Word: prisons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...provision provided deferment for students. Yet to the horror of college students who had hoped to avoid going to Viet Nam by earning advanced degrees, the revamped Military Selective Service Act of 1967 abolished deferments for graduate study. The maximum penalty for draft dodgers: five years in prison, plus a $10,000 fine...
Dannie Martin is used to being punished when he does something wrong. Indeed, Martin, 49, is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence for the 1980 attempted armed robbery of a Cle Elum, Wash., bank. But Martin is convinced that a recent eviction from his home of seven years in California's federal penitentiary at Lompoc is a grave injustice, and he has a powerful ally. The San Francisco Chronicle has joined Martin in a lawsuit charging that federal prison officials are unfairly attempting to silence him for exercising his First Amendment rights to free speech...
...last June Martin published a piece that displeased one very important reader: Richard Rison, the newly appointed warden at Lompoc. Headlined THE GULAG MENTALITY, Martin's article charged that Rison had increased tension at the prison by limiting access to the recreation yard and replacing the inmates' individually decorated and highly prized chairs with plain gray folding chairs. "He's tryin' to start a riot," complained an unidentified convict in Martin's story. "We might just as well give him one and get it over with...
...days after the story appeared, Martin was placed in solitary confinement. Prison officials said Martin was being investigated for "encouraging a group demonstration" and they feared "a threat to his safety" if he were free to circulate among other prisoners. Martin returned to his cell after 48 hours, but a week later he was transferred to a prison in San Diego, in preparation for yet another move to a facility near Phoenix. Fearing that Martin was beginning a regimen that inmates call "bus therapy" -- being transferred from facility to facility -- both Martin and the Chronicle filed suit against Rison...
Rison and federal prison officials maintain that Martin had broken federal regulations against prisoners' being employed and receiving outside compensation. Defense Attorney George Stoll argued at a hearing last month that Martin "isn't Bret Harte or somebody who is uniquely describing the California experience. He's a federal prisoner, and he's moved around from time to time...