by Douglas Ankney
On September 19, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed dismissal of prisoner Tremayne Durham’s suit blaming employees of the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) for injuries he suffered in a shower slip-and-fall, after they denied him access to his cane and ...
Douglas Ankney
On September 15, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut granted a transexual prisoner’s motion for summary judgment in a suit accusing the state Department of Correction (DOC) of violating her Eighth Amendment rights by failing to treat her gender dysphoria (GD).
Veronica-May Clark is ...
by Douglas Ankney
On September 7, 2023, five former detainees at Arkansas’ Washington County Detention Center (WCDC) informed the federal court for the Western District of Arkansas that they had accepted payment of $2,000 each to settle claims alleging that a jail doctor without their knowledge or consent dosed them ...
by Douglas Ankney
On August 18, 2023, an agreement was reached by Defendant officials with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) paying $10,936,250 to settle claims brought in a class-action lawsuit by prisoners and detainees who suffered for a week without electricity or heat at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) ...
by Douglas Ankney and Casey J. Bastian
A spate of jail deaths in California’s San Bernardino County dating back to 2017 has led to at least four legal settlements totaling $3,232,500. Two additional settlements netted another $35,000 for detainees allegedly beaten by guards. Meanwhile one of the most recent jail ...
by Douglas Ankney
On September 14, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dealt a death blow to claims filed by the estate of a Texas jail detainee against the county that held him when he died. But all was not lost for the Estate of Savion ...
Douglas Ankney
According to an analysis from California’s Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD), reforms to the state’s felony-murder statutes had a dramatic effect by August 3, 2023. By then the agency had found sentence reductions granted to 602 state prisoners, since state lawmakers passed SB 1437 in 2018 ...
by Douglas Ankney
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit offered an Illinois state prisoner a hard lesson on July 27, 2023, affirming dismissal of his medical neglect claim against prison contractor Wexford Health Sources, Inc., for lack of evidence that expert testimony could have provided.
While playing ...
Douglas Ankney
Prisoners beware: On June 5, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit refused to stop the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) from “turn[ing] over the full amount” in a prisoner’s trust account to be applied toward “his outstanding restitution obligation.”
In 2019, Christopher Saemisch was ...
by Douglas Ankney
In June 2023, the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund paid $8,700 to each of 23 former detainees at Berkeley County’s Hill-Finklea Detention Center (HFDC)—a total of $200,100—to settle claims they were exposed to toxic fumes while in custody.
According to the complaint they filed, the detainees were ...
