Former Roxbury Correctional Institution officer Marcie Betts was ordered rehired last November, after she was canned in January 2003 for posting nudes of herself on the Internet, and the state of Maryland is appealing the rehire, with the appeal heard in Washington County Circuit Court July 15.
Assistant state prosecutor Scott Oakley told the court the administrative judge who ordered Betts rehired made no account of prison officials who testified that the Betts images presented safety issues. But Lawrence G. Walters, a First Amendment attorney representing Betts, told the court administrative law judge D. Harrison Pratt ruled correctly when ordering Betts rehired because the case involved protected speech.
Roxbury officials found that nudes of Betts appeared on a Website and in a tattoo magazine and fired her toward the end of January 2003, after the magazine was discovered in a prison housing unit, according to a published report that noted Betts had only been on the job eight days before first being suspended from duty. She reportedly sold 81 images to the Website in June 2002 for $300, the report said, long before she was hired as a prison guard and taken basic training for the job.
