Inmate wants judge to hold prison official in contempt
An inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Fayette wants the Fayette County judge who ordered him moved from the prison’s restricted housing unit to hold prison officials in contempt because, he claims, they haven’t complied. Richard Mayberry filed a motion Monday asking Judge Gerald R. Solomon to enforce a Jan. 11 order moving him back into the general population at SCI-Fayette, in Luzerne Township.
Solomon granted Mayberry’s request to be moved after the attorney for state prison officials failed to file an answer in court to the inmate’s claims that he should be let out of restricted housing. That unit amounts to solitary confinement and is used to house the worst prisoners in the system.
In an August 2004 filing, Mayberry, 66, claimed his living conditions were worse than those at a Cuban military prison, and he accused officials of taking his personal items and putting him on a starvation diet. Mayberry is serving a 20-to-40-year sentence for holding hostages in an Allegheny County prison. He has served just more than 23 years and will be eligible for parole in March.
The filing names Gov. Ed Rendell, secretary of the Department of Corrections Jeffrey Beard and the superintendent at SCI-Fayette.
Solomon gave the state’s attorney, John J. Talaber, 45 days to respond to Mayberry’s claims in August, but Talaber did not do so. At a December hearing to take testimony on the claims, Solomon delayed the proceeding and gave Talaber another seven days to file a response.
When that deadline passed, Mayberry asked Solomon to grant his request to be moved into the prison’s general population. The jurist agreed.
In the most recent filing, Mayberry claimed he served state officials with Solomon’s order on Jan. 19 and is still in the restricted housing unit, where he alleged he is subjected to “barbarically inhumane conditions.”
His petition asks for monetary fines and jail time for the state officials involved until he is put into the general population.