Julie Montpetit didn’t see it coming. Not her newfound passion for criminal justice reform, and certainly not her current predicament: blocked from talking to the man she loves, a man locked in prison thousands of miles away.
Her husband, Nicholas Ely, is suing several employees in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, alleging that the department cut off their means of contact after Montpetit launched a podcast that aims to destigmatize relationships like theirs. She interviewed Ely by phone for the first episode.
In his lawsuit, Ely — representing himself — alleges that department rules don’t restrict inmates from appearing on podcasts and that the department’s retaliation has violated several constitutional rights, including his right to free speech.
A Corrections spokesperson didn’t answer emailed questions, citing pending litigation.
The case speaks to the evolving ways prisoners interact with the outside world and a need for clear prison policy governing their participation in modern platforms like podcasts, according to two Nebraska prison experts.
“When things like this take place, as the world is changing with social media and everything, it’s important for the department to have consistent rules and policies to address these if they have concerns,” said Inspector General Doug Koebernick, the state’s Corrections watchdog. “And they really need to take some time to figure out what’s a rule violation and what is not.”
Montpetit said she and Ely have found ways to continue communicating despite Corrections’ restrictions. But, she said, they’re both struggling to cope with the stress.
From pen pal to podcast
Montpetit, who’s 36 and lives in Alberta, Canada, had been on a “journey of soul-searching” when she and her friends started scrolling through an Instagram feed of inmates seeking pen pals. They played a drinking game, she said, watching videos and guessing the inmates’ crimes.
It gave her an idea: What if there were an older man out there serving a life sentence, with time on his hands to study life’s big questions — the universe, religion, philosophy — and help her find answers?
She visited a prison pen pal website and landed on Ely’s profile.
Ely had, in 2011, been in a group that planned to rob 25-year-old Kristopher Winters in Omaha. Someone in the group fatally shot Winters. A jury had convicted Ely of felony murder. He is serving a life sentence without parole.
Aside from his sentence, nothing about 35-year-old Ely fit her initial pen pal parameters. But he intrigued her enough to send a message in January 2024.
They started messaging back and forth and reading books together — “exactly what I was looking for,” Montpetit said in a phone interview.
By July, they were talking for hours each day, and she was telling her mom about plans to fly to Nebraska for a visit.
It shocked her mother, Montpetit said, to hear about the relationship from her daughter who had always followed the rules.
Montpetit said she lost friends who doubted the authenticity of the relationship, and she started connecting with women in relationships with incarcerated men. She began talking to Ely’s mom on a daily basis.
Last summer, she took a manuscript Ely wrote and published it as a book. Ely bought a copy, but the prison didn’t allow him to have it, according to Ely’s complaint.
Montpetit eventually floated the idea of launching a podcast to humanize inmates and the people who love them.
For her first episode, she interviewed Ely. They chatted about their love story and the stigma surrounding relationships like theirs. About how much he has grown as a person since his criminal conviction.
“Had our paths crossed at any other time in our lives, I probably would not have been ready for you,” Ely says on the episode. “But I’m so glad that the universe made me wait all these years and go through all the things that I had to go through to mold and shape me into becoming the person that was ready for you.”
Montpetit dropped that episode Nov. 14, calling the new podcast “More Than an Inmate’s Girlfriend,” playing off a Facebook page called “More Than An Inmate,” where Montpetit and family members regularly post messages from Ely for his 3,000 followers.
That’s “the day literally everything changed,” Montpetit said.
From love story to lawsuit
Ely alleges in his lawsuit that retaliation started the same day when staff searched the special management unit cell where he typically spends 21 hours a day. Montpetit said she started getting messages about the search from other inmates’ loved ones.
A few days later, Montpetit was suddenly absent from his phone list and email account.
The department had also removed a friend and his mom from his email account, according to the suit, though his mom has since been restored.
As he started asking questions, he got differing responses from prison officials — one intel captain said the podcast caused a “knee-jerk reaction” from the prison but asked Ely to be more transparent with them, Ely wrote. Meanwhile, a deputy warden threatened solitary confinement and called the podcast “anti-establishment, anti-authority” and “anti-government.”
The only regulation around inmate interviews in NDCS policy, according to Ely, is that they should not be compensated.
A Corrections spokesperson declined to provide information about the internal policies at play.
