by John E. Dannenberg
The California Court of Appeal (Third District) held that California prisoners sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, who are housed in out-of-state facilities in the federal witness protection program, are entitled to appear personally at their parole hearings. To the extent that parole board ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that a private firm hired by a California county to run a diversion program for bad-check writers was not immune from suit under a claim of state sovereign immunity.
California law authorizes District Attorneys to offer a ...
Ninth Circuit: California Federal Habeas Petitioner Sufficiently Exhausts State Court Remedies When He Presents Facts Necessary to Support Constitutional Claim
by John E. Dannenberg
A California state prisoner challenging a prison disciplinary conviction first pursued his state habeas corpus petition through the highest state court, the California Supreme Court. However, ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The California Court of Appeal upheld a Superior Court verdict of $21,800 against state prison officials in a lawsuit filed by a prisoner whose eventually-corrected good time credit earning rate resulted in his being released nine months late. Suing under a theory of false imprisonment, he ...
by John E. Dannenberg
A former Missouri prison doctor and participant in lethal injections, who was banned from performing executions in that state, is still for hire to conduct executions in other jurisdictions. With over 40 death sentences notched in his belt, he is widely sought after for his purported ...
California Class-Action Suit Reinstates $1.5 Million Illegally Siphoned From County Jail Inmate Welfare Fund
by John E. Dannenberg
Santa Clara County, California (SCC) agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit seeking recovery of funds unlawfully taken from its jails’ Inmate Welfare Fund (IWF) between July 2003 and January 2008 to pay ...
California Juvenile Parolees Entitled to Two-Step Revocation Process; Case Settles
by John E. Dannenberg
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California has held that the rights of California juvenile parolees were violated by the single-hearing revocation process used by the Juvenile Parole Board (JPB). Nevertheless, the court ...
Supreme Court Holds Prosecutors Immune from Using False Snitch Testimony to Gain Wrongful Conviction
by John E. Dannenberg
On March 28, 2007, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a California man, wrongfully imprisoned for 24 years due to unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, could sue the prosecutor for ...
Federal Three-Judge Panel Issues Tentative Ruling To Reduce California’s Prison Population By Up To 57,000 In Three Years
by John E. Dannenberg
In a tentative ruling issued February 9, 2009, a three-judge federal panel ruled that uncontroverted evidence showed that unconstitutional health and safety conditions exist in California’s prisons that ...
Washington DOC Restarts Private Industry Prison Jobs Following State Constitutional Amendment
by John E. Dannenberg
After eliminating private industry prison work programs in response to a Washington State Supreme Court ruling declaring the underlying statute unconstitutional (see related article on Talon Industries v. Washington DOC in this issue), the Washington ...
