Housing Inmates Who Make Death Threats... with their Intended Victims

"I don't want to be in there with that guy"
- Murder Victim Chris Lange

Overhead view of the Twin Rivers Correctional Institute, the Oregon prison where Chris Lange spent most of his sentence, prior to being murdered last May. Placed in a prison with a fellow inmate who had sworn to kill him, Lange did not last 24-hours.

(SALEM) - Note from Editor: due to miscommunication in the communication of this story to our newsroom, errors were made that are being corrected as of 2 May, 2012.

Why did Oregon officials fail to report the beating death of a prison inmate at the Snake River Correctional Facility (SRCI) in Eastern Oregon last year? Clayton Howard, an inmate who nearly died in an identical situation, says he knows why.

“

Chris Lange was murdered and his death consequently blocked from the public, because he was transferred from a prison (SRCI- Oregon) where he had served many years, and placed in a complex where his known rival was transferred to, one who he knew due to 'both' making death threat to one another years ago. Samuel DeFrank was transferred from TRCI to SRCI by STM officials. Chris Lange is not the federal informant. (Robert King) the informant was the cause of the conflict between Lange and DeFrank. He manipulated people with money (he's a millionaire) and both DeFrank and Lange protected him. He is known by DOC officials to be an "unreliable, questionable, manipulative informant". He's extensively documented and is trying to use this case to get out of prison, through parole officials. I am testifying for (not against) DeFrank, as well as for Chris Lange. (In wrongful death lawsuit), as TRCI officials knowingly (and possibly deliberately) transferred DeFrank to SRCI where Lange was. Specific TRCI staff told DeFrank they'd send him to SRCI to where Lange was and made threats against DeFrank, as they knew Lange was a professional boxer, (well documented) and had beat DeFrank in the fight/assault at OSP. Lange suspected that DeFrank had another inmate assault Lange which was false. I personally knew this, as did others, and told Lange. DeFrank proved his innocence to prison officials, but ODOC separated them, sending Lange to SRCI and DeFrank to an out-of-state institution, then to TRCI, until the transfer to SRCI where death was to become of one or both of them. There is now no way these two inmates should have been housed together anyplace as soon as inmates saw DeFrank they WARNED prison officials of the conflict. They didn't do what was necessary to protect either. "Legally", prison officials knew or should have known of the potential risk of harm, and failed to take reasonable measures to prevent the harm, and as a result, someone is injured. In this case Lange was, permanently. ODOC officials are "undoubtedly responsible" for "creating the opportunity" for this murder, and it was known by them (of the conflict). By giving DeFrank the death penalty, ODOC executes two inmates, when it was their negligence and recklessness that caused the incident. This is one of the numerous assaults which resulted in a death, that ODOC officials create throughout its system. An investigation would reveal this is a "widespread systematic ongoing practice" and thousands of TAX payer dollars will be used to compensate inmates for DOC's actions. - Clayton Howard

”

Another Costly Mistake

Chris Soren Lange was 54 when he was fatally attacked last year. He was assaulted on 21 May 2010, and died from head injuries, after failing to recover from a comatose state, several days later. He had been in prison for 21-years, serving the latter half of his sentence in the Two Rivers Correctional Facility in Umatilla, Oregon. He was convicted of having been involved in a contract Murder and had only 90 days left to serve. Though no exact details were available, Lange is also said to have been a confidential federal informant.

According to the Albany Democrat-Herald article titled Linn convict killed in prison:

Lange was convicted of killing John Robert Lucas, the owner of Philippi Ford in Stayton, in 1987. A rival Salem car dealer, David Virgil Waldner, also was tried in Linn County on aggravated murder and murder charges for supposedly hiring Lange to kill Lucas, but he was acquitted.

Lange was accused of shooting Lucas in the head and leaving his body on a logging road near Scio. It was found in November 1987.

James Samuel DeFrank, Jr.

