State Supreme Court Hears Garner Inmate’s Hunger Strike Appeal

By Andrew Gorosko

On October 25, the Connecticut Supreme Court in Hartford heard oral arguments in an appeal from a Garner Correctional Institution inmate in Newtown on whether the state Department of Correction’s (DOC) force-feeding him during a hunger strike violates the Connecticut Constitution and international law.

Stephen Ment, spokesman for the Supreme Court, said that the court’s members will be reviewing the case before rendering a decision on the legal issues. There is no deadline for the court’s decision.

Lawyers for inmate William B. Coleman, 51, argue that the force-feeding violates his free speech rights and international law, which forbids force-feeding prisoners when they are deemed competent and capable of making informed decisions.

Coleman is serving an eight-year sentence for a sexual assault conviction.

The DOC began force-feeding him in September 2008 after he stopped accepting fluids.

A Superior Court judge had allowed the force-feedings, ruling the state has a right to protect Coleman’s life. The state says Coleman has since voluntarily been taking some nutrition.

Coleman has been seeking to bring attention to what he says is a corrupt judicial system. He is scheduled to be released from prison by December 30, 2012, after which he would serve 15 years of probation.

According to the Supreme Court’s description of Coleman’s case, in September, 2007, shortly after his criminal convictions were affirmed on appeal, Coleman began a hunger strike as a form of protest.

Through the hunger strike, Coleman sought to draw attention to what he perceives to be a broken judicial system that, according to him, led to his wrongful conviction.

In January 2008, the DOC filed a legal action for a permanent court injunction to permit it to use force to feed, hydrate, and provide medically necessary care to Coleman.

Coleman then claimed that such an injunction would violate his First Amendment right to free speech.

The Superior Court then rejected Coleman’s claim, noting that there was a rational, valid connection between the DOC’s desire to force-feed Coleman and its interest in protecting the safety and security of its prisons and its statutory duty to preserve the health and life of all inmates.

The Superior Court also found that Coleman had alternative means of exercising his First Amendment right to protest. Also, the court found that Coleman’s death would have a negative effect on staff, inmates, and order within the prison.

Additionally, the court decided that there was no ready alternative to force-feeding Coleman which would meet the state’s valid penological goals.

The Superior Court also rejected Coleman’s claim that the relief sought by the DOC violates international law, stating that there is no international consensus as to whether it is ethical or unethical for a physician or correctional authority to allow a prisoner to refuse nutrition if the prisoner may die or suffer severe injury as a consequence.

In his Superior Court case, Coleman argued that his interest in bodily integrity outweighed the DOC’s interest in force-feeding him. The Superior Court found that the DOC’s interests in force-feeding Coleman were the preservation of life, the protection of innocent dependents — Coleman’s two minor sons — and the maintenance of safety, security, and order in its prison.

Balancing these factors against Coleman’s right to bodily integrity, the Superior Court concluded that equity favored granting a permanent injunction to the DOC to allow Coleman to be force-fed.

 The Supreme Court is reviewing the Superior Court’s decisions.

(Associated Press content was included in this story).