PASCO COUNTY, Fla. – In a motion filed last week, Jason Baez challenged a $547,850 lien imposed by the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) in July 2024 after he settled a lawsuit against FDC officers who beat him so severely that he lost an eye. If this lien is allowed to stand, FDC will take back all the money paid it paid to settle his lawsuit and then some, leaving Mr. Baez with nothing but debt and a life-long disability when he is released from prison.
Mr. Baez is represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Florida Justice Institute. His motion asks the court to reconsider the lien because it is an unconstitutional attempt to recoup the proceeds of a civil rights settlement, and filed fourteen years too late.
“Jason Baez was sentenced in 2006 for his crimes and is serving his punishment of imprisonment. The State shouldn’t be able to come back almost 20 years later and add an additional penalty of over a half-million dollars, especially when the only money Mr. Baez has is his settlement from when FDC employees partially blinded and disfigured him,” said Kelly Knapp, Senior Staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Under Florida law, FDC can impose “cost of incarceration” liens in the amount of $50 for each day of a person’s prison sentence. These liens attach to any money the convicted person has now or in the future, indefinitely, until paid off. While in prison, FDC does not pay incarcerated people for prison labor, and their only income comes from family who give them money to buy daily necessities like deodorant and stamps from the prison canteen. After release, a national study found that for formerly incarcerated people, “about two-thirds of the population were jobless at any given time.”
Instead of imposing these liens against all people at the time of sentencing, FDC is waiting years to target those who file civil rights lawsuits against FDC employees for misconduct such as excessive force. Mr. Baez, for example, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2006. It was only after he settled a civil rights lawsuit against the FDC employees who beat him in 2019 that FDC asked the court to impose a $547,850 lien against Mr. Baez. The court approved the lien against Mr. Baez the same day, before he even had notice or an opportunity to respond to FDC’s request.
“The odds are already stacked against Mr. Baez and other people leaving prison to find jobs, housing, healthcare, and overall stability. Adding a lien that they’ll never be able to pay back does nothing for the state and is counterproductive for reentry. Instead of saddling people coming out of prison with crushing debt, we should be setting them up for success,” said Dante Trevisani, Litigation Director of the Florida Justice Institute.