DAVID RUIZ, PRESENTE - 1942-2005
Rosary – Thursday, Nov. 17, 7:00 PM, Mission Funeral Home, 1615 East Cesar Chavez
Funeral – Friday, Nov. 18, 10:00 AM, Cristo Rey Catholic Church, 2210 East 2nd Street
Internment – Immediately following the funeral at Assumption Cemetery
David Ruiz touched so many of us—prisoners, activists, friends and comrades. He reached people he never was able to meet in person. David will live on forever in the hearts of the men and women locked up in Texas, the writ writers, the organizers, the oppressed. David’s legacy to all of us is that we can all fight our oppressors, no matter where we are and what resources we have.
When his now-famous law suit began trial in Houston in 1979, there were about 100 of us protesting in front of the Federal courthouse on Rusk in support of the prisoners. In that group were men David had grown up with in Austin and wound up in prison with: Julius Corpus, Salvador
Gonzales, and Juan Guzman, as well as men he had grown up with in prison like Robert “Rabbit” Villareal.
Ruiz V. Estelle was historic! After the longest trial in US juris prudence history, Federal Judge William Wayne Justice declared that the
Texas prison system was unconstitutional. David and the other courageous writ writers like O. D. Johnson from Dallas, had forced Texas into the
20th century.
Tune in to "Fight Back!" on Sunday night at 7:30 at 90.1 FM to learn some Texas history that you never learned in school! Hear from family
and friends and comrades of David Ruiz, a hero to the prisoners and a royal pain in the neck to the racist, tortuous prison system. If you are
not in Houston, listen online at www.kpft.org.
When the people re-write our history books, David Ruiz will then be included and given his rightful place in working class history as a leader, organizer, writ writer and fighter for the oppressed.
David Ruiz, Presente
Washington Post; David Ruiz, 63, Convict Who Won Reform With Handwritten Lawsuit New York Times, United States (AP) - David Ruiz, the convict whose handwritten lawsuit more than three decades ago led to court-ordered improvements in Texas prisons, died on Saturday at ... Inmate who fought for prison reform dies Houston Chronicle Plaintiff in long-running prison lawsuit dies Austin American-Statesman
Memorial to David Ruiz
Here is the memorial I read for David Ruiz on the Prison Show, Nov. 18, 2005, minus the poem. I have sent the poem to the Texas Observer and am
hoping they will publish it as a memorial to David; therefore I don't want to post it on the internet yet. Eventually I will.
Kendall
A self-educated Mexican-American, proud of his Indio heritage, David Resendez Ruiz is known in every court, jail, and prison in Texas. His name, both hated and adored, has become a way of marking time for old-timers in Texas who describe prison conditions as either "Before Ruiz" or "After Ruiz." The case that bore his name began in 1972 and became one of the most extraordinary prisoner rights cases in American history. He represented and was supported by hundreds of other prisoners who testified with him, along with thousands who participated in a work-stoppage that rattled the bars across Texas. Because David Ruiz had the huevos and persistence to stand against the State of Texas while in shackles, the building tender system of prisoner abuse ended in 1980. Because of that case, David Ruiz spent the past thirty years of his life in Ad Seg and paid with his life. The first news reports of his death said Ruiz died "of natural causes."
Let his own words set the record straight. Ruiz wrote, in a letter of July 8, 2004 to John D. Stobo, President of the University of Texas
Medical Branch, "I am sixty-two years old, and denial of medical treatment constitutes a conspiracy to murder me slowly." David Ruiz claimed he was dying of medical neglect. He reported harassment and retaliatory brutality by everyone from a petty mailroom dictator named Pegoda, to Nurses Fisher, Fuson, and Freeman, to the doctors, the wardens, and Major Thomas and Captain Jones at Goree. He knew the value of paper, and he created a paper trail that leaves no question about the circumstances of his death.
