by Christopher Zoukis

Jack Daniel McCullough, a 76-year-old veteran and former police officer, was convicted in 2012 of the 1957 abduction and murder of a young girl in perhaps the oldest cold case in the nation to go to trial. He was sentenced to life in prison and his murder conviction was affirmed on appeal. See: People v. McCullough, 2015 IL App (2d) 121364, 38 N.E.3d 1 (Ill. App. Ct. 2d Dist. 2015).

But newly-elected Dekalb County State’s Attorney Richard Schmack was not convinced of McCullough’s guilt. Schmack embarked on a six-month review of the case, including reams of vintage police and FBI reports from the original investigation – most of which were not allowed into evidence during McCullough’s bench trial.

At the end of the review, Schmack concluded that McCullough’s alibi was legitimate and he could not have committed the crime. Noting that the state was “ethically compelled and constrained to admit the existence of clear and convincing evidence” establishing a defendant’s innocence, Schmack joined McCullough’s attorneys in seeking his immediate release.

Despite the rare agreement of both prosecutor and defense counsel, Judge William Brady initially refused to free McCullough in late March 2016. Acknowledging that he was “making ...

by Christopher Zoukis

The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), facing chronic guard shortages, has resorted to either paying overtime to officers who work additional shifts or assigning nurses and other healthcare staff to security positions. In the latter case, one major shortcoming is that medical employees have minimal security training.

The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General deemed the staffing shortage a “crisis,” with the BOP experiencing a medical staff vacancy rate of 40 percent or higher. For a corrections system struggling to provide healthcare for almost 190,000 prisoners, there were 656 medical job vacancies as of March 2016.

The nurses assigned to guard duty by the BOP were, for the most part, members of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS), which has around 900 members working in federal prisons. PHS nurses, clinicians and therapists have “routinely been pressed into patrolling prison recreation yards, securing cell blocks, transporting inmates to and from maximum security zones, [and have] pulled regular shifts monitoring inmate telephone calls and correspondence,” USA Today reported on April 27, 2016.

Further contributing to the BOP’s questionable reassignment of nurses and other medical staff is a conflict between BOP staff members, who are represented by the ...

by Christopher Zoukis

The Bureau of Prisons settled a claim of retaliation brought by prisoner Kevin L. Shehee for $7,350.00 in December 2000.

Shehee was serving a 262-month sentence at Federal Correctional Institution Manchester, Kentucky when he filed his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim in federal court. He sued FCI ...

by Christopher Zoukis

Numerous federal prisoners have voiced strong condemnations of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Charles Samuels, after Samuels told a Senate committee that the BOP does not use solitary confinement at a hearing on August 4, 2015.  The inmates dispute Samuels' comments as false, and part of a continuing pattern of lies, corruption and misuse of public funds, all while treating large numbers of prisoners "like dogs," as one prisoner put it.

Giving sworn testimony as to the BOP's difficulties in operating its prisons on what he characterized as limited resources, Samuels told the committee, "We do not, under any circumstances, nor have we ever had the practice of putting an individual in a cell alone," when discussing the use of Special Housing Units (SHU), commonly described as "the Hole" by staff and prisoners alike. "We do not practice solitary confinement," he said under oath.

Samuels' comments on the subject angered some prisoners, and one accused the Director of committing perjury. "How can he get away with saying such a bald-face lie?" said Jay Martt, confined at FCI Terre Haute, IN. "All that one of the senators needs to do is subpoena any log-book from ...

by Christopher Zoukis

On September 7, 2013, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) prisoner Joseph Duran, 35, a mentally ill inmate who breathed through the use of a tube in his throat, died following a use of force incident. He had been pepper-sprayed in the face for refusing to remove his hands from a food slot in his cell door.

Following guards' forcible entry into Duran's cell, medical staff repeatedly requested for Duran to be removed from the cell and decontaminated. They refused. Over the next seven hours he ripped out his breathing tube and allegedly forced spaghetti and feces into the hole in his throat from a 2006 tracheotomy. While the Amador County coroner deemed his death a suicide, a subsequent CDCR review determined that it was an accidental death and that Duran had been attempting to "soothe" the burning in his throat from the chemical irritant.

