Criminal Witnesses Lose Cellmate Case

Protected criminal witnesses housed at the Federal Correctional Institute in Phoenix lost their bid Tuesday to prevent double-bunking, a proposal they fear will risk the lives of government witnesses and their families.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate a lawsuit filed by 54 witnesses enrolled in the federal Witness Security Program, which provides special protection and new identities for witnesses who have testified against dangerous criminal figures and organizations.

The federal prison at Phoenix, one of only a few in the country that houses protected federal witnesses who have been convicted of crimes, announced in 1986 that it would begin placing witnesses two to a cell to help alleviate overcrowding at the facility.

The witnesses filed suit challenging the plan, arguing that their lives and those of their families would be at risk because of the possibility that cellmates would learn their true identities or the locations of their family members.

Too ‘Speculative’

A three-judge panel of the appeals court Tuesday upheld a district judge’s dismissal of the suit, holding that the witnesses’ fears are too “speculative” to merit intervention by the courts.

Noting the witnesses’ claims that other prisoners might seek to cash in on a “bounty” on the heads of witnesses and family members if they learned their identities, the court said such claims “involve contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated or indeed not occur at all.”

The issues raised in the suit “require further factual development” before a legitimate legal claim can be raised, the court said.

Gary L. Birnbaum, a private attorney who represented the witnesses on a pro bono basis, said he had not seen the ruling but said it appears to leave witnesses in the dangerous position of waiting for an incident to happen to have standing to challenge the double-bunking plan.

“We are actually going to have to have somebody injured or killed before we have standing to enjoin the practice,” Birnbaum said. “We find that to be kind of frightening.”

No Apparent Problems

Government lawyers argued that double-bunking is already in place at other federal and state facilities housing protected witnesses and there have been no apparent problems.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael A. Johns said the government has also proposed additional security measures that would lower or eliminate the risk of a cellmate learning a witness’s identity, including private reading rooms in which witnesses could review court documents and locked storage areas for personal letters and photographs.