Delaware State News
SMYRNA - Correction Commissioner Stanley W. Taylor said Wednesday that an inmate who took a counselor hostage July 12 at the Delaware Correctional Center near Smyrna may have done so in part because he wanted to "punish'' his ex-wife.
"We learned as the day wore on that the hostage taker may have just wanted to punish his former wife,'' Mr. Taylor said. "That raised additional concerns.''
The commissioner made his remarks during an interview with a prison task force appointed by Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to review security at DCC. The panel is to report back to her by Jan. 31, 2005, with recommendations for improvements.
The seven-member group questioned Mr. Taylor following their tour of the prison and the area where counselor Cassandra Arnold was abducted and raped by Scott A. Miller, a serial rapist sentenced to 699 years.
Wednesday's interview was open to the public. The three-hour tour, conducted before the open session, was closed to the public and media.
Miller barricaded a room - with Ms. Arnold his captive - where he kept negotiators at bay for nearly seven hours before he was shot and killed by a correctional officer.
Gov. Minner ordered an independent review of the July 12 incident after she read the results of a two-and-a-half-month internal investigation undertaken by the Department of Correction.
The report, released Oct. 6 by Mr. Taylor, contained accounts of interviews from more than 30 correctional officers and others involved in the siege.
It concluded Miller abducted Ms. Arnold and assaulted her but it did not indicate who was responsible, what caused the situation, or what should be done to prevent future incidents.
In addition, the DOC report did not say if Mr. Taylor and top DOC officials were interviewed as part of the internal review. Mr. Taylor and other prison administrators directed operations during the standoff from a command post set up in DCC Warden Thomas Carroll's office.
Much of Wednesday's open session at DCC was taken up with Mr. Taylor's presentation of what he said his investigators learned through their interviews with prison personnel on duty the day of the incident.
Using a series of maps, he described the path Ms. Arnold took after completing a counseling session and the route Miller took, apparently unattended, to the administrative area bathroom, where he took the 27-year-old counselor hostage with a homemade knife.
During questioning from panel members, Mr. Taylor acknowledged a door to the administrative area where Ms. Arnold was assaulted was often "chocked'' open.
"This door, over time, was chocked open on a regular basis,'' he said, pointing to the door on a map. "This allowed (administrative) personnel to come and go as they pleased and not have to wait for staff to open it.''
Mr. Taylor criticized that habit and said it should not have occurred.
"Basically, if there's a door with a lock on it, it needs to be closed and locked,'' he told the panel.
Pressed further, the commissioner laid the blame for chocked doors to "complacency."
"In this business, you fight complacency all the time,'' he said.
"The natural tendency is to shortcut something. You're constantly struggling with that; staff will try to cut corners. It's 'how do I get my job done easier?' "
Despite warnings from Ms. Arnold two weeks before she was abducted, Mr. Taylor said chocked doors apparently had not been a problem in that area of DCC, which opened four years ago after a major expansion project at the prison.
"For four years it was fine,'' he said. "On July 12, it wasn't.''
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Senior writer Tom Eldred can be reached at 741-8212 or teldred@newszap.com.
Reposted with permission from newszap.com
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