December 30, 2008

The News Journal of Wilmington has a story today about a guy who’s suing the Delaware prison system for (indirectly) killing his pet parrot.

Thomas Goodrich claims that when he was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant, he was not allowed to use the phone to raise bail or to ask someone to feed his birds. He alleges that, by the time he was able to get a stamp and write a letter to a friend, 10 days after his arrest, Freddy, a Hyacinth macaw, had starved to death.

Reporter Sean O’Sullivan writes:

Beyond the question of the deceased pet — and echoes of Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch — legal experts said Goodrich’s lawsuit raises a serious issue about the rights of an accused to secure his or her freedom, most commonly through a phone call.

(Legal experts) said that some kind of effort should have been made to allow Goodrich to contact the outside world — no matter what his reason.

“The ability to seek your freedom is a pretty basic thing,” (Widener Law professor Jules) Epstein said.

(Criminal defense lawyer Joe) Hurley noted other troubling things about Delaware prisons, including the state of inmate health care, but added that once a person ends up in the Young prison, “You are a lost cause for five days, generally.”

He said no one, not family or friends, will hear from you or about you while the staff processes the paperwork. “That is the way it is,” Hurley said, adding that Goodrich was lucky his situation involved a parrot “and not his child.”