by David M. Reutter
On July 7, 2022, a federal judge for the Southern District of Mississippi levied a $6,000 sanction against a federal prosecutor for lying about his COVID-19 vaccination status.
When Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore “Ted” Cooperstein was quizzed on three appearances before Judge Carlton W. Reeves on ...
by David M. Reutter
On April 28, 2022, the Nebraska Supreme Court held that a lower state court erred in denying good time credit when resentencing a state prisoner who had violated the terms of his post-release supervision (PRS).
The Court’s opinion was issued in an appeal by Joshua J. ...
by David M. Reutter
On March 31, 2022, the federal court for the Southern District of Mississippi granted a state prisoner’s petition and enjoined the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to provide him total hip revision surgery. He was also awarded damages and attorney fees totaling over $386,000.
Since age ...
by David M. Reutter
How much actual knowledge does a prisoner need to have of items in his possession to support a contraband conviction? According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the answer is “not much.”
That was the Court’s conclusion in a ruling filed on ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 5, 2022, a Wisconsin state prisoner signed off on an agreement to accept $8,000 to resolve claims that a guard destroyed his legal documents in retaliation for a lawsuit the prisoner was preparing to file.
The settlement comes on the heels of a ruling ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 1, 2022, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin decided that just because a jailhouse snitch used a government-provided device to tape incriminating statements made by a fellow pretrial detainee, he was not acting as a “state agent,” so the defendant’s right to counsel was not ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 5, 2022, Ohio’s Cuyahoga County agreed to pay $2.1 million to the estate of a mentally ill detainee arrested on bogus charges who was then left to commit suicide at the county jail (CCJ). The settlement is one of 11 so far in 30 ...
by David M. Reutter
Though Georgia has no other way to kill him, a condemned state prisoner convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to agree on June 23, 2022, that his objection to lethal injection is a viable civil rights claim and not a doomed petition for habeas corpus relief.
In ...
by David M. Reutter
On March 21, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York denied state prison officials’ motion to dismiss a lawsuit seeking damages for alleged Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment violations that stranded Kayson Pearson in solitary confinement without periodic reviews for 13 years. ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 17, 2022, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) stipulated to a $3.75 million judgment in state court to settle all claims — including costs and attorney’s fees — made by the estate of a prisoner who died in 2019 from breast cancer. Though DOC’s ...
