Mike Ward broke the story on the smuggled cell phone on Texas death row. In today's Austin American-Statesman he writes, "A reporter's account of the prison cell phone controversy." Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning:
I'm returning the medal.
On Tuesday, after a Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing on the controversy over cell phones in prisons, Oliver Bell, the chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, approached me with a pewter-color medal.
Thanks for your cooperation with the two-week investigation into how death row convict Richard Lee Tabler got a cell phone, Bell said, shaking my hand.
"Presented by the chairman for outstanding performance," the medal says.
"I was just doing my job," I told him.
It was no ordinary job.
The story began two weeks earlier, when an anonymous man called the newspaper with complaints about how Tabler and another death row inmate, Bill Mason, were being treated. He said he knew them both well.
He told my editor he was calling from death row, but there was no way to verify that. I told him I would check out the information. I was suspicious.
Then, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee chairman, John Whitmire, D-Houston, called me to say he had received a similar call from someone claiming to be an inmate. After several more calls, Whitmire was convinced the caller was actually on death row.
"I told him you thought it was a hoax, and he held out the cell phone so I could hear the clanging," Whitmire said. "It was prison."
On a subsequent call, Whitmire said, the caller identified himself as Tabler, asked for help with his appeal and told the senator that he knew the names of Whitmire's daughters, their ages and where they lived.
Whitmire called the police.
John Moriarty, the prison system's independent inspector general, was soon on the phone with me.
Earlier coverage begins here. Next, I'll post today's news coverage.
Comments