by Ed Lyon
In September 2019, the final signature of an Arapahoe County, Colorado official was affixed to a $2.45 million settlement agreement in a civil rights lawsuit over the death of prisoner Jeffrey Scott Lillis. Lillis was 37 years old when he was booked into the Arapahoe County Detention ...
by Ed Lyon
On July 26, 2019, a panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part a district court’s judgment as a matter of law against Illinois prisoner Gregory Wilson, who had filed suit against for-profit medical care provider Wexford Health Sources.
Wilson ...
by Ed Lyon
Did you hear the one about the prisoner who allegedly hanged himself while restrained in a straitjacket? That isn’t an opening line for a sick joke; rather, it’s the contention of officials in Essex County, New Jersey when trying to explain the death of jail detainee Lucas ...
by Ed Lyon
On August 13, 2019, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in a consolidated ruling, vacated the dismissals of two lawsuits based on the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).
The PLRA contains a “three strikes” provision that allows a district court to dismiss a prisoner’s pro se civil ...
by Ed Lyon
A federal civil rights lawsuit filed in April 2019 against Orange County, California Sheriff Don Barnes was granted class-action status in September 2019 to include all detainees at the Orange County Jail (OCJ) whose telephone conversations with their attorneys were illegally recorded by GTL, the jail’s phone ...
by Ed Lyon
John DeRosier became Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana’s District Attorney in a 2005 special election. He is a Democrat who opposed the state’s 2018 bill requiring unanimous guilty verdicts by criminal juries and supports continuing juvenile life-without-parole sentences and other criminal justice reform issues.
Notable areas concerning his office ...
by Ed Lyon
Alaska prisoner Keilan Ebli met substance abuse counselor Kerri Pittman at the Goose Creek Correctional Center (GCCC). According to evidence gathered by GCCC staff and investigators, Ebli and Pittman entered into a personal relationship, which is prohibited by prison rules.
Photos of the two “kissing” and “displaying ...
by Ed Lyon
Malik Muntaqim, a prisoner assigned to the Arkansas Department of Correction’s (ADC) Ouachita River Unit, was seeking a transfer to a different prison unit and experienced racial discrimination.
In his written transfer request, Muntaqim stated “something crazy will happen” if he was not transferred. After he affirmed ...
by Ed Lyon
While Terrell Hales was imprisoned at the Cayuga Correctional Facility (CCF) of New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DCCS), he was charged with drug misuse.
On April 15, 2013, he filed a Freedom of Information Law request to DCCS’s commissioner for a copy of the ...
by Ed Lyon
From 2007 to 2016, New York’s prison population dropped by 17 percent, mainly due to efforts to divert low-level, first-time offenders into alternatives to incarceration. But during that same period the state’s number of elderly prisoners increased 46 percent. New York’s 10,337 elderly prisoners now represent around ...
