Jail protest: Pease says he will fight jailers all week
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His aggressive behavior prompted jailers to place him in a small isolation cell, much to the dislike of his family members, who held up signs and picketed the road leading to the jail yesterday.
“We fought for our animal shelter,” said Russell’s wife, Donna Pease. “I think we need to fight for humans too. These men committed a crime so lock them away. But don’t do this to them. Don’t treat them the way they’re treated in there.”
Pease and around a dozen friends and family members protested along Security Circle Road holding signs that said, “They committed a crime but they are still people,” and “If this was your mother or father, could you sit and wonder what was going to happen to them next?”
In response, Sheriff Jackie Matheny offered a taped phone conversation between Pease and his wife where Pease reveals his planned violence against jailers. Inmate phone conversations from the jail are taped, and a recorded message informs both parties of that policy.
“I’ll fight them all week starting with the first one that comes in that door to the last one,” Pease tells his wife. “I’m going to be so bitter and cold with these [jerks] they’ll have to do something. I have to do what I have to do.”
According to Pease’s wife, her husband is infuriated at two things: 1) He wants to be moved from his maximum security cell to the bullpen area of the local jail for the rest of his time here; 2) He wants to be transferred to state prison immediately.
Sheriff Matheny says he will not accommodate the first request, and is not capable of fulfilling the second.
“We’re talking about a bank robber here and you just heard how violent he plans on acting,” said Matheny. “I’m not going to take him out of max and put him in the new bullpen. You have people in there for child support and DUI and things like that. We’re not going to let him and his family manipulate us to put him in an unsafe place in this jail.
“As far as sending him to the state, believe me we’ll send him to the state as soon as we can,” added Matheny. “Right now they don’t have a spot for him.”
Pease was sentenced this Monday by Judge Bart Stanley to 11 years in prison for robbing Cumberland Bank at Plaza Shopping Center. He had already been sentenced by a federal judge to serve 93 months and was outraged to be tried twice for the same crime.
Such a practice is legal – although rare – because crimes such as bank robbery fall under both state and federal jurisdictions. The sentences were run concurrently meaning Pease will satisfy his state time first, then report to federal prison for any time he has left.
After receiving his local sentence, Pease was disruptive in the courtroom and later bragged about his unruly behavior during another phone conversation from Warren County Jail.
“I went off on them twice,” Pease tells an unidentified woman. “The [jerks] wanted me to stand up there and be nice when they’re giving me 11 more years.”
Matheny says his deputies and jailers have shown remarkable restraint when it comes to dealing with Pease. And he admits Pease shouldn’t be happy about his current situation.
“If he was writing letters to his mama saying how much he loved it here, I’d be worried,” said Matheny. “This is jail and he’s not supposed to like it.”
Donna Pease said she will continue to picket the jail again today starting at 8 a.m.