On August 23, 2003, the 26 men in Unit J-1 at SBCC, a "supermax" prison in Shirley, Massachusetts, were finishing lunch. It was just before noon. There was one guard in the unit, a prison guard named David Lonergan. Two guards were assigned to J-1 on that shift, but the ...
As this issue of PLN goes to press the 2004 presidential election is over. Regardless of who won, the need for PLN and the news and work we do will remain and undoubtedly increase given that both major party presidential candidates promise more repression and police power.
We need reader ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 9
The Sacramento California Sheriff's Department agreed to a record $15 million settlement on June 4, 2004 to resolve federal and state lawsuits for damages and injunctive relief regarding illegal strip-search practices at the Sacramento County Jail. The suits stemmed from a policy of mixing felony and misdemeanant detainees together in ...
This column is intended to provide "habeas hints" to prisoners who are considering or handling habeas corpus petitions as their own attorneys ("in pro per"). The focus of the column is habeas corpus practice under the AEDPA, the 1996 habeas corpus law which now governs habeas corpus practice throughout the ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 12
Study Shows Boot Camps are a Failure
A June 2003 study published by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, shows that boot camps are failures in reducing recidivism and prison populations.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, lawmakers throughout the United ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 12
A wrongfully convicted ex-prisoner who spent 15-years in a Pennsylvania prison got modest compensation from the government that imprisoned him by winning a $2.3 million settlement in the lawsuits he filed. In Washington state, a forensic scientist was fired after his unprofessional testimony led to the wrongful conviction of two ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 13
by Matthew T. Clarke
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has recently clarified the meaning of the recent statute allowing the award of parole "street time" credits for prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes.
Lucian Lee Spann and Andrew Michael Marby are Texas state prisoners who, after having their paroles revoked, ...
Connecticut Settles Wrongful Death Lawsuit For $2.9 Million
by Michael Rigby
On April 4, 2002, the State of Connecticut agreed to settle for $2.9 million a lawsuit arising from the wrongful death of Timothy Perry, a mentally ill man who died after being forcefully restrained by prison guards.
Perry, 21, ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 14
The Ohio Supreme Court, affirming an appeals court decision, held that Ohio prisoners have no right to typewriters with more than one line of memory and that prison officials were justified in confiscating a prisoner's typewriter that had a five-page memory capacity, even though the typewriter was purchased years before ...
New York Prisoners Win Injury Awards, Lack Of Expert Testimony Detrimental
by Michael Rigby
In two separate cases, New York courts of claims awarded $3,500 to prisoners pursuing pro se personal injury claims against the state. As these cases illustrate, expert testimony is not always necessary to prevail on injury ...
On June 7, 2004, talks between the New York State Senate and the Assembly on how to best reform the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws broke down. Publicly, the dispute is over ideological disagreements, but an obscure Census quirk that counts prisoners as residents of the prison's legislative district may be ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 16
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth. Circuit reversed a district court's dismissal of a prisoner's complaint that prison officials retaliated against him for exercising his right to file a grievance.
Robert Hart, 38, is a prisoner at the 2,800-man Albert Hughes State Prison near Gatesville, Texas. In February ...
$600,000 Settlement In California Prisoner Shooting Death
by Marvin Mentor
California Department of Corrections (CDC) officials settled a wrongful death complaint for $600,000 brought by the survivors of Octavio Orozco, a prisoner at Pleasant Valley State Prison (PVSP) in Coalinga, who was killed by a single shot to the head ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 18
In two separate decisions, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined whether the Nevada Department of Prisons (NDOP) procedure of reallocating interest earned on prisoner trust accounts constituted an unconstitutional "taking" in violation of the Fifth Amendment or violated due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Jerry McIntyre, ...
The nation's largest private prison corporation is joining forces with conservative faith-based ministries
by Bill Berkowitz
In an era where the Bush Administration touts faith-based organizations as engines of individual and social transformation, and is actively recruiting and funding religious organizations to deliver a bevy of social services, it isn't ...
