On January 30, 2025, a jury in South Carolina’s Richland County Court of Common Pleas, Fifth Judicial Circuit, awarded $250,000 to a state prisoner who accused the state Department of Corrections (DOC) of gross negligence in failing to rein in a guard who assaulted him. 

Prisoner Daniel Tyler Huneycutt’s allegations involved an incident that occurred at the Tyger River Correctional Institute (TRCI) on May 14, 2019. Huneycutt, who was transferred to TRCI the week before, went to the kiosk to send a job assignment request to his case manager. But there was a formal count then underway. Cpl. Vasily Chernyak, Jr. came into the dorm and ordered him return to his cell, informing Huneycutt that he must remain there during count.

Huneycutt apologized, stating that he was unaware of the requirement. But as he was returning to his cell, “Chernyak blocked his way,” the prisoner’s complaint recalled. The guard then “put his chemical munition canister one to two inches from [Huneycutt’s] face,” spraying its contents “directly [into Huneycutt’s] left eye.” Another guard, Sgt. McMorris, ordered Chernyak to stop, but the guard sprayed Huneycutt at least two additional times.

While Huneycutt was obtaining medical treatment, Chernyak taunted him about how “good” ...

On February 24, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed judgment that the “postcard-only” policy for periodicals and books at Arkansas’ Baxter County Jail and Detention Center constituted a de facto blanket ban on publications in violation of the First Amendment rights of the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News. The Court further affirmed an award of $259,350 in attorney fees and costs to HRDC.

HRDC sued Baxter County in 2017 to enjoin the jail’s policy prohibiting all detainee mail except for legal mail and postcards. After a three-day trial in April 2019, the federal court for the Western District of Arkansas found the policy was reasonably related to legitimate penological interests and did not violate HRDC’s First Amendment rights. HRDC appealed.

The Eighth Circuit reversed and remanded the case, citing the second of four factors that must be considered when balancing prison and jail censorship with the First Amendment rights of those incarcerated and those who would communicate with them. As outlined in Turner v. Safely, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), courts must consider whether a restriction has a valid, rational connection to a legitimate penological purpose, whether ...

On January 2, 2025, a settlement was signed by the Plaintiff in a lawsuit over the suicide of a juvenile pretrial detainee held at the lockup in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County. Under the terms of the agreement, the County agreed to pay $550,000 to the administrator of the Estate of the dead teen, “D.W.” In addition to the cash payout, Sheriff Garry L. McFadden promised to make substantive policy changes to protect detainees.

Though he was just 17, D.W. had endured a traumatic life before arriving at the County Detention Center (CDC). By age three, he had been sexually abused. By age six, he had been assaulted with a gun. When he was 11, D.W. was the victim of more abuse and assault. He also suffered a serious head injury as a child, and his father was imprisoned by the time D.W. was arrested. As a result of these events, D.W. had noted anger issues; he was a restless, impulsive risk-taker, and a substance abuser, too. 

On November 5, 2020, D.W. was booked into the Rockingham CDC and transferred to the Alexander Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Alexander County. There, employees of the state Department Public Safety (DPS) placed ...

On January 14, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that a former Illinois prisoner’s deliberate indifference claim against a healthcare provider contracted by the state Department of Corrections (DOC) could proceed to trial, though dismissal of an identical claim against four other staffers was upheld. The lower court had determined that prisoner Clarence Lewis impermissibly split his claims against Wexford Health Sources’ Dr. Dina Paul between his suit and another filed with other plaintiffs also challenging treatment for their Hepatitis-C. But the appellate Court said that Dr. Paul waited too long to raise the objection, thereby waiving the defense. The Court further held that failure to recruit counsel for Lewis’ claims against the other Wexford staffers was not shown to be error.

Lewis sued the five providers, alleging that they were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs while he was imprisoned at Hill Correctional Center from 2013 to 2018. Lewis accused Dr. Kul B. Sood, Nurse Lara Vollmer and Dr. Catalino Bautista of misdiagnosing him and mistreating him for diabetes and COPD when what he really suffered was a bowel disorder. Lewis further alleged that Bautista delayed the colonoscopy procedure which discovered it and ...

On January 29, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that Michigan’s “tolling provision” does not affect the administrative remedy exhaustion requirement in the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. Instead, the provision only pauses Michigan’s statute of limitations.

Michigan prisoner Lamont Heard, who is serving a life sentence, alleged in a civil rights lawsuit that prison officials retaliated against his litigation activities by transferring him to different housing in “the Burns unit.” The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan dismissed the complaint for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, and Heard appealed.

The Sixth Circuit found that the case hinged on the procedural timeline. Heard stated that he was transferred to the Burns unit on January 10, 2017, and that he filed a grievance the next day. Months later, the grievance was returned with instructions to file it with the local grievance coordinator, which Heard did. He never received a response.

Heard had filed a separate civil rights complaint on December 4, 2017, concerning a different prison transfer. On March 2, 2018, Heard moved to amend that complaint to add the Burns unit claim. The district court then dismissed the claim ...

