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ALBUQUERQUE, NM – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico has filed a lawsuit against the New Mexico Children’s Psychiatric Hospital (NMCPH) for violating LeGina and Todd Thomases right to direct the care and upbringing of their 12-year-old daughter. The Thomases allege that the hospital mistakenly diagnosed their daughter as severely mentally ill, and threatened to have the state take custody of her if they did not approve administration of strong psychotropic drugs intended for adults.

“While psychiatrists can provide valuable insight, the decision of whether a young child is exposed to potentially dangerous psychotropic drugs should be the parents’,” says ACLU-NM Managing Attorney Laura Schauer Ives.   “In this case, doctors attempted to usurp the Thomases’ right to make major medical decisions for their daughter because the parents disagreed that medication should be the first line of treatment. Insisting that doctors exhaust other treatment options before administering powerful psychotropic drugs does not make parents incompetent. It means they care about their child and want what’s best for her.”

In April 2010, LeGina and Todd Thomas’s daughter was referred to NMCPH in connection with a police investigation into the possibility that an older boy had inappropriate sexual contact with her. The doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder and severe depression. They insisted that she receive strong psychotropic medications, some of which carry the FDA’s “black box” label warning that they may increase risk of suicide.

The Thomases’ daughter had no previous history of mental illness. Both the police and the Thomases were skeptical of the daughter’s claims that she was suicidal and experiencing hallucinations, believing that she was trying to distract them from pressing charges against the boy she may have had sex with. The Thomases declined the medications for their daughter, insisting that doctors exhaust less extreme treatment options, including counseling, before administering serious drugs.

In response, NMCPH placed an emergency medical hold on the Thomases’ daughter, asserting that the parents were not competent to make medical decisions on her behalf. Two days later, an NMCPH nurse prohibited Mrs. Thomson from talking with her daughter after she had been attacked by another psychiatric patient and suffered a minor head wound. Soon thereafter, NMCPH filed to have the daughter involuntarily committed to their care.

However, on May 5, 2010, the NMCPH received notice from the Thomases’ insurance carrier that the daughter’s stay would no longer be covered. NMCPH immediately dropped all efforts to commit her involuntarily and instructed the Thomases to retrieve their daughter from the hospital before her insurance coverage ended.

The daughter subsequently confessed to her parents that she had faked her symptoms of mental illness and apologized. In the two intervening years, she has exhibited no further behavioral problems and has continued to excel in school.

“No other family should have to endure the nightmare we did,” says LeGina Thomas. “We knew our daughter had just told a lie that snowballed out of control, but no one would listen to us. Instead they tried to take her away from us and drug her up.”

The plaintiffs are suing NMCPH for punitive and compensatory damages for First Amendment retaliation, and violating the Thomases right to familial association, direct care and upbringing of a child.

The legal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court by ACLU-NM Managing Attorney Laura Schauer Ives and Co-Legal Directors Matthew Garcia and Maureen Sanders.

A full copy of the legal complaint can be found here: Thomas v. NMCPH

CONTACT: Micah McCoy, (505) 266-5915 x1003 or mmccoy@aclu-nm.org

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiHvKOlpUb8&feature=player_embedded

In partnership with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, Need to Know investigates whether U.S. border agents have been using excessive force in an effort to curb illegal immigration. Eight people have been killed along the border in the past two years. One man died a short time after being beaten and tased, an event recorded by two eyewitnesses whose video is the centerpiece of the report. Both eyewitnesses say the man offered little or no resistance. One told Need to Know that she felt like she watched someone being “murdered,” and the San Diego coroner’s office classified the death as a “homicide.”

The report raises questions about accountability. Because border agents are part of the Department of Homeland Security, they are not subjected to the same public scrutiny as police officers who use their weapons. It also questions whether, in the rush to secure the border, agents are being adequately trained. And it raises the question: why aren’t these cases being prosecuted?

Watch the full segment on Friday, April 20 at 8:00 pm MST on KNME Channel 5.

