High court to hear appeal of supermax placement

Officials at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown don't want more 'red tape.'
YOUNGSTOWN -- The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Wednesday whether inmates should be given a chance to avoid placement at the Ohio State Penitentiary, a supermax facility.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the state of Ohio, which disagrees with a February 2004 ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. The lower appellate court ruled that prisoners are entitled to hearings, with witnesses, before being assigned to the high-security prison on Coitsville-Hubbard Road.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit against the state, contending that inmates should be given the opportunity to prove they don't belong in the supermax. A federal district court in Akron ruled that standards for sending inmates to OSP were "arbitrary" and the state appealed.
The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether placement at OSP is so significant a change from normal incarceration that a hearing is required. The high court also is being asked whether there needs to be a clearer process for a prisoner to leave the supermax based on good behavior.
Brief to Supreme Court
In a 49-page brief filed with the Supreme Court, Ohio Solicitor Douglas Cole said procedures for placement already go far beyond what due process requires. He said prison officials need flexibility to use OSP "without unnecessary layers of court-imposed red tape."
Ohio has a duty to protect staff and inmates from inmates who might be a threat, Cole wrote. He said Ohio has seen a drop in problems at other prisons in the years since OSP opened.
The prison opened in 1998 with 500 beds to house the state's hard-core inmates after a deadly riot in 1993 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. The state announced last week that 199 death row inmates would be moved from Mansfield to OSP this summer.
Lawyers for the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, in a 50-page brief filed with the Supreme Court, said incarceration at OSP is an "atypical and significant hardship." They said prisoners at the supermax are kept in solitary confinement under very strict conditions.
Inmates are held in their cells 23 hours a day. The lights are never shut off, and amenities are scarce.
The inmates' lawyers, including Staughton Lynd of Niles, said the Federal Bureau of Prisons and a number of states use procedures for administrative placement in their most restrictive prison settings that are virtually identical to those ordered by the lower courts in this case.
The lawyers said incarceration at OSP is in some ways more burdensome than at roughly 30 other supermax prisons in the United States, which permit parole. Maine has no parole. Only Ohio has a rule automatically disqualifying supermax prisoners from eligibility for parole, they said.