The jailhouse lawyer, who litigated his own case against the Department of Corrections while he was in solitary confinement, died from COVID-19 on his 68th birthday
MG Belka, March 10, 2021
Brian C. McCarvill died on Sept. 27, 2020 — his 68th birthday. He was a longtime anarchist and jailhouse lawyer. He contracted the virus while incarcerated in Snake River Correctional Institution, the fourth prison to house him over a 38-year sentence that began in 1995 at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.
His death ends over two decades of personal struggle against the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) and its treatment of him and other prisoners.
An internet search for his name doesn’t turn up much — a couple of letter-writing campaigns in solidarity with his struggle, a couple of dispatches written on the inside and some updates on his legal challenges. There’s a critique of an Engels essay and some mentions in scanned PDFs of old zines, but not much else.