According to documents he left behind, David Ruiz had cancer, first observed by UTMB medical staff in 2002. That cancer was allowed to grow,
unchecked and untreated, for three years, and Ruiz was not even informed of the fact that he had cancer until 2005. He also had Hepatitis C,
which he contracted on Coffield Unit as a result of dangerous and unsanitary conditions. After months of filing grievances, writing letters,
and demanding attention, he was treated minimally and irregularly for Hepatitis C for six months; after six months, his treatment was discontinued. He also had gall stones (untreated), cataracts on both eyes (untreated), hiatal hernia of the esophagus (untreated), and injuries to both
knees, both ankles, and his back (all untreated).
In February, 2004, David Ruiz was told by a doctor sent by the parole board that he had, at most, five years to live. Ruiz wrote at that
time, "I only hope I’ll be able to accomplish certain things I desire on behalf of all prisoners who have experienced oppression, sadness, loneliness, and pain while being confined. I have seen the face of death here
in prison and have suffered and endured brutal pain. I feel death is the end of my existence in the world and the beginning of a journey to
the unknown." A year and nine months later, on November 13, 2005, David Ruiz died in custody at John Sealy hospital.
Three missions kept him going during the last year of his life:
1) his campaign for adequate health care for Texas prisoners;
2) his campaign for programs to provide treatment, education, and encouragement for young people just getting into trouble with the law; and
3) his desire to alert the public to the abuse, torture, and illegal detention of immigrants in Texas prisons. His death leaves a hole in the universe.
He always signed his letters, "Beside you in the struggle for humane treatment for all." His death leaves a challenge to all of us who are still breathing to take up those three causes and to work as bravely and as tirelessly as he did.
Just last month Ruiz wrote, "Bitter and brutal treatment turned me hateful, and I lost all respect for authority. Such treatment commenced
in Reform School. In the 60s and 70s TDCJ-ID was a brutal, mad, and savage prison, and the officials were dimwits and used dimwitted, weak,
brutal inmate guards to enforce their rules. I am of the opinion that many teenagers are bitter, just as I was, and the way to turn them around is to show them compassion, understanding, and love, not violence. But it takes patience, too. It took me a long time to look at things differently."
As a boy, Ruiz turned to a gang for identity and support. As a man, he challenged former gang members to take the nerve, the dedication,
and the love they wasted on gang violence and direct it into the struggle for humane treatment for all.
He was a poet, a writer, and a painter, and he wanted to write a book about his life. He kept putting that book aside to write grievances
about his own abuse and writs on behalf of other prisoners, and finally just a few months ago, he realized that he couldn’t bear to relive the
blood-soaked, bitter story of his childhood and his early years as a violent youth. He wrote several rough drafts of his story, made several
attempts, and at one point he wrote a dedication, which serves as a dedication of his life’s work as a prison reformer:
"I, David Resendez Ruiz, dedicate this effort to all those prisoners confined in penal institutions throughout the world, all who have endured savage and uncivilized treatment because they have opposed the penal system, and who still stand tall. I thank all writ-writers in the U.S., but mainly the writ-writers of the State of Texas who stood beside me throughout the litigation of Ruiz vs. Estelle and have endured, struggling forward, always forward, and who have unbreakable spirits. I thank Porky, Lionsio, Yayo, Lamas, Pope, Montana, Tejan, Kando, O.D., and others. I thank my beloved wife, Rose Marie, my loving daughter, Eva Marie, my precious sons, David Rene and Lawrence Everett, and all the Ruiz family. I thank my attorneys, Frances T.F. Cruz, William Bennett Turner, Donna Brorby, Gail Littlefield, Dave Venderhoof, Charles Ory, Bob Looney, Larry Dowling, Duncan Wilson; and also Charlie Norha and his family. And I thank all my friends and supporters, too numerous to mention."
David wrote a powerful poem called "Steel on Steel" which we have sent to the Texas Observer, hoping they will publish it as a memorial to David. Once they make their decision, the poem will also appear on this web site.
Today he is free.
How did David Ruiz endure what he endured? He and his family chose
the following song to be sung at both the Rosary and the Funeral.
I'm only human. I'm just a man.
Help me to believe in what I could be and all that I am.
Show me the stairway that I have to climb,
Lord for my sake, teach me to take one day at a time.
One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that's all I'm asking from you.
Give me the strength to do everyday what I have to do.
Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus, and tomorrow may never be mine.
