LITTLE ROCK — Acknowledging that the issue was a “pretty close call,” a magistrate judge on Wednesday said he will recommend that a Muslim inmate be required to shave his beard despite the inmate’s religious objections.

At a hearing that lasted nearly three hours, inmate Gregory Holt said he has been a Muslim for nine years and believes the Koran instructs Muslims to “keep the mustaches short and the beard as it is.”

His lawsuit claims a state Department of Correction policy prohibiting inmates from growing a beard of any length violates his right to practice his religion.

Prison officials said the policy is necessary because inmates with beards could use them to hide contraband such as razors, homemade darts or cell-phone memory chips. They also said an inmate with a beard could alter his appearance after an escape by shaving his face.

On Oct. 18, U.S. District Judge Brian Miller issued a temporary order allowing Holt to keep his beard while the lawsuit was pending.

At the end of the hearing Wednesday, however, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joe Volpe said he would recommend Miller lift the order.

He said an appeals court ruling in an earlier case makes it unlikely that Holtwill prevail on the merits of the lawsuit.

“Certainly, you have been very effective in this case,” Volpe said, adding that some of Holt’s arguments are “right on point.”

But Volpe said an earlier ruling “tells me exactly what I have to do.”

Under the department’s policy, adopted in 1998, inmates are not allowed to have facial hair except for “a neatly trimmed mustache that does not extend beyond the corner of the mouth or over the lip.”

The only exception is for inmates with certain dermatological conditions. They are allowed to have a beard up to a quarter-inch long but must present documentation aboutthe condition upon demand.

The policy also says male inmates’ hair cannot fall below the nape of the neck, and female inmates’ can be no longer than shoulder length. It also prohibits “extreme styles,” such as “corn rows,braids, dreadlocks, Mohawks, etc.”

In the earlier case, an inmate said he belonged to a Christian sect known as the Assemblies of Yahweh and believed the law of the Hebrew Scriptures prohibited him from cutting his hair or beard.

In 2008, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Moody that found the grooming policy was constitutional because it served compelling state interests and wasn’t more restrictive than necessary.

Holt, however, said his case is different because he only wants a half-inch beard, which he said wouldn’t significantly alter his appearance and would be too short to hide contraband.

On Wednesday, Holt’s brown hair was cut short, and he sported a mustache and beard that he said was almost a half-inch long.

“You can’t hide anything in this,” said Holt, who represented himself at the hearing.

Holt, 36, who is housed inthe Cummins Unit in Jefferson County, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in Pulaski County Circuit Court of aggravated residential burglary and firstdegree battery. Prosecutors said he cut his girlfriend’s throat and stabbed her in the chest at her mobile home in Little Rock.

At his trial in June 2010, jurors also learned that Holt had written letters describing himself as an “American Taliban” threatening a deadly “jihad” in the courtroom if the verdict in his trial went “south.”

After entering the prison system, Holt said he refused to shave his beard for a time, then relented after receiving disciplinary sanctions.

He said he decided to challenge the grooming policy after learning of a 2004 ruling by a federal judge in California saying that a group of Muslim state prison inmates should be allowed to grow half-inch beards.

Under questioning by assistant attorney general Christine Cryer, Holt acknowledged that he said he “was atwar” with an inmate barber last month after the barber cut his beard too closely.

Denying that the statement was a threat, he said he made it “in the heat of anger” after the barber ignored his instructions.

Cummins Unit Warden Gaylon Lay testified that allowing half-inch beards would present enforcement challenges. It would be difficult for guards to judge the length of inmates’ beards, he said, and the beards would have to be searched for contraband.

“I don’t know how many correctional officers would be comfortable running their hands through a man’s beard,” Lay said.

A survey in 2010 by the American Correctional Chaplain Association found that Arkansas was one of nine states, all of them in the South, with strict grooming policies that do not make exceptions based on an inmate’s religion.

Arkansas’ current policy replaced a more liberal one enacted in 1979 in response to a lawsuit by a group ofinmates, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, who claimed a belief in Hebrew Scriptures law prohibited them from cutting their hair.

That policy said inmates’ hair and beard length would be left to “individual choice,” as long as “good grooming standards are maintained.”

The Correction Department agreed in a lawsuit settlement with the inmates to abide by the policy, but U.S. District Judge Henry Woods voided the settlement in 1998, citing a law allowing courts to terminate certain settlements that were not “the least intrusive means necessary to correct the violation of the Federal rights.”

“These restrictions on religious liberty are a common complaint, despite it having been litigated since the 70s,” ACLU of Arkansas attorney Holly Dickson said in an email Wednesday. “I’m notsure why the state has chosen to fight in court over 40 years about this when half-inch, faith-adherent beards haven’t wreaked havoc in prisons in other states.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/05/2012