• By Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer
• On Wednesday August 26, 2009, 9:28 pm EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government sent about 3,900 economic stimulus payments of $250 each this spring to people who were in no position to use the money to help stimulate the economy: prison inmates.

The checks were part of the massive economic recovery package approved by Congress and President Barack Obama in February. About 52 million Social Security recipients, railroad retirees and those receiving Supplemental Security Income were eligible for the one-time checks.

Prison inmates are generally ineligible for federal benefits. However, 2,200 of the inmates who received checks got to keep them because, under the law, they were eligible, said Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration. They were eligible because they weren’t incarcerated in any one of the three months before the recovery package was enacted.

“The law specified that any beneficiary eligible for a Social Security benefit during one of those months was eligible for the recovery payment,” Lassiter said.

The other 1,700 checks? That was a mistake.

Checks were sent to those inmates because government records didn’t accurately show they were in prison, Lassiter said. He said most of those checks were returned by the prisons.

“We are currently reviewing each of those cases to determine whether or not the recovery payment was due,” Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue said in a statement issued Wednesday evening. “Where we determine payment was not due, we will take aggressive action to recover each of these erroneous payments.”

The Boston Herald first reported that the checks were sent to inmates.

The inspector general for the Social Security Administration is performing an audit to make sure no checks went to ineligible recipients, spokesman George E. Penn said.

The audit, which had already been planned, will examine whether checks incorrectly went to inmates, dead people, fugitive felons or people living outside the U.S., Penn said.

The $787 billion economic recovery package included $2 million for the inspector general to oversee the provisions handled by the Social Security Administration. The audit is part of those efforts, Penn said. There is no timetable for its conclusion.

The federal government processed $13 billion in stimulus payments. About $425,000 was incorrectly sent to inmates.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

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Plaxico Burress Going to Prison for 2 Years

By JOHN ELIGON

Plaxico Burress, the former Giants wide receiver who accidentally shot himself in the leg with an illegal gun last November, will be sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty Thursday to a weapons charge.

Wearing a dark blue suit and chewing on his bottom lip, Mr. Burress quietly answered “Yes, sir,” after Justice Michael H. Melkonian of State Supreme Court in Manhattan asked if he wanted to accept the plea deal, which his lawyer had negotiated with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

By taking the plea, Mr. Burress, who turned 32 last week, avoided what would have been a mandatory minimum sentence of three and a half years in prison if he had been convicted at trial of the original charge against him, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Instead, Mr. Burress pleaded to an attempted weapons possession charge, allowing for the lighter sentence.

“That offer is in keeping with our general plea practice with respect to similarly situated defendants,” John P. Wolfstaetter, an assistant district attorney, said in court, adding that Mr. Burress had until his arraignment Thursday to accept the offer.

Mr. Burress, who will head to prison when he is officially sentenced on Sept. 22, will be eligible for release after slightly more than 20 months, his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said.

“This is a very sad day because I think a very good man, who is a brilliant athlete, is unfortunately going to spend 20 months in prison,” Mr. Brafman told reporters outside the courthouse. “After an agonizing period of discussion, Plaxico decided that he wanted to put this behind him as soon as possible.”

Mr. Brafman said he hoped his client could rehabilitate his career with the N.F.L. After the plea, the league said that Mr. Burress would be suspended for the length of his prison term, but that he could sign with a new team when he was released.

But, Mr. Brafman added, football was secondary in Mr. Burress’s mind: his wife is expecting their second child in November.

The Giants released Mr. Burress in April, and he was not signed in the off-season as teams awaited the outcome of the case.

Pat Hanlon, a spokesman for the Giants, said that to team officials “this has been a tragic, sad, disappointing situation from the beginning.”

“Our concern has always been for Plax’s welfare, and that continues to be our overriding feeling,” Mr. Hanlon said.

The shooting occurred shortly after 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 29 at the Latin Quarter nightclub in Midtown. Security guards had allowed Mr. Burress to enter with a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol tucked in the waistband of his pants. The gun was loaded and not in a holster, according to prosecutors.

Mr. Burress, who caught the winning touchdown pass in the Giants’ 2008 Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots, had a license to carry the gun in Florida, but it had expired nearly seven months before the shooting. Even if it were still valid, prosecutors said, Mr. Burress would not have been allowed to carry the weapon in New York.

Shortly after Mr. Burress reached the nightclub’s second-floor V.I.P. area, where there were 20 to 30 people, the gun slipped down his pant leg and accidentally fired as he tried to prevent it from falling to the floor. The bullet hit Mr. Burress’s leg and narrowly missed a club security guard, prosecutors said.

Before the case was presented to a grand jury, Mr. Brafman said, he tried for months to negotiate with the district attorney’s office for leniency, but prosecutors never offered less than two years in prison.

So in a last-ditch effort, Mr. Burress testified before the grand jury, as did Antonio Pierce, a Giants linebacker who was with Mr. Burress in the nightclub and drove him to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, where Mr. Burress was checked in under a false name. Still, the police learned from news reports about what had happened at the club and arrested him.

Prosecutors also sought weapons charges against Mr. Pierce because he transported Mr. Burress’s pistol in the glove compartment of his car.

The grand jury indicted Mr. Burress but not Mr. Pierce.

After a highly charged debate, the Senate approved a plan to trim California’s prison population by 27,000 inmates, acting over the objections of Republican lawmakers and law enforcement groups. The proposal would let thousands of inmates be released early from state prison or avoid prison time altogether. It is intended to cut $1.2 billion from corrections spending as part of a state deficit-cutting deal struck last month. The measure passed the Senate on a 21-to-19 vote. Passage was less certain in the Assembly.

Now that California is no longer interested, Michigan’s prison in Standish is open to federal inmates — other than detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — or those from other states, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday.

State Corrections Director Patricia Caruso has lobbied the head of federal prisons to use the maximum-security facility in Standish for federal prisoners, said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Department of Corrections.

And Granholm said she’ll continue to solicit Pennsylvania — and other states — to send their excess prisoners to Michigan.

Meanwhile, the possible transfer of Guantánamo detainees to the Standish prison continued to roil political waters. Opponents of a so-called Gitmo North plan to voice their objections Thursday at a town hall meeting in Standish, where the looming closure of the prison and loss of 280 jobs would be a sharp economic blow.

Granholm ordered the prison closed in July to cut costs, but it has been kept open with hopes the state could entice other states to send prisoners, thereby bringing in money and maintaining those local jobs.

But California prison officials told Carsuso on Monday the Standish prison would be too expensive and lacked the needed medical facilities.

Federal officials met with Standish residents last week after they toured the prison. Although transferring the detainees from Guantánamo would keep the prison open, they would be guarded by military personnel, not Michigan corrections officers. Still, it would be worthwhile, said Standish Mayor Kevin King.

“The economic stimulus that would bring to our area would be immeasurable,” King said.

But the notion of housing the Guantánamo prisoners, and possibly exposing the community to terrorist attacks, continued to stir concerns.

Granholm said Tuesday that federal officials haven’t answered safety concerns over housing the detainees.

“I’m worried more about the bigger implications of having a facility like that in Michigan,” she said.

Contact CHRIS CHRISTOFF: 517-372-8660 or cchristoff@freepress.com