Matthew Morgan says he is spending four years in prison for a furlough violation he did not commit.
That’s the basis for a lawsuit that Morgan and his lawyer, Annie Manhardt, supervising attorney in Vermont’s Prisoners’ Rights Office, have filed, requesting Morgan’s release from prison. Court records and Vermont Department of Corrections documents appear to back up the claim.
Morgan alleges that the corrections department decided to return him to prison for four years after he was charged with shoplifting. The charge was later dismissed by the state, but the department has not revisited its decision, according to the lawsuit.
In an interview on Monday, Morgan called the decision “absolutely ludicrous.”
“This is an example of, I am truly innocent. I didn’t steal anything,” Morgan said.
Morgan was out on furlough — a practice that allows a person to serve their sentence while living in the community — when he was charged with stealing a $129 speaker from Walmart last October. That charge was dismissed with prejudice by the state on June 29 but not before the Department of Corrections decided to send Morgan to jail for four years for the alleged furlough violation.
Although court documents show that Morgan’s parole officer informed his corrections caseworker the same day the charges were dropped, Morgan remains in prison, currently at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield.
Asked about Morgan’s case, Haley Sommer, a Department of Corrections spokesperson, said that after Morgan had been charged in the shoplifting case, the department had used a furlough violation “matrix” to determine the length of his prison stay. The length of prison time was not due just to the shoplifting charge but a calculation made using Morgan’s criminal history and plugged into the department’s directives, according to Sommer. That process is intended to eliminate bias from the decision making process, she said.
When asked about the fact that the charge had been dismissed, Sommer said that, “because of this additional information, we are actively reviewing his case.” The Department of Corrections holds case staffing meetings every Wednesday, during which Morgan’s case could be revisited, she said.
Morgan, 54, has been convicted of a series of felonies, including multiple burglaries and domestic assault, according to court records. He has exceeded his minimum release date — Jan. 10, 2019 — and his maximum release date is not until July 2045.
He was first released on furlough in July 2019, and his furlough was suspended on three prior occasions, corrections department documents show, leading to periods in prison.
In an interview, Morgan, who’s studied the law and helps other incarcerated people with legal issues, told VTDigger that he has not denied any of his previous furlough violations.
“In the past, I’ve been guilty of the wrongdoings,” he said. “I’m a man, not a mouse, so when I am guilty, I accept my consequences.”
But this time was different, he said.
Less than a week after Morgan was released on community supervision, the Berlin Police Department received a report of a theft at Walmart committed by an “unidentified African American male,” according to an affidavit filed in that dismissed case.
The affidavit indicates police initially investigated a first suspect who “looked like the male in the security video from Walmart.” When police visited the suspect’s residence at the Hilltop Inn in Berlin, someone other than the suspect answered the door, denied the suspect possessed the stolen speaker and did not allow police to search the room.
Soon after, police put out a press release with an image of the suspect in the shoplifting case and received a call from a probation and parole employee in Barre, identifying the suspect as Matthew Morgan, who is Black. Steven Tiersch, the Berlin officer who wrote the affidavit, said a photo of Morgan and the photo of the suspect “had similarities.” When the officer later met with Morgan at a probation and parole office days after the theft, Morgan was wearing white shoes and black jeans “like the male in the security video,” Tiersch noted in the affidavit.
Morgan denied stealing the speaker, but the officer issued a citation. Morgan said his doctor later provided a statement confirming that Morgan had been at a medical appointment at the time of the crime, which led the state to permanently dismiss the case.
Morgan’s alleged furlough violation — a nonviolent misdemeanor — fell under “Level 1 Violating Behavior” in the corrections department’s furlough violation guidelines. Approved sanctions for such behavior range from apologizing to community service and electronic monitoring.
Corrections policy does state that “a pattern or history of behavior that continues after the exhaustion of lower-level technical sanctions have failed to gain the supervised individual’s compliance” can be considered a “significant violation” that results in prison time.
In court documents, Morgan’s attorney wrote that the corrections department hearing officer overseeing his furlough violation hearing told Morgan “he would be found guilty of violating his furlough no matter what because he had been cited for a new crime, and a citation alone was enough to violate his furlough condition regardless of whether he actually committed the crime.”
Subsequently, Morgan waived his right to a hearing, documents show.
When the Department of Corrections finds a person to have violated furlough, a “case staffing” is held.
“A case staffing is an unrecorded, closed-door meeting at which DOC employees decide how long a person will have to stay in prison before they can be released on furlough or recommended for parole,” Manhardt, Morgan’s attorney, wrote in court documents. “Prisoners are not allowed to attend their case staffings.”
During that case staffing, the committee decided to send Morgan to prison for four years in what is called a furlough interrupt.
In the committee’s explanation for its decision, it cited the directives that deemed a pattern of behavior to be a significant violation and argued that “no other method to control noncompliance is suitable,” a case staffing form admitted as evidence showed.
Asked about the furlough interrupt, Manhardt said she had seen four-year interrupts before but not “where the alleged behavior was just a single minor incident and where the charge was ultimately dismissed.”
Despite the “injustice” he feels, Morgan said he wants his case to go to court so it can set a precedent for other incarcerated people in his situation.
“I know how to use the court and seek redress for a wrong decision. For so many people who don’t know how to use the courts, they just have to suffer and accept the consequences,” he said. “Thank goodness I studied the law.”
