Printer Friendly

Email to A Friend

Friday April 22, 2005

Top court ruling may help separate Jewish inmate from neo-Nazis

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

A Jewish inmate at San Quentin is hoping a recent Supreme Court ruling will keep him from being locked up with neo-Nazis.

Stephen Liebb, an Orthodox Jew convicted of first-degree murder in 1981, has been making noise about the California Department of Corrections’ policy of housing prisoners by race — “white,” “black,” “Hispanic” or “other” — during lockdowns.

Liebb claims he has been locked in with tattooed members of white supremacist prison gangs on more than a dozen occasions.

While Liebb filed a complaint against San Quentin years ago, the Supreme Court’s February ruling in Johnson v. California changed the playing field, according to Liebb’s attorney, Ephraim Margolin.

In that decision, the court ruled that the CDC’s unwritten policy of racially segregating prisoners in double cells for up to 60 days each time they enter a new correctional facility was too broad, and possible race-neutral solutions had not been attempted.

Margolin believes Liebb’s case may be the first since the Supreme Court’s ruling, in which “strict scrutiny” will have to be applied to the state’s segregation policy. He filed an opposition to the state’s motion for summary judgment in the case on Friday, April 15; if the case survives summary judgment, it will move on to a full trial.

In addition to the potent Supreme Court ruling, Margolin notes that Liebb now possesses an additional legal weapon he did not previously have at his disposal — the testimony of a handful of fellow Jewish prisoners in state facilities attesting that they, too, have been locked in with neo-Nazis, the result of years of correspondence with the Board of Rabbis of Northern California and various Jewish chaplains.

Within the filing, Jewish inmates recalled having had five or more cellmates who belonged to anti-Semitic prison gangs and surviving verbal or physical altercations.

In the most chilling passage, two inmates claim to have had their throats slashed after being identified as Jews by a skinhead inmate. Should Liebb’s case proceed to trial, these inmates and chaplains could be called to the stand as witnesses.

“Even an isolated case would be sufficient [to change state policy]. No one should be subjected to fear of death,” Margolin said. “What I have found is this is not a unique thing.”

Liebb’s friend and former cellmate, Viet Mike Ngo, filed a similar case several years ago. Judge Verna Adams of Marin Superior Court ruled against Ngo, stating she was dubious of his informal conversion to Judaism and, regardless, he wouldn’t find himself housed with white supremacists as he was categorized as “other.”

Nathan Barankin, the communications director for the state attorney general’s office, which is handling this case, said that segregation during lockdowns is often necessary to prevent interracial violence. Jewish prisoners, he said, can request to be transferred away from an anti-Semitic cellmate.

“Identifying who is an anti-Semite is not something that necessarily comes out in the assessment process. But, once it is identified, the department can take steps to prevent the [Jewish] inmate from being housed with that person,” said Barankin.

“My understanding is Mr. Liebb has requested at least three different cell transfers. And corrections has addressed his concerns.”

Margolin’s filing counters that reassigning cells can take weeks, which is ample time for neo-Nazis to terrorize and harm their Jewish cellmates.

The refusal to acknowledge that Jews are despised and at risk with a substantial portion of the prison population is simply nonsensical, Margolin claims.

The CDC “expressly relies upon the dangers posed by racist prison gangs to justify their use of racial classifications, yet they refuse to acknowledge the indisputable fact that Liebb, as a Jew, is in danger from these gangs,” he wrote.

“It is especially irrational for [the CDC] to categorically separate black inmates from white to promote domestic tranquility, for example, yet compel Jewish inmates to segregate with the very population from which they are most in danger.”

Did you find this article interesting? Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and you'll be notified each week when "J." goes online. We'll tell you about the most important stories of the week and give you a link to each one.

This page contains a BETA version of Amazon contextual links. They are marked by the dashed underline.  Your purchases support our site. At times they point to items which are not related to the actual link. Please alert us by email if you discover objectionable links.