By Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch
LUCASVILLE, Ohio — In the 20 years since the deadly Lucasville state prison riot, the key inmates in the uprising have not been allowed to talk to the news media.
That ban prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio to file a federal lawsuit yesterday against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The ACLU contends that the restriction violates the rights of five prisoners under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
“The job of the media is to explore important issues from all sides,” ACLU Director James Hardiman said in a statement. “When government officials arbitrarily stifle this process because they are uncomfortable with the conversation, they are preventing public discourse on critical issues, inhibiting a free press and censoring prisoners from telling their stories to the media.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four out-of-state journalists, including Chris Hedges, formerly of The New York Times. Reporters for The Dispatch have over the years requested, and been refused, access to the inmates.
Prison spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said she could not comment because the matter is in litigation.
The riot that erupted on April 11, 1993, resulted in an 11-day standoff in which prisoners destroyed the interior of a maximum-security cellblock in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. Rioters killed nine fellow inmates and strangled to death corrections officer Robert Vallandingham. Forty-seven inmates were convicted of violent crimes; five were sentenced to death.
State prison officials have consistently denied requests for interviews with the riot leaders, citing high-level security restrictions.
However, Hardiman said, other inmates not associated with the Lucasville uprising have been interviewed in similar situations.
“Prison officials are not denying these interview requests based on security,” Hardiman said. " They are denying them based on what they think the inmates are going to say.”
Copyright 2013 The Columbus Dispatch