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Title: Arpaio loses appeal on pink-underwear case
Source:
azcentral.com
URL Source: http://www.azcentral.com/news/polit ... aio-pink-underwear-appeal.html
Published: Mar 4, 2013
Author: Jacques Billeaud
Post Date: 2013-03-04 17:31:55 by Ferret Mike
Keywords: None
Views: 810
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s appeal of a ruling that criticized a decision by his jail officers to force pink underwear onto a mentally ill inmate who erroneously believed jailers were trying to rape him. The refusal by the court means the lawsuit by the estate of Eric Vogel appears headed to trial for a second time. Arpaio’s office won the case at trial, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the verdict and called for a new trial in a ruling a year ago. The 9th Circuit said dressing inmates in pink underwear — a hallmark of Arpaio — appeared to be punishment without legal justification and noted that it’s fair to infer that the selection of pink as the underwear color was meant to symbolize the loss of prisoners’ masculinity. The Sheriff’s Office and Vogel’s attorney didn’t immediately return a request for comment on Monday. Early in his 20-year tenure as sheriff of Maricopa County, Arpaio won points with voters for making inmates wear pink underwear, housing them in canvas tents during triple-digit summer heat, and dressing them in old-time striped jail uniforms. Arpaio’s attorneys wanted the nation’s highest court to examine whether having pink boxers as part of the standard jail uniform can constitute punishment before a trial is held. Vogel had refused to get out of his street clothes after he was arrested in 2001 for investigation of assaulting an officer who was responding to a burglary call. A group of officers in the jail stripped Vogel and put him in pink underwear and other prison clothing as he shouted that he was being raped. A lawyer for Vogel’s estate has said the officers didn’t sexually assault Vogel and that his client didn’t suffer injuries at the jail. Vogel, who was determined by a counselor to be paranoid and psychotic, died less than a month later, after he and his mother got in a minor car accident. When an officer handling the accident told Vogel that he might be jailed on a warrant stemming from his previous struggle involving jail clothes, Vogel ran several miles from the scene back to his home. He died the next day, and medical examiners concluded the cause was cardiac arrhythmia.
The 9th Circuit said dressing inmates in pink underwear — a hallmark of Joe Arpaio — appeared to be punishment without legal justification.
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