Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A. by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Author:Mumia Abu-Jamal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Books
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

In essence, the lawyers represented themselves first. As for other lawyers who did not join their party, tough luck. Every man (or woman) for him/herself.

It took three jailhouse lawyers, scattered in three separate joints across the state, to challenge and defeat the new rule.

Their argument was simple: the regulation violated the First Amendment, as it allowed the state to open legal and court mail outside their presence.

Derrick Dale Fontroy, Theodore Savage, and Aaron C. Wheeler prevailed because they dared to fight.

While the rule was put in place in October 2002, DOC heads claimed that the impetus actually arose some three years earlier. It was August 1999 when a man escaped from the central Pennsylvania prison at Huntingdon. The escape garnered statewide news coverage and sparked several investigations.

The DOC speculated that the escape was made possible, in part, through contraband sent through legal correspondence. The DOC also proffered a distinctly post-9/11 reason for the policy: the event of biohazardous material, such as anthrax, sent via the mails.

In Fontroy, the court found both of these justifications unavailing, for it found “no evidence” establishing that escape materials were sent in that way, and that even state investigations “implicated other inmates and prison staff in the hand delivery of the tools to the inmate.”41

In addressing the DOC’s newer reasons, the Fontroy court explained:

Another concern that Beard gave for changing the policy was the possibility of a contaminant, like anthrax, being introduced through legal or court mail. Yet, he could not identify a single incident of powder having been contained in any legal or court mail.

The concerns articulated now by the DOC were not the reasons given for the policy change at the time. The only rationale for the revision then was the prevention of escape. Now, the DOC contends that the risk of mail containing contaminant powder and the risk to staff attendant to opening the mail in the inmate’s presence are additional reasons for the policy. Yet, there has not been a single incident of suspicious powder or assaults of staff surrounding the opening of legal or court mail in front of an inmate. These post-policy change reasons are not supported by any evidence.42

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