Party at Barry’s pad!  He’s newly flush and knows where to get the good stuff…

The California government and a nonprofit will pay a Shasta County atheist nearly $2 million for violating his civil rights when he was sent back to prison for taking issue with a religious drug-treatment program while on parole.

Barry Hazle Jr. and his attorney, John G. Heller, announced the settlement this morning at a press conference in San Francisco.

Hazle was imprisoned for just over 100 days after taking issue with the drug-treatment program that centered on submitting one’s fate to a “higher power”…

Probation officials eventually sent him back to prison at California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, where he had already spent a year on drug possession charges that were overturned by an appeals court, according to court documents. Their decision was based on Hazle allegedly being “disruptive, though in a congenial way, to the staff as well as other students…sort of passive-aggressive”… [Record Searchlight]