Philip (l) and Simmons (r). Or maybe it’s the other way around.
It’s hard to imagine a place where guns are more outlawed than they are here — a prison warehousing, inter alia, the worst of the worst in South Carolina’s prisons.
Yet somehow, these two guys, already doing an overly-generous life sentence for one adult and one child murder, each, managed to team up and knock off four of their fellow yardbirds — one of the victims a lifer for murder himself.
Denver Simmons and Jacob Philip lured each of the four inmates into a cell at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia on Friday morning, then worked together to attack and choke them, according to arrest warrants released early Saturday.
Two of the inmates were also beaten or stabbed with a broken broomstick, according to the warrants released by State Law Enforcement Division agents.
The warrants gave no reason for the attacks and did not indicate how long it took the prisoners to kill their fellow inmates. They did say there is video of the killings and the men confessed to investigators.
One wonders why both of these mother-and-child killers never got the sentence they had coming — God’s own Recall Notice. Maybe they’ll get it this time. Because, with the proper penalty off the table because judges and lawyers tend to love criminals and hate victims, there’s really nothing that can be done to these guys. Frankly, a healthy society would tissue type them and keep them around until some ill person needs their organs. The Chinese have that right.
These guys have no further utility as human beings; part ’em out for the greater good of mankind. If you want to repent and save your soul, fine and good, but your liver and kidneys belong to the next non-felon in need.
The Corrections Department will conduct an internal investigation into the killings after the criminal investigation is finished, Corrections Department Director Bryan Stirling told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Because of the ongoing investigation, Stirling would not talk about whether prison policies were broken or how the inmates came to be together.
We can practically write the report that they’re presently stalling on. It will be written entirely in the passive voice, and no individual will be held accountable.
That did not require Nostradamus levels of prophecy, really.
Prison records show the four inmates killed were considered minimum security risks. The Kirkland prison serves several roles in South Carolina’s system. It operates a specialized housing unit for the state’s most dangerous inmates, an assessment and evaluation center for new inmates sentenced to more than three months, and a 24-bed infirmary, according to the Corrections website.
Every soldier learns to do the 5 S’s with prisoners: Secure, Search, Segregate, Safeguard, and Speed to the rear. (Those might be out of order. DILLIGAF? No). Looks like this was a major dropped ball in the Segregate and Safeguard columns. SHU inmates should never come into contact with campers.
The interesting thing would be knowing why these guys did it; the corrections bureaucracy probably can’t figure that out, so we’ll pencil in, “because they like killing people?”
Simmons, 35, has been behind bars since his 2007 arrest on charges he killed a woman he knew in Colleton County, took her debit card and ate pizza for lunch, then got her 13-year-old son from school and killed him too.
We like pizza too much, but if we ever said we’d kill for it, it was hyperbole, honest.
Philip, 25, has been in prison since 2013. Authorities said he strangled his girlfriend and her 8-year-old daughter in Berkeley County.
Hey, after the first murder, as these two who now share a body count of eight have learned, the rest are all free.
Maybe we need to relook our justice system with a view to incentives.
Prison records show Simmons has three disciplinary infractions in four years for being out of place, disrespect and refusing to obey an order. Philip has no disciplinary actions against him in nearly two years in state prison.
Records did not show if the inmates had lawyers.
Maybe the dead inmates’ lawyers can get all caught up in torts with the killer inmates’ lawyers, keeping both sets of lawyers from freeing more monsters like these to kill normal human beings? Well, we know the odds, but don’t steal our dreams, please.
On the plus side, none of the deceased leaves a church choir short one tenor:
The four inmates killed were John King, 52; Jason Kelley, 35; Jimmy Ham, 56; and William Scruggs, 44, prison officials said.
King was serving time for a variety of crimes and had a projected release date of October 2020. Kelley was serving 15 years for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. He was scheduled for release in August 2020.
Ham was scheduled for release this November after serving a sentence for a variety of offenses. Scruggs was sentenced to life in prison for murder and first-degree burglary.
via Convicted murderers serving life terms strangle four inmates | New York Post.
Well, now they’ll really throw the book at these two jitbags. Why maybe they’ll get another life sentence, in case they somehow survive the first one!
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
16 thoughts on “When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Broomsticks”
A particularly ,um, enhanced punishment for additional multiples of murder/homicide or for especially heinous circumstances might not pass the constitutional test against *cruel and unusual* punishments, but if used frequently- and there’s certainly a clear opportunity for that, as in the case under discussion here- than it would no longer be so unusual. And the constitutional restriction is not against cruel or unusual penalties.
My nomination for method, usable and apropo in this case? A ride back to the crime scene in a cement-mixer truck, with the mixing drum rotating, but no wet cement inside [That might be reserved for the next penalty up the chain, as f’rinstance child molestation or congressional bribegiving and bribetaking.] To fill up the unused space inside, add in a few dozen concrete blocks and some bowling
balls. Hey, let’s stop off at Dairy Queen!
I’d like to hear the explanation as to how there came to be further killings after the first one was caught on surveillance video.
Bring back the penology of the Chateau D’If!!!
Day the First: Put into your cell, and securely locked and bolted inside.
For whatever fixed term seems appropriate for your first offense.
Morning and evening, the food plate is slid through the door’s food plate slot.
