Web letters 1

PHOENIX, Az. - Two anti-death penalty groups have filed a lawsuit against the Arizona prison system for enforcing a law that bans prisoners, including death row inmates, from sending letters to their Web sites.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit for the groups, charges that the broadly worded Arizona state law, which went into affect in July 2000, is a violation of free speech rights and seeks to punish inmates who write letters to the Web sites.

The ACLU said that inmates have been threatened with disciplinary action or criminal prosecution and the law has a "chilling" effect on advocacy groups.

Gary Phelps, the chief of staff for the Arizona Department of Corrections, said the law was put in place to prevent victims from coming across the faces and reading letters from the men and women who committed crimes against them.

Phelps said the law was proposed after relatives of a Tucson man who was murdered came across a Web site portraying the killer, who is on death row, as a caring person and holding a cat.

Corrections officials said that so far, 53 prisoners have been given disciplinary tickets for violating the Web rule and 24 have lost prison privileges as a result.

Disciplinary tickets are given to inmates who violate prison rules. A ticket can result in loss of privileges inside the prison for specific periods of time.

The prisoners, especially death row inmates who are held in isolation most of the day, frequently write to the sites requesting pen-pals, soliciting donations for defense funds or proclaiming their innocence. Some letters even tell of the inner workings of prison systems and alleged abuses. Many of the inmates also have their pictures posted on the Web sites.