By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher, San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper
On November 14th, this paper carried a front-page story about the treatment of Mr. Antwoine Bealer who is serving a 35 years to life sentence for an Arco Service Station robbery in Lemon Grove, CA, which he says he did not commit. His incarceration has been full of encounters with Prison guards insisting on housing him with known gang members when Mr. Bealer is not and has never been a gang member nor documented as one. His resistance to accepting such housing is based on a well-known fact in the prison system that to house a non-gang member with a gang member is certain death to the non-gang member.
Mr. Bealer has been beaten by prison guards while handcuffed; he has also been sued by at least two of the guards who won lawsuits against him for assault following his beatings.
Mr. Bealer has been transferred 9 times since February 12th of this year and during one short-term transfer was placed in a gang situation and stabbed 15 times. Multiple communications to the Attorney General, and the Director of The California Department of Corrections, all have yielded no response as to the multiple and continued transfers of Mr. Bealer.
Is this an effort to get death by inmates for this Inmate? Family and loved ones continue to call for justice for a man who now faces 55 years in prison because of the orchestrated write-up and infractions which seem to be aimed at increasing his prison time beyond any possibility of release. Mr. Bealer is again being transferred this week, when there should be a medical hold of moving him.