So for my sake teach me to take one day at a time.
Do you remember when you walked among men?
Well Jesus you know if you're looking below it's worse now than then.
Pushing and shoving, crowding my mind,
So for my sake teach me to take one day at a time.
One day at a time, sweet Jesus, that's all I'm asking from you.
Give me the strength to do everyday what I have to do.
Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus, and tomorrow may never be mine.
Yes just for my sake teach me to take one day at a time.
David Ruiz
From:cure-usa@erols.com
Dear Friends,
The paper in Austin reported today that David Ruiz died yesterday of kidney failure at the prison hospital in Galveston. No word yet on a funeral.
He was 63 and spent all but four years of his adult life behind bars.
David was the main plaintiff in Ruiz v. Estelle, the longest and most comprehensive lawsuit ever successfully filed on a prison system.
Pauline and I knew David for over 30 years. He was such a mixture.
Years ago when we were in Texas, I once said that "David was a victim of the prison system he brought down!" He had a drinking (and drug) problem and when he was only out a few months, he received another long sentence for armed
robbery.
In prison, he did not receive any treatment and certainly there was no 're-entry" help on release.
That was over 20 years ago and I received a letter from him just two weeks ago asking again if we could help him make parole. We had played
a major role in his release in the early eighties when the court orders from the litigation became operative and his name in Texas was in the newspapers on a daily basis. I did not reply to his recent letter because I was thinking how to help him. Even now, I don't know what I could say.
And yet, he gave his life to the cause! He once told us that he was offered parole in the mid-seventies by the prison authorities if he would drop his lawsuit. He turned them down flat!!
And because of him and other courageous prisoners and attorneys and officials like Federal Judge William Wayne Justice, Texas prisons have
changed dramatically.
For example, when we first started in 1972, there was one doctor for the entire prison system. Ruiz v. Estelle mandated ten years later that there must be 50. Although Texas still has a long way to go, it has come a long way!
Yesterday, I heard that Al Slaton died too. Al like David was also one of the "writ writers" as they called the "jailhouse lawyers" in Texas.
Both Al and David are now with Frances! The mother of Texas prison reform movement back then was Frances Jalet Cruz, an attorney who came to
Texas in the late sixties as a VISTA volunteer after raising her children. Eventually, she had 28 prisoner clients. David and Al were two of these.
The prison system reacted physically to her as her clients began suing the prison system. She was slapped by the notorious warden "Bear-tracks" and she once told us that her car ended up in a ditch after visiting the Ellis Unit during those days. Frances thought the prison system might have set her car brakes up and Frances was not someone to say something like that unless it was
true.
In 1972, the prison system had her indicted and placed on trial as a "revolutionary". The trial ended three weeks after it began when one of
the three prisoner witnesses who had been released did not show up to testify.
The second absconded after he made parole and the third cried on the witness stand and said he had been forced to testify by the prison system.
The director of the prison system also placed her 28 clients together in segregation and away from any other prisoners until they would terminate their relationship with Frances. But this backfired and the Ruiz litigation came out
of this "control unit" situation.
When David was arrested for armed robbery in the eighties, Frances flew down from the Northeast where she had moved to visit David in jail in
Austin. She stayed with us and told us that she thought David was innocent after visiting him. A jury thought otherwise and he was convicted.
When we first came to Texas, the wardens would dismiss our complaints from people in prison by saying "Just remember, they didn't get here by
singing too loud in church." And certainly David is a good example of someone who went to prison for major crimes.
But, God writes straight with crooked lines. Before Ruiz, prisoners would be placed in isolation for years. The only time a doctor could be called was when the prisoner lost 25% of his or her weight. In the summer,prisoners suntanned from picking cotton in the fields would be released from solitary "white as a sheet". Their skin had been "burnt off" from sleeping on the hot floors!
Solitary was only one issue in this huge lawsuit and eventual court order.
Ruiz basically ended torture in Texas!
