JUSTICE, AMERICAN STYLE: NO SHOWER, NO MAIL, NO SENSE

I hope all the Americans and Canadians demanding a pound of Allen
Richardson's flesh are happy now.

Parole authorities in New York state say the West Vancouver man has to spend
another eight months in jail because, well, those are the rules.

Never mind that Richardson's crime was selling a whopping $20 worth of LSD
30 years ago when he was a 19-year-old student in Rochester. He was
sentenced to up to four years in prison.

Never mind that he has lived an exemplary life in Canada since then,
contributing to community life and volunteering for non-profit work.

Never mind that his wife, Amalia, has struggled with breast cancer for years
and needs her husband at this critical time.

Never mind that Richardson's long-time place of work, the University of
British Columbia's TRIUMF lab, wants him back.

Never mind that Monroe County Court Judge John J. Connell, who handled the
case last month, said Richardson would likely receive probation if he were a
newly-charged felon.

And never mind that New York state parole board members who met Richardson
told him "they thought he should be out on parole, but they said they were
technically bound not to do it," according to his Vancouver lawyer, Michael
Bolton.

Common sense be damned when there are rules to follow, even if their
application is absurd.

The original "crime" is now an irrelevancy, even to the Americans. In their
eyes, Richardson's greater sin was saving his hide by escaping to Canada to
avoid the pre-Civil War human abattoir known as Attica State Prison.

He doesn't need rehabilitation, but the Americans need retribution. That's
what this is all about: Mindless punishment.

American prisons are good at that, and they've already started in on
Richardson.

While he awaits transfer to a medium-security prison, Richardson is locked
down for 22 hours a day in a maximum-security holding facility in Fishkill,
N.Y.

"He hasn't had a shower since last Friday," Bolton told me yesterday. "He
can't receive phone calls. He can't receive mail.

"People have sent letters and they never got to him."

Bolton wryly notes that "all these verbal assurances have been made that
he'd be looked after and blah, blah, blah.

"In fact, it's awful. His conditions are nothing shy of atrocious. It's
unbelievable that they would treat him like this."

Bolton says the parole board claims it can't release Richardson "because
they've been applying a rule, lo these many years, that people given an
indeterminate sentence must serve a year and day" before being eligible for
release. But Bolton notes the same rules allow the board to "depart from the
minimum guideline" if written reasons are provided.

An appeal has been launched on that basis, although Bolton says "it just
might be that all of this is too unacceptable" to New York justice
authorities.

"At the end of the day we may be looking at some other kind of application,
maybe an appeal to the governor for executive clemency."

Then there's the question of whether Richardson, if and when he's released
early, can serve his parole time in Canada. Bolton thinks so, but New York
officials are obviously experts at throwing up roadblocks.

"There's got to be a way around this problem," he says. "Justice and logic
at some point have to prevail here. Reason has got to have some role."

Pathetically, reason has been entirely absent to date, and that includes
Ottawa's meek complicity in this disgrace.

Justice? Ha. You won't find it here.