The Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn.- The state Department of Correction has banned jars of peanut butter from state prisons because inmates were using them to conceal drugs and guns.
Department investigators found that George Hyatte, an inmate accused in the shooting death of a guard during a bold courthouse escape last year, used a peanut butter jar to hide a cell phone that he used to coordinate his escape, the department said last week.
In an unrelated search, guards found a .32-caliber pistol and ammunition in another inmate’s peanut butter jar.
Correction Commissioner George Little announced that the department was confiscating all 18-ounce jars from inmates, who were allowed to buy them from prison commissaries. The jars would be replaced with 1-ounce condiment packets.
Hyatte, a career criminal serving a 41-year sentence for robbery and related offenses, escaped Aug. 9 as two guards led him to a van after a court hearing. His wife, a former prison nurse who met and married Hyatte behind bars, is charged with ambushing the guards, killing one and wounding the other when her husband yelled, “Shoot him.”
The Hyattes were captured 36 hours later at a motel in Columbus, Ohio, and are charged with murder.