by Jo Ellen Nott
A convicted drug trafficker who broke out of a Kansas City-area jail was back in custody on December 30, 2022 – along with his mother, who was charged with abetting his escape.
Trevor Scott Sparks, 33, escaped from the Cass County Jail on …
by Jo Ellen Nott
On July 11, 2022, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution to Ramiro Gonzalez, 40, who had been scheduled to die just two days later. The stay resulted from problems found with testimony given by psychiatrist Edward Gripon during Gonzalez’s …
by Jo Ellen Nott
Michigan state prisoners are having a grim winter. Quarantine orders are in effect at 11 state lockups suffering outbreaks of the flu and COVID-19.
Two prisons, Macomb Correctional Facility (CF) and G. Robert Cotton CF, were under full quarantine as of January 2023. …
by Jo Ellen Nott
With no end in sight for staffing shortages at the Fulton County Jail (FCJ) in Atlanta, detainees got a cruel blow the last week of 2022: A winter storm froze water lines in the metro area, compromising the jail’s water supply and leaving detainees …
by Jo Ellen Nott
Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin, 49, by lethal injection on January 3, 2023, after she sat on death row for at least a decade as Scott McLaughlin. Hers was the first state-sanctioned murder of the new year and also the first known execution of an …
by Jo Ellen Nott
Before November 29, 2021, Louisville Metro Department of Corrections (LMDC) averaged three prisoner deaths per year. Ten months later, that number had skyrocketed; a dozen lives were lost in the lockup by October 3, 2022.
As of April 2022, LMDC has a new …
by Jo Ellen Nott
On November 29, 2022, two California prisoners attacked a third with a homemade knife in the recreation yard at the High Desert State Prison (HDSP). Responding guards first attempted to intervene with verbal commands. When those were ignored, they fired warning shots from a …
by Jo Ellen Nott
When it issued a death warrant for convicted murderer Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. on November 16, 2022, the Idaho Department of Corrections (DOC) admitted it did not have the drugs needed to carry out the execution. By its own self-imposed deadline, DOC must have lethal …
by Jo Ellen Nott
On January 4, 2023, a pair of former felons joined the Rhode Island House of Representatives. The two Democrats, Leonela Felix, 35, and Cherie Cruz, 50, say their shared mission is to help people rebuild their lives after run-ins with the law. It’s a …
by Jo Ellen Nott
On November 29, 2022, Missouri administered a lethal injection at the state prison in Bonne Terre to murder prisoner Kevin Johnson, 37. But his 19-year-old daughter was not by his side. That was because a federal judge had ruled that a state law barring …
