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© 2011 Idaho Press-Tribune
CALDWELL — The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against two Canyon County Jail officials, alleging that the jail moved an inmate to another facility in retaliation for filing grievances against the institution.
According to ACLU attorney Lea Cooper, jail officials transferred inmate Dana Harris without warning to the Payette County jail after he submitted formal complaints of unsanitary conditions and noxious fumes from an adjoining construction project. Harris had also been in contact with ACLU attorneys monitoring federally-mandated health and safety regulations at correctional facilities.
Upon arrival in Payette County, Cooper said, Harris was immediately placed in solitary confinement.
“What they told us was, ‘Oh, well, we just thought he’d like the other jail better since he had so many complaints about ours,’” Cooper said. “In reality, his girlfriend lives in Nampa, there’s no one to visit him in Payette, and when they delivered him, they told the Payette deputies that he was a troublemaker. It was definitely punishment. It was to get them out of their hair.”
Canyon County Sheriff Chris Smith and Chief Deputy Gary Duelen, both named in the lawsuit, did not return phone messages Wednesday evening.
“The U.S. Constitution guarantees all Americans the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and prisoners have the right to file complaints with jail staff and courts about their conditions of confinement,” ACLU staff attorney Stephen Pevar said in a prepared statement. “Retaliating against prisoners for exercising their constitutional rights is at odds with fundamental American values and cannot be tolerated.”
The lawsuit also alleges that jail officials threatened two additional inmates — Alfred Young and Lorraine Scott — with retaliation if they filed complaints.
“What follows is the message that all the other prisoners get,” Cooper said. “Which is ‘You keep submitting grievances, and you’ll be sent somewhere else, too.’”
shdizzle posted at 10:15 pm on Thu, Nov 24, 2011.
Why don't they just do like Sheriff Arpaio does down in Arizona. Put em in pink underwear, eating green bologna, and living in tents. Don't like the conditions then don't go to jail moron. The ACLU will always complains until all of our jails resemble club Med instead of what they should be.
RobertoSarto posted at 6:25 pm on Thu, Nov 24, 2011.
Jail inmates are not the nicest people...but you still have to grant them their rights. Otherwise, our sheriff is running a Gulag.