LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska prison officials have agreed to new rules to accommodate the religious and cultural needs of American Indian inmates in order to settle a federal court action.
The settlement agreement, obtained on Nov. 11 by The Associated Press, arose out of a complaint filed by inmate Richard T. Walker, an American Indian sentenced to a life term in 1966 for second-degree murder in Thurston County.
His complaint was filed in U.S. District Court - Nebraska in Lincoln on behalf of the prison system's approximately 200 American Indian inmates.
Among Walker's allegations was a claim that prison officials made so many demands for qualifications on a medicine man that he stopped coming to the prison to conduct religious and cultural affairs for the Indian inmates.
Walker also alleged that prison officials required the medicine man to be able to "acclimate" to the religious needs of other inmates, including Christians and Muslims.
The settlement agreement would replace a 1974 consent decree signed by U.S. District Judge Warren Urbom requiring prison officials to allow American Indian inmates to conduct religious ceremonies and have access to medicine men and ceremonial tobacco, among other things.
Urbom must approve the settlement before it can take effect.
The consent decree, many argued, was diluted by the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, which was meant to reduce the number of inmate lawsuits.
Courts long have responded to inmate lawsuits over prison conditions by ordering state officials to relieve those that violate some constitutional right.
Congress enacted the 1996 law out of its concern that federal courts were intruding too far into state prison management. The law limits a judge's power to order changes in conditions of confinement, permitting modifications "no further than necessary to correct the violation of the federal right of a particular plaintiff or plaintiffs."
Under the law, remedies must employ the "least intrusive means necessary" to correct any violation.
"The consent decree ... lost a lot of its usefulness" after the 1996 law was enacted, said Bassel El-Kasaby, one of the lawyers representing the inmates. "We thought it was in the interests of the inmates to create this new framework."
In the proposed settlement, prison officials agree to allow American Indian inmates two powwows a year and to give them time for religious education and worship ceremonies.
The inmates can also use traditional ceremonial foods such as fry bread, corn and "berry dish" in their ceremonies.
The inmates agree to not use tobacco — which is banned in the prison system — in their ceremonies. But prison officials will let them use chinshasha, which is made from the bark of red willow trees, as a substitute.
Prison officials also agree to allow the reinstatement of the Native American Club and allow access to medicine men and other spiritual leaders.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Tomka, who helped reach the settlement, could not be reached for comment. But she argued earlier that prison officials had gone out of their way to accommodate American Indian inmates.
She said, for example, that the inmates were allowed to proceed with their religious ceremonies even when a medicine man failed to show up to conduct a ceremony.