On February 4, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted three “male-to-female transgender women” imprisoned by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) a temporary restraining order (TRO). The order prevented BOP from transferring the prisoners to a men’s prison and from discontinuing administration of their prescribed hormone therapy medication. The district court subsequently allowed nine other trans BOP prisoners to join the suit, extending the TRO to protect them until August 2025.

On January 20, 2025, Pres. Donald Trump (R) signed an Executive Order that required government officials to “ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers.” The order further required the BOP to revise its policies to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” As PLN reported, a trans BOP prisoner identified as “Maria Moe” then succeeded in winning a TRO from the federal court for the District of Massachusetts on January 26, 2025, preventing her transfer to a men’s lockup. [See: PLN, Mar. 2025, p.43.]

The three prisoners who filed their complaint in the D.C. ...

On February 12, 2025, attorneys for a former detainee jailed by Minnesota’s Anoka County stipulated to dismissal of his claims for injuries suffered when he was denied withdrawal treatment while incarcerated. In exchange, the County agreed to pay $2.585 million to the injured jail survivor, Deytona Green, on its behalf, as well as for its former medical care contractor, MEnD Correctional Care PLLC. 

While Green suffered severe injuries, he is one of the few pretrial detainees to survive and sue jail officials for the failure to provide drug withdrawal treatment. Green, then 25, was booked into the Anoka County Jail (ACJ) on drug charges on February 5, 2022. He informed jailers that he had a valid prescription for Suboxone to treat his opioid addiction. He also admitted to shooting up heroin earlier that day. 

But ACJ officials confiscated the prescribed medication that was on Green’s person at the time of his arrest and placed it in a locked box in property storage. Green’s mother and his probation officer both called ACJ, offering to bring more of his prescribed medication to the jail to ensure he suffered no disruption in treatment. But they were denied.

Meanwhile Green never received any ...

Striking a rare blow for fairness, the Supreme Court of Kentucky issued a ruling on February 25, 2025, reversing the imposition of $10,972 in jail fees upon Dillian Ford at his criminal sentencing in Carlisle County Circuit Court. Because there was no evidence in the record that the fees were based upon more than an unofficial agreement between Carlisle County and neighboring McCraken County, where Ford was held, the high Court found error in the lack of an officially adopted policy, as required by state law.

Ford was sentenced on November 17, 2022, to a total of 15 years on his underlying charges and fined $10,972 in jail fees for the 422 days he was held in custody prior to sentencing. During the plea colloquy, Ford stipulated that Carlisle County paid McCracken County $26 per day to imprison him.

On appeal, Ford did not question the agreement between the counties. However, he argued that imposition of the fee was error because there was no evidence that either county had a jail reimbursement policy approved by the county’s governing body.

In Capstraw v. Commonwealth, 641 S.W.3d 148 (Ky. 2022), the Court had held that a trial court may not impose ...

On October 4, 2024, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) settled the second of two lawsuits brought by prisoners involved in educational programs who claimed that they were subjected to retaliation after classroom debates over political and social issues piqued reactionary prison officials.

Centralia Correctional Center prisoner Anthony McNeal was assigned as a peer educator in the Citizens Civics Education program, which was authorized by state lawmakers with the Re-Entering Citizens Civics Education Act, 730 ILCS 200/1; the primary goal of the law is to teach soon-to-be released prisoners about their voting eligibility and how voting is vital to successful re-entry. 

On March 1, 2023, McNeal was performing his assignment, carrying out a lesson plan that discussed poll taxes, literacy tests, and other racist laws from the Jim Crow era. In response to another prisoner’s inquiry, McNeal informed the class how many southern states had used literacy tests and poll taxes to suppress the Black vote.

Nathan Tucker, a prison official assigned to monitor the class, cut McNeal off and instructed him not to discuss racism in class. Tucker further insisted that McNeal present literary tests as having a legitimate nondiscriminatory purpose of ensuring that voters “knew what they ...

On October 24, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois entered judgment awarding $69,384.73 to a state prisoner in his civil rights action alleging a Department of Corrections (DOC) food service director subjected him to excessive force over a grievance filed against him. The judgment included damages awarded by a trial jury and an additional award for attorney fees and costs.

Prisoner Jeremiah Fallon, then 35, filed a grievance on September 19, 2019, alleging that food service supervisors at Pontiac Correctional Center (PCC) fed prisoners cereal that they knew was contaminated by mice droppings. The next day, Food Service Director Dean Wessels confronted Fallon in the prison’s kitchen, where he “got in (his) face, and screamed and cursed at him,” Fallon’s civil rights complaint recalled. After Fallon admitted filing the grievance, Wessels told Fallon that he was fired and demanded he leave the kitchen immediately.

Fallon walked into the adjoining hallway. But the gate was locked, so he remained there. Wessels saw him, screamed at him, and demanded to know why he had not left. Surveillance video captured what happened next as Wessels violently slammed Fallon into the locked gates, “causing extreme pain and injury to ...