by Chuck Sharman
Under an agreement signed on September 17, 2025, California’s Ventura County agreed to pay $8.5 million to Patricia and Anthony Garcia, the wife and son of Tony Garcia, 70, who was murdered by a fellow detainee at the County’s Todd Road Jail (TRJ) in …
by Chuck Sharman
Tackling the pernicious practice of using prepaid debit cards to return funds seized from prisoners upon their release—and then eating up the balance with fees—the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, has filed several lawsuits. Two have …
by Chuck Sharman
On February 13, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved an $11 million settlement agreement between DuPage County and the Estate of Reyneda Aguilar-Hurtado, a detainee who died in the County jail in Wheaton in June 2023.
A mother …
by Chuck Sharman
Susie Annie Balfour, who spent 33 years incarcerated at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) before her 2021 release, died on August 5, 2025, the victim of metastatic breast cancer that she blamed on exposure to toxic chemicals in cleaning agents she was forced to use …
by Chuck Sharman
The federal government’s immunity from lawsuits for damages might provide cover for mistreating prisoners to any employee of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), if it wasn’t for a decades-old decision by the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) in Carlson v. Green, 446 …
by Chuck Sharman
On September 12, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky rejected a desperate plea from a transgender state prisoner who had been receiving hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for her gender dysphoria for nine years before a new anti-trans state law was …
by Chuck Sharman
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted on July 15, 2025, to pay $14 million to former state prisoner Alexander Torres, 45, to settle his federal civil rights claim over his wrongful conviction and two-decade imprisonment for a 2000 murder that he didn’t commit.
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by Chuck Sharman
On September 18, 2025, less than a month after losing a bid to dismiss a wrongful death suit filed by the survivors of a detainee murdered in the county lockup, San Diego County filed a crossclaim against its jail medical contractor, NaphCare, along with the …
by Chuck Sharman
Two federal appeals courts recently considered cases involving delays in summoning care for detainees in medical distress. In one, the Administrator of Alabama’s Clarke County Jail (CCJ) didn’t summon emergency responders for a prisoner having a heart attack but made him dress and walk to …
by Chuck Sharman
In a letter dated September 10, 2025, attorneys for a group of more than 500 prisoners at Indiana’s Pendleton Correctional Facility announced a $2.4 million settlement of claims arising from an outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in late 2021 and 2022 caused by contaminated water. All …
