$35,000 Cash Reward Offer Helps Sink Judgeship Chances for Bush Nominee

Posted by Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet at 12:16 PM on June 16, 2008.

Gustavus "Gus" Puryear, head legal honcho for the nation's largest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), isn't the kind of guy who's accustomed to sitting in the hot seat, much less showing visible signs of discomfort.

The kind of discomfort, say, that Puryear might have felt when he heard that up to $35,000 in cash reward money had been announced for information leading to the conviction of Estelle Richardson's murderer(s). Ten thousand dollars will go to anyone who can recover "missing" cell extraction video footage from within the CCA-operated Nashville prison where Estelle was found dead in her solitary confinement cell.

The cash reward announcement came a couple of weeks after AlterNet ran the two-part investigative feature I wrote about the Estelle Richardson, and what any of the events surrounding her life and death has to do with Puryear's bid for federal judgeship.

This money's quite real, and the offer is quite legitimate, although the actual donor has chosen to remain anonymous. Check it out for yourself at WhoKilledEstelle.org.

The grassroots organizing front has picked up steam, as well, especially after Amy Goodman took interest in the story and brought me on Democracy Now! to discuss some of the particulars. Many readers and viewers have followed up by going to AgainstPuryear.org, run by a man named Alex Friedmann.

"[T]he judicial nomination of CCA general counsel Gus Puryear is largely in the toilet," Friedmann wrote to me in a recent e-mail, referring to an article from The Tennessean.

Wow.

When President Bush nominated him to a lifetime federal judicial appointment last year, it seemed to most people paying attention that he'd be confirmed without much fanfare or fuss. Puryear had always been a staunch GOP loyalist, but he wasn't the kind to rock the boat with public proclamations about controversial issues. Instead, he proved himself to be the behind-the-scenes guy; the kind of guy, for example, who got a kick out of prepping Dick Cheney for the 2000 and 2004 vice-presidential debates.

By the time he was nominated for the U.S. District Court judgeship, Puryear also proved himself to be a relentlessly corporate litigator whose loyalty to CCA's bottom line had been (and still is) handsomely rewarded. If it weren't for the fact that CCA brought in a corporate commando in 2001 by the name of John Ferguson (and that Ferguson decided to bring Puryear in to create a new, formidable legal fortress), CCA's scandal-ridden, stock-price-tanking, shareholder-suing mess would have surely have brought the entire company crashing to the ground. (Yes, CCA scandals are now more prevalent than ever, but so is the number of people cycling in and out of prison. Where federal and state governments have run out of options, CCA and other prison privatizers have made it their business to make themselves indispensable.)

With a net worth of $13 million (and climbing), the 39-yr-old Puryear didn't just show up with an old-money pedigree and a seemingly skeleton-free closet; he was able to turn it up a few notches as a quick-witted, nattily-attired, blue-eyed whippersnapper eager to play his part to freshen up a stale party image. And what better way to do so than to slip on a nice, roomy judge's robe and decide on the fate of people's lives?

He was riding in the slipstream of the most reprehensible driver of the American prison machine. Sure, he hit a few small speed bumps along the way, and Estelle Richardson was one of those.

I'm grateful that Friedmann wasn't willing to let her memory fade away.

"But the fight isn't over yet," he cautions. "Puryear can still be confirmed anytime from now until January 2009. Since his nomination is presently on the ropes, it's time for a knock-out blow. If you or your organization haven't already done so, now is the time to contact the Senate Judiciary Committee and object to Puryear's pending nomination.

I'll second that.

www.againstpuryear.org.

Estelle, I hope that you can rest in peace.

Tagged as: tennessee, gus puryear, cca, estelle richardson

Silja J.A. Talvi is a senior editor at In These Times, an investigative journalist and essayist with credits in many dozens of newspapers and magazines nationwide, including The Nation, Salon, Santa Fe Reporter, Utne, and the Christian Science Monitor.