A former inmate of the Hampshire County jail filed a lawsuit against corrections center officials alleging that his rights were denied and that officials unlawfully detained him in an isolation ward for over two months from January to March of this year.
Thomas Wojcik filed a handwritten, nearly 50-page civil lawsuit with the Hampshire Superior Court in May with allegations about how his rights were denied while placed in a confinement cell, and how jail officials reportedly denied him a chance to place a phone call in order to retain legal representation. Wojcik is representing himself in the lawsuit and he is looking for compensation for damages totaling $19,200 — or $300 per day of the 64 days he was “wrongly placed on Isolation” — according to Wojcik’s civil complaint filed in May.
Hampshire county jail officials named as defendants in the lawsuit are Sheriff Patrick Cahillane, Captains Matthew Garvulenski and Eric Jacque, Sargent Andrew Robidoux, and the jail’s records specialist Beth Stetzel. Wojcik is currently detained at the Cheshire Correctional Institute in Connecticut.
Legal representation for Cahillane and other jail officials filed a motion to dismiss the case on August 29, describing Wojcik’s complaint as “meandering and disjointed,” and stated that all allegations made by Wojcik transpired from “a disciplinary proceeding triggered by his attempt to smuggle narcotics into prison.” The drugs were reportedly strips of Suboxone, used for decreasing opioid withdrawal symptoms, that were found in mail addressed to Wojcik.
Attorney Charles Maguire is representing the defendants in the lawsuit.
On January 14, officers formally charged Wojcik in connection to the incident, and in the motion to dismiss, deny any Constitutional violations made during Wojcik’s detention in a confinement cell. Additionally, the attorney for Cahillane and jail officials stated that Wojcik filed a lawsuit past the 60-day period to file a legal complaint, with the lawsuit coming 37 days after the “expiration of the period of limitations.”
Massachusetts State Police arrested Wojcik in 2019, who was a wanted man in Connecticut, after finding him in a Goshen home he had broken into, MassLive previously reported. He was wanted for burglary, robbery and larceny by the state of Connecticut.
In the lawsuit, Wojcik said that jail officials placed him in an isolation cell “without any explanation given,” stripped naked, searched and left without clothing for four hours on January 7. He claimed that from January 7 to 14, he did not have warm clothing or proper bedding materials while in isolation.
Wojcik alleged that he was denied a call to lawyers for “retention purposes” on four different occasions, which he claimed is a violation of his Constitutional rights as an inmate. He added that he has attempted to unsuccessfully to reach legal representation by mail and was denied every request to make a call by jail officials. A judge denied his request for the court to appoint him legal representation, writing in a motion that “the court has no authority to provide counsel in a civil case.”
“It is cruel and unusual to punish the Plaintiff ‘punitively’ prior to even being given an infraction from the prison,” Wojcik wrote about the jail detaining him for seven days before being given an explanation or charged. “Plaintiff has been serving isolation time for a total of sixty-four (64) days, along with Room Restriction, with only one complete 24-hour break in between the entire sixty-four days. This violates H.J.H.C ‘Isolation’ policy.”
Wojcik argued in court documents that his detention status, as told to him by corrections officers in the jail, kept changing, including “disciplinary isolation” “awaiting action/room restriction” and “pre-hearing detention” and that the jail violated their own policies regarding keeping inmates in isolation.
In a statement to MassLive, Maguire wrote, “be assured that every day of Wojcik’s confinement was perfectly lawful and in precise confirmation” with state laws.
“Despite Wojcik’s perpetual confusion of Awaiting Action for Disciplinary Isolation and his transparent attempts to run these two distinct detention forms together, his confinement both before and after imposition of sanction was perfectly lawful.”
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