The department’s public-facing prison policy is “really ambiguous” in this situation, said Danielle Jefferis, a University of Nebraska law professor who specializes in prisoner civil rights.
In recent years, Nebraska’s prisons have introduced tablets that inmates now use to receive their mail, communicate with loved ones and stream media such as podcasts, Jefferis said. The outward-facing policy doesn’t appear to have kept up.
Ely filed grievances and submitted requests to the warden. Montpetit sent her own messages to prison leaders. The restrictions stayed in place.
A letter from then-Warden Taggart Boyd, dated Dec. 17, states that Montpetit’s virtual and in- person visits were “suspended indefinitely” due to security risks associated with her “being complicit in and helping Ely facilitate continuous violations of NDCS regulations,” including unauthorized business practices and communications.
But they’d had virtual visits after Dec. 17, Montpetit said, and she didn’t get a response to a request for copies of the allegedly violated policies.
They had already planned to get married but accelerated their plans, reasoning that the prison couldn’t keep them from talking to each other if they were immediate family, Montpetit said.
She flew to Nebraska to get a marriage license, she said. Ely submitted a marriage application to a case manager for their planned visit on Christmas Day.
The prison rejected his marriage request, according to his complaint. Then the prison denied their Christmas visit altogether. In January, Ely submitted a new marriage application.
“The defendants have been using the plaintiff’s visits, marriage, and associations with loved ones (phone/email) as weapons to retaliate against the plaintiff for publishing a book and being interviewed for a podcast,” Ely alleges in his lawsuit.
They were ultimately approved to marry in February. Montpetit was allowed to be with Ely for their 20-minute ceremony, but she wasn’t allowed to stay for a typical two-hour visit, she said.
After the wedding and a meal with family, she went to the state Capitol and testified in support of a bill that would give some inmates serving long sentences a chance at earlier release. She said she also has been advocating for changing Nebraska’s felony murder law that landed Ely in prison for life.
“My life has completely flipped: My passions, my drive, everything has completely changed, and I feel like I’m exactly where I need to be,” she said.
Since their wedding, she said she hasn’t seen Ely in person or via video.
Seeking communication and compensation
The restrictions on communicating with his wife have triggered anxiety and depression — “irreparable harm,” Ely wrote.
“For no real reason, the defendants have removed the plaintiff’s wife from his life, leaving an empty void and lack of meaning,” he wrote. His mom has written to the department for help getting him mental health support.
Severing ties can compound a feeling of isolation that’s already a painful feature of life behind bars, according to Jenn Tostlebe, who teaches and researches criminology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Visits from loved ones early on and consistently throughout their prison sentence can bolster well-being and promote good behavior, she said.
“This loss can create this sense of social isolation, and therefore strain, in their life where they are missing somebody and it’s mentally taxing and, therefore, it contributes to the likelihood that they’ll resort to misconduct as a means of coping with this loss,” Tostlebe said.
Not every visitor is a positive influence, and not every visit goes well, she said, but visits are important for most inmates — and many inmates never get a visitor.
“Really, unless it’s a harm to the institution, I don’t feel like it should be taken away,” she said.
Montpetit said the stress prompted her to take leave from her job as an operations manager for a dessert manufacturer. She said she and Ely feel they have exhausted their options and the lawsuit was a last resort.
In it, Ely asks the court to let Montpetit visit, to restore their ability to contact each other and to take part in interviews without retaliation. He also asks for compensation and a jury trial.
Prison policies have to comply with the U.S. Constitution, Jefferis said, but the First Amendment has been interpreted to be somewhat limited behind bars.
“When we think about legal issues arising within prisons, those undefined areas where prison officials can exercise their discretion are where problems arise often,” she said.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said restrictions on First Amendment rights are constitutional in prison if they’re reasonably related to “legitimate penological interests,” Jefferis said, and usually that interest is security or order in a prison. The department will likely present evidence that officials contend justifies their restrictions.
A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 23 in Lancaster County District Court about Ely’s request that Montpetit be allowed to visit and communicate with him while his case is pending.
Montpetit voiced frustration that there are other podcasts out there — like One Minute Remaining or Wrongful Conviction — that interview inmates behind bars. She’d also be OK with the department reviewing episodes before they publish.
“We just want to be able to see each other,” Montpetit said.
