Date: Thu, 26 Jan 95 20:26:14 CST  
From: "Cynthia Hoffman" <choff@violet.berkeley.edu>
To: badsubjects@uclink.berkeley.edu
Subject: Pelican Bay

Although I highly suspect that the only person besides me who remembers that
I promised to post this is David Hawkes, here goes:

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San Francisco Daily Journal, January 12, 1995

STATE ACCEPTS BRUTALITY RULING ON PRISON

Conditions at Pelican Bay violate inmates' rights, a judge
decides, and he appoints a monitor.

By Rex Bossert

State officials sounded surprisingly upbeat and willing to
cooperate with a monitor appointed by a San Francisco federal
judge, who ruled in a landmark decision Wednesday that the use of
excessive force and inadequate health care at California's state
of the art Pelican Bay State Prison violate inmates' rights.

"At this time it doesn't look like we will seek a stay of that
order," said Deputy Attorney General Peter J. Siggins, the lead
attorney for the state's Department of Corrections, the chief
defendant in the case.

Though Siggins said the state has not ruled out an appeal, he
added:  "It's not clear there's anything in the order that will
be difficult to comply with."

In the mammoth, 345 page decision, Chief U.S. District Judge
Thelton E. Henderson of San Francisco ruled a pattern of beatings
and brutality at the prison -- especially when guards forcibly
remove inmates from their cells -- violated the Eighth Amendment.

The Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment is
also violated by the serious lack of health care at Pelican Bay,
said Henderson, who was appointed to the federal bench by Carter
in 1980.

Henderson wrote:  "The dry words on paper can not adequately
capture the senseless suffering and sometimes wretched misery
that defendants' unconstitutional practices leave in their wake."

The ruling came in  _Madrid v. Gomez_, C90-3094TEH, a prisoners'
rights class action challenging the conditions of the so-called
super!maximum security of Pelican Bay's notorious Security
Housing Unit.

The SHU, as it is known, is a separate complex housing as many as
1,500 inmates under heavy guard and in extreme isolation in
small, windowless cells for 22 1/2 hours a day.

The SHU, one of three separate parts of the Del Norte County
prison, is reserved for the state's most violent prisoners and
gang members -- the "worst of the worst," according to the state.

The suit was a consolidation of nearly 300 separate suits filed
by Pelican Bay prisoners and brought before Henderson in a three
month bench trial that ended a year ago.

Henderson said that though it is not clear every inmate of the
Security Housing Unit would be likely to suffer psychological
trauma as a result of the extreme social isolation, those who are
already mentally ill or are at risk of instability should not be
housed there.

Henderson appointment Thomas F. Lonergan, who retired from the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in 1980, to act as a
special master overseeing the state's efforts to improve
conditions, Lonergan will help the state and the plaintiffs to
work together on a remedial plan, to be submitted to Henderson
within 120 days.

Plaintiffs' attorney David Steuer, a partner with Wilson,
Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, declared the ruling a landmark
victory because he said Henderson has "taken over control of the
prison."

Steuer and law partner Susan A. Creighton, who handled the case
pro bono for their Palo Alto firm, said Henderson's decision is
the latest word on constitutional standards for prisons, and will
be studied by prison administrators nationwide and in
California's 29 facility system.

But state Department of Corrections officials were also quick to
claim victory, noting that Henderson did not shut down the high
tech prison or significantly fault the basic conditions of
confinement.

"The judge is giving us the opportunity to show the improvements
that have been made since the prison opened in 1989," said
director of corrections James H. Gomez in a Wednesday new
release.

"This is a priority for us," Gomez said.

Henderson's opinion, while criticizing the state's policies on
use of force and medical care, did note that the Department of
Corrections should be given broad latitude to establish
procedures in light of concerns over security.

"He basically conceded that the defendants' policy preference
must be given deference in forming a plan," Siggins said.

The state also lauded Henderson's decision to let prisoners be
placed two to a cell, and to let minimum and maximum security
inmates be housed together on occasion !! practices condemned by
plaintiffs' attorneys as leading to unnecessary violence.

In addition, Henderson allowed the segregation of gang members in
the SHU and rejected plaintiffs' arguments that procedures
governing their assignment -- often for indeterminate terms --
were unconstitutional.

Henderson did not ban the use of firearms by prison guards -- a
practice condemned by plaintiffs' attorneys -- but did severely
criticize policies governing their use.

The judge had harsh words for the Department of Corrections'
supervision of the use of both lethal and nonlethal force by
guards, and for a pattern of excessive force.

"Indeed, the degree of force used by correctional staff was often
so far beyond any penalogical justification that it was clearly a
pretext for inflicting punishment and pain," Henderson wrote.

He cited numerous incidents where inmates suffered serious
physical injuries requiring medical care, and he said even where
no injuries occurred, such as nude lockups or chaining inmates in
fetal positions, correctional staff acted "with a punitive
purpose."

Henderson also enumerated many "systematic deficiencies" of
mental and physical health care at Pelican Bay.  Those included
lack of adequate staffing, proper screening and diagnostic
procedures, medical records, and monitoring of psychotic inmates.

Plaintiffs' attorney Donald Specter, of the nonprofit Prison Law
Office at San Quentin, said Wednesday that for the Madrid case to
avoid the years of appeals with which other prisoners' rights
cases have met, the Department of Corrections must exhibit a
"major sea change in their attitude towards court orders."

Specter added that he had not yet seen any indication of such a
change.

Henderson said in his ruling that "defendants have expended most
of their energies attempting to deny or explain away the
evidence" of constitutional violations.

"Nor are we confident, given the history of other prison
litigation, that defendants will promptly rectify constitutional
deficiencies absent intervention of this court," Henderson wrote,
concluding that only an injunction establishing a special master
would be adequate.

The Henderson ruling is not the only setback facing the state
corrections department, which was ordered last summer by U.S.
Magistrate Judge John Moulds to improve its mental health care
for thousands of prisoners statewide.  The Department of
Corrections was also held in contempt of court by U.S. District
Judge Lawrence K. Karlton for lack of proper psychiatric care at
the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

But Siggins said many changes mandated in Madrid and other cases
are already under way.

"These changes are going forward," he said.

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Read between the lines here.  While I think Henderson is the real thing
(he's still only on the District Court bench after 15 years...a legacy of
Carter's; he'll probably never go higher because he's a good [read liberal]
guy), I don't think much is really going to change substantively in the
short run.  Nevertheless, there will be a monitor installed, and if they let
him do his job (and if he's really interested in doing his job, which is
debatable given his former occupation) at least the worst excesses of
Pelican Bay will be under control.

Cynthia, glad to be out of the criminal world, given the climate of the 90s.
Although she also realizes that not being a "criminal" is no guarantee that
she won't be arrested anyway.  (Been there, done that ...)