John C. Bienvenu

Over the vigorous dissent of four justices, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit jails from routinely strip searching inmates, even if people are booked into facilities for minor offenses and officials have no reason to suspect they are carrying contraband. In other words, even people arrested for such nominal offenses as driving without a license or failing to use a turn signal could be forced to strip naked and let jail guards inspect their most intimate parts with no recourse under our Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted searches. This ruling strikes another blow to Americans’ vanishing guarantees of privacy.

Far-reaching as this ruling may appear, jail officials in New Mexico should not rush to assume that the Court’s ruling grants them carte blanche to begin blanket strip searches of all detainees. The New Mexico Constitution also prohibits unwarranted searches, and our state courts have shown greater enthusiasm for safeguarding that right than what the Supreme Court evidenced in its recent ruling. For example, New Mexico courts have consistently rejected the federal precedent that motorists lower their expectation of privacy, and are more subject to search, when they enter an automobile.

The jail that implements blanket strip searches runs the risk of inviting state constitutional claims that might be entirely undiluted by the high court’s ruling.

What’s more, even in federal court, the Supreme Court’s ruling might not protect a strip search policy that does not result in a higher incidence of detection of contraband or otherwise increase jail security. As our federal court of appeals observed nearly twenty years ago, “There can be no doubt that a strip search is an invasion of personal rights of the first magnitude.” Chapman v. Nichols, 989 F.2d 393, 395 (10th Cir. 1993). Other courts have aptly described strip searches as “demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, unpleasant, embarrassing, repulsive, signifying degradation and submission.” (Id.)

The ACLU would not hesitate to represent someone who was forced to strip before a jail guard when they were accused of only a minor offense and gave no reason to suspect that they were connected to drugs, weapons, or violence. Among those who are booked into jails every day are people who have committed no crimes whatsoever, but who are the victims of bureaucratic snafus. Indeed, the plaintiff in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, the recent U.S. Supreme Court case, is someone who was erroneously arrested in 2005 for failing to pay a traffic fine that he had already paid.

Other people are booked into jails on accusations of minor misdemeanor offenses that have no relationship to drugs, weapons or violence. They are mothers, spouses, grandparents, siblings. In short, they are all of us and all of our family members and friends who, at any moment, can find ourselves taken to a jail on minor or completely erroneous charges. There is no reason to suspect across-the-board that anyone arrested for such minor offenses is likely to be smuggling contraband into jail through their bodily orifices. In his dissent, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer cited an Orange County, N.Y., correctional facility in which a study of strip searches detected one instance of contraband among 23,000 inmates searched.

Recent class action lawsuits throughout New Mexico have caused several jails to adhere to policies that restrict strip searches to circumstances in which jail officials have “reasonable suspicion” that a detainee may be harboring drugs, weapons or other contraband. Such policies strike a reasonable balance between the need to secure the facility and the need to protect the privacy and dignity of individuals who have not been convicted of any crime. They also agree with standards promulgated by the American Correctional Association, which rejects the need for suspicionless strip searches.

To cast aside the time-tested practice of using reasonable suspicion to guide strip searches on the basis of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling would be a grave error. We trust our government to use its powers judiciously, not to exploit them to their fullest extent just because it can. The ACLU guards against such gratuitous use of power, and we will as eagerly challenge it in the context of jail strip searches as we do in all other arenas of government authority.

John C. Bienvenu

Cooperating Attorney, ACLU-NM

Jeremy and Joshua De Los Santos

ROSWELL, NM—Today, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico filed a lawsuit against the City of Roswell, NM, alleging that police officers repeatedly violated the First Amendment free speech rights of two local street preachers, Joshua and Jeremy De Los Santos. Joshua and Jeremy are brothers and members of the Old Paths Baptist Church in Roswell, where Joshua is the pastor. Both believe they have a duty to boldly preach the Gospel in public, and both regularly do so in publicly owned spaces. However, the Roswell Police Department (RPD) has arrested both brothers multiple times for expressing their sincerely held religious beliefs in public, as is their right under the First Amendment.

“Our right to express our religious beliefs is among the most precious of American freedoms,” says ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson. “Freedom of speech and religion means that any person can express any religious belief, no matter how unpopular, in public without fear of arrest or government harassment. Today, the ACLU is standing with the De Los Santos brothers to affirm and defend this right in Roswell.”

