B.C. drug smuggler sues U.S. prison system

VANCOUVER — A drug-smuggling skipper from B.C. has filed suit against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for not doing enough to protect him from the coronavirus.

John Philip Stirling, 66, says he has been put at risk inside his Oregon prison because prisoners have been moved into the facility without being isolated from longer-term convicts.

Stirling is awaiting sentencing after being caught last year on a sailboat off Oregon with 28 26-litre jugs containing liquid methamphetamine. His sentencing hearing had been scheduled for April but was delayed due to court closures related to the pandemic. It is now set for May 21.

Stirling filed suit last month, alleging that the Sheridan Federal Correctional Institution, southwest of Portland, “kept putting 10 people that are from outside this prison in my unit under what the captain says is quarantine.

“Sheridan prison staff are endangering my life with new entries,” Stirling said in his handwritten complaint. “I am 66 years old with diabetes. I should be released as death either mentally or by Corona-19 is inevitable under the present situation.”

He also complained about being on lockdown with little access to showers, phones, email or “quality food,” and that there is no bleach for cleaning.

“We are exposed to guards with no masks, gloves, footwear that is unclean after we have been locked down,” he said. “My wife in Canada is sick and the times I get out do not allow me to call. I have had four hours out in the last 19 days.”

Stirling is asking the U.S. District Court in Portland to issue an injunction, preventing the Bureau of Prisons and Sheridan staff from bringing new people into his unit. And he wants an order to end the lockdown, which, he says, is affecting the mental health of inmates.

In 2001, Stirling was arrested on his boat, the Western Wind, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca with 2.5 tonnes of cocaine on-board, but was never charged.

In 2006, he was arrested again off Vancouver Island after police found $6.5-million worth of marijuana on board a fishing vessel registered to him.

The charges laid against him were later dropped.