by Douglas Ankney
On June 24, 2022, U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the Northern District of Illinois entered an amended consent decree in a class-action suit challenging prisoner healthcare in the state Department of Corrections (DOC).
Filed in October 2011 by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of ...
by Douglas Ankney
On August 19, 2022, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of Prison Legal News (PLN) and Criminal Legal News (CLN), filed suit in federal court for the District of Wyoming, accusing Park County Detention Center Administrator Joseph D. Torczon and Sheriff Scott ...
by Douglas Ankney
On August 30, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that Missouri’s parole review process does not violate the constitutional rights of prisoners who were sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) as juveniles. The decision came after a rehearing of the full Court ...
by Douglas Ankney
On March 23, 2022, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed a new law to shield the identity of drug suppliers for state executions by lethal injection.
House Bill 658 was written by the state’s Attorney General and Department of Correction (DOC). It won complete approval in the ...
by Douglas Ankney
It took him three years to do it, but Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D) finally appointed a director for the state Correctional Systems Oversight Commission (CSOC). On April 4, 2022, former New York City Department of Corrections (DOC) Monitor Christin Johnson assumed the role created by the ...
by Douglas Ankney
On January 3, 2022, the Supreme Court of California held that the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) did not abuse its authority when it promulgated regulations excluding from nonviolent-offender parole review any prisoner currently serving a sentence for a violent felony, even one not designated ...
by Douglas Ankney
On September 28, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied the appeal of a federal prisoner in Florida, whose application for compassionate release satisfied the first factor enumerated by statute, saying that one factor carried no more weight than others referenced in ...
by Douglas Ankney
On November 4, 2020, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel C. Hoppe of the Western District of Virginia recommended an award of $5,000 plus costs to prisoner Plaintiff Erin D. Proctor in his claiming former Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Robert Jefferson abused him and then retaliated against ...
By Douglas Ankey
A Vermont prisoner’s valiant effort to hold the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to account died a maddening bureaucratic death in state court on April 4, 2022.
The facts underlying the case began in April 2017, when DOC placed state prisoner Anthony Davey on community-reentry furlough status. ...
By Douglas Ankey
In a decision released on December 1, 2020, the Supreme Court of Connecticut held that a special credibility instruction is required for a jury when hearing testimony from a jailhouse informant regardless of the location where the defendant allegedly confessed.
When Billy Ray Jones was tried for ...
