On April 1, 2024, jury in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois awarded $875,000 to state prisoner John E. Taylor, Jr., after finding officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) and its contracted medical provider, Wexford Health Sources, had violated his constitutional rights with the deliberate indifference ...
In a case of importance to California prisoners, the state Court of Appeals, Sixth Appellate District, held on June 28, 2024, that Penal Code § 2900.5 requires a trial court to apply presentence credits for periods that a defendant has spent in jail toward any and all sentences handed down “concurrently ...
Since its September 2021 ruling in Brawner v. Scott Cty., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has held that pretrial detainees challenging their medical care in jail are not fully held to the “deliberate indifference” standard laid out by the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) ...
The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government (NMFOG) has filed an enforcement complaint under the state Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) against the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners, seeking release of video and other records from the County’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), as well as a declaration whether MDC ...
The city of Durham, North Carolina agreed on May 20, 2024, to pay $7.75 million to resolve the wrongful conviction claim of exonerated prisoner Darryl Howard. He spent almost 24 years in prison before a federal jury agreed that former Durham cop Darrell Dowdy improperly manipulated evidence used to convict ...
In November 2024, a Massachusetts jury awarded $13 million to former state prisoner Michael Sullivan, 64, as compensation for his wrongful conviction for a 1986 armed robbery and murder. Sullivan’s case involved false laboratory test results, as well as a prosecutorial plea bargain that obtained false testimony from the real ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 14, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court’s denial of qualified immunity (QI) to James LeBlanc, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC), in a lawsuit alleging he was liable for detaining prisoners ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 22, 2022, an inspector appointed by the federal court for the Western District of Tennessee reported that the Shelby County Jail remained understaffed even as a surge in bookings drove up the number of prisoners and detainees held there, frustrating efforts to fully vaccinate ...
by David M. Reutter
In two recent cases, federal courts have granted orders to seize funds from prisoners after sizable balances in their canteen accounts came to prosecutors’ attention.
In federal court for the Western District of Michigan on August 19, 2021, Judge Janet T. Neff granted prosecutors’ motion to ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 29, 2021, the Court of Appeal for the First District of California decided that a “bail bond premium financing agreement” is a consumer credit contract and, under California Civil Code § 1799.91, is unenforceable against any cosigner to whom the statutory notice is not ...
