CHP Officer’s Killer Sent to Toughest U.S. Prison

Even San Quentin state prison’s notorious death row is not secure enough to hold convicted cop killer Hung “Henry” Thanh Mai.

Instead, the state’s most heavily guarded inmate will be housed in the nation’s toughest federal prison, a bunker-like maximum security facility in Colorado dubbed “Supermax.”

Among Mai’s future fellow inmates: the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy J. McVeigh; Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing; and Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski.

Mai, a 29-year-old gang member, was sentenced to death last month for the 1996 murder of a California Highway Patrol officer in Fullerton. During his three-year incarceration awaiting trial, Mai ran an elaborate criminal network in the Orange County Jail and aspired to unite Asian and Hispanic gang members into one huge criminal syndicate, according to court records.

After Mai pleaded guilty to federal charges of ordering the death of an informant and running a distribution ring for illegal weapons and counterfeit securities, a judge ordered his every movement be monitored by two overhead cameras. Mai also was not allowed to flush a toilet without a guard being present, cutting off his ability to use the jail plumbing system to send messages. Mai’s letter-writing and telephone privileges also were severely restricted.

Mai will serve his time in federal prison because authorities are concerned that San Quentin won’t be able to provide similar security measures. Death row inmates at the Northern California prison can occasionally communicate with each other, and authorities feared that Mai would reestablish contact with fellow Asian gang member Lam Nguyen, a convicted double-murderer also on death row.

Authorities said Mai had conspired with Nguyen in the past to form an Asian Mafia. “You would not want to put those two back together again,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Marc Greenberg.

San Quentin officials said Mai will be the only death row inmate imprisoned at a federal penitentiary.

Mai’s attorney, George A. Peters, calls the security measures inhumane and said Mai’s emotional health will deteriorate over the about five- to 10-year time span it will take for the appeals process to run its course.

“It seems like they want to seal him into a canister,” said Peters, who plans to fight the restrictions in court. “Isolation will make people crazy, and as tough a man as Mr. Mai is, it has affected him.”

At the Colorado facility, called the U.S. Penitentiary Maximum, some of the more stringent security measures--such as 24-hour video monitoring and the no-flush rule--will not be necessary. But restrictions limiting Mai’s contact with the outside world and fellow inmates will remain.

Mai will be prohibited from sending or receiving mail, and will be allowed to speak only with his attorney or immediate family members: an aunt and his 92-year-old grandmother. Each month, he will be allowed only three 15-minute phone calls.

During a hearing in federal court last week, Judge David O. Carter ordered that photographs of the inside of the penitentiary be sealed, citing security reasons.

However, Jennifer Grundy, the prison’s legal counsel, responding to Carter’s questions, provided rare glimpses of what Mai’s life will be like inside the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” about 100 miles southwest of Denver.

Grundy said Mai probably will be housed in the most secure wing of the penitentiary, where he will be limited to one hour of exercise per day. No contact with fellow inmates will be permitted, and his visits will be recorded, she said.

Locked in a tiny cell behind steel double doors, Mai will find it difficult to pass notes to other inmates, Grundy said. She said the only way Mai could verbally communicate with another prisoner would be to yell loudly through a vent to the inmate above his cell.

Carter, citing Mai’s history of devising clever ways to communicate with others, recommended that the prison be careful about allowing him certain reading privileges. He said Mai might try to send messages to other inmates on magazine pages.