Two patients at Coalinga State Hospital, which houses nearly 1,000 sexually violent predators, have filed a federal lawsuit against the hospital’s executive director and 10 other staff members for allegedly violating their civil rights during a recent crackdown on portable electronic devices that hospital officials say was prompted by a “child porn epidemic.”
Sacramento civil rights attorney Janice Bellucci filed the lawsuit on behalf of two patients, Michael Saint-Martin and an anonymous claimant, in federal court Tuesday night. It asks the court to immediately halt a newly implemented hospital policy that commanded all of the nearly 1,300 patients to turn over any personal electronic devices with storage space or internet access – including flash drives, MP3 players, video game consoles, computers. Full Article and Complaint
Give em hell Janice!
I sure seems like they are trying to deny these prisoners their rights, and I believe this to be true. They (prisoners) live in Coalinga weather the authorities wan’t to admit it or not. They are living there against their will, but I don’t think anyone can deny that they do in fact live in Coalinga. If their (authorities) claims are true they have the worst timing since the foundations of this world; and one must ask why they waited so long to force inmates to give up their communication devices if their claims of an ongoing problem, as indicated by the DA filing charges are true. Some of the accusations against some of the inmates may be true, and if so indicate to me that they are not trying to rehabilitate these state victims. And if they are trying to rehabilitate their victims whatever they are doing isn’t working if some of them are looking at child porn. The authorities may have opened a Pandora’s box for themselves. And why sanction the prisoners that aren’t violating any laws or rules?
Thank you for engaging in these unpopular battles Janice. Good luck and we are all rooting for you and your clients!!
Let’s see how many of those charges will be dropped after those lawsuits.
Steve Wright, an assistant Fresno County district attorney, said his office has filed child pornography charges against 18 Coalinga patients since September 2016.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article196443479.html#storylink=cpy
This is a terrible injustice and I can only imagine the nightmare. I’m punished every day while just trying to live a normal life because of the Registry. These people aren’t even allowed to live a normal life and yet are still being punished for trying to exercise what looks to me as the one way to cope with that HELL HOLE, by being politically active. This is a wonderful way to integrate back into the community and what could be much more better? Politics can be fun and exciting and as we all know, bullshit. I think it was super what these individuals did prior to the election. They made the best of their time with something that really matters. Shouldn’t this be considered a sign of rehabilitation? Yes it should. This was Very Healthy Positive Energy and Behavior put forth by these Individuals. Kudos men and not only kudos but you helped win the Vote. Now that is what I call behavior and investments in life that should fast track you out of there and not get you ( An Emergency Confiscation
Prisoner’s right, at least to the general public, is an oxymoron. And, even more so if the word “sex” is in the prisoner’s crime. I don’t think in my lifetime I am going to see common sense especially for those arrested on child porn charges. I think the public and the lawmakers feel that by making them the worst of the worst, they are preventing future actual crimes from happening. What’s that song…keep waiting on the world to change.
Coalinga State Hospital – I keep noting folks referring to the residents there as “prisoners”. Keep in mind though that all the sex offenders housed there have completed their prison terms and most have discharged from parole; many are registered voters too. Most have been there a decarde or more and the average age is 45 – 50 years. Some are in their 80s, in wheelchairs and some bedridden.
Because they are not criminals they are not sentenced, but rather (warehoused) there under what is called civil detention at DSH-Coalinga by judicial order, for evaluation, assessment and treatment. While this detention is involuntary, they are still expected to pay the full costs of their detention during the months or years there (at an average of $200,000.00 per year). Thus any patient having more than $500 to his name can have it levied to pay his room and board. I have heard of a couple of elderly gentlemen who had the state take their house, motorhome and other moveable property. One resident there has been locked up in Coalinga for 16 years (after serving a 16 year term for his original conviction), 33 years continuous since 1985. No, he did not kill his victim, thanks be to God. But he can tell you about 2 men he did time with in Soledad and Old Folsom prisons who’ve served 28 and 29 yrs for killing somebody, and now they are free and writing him letters wanting to know “who did you kill, bro? You’ve been locked up longer than us. Be honest!”
When he writes to try to explain this insane SVP law, they (and few others) can believe that California (and quite a few other states) can lock people up in psychiatric hospitals under the “indeterminate” statute (read: until they die), for what the state claims they MAY do in the future. Don’t worry, taxpayers, they have trustworthy doctor evaluators (sometimes knows as “whores of the court”) who are able to look into their psychiatric Bible (DSM-5) and their crystal ball and tell whether a person will commit another sex crime and also whether or not he suffers from a mental disorder that will justify keeping him locked up indefinitely. Many of the men refer to themselves as “cash cows” for these evaluators, most of whom make on average of $250,000.00 a year, and some have cashed in at over $1 million per year. I kid you not.
But, wait, there’s more: At the original criminal trials of every one of these nearly 1,000 patients they were back then all determined to have no mental disorders, they were deemed common criminals and sentenced to prison. Hold on…here it comes: Then within 45 days of their parole they were every one taken to see the wizard evaluators who looked into their “Bibles” and crystal balls and determined…what? They have a mental disorder now, they are extremely dangerous, and cannot be released to the community. Nobody has ever been able to answer the ELEPHANT question in the room: When the hell did that mental disorder appear? Heard enough? It gets even better: Now with the recent arrests for child porn at Coalinga, those patients under treatment for their mental disorders that they didn’t have when they committed their original offenses, but now do, can’t be criminally responsible can they? Of course not. What’s a determined D.A. to do? They have some kind of mysterious, magiK wand I can only suppose, that allows them to wave it around in the criminal courtroom, and Shazzam, that mental disorder just vanishes like it was legal fiction all along. Think the state is done with this folks. No way! What’d ya think the D.A.’s do when those prison terms are done????????????????????? Yep, you got it, are you seeing million dollar wizards and their crystal balls again? You got it. That mental disorder that never was there when they committed their original crime that sent them to prison, but showed up when it came time for them to parole, and disappeared when they committed a crime in the hospital that sent them back to prison a second time, is now legal fiction still once again. Who knew that the state of california had the power to turn mental disorders on and off like ethereal light switches? NOW YOU KNOW. Now, as to the turmoil at Coalinga where the ageing men there, who are mostly all walking dead men, …I ask: Is it any wonder there’s no easy peace at all in that cesspit of inequity and injustice?>
Sounds like what they really have is a BS epidemic at Coalinga State Hospital!
Most if not all of the contraband brought into the hospital is done by staff, yet you never hear about in the news. That’s because they don’t want the public knowing this, as it would be a black-eye to the hospital!!! The plain truth is this, they are getting over $200,00.00 per person a year times at least 1250 patients, that comes to over $250 million a year. Yet, there is very few who, if possible, make it out alive, this is because they do not have a viable program that works! Why have one that works and lets people out when you can have one that doesn’t and makes them millions a year for doing nothing. The media has the public believing that they have Cell Phones and Internet, when actually it is the opposite, they have none of that, so then, how does the contraband get IN!!! The answer is very clear, STAFF. Yes, STAFF, and there has been hundreds of staff walked out of there for introducing contraband, how many of these have you heard in the news? One, maybe two. Thanks to Janice and her team for sticking up for the less fortunate and down trodden. What the public needs to know is what is really going on in there.