Up Against the Law by Luca Falciola

Author:Luca Falciola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

From Total Engagement to Disillusion

In the wake of San Quentin, Soledad, and Attica, Guild attorneys and activists channeled unprecedented attention and energies toward prisons. A myriad of small, or simply lesser-known, battles on behalf of rebellious inmates were initiated across the country: prison task forces, committees to analyze inmates’ and ex-inmates’ needs, groups to provide post-conviction legal services, constituencies to advocate the release of prisoners, conferences on prison legal-political work, and suits to lessen the consequences of political actions and to keep prison administrators under watch.62

Considering that coercion and isolation were the traditional strategies for dealing with unruly prisoners, the fight against “punitive segregation” was a constant of Guild lawyers’ engagement during that period. The case of Martin Sostre, a Black Puerto Rican, raised particular attention. Sostre was first incarcerated on drug charges in 1953 and remained in prison until 1964, spending four years in solitary confinement due to his Muslim activism. Only three years later, he was once again incarcerated, after the police found several heroin doses in the bookstore he had opened in Buffalo. Sostre’s detention conditions, his repeated seclusion in punitive segregation, and his stubborn opposition to prison discipline troubled many. A lawsuit filed on his behalf began a series of inquiries into the issues of due process and prison punishment. Eventually, a judge awarded him compensatory damages and forbade prison officials to isolate him without a hearing. Sostre remained incarcerated until 1975, when his sentence was commuted by Governor Carey in response to pressures from Amnesty International and the Martin Sostre Defense Committee.63

Remarkable success also came in August 1973, when the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rendered its decision on a class-action lawsuit—filed by Taylor and Deutsch of the People’s Law Office—challenging the unconstitutional incarceration of 103 inmates of the Marion Federal Penitentiary. A maximum-security prison built in 1963 to manage difficult male felons in rural Illinois, Marion ended up secluding some of the most rebellious prisoners in the federal system. As a matter of fact, during the spring of 1972, federal authorities had transferred there approximately one hundred inmates who had taken part in political disturbances across the country’s penitentiaries, with the aim of insulating them and making them undergo behavior modification programs. And yet by that summer, a multiracial group of prisoners was organizing coordinated protests and strikes against the harshness of the disciplinary methods. As a result, the prisoners suffered brutalities, harassment, and indefinite segregation in special units where isolation was coupled with sensory deprivation.

As always, Guild lawyers, together with ACLU and NAACP lawyers and Congressman Dellums, came to their aid. The aforementioned lawsuit charged prison officials with cruel and unusual punishment and the denial of access to courts, of procedural standards for prisoners placed in solitary confinement, and of rights to freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the mail. After a long battle and a series of setbacks, the lawyers succeeded in convincing the judge that indefinite confinement in the special units could be disproportionate punishment—therefore cruel and unusual—and it was always so if it was retaliation for a strike.

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