Judge: State’s ‘pay-to-stay’ law that charges inmates for prison stay not excessive
BRIDGEPORT — A lawsuit seeking to bar the state from forcing former inmates, including the mother of a Bridgeport teen shot to death by a police officer in 2017, to pay for their incarceration has been dismissed by a federal judge.
The lawsuit by Natasha Tosado, of Hamden, and other former inmates claims the efforts by the state Department of Corrections and the Department of Administrative Services to collect money under the state’s “pay to stay” law is excessive and a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.
But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Meyer found that the law is not excessive on its face.
“Although the plaintiffs raise important public policy concerns about the purpose and operation of Connecticut’s law, they fail to show for purposes of their facial challenge that requiring a convicted prisoner to pay the costs of imprisonment amounts to a per se violation of the Excessive Fines Clause,” the judge ruled. “Nor do they show for purposes of their as-applied challenge that the pay-to-stay law authorizes the state to collect amounts from them that are no less than grossly disproportional to the gravity of their crimes.”
While dismissing most of the case the judge did allow it to continue for two plaintiffs, Teresa Beatty of Stamford and Douglas Johnson of New Haven, who said they were being charged more than the state law allowed.
“These two plaintiffs have plausibly alleged a violation of the Excessive Fines Clause to this limited extent. Accordingly, I will grant in part and deny in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss,” the judge stated.
Dan Barrett, legal director of the ACLU of Connecticut, who with David Slossberg represents the plaintiffs in the case, said he believed his clients’ claims had strong merit.
“We are actively pursuing our next legal steps on this issue,” Barrett said.
Under the 1995 law Connecticut inmates are charged $249 a day for their incarceration. Attempts to rescind the law have failed.
According to the lawsuit, the state probate court notifies the Department of Administrative Services whenever an inmate is the beneficiary of money left to them by a deceased relative. The Department of Corrections then supplies DAS with records showing what the DOC contends that the person owes and the DAS files a notice of a lien against that inmate’s estate in probate court.
A 2022 amendment to the law exempts the first $50,000 of assets and caps the amount to be sought at not more than 50 percent of the prisoner’s share of the estate.
This litigation began nearly two years ago when three former state prisoners, Beatty, Karl Weissinger, and Michael Llorens, filed a class action suit for injunctive relief against the governor and the attorney general seeking to block the procedure. However, the judge dismissed the case, ruling that the plaintiffs had sued the wrong people. The plaintiffs then refiled the lawsuit against the DOC and DAS.
Beatty has stayed on as a plaintiff in the new lawsuit but Weissinger and Llorens dropped out. Two more plaintiffs — Tosado and Johnson — were then added.
Tosado, served nearly two years in prison between 2016
and 2018 on gun charges.
On May 9, 2017, Tosado’s 15year-old son, Jayson Negron was fatally shot multiple times by Officer James Boulay following a brief pursuit in a stolen car on Fairfield Avenue.
While Boulay was not prosecuted for Negron’s death the city later agreed to pay a $500,000 settlement to Negron’s family to end their civil rights lawsuit.
According to Tosado’s lawsuit, DAS notified the probate court that it sought $44,028.98 of the money Tosado got in the settlement to satisfy Tosado’s lien for the costs of her imprisonment.
Beatty served two years on drug charges in the early 2000s.
When Beatty’s mother died in 2020, she left Beatty a 40 percent interest in her house, which sold for $625,000. In the meantime, DAS filed a notice with the probate court seeking to recover $83,762.26 against Beatty’s inheritance for the costs of Beatty’s imprisonment, according to the lawsuit.
Johnson served 25 months for drug-related charges. After his father died in 2021, DAS filed a notice of lien for $74,652.58, which according to the suit is the “full amount” of the cost of his imprisonment and does not credit Johnson for a prior amount that was collected against him after his mother died in 2016, the suit states.