Pubdate: Wed, 15 Oct 2014
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Bob Egelko
Page: E1

ATHEIST EX-INMATE SETTLES OVER 12-STEP CASE

Barry Hazle was paroled after a one-year prison term for 
methamphetamine possession in 2007 and was ordered to spend the next 
90 days in a residential drug treatment program. When he arrived, 
officials told him it was a 12 step program, modeled on Alcoholics 
Anonymous, that required participants to confess their powerlessness 
and submit to a "higher power" through prayer.

Hazle, a lifelong atheist, had asked for a secular treatment program. 
He said he was told this was the only state-approved facility in 
Shasta County, where he lived, but that it wasn't a stickler for compliance.

"They told me, 'Anything can be your higher power. Fake it till you 
make it,' " he recalled.

Hazle refused and was declared in violation of parole and sent back 
to prison for 100 days. Seven years and two federal court rulings 
later, he and his lawyers announced a $1.95 million settlement 
Tuesday of a suit against the state and its contractor, WestCare 
California, for wrongful incarceration in violation of his religious liberty.

The money, which includes attorneys' fees, wasn't his main object, 
Hazle said. "I just want to make sure that somebody else doesn't have 
to go through this kind of thing," he said.

That's apparently not guaranteed, despite the state Department of 
Corrections and Rehabilitation's efforts to have its parole agents 
respect parolees' diverse religious views. In November 2008, the 
department ordered agents to refer paroled drug and alcohol offenders 
to nonreligious treatment programs if they objected to religiously 
based 12-step regimens. The order followed a federal appeals court 
ruling that said Hawaii had violated another parolee's rights by 
ordering him to take part in Alcoholics Anonymous.

But in an August 2013 ruling in Hazle's case, the same federal court 
quoted WestCare, a contractor for the department in Shasta County and 
several Central California counties, as saying it continues to refer 
all parolees to 12-step residential programs. West Care said it never 
received the corrections department's order and doesn't understand 
the term "alternative nonreligious program."

The settlement provides $1 million from the state and $925,000 from 
WestCare. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said 
Tuesday it "does not require a 12-step program as a condition of 
parole." An attorney for West Care declined to comment.

Hazle, a computer network administrator, initially pleaded guilty to 
drug possession in 2004, was placed on probation, and then was 
ordered to prison in 2006 for violating probation by continuing to 
use methamphetamine.

After his release a year later, he said, he told parole officials of 
his atheism and was assured he wouldn't be sent to a religiously 
based treatment program. But the leaders at Empire Recovery Center in 
Redding, where West-Care referred him, told participants they could 
recover only by submitting to God, Hazle said - "if we don't find 
God, we're doomed to repeat till we die."

That might work for some people, Hazle said, but the way he sees it, 
"I have to become powerful to overcome problems in my life. ... A 
higher power, to me, is a fiction."

A federal judge in Sacramento ruled in 2010 that the state had 
violated Hazle's rights by revoking his parole and returning him to 
prison. A jury declined to award damages, but last year the Ninth 
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Hazle was entitled to some 
financial compensation for his "loss of liberty" and ordered a 
retrial. The court also said WestCare was potentially liable for 
referring Hazle to a religiously based program. All those claims were 
resolved by Tuesday's settlement.

Hazle, 46, now farms his family's 10-acre plot in Redding. He said 
he's handled his drug problems on his own.

"Everybody falters here and there, but I'm committed to that" 
recovery, he said. "I'm no longer a user."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom