Judge in Oregon rules limiting inmates' mail unconstitutional

PORTLAND, Ore. –  A 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.

In Arizona, officials said the policy was rooted in the number of drugs applied to stamps or laced into other products flowing through the jail's mail system.

"We went to postcards on incoming mail (only), and it's cut down on contraband dramatically," said Maricopa County Sheriff's Office spokesman Brandon Jones. Inmates in Maricopa County can still send regular mail.

But Simon said Oregon's Columbia County Jail had no such reasoning. The prohibited mail included legal documents sent by family members, children's report cards and bills that needed to be paid.

Columbia County Sheriff Jeff Dickerson "agreed that the postcard-only policy was not adopted in response to a known contraband problem," Simon wrote. "Defendants' postcard-only policy was a solution in search of a problem."

Simon's finding of fact in the trial -- damages will be assessed either in a settlement or by a jury -- applies exclusively to Columbia County. But Alex Friedmann of the Human Rights Defense Center said challenges to the policy in other districts that long languished from the lack of available case law can point to the Portland decision as a victory.

"This is the first time to our knowledge, and we're pretty much the go-to people on this, that this policy has gone to trial on the merits and the court has struck it down," said Friedmann, whose group is the parent company of the plaintiff, Prison Legal News.

In court documents, Columbia County said it was acting in concert with other Oregon counties, including the larger and wealthier Washington County, which includes the Nike Inc. worldwide headquarters. Washington County officials said in presentations to other sheriff's offices that the issue had been tested in courts and found to be constitutional.

"Like anything else, when you're going forward with something new, and Oregon certainly was in 2010, you go on what the court decisions are thus far," Dickerson said. The sheriff said Thursday he was unsure whether the county would appeal.

But Friedmann said the only other challenges to the policy have been from inmates representing themselves. In federal court, he said, "that's like doing brain surgery on yourself when you're not a brain surgeon."

Friedmann said that in 2010, 13 of 36 Oregon counties had the policy in place. By 2012, a survey found most counties in the state had a postcard-only policy, Yamhill County Sheriff's Office Capt. Ron Huber said.

That ended, Huber said, with Simon's injunction.

"A majority of counties were doing the postcard-only (mail), and as soon as Yamhill County got word that there were issues, it kind of just spread," said Huber, who also is the Oregon State Sheriff's Association's chairman on jail issues. "It ended pretty quick."

View the original article here

Oregon logging communities prepare for life after federal subsides

• 

The government offices in Oregon’s Curry County are like scenes from a ghost town. Fliers are pasted to the windows. A meeting room is dark. The offices that are open have few, if any, residents getting services. 

It's the result of diminishing federal welfare known as timber payments -- money given to counties with federal forest land in exchange for not letting loggers harvest trees. 

"We can't rely on them for income and it's been declining every year," said Curry County Commissioner Susan Brown. "I feel like we have our hand out all the time."

She is among a group of lawmakers who think the payments are hurting the county in the long run. She wants the timber payments to end, even though it could bankrupt the county of 21,000, with an unemployment rate of 11.8 percent. 

Last year, Congress appropriated $676 million, with Oregon taking the largest single share, $99 million.

The county is already running a bare-boned operation, which includes empty offices, a part-time building inspector and four sheriff deputies patrolling an area the size of Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are proceeding as if Congress will not renew the payments, which began in 2000.

“What we’re becoming in the timber-dependent counties is the Appalachia of the Pacific Northwest,” said state Rep. Val Hoyle, leader of the Oregon’s Democrat-controlled House. “That’s not what we want to be.”

The legislature is considering several bills that would allow the state to create its own safety net for the rural timber counties.

One bill would have the state take over such county functions as elections, building code enforcement and taxation.

The most controversial would allow Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber to declare a state of emergency, then impose a local tax to pay for public safety.

Matt Shelby, spokesman of the state’s Department of Administrative Services, said Oregon officials don’t know what will happen but are assuming a worst case scenario in which counties cannot provide basic services.

“We need to be in position to help our fellow Oregonians,” he said.

At least one lawmaker thinks the solution is more logging, not a state takeover.

“That’s not what we’re looking for,” said Republican state Rep. Bruce Hanna, who wants a federal forest policy that includes a “sustainable yield harvest.’”

Curry is typical of the many Oregon timber counties. Two-thirds of its land is owned by the federal government. And only 11 percent is privately owned and available to be developed.

Curry grew as the timber industry flourished. Lumber mills dotted the landscape and employed many hundreds of people. Now there is just a single mill still open.

The long slide began after the spotted owl was added in 1990 to the Endangered Species List. It prompted timber wars as protestors chained themselves to older trees.

Environmental laws were stiffened, adding layers of regulations and allowing multiple legal challenges to Bureau of Land Management timber sales.

The Clinton administration tried to fix the situation by crafting the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. It called for reducing harvest levels to 25 percent of the peak in the 1980s. Roughly 51 million feet was set aside, but the total has never been hit because of legal challenges.  

View the original article here

Oregon professor fired for bizarre tirade, allegedly threatening student protesters

• 

  Adjunct Law Professor James Olmstead (left) was fired from the University after a heated exchange with student protestersJaki Salgado

A law teacher with the University of Oregon got a life lesson from the school of hard knocks when he was fired from his position after he got irate with student protesters, seen in an eyewitness video eventually shoving one protester and snatching the phone of another.

James L. Olmstead, an adjunct law professor, was arrested on theft and physical harassment charges after he confronted students from a pro-immigration organization during a campus rally last Thursday and at first seemed to agree with the activists before the public discussion took a sudden bizarre turn.

Olmstead, who also is a land-use and conservancy attorney, started to reject the protestors' peaceful protesting techniques in an exchange that was captured on video and went viral over the weekend on YouTube.

"This is an aggressive tone. I'm feeling a little threatened right now."

- -an unidentified student

“Start a f---ing war. ... Stop being p---ies,” he starts shouting at the crowd of students. “Start a war, get a gun, shoot me first. I’m right here.”

Click to see video of the incident [WARNING-graphic language]

"This is an aggressive tone. I'm feeling a little threatened right now," one student can be heard saying on the video as Olmstead rips off his jacket and throws it to the ground, appearing to gear up for a physical altercation.

The professor then becomes more irate when one student approaches him in an attempt to calm him down.

Olmstead is seen in the video shoving the student and starting to threaten the group, urging them to “do something” if they wanted him removed. He then grabs the phone of a student who had been using it to film his awkward behavior and puts it in his back pocket.

With the phone still recording, Olmstead can be heard continuing his tirade, shouting, “Do something.”

He continues by stating that the campus grounds are his public property and posing questions to the protestors.

"Do I have freedom to speak to? Can I yell?" Olmstead said. "I'm part of your performance. You need a protagonist."

Olmstead was arrested after his outburst and later removed from his teaching position, and he received a letter from university officials stating that he was banned from campus.

“His teaching responsibilities have been reassigned to other professors on staff,” Julie Brown, director of communications for the University of Oregon, told FoxNews.com.

Olmsted did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"If a liberal professor attacks like-minded students in this way, I can only imagine how he would have treated students of an opposing viewpoint." Josiah Ryan of advocacy group Campus Reform said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

View the original article here