by Daniel A. Rosen
An attorney with a small private practice in Albuquerque has blazed an unconventional path to reforming the use of solitary confinement in New Mexico. According to an October 2020 profile in Rolling Stone magazine, Matthew Coyte has successfully sued local jails over abuses of the practice, ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Ex-death-row prisoner Debra Milke’s civil suit against Arizona authorities claiming wrongful conviction was dismissed by a federal judge on October 29, 2020 because she repeatedly destroyed documents relevant to her case.
Judge Roslyn Silver harshly criticized Milke in her ruling, saying the destroyed records would have ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Nevada state officials suspended a Department of Corrections policy that used a victims’ bill of rights to take up to 80 percent of funds sent to prisoners by family members, but in January 2021 restarted it but cut the maximum to 50 percent.
Marsy’s Law was ...
by Daniel Rosen
Waylon Young Bird, a 52-year-old federal prisoner with serious kidney disease, wrote over a dozen letters to the judge who sentenced him asking for compassionate release. He died of COVID-19 in early November 2020, a week after his last plea was written.
“I’m afraid I may be ...
by Daniel Rosen
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paid out almost a half-billion dollars in overtime in 2019, nearly twice what it paid in regular salaries, CalMatters reported in August 2020. Responding to a public records request from the publication, CDCR provided salary data on regular and overtime ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
A captain with the St. Louis County Justice Center is under investigation for potentially inappropriate use of a Taser in several recent cases. In May 2020, he employed a Taser to subdue a woman in crisis with a history of mental illness. In June, the same ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
On Election Day in November 2020, Washington State attorney and former prisoner Tarra Simmons became the first person convicted of a felony elected to the state’s legislature.
Prior to the election, she said she was running to help give people “a first chance so they won’t ...
by Kevin Bliss and Daniel A. Rosen
In a June 2020 report, an official with the Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) determined that employees at the Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) in Portland followed “expected practices” in using pepper spray on detainees bound for a state psychiatric hospital.
The review by ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
A 16-year-old in Mississippi has spent almost a year and a half in an adult jail without being indicted, according to a July 30, 2020, article in The Appeal. And his case is by no means unique; thousands more in the state are caught in ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Migrants in ICE custody in New Mexico were attacked with pepper spray on May 14, 2020, to end a days-long hunger strike. The detainees, housed at Torrance County Detention Facility, privately run by CoreCivic, were protesting the food quality and lack of protection from COVID-19.
“Suddenly ...
