U.S. judge bars law keeping inmates off Net

PHOENIX - A federal judge barred the state from enforcing a law blocking prison inmates from soliciting correspondence on the Internet.

U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll said the law illegally infringes on the First Amendment rights of those with whom the inmates want to correspond. He said that while officials from the Department of Corrections have legitimate security concerns, they can be addressed in less obtrusive ways.

Mike Arra, spokesman for the agency, said attorneys are studying the ruling before deciding whether to appeal.

Carroll's decision drew an angry reaction from Stardust Johnson whose husband, Ron, a University of Arizona music professor, was murdered in 1995.

It was Stardust Johnson who spurred lawmakers to enact the ban after seeing a Web site set up on behalf of Beau Greene, the man convicted of her husband's killing.

She said that without the legal barriers inmates, including pedophiles, can make contact through the Internet with people who are unaware of the crimes they committed.

Johnson had particularly harsh words for one of the three organizations that sued, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. "They ought to go back to Canada and take care of their own business there," she said.

Johnson said Greene's Web site was misleading at best.

"It gave no clue he was a brutal murderer," she said. "Instead he presented himself as a lonely man holding a cuddly kitten who was misunderstood."

Ron Johnson disappeared after an organ performance at a Green Valley church. He was found beaten to death four days later, face-down in a muddy wash west of Tucson. Greene was sentenced to die for Johnson's murder.

Inmates have no direct Internet access. But various groups, like the Canadian Coalition, make Web pages available for inmates who send them information about themselves, either seeking to tell their story or looking for pen pals to write them through the regular mail system.

The 2000 law closed that avenue by making it a crime for inmates to send information that would be posted on the Internet.

In defending the law, the state said the restrictions are necessary to prevent attempts to defraud the public and preclude "inappropriate contact" with minors, victims or other inmates.

Carroll, however, said there are other ways to do that, pointing out that inmates have no direct Internet access.

He noted that prison staffers can open incoming and outgoing mail and examine it for contraband. And letters that are not privileged may be read to determine if the contents "might facilitate criminal activity."

The judge also said current prison regulations permit staff members to monitor and record inmates' telephone calls.

Carroll also said this is not strictly about the rights of inmates. He said those who wish to communicate with inmates also have a right to do so - and that the ban on inmates' sending or receiving mail from groups that post information on their Web pages infringes on those rights.

David Fathi, an attorney representing the three organizations, said the law amounted to Arizona trying to impose its restrictions on what others outside the state could post on their Web sites.

But Assistant Attorney General Jim Morrow said the only bar was to inmates' sending information. He said nothing precluded inmate rights groups from posting stories about Arizona inmates.

Arra said there are other reasons to limit what inmates can post.

"Many inmates put advertisements seeking pen pals on the Internet and seek donations to their causes or to their defense funds," he said. "But there's really no authority that is monitoring where that money might go other than the inmate himself."

Arra acknowledged that the law covers only Internet postings - and never precluded inmates from doing the same thing in individual letters or even through ads in commercial publications.

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