By David C. Fathi | January 1, 2009
PRESIDENT-ELECT Barack Obama has said he'll close the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The question is how. If the government has evidence that Guantanamo detainees have committed crimes, it should put them on trial in the federal courts, just like other ...
by David C. Fathi1
The prison industry, like any other, has its fashions. And in the 1990s, "supermax" prisons were a raging fad. According to Chase Riveland, former secretary of corrections in Washington and Colorado, [t]hey have become political symbols of how "tough" a jurisdiction has become. In some places, ...
Washington's Early Release Credit System Unconstitutional Because It
Discriminates Against Poor People
By Meredith Martin Rountree & David C. Fathi
The Ninth Circuit in MacFarlane v. Walter, 179 F.3d 1131 (9th Cir. 1999),
recently held that Washington's early release credit system was
unconstitutional because it discriminates on the basis of ...
Total Confinement: Madness and Reason
in the Maximum Security Prison
by Lorna A. Rhodes, University of California Press, 2004 (329 pages, $19.95).
Reviewed by David C. Fathi
Like chain gangs and boot camps before them, "supermax" prisons were a raging fad in the 1990syet another round in the perpetual "tough ...
by David C. Fathi
On January 25, 2001, a federal jury in Washington, D.C. awarded nearly $175,000 to D.C. prisoner Lawrence Caldwell in his challenge to conditions at the District of Columbia's Maximum Security Facility (MSF) in Lorton, Virginia. The award included $25,000 each in punitive damages against the Warden ...
John Midgley and David C. Fathi
Recently, the United States Supreme Court has made it difficult for prisoners to successfully file claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that "necessarily imply" the invalidity of a conviction or a decision that lengthens a prison term, such as a prison disciplinary hearing that ...
by David C. Fathi
Youth incarcerated in the Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC) are challenging the state's failure to provide them with basic and special education, as required by state and federal law.
The lawsuit, Tunstall v. Bergeson , was filed in state court on November 21, 1997, and certified ...
by David C. Fathi, Jeff B. Crollard and Leonard J. Feldman
Lawyers representing two deaf prisoners in a lawsuit against the Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC) are seeking to broaden the suit into a class action on behalf of all deaf and hearing impaired prisoners in the custody of WDOC. ...
by David C. Fathi
On May 19, 1997, the United States Supreme Court decided Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 117 S.Ct. 1584 (1997). Although the Court reversed a favorable decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, it also reaffirmed the ability of prisoners to challenge unfair ...
by David Fathi
The State of Washington has filed a motion to vacate a long-standing federal court order in Hoptowit v. Ray, which governs conditions at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. Whether the state succeeds will depend largely on whether the court finds that constitutional violations at the ...
