by David M. Reutter
The sheriff’s office in Cherokee County, North Carolina lost five veteran deputies to abrupt firings and resignations in just two months following an October 2018 news report that described allegations of staged fights between prisoners in a crude form of “jailhouse justice.” In December, two former ...
by David M. Reutter
A Michigan federal district court initially held that a prisoner’s allegation that a guard’s use of a Taser constituted excessive force stated a viable claim. The court also denied the defendants’ motion to seal evidence in the case, though the suit was later dismissed.
Prisoner Gregory ...
by David M. Reutter
As Florida was preparing for Hurricane Dorian in August 2019, government officials told registered sex offenders to seek shelter in county jails. “It was such a traumatic experience to be incarcerated. I’m not going to subject myself to that voluntarily,” said a representative with the Florida ...
by David M. Reutter
A federal jury awarded $1,000 to each person who was subjected to a privacy violation due to Buck County’s willful violation of Pennsylvania’s Criminal History Record Information Act (CHRIA). Up to 66,799 people whose arrest information was posted online are eligible for inclusion in the class-action ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 9, 2019, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals answered in the affirmative whether it is “excessive force to tase for a second time a man who, as a result of an initial shock, is lying motionless on the floor and has wet himself, and ...
by David M. Reutter
Louisiana’s First Circuit Court of Appeal held on May 23, 2019 that a prisoner who filed grievances and a lawsuit concerning his medical treatment “exercised reasonable diligence to the best of his ability to determine if something was wrong with him.” Under the circumstances of the ...
by David M. Reutter
Florida federal district court has denied a motion to dismiss a civil rights action claiming that Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) officials and the FDOC’s former medical services contractor, Corizon Health, deprived a mentally ill prisoner of care he needed to prevent him from starving to ...
by David M. Reutter
n June 2019, Louisiana officials entered into a contract that will allow prisoners and Medicaid patients to receive advanced medications to treat hepatitis C (HCV). The five-year contract with Asegua Therapies, a subsidiary of Gilead Sciences, aims to treat at least 31,000 of the state’s 39,000 ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 3, 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s order that found the conditions of confinement on Virginia’s death row violated the Eighth Amendment. The appellate court held the conditions that existed when the suit was filed created a “substantial risk” ...
by Matt Clarke & David M. Reutter
In July 2019, seven prisoners died in facilities operated by the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC). The deaths followed a similar spate in August 2018, when 16 deaths occurred at the DOC’s three state prisons. Media coverage of the most recent deaths was ...
