Wright can get deposition from death row inmate
By The Associated Press
This article was published March 10, 2010 at 2:41 p.m.
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Lincoln County Jail handout photo of Betsey Wright Photo taken on August 15, 2009.
An inmate set to be executed next month can be interviewed on camera by attorneys for a death penalty opponent accused of trying to smuggle him contraband in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Circuit Judge Jodi Dennis said attorneys for Betsey Wright can videotape Don Davis, who is to be executed a month before Wright’s trial in May.
Authorities said Wright, 66, was caught with a pocketknife, box cutter and a potato chip bag filled with tattoo needles while trying to visit Davis last May. But Wright’s attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig, said it was a case of “inadvertent interception,” not intentional smuggling.
Wright, who’s had a “lengthy friendly relationship” with Davis, stopped at the vending machine in the entrance of Varner to get a snack and found a bag of Doritos in the bottom of the machine, her attorney said.
“She thought she was just getting a bag of chips,” Rosenzweig said.
Wright gave guards the chips and her other personal items — including a key chain with the pocketknife and box cutter on it — to go through an X-ray machine. That’s when prison workers found 48 tattoo needles in a plastic bag inside the Doritos.
Davis was convicted in the 1992 murder of a Rogers woman and is set to die April 12. In court filings, Rosenzweig said Davis’ testimony is necessary to “to corroborate Wright’s defense that she was not attempting to smuggle contraband into the prison.” Prosecutors didn’t oppose the motion.
Wright, who served as Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial chief of staff for seven years, has pleaded not guilty to attempting to furnish prohibited articles in a correctional institution.
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pat72209 says... March 11, 2010 at 10:23 a.m.
Just another waste of taxpayers money and embarrassment for an innocent person. How stupid is this? Handed all the stuff to the security person and charged with trying to "smuggle". She is smarter than that.
Unbelievable. I guess the prison staff is not very smart. That's it!
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