FREE DUSTY!

Dusty transferred to Powhaten Correctional Center after false accusation of escape attempt

Recently, Dusty was placed in solitary confinement for almost 12 weeks because he was wrongly accused of creating an escape plan.  Someone else may have been thinking about escaping, but not Dusty. In fact, on August 29th, he was busy working on his Writ of Actual Innocence, when the guards came and rudely took him away to isolation without even an explanation. He was not allowed to make contact with his family or attorney for 12 days. The first few days he sat there with not so much as even a pencil and paper, and of course he had no form of entertainment or communication. It wasn't until after his mother demanded to know what was going on and threatened to bring in the media, that he was allowed access to a phone to call his home. That is when his family learned that he was under investigation for planning to escape. There was a 3 page list found near Dusty's pod (not his cell) in a trash can that had items on it that could be used for an escape. And the investigator told Dusty that there was an anonymous note found that had his name on it that stated he had been thinking about escaping. He along with three other men was taken to solitary confinement. One man was his cell partner and of the other two, he barely knew one of them, didn't associate with him and he didn't know the other at all.  We believe that Dusty was targeted because of several reasons. Of those reasons one is his military background and another is that his case has received much media attention. Although the 3 page list was shown to Dusty he never saw the anonymous one. It took weeks of frustrating calls and contacts to the administrators where he was incarcerated and our attorney contacting the investigator before any action was taken. Finally after hand writing analysis, fingerprints and a lie detector test, came back negative they allowed him to have some of his personal and legal things. Not all of it was returned and what he received was all zerox copies of his handwritten notes. (To this day he still has not received much of his hard work, which he has put literally years into it). Although it was proven that he had nothing to do with a plan to escape the investigator recommended that Dusty be moved to a level 5 (he was in a level 3 at Augusta ) Level 5 means higher security, more lockdowns and less freedom. The investigator stated that he thought that Dusty was a security threat! I believe it was all a conspiracy to get him moved to a higher level of security or to get him to catch a charge, which wouldn't look good on his record.   Luckily there are some good people out there watching out for Prisoners rights. We had help and suggestions from several people including a reporter, a senator, the Public Health and Safety, the DOC, some of the administrators at Augusta CC and Keith Deblasio and Annette Blankenship, both advocates for Prisoner rights.  The DOC moved him from Augusta CC to Powhaten CC on November 8, 2006. This is Dusty's current address:

Dustin Turner # 243975
Powhatan CC
Dept of Correction
State Farm , VA 23160