EX-PRIEST SLAYING Guards' acts were a factor, probe says

John Geoghan shouldn't have been in maximum security, the probe said.
BOSTON (AP) -- A series of trumped-up discipline reports by guards helped trigger the transfer of pedophile priest John Geoghan to a maximum-security prison -- and into an environment that would eventually kill him, an investigation concludes.
A three-member commission probing the slaying of Geoghan found the reports were among a combination of factors that contributed to the defrocked priest's death, though there was no evidence of a conspiracy among guards.
Geoghan, the 68-year-old priest at the center of the Boston Archdiocese's clergy sex-abuse scandal, was sentenced to a 9- to 10-year sentence for groping a 10-year-old boy. After serving more than a year in the medium-security MCI-Concord prison, he was transferred to the maximum-security Souza-Baranowski prison in Shirley, where he was killed in his cell five months later.
Details of report
The report, released Tuesday, said Geoghan was harassed and physically abused by guards while at MCI-Concord and never should have been moved to Souza-Baranowski, where he was more likely to come into contact with more violent offenders.
A series of "overzealous and unwarranted" discipline reports by a handful of guards led to Geoghan being reclassified as one of the state's most dangerous prisoners, and landed him in the same unit as Joseph Druce, a convicted murderer charged with killing the former priest, investigators found.
"It's absolutely shown in this report that under no circumstances should John Geoghan have been in the special housing unit at Souza-Baranowski Corrections facility," state Public Safety Secretary Edward Flynn told The Associated Press in an interview.
No evidence was uncovered that guards, despite allegations some had a grudge against Geoghan, set him up to be killed. The report found that Druce worked "alone and in secret."
The report also recommends barring inmates from changing their names while in prison. Druce's birth name was Darrin Smiledge, but he changed it while in prison -- which meant his history wasn't immediately familiar to guards who knew him under his previous name.
'Unduly harassed'
Although the report cites specific failures at Souza-Baranowski that allowed Geoghan to be attacked -- including insufficient staffing procedures at his unit -- much of the criticism focuses on his time at MCI-Concord, where he was "unduly harassed and physically abused," the report said.
The investigation found that the disciplinary reports "were more the result of personal animus against [Geoghan] than serious infractions that required formal findings."
Flynn said investigators determined that one guard at MCI-Concord physically assaulted Geoghan. That guard resigned shortly after the investigation into Geoghan's death began. Another guard, also at MCI-Concord, was responsible for filing more than half of the disciplinary reports against Geoghan. The names of the guards are redacted from the report.
"The problem is that it appears some decision-makers make decisions with insufficient facts. Certainly, in this case, that trivial disciplines can be used to deem a 68-year-old frail individual as a maximum-security risk leads us to believe there's a problem in the decision-making," Flynn said.
A separate panel, appointed by Gov. Mitt Romney, is investigating the state's entire prison system to determine if the problems cited in the Geoghan probe were unique or existed throughout the system.