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Inmates sue to enforce smoke banTOPEKA (AP) — Joe Camel and Pall Mall are suing state officials in federal court over secondhand smoke.Camel and Mall are the pseudonyms of two prison inmates, cell mates at the state’s medium-securi-ty unit in Lansing. They claim thestate Department of Corrections isnot enforcing its own ban on smok ing in prison buildings, which took effect in July 1995.The inmates say they even have gone so far as to seal off the heating duct in their cell to avoid secondhand smoke. They complain that their cell is so cold in winter that they are subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.Pall Mall is the name chosen by prisoner Robert Lile. Joe Camel is the pen name of Jouett Edgar Arney, perhaps the most famous inmate litigator in Kansas.They want to force the state to ban all tobacco products from prison grounds, not just buildings,or build separate cell houses for non-smoking inmates. They also want an unspecified amount of money for damages, as well as $150 an hour for acting as their own attorneys.“The defendants’ conduct and acts are intentionally committedwith serious deliberate indifferenceto the present and future health of Arney and Lile,” the men said in their lawsuit, which they filed earlier this month.Defendants are Corrections Secretary Charles Simmons, Lansing Warden David McKune and Attorney General Carla Stovall. The inmates say the attorney general has a duty to see that the state treats its inmates humanely.The inmates claim violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees legal due process. They also complain of violations of theSeventh Amendment, which guarantees trial by juryBill Miskell, the department’s spokesman, suppressed snickers when first told details of the lawsuit. He later said the department’s attorneys have not yet been notified officially. lt;’*•He said an inmate sued the department over secondhand smoke in the 1980s and that the department prevailed. He had no further details, however.Arney was sentenced to life in prison for a 1972 murder. Lile is serving time for aggravated kidnap ping. rape, aggravated sodomy, and attempting to escape from prison.Prison and law enforcement officials view Arney as a jail house lawyer, and he has filed nine law suits in federal court in the past two years alone. He once sent a petition to a federal judge written in pencil on three feet or so of toilet paper, protesting his lack of access to pa per and typewriter.
Newspaper Details
Garden City Telegram
Garden City, Kansas, US
Thu, Dec 12, 1996
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Emily S.
NA, 04 Oct 2020
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