Judge backs Va. inmate on prison library policy

By Mike Gangloff
The Roanoke Times

RICHMOND, Va. — A jailhouse lawyer's complaint that he should have access to "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterly's Lover" prompted a federal judge to cite Walt Whitman, Robert Heinlein and the Playboy magazine website Wednesday in a decision overturning the restrictions on Virginia inmates' reading materials.

"One wonders whether the 'Illiad's' depiction of the abduction of Helen might be considered by prison authorities to be illustrative of a violation of the Mann Act," Senior U.S. District Court Judge James Turk scoffed in an opinion filed in federal court in Roanoke.

Turk's decision seemed to end a nearly yearlong battle that William Couch launched from Augusta Correctional Center after prison library workers told him that James Joyce's and D.H. Lawrence's novels were being purged from the shelves.

Couch had represented himself in other lawsuits against the state, including a successful bid to change how Muslim prisoners were allowed to observe Ramadan. In the "Ulysses" and "Lady Chatterly's Lover" case, he argued that a state Department of Corrections policy barring publications with explicit sexual content infringed on prisoners' constitutional rights. Also, he said, it did not further goals of prison safety or order because it seemed to be arbitrarily applied, allowing Playboy or the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition. A Sunni Muslim, Couch pointed out in a footnote to one of his filings that portions of the Bible would seem to violate the state policy.

Reviewing the long series of legal exchanges between Couch and state attorneys, Turk said the policy could not be justified.

"The irrationality of O.P. 803.2," Turk wrote, referring to the prison policy, "stems from the fact that it encompasses much of the world's finest literature, but does not extend to 'soft core' pornography."

Couch, who is serving multiple life sentences for a string of rapes and thefts in the early 1990s, had asked for an injunction overturning the policy and for monetary damages.

Turk wrote that he saw no need to award damages. The judge said he would strike down the policy but gave the corrections department 60 days to come up with a new regulation that would meet constitutional requirements.

Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor wrote in an e-mail Wednesday that the department had not had time to review Turk's decision and would take direction from the Virginia attorney general's office on how to respond to it.

Couch last month began a new lawsuit, suing to be allowed to wear an eighth-inch beard to express his religious faith.

Read Judge Turk's opinion online at www.roanoke.com.