Daniel McGowan Released After Lawyers Confirm He Was Jailed For HuffPost Blog 5th April

Lawyers for envi­ron­men­tal activist Daniel McGowan said in a state­ment Fri­day after­noon that he had been returned to his halfway house in Brook­lyn. They added that they had con­firmed McGowan was jailed by fed­er­al mar­shals on Thurs­day for his Huff­in­g­ton Post blog post — on the basis of a prison reg­u­la­tion that was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by a judge in 2007.

Their state­ment read:

Daniel McGowan has been released from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter in Brook­lyn where he was tak­en into cus­tody yes­ter­day and is back at the halfway house where he has been resid­ing since his release from prison in Decem­ber. Yes­ter­day, Daniel was giv­en an “inci­dent report” indi­cat­ing that his Huff­in­g­ton Post blog post, “Court Doc­u­ments Prove I Was Sent to Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­age­ment Units (CMU) for My Polit­i­cal Speech,” vio­lat­ed a BOP reg­u­la­tion pro­hibit­ing inmates from “pub­lish­ing under a byline.” The BOP reg­u­la­tion in ques­tion was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by a fed­er­al court in 2007, and elim­i­nat­ed by the BOP in 2010. After we brought this to the BOP’s atten­tion, the inci­dent report was expunged.

The Bureau of Pris­ons did not imme­di­ate­ly return a request for com­ment.

The ear­li­er sto­ry …

NEW YORK — The jail­ing of envi­ron­men­tal activist Daniel McGowan is under review, a Fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons (BOP) offi­cial said Fri­day morn­ing.

McGowan, who plead­ed guilty to arson linked to the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front in 2006, was serv­ing out the final months of his sev­en-year sen­tence in a Brook­lyn halfway house when he was jailed by fed­er­al mar­shals Thurs­day morn­ing, alleged­ly for writ­ing a com­men­tary on The Huff­in­g­ton Post crit­i­cal of a harsh­ly restrict­ed fed­er­al prison unit in which he had spent time.

Tra­cy Rivers, a res­i­den­tial reen­try man­ag­er for the BOP in New York, told Huff­Post Fri­day morn­ing, “We are review­ing this case to deter­mine if the actions that were tak­en were appro­pri­ate.”

Rivers declined to say more about why McGowan was moved to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter, cit­ing pri­va­cy issues. But she not­ed that a deter­mi­na­tion would be made in McGowan’s case by the end of Fri­day.

In gen­er­al, Rivers said, pris­on­ers can be pun­ished for vio­lat­ing a BOP rule thatpro­hibits giv­ing inter­views to the news media with­out offi­cial approval. But that rule says noth­ing about pris­on­ers writ­ing blog posts.

McGowan’s wife, Jen­ny Synan, told Huff­Post that nei­ther he, his lawyers nor a BOP offi­cial she talked to about the case had heard of a reg­u­la­tion pro­hibit­ing pris­on­ers from writ­ing blog posts.

In a state­ment Thurs­day, McGowan’s lawyers at the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights said, “If this is indeed a case of retal­i­a­tion for writ­ing an arti­cle about the BOP retal­i­at­ing against his free speech while he was in prison, it is more than iron­ic, it is an out­rage.”

UPDATE: 1:25 p.m. — Daniel McGowan may soon leave jail. His attor­ney with the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights, Rachel Meeropol, told Huff­Post Fri­day after­noon, “We have been told by the BOP that he will be sent back to the halfway house today.”