CROWN POINT | Another lawyer-less prisoner was granted permission to sue the Lake County Jail in Hammond federal court, making him the eighth person without counsel to lodge jail-cruelty claims that were not immediately dismissed.
Lake and Porter county jails have been hit with 39 prisoner lawsuits in federal court in the past year, but the majority are rambling, hand-written screeds that have been dismissed by judges before the jails could file answers, a Times review of the cases has found.
Of those deemed to have enough merit to require a formal response from the jails, four of the prisoners claim to have contracted staph infections from unsanitary conditions while in custody.
All four were inmates at Lake County Jail, which had a 48-hour quarantine in 2006 after an outbreak of a drug-resistant form of staph infection known as MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Joseph Van Bokkelen approved litigation for one of the four inmates without a lawyer who did not contract a staph infection.
Van Bokkelen gave Robert Stanley Cranshaw permission to sue the Lake County Jail under a wide range of claims, including denial of toothpaste, failure to allow inmates to use the bathroom for 10 hours at a time and serving of meals that are not adequate in portion or nutrition.
It's an almost identical set of claims for which Lake County inmate James Wesley Hunt received permission to sue.
At Porter County Jail, Albert Crews is suing for failure to receive treatment for blood in his stools, while Errick Hawkins is suing under claims jail staff opened his legal mail outside of his presence.
Federal law dictates that claims of cruel and unusual punishment and other constitutional issues involving prisoners without lawyers must be reviewed by judges before jailers are required to answer such claims.
The various judges who approved the eight claims have said they are not necessarily agreeing with the prisoners' complaints, but rather have ruled that they do not see any reason for immediate dismissal.
