Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503060071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The 90-page complaint, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Richmond, charges officials at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center with withholding clothing, blankets, bedding and personal belongings from the inmates during a strip search from Feb. 11 until Feb. 14.
The suit also charges that the men were cut off from contact with their attorneys through a ban on telephone calls during the three-day period.
``There is absolutely no explanation other than vindictiveness for depriving the inmates of these essential comforts for that length of time and, further, to cut them off from contact with their attorneys,'' Kent Willis, executive director of the ACLU in Virginia, said Saturday.
Corrections spokesman Jim Jones said Saturday he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on the allegations. A shift supervisor reached Saturday at the Boydton prison also declined to comment.
The four defendants named in the suit, including Mecklenburg Warden J.D. Netherland, could not be reached by telephone.
Willis said the strip search began after prison officials discovered that a section of metal from a desk in one of the death row cells had been cut out and removed.
Guards searching for the missing metal and a cutting device stripped down eight cells, leaving prisoners wearing nothing but their underwear for several days, the lawsuit said. Outside temperatures dipped to below 20 degrees each night, according to the suit.
``What we're seeking is for the judge to indicate that this is a violation against the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Constitution,'' Willis said. ``But our most pressing concern is that this incident does not repeat itself.''
Willis said the treatment also violates a April 1985 consent decree reached in U.S. District Court in Richmond between the ACLU and corrections officials, again over conditions affecting prisoners at Mecklenburg.
``Mecklenburg does seem like a bad penny that keeps coming back, or whatever it is that bad pennies do,'' Willis said.
One section of the decree guaranteed death-row inmates ``unlimited and confidential calls to those attorneys and paralegals on their attorney list.''
Jeane Thomas, attorney for inmate Carl H. Chichester, said in an affidavit filed along with the lawsuit that she was denied access to her client Feb. 13.
Thomas, who at the time was attempting to file a habeas corpus appeal on Chichester's behalf with the U.S. Supreme Court, said a prison shift supervisor told her that Netherland had suspended inmates' access to telephones.
The ACLU will ask the court to amend the consent decree to ``specifically bar this kind of treatment,'' Willis said.
Named as defendants in the suit are Netherland; Corrections Department Director Ronald Angelone; Assistant Warden Frank Martavich; and a Mecklenburg shift captain identified only as John Doe.
The seven plaintiffs are Chichester, Johnile L. DuBois, Bobby Ramdass, Douglas C. Thomas, Lonnie Weeks Jr., Michael Williams and Dwayne A. Wright.
by CNB