News & Commentary

The RI ACLU today filed a lawsuit against the Town of Narragansett in what the ACLU calls “the latest attempt by the town to unnecessarily harass and intimidate URI students living there.” The suit, filed in RI Superior Court by ACLU volunteer attorney H. Jefferson Melish, is on behalf of three URI pharmacy graduate students who have received tickets for parking their cars overnight on their street even though they have a permit to do so.

The Rhode Island ACLU has today taken legal action against the Pawtucket and Little Compton school districts for violating the state’s open records law. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court by ACLU volunteer attorney Karen Davidson, charges that district officials in each of these districts unlawfully failed to respond to two requests from the ACLU for public documents.

The Rhode Island ACLU has filed a legal brief asking a federal court to reject arguments by the United States government that it be dismissed from the lawsuit on behalf of the family of a detainee who died while in the custody of immigration officials at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. 

The Rhode Island ACLU has today filed a “friend of the court” brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston, supporting Governor Lincoln Chafee’s legal efforts to prevent the surrender of murder suspect Jason Wayne Pleau to federal authorities to potentially face the death penalty. The brief was joined by the four other ACLU affiliates – from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Puerto Rico – that are in the appeals court’s jurisdiction.

The Rhode Island ACLU today applauded the Department of Corrections (DOC) for adopting suggestions to strengthen proposed rules that will govern the use of restraints on pregnant prisoners. These new regulations, based on ACLU-drafted legislation passed last June, generally prohibit the use of handcuffs, shackles, and waist restraints on a pregnant inmate during transport, labor, delivery, and recovery.  They also allow only  “medically appropriate” restraints to be used during the second and third trimester of an inmate’s pregnancy.  Most importantly, the changes adopted by the DOC make important clarifications regarding what restraints are appropriate during each stage of an inmate’s pregnancy and where information about the procedures should be made available to staff and inmates. These changes strengthen what is one of the strongest laws in the country protecting pregnant inmates.

A federal district court heard oral arguments today on whether to dismiss an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official from the federal lawsuit filed by the R.I. ACLU on behalf of the family of a detainee who died while in the custody of immigration officials at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. ACLU volunteer attorneys Fidelma Fitzpatrick and Robert McConnell urged the judge to reject the government’s motion.

Today the Rhode Island ACLU and seven other organizations have submitted testimony to the Department of Corrections in response to proposed regulations that will implement Rhode Island's new anti-shackling law that the General Assembly approved in June. The law, one of the strongest in the country, was drafted by the Affiliate and generally bars the use of handcuffs or shackles on pregnant incarcerated women.  Among other things, the testimony calls for clarification on the new rules for labor, delivery and recovery and for “medically appropriate” restraints.

Claiming that it violates the Department of Justice’s own standards, the RI ACLU and four other organizations have asked the United States Solicitor General to “halt any further efforts” by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Rhode Island to seek to impose the death penalty on Jason Wayne Pleau. The letter follows actions by that office to appeal a federal court ruling two weeks ago that Governor Lincoln Chafee acted lawfully in refusing to transfer Pleau’s custody to the federal government, which is seeking to prosecute him even though he has already agreed to serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

In a campaign coordinated with its national office, the Rhode Island ACLU today sent open records requests to the RI State Police and the Providence Police Department to obtain information as to how and the extent they are using cell phone location data to track  the movements of Rhode Islanders. The requests are an effort to strip away the secrecy that has generally surrounded law enforcement use of cell phone tracking capabilities across the country.