University of Virginia Library

Penal Reform System Challenged

—District Judge

Maupin Cummings.

Cummins Ark. (LNS)—On
November 29, Willie Stewart,
17, a young black convicted of
breaking into a hardware store
in Conway, Arkansas, was sent
to the Cummins Arkansas
Prison Farm to serve a one day
sentence. At the end of the day
he was dead.

An autopsy ruling by the
state medical examiner has
declared that Willie Stewart
died of "natural causes", an
abnormal hemoglobin
condition akin to sickle cell
anemia, and that "physical
violence was not the cause of
death."

However, testimony raised
about Stewart's death during
hearings in federal district
court have left serious
questions as to the credibility
of that finding.

Stewart, convicted of
burglary, had been sentenced
to three years, but all but one
day of that sentence was
suspended under a
"progressive" court policy that
sends "youthful offenders" to
the penal farm in hopes of
"shocking them into obeying
the law."

Testimony from Rev. Elton
Ballantine, social services
coordinator at Cummins, field
guard Joe Lewis, and inmate
Robert Oliver revealed that
from his arrival Monday
morning until his collapse that
evening, Stewart had been
systematically harassed,
physically abused, and driven
to exhaustion.

Standing in a freezing wind,
Stewart was first ordered to
hold his head under and then
wade through a pool of water
draining from the prison
laundry. He was then forced to
run two miles to a cotton field
to join the long line.

During the day, Stewart was
shot at, forced to run up and
down the cotton rows, and to
jump up and down while
holding a hoc handle to his
head and yelling, "I will not
steal, I will not steal!" At one
point he fell asleep on his
cotton sack and was kicked
awake and chased by a guard
on horseback.

By late afternoon, Stewart
had collapsed. Two guards
dragged him into an office and
dropped him on the floor. One
guard suggested that Stewart
might be "high or something".
When efforts to revive him
failed, he was carried to an
ambulance and taken to a
nearby hospital. He died
en route.

Field guard Joe Lewis has
quit in protest, after testifying
he was ordered to shoot over
Stewart's head and witnessed
the continual intimidation
Stewart had been subjected to.
Rev. Ballantine has been barred
from the farm.

Elsie Washington, Stewart's
mother, has taken issue with
the state's autopsy ruling,
insisting that her son has never
complained of any of the
supposed symptoms and that
there is no medical history of
the hemoglobin abnormality in
her family.

The testimony came up
during hearings before Federal
Judge J. Smith Henly, who
ruled in February 1970 that
conditions at both Cummins
and Tucker prison farms
constituted cruel and unusual
punishment and were
unconstitutional. The hearings
were held to evaluate the
state's progress in bringing the
prisons up to a constitutional
standard.

Henly has retained
jurisdiction, stating that while
there have been "marked
improvements" there was also