by Derek Gilna
Many troubling details surround the 13 executions carried out by the Department of Justice in the final months of the Trump administration, including allegations that the drug used, pentobarbital, caused intense pain and suffering before death are reportedly being suppressed by federal officials. If the federal justice ...
by Derek Gilna
It seems inconceivable that prison personnel selected to carry out the ultimate judicial sanction – execution — would willfully violate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and expose themselves, their families, prisoners and staff, clergy, and media witnesses to COVID-19. But that is exactly what happened, ...
by Derek Gilna
Federal prisoners transferred tohome confinement to serve their sentences because of the COVID-19 emergency could return to lockup if a January 15, 2021, opinion issued by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel is followed.
According to the memo, if the U.S. attorney general ...
by Derek Gilna
Health experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) agree that keeping people from coming in close contact with one another through social distancing is the most reliable method to stop the spread of COVID-19. So is the need to quarantine positive cases from ...
by Derek Gilna
Karla Bello, who claims that she was mistreated by Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office employees while in custody for 11 days for unpaid parking tickets, filed suit on September 10, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, alleging violations of her civil rights. ...
by Derek Gilna
According to statistics compiled by The Marshall Project, one in five U.S. prisoners has already contracted COVID-19, a rate more than four times that of the general population. The problem has been particularly acute in the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) and the separate federal prisons ...
by Derek Gilna
Global Tel*Link (GTL) has long been one of the principal beneficiaries of the $1 billion prisoner call industry, through a combination of astute business practices, intense lobbying, and a business model of questionable propriety, if not illegality. GTL, which has been a defendant in multiple lawsuits by ...
by Derek Gilna
A Correctional Emergency Response Team, also known as CERT, is under investigation for allegedly placing a noose on the bunk of a Black prisoner, Aaron Tyson, at State Correctional Institution Houtzdale, in Pennsylvania.
After guards searched their dorm room, Tyson and his roommates noticed something resembling a ...
by Derek Gilna
A federal judge on September 8, 2020, once again ordered the California Department of Corrections (CDOC), to resolve numerous violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Rehabilitation Act (RA). The most recent litigation and court order affects only those prisoners confined at the R.J. Donovan ...
by Derek Gilna
On July 3, 2020, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported prisoner John Dailey died of COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) in Butner, North Carolina. The 62-year-old cancer patient had been granted release the month before to home confinement. But BOP had fought the release, ...
