By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
Then-New Hampshire Department of Corrections Commissioner Helen Hanks needed to fire Corrections Officer Claudia Cass in 2023 to prevent the veteran officer from ever disobeying a direct order that was never actually given.
That logic is what Mary Triick, the attorney representing the Department of Corrections, offered to the New Hampshire Supreme Court on Tuesday during oral arguments on Cass’s lawsuit against the department. Hanks fired Cass preemptively, Triick said, in anticipation she might disobey an order if it was given.
“Allowing officers to not follow orders when they perceive a safety risk that’s unreasonable would actually make the prison more unsafe,” Triick said.
Cass was fired months after she provocatively called attention to the dangerously low staffing inside the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in a December, 2022, email to Warden Michelle Edmark and other DOC administrators. At no point did Cass ever refuse to follow a direct order, her attorney John Krupski said. Instead, DOC leaders scrambled to silence Cass from talking about the dangerously low staffing levels inside the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord.
“They did not want to address the chronic understaffing at the men’s prison, they didn’t want to address it and wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening,” Krupski said.
Cass lost her job of 17 years after she sent Edmark the email in which stated she would not release inmates from their cells during her next third shift rotation if staffing levels were dangerously low again. The prison, like all DOC facilities, is chronically understaffed. Cass stated she could not safely release all of the inmates at once for their breakfast, as was the standard procedure.
The exact ratio of inmates to officers on that third shift is not known, as DOC officials have blocked the release of basic data, but it is likely hundreds of prisoners monitored by a few officers.
During subsequent conversations with her superiors about her email to Edmark, Cass maintained that if she was again in a situation she deemed dangerous to herself, other DOC staffers, or inmates, she would institute a lockdown procedure until more staff arrived. Corrections officers at Cass’ rank do not have the authority to impose a lockdown on their own, but Cass stated she has a legal and moral obligation to keep other staffers and inmates safe.
Under DOC rules, corrections officers can be fired for taking any action that could endanger inmates or other staffers. Cass maintains that going along with the staffing levels inside Concord would have put people in real jeopardy. Cass never actually followed through with a lockdown after she sent the email to Edmark, and she was never given an order by her superiors to not call a lockdown.
Shortly after she sent her email, the DOC suspended Cass and opened an investigation into her alleged misconduct. The investigation dragged on for months, and at one point Edmark ordered Cass to undergo a mental health evaluation. When that evaluation gave Cass a clean bill of health and cleared her to return to work, Edmark fired her.
During the oral arguments, Krupski told the justices that as a corrections officer Cass, like any other member of a paramilitary organization, has the duty to disobey orders that are illegal, immoral, or unethical. They also have a duty to keep other staffers and inmates safe. Even though she never actually disobeyed a direct order, Krupski said, she was fired for telling superiors that she would call a lockdown if she deemed the third shift staffing endangered the people inside the prison.
“You can’t say someone didn’t violate an order and then find they violated an order,” Krupski said.
Triick told the justices that Cass’ case isn’t about a member of a paramilitary organization dealing with illegal orders, but a state employee refusing to follow directions from her bosses. Hanks and Edmark could not wait for Cass to disobey a direct order. They had to terminate her before her hypothetical lockdown threat caused problems inside the prison.
Cass had real safety concerns, Triick said, but corrections officers, like police officers, cannot refuse an order just because it might be dangerous.
“Working in a prison, inside the walls of a prison, is inherently dangerous, Triick said.
Cass fought her termination first by going to the Personnel Appeals Board. Tuesday’s oral arguments are a result of Cass’ appeal of the PAB ruling against her. In its ruling last year, the board found Cass disobeyed orders by sending the email to Edmark. The board was split 2-1 and Jason Majors, then the chair of the board, dissented. Majors stated he would have voted to reinstate Cass since she “never actually refused to follow an order from her superiors while on duty.”
Cass also has a whistleblowers lawsuit against the DOC currently being litigated in Merrimack Superior Court.