Nothing captures the public’s imagination like a good jail story.

Who can forget the time back in 2003 when a near-riot broke out at the Cumberland County Jail after an inmate complained that his beef chili smelled like human feces?

Weeks later, investigators attributed the stench to bacteria and mold growing inside the jail’s food trays. But that didn’t stop inmates from beating the tar out of two jail trusties they suspected of, well, you know …

“We don’t have conclusive evidence that there wasn’t (feces in the chili),” said a relieved Sheriff Mark Dion at the time. “But these new developments definitely raise some questions about the initial assumptions.”

Sheriff Kevin Joyce, who inherited the jail from Dion in 2010, should be so lucky.

“This is an embarrassment to the agency,” Joyce admitted Tuesday when asked for the umpteenth time about a frisky 23-year-old inmate by the name of Arien L’Italien.

To Joyce, L’Italien is nothing more than a two-bit “sociopath” who ran up a long criminal record before his arrest in January after a shootout with deputy U.S. marshals in Portland. (Before it was over, L’Italien took a slug to the leg.)

But to his fellow inmates, L’Italien long will be remembered as the first guy ever to go on an unauthorized date – and a consummated one at that – without ever leaving the confines of the jail’s so-called maximum-security cell block.

We’re talking four doors, all equipped with locks, through which L’Italien passed to get from his cell to that of one Karla Wilson, who was awaiting trial in the nearby women’s unit on charges of gross sexual assault and aggravated assault.

We’re talking sheets stuffed with pillows to make it look like L’Italien was still in his bunk – when in fact he and Wilson were someplace far, far away for upward of an hour.

We’re talking overnight security protocols that failed to detect the hijinks until a guard happened to look up at the small entryway between the two cell blocks and saw a leg move. It was L’Italien, mission accomplished, crawling back to his cell.

Great stuff for the water cooler, to be sure.

But beyond all the one-liners and “Cool Hand Luke” references spawned by this whopper of a jail tale – as Luke himself once put it, “A man’s just gotta go his own way” – Cumberland County’s jail keepers have some serious explaining to do.

Let’s start with those doors.

According to Joyce, the two day-room doors leading into L’Italien’s and Wilson’s cell blocks were unlocked as a matter of routine – all the clanking of locking and unlocking doors would wake up the inmates as guards made their bed checks.

“I asked the question last year” about why the doors weren’t locked, recalled Joyce. “But the command staff at the jail said, ‘Well, you know, we’ve always done it that way. So I said, ‘OK, sometimes a good leader has to let his people guide them in the right direction.’ “

Or not.

As for the actual cell doors, both L’Italien and Wilson managed to keep their locks disengaged by stuffing the mechanisms with plastic.

Now, unlocked cell doors are detectable via lights at the maximum-security unit’s sub-control station. Problem is, that station isn’t staffed at night.

And the unlocked doors would have been flagged via monitors at the jail’s master-control center. But it seems no one called up those screens during the time in question.

“That is one of many areas in the jail that are being watched” from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., Joyce explained. “Generally, (the operators) are just going between screens opening doors” for other staffers as they go about their duties elsewhere in the jail.

Then there’s the jail’s ventilation system, through which the hormonally charged ne’er-do-wells apparently hatched their rendezvous. Nobody heard any hollering, so investigators can only assume that other inmates helped relay messages about the hook-up.

Finally, we turn to the closest guard station, from which one cannot fully see the area traversed by L’Italien. That, Joyce said, already has been fixed.

In short, the inmates weren’t exactly running the institution last Friday night. But they sure didn’t let it get in the way of their, ahem, extracurriculars.

“There are a lot of pieces that need to be filled in,” said Joyce. “A lot of people still need to be interviewed to find out how this happened.”

As for L’Italien, the party’s over. U.S. marshals transferred him Tuesday to the Maine State Prison’s Supermax unit in Warren – where they tend to frown on nocturnal wandering.

Wilson, on the other hand, remains in the county jail because she never left her cell and, as Joyce put it, “any sex that occurred was consensual.”

“Obviously, there will be some disciplinary things handed down on the inmates,” the sheriff said. “It could be good time taken away, although both of them are pre-sentence, so I’m not sure that means a lot.”

(Besides, how exactly do you take away good time after it’s been had by all?)

But enough frivolity. As Joyce is the first to admit, this whole lapse in “maximum” security could have been a lot worse if a meanderer like L’Italien had been out looking to rough up a guard rather than romance a girl.

“At least I’m not visiting a hospital or planning a funeral,” Joyce said. “I think it’s a wake-up call for the officers that were working.”

Literally.

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at: bnemitz@mainetoday.com

 

Copy the Story Link