by Ed Lyon
California governor Gavin Newsom entered office in early 2019 vowing to end the use of private prisons – including those in which federal immigration authorities detain asylum seekers – because for-profit prisons “lead to over-incarceration” and “do not reflect our values.” For many years, California sent prisoners ...
by Ed Lyon
A new program that began in 2018 in Alameda County, California aims to assist former prisoners with housing needs. The Homecoming Project matches newly released prisoners with hosts who are subsidized in what founder Alex Busansky describes as an Airbnb-style solution to the acute need to house ...
by Ed Lyon
Rhode Island’s “civil death” statute (GL 1956 § 13-6-1) provides that a person serving a life sentence in that state is “civilly dead” and therefore legally unable to avail him or herself of relief in a state civil court after their sentence is affirmed.
On November 14, ...
by Ed Lyon
Stamford, Connecticut attorneys David P. Friedman and Lorey Rives Leddy are representing prisoners at the Osborn Correctional Institution (OCI) over environmental hazards at that facility.
Not only are the prisoners routinely exposed to toxic and cancer-causing materials like PCBs and asbestos, they also have been drinking water ...
by Ed Lyon
At least three major federal lawsuits involving the jail in Monterey County, California had been filed prior to Erick DeAnda’s death at the facility on September 16, 2015, in an isolation cell in a unit designated for mentally ill prisoners.
DeAnda was 24 years old when he ...
by Ed Lyon
For the last 50 to 60 years, improvements in prison conditions have typically only come about through lengthy, adversarial litigation. During and after losing such lawsuits, state prison systems often delay, fail to adhere to consent decrees and are sometimes cited for contempt until, finally, they grudgingly ...
by Ed Lyon
Shali Tilson, 22, had struggled with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia since he was eight years old. His conditions were managed by medication, though due to their adverse side effects he stopped taking them during high school. He appeared to be successfully coping through a combination of diet ...
by Ed Lyon
On September 9, 2019, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a Louisiana district court’s denial of qualified immunity to three of four defendants in a prisoner’s civil rights suit.
State prisoner Clarence Jason was on the recreation yard when another prisoner he had argued with ...
by Ed Lyon
In a case decided on August 28, 2019, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court’s order allowing the federal Bureau of Prisons to seize $6,671.81 from prisoner Lonnie Eugene Lillard’s institutional trust account. The U.S. Attorney had initiated the seizure process pursuant ...
by Ed Lyon
On April 11, 2019, Ohio police executed an arrest warrant for heroin trafficking in a Target parking lot in Hamilton County. Their target was Ashley Foster, who was in the lot not with a load of heroin but with her two sons – one of whom was ...
