Too Cruel for the Cruel

At Arkansas' Tucker prison farm, "the Tucker telephone" was a fearsome means of communicating the superintendent's displeasure. It consisted of an old-fashioned crank-phone apparatus that was wired to the genitals and one of the big toes of recalcitrant prisoners. When the crank was spun, the recipient of the message was shocked nearly unconscious. James Bruton, the superintendent who designed and used that device, resigned in 1966 when state officials began a series of investigations of brutality in the Arkansas prisons (TIME, Feb. 9, 1968). Last week Bruton pleaded no contest to charges that he violated prisoners' civil rights by administering cruel and unusual punishment. The penalty he received was considerably more compassionate than many he himself had dealt out.

The maximum permissible sentence that could be imposed on Bruton under the federal Civil Rights Act of 1871 was a $1,000 fine and one year in prison. Federal Judge J. Smith Henley imposed the full penalty, complained that it was too light, and then made it even lighter. He suspended execution of the prison term and released Bruton on a year's probation. Henley's explanation: "The court doesn't want to give you a death sentence, and quite frankly, Mr. Bruton, the chances of your surviving that year would not be good. One or more of these persons or their friends with whom you have dealt in the past as inmates of the Arkansas penitentiary would kill you."

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