Corrections Dept. secrecy brings record fine

The state Department of Corrections has agreed to pay a record fine of $541,000 for wrongly withholding employee-discipline records from a prison watchdog magazine.

The agreement, filed Friday in Thurston County Superior Court, includes an admission that the agency destroyed 19 of the documents sought by Prison Legal News. That act, which the department called inadvertent, added nearly $50,000 to the award.

The fine, which was negotiated out of court, is the largest levied for a violation of the state's Public Records Act, which allows citizens to seek fines when they are wrongly denied access to public documents.

In this case, Paul Wright, who at the time edited Prison Legal News from behind bars, filed a pair of requests in 2000 with the department for records related to medical errors and discipline against prison medical providers. The department released more than 1,000 pages, but redacted so much information — including the names of disciplined employees — that Wright sued in 2001.

The department convinced a Superior Court judge and an appeals court that releasing the names would jeopardize the staff members and undermine prison safety. But the state Supreme Court in 2005 dismissed that argument and ordered the department to release the names and to pay fines and attorney fees dating to Wright's original request.

"The bad thing is this is the taxpayer's money," said Michele Earl-Hubbard, Wright's lawyer. But "it sends a message to agencies that if you violate the law, it will have an impact on you in the future."

Department spokesman Gary Larson said the fine was so large because it mounted each day and the case took a long time to decide.

"We thought we were on pretty solid legal ground on our interpretation of the law," he said. "It was only when we got to the state Supreme Court that we found out we were wrong."

Deficient medical care

Wright, who was released from a 17-year murder sentence in 2004, said the records show deficient prison medical care that his magazine, a monthly with 6,000 subscribers, has long documented.

Among the records are two cases of inmate deaths attributed to medical errors, including that of Charles Snipes, who was left to die in his cell at Monroe after complaining of breathing problems.

They also show that a husband-wife team of physicians' assistants was fired in 1994 for gross incompetence: she was for sending a pregnant inmate back to her cell despite hearing no fetal heartbeat; he was for causing a patient to be needlessly airlifted to Seattle — at a cost of $5,600 — after a misdiagnosis.

"We knew medical care in prison was bad, and we knew their system of medical discipline was ineffective," Wright said. "It's one thing to know it; it's another thing to have the documents to prove it."

The payout awards Prison Legal News $200,000 in fines because the department withheld the documents, the result of a formula varying between $5 and $100 a day. Prison Legal News, which is based in Seattle, will buy office space with the money, Wright said.

Blacked out originals

The fine was boosted by nearly $48,000 because the department acknowledged last year that it had also blacked out original versions of 19 documents. Larson called it an inadvertent mistake, and said most of the information was recreated by holding documents up to the light.

Earl-Hubbard, however, said the size of that fine indicated the seriousness of the error. "They never ultimately could produce records in a lawsuit, which is a huge mistake," she said.

Her firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, which also represents The Seattle Times, was awarded $341,000 in fees and costs.

The fine tops the $425,000 paid by King County to Seattle businessman Armen Yousoufian for records related to the construction of Seahawks Stadium. That case, however, is still active, and Yousoufian is seeking higher attorney fees.

Wright, who now lives in Vermont, said he is filing more requests, seeking more current disciplinary records of medical staff members.

"Hopefully, they'll pony the records right up," he said. "Hopefully."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com