Posted on 09/10/2001 8:30:37 PM PDT by SongathuSouth
Warden claims libel in landmark lawsuit Connecticut papers would face trial in Va.
BY FRANK GREEN TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Sep 09, 2001
BIG STONE GAP - In January 2000, shortly after several hundred Connecticut prisoners arrived at Wallens Ridge State Prison, a delegation of Connecticut lawmakers trekked 700 miles south to check on their well-being.
Most of the inmates were black or Hispanic, and some claimed that the largely white prison staff addressed them with racial slurs. For the legislators, the trip to the heart of Virginia coal country apparently was a case of culture shock. Their subsequent comments to the news media would fuel outrage and protest back in Connecticut. Of the three columns and one news story cited in the defamation suit, Young is mentioned only once - and then only as the warden who is being sued by inmates.
Nevertheless, Young contends the pieces called into question his ability to perform his job and that they said he encouraged the abuse of inmates and ran a racist institution.
A column that ran in The Hartford Courant cited in the suit included the following: "Every prison guard had a Confederate flag flying on the back of his truck and 'all of them were white and young and inexperienced,' said Connecticut state Rep. Michael Lawlor."
The columnist, Amy Pagnozzi, continued, "Lawlor heard pretty much the same stuff from inmates in person that I heard from their letters regarding racial slurs and stun guns and being thrown into segregation for no apparent reason." The column quoted a University of Hartford history professor as saying "We've got to get these men back before they come home in body bags."
Pagnozzi mistook Young for Virginia prison director Ronald Angelone, a Rhode Island native. She wrote: "Angelone's office was a virtual museum of Civil War memorabilia. His passion, artifacts from Confederate generals, were displayed with the solemnity of religious relics."
In another story, the Courant referred to the area surrounding the prison as "that isolated and overwhelmingly white enclave of Appalachia."
Big Stone Gap, population 4,856, is connected to the rest of the world by four-lane, divided U.S. 23 and two nearby airports in far Southwest Virginia. According to the 2000 Census, the town is about 94 percent white, as is much of Appalachia.
It also has a federal courthouse and Internet access. Therein lies the basis of the lawsuit.
Young is suing the Courant and the New Haven Advocate for defamation. Last month, U.S. District Judge Glen M. Williams ruled that, if the case comes to trial, it will be conducted in Big Stone Gap - not in Connecticut - because the newspapers' stories were available on the Internet in Big Stone Gap.
When the legislators visited, Young gave them a tour of the prison and met with them in his office. He is white, thick-necked, and at 6 feet, 2 inches and 330 pounds, a bull of a man.
A former history teacher, he has a passion for the Civil War and World War II. On his office walls were Civil War prints and World War II photos, including one of Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
The legislators took word of the Confederate art back to Connecticut, where it made news and upset at least one civil rights leader.
Carolyn B. Nah, president of the Greater Bridgeport (Conn.) NAACP, told the daily Connecticut Post that "the warden's a Southern man and that's why he's dangerous. . . . The silent Civil War is still being fought." The Post is not being sued.
An Advocate headline read, "Welcome to the Confederacy." Stories covered the Confederate memorabilia controversy as well as the suicide of one Connecticut inmate and the death of another that occurred after he was shocked by a stun gun and strapped down. Later, it was determined the cause of his death was "natural."
Wallens Ridge, one of the toughest-run prisons in the nation, has been criticized and investigated for its policies and practices. Inmates can be hit by rubber pellets fired from shotguns, shocked by electric stun shields or strapped down to a bed for 48 hours.
But racism and abuse, Young insists, have not been problems. "A good day at the prison is a quiet day. As a correctional officer and as a warden, why would I go in and say, 'OK, you dirty so-and-so and so-and-so,' knowing that these guys, most of them, have absolutely nothing to lose?"
Young, 44, was a high school history teacher before he entered the corrections field in 1980. A native of Loudoun County, he has a bachelor's degree in history from Emory & Henry College. He raised four sons, was widowed in 1993 and was a single parent for several years until he remarried.
Young taught school and coached in Grundy for a year, then left to try his hand in his own business - a youth center - but "found out very quickly that I am not a businessman," he said.
He took a job as a corrections officer in Fairfax while he looked for another teaching and coaching job. He says that every time he gave notice that he was leaving for another job, the department offered him a promotion to stay. Eventually, he was made warden of Wallens Ridge, one of two Virginia "supermaximum" security prisons.
History is his passion. "Growing up as a child, we didn't play cowboys and Indians; we played rebels and Yankees," he said.
Young said he removed the Civil War pictures when they began to generate so much controversy. He said the Connecticut legislators, two of whom would later complain about them, never did so while in his office. Young said he learned of the stories when an observer from the Connecticut Department of Correction who was at Wallens Ridge told him he had made the papers. Young found the articles on the Internet and said he was shocked.
"I read it on my computer screen. And then I read it again. And then I printed it. And I read it again, because I thought, you know, either they talked to someone else or these guys lied, or what's going on?"
He said it hurt him and it hurt his children.
"It was an attack on me personally, it was an attack on the institution and it was an attack on Wise County, Southwest Virginia and Virginia," he said.
Young said he has had telephone threats from people in Connecticut.
Among other things, the suit charges that three Courant columns were "maliciously prepared and composed." The columns could not be found in the newspaper's Web site archives last week. A spokesman for the newspaper and a lawyer representing the Courant said they could not comment when asked if the columns had been removed from the archives.
In court filings, the newspapers responded that their coverage was not defamatory. The articles Young objects to are "statements of opinion and fair comment and admittedly true," the newspapers said.
Stephanie S. Abrutyn, a New York lawyer representing the Tribune Company, which owns the Courant and the Advocate, says she has never heard of a ruling like the one Judge Williams issued.
The ruling means "that merely having a Web site can open you up to be sued in all sorts of places that everyone agrees you otherwise couldn't be sued in," she said. "I think not only newspapers, but any company or person who publishes a Web site, should be troubled by it."
Richard Schmidt, general counsel for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said that while he had not heard of a similar ruling, "we shouldn't be surprised."
"A lot of new law is going to be made because of the Internet," he said.
Rod Smolla, a professor at the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond and an expert on libel, while not familiar with the case, said, "There is a large and growing body of law dealing with whether a court can assert jurisdiction over a party when they have published over the Internet."
Judge Williams, in his 27-page Aug. 9 order, said that "ultimately, this case revolves around the interesting question of where acts or omissions conducted in cyberspace actually occur."
The newspapers argued that none of the writing, reporting or editing occurred in Virginia, that they do not have an office or bank account in Virginia or solicit business in the state nor did they aim their comments at Young.
But Williams disagreed.
The articles concerned conditions in the Virginia prison system and the newspapers knew Young was a warden in the system and lived in Virginia. Therefore, they also should have known that any harm suffered by Young from the circulation of these articles on the Internet would primarily occur in Virginia, he ruled. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgreen@timesdispatch.com
As if there was something wrong with being white and young...and having a Confederate flag on your pickup made you a monster.
Rep. Lawlor should have his mouth washed out...with some grits. What a provincial little twerp.
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