Prisoner denied pornography sues for violation of his Constitutional rights

Kyle Richards after his January arrest.

Kyle Richards trudged through the winter snow, fresh bills spilling out of his hands and pockets, reaching his apartment a few dollars short of the $900 he demanded from the TCF Bank Teller just after noon on that biter cold day. He had no weapon other than intimidation and no plan other than escape. The police found him shortly after by tracking his footprints in the freshly fallen January snow, along with the stray cash outside his apartment.

As he awaited sentencing five months later, the embarrassment of his capture was overshadowed by an indignity he suffered due his jailer’s policies.

“No,” they said. “You cannot have hardcore pornography.”

Do we live in a nation where a man could be so harshly treated and subjected to such cruel and unusual punishment? To sentence a man to a felony that due to prior convictions could land him in jail for potentially the remainder of his life is one thing, but to then deny him his God given right to pornography? His life, like so many pages of Hustler, was essentially ruined.

But Kyle Richards did not take it lying down. Not letting his right hand go to waste, he used pen and paper to handwrite a lawsuit filed last week against the Macomb County Jail. The lawsuit alleges that the Jail is violating his Constitutional rights by withholding pornography from him, and that doing so contributed to a “poor standard of living” and “sexual and sensory deprivation.” Good thing he wrote that last part instead of telling other prisoners.