A lawsuit involving a Cherokee indian man who claimed he was not allowed to practice his Native religion while serving a lengthy prison sentence has been resolved, with the state of Alaska agreeing to accommodate his religious practices.
The settlement will allow Brian Hall, who is serving a life sentence on two murder convictions, to wear as part of his faith a bear claw pendant around his neck and a bandanna around his head to signify the direction of his spiritual path.
According to a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union, Hall may now wear a bandanna in one of six different colors or containing one of six different symbols depending on the direction he is called to move.
Alaska Assistant Attorney General Cori Mills said that state is glad to have been able to resolve this and allow Hall to practice his religion while also balancing the security concerns of the state’s correctional facilities.
The ACLU said Hall made multiple requests to DOC officials to be allowed to wear these two religious items, as is his right under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the Alaska Constitution, but that DOC denied him, saying they would create a safety risk inside the Goose Creek Correctional Center in the Matanuska Valley. Hall filed a lawsuit against the DOC in August 2016 on grounds that he was denied to freely exercise his religion.
The settlement also included an agreement for the state to pay the ACLU of Alaska $30,000 in legal fees.According to Alaska Supreme Court records Hall, who was born in 1975, was from early childhood emotionally disturbed and prone to uncontrollable anger and violence, and on April 16, 1993, he murdered Mickey Dinsmore and Stanley Honeycutt with a stolen gun in Anchorage’s Far North Bicentennial Park after a verbal altercation. Hall, who was 17 at the Court records stated that jurors rejected Hall’s defense that he reasonably but mistakenly believed when he fired the gun that he was being threatened with a gun, and the victims were actually unarmed.