Ten years earlier, when Lange was beginning his sentence, he had an altercation with the man who now stands accused in his murder: James 'Jimmy' Samuel DeFrank, Jr.

While not overlooking the severity of the violent crime, Clayton Howard says DeFrank was played by prison officials; a wiry, serious inmate serving a life sentence for Murder, this man now likely headed for Death Row, is described as a lifer who doesn't issue empty threats. Howard says there was ample knowledge of DeFrank's death threats against Lange, adding that Lange had repeatedly been assured by officials during his time in prison, that he would not be placed in a facility with the inmate who had sworn to kill him.

There is no question that placing these two in the same unit amounted to a serious security risk. The same week that The Oregonian finally caught wind of this incident, last August, guards at the same prison, SRCI, fired at inmates during an altercation in the recreation yard and that incident led to an overhaul of prison tower procedures. In fact it was that incident that led to, or at least coincided with, the news of Lange's death leaking out.

Howard, who is presently in the Two Rivers facility where Lange had spent his sentence, said it was shocking to see Lange transferred to a sure death sentence. The inmate was Murdered within 24-hours of his arrival at Snake River, and the suspect is DeFrank. He was attacked and killed in SRCI's Complex Two recreation yard, according to a press release issued by Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris.

Oregon Fails to Disclose Murder

Snake River Correctional Institution, where Lange was murdered in the rec yard.

The staff at The Oregonian heard about the inmate murder three months after it happened. Both SRCI and the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) failed to notify the public about the man's violent death. In Richard Cockle's 23 August 2011 report, Inmate was beaten to death at Snake River prison near Ontario in May, Jeanine M. Hohn, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Corrections in Salem, discussed the undisclosed killing on state grounds.

In the May beating death case, Hohn said the department apparently didn't issue a statewide news release about Lange, but may have notified Ontario-area media. She didn't know why that was.

Inmates receive the local Ontario, Oregon newspaper via subscription, and Clayton Howard says there was no local mention of the death, contrary to what state official Hohn states "may" have happened. News releases are either issued, or they are not, and there is no reference to the death in any DOC press release records. The information from Hohn; a responsive DOC representative who seems to do her best to answer questions from the media, seems very unclear and non-specific in this case; in spite of the fact that it involves both the death of a man, and now I am told, a new wrongful death lawsuit, that will be another costly nugget for Oregon's taxpayers.

No criminal charges were filed against DeFrank until after The Oregonian reported the otherwise undisclosed Murder, more than three months later.

The crime happened in May, The Oregonian learned of it in August, and in September criminal charges against DeFrank were filed, very interesting.

Anna Canzano wrote about the case on 14 October 2010 on The Inside Scoop from a Portland TV journalist, in an article titled: Oregon inmate indicted on murder charges:

“

Lange’s beating and subsequent death occurred in May but only came to light in August after another incident at Snake River in which an inmate was shot and wounded by a corrections officer. I asked Jeanine Hohn with the Oregon Department of Corrections Public Affairs department about the agency’s policy on releasing information about inmate deaths. This was her response: “The Department does not have a policy that speaks specifically to releasing information about inmate deaths, but it is our practice to be transparent on inmate issues and incidents that would be of interest to the media and the public. In this case our office missed the release. There was quite a bit of time between the actual assault and inmate Lange’s death, and our office was involved in several projects during the May/June timeframe, and we truly just missed it. I take full responsibility for this oversight. As soon as the media/we realized the error, we have attempted to communicate as much information about the incident as possible without compromising the integrity of the investigation.” See the grand jury indictment against James DeFrank here.

”

The one man who can most closely identify with Lange's fatal situation, Clayton Howard, says the reason that officials at SRCI and the DOC failed to report the death, is, "... because they set it up by sending Lange to where DeFrank was, where they knew Lange would be killed, and they didn't want to draw attention to it, simple as that".

He recalls Lange saying, "I don't want to be in there with that guy" and worrying about having to confront his now longtime enemy.

