Pink underwear kills: Sheriff Joe settles with family of Eric Vogel.

Whatever BS rationalization Arpaio uses for employing the color pink in his jails, its used in an overtly misogynistic, homophobic way - to humiliate the male prisoners, mainly. His policies and practices around the dressing of prisoners not only perpetuates harmful stereotypes, at the very least; the forced dressing in "feminine" clothes  even terrified Eric Vogel to death. Too bad they didn't challenge the constitutionality of Arpaio's treatment of all prisoners, at the same time, as this settlement doesn't set any precedent that could force Arpaio to change policies.  Shame on the Maricopa County voters who have fueled that idiot's fires and kept him in power. I hope Eric Vogel's family get millions.

The lawyers in this case were Robbins and Curtin, if you need one to sue either the MCSO or the State of Arizona on behalf of a victim of police or prison violence. They often win.

Joe Arpaio's armored car stalked and chalked

at the PHOENIX 2012 Veterans Day Parade

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Arizona pink underwear inmate case to be settled: lawyer

Chicago Tribune 

September 8, 2014

(Reuters) - An attorney for the estate of a mentally ill inmate who sued an Arizona county after being forcibly dressed in pink underwear by jail officers said on Monday they will settle the case.

Lawyers for Eric Vogel's estate and the county of Maricopa told the court on Friday both sides had reached an agreement, plaintiff attorney Joel Robbins said. Robbins declined on Monday to provide further detail on the settlement, which needs to be approved by county officials.

The pink underwear for male jail inmates policy is a controversial part of firebrand Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-crime policies. The sheriff was listed as a defendant in the case, which was filed in April 2007.

Officers arrested Vogel in November 2001 for assaulting a policeman. Health workers at the jail determined Vogel had mental problems and needed psychiatric care, court records show.

The inmate resisted the pink underwear policy at the jail, and screamed that the officers who held him down and forcibly dressed him were raping him, according to court documents.

"The fact that they had wrestled this man, screaming that he was being raped, those are the things that kind of added up to what we believe was deliberate indifference," Robbins said.

Vogel died of acute cardiac arrhythmia weeks later, after running miles from the scene of a minor car accident, fearing that he would be arrested again, court documents show.

The county is scheduled to hold a board of supervisors meeting on Wednesday to discuss the agreement, according to court records.

In 2012, the federal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Arpaio's policy may be unconstitutional when applied to prisoners who had not been convicted of a crime.

Two members of a three-judge appeal panel raised the issue while ruling for the majority in a related lawsuit against Arpaio and Maricopa County. But they stopped short of striking down the underwear practice, saying it had not been formally challenged by plaintiffs in the case.

Writing for the majority, a 9th Circuit judge said that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed jail officials to use unpleasant measures so long as they served a legitimate purpose, such as the safety of the institution.

But he noted the Supreme Court also ruled that arbitrary requirements may be construed as punishments, which could not be imposed on people who had not been found guilty of a crime.

Arpaio has come under fire by the U.S. Justice Department for a crackdown on illegal immigration that the government said involved racial profiling.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Sandra Maler)

POSTCARD-only policy in jails unconstitutional!

YAY for Prison Legal News - which is well worth the subscription, by the way.

 Hopefully this means the beginning of the end of the crummy postcard-only policy in the Maricopa County jail system. It really is unduly oppressive and drastically restricts freedom of speech both ways. It being thrown out in one jail doesn't mean that Joe Arpaio will change his policy without a fight, though. It means the prisoners in his jails need to file grievances about the mail policy violating your 1st Amendment rights - appealing them all the way to the top so you are in a position to sue when the last denial comes down - that's called "exhausting administrative remedies" - it shows you're trying to work things out in-house, by policy, before asking the court to settle your prisoner issues. 

I know the MCSO is worried about massive quantities of drugs being hidden in children's homemade birthday cards and the like, but I think they should start strip-searcing the guards (who are the biggest source of contraband in most jails/prisons) instead of strip-searching all the prisoner's  mail...they'd find a whole hell of a lot more contraband that way.

Besides, nothing beats a real letter...

Here's the link to the actual decision

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PLN prevails in challenge to postcard-only policy at Columbia County, OR jail

Prison Legal News, Jan. 1, 2013. Press release - PLN prevails in challenge to postcard-only policy at Columbia County, OR jail 2013

PRESS RELEASE

Human Rights Defense Center
For Immediate Release

April 25, 2013


Federal Court Strikes Down Postcard-only Policy at Columbia County Jail

Portland, OR – On April 24, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, Portland Division, held that a postcard-only policy at the Columbia County Jail, which restricted mail sent to and from detainees at the facility to postcards, is unconstitutional. The court therefore has prohibited enforcement of the policy permanently – the first time in the United States that a jail’s postcard-only policy has been struck down following a trial on the merits.

