BY JOHN HAWKINS
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Federal Magistrate Judge Vanzetta Penn McPherson ruled January 30 that the Alabama Department of Corrections must cease the practice of handcuffing inmates for hours at a time to chest-high, horizontal bars that prisoners call "hitching posts." McPherson's ruling came in a suit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had also sought to outlaw Alabama's revival of chain gangs.

Faced with international outrage over the chain gangs and the prospect of losing on that front in court, the state government announced in June that it would discontinue the practice of chaining prison work crews together. However, state officials refused to agree to eliminate the "hitching posts" and say they will appeal McPherson's ruling.

"Short of death by electrocution," wrote McPherson in her decision, "the hitching post may be the most painful and tortuous punishment administered by the Alabama prison system. With deliberate indifference for the health, safety, and indeed the lives of the inmates, prison officials have knowingly subjected them to all the hazards of the hitching posts, then observed as they suffered pain, humiliation and injuries as a result."

Over the past six months, in testimony before the court, prisoners have described standing shackled for as long as nine hours to the devices, called "restraining bars" by prison officials and in place at all Alabama prisons since 1993. They consist of two bars, one for shorter and one for taller inmates.

However, inmates testified that prison officials routinely shackle shorter inmates to the taller bar and vice versa, causing them intense discomfort and, in some cases, injury.

Prison officials testified that only those inmates who refused to work were shackled to the posts. But inmates contradicted that testimony, citing case after case of arbitrary infliction of the punishment, including on inmates who asked to be relieved of work details because they were ill.

Prisoners testified that they were subjected to the torturous punishment at all times of the year, whether under a hot summer sun or a driving winter rain. Moreover, inmates testified, they were often deprived of food, water, and the opportunity to use the toilet.

Among the inmates who testified was Tony Fountain. Fountain, who is six feet tall, described being deliberately hitched by prison officials to the shorter of the two posts for nine hours. Fountain complained of an injured back, which prevented him from keeping up with his farm work crew. Prison officials' response was to chain him to the hitching post, forcing him to stand bent over in 90- degree heat. During the entire nine hour ordeal he received no water.

Fountain, who had also been taking a laxative, was refused permission to use the toilet and soiled his clothing mid-way through the punishment. "For the next four and a half hours that he remained on the hitching post," wrote McPherson, "officers and other inmates laughed and made fun of him."

In court Fountain described the experience as "terrifying" and "horrible." After being examined by medical officials, Fountain was taken off work duty for 30 days due to dehydration and inability to stand straight.

Testifying in October at one of the hearings in the case, Allen Breed, former director of the National Institute of Corrections, a federal agency that advises state prisons, compared the hitching posts to the pillory used in colonial times. "In this case we are perhaps more barbarous," said Breed, "because what we're doing is stretching an inmate out in the hot sun so he's uncomfortable and can't move."

McPherson's ruling now goes to Federal District Court in Montgomery, where Judge Myron Thompson will hear the case.  
 
 
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