Home » About » Newsletters » November 1996
Recognition for Attorneys' LongTerm Efforts
By Andrew Kayton, Legal Director
November 1996
Many cooperating attorneys for the ACLU of Florida are effecting important and needed social and institutional reforms through the courts in this state. The work of these attorneys often requires a staggering amount of time with little or no compensation, but is crucial to upholding the Bill of Rights. They have gone about their work quietly and without herald, litigating cases that otherwise would not be brought on behalf of those who otherwise would not be represented. Highlighted below are some of the more impressive efforts deserving our acknowledgement.
Since 1987, a small group of lawyers, including James K. Green for the ACLU, have successfully challenged and sought to halt the barbaric treatment of mental health patients at G. Pierce Wood Memorial Hospital, a state facility in Arcadia. Elderly patients at the hospital were tied to chairs or left in urinesoaked beds throughout the day; female patients were left at the mercy of sexual predators, without investigation or treatment for such assaults; and nonviolent patients were administered disabling narcotics by unlicensed hospital aides. The State of Florida entered into a consent decree in 1989 that provided for an independent court monitor and contemplated a range of improvements in the hospital's management, conditions and its community outplacement of patients. Reprehensibly, the State asked the federal district court to release it from its legal obligations under the consent decree in 1994. That summer alone, four patients at the hospital died one from hanging, one from poisoning, and two from choking. A fifth patient severed his hands on an electric table saw. The hospital's national accreditation was revoked in 1995. This year, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice moved to intervene in the case, asserting its belief that patients at the hospital were at "serious risk of harm, including death." Public minded lawyers, like Jim Green and Stephen Hanlon, however, had already been at the scene of this disaster for over nine years.
In 1988, Benjamin Waxman, along with Stephen J. Shnably and Jeffery Wiener, brought an ACLU case on behalf of the approximately 6000 homeless persons living in Miami. At the time, Miami police routinely arrested the homeless for engaging in essential life activities (i.e., sleeping and eating) in public places and destroyed their personal property, including clothing, books, medicine and shelter. Methodical "sweeps" of the homeless were instituted, particularly before high profile events such as the Orange Bowl. In one incident, the police rounded up homeless persons sleeping under an interstate overpass and moved to them to a park, where front end loaders and dump trucks were then loaded with those persons belongings for removal. U.S. District Court Judge C. Clyde Atkins found in 1991 that the city's practices were violative of numerous constitutional provisions, and created a series of "safe zones" in which the homeless could exist without police harassment. Eight years after its inception, after two appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the suit continues, now in courtordered mediation. The efforts of Benji Waxman and the other lawyers in this landmark case have benefitted not only the homeless in Miami, but also had an immeasurable ripple effect on their legal status in Florida and elsewhere in the nation. Because of this litigation, government institutions and agencies now often recognize that the homeless can and do have civil rights warranting their heed and respect.
In 1982, David Lipman (later to be joined by William Amlong, Maria Kate Northrup and Florida Rural Legal Services, Inc., and much later by the ACLU) brought an action on behalf of inmates at Glades Correctional Institution in Belle Glade. This was not the usual inmate suit. GCI was the scene of an inordinate number of brutal sexual assaults systematically ignored by prison officials. Plaintiffs were reportedly raped in the dorms, in the bathrooms, in the shower area, at unsupervised showings of hardcore sex films, even when in protective solitary confinement and in one instance allegedly with a baseball bat on the recreation field. Victims were refused medical attention and protection. Prison staff looked the other way. One inmate asked a guard for protection and was instead given a knife. At trial, the district court awarded significant damages (to inmates serving hard time) that were later overturned on appeal. After a partially successful retrial, the case is now on appeal for the second time to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, fourteen years after its inception. Little wonder that so few lawyers have the courage to undertake this type of case, although we all know the common assumption that rapes occur in many correctional facilities.
Another important case was first filed for the ACLU by Ed Stafman in Tallahassee in 1984. That year state and local police instituted unprecedented roadblocks on a state highway in North Florida that tied up about 1400 vehicles for 45 minutes while police canines sniffed each vehicle for drugs without any cause or suspicion. The net result was one drugrelated misdemeanor arrest, and a lot of angry drivers. (Trained police canines consistently proved wrong in their drug "alerts," but each erroneous alert provided "probable cause" for a complete vehicle search.) While the war on drugs abscessed, the federal district court took nine years to grant summary judgment for the defendants on a stipulated set of facts. The U.S. Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit affirmed in 1995, becoming the first and only federal circuit to legalize suspicionless roadblocks having no public purpose other than the interception of illegal drugs. Three dissenting judges warned that the decision "comes perilously close to permitting unfettered government intrusion on the privacy of all motorists." The U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari in October 1996, twelve years after Ed Stafman and the ACLU first brought this case.
These exceptional longterm efforts by ACLU cooperating attorneys exemplify the best type of service by private lawyers working meaningfully in the public interest. The Florida community is a better place because of their work, and the ACLU of Florida is proud to be affiliated with their accomplishments.
