when a person is arrested they are not being held for punishment, they are being held till trial, they still have all the rights of a citizen till they are convicted. he was acquitted in the end. which means he was held against his will for 6 weeks for nothing. think about it.

If it is punishment to contribute to his room and board, then I have been on punishment most of my life.

when a person is being held for trial, they are not suppose to be treated like criminals and forced to work. the amount he is asking is way too much, but he was held and not convicted. which legally means they held a innocent man for 6 weeks for no reason.

O guess we just have to agree to disagree on this one. :-)

"Prison officials threatened to put McGarry "in the hole," where inmates are shackled and locked up for 23 hours per day in solitary confinement, if he refused to work, he said."

I gotta disagree with you on this one, too, up2. gacpl is absolutely correct: we're still an "innocent until proven guilty" society, and the use of "Cool Hand Luke" tactics as quoted above demonstrates that what we have here is failure to communicate: to confinement officials this important distinction in confinees' status. Pretrial confinees should not be treated the same as convicted prisoners.

I predict that the appellee will ultimately win this one. IMHO - he got screwed.

For your consideration: We complain about how much the government spends, locally and nationally. So if someone has to contribute to the upkeep, via KP duty, laundry duty etc, I do not think that is punishment. Now if he was to work on a chain gang or something, that would be a different story. Or would you rather tax dollars go to washing his clothes for him? People in the military do things like this all the time and it is not considered punishment. Now as for them threating him...well that is going a little far, I agree. But the whole idea that he doesn't have to contribute to his up keep doesn't sit well with me. Often on these blogs people are moaning and groaning about people on welfare and how they need to work. Yet they haven't broken the law or suspected of breaking the law. I see a double standard here. Maybe I am wrong (won't be the first time, or the last) but that is how I feel about it.

There is no double standard becaused accused persons are not convicted criminals. That's the distinction. It has to do with prisoner STATUS, and the type of "work" that's permitted to be imposed upon them. The operative quotes from your link above are:

"Supreme Court precedent has established that the constitutional rights of pretrial detainees are distinct from those of convicted inmates, because criminal convictions can justify certain punishments, Parker argued."

"If you haven't been convicted at all, your pretrial detention is not a form of punishment," said Columbia Law School professor Jamal Greene. "The degree to which his liberty can be restricted is directly tied to the needs that required him to be detained. So if he was detained only to secure himself for trial, he can't be detained for punishment."

and

"David McLean, an assistant attorney general for Vermont, said it has never been the policy of the state's Department of Corrections to compel pretrial detainees to perform manual labor...."

Also, when an accused person is "shackled" and locked up for 23 hours "in the hole," it is clearly "punishment." The principle is that you don't "punish" people who are yet to be convicted.

That's what the communist countries and the Nazis during their reign in Germany were famous for. Supposedly we don't play that in the U. S. of A. The courts will sort it out, but this sort of treatment smacks of the chain gang brutality made famous here in Georgia. The fact that it happened in Vermont just goes to show you that the inability to understand the concept of "involuntary labor" as it applies to persons PRESUMED INNOCENT knows no geography.

hmmm...I have to agree with the guy filing the lawsuit on this one. Wasn't convicted, yet still in jail for 6 months. Was he in jail with convicts? Plus, all charges were dropped? Seems like he's got a case and will probably win.

http://coastalcourier.com/section/35/...

The Link posted is in regard to the Ft. Hood shooting. I know a little off track as he is guilty... However, after 3 years the families have no closure and it does not to be too far in sight as now he has proclaimed that he wears a beard for religious reasons. Kinda funny considering he was clean shaven when he committed the crime. The point I am trying to make is in regards to some of the comments in this blog. It seems that people that are part of the "system" seem to be able to claim ridiculous points of contention that delays closure of the trail. The the appeals system seems to be endless. If you are on death row, no worries as it will be another 10-20 years before you might be executed, I say put death row in the express lane and start demonstrating consquences for actions.

The only problem with that is there is the occasional DNA test which exonerates somebody sentenced to death; plus there are frequent appeals granted due to outright incompetence of counsel. These occurrences have demonstrated that the "innocent" do sometimes wind up on death row. Our society has essentially taken the position that we'd rather see 100 guilty persons not executed before we execute somebody who is innocent.

Hence we get what we've got. Seems infuriating at times, but unless we bring back the rules of the French Revolution and fast-track 'em to the guillotine, we're stuck with our current system.