A former volunteer Quaker chaplain at the Southern State Correctional Facility (SSCF) in Springfield has filed suit against three Vermont Department of Corrections officials, contending that they violated free speech rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for dismissing him from the prison’s volunteer ranks after he compiled, edited, and published a book featuring an SSCF prisoner’s evocative illustrations and sketches, as well as writings by multiple inmates that were shared with the chaplain regarding prison life.
At the center of the legal dispute between volunteer chaplain and spiritual advisor Devon Kurtz, a part-time resident of Woodstock, and Vermont corrections authorities is “Sketches from Behind Prison Walls,” a book that Kurtz assembled last year in collaboration with SSFC inmate, sketch artist, and illustrator Rein Kolts and 15 other incarcerated men, who shared their experiences with prison life, to which Kurtz appended commentary steeped in the tenets of his Quaker faith. “Sketches” was published on April 20, 2024, by the Quaker Institute for the Future (QIF), a community of scholars, artists, and authors whose work grows “from [a] commitment to honoring the Divine in all of Life by growing [their] writing and art out of the Spirit,” according to the introductory passages of the book.
The lawsuit, filed with the U.S. District Court for Vermont in Burlington on Aug. 20, noted that Kurtz joined the volunteer staff at the SSCF in January 2021 and stepped up to the official Quaker chaplain’s role two years later in February of 2023. “Over time, as his Quaker faith deepened, his commitment to volunteering at the prison took new shape and he became a religious services volunteer,” the lawsuit says. “In that role, he served many incarcerated men but forged a special relationship with one Friend (the Quaker term for one of the religion’s adherents), Rein Kolts. Mr. Kurtz felt that Mr. Kolts embodied Quaker values, not least of all through his art — sketches of his fellow prisoners,” the suit states.
The Kurtz lawsuit now before the U.S. District Court in Burlington was filed against three individuals, all in their official capacities as state employees — Jon Murad, interim commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC); David Bovat, the acting superintendent of the SSCF; and Anthony Giordano, the volunteer services coordinator at the men’s prison in Springfield. Although Kurtz did not initially receive any complaints about “Sketches” from the defendants or other DOC employees, his volunteer chaplain’s role at SSCF was terminated in July of last year, shortly after the book’s publication, via a letter from Bovat, then the assistant superintendent at the men’s correctional facility. This followed three years of weekly volunteering at the prison on Kurtz’s part. In the letter appended as an exhibit to Kurtz’s lawsuit, Bovat wrote that the firing from the volunteer chaplain’s post was due to a violation of the DOC’s work rules “as evidenced by your failure to comply with VTDOC policy regarding Media Access as seen in your book ‘Sketches from Behind Prison Walls.’”
For more on this, please see our September 4 edition of the Vermont Standard.
