by John E. Dannenberg
The County of San Bernardino, California has agreed to settle a federal class action lawsuit filed against its Sheriff’s Department in 2005 for $25.5 million – one of the largest such payouts on record.
On September 26, 2007 the County preliminarily agreed to pay for damages ...
by John E. Dannenberg
Three recent California court decisions interpreting California’s sentencing laws have spawned a need for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to recalculate the release dates of an estimated 33,000 current prisoners. It is unknown how many of the 33,000 will actually gain earlier release ...
by John E. Dannenberg
Underlying the purported societal goal of prisoner rehabilitation lurks the reality of what impedes it: systemic violence that defines the adversarial relationship between all men and women behind bars, prisoners and guards alike.
Driven by racial animus, drugs, anger, gang rivalry, perceived disrespect and lack of ...
North Carolina Execution Laws Trump Medical Board's Ethics Declaration
by John E. Dannenberg
In September 2007, the Wake County, North Carolina Superior Court ruled that because executions are not "medical procedures," a state law that requires a physician to attend executions was not trumped by another state statute that sets ...
by John D. Dannenberg
In 1997, an amalgam of Pennsylvania prisoners, taxpayers and public interest groups sued the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons (Board) and top state officials in U.S. District Court, challenging restrictive 1997 amendments to Pennsylvania's commutation statutes as violating the Ex Post Facto clause of the U.S. Constitution. ...
A combination of prison overcrowding and a 10.9% staff vacancy rate in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) resulted in $471 million in overtime being paid in fiscal year 2006-2007 ? a 17% increase over 2005-2006. More than 8,000 CDCR employees collected at least $25,000 each in overtime, ...
by John R. Dannenberg
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that nationwide, more deaths in the United States are now resulting from drug resistant invasive MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) skin infections than from AIDS. Overall, an estimated 90,000 invasive MRSA infections occur annually nationally ? a ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The federal court-appointed Receiver for California?s prison healthcare system is investigating the deaths of four prisoners who were transferred to out-of-state facilities, but stopped short of declaring the deaths suspicious or negligent. His concern is heightened because the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The California Court of Appeal, 4th District, has upheld the San Diego Superior Court’s award of $1,257,258.60 in attorney fees incurred during drawn-out litigation against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and CMT Blues (CMT), the CDCR’s joint venture contractor employing prison labor. The ...
by John R. Dannenberg
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, has held that a decade of cumulative changes to parole eligibility regulations for Michigan's life-sentenced prisoners violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws.
While the ruling, on behalf of seven named ...