The ruling, by federal judge Michael H. Simon, was entered in a lawsuit against Columbia County and Sheriff Jeff Dickerson filed by Prison Legal News (PLN), a non-profit monthly publication that covers criminal justice-related issues. PLN, a project of the Human Rights Defense Center, sued in January 2012 after Columbia County jail employees rejected PLN’s monthly news publication and letters mailed to detainees. Further, the jail had failed to provide PLN with notice or an opportunity to appeal the jail’s censorship of PLN’s materials.

The rejection of PLN’s publications and letters was attributed to the jail’s postcard-only policy and a policy and practice that prohibited detainees from receiving magazines. PLN contended that such policies violated its rights under the First Amendment, and that the lack of notice and opportunity to appeal was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

During the litigation, the defendants admitted “that inmates have a First Amendment right to receive magazines and inmates and their correspondents have a Fourteenth Amendment right to procedural due process.” However, the jail defended its postcard-only policy and claimed there was no official policy banning magazines at the jail.

On May 29, 2012, Judge Simon entered a preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendants from enforcing their postcard-only policy. He ruled that the policy "drastically restricts an inmate’s ability to communicate with the outside world," and "prevents an inmate’s family from sending items such as photographs, children’s report cards and drawings, and copies of bills, doctor reports, and spiritual and religious tracts." The court also observed that the jail’s postcard-only policy "inhibits rehabilitation," citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found "inmate freedom to correspond with outsiders advances rather than retards the goal of rehabilitation." Undeterred, the defendants continued to defend their policy at trial, held from February 5 to 8, 2013.

Following the trial, the district court found in its April 24 ruling that the defendants’ rationales for adopting the postcard-only policy at the jail – preventing the introduction of contraband and saving time during mail inspection – were not supported by the evidence.

The court also determined that jail employees “did not in fact allow magazines to enter the Jail,” and that a ban on magazines was specifically declared in the jail’s inmate handbook, in a jail memorandum and on the jail’s website. Further, "Sheriff Dickerson credibly testified that he did not know that the First Amendment required the Jail to allow inmates to receive magazines when he took office in 2009." The district court therefore concluded that the defendants had a policy and custom of prohibiting magazines, in violation of the First Amendment.

Accordingly, Judge Simon entered a permanent injunction that enjoins the defendants from restricting incoming and outgoing mail to postcards only. "[T]he postcard-only policy creates a hurdle to thoughtful, personal, and constructive written communications between an inmate and his or her unincarcerated family and friends," he wrote. He also declared "that inmates have a First Amendment right to receive magazines and that it would be unconstitutional for Defendants to refuse to deliver magazines to inmates solely because they are magazines," and that detainees and their correspondents have a right to procedural due process when mail is rejected, including notice of the rejection and the ability to appeal same.

"This lawsuit could have been avoided had Sheriff Dickerson not enacted an unconstitutional, harmful policy that limited correspondence to and from detainees to postcards, and had he ensured that jail employees were properly trained as to the First Amendment and due process rights of both detainees and those who correspond with them," stated PLN editor Paul Wright. "Unfortunately he failed in both of these respects, and the court’s ruling is the result."

"The court’s well-reasoned and thoughtful opinion is notice to other jails that a postcard-only policy does not serve a legitimate purpose, and indeed harms the public interest. Jails would do well to steer clear of adopting ineffective policies that violate the Constitutional right of free speech," added attorney Jesse Wing, who represented PLN at trial.

PLN was represented by Marc D. Blackman with the Portland law firm of Ransom Blackman, LLP; Jesse Wing and Katie Chamberlain with the Seattle law firm of MacDonald Hoague and Bayless; and Human Rights Defense Center general counsel Lance Weber and staff attorney Alissa Hull. The case is Prison Legal News v. Columbia County, U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, Case No. 3:12-cv-00071-SI.

________________________


The Human Rights Defense Center, founded in 1990 and based in Brattleboro, Vermont, is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting human rights in U.S. detention facilities. HRDC publishes Prison Legal News (PLN), a monthly magazine that includes reports, reviews and analysis of court rulings and news related to prisoners’ rights and criminal justice issues. PLN has around 7,000 subscribers nationwide and operates a website (www.prisonlegalnews.org) that includes a comprehensive database of prison and jail-related articles, news reports, court rulings, verdicts, settlements and related documents.


