By Basil Katz
NEW YORK, Aug 3 (Reuters) – A man who claimed he was forced
to do manual labor while detained pending trial can proceed with
claims against the state of Vermont under the 13th Amendment,
which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude.
In an opinion on Friday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals found that a lower court wrongly denied
Finbar McGarry a chance to argue that he was forced, against his
will and under threat, to work in a prison laundry.
McGarry was a PhD student in chemistry at the University of
Vermont at the time of his arrest in December 2008. Denied bail,
he was jailed at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility
in South Burlington, Vermont, pending trial on charges relating
to a domestic disturbance.
For six weeks, McGarry said he was forced to work three days
a week for up to 14 hours at a time washing other inmates’
laundry at a pay of 25 cents an hour.
The work was hot, unsanitary and resulted in his getting an
infection in his neck, McGarry said. If he refused to work,
McGarry said prison officials threatened to send him to “the
hole,” where inmates were confined for 23 hours a day.
McGarry was released in June 2009 and charges were
subsequently dropped.
A month before his release, McGarry sued the State of
Vermont and a slew of prison officials on a variety of grounds,
including that his 13th Amendment right to be free from
involuntary servitude was violated.
His lawsuit, which he filed himself, asked for $11 million
in damages.
In dismissing the case, U.S. District Judge Garvan Murtha in
Brattleboro, Vermont, ruled that the state was immune from
McGarry’s claims because he had failed to show that the prison
work was sufficiently akin to African slavery.
Appeals judges Robert Katzmann, Barrington Parker and
Richard Wesley, however, disagreed with the judge’s reading of
the 13th Amendment, which was enacted in 1865.
“The Amendment was intended to prohibit all forms of
involuntary labor, not solely to abolish chattel slavery,” the
opinion, drafted by judge Parker, said.
More broadly, the appeals court said Vermont could not treat
people in custody pending trial the same way it treats convicted
prisoners, such as compelling them to participate in work
programs designed to rehabilitate inmates.
“The Supreme Court has unambiguously and repeatedly held
that a state’s authority over pretrial detainees is limited by
the Constitution in ways that the treatment of convicted persons
is not,” the opinion said.
Representatives for the Vermont Attorney General’s office
did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Friday’s opinion reversed the lower court and sent the case
back to Murtha for further proceedings.
“We are gratified that the court vindicated the important
constitutional principles at issue here,” said Daniel
McLaughlin, McGarry’s court-appointed lawyer. “We hope that the
result of the 2nd Circuit decision will be a change in how the
State of Vermont handles pretrial detainees.”
(Reporting By Basil Katz; Editing by Andrew Hay)
