by Chuck Sharman
On April 17, 2023, Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly filed bills to repeal the state’s death penalty. HB999 was introduced in the House and SB600 in the senate two months and one day after Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) – a onetime supporter of ...
by Chuck Sharman
On March 13, 2023, an attorney in Missouri’s Iron County helped a 64-year-old resident file a pro se motion in court, asking for an indigency hearing she never got before being ordered to pay restitution for letting her dog off-leash. When she couldn’t pay, Lori Ann Stuehmeyer ...
by Chuck Sharman
Old ghosts have come back to haunt the promotion of Vincent Grinnage to head the Emergency Services Unit (ESU) for the New York City Department of Correction (DOC).
It cost the city $3.3 million to settle the lawsuit filed over the suicide of Kalief Browder in 2015, ...
by Chuck Sharman
On April 7, 2023, a Texas grand jury indicted a guard at the Hays County Jail for shooting a shackled detainee in the back and killing him. Isaiah Garcia, 27, was charged with felony deadly conduct in the December 2022 death of Joshua Leon Wright, 36.
The ...
by Chuck Sharman
On August 12, 2022, the federal courtfor the Central District of California approved a settlement for the minor children of a jail detainee who committed suicide less than nine hours after he was arrested for auto burglary – despite the refusal of the car’s owner to press ...
by Chuck Sharman
On April 25, 2022, a former guard employed by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping a prisoner. After completing his prison term, Carlos Richard Martinez, 52, must also remain on supervised ...
by Eike Blohm, MD and Chuck Sharman
After Arizona resumed executions last year, following an eight-year hiatus, it quickly murdered three murderers on its death row.
On May 11, 2022, a lethal injection of pentobarbital was given to Clarence Dixon, 66, a mentally ill Native American, by then blind. Blaming ...
by Chuck Sharman
After two detainees died within a week at Arizona’s Pima County Jail — and just before two more committed suicide — two other detainees managed to walk out, all within two months.
One man escaped, and the other was released by a confused guard. On November 21, ...
by Chuck Sharman
In October 2022, PLN successfully concluded a months-long effort to obtain a copy of an agreement by San Diego County to pay nearly $3.5 million to settle its part of a lawsuit filed by the family of Paul Silva, a mentally ill detainee who died after a ...
by Chuck Sharman
On June 22, 2022, San Diego County agreed to pay $8.1 million to settle claims that a deputy outside a county jail chased a fleeing detainee and fatally shot him in the back. It was the largest payout for a wrongful death by the county in at ...
