20-plus year jail lawsuit is finally almost over
Only final briefing left in case of prison conditions
If they’d handed out T-shirts at the end of U.S. District Judge James A. Parker’s fairness hearing Wednesday in the McClendon jail conditions lawsuit, the slogan would have said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
The 1995 lawsuit by Jimmie McClendon on behalf of a group of inmates at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque is pretty much over but for the final briefing, which has to do with objections filed by 20 prisoners to the proposed settlement, which already has preliminary approval.
Taylor Rahn of the Robles Rael law firm, which represents Bernalillo County, offered a summary of the testimony by an MDC official charged with carrying out terms of the agreement. Each pod of the jail was provided with copies of the proposed agreement, which also was translated into Spanish by a certified interpreter, and notices were published every week for six weeks in the Albuquerque Journal.
Besides the 20 objectors, two more filed pleadings saying they objected to the absence of any monetary compensation, and one of them wanted to be
transported to federal court to speak about the settlement. But plaintiffs’ attorneys said the lawsuit was always about conditions in the city-county lockup, not about money, and they did not believe testimony by one or more objectors would add anything useful.
Parker ordered a briefing on the objections, after which he will decide whether the deal gets final approval.
When the lawsuit was filed, the jail was still in Downtown Albuquerque, and the building remains a vacant, hulking mass of concrete that nobody seems to want in the block next to the 2nd Judicial District Court.
Then, it was operated as a joint project by the city and the county.
The litigation survived construction of a new jail west of Albuquerque because crowding, among other conditions, remained an issue.
Retired U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Torgerson served as special master on the lawsuit, and Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen B. Molzen also worked on resolving the litigation.
The 15-page proposal first presented in December 2015 used terms like “substantial compliance,” “sustained compliance” and “backsliding” and called for audits in various categories to gradually decrease federal court oversight.
Only one class member spoke. Tom Sheridan said he’d spent 62 days in pretrial custody and objected to being treated in the same manner as individuals convicted of various crimes. MDC houses individuals before trial and those sentenced to less than a year in custody. Sheridan suggested a separate pod for those in pretrial detention.