Two inmates at the Allen County jail filed suit against Sheriff Bryan Murphy, accusing him of violating their civil rights by not having an updated law library at the jail.
Kyle J. Sutton and John P. Kent each filed handwritten civil lawsuits Jan. 21 in Allen County District Court, representing themselves.
The suits allege Murphy violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by blocking access to a law library, and by referring their requests to public defenders who do not practice civil law. They asked the court to require Allen County Law Enforcement Detention Center to maintain an “up-to-date” 2020 or 2019 law library and pay their filing fees of $195 each.
The Allen County jail does not maintain a law library because of the costs of purchasing those materials and for security reasons, Murphy said.
When inmates ask for information about case law, jail staff refer them to attorneys or look up the requested documents online and print the information for the inmates. Such requests typically come from inmates who seek information related to their criminal cases, he said.
“We help as much as we can,” Murphy said.
The Supreme Court has ruled that prisons must provide some form of assistance to allow inmates the right of access to the courts, either through law libraries or access to law professionals. Other rulings extend that same access to jails.
Larger detention centers, like those in Wyandotte, Johnson or Sedgwick counties, typically maintain law libraries but smaller facilities may or may not.
Jails in Coffey and Neosho counties do not maintain law libraries and refer inmates to their attorneys, the same as Allen County.
Anderson County’s jail maintains a law library with about 25 or so books, but they are more than five years old and inmates are not allowed to take them to their cells.
HEARINGS ON the cases filed by Sutton and Kent are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. March 10.
Sutton was held at Allen County for a couple of weeks on behalf of Wyandotte County because of overcrowding issues at the jail there, and has since been returned to Wyandotte to attend court hearings on his case. Kent is a local inmate since Nov. 18, 2019, and remains in Allen County’s jail.
