Posted on 01/26/2006 12:26:19 PM PST by robowombat
U.S. prison chaplain under attack
Jewish chaplain for prisoners in Washington state named in lawsuit by prisoner who says he was denied kosher food; Chaplain Gary Friedman says man doesn't meet criteria for being Jewish Manny Frishberg, Seattle
Gary Friedman is under the gun again. The chaplain for most of the Jewish inmates in Washington State's prisons has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit by a prisoner who claims he was denied kosher meals while incarcerated in Nevada.
Friedman said James Shilling never claimed to be Jewish before being sent to Nevada. According to the chaplain, Shilling had previously told prison officials he was a Protestant and a Buddhist.
The State of Washington has been dealing with its own prison overcrowding by shipping inmates to other states, where they serve at least a portion of their sentences. According to Friedman, he has never had any contact with Shilling, either before he was sent to Nevada's medium-security High Desert State Prison in May 2003 or while he was housed there.
Shilling was in Nevada for about a year and a half before being returned to Washington State. While there, according to court papers he filed in the Federal District Court in Las Vegas, Shilling filled out the requisite forms stating that he held a sincere belief in Judaism and was attempting to live according to Orthodox law. Nonetheless, he says, the prison administration refused to give him kosher food. Friedman said Nevada authorities offered to transfer him to a maximum-security prison elsewhere in the state where he could be served a kosher diet, but Shilling refused the transfer.
Friedman has said that according to halacha (Jewish law) it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a person in prison to convert to Judaism.
Different view
But the U.S. government takes a different view of religious affiliation, based on the Constitution. It does not require a formal conversion before allowing a prison inmate who claims to be Jewish to be treated as a Jew, including the right to kosher meals. Under a federal court decision based on the First Amendment's free exercise clause, anyone who expresses a sincere belief in a religion has the right to be taken at their word.
Friedman has been sued several times in the past in his role as a Jewish chaplain by inmates who have claimed their religious rights are being violated. He says there are a number of reasons for inmates who do not meet traditional definitions of being Jewish to claim Jewish affiliation. Among them are the quality of the kosher food served in prisons, and, more basically, he says, because it affords them a chance to take control over an aspect of their lives in a situation where control has largely been stripped from them.
Friedman's defense
Chaplain Friedman said that in the past, when the state has provided him legal defense through the Attorney General's office, they have been too willing to settle out of court and have ignored his claims that Jewish law should be factored into the defense arguments. The situation is further complicated by Friedman's status as a contractor, rather than as an employee of the state's Corrections Dept.
Fred Diamondstone, a Seattle-area lawyer representing Friedman in this case said his client had originally asked the Attorney General's office to represent him when he was named as a defendant.
"The form the Attorney General's office asked Gary to complete cedes to the Attorney General's office all decision-making power with regards to the conduct of litigation and settlement of the case," Diamondstone explained. "One of Gary's concerns is that the Attorney General's office doesn't really have the authority and the state of Washington doesn't really have the authority to be making decisions that involve religious practices and religious law."
Diamondstone said when Friedman tried to exclude matters of religious law in the authorization, the state refused to accept those terms, leaving him to hire his own defense attorneys.
Friedman said he has hired Diamondstone and a second lawyer based in Nevada to handle his case. He said they are charging the minimum allowed under the federal Prisoners Litigation Reform Act, which is $169 per hour.
Motion for dismissal
Diamondstone said they have filed a motion with the court to have Friedman dismissed from the lawsuit, since he is not an employee of either the Washington or Nevada Corrections departments.
"We've actually contested whether there is any legitimate basis for including Gary in the suit," Diamondstone said. "It's our view, and it's the position that we've argued in our court papers, that Gary is not a state actor, he is not a state official and he does not have the power to allow someone to have or to not have a kosher diet, and for those reasons he is not a properly a defendant in a civil rights case. Gary does not control the actions of state officials in either Washington or Nevada and he doesn't have any decision-making with respect to the custody or the supervision of a Washington prisoner in a Nevada prison."
The plaintiff has until the end of January to respond to the motion and a decision by the judge is expected to rule sometime in the next several months. Friedman said if he is not dismissed from the case his legal bills could amount to several thousand dollars, even if he is eventually found not to bear any responsibility.
To help pay the legal expenses, a fund has been established through Friedman's organization, Jewish Prisoner Service International. It is being administered by a committee headed by Temple B'nai Torah's Rabbi James Mirel.
"What I'm doing is chairing the committee collecting funds for his legal defense," Mirel said. "It's basically to give credibility to the defense committee and monitor the spending of it. Most of the money is going to the lawyers, obviously."
Other members of the committee include rabbis Jay Rosenbaum, of Congregation Herzl-Ner Tamid and Yechezkel Kornfeld of Congregation Shevet Achim, former state insurance commissioner Deborah Senn, and Larry Finegold, a local defense attorney.
"I think it's a righteous cause and we should support our Jewish chaplain and not have him subjected to harassment and arbitrary rulings," said Rabbi James Mirel, the head of the committee overseeing the fund. said. "I think it's an interesting case. I can't speak to the legality of it too much but I think it has a lot of merit. I think to just settle like the Department of Corrections did is not right. I think it sets a bad precedent."
So the government is now the one who determines someone's belief? I can understand the reasoning on one hand but on the other it is disturbing.
He converted when he found out that Kosher food is better than standard prison meals.
Exactly, something I found out back when airlines served meals you didn't have to pay extra for.
Jewish inmates, eh? I wonder if there's more Jewish inmates, or muslim ones... ya know, just wondering...
Owl_Eagle
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
I don't know how unususal this might be. bill clinton was the first Protestant Buddhist Catholic Hindu Jewish Druid President.
I thought he was also the first black president?
Even if he is not Jewish, I say give him the kosher food and all the prayer books and Hebrew bibles he wants. Maybe he will convert when he gets out.
Even if he doesn't, it is better than becoming a Muslim.
That too. And the first female President.
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