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Federal Judge in Oregon Rules Limiting Inmates' Mail to Postcards Unconstitutional

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Photo Credit: Tim Pearce, Los GatosA federal judge in Oregon has determined limiting inmates’ mail to only postcards is unconstitutional, throwing into question the legality of a practice used for years in jails across the country.

For two years, the Columbia County Jail north of Portland restricted inmates’ personal mail to the sending and receiving of postcards until U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon issued an injunction that stopped the practice in May 2012.

In a ruling made public Thursday, Simon said the practice by the St. Helens jail is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment rights of inmates, the people who write to them, and the plaintiff, a monthly national law journal published by the Vermont-based Human Rights Defense Center.

It’s the first legal precedent opponents can use in their opposition to a policy that stretches from Florida to the Arizona desert, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is credited with first implementing it in 2007.

The primary reasons cited for the postcard-only mail policy are that it prevents contraband from entering the jail and it saves time for increasingly cash-strapped sheriff’s offices.

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Paroled Sex Offenders Disarming Tracking Devices

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photo credit: photologue_npThousands of paroled child molesters, rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in California are removing or disarming their court-ordered GPS tracking devices — and some have been charged with new crimes including sexual battery, kidnapping and attempted manslaughter.

The offenders have discovered that they can disable the monitors, often with little risk of serving time for it, a Times investigation has found. The jails are too full to hold them. “It’s a huge problem,” said Fresno parole agent Matt Hill. “If the public knew, they’d be shocked.”

More than 3,400 arrest warrants for GPS tamperers have been issued since October 2011, when the state began referring parole violators to county jails instead of returning them to its packed prisons. Warrants increased 28% in 2012 compared to the 12 months before the change in custody began. Nearly all of the warrants were for sex offenders, who are the vast majority of convicts with monitors, and many were for repeat violations.

The custody shift is part of Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature’s “realignment” program, to comply with court orders to reduce overcrowding in state prisons. But many counties have been under their own court orders to ease crowding in their jails.

Some have freed parole violators within days, or even hours, of arrest rather than keep them in custody. Some have refused to accept them at all.

Read more from this story HERE.

Out-of-Control Judiciary: Federal Judge Orders Expert Opinion on Whether Electrolysis is Necessary for Sex Change Murderer

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The federal judge who last month ordered taxpayer-funded sex-change surgery for transsexual wife-killer Robert Kosilek is now forcing the state prison system to hire an expert to determine whether he needs electrolysis hair-removal treatment.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf issued the order today, telling the Department of Corrections to identify the expert by Nov. 2 “to evaluate Kosilek to determine whether electrolysis is medically necessary, and/or to provide the electrolysis, if it is ordered to do so.”

A state prison doc testified in 2010 that Kosilek doesn’t need the treatment; that doctor, Robert Deiner, will be called to testify again at a Nov. 19 hearing.

The Department of Corrections refused to comment on today’s order.

Wolf, in a landmark ruling last month, ordered the surgery for Kosilek, 63, an MCI-Norfolk lifer who suffers from gender-identity disorder and sued the state to provide sex-change surgery in 2006. Wolf ruled the surgery was “a serious medical need” and to deny the surgery would violate Kosilek’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

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Insanity: Federal Judge Orders Sex-Change Surgery for Convicted Murderer

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A federal judge on Tuesday ordered state prison officials to provide a taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate serving life in prison for murder.

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled in the case of Michelle Kosilek, who was born as a man but has received hormone treatments and lives as a woman in an all-male prison. Robert Kosilek was convicted of murder in the killing of his wife in 1990.

Judge Wolf is believed to be the first federal judge to order prison officials to provide the surgery for a transgender inmate.

Kosilek first sued the MassachusettsDepartment of Correction 12 years ago. Two years later, Judge Wolf ruled that Kosilek was entitled to treatment for gender-identity disorder but stopped short of ordering surgery. Kosilek sued again in 2005, arguing that the surgery is a medical necessity.

In his ruling Tuesday, Judge Wolf found that surgery is the “only adequate treatment” for Kosilek’s “serious medical need.”

Read more from this story HERE.