A county jail in central Pennsylvania has kept a shooting suspect in solitary confinement for more than a year because he refuses to cut his dreadlocks. Jail officials say his hair can conceal weapons, but the inmate says his hair ensures his entrance into the afterlife, as a Rastafarian.
Attorneys for Eric S. McGill Jr., 27, are suing for preliminary injunction to move their client to a cell with the general population, saying he’s being punished for religious observance.
According to court records in federal court, Mr. McGill’s hair has been in dreadlocks for seven years, and he has been allowed to keep them in previous stints in federal correctional facilities.
“Mr. McGill is suffering daily irreparable harm from the violation of his right to freely exercise his religious beliefs and from the well-known psychological effects of solitary confinement,” says a complaint filed on Feb. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Attorneys say the jail’s warden and two staffers are violating the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 that bans prisons from infringing upon a person’s religious exercise while incarcerated.
Mr. McGill, who is a pretrial defendant after an arrest early last year on charges of aggravated assault, has been held in the Lebanon County Correctional Facility for 13 months, as he was unable to afford post bail, according to a report by PA Post, a statewide digital news outlet.
Unlike federal and state prisons, which allow dreadlocks, the jail is subject to county law and follows a rulebook that prohibits braids or long hair unless it’s tied back.
As a Rastafarian, Mr. McGill believes his hair — like that of the biblical figure of Samson — shouldn’t be shorn, according to court documents.
Rastafarianism is an Afrocentric religion with roots in the Old Testament that sprang up in Jamaica in the 1930s with predictions that a black messiah would arise in Africa. There are about 100,000 practitioners, according to the United Religions Initiative, a global ecumenical network.
A Lebanon County administrator declined to comment.
Court filings by the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, which is representing Mr. McGill, say that their client has been kept in the Security Housing Unit away from other inmates for not complying with the jail’s rule on hairstyles. Mr. McGill is given one-hour breaks at midnight for recreation five days a week.
In an affidavit filed in December and provided to The Washington Times, jail Warden Robert J. Karnes said the rules on placing inmates with dreadlocks into “administrative segregation” have impacted “inmates of all races, gender, sexual orientation, and other protected classes.”
“On no less than a biweekly basis, Plaintiff is offered the opportunity to obtain a haircut pursuant to the Haircut Procedures to remove his dreadlocks. Plaintiff refused to remove his dreadlocks,” the warden said.
The affidavit also restates the general rules for the jail that prohibit braids and cornrows. Long hair, Mr. Karnes said, is allowed only if “having it in hair ties or in a single ponytail.”
The lawsuit says Mr. McGill’s hair cannot be put into ties and can only be cut off, which would endanger his spiritual well-being.
“Mr. McGill believes that his spirit lives through his dreadlocks,” the lawsuit states.
The Department of Justice under President Trump has filed statements of interest invoking the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act in cases such as American Indians seeking to establish sweat lodges near a housing association in New Jersey.
Last week, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against a village in Nebraska for denying the construction of a church for a congregation of evangelicals.
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an Arkansas prison policy that prevented a Muslim inmate from growing a short beard in accordance with his religious beliefs was a violation of his First Amendment rights.
• Christopher Vondracek can be reached at cvondracek@washingtontimes.com.
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