176 original plays created by prisoners in 18 Michigan prisons, another 107 in 4 juvenile facilities. 39 readings of original work in the prisons, 16 in the juvenile facilities, 40 anthologies. 9 Annual Exhibitions of Art by Michigan Prisoners: in the most recent, 205 artists exhibited 343 works of art, ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 22
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that prisoners have nothing to recover in a claim for interest on their common trust account when the state's costs to administer the account exceed the interest generated, but an individual prisoner might have such a claim if his personal interest portion ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 22
An Indiana federal district court held that the sheriff of Marion County was in contempt of court for failing to comply with the court's previous orders relating to conditions at the County's jail. While the court held that punitive sanctions would not be imposed at this time because the failure ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 23
Washington state prisoners who believe DNA evidence may prove their innocence must file a request for postconviction DNA testing by December 31, 2004. Starting January 1, 2005, a defendant must raise DNA issues at trial or on appeal.
Under RCW 10.37.170, any person convicted of a felony who is serving ...
Washington Police Kill Unarmed Escapee In Botched Raid; Prisoner also Killed
By Michael Rigby
One day after he used a fake gun to escape from a courthouse in Tacoma, Washington, a "three-strikes" prisoner was killed by police in a bungled raid that left one officer wounded. Family members allege the ...
by Alan Prendergast
The seven men sat around the defense table Tuesday afternoon, June 24, 2003, murmuring quietly to each other and exchanging hearty good-luck handshakes with their attorneys. The tension was thick, anticipation high.
Shortly after 4 p.m., the jurors filed into U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel's courtroom. The ...
The Eleventh Circuit Court held the attorney fee cap of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) applies to parole cases and is constitutional and allows a fees-on-fees award. Georgia prisoner Coleman Jackson filed a joint motion for habeas corpus and complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Jackson alleged the Georgia ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 33
By Matthew T. Clarke
On March 16, 2004, the Fifth Circuit issued a per curiam opinion affirming the district court's termination of the 20-year-old consent decree which had regulated prisoner mail in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ).
The case involves a class-action civil rights suit initiated by Texas ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that the broader "totality of the circumstances" standard must be used rather than just a narrower statistical burden when testing for racial bias in a prisoner voter disenfranchisement complaint. The U.S. District Court (E.D. WA) had summarily dismissed ...
by David M. Reutter
A federal class action has been filed in the Federal District Court in Ft. Myers by eight residents of the Florida Civil Commitment Center (FCCC), seeking to enforce their rights to mental health services and treatment under the United States Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 36
by Matthew T. Clarke
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit legal center, helped Iraqi prisoners file a class-action lawsuit against private "interrogation services" contractors Titan Corporation and CACI International Incorporated alleging that Iraqi citizens being held without charges were horrifically abused and murdered while falsely imprisoned by ...
by Alan Elsner, FT Prentice Hall, 256 pp., hardcover
Review by Tom Murlowski
"Alan Elsner's powerful book demonstrates that our $40 billion corrections system for both adults and juveniles is badly broken. Our jails and prisons and penitentiaries are failing us at enormous cost in money and in danger to ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 39
The Wisconsin Court of Appeals held that the Wisconsin Prison Litigation Reform Act's (WPLRA) prohibition against the recovery of costs and fees by prevailing prisoners does not violate equal protection.
Daniel Harr, a prisoner of Wisconsin's "Supermax prison successfully pursued a common law certiorari action to overturn a disclplinary reprimand ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 40
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a county juvenile detention center was not entitled to sovereign immunity. S.J., an Ohio juvenile, was referred to the Hillcrest Training Center (Hillcrest) which is a county juvenile facility created pursuant to Ohio Rev. Code § 2151.65. He was sexually assaulted several ...
The Alaska court of appeals has dismissed a prisoner's suit challenging the conditions of his confinement in an Alaska prison under AS § 12.72.020(c), Alaska's post-conviction relief statute. This ruling came after the court found that it was without jurisdiction to decide the case under that statute.
In 2002, Sidney ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 41
News in Brief:
Alaska: On August 4, 2004, Charles Rubin, 41, the manager of the Cordova Center, a half way house in Anchorage which is operated by Cornell Corrections, a private, for profit prison company, was arrested in charges that he lured a 23 year old female prisoner into his ...
Loaded on
Nov. 15, 2004
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2004, page 44
Texas Prison Guard's Sentence For Rape Reinstated
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has reinstated the sentence of a Texas prison guard who had impersonated a police officer, using a fake badge to coerce women into sex acts.
Charles Melvin Page, a former guard at the TDCJ women's prison in ...
