A federal judge on Friday denied a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) requested on behalf of patients at Coalinga State Hospital to stop the confiscation and destruction of their personal electronics, including computers and electronic storage devices. The judge made his decision from the bench after more than an hour of oral argument from attorneys representing both the patients and the state hospital.
“This decision will significantly harm hundreds of patients at Coalinga State Hospital who will lose important legal documents, treatment records and personal writings including novels and poetry,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci.
At issue in the case is whether emergency regulations issued by the Department of State Hospitals (DSH) on January 2 violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. According to DSH, the emergency regulations were needed due to an “epidemic” of child pornography at the hospital.
This statement is inconsistent with a letter from the Legal Services Division of DSH dated January 12, 2018, which states that during the 12 years in which Coalinga has been operating, only 29 people have been arrested and 17 people convicted of possessing child pornography. The letter also states there have been a total of 2,387 patients at Coalinga during that time.
“Therefore according to the agency’s legal division, only 1 percent of the patients at Coalinga have been charged with possession of child pornography and only about half of them have been convicted of that offense,” stated Bellucci. “DSH is now punishing almost 1,300 people for the crimes of a few.”
Due to the expected confiscation and destruction of electronics, a few patients at Coalinga protested by damaging government property including a clock and windows. Immediately after the protest, DSH issued a lockdown on all patients which included prohibitions to leave the unit to which they were assigned, to access the hospital library, and to go to the post office. In addition, patients have had no outside visitors since January 14.
“At the beginning of the lockdown, patients at Coalinga were also cut off from communicating with their attorneys. This situation has improved slightly although phone calls are limited to a maximum of 15 minutes,” stated Bellucci.
During the TRO hearing and in legal documents filed by DSH and the Executive Director of Coalinga, the government testified that the lockdown at Coalinga had ended. The government failed to provide a date on which the lockdown ended and as of this date, patients continue to be confined to their units and no visitors are allowed.
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Such a f$$$/^ travesty of justice…
Does anyone know if they have filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? It is already been granted, so how is that the Eastern District could deny it. Defendants want to eventually take away the laptop computers under the old 4350 regulation which is being argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, case # 16-16518. It is so hard to understand why when one Court has ruled another can rule against it, especially when it’s a lower court!
Appeal?
Are they still serving their sentences? Probation?
If these people are “patients” and not prisoners this is outright oppression and denial of their rights. It’s my understanding these state victims are not prisoners in the eyes of the state, but we here know they are in a prison without charges and they haven’t committed a crime. This is wrong on so many levels. I hope Janice challenges this injustice.
How do we go about putting a stop to this circle of punishment givers ? and not just whats going on in these hospitals , but whats going on in all of our so called live
CA is a shit hole state drain the swamp
Everyone, please start writing to – and pressuring – your California legislature assemblyman and senators! We must raise the red flag on this outrageous oppression!
This needs to stop!! 😡😡😡
Criminal regimes commit crimes. It’s what they do. Always vote to shrink big government. Always vote to keep money from the prison industry.
The CA map should be redrawn to the show the “The Coalinga Republic of Venezuela, North Korea, etc”
Would somebody please explain to me why we have a Constitution when our government and judicial branch choose to ignore it? We are not all equal under the law.
I hope the patients or so called, destroy the place ! 🙂
Everybody in the hospital gets reprimanded. The end
I found these reviews by employees at CSH:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Coalinga-State-Hospital-RVW9055582.htm
My favorite was this quote: “Spoiler alert: The real SVPs are not the patients!”
This may or may not help.. but it appears this Judge may have possibly had a compliant of Judicial misconduct filed on him in previous years. http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/aol/372c.complaint.drozd.htm
it seems they are just taking the window dressing off , and saying yep its prison , what you going to do about it? , flexing their coward muscle , and seeing how far they can push , surly it will spread to other areas , like the registry as a whole thru different agents of control , like they have been doing these multi agency sweeps we have been seeing up in SAC town
On November 12, 2014, President Obama nominated Drozd to serve as a judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California,
Janice,
Today is Tuesday the 30th and the lockdown is still going on. On Sunday night, their voluntary giving forth of all of their electronics ended and since then police is going through every unit looking to confiscate and arrest/prosecute anyone who did not give up their belongings within the 10-day period, which ended Sunday. I was told that once they go through all of the units, they will start opening the phone lines but not sure about visiting. There has been no phone contact so far.
“The psychiatric incarceration of certain individuals [in the Soviet Union] was prompted by their attempts to emigrate, to distribute or possess prohibited documents or books, to participate in civil rights protests and demonstrations, and become involved in forbidden religious activities.”
_______””The incarceration of free-thinking healthy people in madhouses is spiritual murder, it is a variation of the gas chamber, even more cruel; the torture of the people being killed is more malicious and more prolonged. Like the gas chambers, these crimes will never be forgotten and those involved in them will be condemned for all time during their life and after their death.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn ____________ Speaking of Coalinga State “Hospital,” they are still on lock-down, limited phone use has been restored to SOME of the units and staff – ALL available staff – have been tearing into all of the Detainees’ property and stealing most of it despite it all having been approved and legally purchased. Mike St. Martin lost nearly two thousand CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray disks. They did leave him 30, as they had stated. However, none of the other Detainees in his unit were left with ANY disks whatsoever, not even the thirty that were promised. Mike lost all of his removeable media – both hard drives and thumbdrives, cables, a Blu-Ray player and lots, lots more. They rifled through all of his legal paperwork. They stole food that was legally bought through the commissary. They threw all of the ice cream in the unit refrigerator in the garbage. Mike lost more than $20K worth of property. Another example is the dumbed-down and ridiculously expensive tablets that were being sold to Detainees for several years from that well-recognized prison industrial complex vendor profiteer, Walkenhorst. Many of the Detainees bought them for $200 even though they did very little. No wifi, certainly and no camera or microphone. It was the closest they could get to a computer. All of these have been seized by the authorities now. Mike lost two of these. Detainees will not be compensated for any of these confiscations. To pile on the insults, the searches resulted in the destruction of much of the property that remains. They left an enormous mess which the Detainees now must clean up. There are some very depressed people at CSH these days.
Yes, the patients are still on some type of lockdown. My brother told me he’d call this week and as of this time I’ve still not heard from him. I tried to call on a number I’ve used many times. It was finally answered by someone that wouldn’t confirm or deny if he was there. Point being I didn’t ask if he was there, I asked to speak to him. So I asked who I was speaking too, and he replied that he was a staff member. Then I asked if the patients were still being denied phone calls, and he repeated that he couldn’t confirm or deny if “he” was there. I asked about the denial of calls again, and he just kept repeating himself. So I informed him that I would take that as a confirmation, that they were still denying civil commitments their civil rights, and contact my attorney. The people at this hospital make their own rules as they go along. I’m beyond frustrated, I can’t even imagine what the patients are feeling.
Janice, this is just a thought. Do you think we can bring family or friends of citizens in Coalinga together. Maybe even hold informational meetings to help each other and be on top of what’s going on with our loved ones? I would say 99.99% of the citizens in there are there because they could not afford a good private representation to fight for them. This is what this system banks on- people with no money and contact/rally can not really do much! Maybe there already is such a group or organization?! I am not sure but I don’t think so.