WITNESS
Stephen F. Hanlon manages Holland & Knight's Community Services Team, which provides legal representation to people and groups that otherwise could not afford it. In 1997, the firm received the American Bar Association (ABA) Pro Bono Publico Award. The American Lawyer has described Holland & Knight as a "Pro Bono Champion." Mr. Hanlon's major civil rights work has included prisoner rights, challenges to indigent defense systems, death penalty litigation, challenges to high stakes testing, a claims bill in the Florida Legislature for the survivors of the town of Rosewood, housing, employment and AIDS discrimination, and a constitutional challenge to unconsented medical experimentation.
Mr. Hanlon, who began practicing law in Missouri in 1966 and in Florida in 1976, is past chairman of the Public Interest Law Section of The Florida Bar, and a past President of Florida Legal Services, Inc. He is the immediate past Chair of the Executive Council of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section of the ABA. Mr. Hanlon is a past member of the ABA Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly and the ABA Coordinating Group on Bioethics and the Law. Among the many honors he has received are the Nelson Poynter Award from the ACLU of Florida in 1996 for his commitment to civil liberties and civil rights, the Steven M. Goldstein Criminal Justice Award from the Florida Association of Criminal Lawyers in 2000, and the Equal Justice Award from the Southern Center for Human Rights in 2001.
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STATEMENT
Given the remarkably high burdens, the subjective deliberate indifference standard, the elimination of the catalyst theory, the Supreme Court's holding in West Virginia Univ. Hosp. v. Carey, 499 U.S.83 (1991) that prevailing plaintiffs are not entitled to an award of costs for the substantial expert fees that invariably are required in this litigation, and the need for judicial oversight, one must, it seems, question the public policy undergirding these Prison Litigation Reform Act caps, which can only serve to discourage meritorious prison conditions litigation.
These concerns are particularly pertinent in a time of declining state revenues and dramatically increasing prison populations. I would respectfully submit that lawyers should be encouraged, not discouraged, from undertaking this most difficult litigation. These Draconian attorney's fees restrictions are senseless in view of the burdens of this litigation. The courts simply cannot fulfill their important oversight role with respect to our nation's prisons without lawyers who can and will initiate and prosecute this highly complex and risky litigation.…
…I would hope that this Commission would address the important national prison policy consequences of the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence in this area. Is the Court's focus on the intention of prison officials the appropriate inquiry? Or was Justice Blackmun correct in his observation that the real problems in our prison system stem not so much from specific acts attributable to individual prison officials, but rather from "a cumulative agglomeration of action (and inaction) on an institutional level?"
Excerpted from a written statement submitted to the Commission
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