A Kentucky state jury found for the defendants in a lawsuit alleging a jail guard and nurse failed to monitor and treat a pretrial detainee’s serious medical condition, resulting in her death. Recently, however, the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial.
Melissa Czaja, 34, was arrested ...
An Arkansas federal jury awarded $5,000 to a prisoner in an Eighth Amendment failure to treat claim.
While in the Jackson County Jail on a warrant for failure to pay child support, Hubert Wren was bitten by a brown recluse spider. The area around the wound began to swell, causing ...
A private medical vendor’s discontinuation of a pre-trial detainee’s psychotropic medication in the middle of a double-homicide trial was being called government misconduct that merited dismissal of the charges.
Michael John Pierce, 39, suffers from schizophrenia. He was charged in the murders of two people in their Quilcene, Washington residence ...
Official with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) devised a plan in 2006 that aimed to chop the head off of prison gangs. What CDCR did not consider was that the gang leaders it indefinitely isolated on the Short Corridor of the Special Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican ...
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) has white racist gangs operating at its highest levels, threatening the lives of deputies who exposed it, and labeling them as “race traitors” and “snitches.” Those claims are included in a federal civil action filed by two LASD deputies.
Michael Rathbun and James ...
The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) has “a policy of routinely refusing to subtract previously credited good time as well as some previously credited earned time from inmates’ sentences despite the fact that the inmate has earned those credits,” charges a federal civil rights complaint. The suit, which may become ...
California prison mental health care workers are practicing “defensive medicine” and overmedicating their patients with psychotropic medications. Fear of triggering a lawsuit or federal court order drives the practice, admits a former top prison official.
An Associated Press report found spending on psychotropic drugs in California prisons greatly exceeds that ...
The City of San Francisco negotiated a new contract with its food vendor, Aramark Correction Services, to provide a “heart-healthy menu” for prisoners at the San Francisco County Jail (SFCJ). The new fare, hopefully, will diminish the need for prisoners to prepare meals from the snack food laden jail commissary. ...
by David M. Reutter and Rod L. Bower
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy David “Lee” Baca faces up to six months in prison after pleading guilty on February 10, 2016 to charges that he lied to federal investigators in an attempt to cover up a conspiracy to thwart an FBI probe into brutality and excessive use of force by deputies in the county’s sprawling jail system.
In a plea agreement filed in federal court, Baca admitted to twice lying about his involvement in hiding a prisoner-turned-informant from FBI agents. In fact, according to the agreement, Baca ordered the prisoner, Anthony Brown, to be moved from facility to facility under different names, and placed then-Undersheriff Paul Tanaka in charge of executing that plan, dubbed “Operation Pandora’s Box.”
Baca also acknowledged that he lied when he told investigators he was unaware that his subordinates planned to contact FBI Special Agent Leah Marx at her home. Deputies confronted Marx and, in an effort to intimidate her, falsely threatened her with arrest. Baca admitted that he directed the deputies to approach Marx, telling them they should “do everything but put handcuffs” on her, according to his plea agreement.
The guilty plea marks a stunning ...
The City of Chicago paid $7,625,000 to settle a civil rights action brought by a former prisoner who was wrongfully convicted of rape and exonerated by DNA evidence.
Dean Cage was 27 years old when he was arrested for the November 1994 rape of a 15-year-old girl as she walked ...
