Officials look into death of Stephanie Brinson, who’s second person in a year to die during family visit at Ione facility

Summary

Stephanie Diane Dowells, 62, was strangled during an overnight visit with her husband, David Brinson, at Mule Creek state prison in California.

Brinson, serving life without parole for four murders, claimed Dowells passed out, but authorities ruled her death a homicide.

This marks the second strangulation death during a family visit at the prison in a year; Tania Thomas was killed in July 2024 while visiting inmate Anthony Curry. Investigations are ongoing.

California is one of four states allowing family visits to maintain positive relationships.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
      23·
      13 days ago

      You started off arguing against life in prison.

      I only said that life in prison is less bad than execution. I never said either were okay.

      Good, I’m glad you can at least be direct about it now. What should we be doing instead?

      Create a society where there aren’t incentives to do crimes and then focus on reeducation and rehabilitation for people who need help adjusting to life in a peaceful society.

      We need schools and hospitals, not dungeons. In some cases people might need to be involuntarily placed into reeducation and rehabilitation, but that’s far different from just locking them up as a form of punishment.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
          23·
          12 days ago

          Well we could start by massively reducing the prison population. If we addressed crowding, existing prisons would be far more humane.

          I’m sure there needs to be a phase-out period while we build hospitals and schools, it really wouldn’t take that long if we actually marshalled all the forces of production on the project. If we built as fast as China we could replace all prisons in a year.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
              23·
              12 days ago

              What should we be doing instead of sending people to prison before we live in a society where people don’t commit crimes worthy of incarceration?

              Well I literally said we can keep the prisons open while we build the hospitals and schools. There’s no where else to put people who are a danger to themselves and others.

              Also, we can definitely redefine what a “crime” even is; so many people are locked up that don’t need to be.

              To be clear, since you don’t seem to understand what I’m saying, I’m saying that hospitals and schools replace the prisons. In a just society, antisocial behavior would be treated with rehabilitation in hospitals and reeducation in schools. Again, the hospitals and schools replace the prisons.

              I’m sorry that I keep repeating myself but it seems like there’s some fundamental disconnect with what I’m saying that you don’t seem to be understanding. Are we communicating through translation software?

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
                  23·
                  12 days ago

                  So… we go all the way back to my previous point where I said you think it’s okay to imprison people for life even with the possibility that they are innocent.

                  I said to keep the prisons open until we replace them. That necessarily means we aren’t imprisoning people for life, because the prisons will close. We just hold them for the length of time it takes to replace the prisons with schools and hospitals.

                  Get it?

                  Also I don’t know where you got the idea that I actually support life imprisonment? I only said it’s better than the death penalty.

                  I keep repeating myself because you seem to be willfully misunderstanding me over and over.