See earlier reports: HERE 8-6-15 California:
A Santa Fe woman is suing the federal government over the beating death of her 72-year-old husband in a California prison after he was convicted on child pornography charges.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, says prison officials are to blame for putting retired Wall Street attorney Robert A. Warren in a communal cell at the Victorville, Calif., prison with another inmate whom they knew was a danger to him.
A judge in February 2011 sentenced Warren to five years in prison. The lawsuit, which also described him as a university instructor, philanthropist and author, says he was killed on Dec. 29, 2011.
In his plea agreement, Warren had admitted to receiving a video clip online of a man sexually assaulting a prepubescent female who was tied up with a rope and to having on his computer 2,621 images and 26 videos depicting child pornography.
Carol H. Warren says in her complaint that a forensic psychologist concluded that Warren was a good candidate for outpatient treatment because he was amendable to treatment, had no history of violence, sexual or otherwise, and was “lacking many of the historic behavior problems that are associated with re-offenders.”
The 72-year-old also had numerous medical and mental health issues, including a cyst in the frontal lobe of his brain which controls an individual’s ability to reason, the complaint states. He also took medications to prevent stroke and walked with a cane.
U.S. District Judge Bruce. D. Black of Albuquerque recommended that Warren be housed in one of two medical facilities for federal inmates with special health needs which also offered sex-offender treatment programs. But the complaint says the Bureau of Prisons ignored its own protocol concerning prisoner placement and instead put Warren in the medium-security prison at Victorville.
He arrived there in June 2011, according to the document, and within 24 hours was brutally attacked by fellow inmates who had learned of his child pornography conviction.
An investigation into that incident “concluded that Mr. Warren’s safety was at risk at Victorville,” the complaint says, and recommend he be transferred. The Bureau of Prisons also ordered that Warren be kept separate from one inmate in particular, Frederick Ashley , who, the complaint alleges, was known to have committed violent assault on multiple sex offenders at Victorville and was the reason many inmate sex offenders requested to be placed in segregated housing.
But the opposite happened, according to the complaint, and Ashley and Warren were placed together in a communal cell not monitored by video cameras.
Ashley, 35, then mounted a “lengthy and brutal attack” on the 72-year-old, the complaint states, strangling him from behind with chains attached to his wrists, then smashing Warren’s head into the concrete and stomping on his head, neck and chest, breaking bones and causing hemorrhaging in surrounding muscles.
Corrections officers initiated an emergency medical response, the complaint says, but efforts to save Warren’s life were unsuccessful.
The lawsuit accuses the federal Bureau of Prisons of negligence resulting in wrongful death.
Warren’s widow seeks an unspecified amount in damages related to pain and suffering, severe emotional distress, loss of consortium, medical expenses, and funeral and burial expenses.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman declined Thursday to comment on the pending litigation. ..Source.. by Phaedra Haywood
UPDATED: Attorney Convicted of Child Porn Killed in Prison
1-4-2012:
A 72-year-old retired attorney from Santa Fe was murdered at the California prison where he was serving a federal sentence for receiving child pornography on the Internet.
Robert A. Warren was attacked sometime before 7 a.m. Thursday at Federal Correctional Institution II in Victorville, Calif., a medium security facility housing more than 1,700 inmates, according to a news release provided to the Victorville Daily Press. He was pronounced dead just before 9 a.m.
Details about the cause of death were unavailable from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Warren’s sole criminal conviction had generated heated discussion at sentencing about the appropriate punishment for the crime. Prosecutors sought nine years, saying Warren was more than the “passive voyeur” he claimed to be and had fueled the industry by saving thousands of child porn images.
The defense said the five-year mandatory minimum was more than enough punishment for a man with no criminal history, a history of philanthropic giving and a list of medical issues. Society would be better served by allowing him to pursue specific treatment outside of prison, it said.
Because Warren is dead, the conviction and indictment are expected to be dismissed. It’s unclear if the family could recoup the $50,000 fine he was required to pay.
A spokesman at U.S. Bureau of Prisons office in Washington, D.C., said Tuesday that the FBI handles homicide investigations in prisons.
Warren was charged in a seven-count, July 2009 indictment with receipt and possession of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He pleaded guilty to a single count of receipt and was sentenced in February by Chief U.S. District Judge Bruce Black to the mandatory minimum five years.
“These mandatory minimums make it impossible for judges to tailor a sentence to fit an individual, especially someone as medically fragile as Mr. Warren,” said Marc Lowry, Warren’s attorney.
Lowry said he had written the Bureau of Prisons twice to urge transfer of his client after Warren was attacked within 12 hours of arrival at Victorville. Black had recommended Warren be allowed to serve his sentence at a federal medical prison facility.
Court pleadings filed by the defense say Warren had a variety of health problems, from diabetes and neurological defects that made him unaware of the effects of his behavior.
Federal prosecutors cited recognition by the Congress, the Supreme Court and U.S. Sentencing Commission that child exploitation offenses should be punished severely, noting that the clear trend since 2003 was to increase sentences.
“The child pornography industry would not be in business if there was not a demand from … (those) willing to pay money for such images and videos,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlyn Rees said in a sentencing memorandum.
Warren’s plea agreement reserved his right to appeal the court’s July 2010 ruling denying suppression of evidence against him.
Warren had sought to suppress the evidence based on an argument that the search warrant affidavit used was insufficiently specific and that it contained false information about a prior arrest attributed to him that was of a different Robert Warren.
In Warren’s plea to Count 2 of the indictment, he admitted knowingly receiving a video more than three minutes long that showed a man performing sexual acts on a girl tied with ropes. Forensic examiners identified more than 2,000 child pornography images from 141 child victims.
Court documents say Warren had been identified as a subscriber to child pornography websites in seven national investigations dating back to 2002, but he was not arrested until the FBI in 2007 used a fake new child pornography website to capture the Internet addresses of those who attempted to access it.
2/24/11 — Retired Attorney Sentenced in Child Porn Case: The 71-year-old Santa Fe man was sentenced Wednesday in federal court to five years in prison.
Journal Staff Report
A 71-year-old retired attorney who lives in Santa Fe was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for a federal child pornography conviction, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.
Robert A Warren appeared before Chief U.S. District Judge Bruce D. Black in Santa Fe for sentencing, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Black also ordered that Warren pay a $50,000 fine and said that after Warren completes his prison sentence, he will be placed on supervised release for five years and be required to register as a sex offender.
The news release said Warren was charged in a superseding indictment on May 11, 2010, with five counts of receipt of child pornography and two counts of possession of child pornography. He pleaded guilty on Aug. 30, 2010, under a plea agreement to the second count in the indictment, a receipt of child pornography charge.
The other six counts were dismissed Wednesday by Black after he sentenced Warren Wednesday, the news release said.
Warren, who has been in federal custody since entering his guilty plea, specifically admitted in his plea agreement to receiving a three minute and 15 second video depicting an adult male performing sexual acts on a young prepubescent female, the news release said.
The news release also said that according to the plea agreement, FBI special agents who executed a search warrant at Warren’s residence on June 18, 2008, recovered multiple computers and computer-related media such as hard drives, compact disks and printed images that contained visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct (child pornography).
The plea agreement indicates that forensic examination of Warren’s computers and computer media uncovered more than 2,600 images and 26 videos of child pornography, the news release said. by Journal Staff Report
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