State to pay for Qurans

Prisoners at Airway Heights Corrections Center now have greater access to copies of the Quran following the settlement of a federal lawsuit.

The state Department of Corrections agreed to pay $1,700 for the cost of bringing the suit and for replacing inmate Dale Mitchell’s religious materials, which were taken from his cell three years ago. The state will also provide $300 to purchase Qurans for any inmates who request copies.

“It wasn’t about the dollars and cents,” said Terry Sloyer, an attorney who represented Mitchell, 43, on behalf of the Center for Justice. “It was about having a level of respect at the institution.”

In the settlement approved earlier this month, neither Mitchell nor the state Department of Corrections admitted wrongdoing, said Assistant Attorney General Mary “Kate” McLachlan, who defended the prison.

“This was not a case about religion, per se,” McLachlan said. “It was about the policy about confiscation of contraband material. The fact that some of the contraband was religious material complicated the issue emotionally.”

The mediated agreement ended a legal battle that originated in 2002 when Mitchell, a convicted rapist, filed a civil rights suit against the state alleging religious discrimination and denial of religious freedom.

Mitchell was sent to Airway Heights in 1998. At the time he had two copies of the Ali Yusef version of the Quran and a King James Bible, Sloyer said. Corrections officers raised no objections to those materials until five days after Mitchell gave a deposition to state attorneys for his 2002 lawsuit.

On that day in February, 2003, corrections officers ruled that the religious materials were contraband.

“They took the Bible, looked (Mitchell) in the eye as they threw it into the garbage in front of him, which was devastating to him emotionally,” Sloyer said. “The timing was suspect for us.”

The lawsuit was later dismissed, largely because prison officials had destroyed Mitchell’s religious materials, the only physical evidence in the case. “The DOC has its own version of how this went down,” Sloyer said.

Associate Superintendent James Key said there was no correlation between Mitchell’s lawsuit and the declaration of his Qurans as contraband. Key said the corrections officers followed state policy to the letter.

“The staff searching the cell had no idea that Mr. Mitchell was deposing anyone,” Key said. Mitchell’s attorney “may think it’s ironic, but it’s not relevant to the cell search.”

Because the state can’t purchase holy books, the Ali Yusef versions of the Quran will be purchased in the name of Dale Mitchell – who was convicted in 1996 of first-degree rape and first-degree burglary in King County, Key said.

Mitchell, who did not respond to a request for an interview, is scheduled to be released in 2024.