On June 30 Long Beach Municipal Court Judge Joan Comparet-Cassini ordered a bailiff to send 50,000 volts of electricity through a bound defendant because he was talking too much.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California joins today's coalition of national and international human rights activists who demand that this inhuman practice be ended, once and for all. We demand that the Los Angeles County Superior and Municipal Courts ban these electro-shock belts which are nothing more than modern-day versions of Medieval torture devices. They have no place in our current criminal justice system.

There are other obvious and tested solutions. Defendants or others who are disruptive may be removed from the courtroom and even required to view proceedings by video.

Under the VIII Amendment to our nation's constitution we are forbidden to inflict "cruel and unusual punishment. . ." This macabre device is cruel and unusual and converts our courtrooms into modern day torture chambers.

To inflict a 50,000-volt shock to a defendant for interrupting a judge is as outrageous as it is uncivilized. The setting here is an American courtroom, not a sadistic psychology experiment. To allow this type of punishment to continue will damage us as a society, and make the Bill of Rights nothing more than an old piece of paper under glass with no substance. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Unless we receive an assurance from the court within a reasonable period of time that such punishment will be banned from our courtrooms, the ACLU is prepared to go forward in court to stop this barbaric practice.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, in cooperation with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, is filing an amicus brief on behalf of a 17-year-old gay man who fled to the United States from Mexico after being subjected to repeated beatings and harassment by Mexican police and others.

On at least two occasions, Geovanni Hernandez-Montiel was raped by Mexican police. At another time he was attacked and beaten by others, yet the police did nothing to help him.

After fleeing to the United States, Mr. Hernandez-Montiel applied for asylum with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), explaining that he feared for his life and that his own government would not protect him. For asylum to be granted, an applicant must demonstrate that he fears returning to his country of origin due to persecution arising from his membership in a particular social group. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied his application, a ruling which is presently before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal.

Taylor Flynn, ACLU/SC gay and lesbian rights attorney, said "Mr. Hernandez-Montiel was repeatedly harassed, beaten and rapedincluding by the police who are supposed to protect himsimply because he is gay. Neither the police nor any other governmental official has taken a single step to protect him. To deny him asylum is to subject him to further rapes, beatings, and may ultimately cost him his life. I cannot imagine a clearer case for granting political asylum." A hearing date for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal has not been set.

The ACLU of Southern California sent a letter to the Kern County Board of Supervisors on June 25 urging that body to terminate County Human Relations Commissioner Douglas Hearn for making anti-gay remarks at commission meetings that the ACLU says make it impossible for the Human Relations Commission to fulfill its stated purpose to, "promote and safeguard the equal rights of and respect for all people within Kern County."

ACLU staff attorney Taylor Flynn sent the letter to all supervisors expressing concern that Hearn's public remarks at commission meetings directly undermine the ability of the Kern County Human Relations Commission to enforce state anti-discrimination laws and the commission's own purposes. In the letter, Ms. Flynn clarified that the First Amendment does not protect the comments of public officials which counter the expressed purpose of the agencies they serve.

"Commissioner Hearn's statements have been defended by members of the Board of Supervisors on the ground that his statements are protected under the First Amendment. This is incorrect. As the United States Supreme Court has long held, when a public official makes statements in his official capacity that are inconsistent with his official duties, those statements are not protected by the First Amendment. In fact, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals addressed precisely this issuea San Francisco Human Rights commissioner had made anti-gay statements and then claimed that his statements were protected by the First Amendmenta claim which the court flatly rejected."

As reported in the June 4 issue of the Bakersfield Californian, "At a Human Relations Commission meeting held May 12, commissioner Douglas Hearn said homosexuals are `sick' and that he wouldn't want a gay teacher teaching his child, comments that were heard by James Merrick, a local teacher who attended the meeting because he was interested in joining the commission. The statements were confirmed by Hearn himself, who later elaborated on his opinions. `Any homosexual in my mind is sick,' he said. `I know those people are sick and I'll stand on that."

Kern County Supervisor Jon McQuiston, who appointed Hearn, defended his appointee, a Baptist minister. As reported in the June 10 edition of the Bakersfield Californian, "Hearn based his opinion on his religious beliefs, McQuiston said, and the commission sand the commission should tolerate members with differing beliefs."

But Taylor Flynn admonished the Board to, "acknowledge its obligation to remove Mr. Hearn from the Human Rights Commissiona public body which distributes flyers to encourage members of the gay and lesbian community to come to the Commission with reports of anti-gay violence and intolerance...The simple fact is that there is no possibility that the Human Rights Commission can effectively enforce the state's anti-discrimination laws while Mr. Hearn continues to serve as a commissioner."