By Crescenzo Vellucci
Vanguard Sacramento Bureau
SAN FRANCISCO – A massive lawsuit alleging inhumane treatment at the San Francisco City and County Bryant Street Jail just got a shot-in-the-arm – a federal magistrate judge here issued a preliminary injunction this week forcing the aging facility to allow some prisoners more sunlight and recreation, according to a civil rights attorney who contacted the VANGUARD.
Named defendants include San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department, the City and County of San Francisco, and, in their individual capacities, Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, Captain Jason Jackson, Captain Kevin McConnell, and Chief Deputy Sheriff Paul Miyamoto.
Plaintiffs – some who are pretrial detainees and not convicted, and others serving sentences – include Kenyon Norbert, Montrail Brackens, Jose Poot, Troy McAllister, Marshal Harris, Michael Brown, Armando Carlos, Montrail Brackens, Marshall Harris, Kenyon Norbert.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim signed a preliminary injunction ordering that some prisoners being held in San Francisco’s Bryant Street Jail must receive at least one hour of direct sunlight a week, and other prisoners must receive at least one hour a day in a gym.
“Court finds that confining inmates in County Jail 4 who are in administrative segregation and confined to their cells for 23 ½ hours a day violates the more stringent standard of the Eighth Amendment and thus violates the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court finds that inmates in the general population in both County Jails 4 and 5 and in administrative segregation in County Jail 5 receive 
an adequate amount of exercise and access to day rooms to satisfy the Eighth Amendment,” wrote Kim.
The judge also added that the court “finds that depriving a pretrial detainee of lack of access to direct sunlight for more than four years constitutes punishment. The Court finds that inmates in administrative segregation for non-disciplinary reasons do not have a procedural or substantive due process right to a hearing and written notice for the reasons for their placement.”
Kim made her decision after she made an unusual personal “judicial site visit” to County Jails 4 and 5 last year. It must have made an impression because Kim later penned:
“That society would incarcerate a human being – who has not yet been found guilty and therefore is legally innocent and who has not committed a specific disciplinary violation – by locking him up in a small cell for 23 ½ hours a day is unacceptable.”
About 85 percent of inmates in the jail are awaiting trial and have not been found guilty, something Judge Kim spoke to directly when she added: “The issue is not whether the inmates who are confined to their cells for 23 ½ hours a day are allowed to exercise outside but whether the amount of time they receive to exercise out of their cells and spend time out of their cells violates the Constitution.”
Civil rights lawyer Yolanda Huang – who seemingly has made it a habit of suing on behalf of prisoners in San Francisco jails because of the jails’ reputation of inhumane conditions – was ecstatic about the ruling, calling it “seismic” in an interview with the VANGUARD.
“The preliminary injunction declares that holding pretrial detainees where they do not see direct sunlight for years is impermissible punishment. The judge ordered any pretrial detainee incarcerated for more than four years receive at least one hour of sunlight a week. And that all administrative segregation inmates receive at least one hour a day in the gym,” she said.
The decision is a precursor to a larger federal lawsuit about jail conditions filed by Huang and still pending in federal court against the City and County of San Francisco, and officials and officers.
Huang reported earlier this week that she was receiving “emergency” calls from Bryant Street Jail prisoners, complaining “there is no-heat, windows are stuck open, no blankets” in the jail, just as temperatures in the Bay Area were plummeting to the low 30s and high 40s.
“The City and County of San Francisco have an annual budget of $10 billion, and touts their progressive, humanitarian politics. But they house people in jails that the previous Sheriff Hennessey called ‘an embarrassment,’” said Huang.
She continued, “A prisoner in a San Francisco County Jail never gets to see the sun, feel sunlight on his skin, and for those who are held in jail for long periods of time, slowly develop chronic, health diseases including endocrine disorders such as diabetes, cognitive dysfunctions, memory losses.”
The SF Board of Supervisors voted in 2015 to close the jail at 850 Bryant, but it’s still open and houses 400 plus men. In 2006, San Francisco built a new jail in San Bruno that is deliberately designed so that prisoners never gets to be outside, Huang said.
Judge Kim’s ruling wasn’t everything sought by Huang, who is asking in the main lawsuit that all inmates in County Jails 4 and 5 receive a minimum of “one hour per day of time out of their cells and a minimum of three hours per week of outdoor recreation time “distributed over 7 days (and not just in one chunk).”
She is also asking for “any inmate who has been in administrative segregation more than one year be released to general population…unless defendants comply with the hearing and the hearing demonstrates that the [inmate’s] release would ‘severely endanger the lives of inmates or staff or the security of the institution,’ and that any inmate held in administrative segregation more than one year be provided mental health support upon release back into the general population,” and other concessions for inmates.
The judge did rule in the defendants’’ favor on parts of a motion to dismiss, ordering all claims dismissed against the San Francisco Police Dept. because the City and County of San Francisco are a defendant. Court also ordered some, but not all, claims against Sheriff Hennessy and other individuals dismissed because of qualified immunity.
