Mail correspondence is allowed. The facility head has the right to deny any request to interview based on security, medical, or other administrative reasons. Infotainment publications and broadcasts are restricted from department facilities without the commissioner's prior written approval. The media will be granted interviews with death row inmates only once every 90 days. Three days before a scheduled execution, a media pool will be allowed to interview the condemned inmate.
Policy now prohibits the interviews.
The court said that because there were alternative means of communication between inmates and the media, there were no constitutional rights violated by the ban. Federal prisons Upon notification by the attorney general, the head of a federal law enforcement agency, or the head of a member agency of the United States intelligence community, that there is a substantial risk that an inmate's communications could result in death or serious bodily injury, the warden can implement special administrative procedures including housing an inmate in administrative detention in 120-day increments that can be renewed indefinitely if the original circumstances continue to exist, limiting correspondence, visiting, interviews with the news media, or telephone use. The lawsuit was a challenge to the California Department of Corrections Manual that prohibited interviews with specific individual inmates. The court stated that there is no constitutional right of access to prisons or their inmates beyond that afforded the general public and held there was no violation of the First Amendment. Turner at 88.