Prisoner Loses Claim Over Verbal Harassment and Koran Damage

The opinion of a magistrate judge from earlier this year in Singleton v. Morales, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24776 (ED Cal., Aug. 25, 2005) has just become available. The federal district court for the Eastern District of California rejected a prisoner's free exercise claim, finding that verbal harassment of an inmate about his religion and damaging (but not destroying) of his Koran did not place a substantial burden on the prisoner's religious practice.