Lucasville Prisoner Supporters being retaliated against at OSP by having visits restricted!

From Greg:
“BEN T. has been and believe will be a unyielding friend, comrade, Brother. A MAN of his word and that apparently disqualified him from visiting me here at OSP.

 

I know BEN will not accept defeat easy so I hope y’all out there are able to support his effort to continually expose the STATE for the conditions they hold me in, the arbitrary use of policy/rules/judgement to keep me at a high security prison while I fight to get FREE.

 

This decision is about silencing our message at a time when more people are becoming aware of the injustice of the 1993 prison riot and the treatment of us ever since including placing me and HASAN in the hole during BLACK AUGUST. The STATE knows what is at stake. DO YOU?! “

 

Greg added to this today: “please include Ms Joyce Jones,” who has also been restricted in visiting Ohio State Prison supermax, including Hasan and Greg! Joyce has been an enormous support for the men, and the prison wants to punish the supporters and at the same time silence the vocal prisoners.

We must let the autorities know they must stop the restrictions at once.

Advertisement

Update: Greg is out of the hole! (was: Greg is locked up in the hole)

Today Aug. 15 Greg called to let the webmaster know he is out of the hole! He was told he will not get a write-up, and that he did nothing illegal basically.

Greg is still pursuing his request to be moved out of Ohio State Penitentiary, since everything he does is turned into something bad. He said, if I would shout, I would already be suspiciously looked at (by staff). I cannot do anything right here for them. I have to keep a low profile all the time.

Also, at OSP, there are “dog cages” as they are called for recreation time. So Greg and others do not get to stretch their legs on a real yard, but they have to go to cages for their “rec. time.” And this has been going on for 20+ years…

So it is still important that we stay supportive of Greg’s need to get moved to a real level 4 prison away from this atmosphere that is causing harm to Greg’s wellbeing.

Thank you to everyone who made calls and who emailed!

---

(edited 8-14-2018)
Since August 10th or 11th, Greg is in the hole at OSP and he has not yet had any charges/writeups against him.

The shadow of “Lucasville” is cast over Greg, who had no participation in the Lucasville uprising back in 1993, but who was charged and sentenced solely due to snitch testimony, an ineffective public defender and basically a court and jury not of his peers. Ever since, he has received harassment from those who keep him locked up.

Greg has asked many times to be moved out of Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP), but they keep him there because they say “Level 4 is appropriate for him,” but in other prisons “level 4” does get recreational yard time, eating in the chow hall, etc. which he does not get at OSP. He has been at OSP since its beginning, and it is and remains a supermax prison, with very few chances to progress to lower levels with less restrictions, such as more and a better recreation yard, going to the gym, going to the chow hall, simple things that mean so much.

After all these years we support Greg’s request to be moved, for his personal well-being, and because he should not get the disciplinary treatment he gets at O.S.P. because of the label that was put on him following the Lucasville prison disturbance, with which he had nothing to do. It is unprofessional to treat someone with personal hatred and retaliation when one is a professionally hired person working for the state.

Greg has asked to email the overall director of ODRC to ask why he cannot be moved to another level 4 prison with privileges such as contact visits, recreation time, etc.

Greg has also asked everyone of you to gather behind him and to write him via Jpay, but to also include with every letter a return-stamp, otherwise he cannot respond. Thank you.
Greg’s registration nr is: #213-159. Look his name up in Jpay.com, he is in Ohio if you hadn’t guessed!

His address is:

Greg Curry #213-159
OSP
878 Coitsville-Hubbard Road,
Youngstown, OH 44505

Remember: Greg has no stamps, you must write a Jpay (jpay.com) and add an additional stamp for him to respond to you! Thank you!

ACLU Case: We filed this suit because the ODRC is violating the First Amendment rights of the prisoners and of the press

This is about the ACLU Media-access case, in which Greg Curry also is a plaintiff, from the ACLU Ohio website:

21 years after the Lucasville prison uprising, the media is still waiting for face-to-face interviews with the condemned prisoners.

For more than two decades, Siddique Hasan, Jason Robb, George Skatzes, Keith LaMar and Greg Curry have claimed they are innocent of the crimes attributed to them during the 1993 prison uprising at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF).

Among other things, these five men accuse the state of coercing false testimony from other SOCF prisoners in order to convict them. They have spent years in solitary confinement, soliciting media attention in an attempt to convince the public—and ultimately the court system—that they do not belong where they are.

In response, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) has completely banned face-to-face media contact with these men, arguing that they are too much of a security risk to be allowed to tell their stories in person.

In late 2013, the ACLU of Ohio filed a lawsuit challenging this ban. The suit was filed on behalf of Hasan, Robb, Skatzes, LaMar and Curry, as well as one teacher and four reporters, including Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges. 

We filed this suit because the ODRC is violating the First Amendment rights of the prisoners and of the press. It’s not hard to see that their actions have very little to do with security and everything to do with silencing an uncomfortable conversation about the Lucasville uprising.

For proof, consider that many other death row inmates in Ohio have been granted face-to-face access to the media. They include spree killer John Fautenberry, neo-Nazi murderer Frank Spisak, and convicted arsonist Kenneth Richey, who has since been released from death row.

In all, Ohio prison officials have approved nearly two dozen media interviews with other death row inmates while denying each and every request for face-to-face interviews with the five Lucasville prisoners. This ban is a special form of extended vengeance, reserved only for them.

These prisoners are complicated characters, and the Lucasville uprising is a complex story.

Hiding these complexities behind a wall of censorship will not make them go away.
The Basics

21 years ago, on Easter Sunday 1993, more than 400 inmates at an overcrowded prison in Lucasville, Ohio staged an 11-day prison uprising. In the ensuing violence, nine inmates and one corrections officer lost their lives.

The Basics – read more here.

(clockwise from top left) Jason Robb, Siddique Hasan, Greg Curry and Keith LaMar are all incarcerated at Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, Ohio. Not pictured is George Skatzes, who is incarnated at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution (photo courtesy of Siddique Hasan and Greg Curry).

Artist Laurel Herbold’s imagined rendering of an actual legal meeting between prisoner Jason Robb, former ACLU of Ohio Legal Director James Hardiman, prisoner Greg Curry, ACLU Volunteer Attorneys Alice and Staughton Lynd, prisoner Siddique Hasan, ACLU of Ohio Managing Attorney Freda Levenson and prisoner Keith LaMar.