On September 4, 2014, Duran's parents, Steven and Elaine Duran, filed a wrongful death suit in federal court in Sacramento. Attorney Stewart Katz represents the family. Among the allegations are that CDCR staff used excessive force and engaged in a cover-up. The lawsuit names 13 CDCR officials, including Mule Creek Warden ...

by Christopher Zoukis

The leading organization for the nation's architects has rejected a call from some of its members to reject employment that would involve the design of certain prison facilities, such as execution chambers and Special Housing Unit cells.

In February 2014, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) was faced with a very troubling ethics petition. Proposed by Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), the petition proposed modifying the AIA's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to "prohibit the design of spaces for killing, torture, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." More specifically, the petition singled out "execution chambers," "super-maximum security prisons," and "solitary confinement facilities for juveniles and the mentally ill." The petition was denied.

According to Helene Combs Dreiling, AIA's former president, "It's just not something we want to determine as a collective. Architects self-select, depending on where they feel they can contribute best." Raphael Sperry, ADPSR's architect who led the petition, disagrees with allowing the profession to continue building such facilities. If he had his way, those who do build such facilities should be censured. In his view, architects have a social responsibility to act in the public interest, projecting the idea that architects, like doctors, should ...

by Christopher Zoukis

According to Bryan Cox, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “claims of U.S. citizenship of individuals encountered by ICE officers, agents, and attorneys are immediately and carefully investigated and analyzed.” However, the United States has a long history of mistakenly deporting its own citizens; since ...

by Christopher Zoukis

Video calling* is gaining a significant foothold in local jails. The technology is seen both as less costly than in-person visitation and a potential profit generator for jailers. But it can also have a detrimental impact on prisoners’ ability to communicate with their families; nevertheless, for-profit companies are rolling out video calling services as fast as they can. [See: PLN, Nov. 2014, p.48; March 2014, p.50; Sept. 2012, p.42; Jan. 2010, p.22]

Often, when a jail contracts with a video calling provider, such as Securus Technologies, all in-person visitation is banned. [See: PLN, July 2013, p.44]. For example, in Maine’s Cheshire County and York County jails, as well as the Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset, in-person visits were banned after video calling services were implemented. Richard Van Winkler, superintendent of the Cheshire County jail, defended the move – which will earn his facility 20 cents of every $1 charged by Securus when prisoners’ families pay for video calls.

“When one violates the law and one has to serve time in a public institution, one of the liberties that one could lose is the opportunity to hug a loved one,” he said. “And you know ...

by Christopher Zoukis

An October 2016 report released by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a research and policy group that opposes the privatization of government services, details the millions of dollars spent by for-profit prison companies to influence public officials.

The report tracks political expenditures by private prison firms, including Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, now known as CoreCivic) and the GEO Group, to expand their role in the U.S. criminal justice system. The report exposes a serious flaw in the conventional belief that such companies will reduce costs, as some of the funds from taxpayer-paid private prison contracts are used for political contributions and lobbying intended to grow the for-profit prison industry and drain even more money from public coffers.

The report is organized around three distinct “avenues of influence” used by private prison firms. The first is the most obvious method by which the companies exert influence: campaign contributions. Between state, federal and local campaigns, the private prison industry spends millions of dollars each year supporting political candidates.

At the state level, the industry contributed over $2.5 million to 360 candidates for public office during the 2013 and 2014 election years. On the federal level, CCA and the ...

by Christopher Zoukis

In an odd twist in this age of prison and jail overcrowding, the Two Rivers Regional Detention Facility (TRRDF) in Hardin, Montana has had an awfully difficult time finding prisoners to fill its beds. Opened in mid-2007 as an intended economic boon for the area, the jail, which is overseen by the Two Rivers Authority (TRA), the economic development arm of the City of Hardin, has not been able to obtain enough contracts to cover interest payments on bonds used to build the $27 million facility, much less break even or generate profit. As PLN has repeatedly reported over the years, this has left city officials scrambling to locate prisoners for almost a decade. [See: PLN, Aug. 2013, p.42; March 2011, p.34; Dec. 2009, p.1].

The situation is dire for Hardin. The facility sat vacant for seven years until TRA entered into a contract with Louisiana-based Emerald Correctional Management to operate the jail in
May 2014.

Under Emerald, TRRDF, which has a capacity of 464 beds, housed just 250 prisoners under a contract with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Until November 1, 2015, it only housed Native American detainees.

That contract, the facility’s largest since ...