Someone’s head needs to roll for this!

As a former prison chaplain, I’m appalled at the news of a murder in an Oklahoma facility – particularly because it was so easily preventable, if only someone had bothered to think!

A 23-year-old inmate beaten to death at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary had been put in a cell with convicted killer he had testified against.

Prison spokesman Jerry Massie says Paul Duran Jr. fought with one cellmate and then was put in a cell with Jessie James Dalton.

Duran was found beaten to death about 15 minutes later.

Massie says the two were not supposed to be put in the same cell and prison officials are trying to determine how it happened.

Duran and Dalton were co-defendants in the January 2002 shooting death of Billy Wayne Ray in Oklahoma City.

Duran pleaded guilty to a robbery charge and testified against Dalton who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole.

Massie says investigators will present their findings to a district attorney who will decide if criminal charges will be filed.

Whoever was responsible for putting Duran and Dalton in the same cell should be charged with at least culpable homicide, in my opinion, if not accessory to murder. In fact, I’d be checking them very, very carefully indeed, to make sure that this was, indeed, a mistake, and not something more sinister. This sort of thing should never, ever happen, and there are systems in place to supposedly ensure that it doesn’t. The fact that those systems failed in this case makes me wonder whether they were observed at all . . .

Duran may have been a scoundrel and a scumbag in his own right: but to be done to death in that manner is hardly justice. One hopes that his murderer will pay the price. Certainly, if the evidence cited in the news article is correct, I suspect the State of Oklahoma will be paying Duran’s survivors a great deal of money over this, whether Oklahoma taxpayers like it or not. The State appears to have clearly failed in its custodial responsibilities.

Peter