Inmate won’t get all of $50,000 award

Saturday, Nov. 12, 2005 | 7:50 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Michael Epstein, the prison inmate who won a $50,000 settlement against the state, isn't going to have a big bonanza when he walks out of prison Christmas Eve.

His lawyer, Carter White, said Thursday that Epstein must pay $12,000 in court costs and he has made a generous donation to the civil rights clinic at the University of California-Davis that handled his case free of charge.

Epstein, now 50, sued the state for $300,000 after prison officials prevented him from seeing his wife. The state settled the case this week.

Epstein, who was sentenced to 20 years for kidnapping and sexual assault in Washoe County, met his wife when she was working as a nurse at the state prison in Ely.

They became romantically involved in 1996. When prison officials learned of the relationship, they asked her to resign and then locked her out of the prison.

The couple married in 1998 despite an attempt by the prison to stop it, said White. The prison barred face-to-face visits.

The case was scheduled to go to trial in June this year to determine if the rights of Epstein were violated and if the visiting privileges were allowed for other inmates who were married in prison.

The state attorney general's office said Hall tried to smuggle in contraband and stole medical records, a charge White called "patently false."

White said the couple was able to talk over the telephone and through the mail but were barred from personal visits, except when they saw each other in court.

White, the supervising attorney at the UC Davis legal clinic, said there may be at least one other case in which a suit would be filed involving a wife of an inmate who was prohibited from visiting him.

Cy Ryan can be reached at (775) 687 5032 or at cy@lasvegassun.com.