Clayton Howard says he was shown photos of Mr. Lange after the beating death, and he described him as "unrecognizable" and adds that Lange, "looked like his head was a watermelon that somebody just smashed". According to witnesses, Jimmy DeFrank attacked a man who offered no resistance. Lange had been losing weight and appeared somewhat gaunt at the time of the attack according to Clayton, who said, "Apparently it was just one punch, and Chris Lange was down. After that Jimmy just kept going and there was nothing Lange could do to defend himself. There just wasn't much left of him after that."

Clayton Howard

Clayton Howard is ideally suited to talk about the case for three specific reasons:

• The first is that he knew both Chris Lange and Jimmy DeFrank, and was on good terms with both.
• Another reason is that Howard, as we have written about in past reports, was the victim of a near-fatal knife attack at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem by an inmate that officials knew had threatened his life.
• The third reason is that Clayton Howard is known in prison terminology as a "jailhouse lawyer". Over the course of time, he has filed and won approximately 45 lawsuits against the state of Oregon for inmate grievances. In the past ten years, Howard has won nine. He knows a great deal about Oregon law, and he's had the time to polish and develop the required skills.

To clarify, in addition to the lawsuits Howard and filed and won, he has also filed hundreds of Tort claims on behalf of inmates. He also has a distinct court victory from the early 90's that allows the cases he submits to almost always lead to payments for the inmate-plaintiffs.

Due to his successful record of litigating against the state on behalf of other inmates, Howard has earned a complex reputation in prison. Officials know that if they place him in 'the hole', he is in a closer proximity to inmates receiving mistreatment, and this typically leads to new suits. Among prison officials, he would likely earn the "least popular" award.

Howard's Stabbing

Clayton Howard survived a near-fatal knife attack.

An inmate named William 'Dollar Bill' Thomas; a gang member from Southern California serving multiple life sentences for Murder, had a beef with Howard over attention the two African-American inmates were receiving from a white female corrections officer. Thomas, who had stabbed or 'shanked' four different inmates in the past, took a vow to kill Clayton Howard, he even told a corrections officer about his plan to stab Howard to death.

The corrections officer, William Coleman, says he was shocked to have 'Dollar Bill' confess a plan to commit Murder, and asked him not to carry out the act he threatened. Coleman was even more shocked when Thomas suggested that he had "permission" to take Howard's life.

Coleman then went to his superiors to report the death threat against Howard. He says the senior officials casually dismissed the information, repeatedly. Again, this story has been the focus of more than one past report, links to all of the related stories are below.

Clayton Howard was stabbed by Thomas when he was eating his dinner in the prison chow hall. The incident was recorded on videotape and Coleman says it took far longer than it should have for officers to intervene and subdue Thomas.

Every person in the corrections field that I have discussed this case with, says it is incredible and very suspicious that Oregon's DOC would allow a convict with a violent history like Thomas, to exist among the main population. Almost any convict with a repeated pattern of stabbing other inmates (all of his victims were also black) would be kept in some type of solitary confinement.

But not in Oregon. There seems to be a pattern in this state, of corrections officials sending inmates into harm's way intentionally, by pairing them with inmates who sport deadly vendettas.

Howard survived the stabbing only because the ice pick Thomas used in the attack, hit a rib; it's why his internal organs didn't suffer irreparable harm. One week from today, Howard's lawsuit against the state of Oregon over the preventable stabbing, goes back to court.

It's hard to consider Clayton Howard "lucky" for receiving a life-threatening knife wound, however he's very fortunate in comparison to Chris Lange.

While he is far from helpless, Clayton Howard says he has witnessed things inside of the Oregon corrections system that would turn a person's hair gray. But humiliation, and physical and mental abuse, still pale in comparison to the capital crime of Murder. He hopes that Jimmy DeFrank takes his Murder case to court to draw attention to the practice of placing inmates with sworn death threats against others, together with their would-be victims.