by Casey Bastian
On November 8, 2016, California voters went to the polls to consider whether the Control, Regulate, and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act, known as Proposition 64 (Prop64), should be approved. Prop64 was easily passed with voters clearly supporting the legalization of recreational marijuana. Medicinal use in ...
Lake Ozark Politician Gives Women Prisoners Help, Gets Sex
by Casey J. Bastian
In 2015, Gerry Murawski was an elected city alderman for Lake Ozark, Missouri. Murawski was also engaging in questionable relationships with several young women. During the period of 2015-2016, Murawski would provide money and favors for at ...
by Casey J. Bastian
The Office of the Inspector General completed an audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Chaplaincy Services Branch (CSB) in July 2021. The CSB is responsible for the BOP’s religious services nationwide. The program is intended to ensure that the constitutional right of prisoners to ...
by Casey J. Bastian
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections (DOC) has been knowingly using drug tests described by plaintiff’s lawyers as “fake” on legal mail to both interfere with attorney/client communications and impose strict punishments without due process. These claims are the basis of a class complaint recently filed by ...
by Casey J. Bastian
Following a series of complaints resulting from the parole of 329 Virginia state prisoners in 2020, a whistleblower released several emails sent between members of the Virginia Parole Board (“VPB”) employees. The leaked emails were clearly intended to discredit the Parole Board, and likely the entire ...
by Casey J. Bastian
A major driver of mass incarceration is the abusive rate at which life sentences are imposed, as a report from the Sentencing Project examines. Referred to as “death by incarceration,” long-term sentences have become the lifeblood of America’s hyper-incarceration rates.
One of every seven prisoners is ...
by Casey Bastian
On February 25, 2021, the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) settled an employment discrimination lawsuit filed by a former guard, who alleged he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias from his mostly White co-workers on the correctional staff Parnall Correctional Facility (PCF), a minimum-security prison in Jackson ...
by Casey Bastian
The story of Archie Williams shocks and inspires. A Black man spent 36 years in a Louisiana prison for the rape and stabbing of a White woman before his 2019 release. There was just one problem: Williams was innocent.
Despite this experience, Williams has maintained a warm ...
by Casey Bastian
Very few criminal offenses in America allow for a sentence of death. Nevertheless, too many people are dying in jails and prisons while serving a sentence or simply waiting for the process to slowly grind its way to a resolution. Oftentimes people can’t make bail for even ...
by Casey J. Bastian
In 2004, former FBI agent Richard Beasley first met Jon D. Ponder when he was arresting Ponder for bank robbery. Beasley recalled that Ponder was “angry, scared, frustrated and anxious about his future.” Ponder found himself in a small jail cell in Las Vegas looking at ...
