PHOENIX (AP) — An appeals court has resurrected a lawsuit by an Arizona death-row inmate who alleged a prison officer violated his constitutional rights by reading a letter he wrote to his lawyer.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in prisoner Scott D. Nordstrom’s appeal that the Constitution doesn’t let prison officers read outgoing letters between inmates and their lawyers.
The ruling revives Nordstrom’s legal claims and sends his lawsuit back to a lower court, but it makes no changes to his convictions or death sentence.
Nordstrom, 46, was convicted of killing six people in two robberies in 1996 in Tucson. Two people were killed at a smoke shop in one robbery, while four others were killed during a holdup 14 days later at a social club. Nordstrom was sentenced to death. One of his accomplices was executed last year.
Nordstrom alleged a jail officer read his two-page letter in May 2011, refused his requests to stop viewing it and claimed he had the power to search mail for contraband and scan the contents to ensure they concerned legal matters. The prisoner claimed the experience forced him to stop relaying sensitive information about his case to his lawyer.
The appeals court ruled prison officials can inspect inmates’ outgoing mail in their presence to ensure there are no escape plans, maps of prison yards and other suspicion features. But the court said the Constitution doesn’t let prison officers read outgoing letters between inmates and their lawyers.
One of the three appellate judges wrote a dissent that said, in part, that prison officials aren’t prevented from reading legal letters with an eye toward discovering illegal activity.
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