OHIO APPEAL U.S. high court to review 'supermax' procedure

Corrections officials are watching the Youngstown case closely.
STAFF/WIRE REPORT
WASHINGTON -- The Ohio Penitentiary in Youngstown will serve as a national test case of whether inmates can be assigned to high-security "supermax" prisons without due process.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an appeal from the state of Ohio, which disagrees with a February ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that prisoners are entitled to hearings, with witnesses, before being assigned to the prison.
Civil rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the state on behalf of prisoners in 2001, contending that the inmates were not given a chance to prove they didn't belong in the supermax on Youngstown's East Side.
In the Youngstown "supermax" on Coitsville-Hubbard Road, inmates are held in 23-hour-a-day lockdown, in 90-square-foot cells built to prevent prisoners from communicating with one another. They also face tighter security with strip-searches and less access to telephones and personal items.
About the penitentiary
It was opened in 1998 with 500 beds to house the state's toughest prisoners in reaction to an earlier deadly riot at the old Lucasville prison.
Beside the court of appeals ruling, in 2002 the U.S. District Court in Akron also sided with the inmates, saying their confinement was "arbitrary."
Since the 2002 ruling the state has made changes to satisfy health care issues raised at the trial and built an outdoor recreation area. But it has continued to fight to send prisoners to the Youngstown supermax at its discretion.
There are more than 30 state and federal supermax prisons around the country, and corrections officials have watched the Youngstown case closely.
Ohio Solicitor Douglas Cole told justices in his appeal that the requirements imposed by the appeals court make it almost impossible to "neutralize the threats posed by dangerous inmates.
"The question presented here has significant safety implications for tens of thousands of state prisoners."
Lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the prisoners, said the confinement "imposes an atypical and significant hardship" on the detainees.
Reaction
Greg Trout, the chief legal counsel for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said the Supreme Court's willingness to weigh in on the issues means Ohio's and other prisons will know how to deal with prisoner classification and other safety issues.
"It's very good news," Trout said. "These core issues are very important to us and our profession."
A lawyer for the Ohio ACLU, Staughton Lynd, said the group is disappointed the 6th Circuit decision will not stand, but looks forward to a national precedent likely being set regarding prisoners' right to due process.
The case forces the Supreme Court to revisit a 1995 decision that limited prisoners' rights to have hearings before they lose privileges or are disciplined for misconduct.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in that opinion that inmate liberty interests are "limited to freedom from restraint which ... imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life."
Lynd said the ACLU case contends that all supermax prisoners fall into that category, a point the state did not appeal. He said that means the issue the Supreme Court will be deciding is how the state, and therefore other states, must handle the prisoner hearings.