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Articles by Derek Gilna

EEOC finds BOP Workplace Retaliation Widespread

A U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) Office of Federal Operations (OFO) has issued a report that finds that a culture of "widespread retaliation" exists against employees who file EEOC complaints. The November 2010 report, which was compiled over a three-year period, and incorporated survey forms sent to all Federal ...

Wisconsin Prisoner's Pro-Se AEDPA Action Dismissed, Reversed and Remanded

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin's denial of a pro-se application for a writ of habeas corpus by prisoner Stanley E. Martin, Jr., was reversed and remanded by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals based upon "an improper interpretation of the relevant sections of the Antiterrorism ...

7th Circuit Reaffirms Voluntariness of BOP’s Inmate Financial Responsibility Program

In a ruling of significance to the approximately 218,000 prisoners in the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the Seventh Circuit has reaffirmed that a federal prisoner cannot be ordered by his or her sentencing court to participate in the BOP’s Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP).

Federal prisoner Ondray McKnight was convicted ...

DC Court Disbars Former Federal Prosecutor for Misconduct

On March 8, 2012, for the first time in over ten years, a former federal prosecutor was disbarred for “egregious” misconduct during the prosecution of several high-profile murder cases in the 1990s.

According to a 2010 investigation by USA Today, at that time there had been “201 documented cases since ...

U.S. Citizens Mistakenly Snared, Deported by DHS and ICE

An increasing number of American citizens have been questioned, detained and even deported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as a result of databases that incorrectly identify them as undocumented immigrants.

According to the New York Times, “Detentions of citizens are part ...

Tenth Circuit: Terrorism Prisoners Lack Liberty Interest in Transfer to ADX

Omar Rezaq, Mohammed Saleh, El-Sayyid Nosair and Ibrahim Elgabrowny, convicted of terrorism-related offenses and confined at the federal supermax ADX facility in Florence, Colorado, filed suit contending they had a liberty interest in “avoiding transfer without due process to the high-security prison.” The district court denied relief, which was affirmed ...

GAO Examines How BOP Can Reduce Prisoners’ Time in Prison

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a study on the Bureau of Prisons’ authority to shorten a federal prisoner’s sentence. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was found to have three principal authorities with respect to sentence reduction: prisoners can earn up to twelve months off for successfully completing ...

NY Federal Judge Deals Rare SHU Placement Defeat to BOP

Viktor A. Bout, a Russian international arms dealer ensnared in a DEA sting in 2008, extradited from Thailand and held in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) of the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York, won a court order compelling the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to transfer him to ...

Supreme Court Adopts Strickland Prejudice Standard for Rejected Plea Bargains

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, has extended Strickland guarantees of effective legal representation to defendants entering into plea bargains. According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who delivered the majority opinion of the Court, “The reality is that plea bargains have become so central to the administration of the ...

The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, by William J. Stuntz (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011). 432 pages, $35.00

Book review by Derek Gilna

The late William J. Stuntz, a Harvard law professor who conducted extensive research into the “rule of law” in American society, authored a tome that attempts to explore how the U.S. justice system has arrived at its current state. His posthumously published book, The Collapse ...