-Charlie and Pauline
Please sign David Ruiz's Guess Book:
How To Sign His Guest Book:
1. Click on the link that says: Plaintiff in long-running prison lawsuit dies
2. Below his picture, where it says "More of this Story" it says "guess book", it is in light gray
3. Click on that and the guess book will come up
4. Then at the top right is a place where it says, "Sign Guess Book" click on that
5. Then it will take you to where you can write a message to his family
6. You don't have to know this man to say thank you to his family and that you care just because of what he did for the Texas Prison system.
If you think it is bad today, back in the seventies is when the Prisoners were allowed to guard the Inmates and the entire system was out of control for sure.
I would appreciate all Jail Bird Sings and TX Pen Pals Wanted Members write a special message to let others know how much we as families and friends appreciate this man [David Ruiz] efforts to stand and fight for Texas Prisoners rights to be treated as human beings.
Blessings,
~~Linda
Click the following link to access the GuestBook:
Guest Book is closed... Plaintiff in long-running prison lawsuit dies
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DAVID RUIZ - 1972
Judge Justice first took control of Texas prisons in 1979 following a year-long trial brought about by civil-rights complaint filed in 1972 by prisoner David Ruiz. 349 witnesses testified at the 1978-79 trial telling of unspeakable atrocities committed by "building tenders" (prisoners who had been appointed as guards) and aided by guards and prison officials. Murder and torture were common punishments for such rule infractions as not picking enough cotton to satisfy the field major. Prisoners who wrote complaints to the federal court describing these barbaric terms of confinement were targeted for retaliation by wardens, with building tenders carrying out the beatings and rapes, and on occasion murders of jailhouse lawyers and others with no fear of punishment of any kind.
In 1980, Judge Justice ruled that confinement in the Texas prison system constituted cruel and unusual punishment, citing overcrowding, understaffing, brutality by guards and building tenders, substandard medical care, and uncontrolled physical abuse among prisoners?
The saga began in 1972, when an inmate named David Ruiz scrawled a 30-page complaint about civil rights violations at his facility and passed them to a judge through his attorney. After a marathon trial, Judge William Wayne Justice declared in 1980 that Texas's entire corrections system was unconstitutional. Over the next two decades, Justice would become the de facto chief administrator of Texas prisons, forcing the state to spend billions constructing new prisons and to end the practice of deputizing inmates to guard other inmates--a practice under which these "guards" routinely raped, beat, and tortured their fellow prisoners.
Despite the evidence of chronic abuses in Texas and elsewhere, these judicial decrees proved highly unpopular, particularly when rulings about overcrowding led to the release of "less violent" criminals--many of whom quickly began committing new crimes. As crime rates soared during the '70s and '80s, fueling public frustration with liberal policies that seemed aimed more at protecting criminals than their would-be victims, state officials began lobbying for relief from the close scrutiny of prisons. They finally got it in 1996 after the Republican Congress passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act, curbing both the ability of judges to issue decrees over prison systems and the ability of inmates to bring lawsuits in the first place.
Ruiz the reformer
Some of those lawsuits have sparked sweeping reforms. The most notable in Texas: Ruiz v. W.J. Estelle. In 1972, Texas inmate David Ruiz claimed that prison conditions were so brutal they amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge agreed. The state eventually spent billions of dollars to make prisons safer and less crowded.
"What has been accomplished over the last 20 years is astonishing," said Allen Breed, a national criminal justice consultant who testified against the state in the Ruiz case. "It never would have happened in Texas, never, if there hadn't been the Ruiz litigation."
Yet such cases are rare. More than 90 percent of lawsuits are dismissed or settled before they get to trial, according to the National Center for State Courts. Most of them challenge prison sentences, jail conditions, even state or federal laws.
Texas inmate suits
Since 1995, Texas' prison population has steadily climbed, but the number of lawsuits filed per 1,000 prisoners has decreased by 14 percent as Texas and the federal government passed laws targeting lawsuits.
Number of lawsuits filed in federal courts by Texas prisoners per 1,000 inmates 1995-2000*
1995 -- 43
1996 -- 54
1997 -- 49
1998 -- 41
1999 -- 37
2000 -- 37
*Does not include federal prisoners.
Source: Texas Department of Crminal Justice
Austin American-Statesman
DAVID RUIZ'S LAW SUIT