Perhaps, as a sop to the sentimental, an annual firehose bath and haircut.
No books. No radio. No TV. No movies. No letters. No weight pile. no interaction whatsoever.
Just an endless parade of days, with you removed from the world, and naught but a very small hole to allow sunlight, and mark the passage of days in your solitary existence, removed from the world.
As it should be.
Day the Last, an opportunity to shower, a haircut, and a new set of clothes.
Then set at liberty, with the benediction that the second visit will be perpetual, for you, however long that may be.
(Unless, due to the gravity of Crime One, the judge pre-selected that option from the outset.)
If, at some point, the food tray remains untouched, and a sickly sweet odor emanates from within your cage, the keepers sew you into a potato sack, weight the bundle, and offer your mortal remains as a boon to the local crab population offshore.
Unnoticed, unmourned, and unmissed, save for the solitary entry of “Paid” next to your name in the prison guest ledger.
Then the cell is steam cleaned, and marked ready for the next occupant.
As an act of purest mercy, prisoners sentenced to Life to be given the opportunity, on initial arrival only, for euthanasia. For the pro-abortion crowd, we can call it “Very Late Term Choice”.
As a bonus, the ranks of prison staff can be shrunk to the size of the guard contingent at most garbage dumps.
Attempted escape gets you returned at half rations for some good time.
Any harm to anyone in the attempt gets you euthanized for cause.
Crime would be a lot less rampant, and a lot less fun, at that point.
Recidivism would be require multiple zeroes to the right of the decimal to calculate.
Society’s oxygen thieves?
In better times, before those peacenik Quakers screwed us royally, we simply had the stocks insured by the noose.
***In better times. … . we simply had the stocks insured by the noose.***
I think there;s room here for compromise between two viewpoints of good intelligent people who simply want what’s best. Why not both? Simultaneously!
Granted, the immobility of the stocks limits the intricate steps of the Rope Dance. That’s easily enough solved by attaching the free end of the noose rope to a passing truck. Or when anticipation is called for, to the harness of a frisky horse, bottle rockets already ihaving been distributed to the spectators.
Gang related killings, for money or favors from an ex con or gang member outside the prison. who knows for sure but the bottom line is, they did not do the murders for recreation.
They are getting something for it… even if it is paying back a favor or making sure their families are taken care of… one this is for sure, dirt bags killing dirt bags should NEVER be a crime 😀
Judging by the report of our gracious host, I think the murderers’ families were already taken care of, so to speak.
-John M.
Silence, Search, Segregate, Safeguard, and Speed.
The things I remember….. Just not where I put the car keys. Sheesh….
***Silence, Search, Segregate, Safeguard, and Speed.***
Either that, or put a round into the body as you pass by so you don’t have to worry about problems left unresolved later annoying you from behind. Granted, it gets a little *remains unviewable* when an entire platoon…or company… working by that SOP passes by.
***The things I remember….. ***
‘Me too, including a little poem/ditty, now some 50 years old:
*Recon, we’re a funny bunch; what you call bodies, we call lunch….*
I will wax theological regarding capital punishment with the following opinion.
There is a reason for the use thereof, but we obscure it when we think that we are somehow performing a just vengeance. It is not that just vengeance is not required; it is that we are incapable of seeing what it really looks like from our very low vantage point.
When we think of all of the terrors that we might visit upon an objectively deserving perpetrator, what we are missing is that these acts pale in comparison, at an infinite level, of what awaits them at the true Bar of Justice. (And for those who think there is not One, then there remains nothing but opinion and consensus to decide the definition of wrong. Without an infinite God Who is just, then the entire premise of right and wrong evaporates.)
The reason that man is commanded to enforce capital punishment is due to the gravity of the offenses, and the real victim. Since man is the “image bearer”, murder is, at a fundamental level, an attack against the Author of the image. Even if a man says it ain’t so, we do not get to define the law; the Author creates the definitions. In the instant case, the Author says that when a man commits murder, that it is an offense that is so heinous that it cannot be legitimately dealt with by man’s justice, “so I am commanding you oh man, as a creature, to send this man to Me”. God is not opposed to vengeance whatsoever; He just wants it done right, and we lack the ability. He says “vengeance is mine”.
We think that a snapped neck, empty lungs, a perforated brain, etc, ends the issue. As Marion Morrison was wont to say: “Not hardly, pilgrim”. It is just the beginning of a process that never ends.
As Davel mentioned the video of the killings….my hunch is the screws had a pool going or impromptu gladitorial games.
Death by Bongo!
We sometimes dispo’d a call “NHI”.
“No Humans Involved.”
Sounds about right on this one.
The techie’s version of that is PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
Prison for hardened criminals need to be more like Devils Island in Papillon.
“Warden Barrot:
The rule here is total silence.
We make no pretense of rehabilitation here.
We’re not priests, we’re processors.
A meat packer processes live animals into edible meat.
We process dangerous men into harmless ones.
This we accomplish by breaking you.
Breaking you physically, spiritually and here [taps head].
Strange things happen to the head here.
Put all hope out of your mind, and masturbate as little as possible.
It drains the strength.”
PEBKAC may need to be moved to the top of my list of acronyms we use for trouble tickets dispositions. In the past we have usually favored ID10T as a catch all close out. It takes some people a minute to see we occasionally have clients we can only classify as an idiot.