For Art’s Sake! Prisoner Sues over Book Ban

October 23rd, 2014. By LucyC

No nudes allowed.

If you can’t read you might as well write—right? Write a lawsuit that is—this one was recently filed by a 44-year old man who has been convicted of murder and is set to spend the next 56 years behind bars.

Dwight Pink Jr alleges his constitutional rights are being denied because the prison guards at the facility in Connecticut where he is incarcerated, used a policy to deny him access to an “art book”—the “Atlas of Foreshortening”—which contains nude pictures. So this ban also goes under the guise of a ban on pornography. Oh, this old chestnut. According to Pink, the ban is a violation of his free speech rights and serves no meaningful objective in prison.

Of course, the state doesn’t agree, and stated in its response that Pink has not been harmed by the ban and none of his rights were violated. Hmm… “Any injury or harm, if any, was caused solely by plaintiff’s own acts, omissions, or conduct and was not due to any wrongful conduct by the defendants,” Assistant Attorney General Steven Strom wrote.

What conduct, acts or omissions are they referring to?

The back story is that in 2011, the state Department of Correction put out the administrative directive banning all material that contains “pictorial depictions of sexual activity or nudity” from the prisons. Art books would definitely fall into that category. BUT, the state also said the ban should not apply to “materials which, taken as a whole, are literary, artistic, educational or scientific in nature.”

I think benefit would be derived from defining those terms, no? Certainly it would reduce the paperwork. Apparently the ban has resulted in half a dozen lawsuits being filed, no surprise there, challenging the greyer than grey law, in both state and federal courts.

The ban was intended to improve the work environment for prison staffers, especially female staffers. What’s that expression—the road to hell is paved with good intentions…

Jaclyn Falkowski, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said the cases that have been filed are still being litigated. At least the lawyers are making money.

According to the New York Post, in 2012 a judge hearing a case refused to issue a preliminary injunction allowing inmate Akove Ortiz to possess magazines like “Playboy.” He wrote in his ruling, “Although prisoners do not forfeit all of their constitutional rights upon incarceration, the fact of incarceration and the needs of the prison system impose limitations on prisoners’ constitutional rights, even those derived from the First Amendment.”

In an interview with the Post, William Dunlap, a law professor at Quinnipiac University, said that in general the courts have taken the side of the state, if the prison officials can prove the ban has a legitimate goal other than to simply suppress material that some people might find objectionable. One such goal would be maintaining safety in the prisons or keeping the material out of the hands of sex offenders. Makes sense. But Dunlap added that Pink’s lawsuit has a chance of succeeding provided he can prove that his book was improperly denied him because it falls under the categories art and/or literature. “I think that’s a much stronger argument than saying the statute itself is facially unconstitutional,” he told the Post.

So we’re back to the definition of art. I think that debate has been taking place for at least 2,000 years.

FYI—Pink is doing 56-years for his role in the 1998 slaying of a 35-year-old man in Old Saybrook. According to the authorities, the victim, Scott Rufin, was shot up to five times in the head with two guns and stabbed in the heart seven times with a sword, authorities said. The title of that work would be the Foreshortening of Human Life…

This was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2014 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Crazy Sh*t Lawyers See . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.