by Benjamin Tschirhart
The Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) recognized a limited cause of action for money damages against agents of the federal government in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bur. of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). But on March 3, 2023, the U.S. Court ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
When you’re arrested in St. Louis, it doesn’t much matter whether you end up in the city’s jail or the lockup in adjacent St. Louis County; both are mired in controversy. But in a letter defending city Jail Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah, Mayor Tishaura O. Jones (D) took ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On June 22, 2023, the chief prosecutor in Arizona’s Maricopa County dropped a suit filed to force the state to execute condemned prisoner Aaron Gunches. As previously reported by PLN, the state Supreme Court issued a death warrant on March 2, 2023, authorizing the execution of Gunches, ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
At 28 years old, drug addicted and semi-homeless, Kelly Harnett was nobody’s idea of a model citizen. So when implicated along with boyfriend Thomas Donovan in a July 2010 murder in a public park in Queens, New York, she knew it was bad. But she didn’t expect ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On March 16, 2023, Judge Sue Myerscough of the federal court for the Central District of Illinois sentenced former state prison guards Alex Banta, 31, and Todd Sheffler, 54, to 20 years in prison for the fatal beating of a handcuffed and helpless prisoner, Larry Earvin, at Western Illinois Correctional Center (WICC) in 2018.
A third co-defendant, former guard Willie Hedden, 44, cooperated in prosecution of the other two and received a shorter prison sentence of six years on March 22, 2023. All three were also ordered to serve five years of supervised release. Banta and Sheffler each must also pay a $500 special assessment. Hedden’s special assessment is $300. See: USA v. Sheffler, USDC (C.D.Ill.), Case No. 3:19-cr-30067.
“Forget what you learned at the academy. We do things differently here.” That’s what Banta recalled hearing on his first day of work at WICC in 2014, from Internal Affairs officers giving new recruits a lesson in reality. “Things will happen that you might need to ignore,” they reportedly continued. “If things happen with an inmate, aim for the body and not the face.”
Banta learned that lesson and put it into practice with Earvin, a 65-year-old ...
by Kevin W. Bliss, Chuck Sharman and Benjamin Tschirhart
On May 31, 2023, Luis Molina, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction (DOC), announced his agency would no longer make public reports of in-custody deaths. Why? Molina blamed the federal monitor overseeing a long-running class-action lawsuit to improve ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In 2013, Greg Kelley was a 17-year-old high school football star from Cedar Park, Texas. A good student, he already had a full scholarship to play football for the University of Texas in San Antonio. His coaches believed he might go on to the NFL. Instead, the ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
Ray Garcia was warden for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Dublin, California. He served as supervisor at the lockup for regular audits conducted under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). But after his sentencing before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
As of mid-January 2023, almost 100 minimum-security prisoners from the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) in Tucson were still being held in segregation at the nearby U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Tucson, six weeks after a fellow prisoner somehow got a gun and attempted to shoot his wife when ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
Over 10 years ago, when former prison guard Robert Fletcher heard from a friend that a painting he owned was an early untitled work by artist Peter Doig, Fletcher was understandably elated; Doig is a renowned artist whose paintings normally sell for millions of dollars.
Fletcher had ...
