ILDA JACOBS, Washington DC | Monday
A SOUTH African woman’s 25-day hunger strike has succeeded in forcing the California Department of Corrections to admit that her husband was wrongly classified as a gangster.
Lara Johnson, 35, originally from Volksrust in Mpumalanga, married African American Demian Johnson in a prison waiting room three years ago after meeting him over the internet when he appealed for help.
He had been denied parole ever since he was jailed for 15 years to life in 1983 for second-degree felony murder after he and some friends refused to pay a taxi driver and shot him dead.
He was also put in solitary confinement for six years when he was first classified as member of the Black Guerilla Family gang in 1997 while at San Quentin Prison.
Lara lost 12 kilograms during the hunger strike, which began on November 19 last year after her husband’s last parole application was turned down in August.
“I never dreamt they would admit that they had put him into solitary confinement based on the false gang label,” she said.
Lara has now got written admission from both the California Department of Corrections, as well as Salinas Valley Prison where her husband is currently held, which she might use against them in a Federal Civil Rights Violation lawsuit.
“Getting a US state department to admit an error is almost unheard of, so we were really surprised,” Lara said.
In a letter to Lara the authorities have committed themselves to reviewing the negative impacts which the gang label had on her husband. Johnson has served 18 years of his sentence at eight different prisons.
Salinas Valley State Prison warden, AA Lamarque, admitted that “inmate Johnson was previously erroneously classified as BGF associate, and as such, was placed into a security housing unit, on an indeterminate basis.”
He said Johnson’s status should be reviewed and suggested that the case be prepared for an Institutional Classification Committee review.
This is not the first time that Johnson’s gangster label has been deleted. Both the Department of Corrections and the Office of the Inspector General have previously declared the label to be erroneous, but local prison authorities repeatedly neglected to remove the label from Johnson’s file. – African Eye News Service