corrections.com, Louisville - EEUU, 15 de Julio de 2013

Court turns away challenge to tobacco-free prisonsLOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky's prisons can remain tobacco-free because the head of the state Department of Corrections has the authority to ban cigarettes and smokeless tobacco from the facilities, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled Friday. 

A three-judge panel concluded that a 1952 law grants the Corrections Commissioner the authority to restrict an inmate's smoking privileges for disciplinary purposes. That law, along with a 1992 statute, grants the Corrections Department all the authority it needs, Judge Glenn Acree wrote. 

"The statute places no limit on the Commissioner's authority to implement a tobacco-free policy applicable to all state-run penal institutions," Acree wrote in an opinion joined by judges Irv Maze and Donna Dixon. 

Death row inmate John Mills, 43, challenged the ban, saying Corrections Commissioner LaDonna Thompson didn't have the authority to implement a tobacco-free policy. Mills was sentenced to death in Knox County for the 1995 stabbing death of 79-year-old Arthur Phipps at his residence in Smokey Creek.

Información publicada originalmente en: 

http://www.corrections.com/news/article/33686-court-turns-away-challenge-to-tobacco-free-prisons