by David M. Reutter
A settlement agreement to remedy violations of the federal Clean Air Act at four Pennsylvania state prisons was announced on January 4, 2011. The settlement between the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PDOC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice covers violations ...
by David M. Reutter
“From this day forward I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.”
—Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Callins v. Collins, 501 U.S. 1141 (1994)
The only American producer of sodium thiopental has abandoned the market for that drug due to protests and export bans ...
by David M. Reutter
Pennsylvania-based Wexford Health Services, which bills itself as “the nation’s leading innovative correctional health care company,” entered into a confidential settlement with the estate of a New Mexico prisoner who died due to deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs.
When prisoner Michael Crespin arrived at ...
by David M. Reutter
Touting its 140-year history of using prisoner slave labor, the North Carolina Department of Correction (NDOC) announced in January 2011 that it will save taxpayers $27 million when building more than 2,700 new prison beds with prisoner labor.
The North Carolina legislature has allocated funds since ...
by David M. Reutter
Washington State’s Kitsap County Jail (KCJ) has corrected an error in how it calculates and awards “good time” to prisoners, after a former prisoner discovered the mistake and brought it to the attention of jail officials.
As prisoner Robert “Doug” Pierce was being shackled to be ...
by David M. Reutter
Despite a prosecutor’s request for a probationary sentence, a Massachusetts federal judge sentenced Patrice Tierney, 60, the wife of U.S. Representative John F. Tierney, to 30 days in prison followed by five months on house arrest as part of two years’ supervised release. She also must ...
by David M. Reutter
A brouhaha has erupted in Mississippi after an unregistered sex offender, who was working on the BP oil spill cleanup, was charged with raping a co-worker. The uproar revolves around the failure to perform background checks.
Rundy Charles Robertson, 41, was supervising a crew of cleanup ...
by David M. Reutter
An on-going investigation into contraband smuggling at Florida’s Broward County Jail in Fort Lauderdale has resulted in the arrest of five guards and a contract nurse.
Following months of witness interviews and a review of phone records, detectives arrested jail guards Salisia Pascoe, 30, Kiara Walker, ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 17, 2010, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s grant of summary judgment to prison officials on the eve of trial, holding it was an abuse of discretion to grant the oral motion for summary judgment so late in the proceedings. ...
by David M. Reutter
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated a Georgia federal district court’s injunction that prohibited a prisoner from submitting future filings, and reversed the lower court’s dismissal of the prisoner’s complaint.
Before the Eleventh Circuit was the appeal of Georgia prisoner Tracy A. Miller, incarcerated ...
