scheduled to get out of prison when he is 75.

Lionel Lespinasse, 24, is also on X. He went there from Charlotte
Correctional Institute after slamming his food tray into a guard. The guard
noted in his report that he had not been injured, but Lespinasse still
landed on X at FSP. After a few days in the vault, Lespinasse extended his
stay by going bonkers behind the double doors and breaking the metal heater
in his cell.

He is in prison because, at 18, he stole a car and got a year in jail. At
21, he was convicted in a robbery and a carjacking. He is scheduled to get
out in 35 years.

Of the current group in X, James Agan, 73, is the oldest. Agan was put in
FSP solitary because he stabbed another prisoner to death, after being
convicted of an earlier murder. But it's not clear what has kept him there
for almost five years. Recently, he said he didn't want to take a shower. He
spit when a guard rolled him in his wheelchair to the shower and threw urine
from the big yellow hose in his side. Mostly, though, he sits in his
wheelchair with his head down, showing signs of the "disassociating from
reality" that psychiatrist Grassian says X-Wing inmates inevitably display.

Buchanan says he is there because his wheelchair rolls in the shower easily,
but corrections officers say it's because he wants to be there, away from
other prisoners because he thinks it keeps him out of trouble. But Agan
complains about X, saying that when he was on Death Row, before his death
sentence was commuted to life, things were better. At least he had a small
TV to help him pass the time.

But not all of the inmates on X are lifers or on Death Row. Most have a
release date. One of these inmates is Sol Hoke, 21, who had been at
Charlotte Correctional Institute for six years for robbery and burglary.
Hoke was sent to X at FSP in April, after he threw his lunch at a guard and
refused to be handcuffed. For a while, he was on bread and water management
meals. Hoke's stay on X and his release in five years raises the question of
what effect isolation on X has on an inmate's ability to reintegrate into
society.

Jack Fevurly, a retired federal prison administrator for a 10-state area,
studied X Wing in the early '90s and wrote a report that said it was not up
to national correctional standards. He described it as "draconian" and
"cruel."

Fevurly now says it is still not up to these standards: "Inmates should have
minimal things -- like five hours of exercise a week, books, a place to
write, a time to go outside. If you take too much away, they become so
severely impaired they're a bigger problem when they get out than when they
went in." DEATH ROW'S LAST STOP After visit to solitary, inmates `go
quietly'

With Askari Muhammad, who spent 12 years on X Wing, the effects that it will
have on him when he gets out of prison are not an issue because he will
never get out. He went from Death Row to X Wing in 1980 after he killed a
guard in a fit of rage -- this after murdering a prominent Miami couple six
years before. But it was not murder that kept Muhammad on X for 12 years. It
was disciplinary infractions while on X Wing. It was for acknowledging a
court order that the prison refused to acknowledge.

>From July 17, 1974, when he was arrested in a South Dade field after
shooting Sydney and Lillian Gans in the back of their necks, Muhammad, then
Thomas Knight, was nothing but trouble for the prison system. Less than a
year later, he escaped from jail for 103 days. When he was finally
recaptured and the first murder case went to trial, Muhammad was so
disorderly and loud in court, he had to be removed. Once convicted and put
on Death Row for the two murders, he kept growing a close-cropped beard when
it wasn't allowed. He managed to get a medical pass to keep it. He also
plaited his hair when it wasn't allowed. He got written up for that dozens
of times.

Then, in October 1980, in a fit of rage over not being allowed to see his
mother on visiting day because of his beard, he stabbed prison guard Richard
Burke to death with the sharpened handle of a ladle, used for serving prison
soup. It was this murder that got him moved to solitary confinement. He also
got a third death sentence.

A year later, while still in solitary, he legally changed his name from
Thomas Knight to Askari Muhammad. The court ordered the prison to recognize
the name change. But the prison refused and insisted Muhammad call out his
former name, Thomas Knight, to identify himself when his prison number was
given every morning. When Muhammad held to the court order and called out
his new legal name, guards wrote him up every day for disobeying a command.
He got more than 500 disciplinary infractions, which extended his time on X
Wing to 12 years.

"He was kept in solitary because the correctional officers wanted revenge
after he killed their friend, Richard Burke," says Susan Carey, Muhammad's
former attorney. "It was the prison's own form of punishment and the
disciplinary charges were simply a way to try to justify the punishment on
paper."

Corrections spokeswoman Buchanan: "The name an inmate comes into the system
with is the name that inmate keeps. We cannot acknowledge name changes,
legal or otherwise, that take place after an inmate is already in the
system. We did not insist that Thomas Knight be Thomas Knight to punish him
in any way. We did it because that is how the system works."

After 12 years, Muhammad got out of solitary because he started yelling out
his former name. And, he did something else, says a former FSP correctional
official, who asks not to be named: "Thomas became subdued and quiet. He no
longer had that enraged expression on his face. When his perceived demeanor
changed, he got to go back on The Row."

Carey remembers going to see Muhammad after he returned to Death Row. He was
brought handcuffed and shackled to the visiting area, where Carey waited on
the other side of a glass. She had picked yellow and purple wildflowers
along the side of the road before entering the prison and held them up for
Muhammad to see.

"They startled him," she says. "It made me realize he had not seen anything
bright for years."

In mid April, Palm Beach Circuit Judge Marvin Mounts took a group of
prosecutors, public defenders, police, judges, probation officers and one
reporter on a tour of the state prison system.

As the tour group moved down the X-Wing corridor, a guard offered to open
the outer metal door so everyone could see a solitary confinement prisoner.
The prisoner happened to be Agan, who sat in his wheelchair with his head
bowed over. A yellow tube funneled urine into a bag. When the guard called
his name, he lifted his head and squinted in confusion. Someone asked him
how he was. He responded that he was OK. He spoke slowly and methodically,
as if pulling words out of early memory: "You have a nice day, m'am," he
told the group as it passed by, on its way to tour Death Row.

The Death Row wing that the group visited was the corridor where Muhammad --
once called "Death Row's meanest" by The Herald -- has lived since getting
off X Wing in 1992. If all of his future appeals fail, he will probably
remain there four or five more years. This means that after 30 years in
prison, 12 spent in solitary in a windowless vault, Muhammad will be
strapped in the electric chair and put to death around 2004.

The tour group filed down the dim corridor of Death Row cells until it got
to cell 15, where Muhammad sat on the edge of his cot, writing in a legal
pad. He is 48 now. Paunchy and calm. No beard. No enraged expression. He
wore glasses and a knitted prayer cap. His handwashed underwear hung
overhead, his chess set and prayer rug were on the floor beside his cot. The
reporter in the group called out his name -- the name that kept him in
isolation for 12 years: "Askari Muhammad."

"What did you say?" he called back, lifting his head, trying to see into the
corridor.

Again the name: "Askari Muhammad."

"No one here calls me that," he said. Then two words and nothing more:
"Thank you."

Before he is executed, Muhammad will be returned to a cell on X Wing. David
Lehr, a former FSP assistant superintendendant who led the recent prison
tour, explained that Death Row inmates are put on X Wing a month before
their scheduled execution to complete the process of breaking them down
before they are strapped into the electric chair.

"This way, they go quietly," he said.