Federal judge dismisses Spring Creek inmate's bid for Indiana prison privileges

U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason dismissed a Spring Creek Correctional Center inmate's lawsuit Wednesday, ruling that Indiana's prison conditions do not apply to him while he is held in Alaska.

Josiah Lumumba Boyd, an Indiana prisoner serving 35 years for attempted murder, is serving his sentence in Alaska "by special agreement," a 2023 federal order in Indiana said. Spring Creek is in Seward.

Representing himself, Boyd sued Spring Creek Superintendent James Milburn and Michael Bryant on Jan. 12 and filed an amended complaint June 1. He argued that Indiana's interstate corrections compact law entitled him to receive emails through a tablet and to have other items Indiana inmates may have.

Gleason adopted Magistrate Judge Matthew M. Scoble's recommendation in full. She wrote that Indiana law requires inmates transferred to another state to be treated equally with similar inmates of the receiving state held in the same prison. Alaska is the receiving state, she wrote, and Boyd did not claim he was treated differently from Alaska inmates at Spring Creek. Alaska's own compact law says the same.

"Plaintiff is incorrect that Indiana's conditions of confinement apply to Plaintiff when he is incarcerated in Alaska," she wrote.

Gleason also cited Ghana v. Pearce, a 1998 Ninth Circuit ruling that the interstate compact cannot be the basis for the type of federal civil rights claim Boyd brought.

She dismissed the case without allowing Boyd to amend it again, denied his pending motions as moot and ordered final judgment.

The dismissal counts as a strike against Boyd. Under federal law, a prisoner with three strikes cannot file a civil suit without prepaying the filing fee unless he is in "imminent danger of serious physical injury," as Gleason put it in an October order in another case. Wednesday's order does not say how many strikes Boyd has.