by Derek Gilna
The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), parent company of Prison Legal News, (PLN) and Criminal Legal News (CLN), on September 1, 2020, filed a federal civil rights case alleging violations of its federal civil rights statutes.
HRDC alleged in its complaint that ...
by Derek Gilna
In a clear victory for prisoners and their families, a federal judge has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to make stimulus payments previously denied to people in prison and jail. Affected individuals must apply no later than October 30, 2020 for ...
by Derek Gilna
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz has issued a report itemizing the multitude of mistakes and mismanagement that aggravated the troubled agency’s response to the COVID-19 hotspot at the Lompoc, California, federal prison complex.
The 36-page, July 23, 2020 report found that continuing ...
by Derek Gilna
In an order entered June 18, 2020, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the federal district court of the District of Columbia entered a preliminary injunction against the district’s Department of Corrections (“DOC”), its Central Detention Facility (“CDF”), and the Correctional Treatment Facility (“CTF”), finding deficiencies in its social-distancing, ...
by Derek Gilna
Damage from tornados with winds in excess of 150 miles per hour in April of 2020 forced the immediate transfer of 956 low-security federal prisoners from Estill, South Carolina to the maximum-security U.S. Prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The controversial move by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) ...
by Derek Gilna
Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president, has long touted her law enforcement background in winning election to the offices of district attorney, California attorney general, and U.S. senator. But, serious questions have been raised about an investigation her office launched in 2015 regarding corruption in ...
by Derek Gilna
Deep-pocketed friends and foundations associated with business mogul Michael Bloomberg are planning to spend around $20 million to pay the outstanding fines and court debts of former state felons in Florida, obligations that would otherwise disqualify them from voting in November.
Computer scientist Robert Montoye noted in ...
by Derek Gilna
Williams & Connolly LLP of Washington, D.C. and the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), parent organization of Prison Legal News (PLN), have won a federal civil rights judgment against the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail Authority in the United States District Court in Abingdon, Virginia.
PLN ...
by Derek Gilna
The Prisoner Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) of 1995 barred prisoners from filing a new lawsuit “in forma pauperis (IFP),” or without payment of a filing fee, if the prisoner had previously had three actions dismissed for failure to state a cause of action.
In the case of ...
by Derek Gilna
Although California is in the middle of a pandemic with the governor ordering the lock-down of the state’s economy and encouraged people to “stay home-save lives,” California prison medical director Dr. R. Steven Tharratt decided to transfer over 100 COIVD 19-positive prisoners from one prison to others, thereby ...
