IDAHO PRISONER PREVAILS IN PRO SE TRIAL OVER REFUSAL OF STATE TO DISCLOSE PUBLIC RECORDS
In April, 2020, Idaho prisoner Dale Shackelford filed a 2 count lawsuit in state district court (Ada County [Idaho] Case No. CV01-20-06757) petitioning the Court to compel the Idaho Department of Correction to produce a number of public records which the IDOC said did not exist.
On January 27, 2020, Shackelford requested a copy of the Request for Proposal (RFP) - or contract - between the IDOC and CoreCivic (formerly CCA) for the planned housing of Idaho inmates (again) at the Kit Carson facility near Burlington, Colorado. After failing to respond in the first instance, Shackelford made a second request via Certified Mail. In response to that second request, the IDOC denied the record requested, stating no such RFP, Contract or collateral information existed.
A couple weeks after the denial, a non-incarcerated friend of Shackelford filed an identical request. In response, the IDOC emailed her 88 pages of records within days, with a note that the state was using a new term - Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) - for these agreements. The IDOC failed to notify Shackelford of that new term or provide a copy of the ITN.
In the initial response to the lawsuit, IDOC Deputy Attorney General Oscar Klaas stated to the Court that there was no contract (or collateral information) - in any form - between the IDOC and CoreCivic. Klaas argued that Shackelford's request was properly denied, and that Count 1 of the lawsuit shoud be dismissed.
Shackelford then disclosed in a court filing that a copy of the ITN had been provided to a 3rd party by the IDOC based on her request for an RFP - by the same Custodian of Records who had denied the existence of the record to Shackelford. In an email entered as an exhibit at the December 21, 2021 bench trial, it was divulged that IDOC Records Custodian Cindy Lee had written to the 3rd party just weeks after the denial of the same records to Shackelford, stating: "In response to (your) request, the Department provided you with a copy of the RFP (aka Invitation to Negotiate) that was issued for out-of-state inmate housing in 2019." Ms. Lee would later testify that that it did not occur to her to provide a copy of the ITN to Shackelford after she had released the records to the 3rd party.
Only after learning that Shackelford knew of the 3rd party disclosure did the IDOC provide Shackelford with a copy of the 88 page ITN/RFP [contract]. Ironically, the IDOC did not follow through with housing Idaho inmates in Colorado in 2019/2020, but instead later entered into a contract with CoreCivic to house these inmates at the Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona.
Klaas also argued that Claim 2, the refusal to disclose a Public Records Manual to Shackelford should also be dismissed. Only after the filing of the suit did the IDOC provide Shackelford with not only a copy of the IDOC Public Records Disclosure Manual, but a copy of IDOC Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 108.00.01.001 - Public Record Requests.
Because the IDOC "voluntarily" disclosed the records requested only after the filing of the Petition to Compel the Production of Public Records, and did so well after the IPRA deadlines, the Court ruled that Shackelford had prevailed on both claims, and awarded Shackelford costs and fees in the case.
SOURCE: idahoprisonblog.org