Panel hears inmate's language appeal

By: | Times-Dispatch
Published: January 27, 2009

An apparently unsympathetic federal appeals court panel heard arguments today over an angry letter written by a Virginia inmate to prison officials.

In a 2004 letter, inmate Johnny Huff, 57, complained to the director of the Virginia Department of Corrections of "cold, callus, cruel, evil, uncaring, unmercyful, inhumane officials you have left in charge as wardens."

Huff, serving a 23½-year sentence for sex offenses in Chesterfield County, was disciplined for using "insolent and inappropriate language directed toward an employee." He was fined $12 and says he lost some "good time" sentence reduction.

Though the punishment was later rescinded, Huff sued -- and lost in lower court -- alleging, among other things, that his First Amendment rights had been violated. He appealed, leading to today's hearing.

"What you're asking us to do," said Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, is similar to "supervising a playground, isn't it?" Niemeyer added that "for us to get involved in this would be enormously difficult."

Huff's lawyer, Rebecca K. Glenberg of the ACLU, said she was hoping for some sort of ruling that the written speech used by Huff was protected by the First Amendment. "Otherwise, prison officers are free to characterize any expression of outrage as insolence," she said.

Huff was upset because he said old and infirm inmates at the Haynesville Correctional Center were being made to wait outside in wet and cold weather to receive their daily medications.

The ACLU concedes that prisons have a right to bar abusive language directed at an official in confrontations to maintain order but contends that such a bar should not extend to a written complaint that was not shared with other inmates and might undermine order.

"He used language that was harsh, but appropriate to the situation," Glenberg said about Huff. "The right to free speech and the right to petition is the only way [prisoners] can protect themselves from abuses of authority."

But William R. Muse, with the Virginia attorney general's office, said the language used by Huff was clearly disrespectful. It is not known when the three-judge panel will rule.

-- Frank Green