They Put Him in Writer's Block

By Laurence Zuckerman

Dannie Martin is used to being punished when he does something wrong. Indeed, Martin, 49, is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence for the 1980 attempted armed robbery of a Cle Elum, Wash., bank. But Martin is convinced that a recent eviction from his home of seven years in California's federal penitentiary at Lompoc is a grave injustice, and he has a powerful ally. The San Francisco Chronicle has joined Martin in a lawsuit charging that federal prison officials are unfairly attempting to silence him for exercising his First Amendment rights to free speech.

Martin's relationship with the Chronicle began two years ago, when the inmate sent an unsolicited article to Peter Sussman, editor of Sunday Punch, the paper's weekly features and commentary section. Sussman was impressed by the story -- a harrowing account of the indiscriminate sexual assignations of several AIDS-infected inmates -- and decided to run it. Soon Martin became a regular contributor, with a series of pointed and well-read pieces about life behind bars at Lompoc.

But last June Martin published a piece that displeased one very important reader: Richard Rison, the newly appointed warden at Lompoc. Headlined THE GULAG MENTALITY, Martin's article charged that Rison had increased tension at the prison by limiting access to the recreation yard and replacing the inmates' individually decorated and highly prized chairs with plain gray folding chairs. "He's tryin' to start a riot," complained an unidentified convict in Martin's story. "We might just as well give him one and get it over with."

Two days after the story appeared, Martin was placed in solitary confinement. Prison officials said Martin was being investigated for "encouraging a group demonstration" and they feared "a threat to his safety" if he were free to circulate among other prisoners. Martin returned to his cell after 48 hours, but a week later he was transferred to a prison in San Diego, in preparation for yet another move to a facility near Phoenix. Fearing that Martin was beginning a regimen that inmates call "bus therapy" -- being transferred from facility to facility -- both Martin and the Chronicle filed suit against Rison, two other Lompoc officials and two officials of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Says Jeffrey Leon, Martin's attorney: "We believe he was punished as a direct result of his article, and that is illegal."

Rison and federal prison officials maintain that Martin had broken federal regulations against prisoners' being employed and receiving outside compensation. Defense Attorney George Stoll argued at a hearing last month that Martin "isn't Bret Harte or somebody who is uniquely describing the California experience. He's a federal prisoner, and he's moved around from time to time."

After the hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Legge issued a temporary restraining order barring prison officials from retaliating against Martin but allowing his previously planned move to Arizona. He will get another hearing next week. Meanwhile, talking over a tapped telephone in his new home, Martin argued that his articles were "just trying to put a human voice into the stereotypes of criminals. I could've dug up a lot of dirt at Lompoc and written about it, but I never did because I'm not a stool pigeon. All I'm trying to do is be a writer."

With reporting by D. Blake Hallanan/San Francisco