Lawyer Allowed to Keep Artificial Leg at Prison Visits

California’s 4th District Court of Appeal has ruled that a Santa Monica attorney does not have to remove his artificial leg for security reasons when visiting clients in a prison.

The dispute over attorney Charles Lindner’s prosthesis began more than two years ago when he called the Centinela State Prison in Imperial County to advise officials there that he would be visiting an inmate in a couple of days.

“I told them I was handicapped, that I had an artificial leg and I couldn’t walk very far,” Lindner recalled. “They told me I’d have to take it off; that it might contain contraband or a weapon. I told them I’d been visiting prisons here and overseas for 20 years, and nobody had ever told me that before.”

Lindner said that when he arrived at the prison 15 miles west of El Centro, he told officials he had no objection to a thorough examination of the leg, but was unwilling to suffer the “degradation” of taking off his pants and removing the prosthesis.

“They said, ‘You don’t do it our way, you ain’t coming in,”’ Lindner recalled. He left without seeing his client.

The attorney said that after several months of unsuccessful negotiations, he filed for a writ of habeas corpus, contending that his client was being improperly deprived of meetings with a lawyer. The appellate court turned him down.

Lindner said he then asked the state Supreme Court to review the case, and the Supreme Court ordered a rehearing in an Imperial County Superior Court. A Superior Court judge granted the writ.

“I go back to the prison,” Lindner said. “They search me for two hours, make we walk the equivalent of three or four blocks. I finally get to see my client at 3:26 p.m. At 3:34 p.m., they tell me visiting hours will be over at 4 p.m.”

Enraged, Lindner called the state attorney general’s office.

“I asked them if they were prepared to lose a major civil rights suit,” Lindner said. “They called the prison, then called me back and sent me back inside. . . .

“Now everyone was sorry,” he said. “They even asked me if I would like to stay for dinner.”

Nonetheless, the attorney general’s office subsequently appealed the writ. But on Tuesday, the appeals court sided with Lindner.

“The only search Lindner refused was removing his leg and submitting it to dismantling, something we find he was not required to do,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling this week. “The search of the leg was sufficient to protect the reasonable security interests of the prison. . . . The courts cannot abdicate their responsibility to protect inmates’ rights to adequate contact with their attorneys.” There’s only one downside to the decision, Lindner joked Thursday:

“I’ve lost the opportunity to moon prison guards.”