by Mark Wilson
On June 30, 2020, an Oregon county agreed to pay Albert Molina $625,000 to settle his claim that a jail guard fractured his skull in an unprovoked 2018 attack. Two days later, county prosecutors — who had initially declined to bring charges — obtained indictments against Washington ...
by Mark Wilson
On June 5, 2020, an Oregon federal court denied prison officials’ summary judgment on a prisoner’s First Amendment retaliation claim. Oregon prisoner Leumal Fred Hentz was assigned to work in the bakery at Oregon State Correctional Institution (OSCI). On November 6, 2016, Hentz, who is Black, filed ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 16, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a former California pretrial detainee’s suit for non-exhaustion.
Joshua Franklin Snyder was a pretrial detainee at two Riverside, California, detention facilities. While there, Snyder complained about unsanitary ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 21, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a prisoner’s religious freedom suit that had been dismissed as time barred.
California prisoner C. Dwayne Gilmore brought federal suit, alleging religious freedom claims in violation of ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 20, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a Virginia prisoner’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claim stemming from the denial of a prison job.
In 2006, Virginia prisoner Douglas Fauconier was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, ...
by Mark Wilson
We are not indifferent to the serious dangers faced by petitioners and other inmates at heightened risk of contracting COVID-19 in Washington’s correctional facilities.”
That was a claim by a Majority of the en banc Washington state Supreme Court on July 23, 2020, in a 5-4 decision ...
by Mark Wilson
As millions of Americans suffer economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic, it’s business as usual for fat cat lawmakers who continue to reveal how out of touch and indifferent they are to the lives of their constituents.
The irony was apparently lost on Senator Jerry Moran, (R-Kansas), ...
by Mark Wilson
"We said since day one, prisons, especially private prisons shielded from transparency and oversight, are a hot spot for COVID-19 transmission.”
That’s what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada said in a July 2020 statement criticizing the “outrageous and disturbing” infection of 69.7 percent of Nevada prisoners confined within an Arizona prison operated by Tennessee-based CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison firms in the country.
The novel coronavirus that causes the disease ravaged Arizona like a wildfire in the summer of 2020, with one in five Arizonans testing positive. On a single day, July 18, 2020, the state reported 147 new deaths to COVID-19, versus just nine deaths in Nevada the same day. Arizona has no statewide mask mandate like Nevada’s to combat the pandemic.
Thanks, in part, to a comprehensive testing initiative, just 18 (less than 0.15%) of Nevada’s 12,000-plus state prisoners, as well as 54 guards, had tested positive for COVID-19 by July 2020. But a group of 99 prisoners that the Nevada Department of Corrections (NOOC) sent to CoreCivic’s 1,926-bed Saguaro Correctional Center, in Eloy, Arizona, was not so lucky.
As of July 16, 2020, four CoreCivic staff members and 69 ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 15, 2020, the Idaho Supreme Court held that an arrestee acts voluntarily when given an opportunity to surrender contraband before entering jail but chooses to continue possessing it.
On January 20, 2018, Idaho Falls Police arrested Nicole Lyn Gneiting on drug charges. Police felt a ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 15, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed a lower court’s conclusion that a detainee’s attempted suicide was not caused by objective unreasonableness of jail staff.
Wisconsin police arrested Zachary Pulera during the early morning of April 21, 2012. He ...
