COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Allowing prisoners convicted for
their role in Ohio’s deadly 1993 prison riot to conduct face-to-face
media interviews could give them too much "notoriety and influence"
among fellow prisoners and cause problems throughout the correctional
system, the state argues in a new court filing.
The Department of
Rehabilitation and Correction calls a lawsuit seeking such interviews
frivolous and wants a federal judge to throw it out.
The
interviews are banned because of the state’s concern "regarding safety
and security and the fear that these prisoners would thereby gain a
disproportionate degree of notoriety and influence among their fellow
inmates," according to documents the state filed Monday in a Columbus
court.
That influence could lead "to substantial disciplinary
problems that could engulf large portions of the prisons," the filing
said.
The Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued
the state in December, arguing the prison system’s policy is
inconsistent, especially when the backgrounds of other high-security
prisoners granted access to reporters is reviewed.
The only
plausible reason for granting interviews to other prisoners while
denying access to the Lucasville ones "is the desire to stifle public
discussion of the 1993 Lucasville prison uprising," according to the
ACLU.
Under recent policy changes, Lucasville riot prisoners may
make telephone calls of up to an hour, including to reporters. But the
prisoners have argued that in-person meetings captured on video are a
more powerful way to tell their side of the story.
The ACLU
lawsuit was brought on behalf of Noelle Hanrahan, director and producer
of Prison Radio in Philadelphia; Christopher Hedges, an author and
former New York Times reporter in Princeton, N.J.; Derrick Jones, a
former Bowling Green State University professor now at the Naropa
Institute in Boulder, Colo.; and James Ridgeway, co-editor of a website,
"Solitary Watch" in Washington, D.C.
The lawsuit was also brought
on behalf of death row inmates Siddique Abdullah Hasan, George Skatzes,
Keith Lamar and Jason Robb, and prisoner Gregory Curry, who is serving a
life sentence for the Lucasville riots.
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Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus
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