by John E. Dannenberg
The Minnesota Court of Appeals held that a 1999 statutory amendment mandating all sex offenders to undergo mental health treatment was an ex post facto law as applied to a prisoner sentenced in 1985. The earlier version of the statute had only provided for voluntary participation ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The Supreme Court of New York held that the Court of Claims erred when it dismissed a prisoner’s damages claim for injuries suffered when he was not placed in protective custody as had been ordered by the Criminal Court.
Kenneth Hunt was arrested on September 15, ...
by John E. Dannenberg
When a private prison corporation sued Director Jeanne Woodford of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for alleged defamatory statements made against the corporation's performance on a CDCR contract, which were made in the proper discharge of Woodford's official duties, she was held absolutely ...
by John E. Dannenberg
On August 8, 2008, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) discharged prisoner Michael McHone from its Edgefield, South Carolina prison to spend his first night in a motel. The next day, a Saturday, a prison worker took McHone to Asheville and dropped him off in front ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The Supreme Court of Nassau County granted an Article 78 petition against Nassau County that enjoined it from charging non-indigent prisoners a “per diem” incarceration fee, thereby voiding Title 21 and 21-A of the Miscellaneous Laws of Nassau County (2006).
The New York State Commission of ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, following remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, held that a California prisoner had not exhausted his administrative remedies when he failed to file his initial grievance (Form 602) within the 15-working-day time constraint levied by California Department of Corrections ...
by John E. Dannenberg
On June 7, 2011, a scant seven days after the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling affirming a three-judge panel’s order to reduce overcrowding in California’s state prisons (Brown v. Plata, No. 09-1233 (see PLN, July 2011, p. 1)), the state belatedly responded to the panel’s January ...
Ninth Circuit: Warrantless Parole Search Unconstitutional Where "Residence" Was Only an "Emergency Address" Listed Years Earlier
By John E. Dannenberg
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a warrantless police search for a parolee, who had not been seen at the address but who had listed it years ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The California Court of Appeal held that because California’s 1996 voter-approved Medical Marijuana Program Act (Proposition 115) permits a citizen to possess marijuana for medical use, bringing such approved marijuana into jail could not be punished as a felony under Penal Code § 4573.5 (which generally ...
by John E. Dannenberg
In a landmark ruling upholding provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) that permit specially convened three-judge federal court panels to order reductions in state prison populations due to overcrowding (18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(3)), a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, affirmed ...
