Cell phones make it to Death Row

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:56:12 -0500

It turns out two cell phones have made it to North Carolina's death row.

Correction officials say it first happened in April 2007, when Johnny Street Parker was found with a cell phone. Parker, 34, was convicted of first-degree murder in Sampson County in 1997, Dan Kane reports.

Department of Correction spokesman Keith Acree said Parker received 30 days in segregation for possessing the phone. He was put on increased supervision for more than a year for struggling with correction officers seeking to take away the cell phone.

Acree said the department suspects a correction officer brought in the phone. The officer, who was not identified, was questioned and resigned two days later. A second phone was found a short time later behind the cover of an electrical outlet on death row, and correction officials suspect the same officer had smuggled that phone in as well.

The department is taking several steps to curb the smuggling of cell phones. They have acquired a dog that can sniff the phones and have tightened up their security checks of visitors and inmates returning to prison from work release.

The department also plans to ask state lawmakers to make it a felony to smuggle cell phones into prisons, and it is looking into jamming technology that would knock out cell phone signals, but that would require clearance from the Federal Communications Commission.

So far this year, the department has confiscated roughly 140 cell phones and dismissed several staff for bringing roughly a dozen of those phones into prisons across the state.