For further information, please contact:

Paul Wright, Editor
Prison Legal News
(802) 257-1342 (office)
(802) 275-8594 (cell)
pwright@prisonlegalnews.org

Jesse Wing, Attorney
MacDonald Hoague & Bayless
705 Second Avenue, Suite 1500
Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 622-1604 (office)
jessew@mhb.com

One for the good guys: Arpaio loses again.

YAY!!!!

The good guys won this one!!!!

(When are the people of this county going to finally just run that man out of office?)

Anti-Arpaio protesters awarded settlement from 2008 arrests

by Craig Harris and Yvonne Wingett - Jul. 9, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Seven political activists claiming their civil rights were violated after they were arrested and cited for protesting against Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration policies recently were awarded nearly $475,000 by Maricopa County.

The settlement, reached this week, was nine times more than what the county's self-insured trust had originally authorized in February, and significantly higher than what the county planned to offer just days before the settlement, according to memos obtained by The Arizona Republic.

The settlements skyrocketed during negotiations because two lawyers working for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and a county risk manager persuaded the trust's board to pay up to $100,000 per plaintiff, records show. The money will come from the county's general fund, whose reduction this year caused layoffs and budget cuts.

Cari Gerchick, a county spokeswoman, said the earlier authorization "was an unreasonable amount" for the plaintiffs, and it would not have settled the case. She said the county's goal was to "minimize taxpayer exposure," and settling the case was far less expensive than going to trial.

But Chief Deputy David Hendershott of the Sheriff's Office called the settlement a "fraud on the taxpayers." He said the county should have settled for far less or forced the activists to go to court. Hendershott accused the county of settling to keep supervisors from being questioned in depositions.

The Sheriff's Office, he said, would have been allowed to participate in the depositions and would have questioned Supervisors Don Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox about criminal investigations the Sheriff's Office had conducted against them. Investigations into questionable financial dealings by Stapley and Wilcox resulted in indictments, but all charges have been dropped.

Gerchick called Hendershott's allegation "ridiculous" and said the settlement had nothing to do with the ongoing battle between the Sheriff's Office and the supervisors. The settlement stems from the arrests and citation of protesters on Dec. 15, 2008, on the 10th floor of Maricopa County's administration building and two days later at a Board of Supervisors meeting. Some protesters wore animal masks and pig snouts.

All were later acquitted. They sued the county for wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution and civil-rights violations. The activists have been vocal critics of Arpaio and his immigration policies.

The settlements, reached Tuesday evening, will pay:

• Monica Sandschafer and Kristy Theilen each $99,999.

• Jason Odhner and Joel Nelson each $75,000.

• Guillermina Bethancourt and Ayensa Millan each $50,000.

• Raquel Teran $24,700.

County Manager David Smith said the settlement was a business decision. He estimated that going to trial on the cases could cost "at least $1 million in the first six months, just to defend them."

"You'd end up going round and round, grinding up all kinds of resources and spending two to three times the amount," Smith said. "Once again, the Sheriff's Office is creating these liabilities against the county. If it's 'fraud,' it's a fraud committed by virtue of bad acts."

The county expects to make the payouts within the next few weeks.

Records obtained by The Republic show the county intended to pay much less.

Maria Brandon is an attorney who works in the county's office of special-litigation services. She was appointed to represent the Sheriff's Office.

In memos sent to the Sheriff's Office days before the July 6 mediation hearing, Brandon stated that the county intended to start discussions with an offer of $2,000 per person and had no intention of giving away a lot of money. She indicated she received approval from the county trust in February to pay only up to $7,500 per plaintiff.

The county increased the payouts because, according to one of Brandon's memos, attorneys Brad Keogh and Wade Swanson, who report to the Board of Supervisors, and Assistant Risk Manager Rocky Armfield later went to the trust without her knowledge and received authority to pay up to $100,000 per plaintiff.

"I don't know why they did what they did, and I'm sure they have their reasons," Brandon said in an interview.

Swanson and Keogh declined to answer questions. Armfield could not be reached regarding Brandon's claim.

In a July 2 memo, Brandon stated that she and Armfield argued about the protesters, and he said it was OK to protest at the county's headquarters.

"He says the animal masks and pig snouts are for 'fun.' I said, 'Will they like it the next time if it is skinheads and neo Nazis?' " Brandon wrote.

Randy Parraz is another activist who filed a claim and is asking for $500,000. He withdrew from mediation and said negotiations are ongoing.

"In the event it doesn't get resolved, we have a lawsuit that's ready to be filed," Parraz said. "We're still engaged; we're still talking."