In the past two years, Roswell police officers have arrested Jeremy De Los Santos five times for preaching in public and arrested Joshua twice for the same activity. In every case, the charges against the plaintiffs were dismissed by a court of law.

The De Los Santos brothers allege that the Roswell police falsely arrested them without probable cause for exercising their First Amendment right to Free Speech on public property. The brothers also claim that RPD confiscated phones, cameras, camcorders and a bullhorn, some of which have not yet been returned.

Jeremy De Los Santos also claims that RPD officers used excessive force on two occasions. On September 24, 2010, RPD arrested Jeremy for preaching outside in the church parking lot. Before placing Jeremy in the squad car for transport to the local detention facility, an officer sprayed pepper spray or a similar chemical agent in the back seat, making it difficult for Jeremy to breathe. On Memorial Day, 2011, RPD officers again arrested Jeremy as he attempted to preach at a public event held in a park. After RPD booked Jeremy into jail, they handcuffed him behind his back and shackled him to the wall in a painful stress position.

“The Roswell Police Department’s mission is to serve and protect everyone in their community, even the people they disagree with,” says ACLU-NM Staff Attorney Ed Macy. “Arresting people for publicly preaching their religious beliefs tramples on the Constitutional guarantees that the Roswell Police Department officers took an oath to uphold.”

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court by ACLU-NM Staff Attorney Edwin Macy and ACLU-NM Managing Attorney Laura Schauer Ives.

A copy of the complaint can be found here: De Los Santos v Roswell

CONTACT: Micah McCoy, (505) 266-5915 x1003 or mmccoy@aclu-nm.org

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Peter Simonson, Executive Director

“Why are some people so aghast at the idea that when we vote we should have to show a photo ID?”

This is the question that Diane Dimond poses in her recent column supporting mandatory photo ID for voting. If Ms. Dimond is sincere in her desire to understand why people would oppose this wrong-headed scheme, she should direct her question to Albuquerque voter Katy Sheridan. Katy is a retired grandmother of two and has been a voter for the past 49 years. It is a responsibility she takes seriously.

“It’s my voice, it’s one of the ways I can make an impact on the direction my country goes,” Katy told the ACLU of New Mexico in a recent video interview.

On October 4, 2011, Katy set out to make her voice heard in the Albuquerque municipal elections. The day was stormy, but Katy—who does not own a car—braved the weather and walked through the wind and the rain to her polling place to cast her vote. There poll workers turned her away because she did not have a government issued photo ID with her.

The truth is that unnecessary and expensive photo ID laws, like the one in Albuquerque, have nothing to do with improving elections. These laws are specifically designed to make it harder for qualified American citizens like Katy Sheridan to vote. We are living through a troubling new era in our nation’s history characterized by renewed efforts to strip American citizens of their right to vote.

Why are we aghast? Because these mandatory photo ID laws are nothing more than a 21^st century poll tax. Poll taxes and “literacy tests” were used in the Jim Crow south to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote. We now find these tactics abhorrent and shameful, but let us not forget that many people thought them perfectly reasonable at the time: Why shouldn’t a person have to be literate to vote? Do we really want anyone voting who can’t afford a measly one-dollar fee?  You have to show an photo ID for all sorts of things today, why not voting?

Voting is not a privilege, it is a constitutional right, and no eligible citizen should have to pay to vote. Government issued photo IDs cost money and obtaining copies of birth certificates, passports or other required supporting documents can be expensive as well–sometimes running upwards of hundreds of dollars. This modern day poll tax burdens the citizens who are least able to afford it: people like the elderly who live on a fixed income and rural voters who live many miles from the nearest MVD.

Mandatory photo ID laws are the centerpiece in this new generation of vote suppression efforts, but such laws are only one tactic among many designed to make it harder for Americans to vote. In recent years, we’ve also seen efforts to suppress early voting and block civic groups like the League of Women Voters from registering new voters.

Voter participation and turnout is a key measure of the health of our democracy. American voter turnout is substantially lower than most other established democracies, rarely rising above 50 percent. Shouldn’t we work to reduce unnecessary barriers to voting, not make it harder? Shouldn’t we strive to ensure every eligible citizen has his or her voice heard?