by Matt Clarke
On October 23, 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) denied certiorari in a federal civil rights action challenging Alabama’s use of nitrogen hypoxia for executions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a vivid and strongly worded dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji …
by Matt Clarke
On April 12, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied the government’s motion to dismiss with respect to due process and First Amendment claims made by a federal prison reform advocate whose access to communicate via electronic messaging with prisoners …
by Matt Clarke
On December 1, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that jailers could not be held liable for the death of a Georgia pretrial detainee caused by lack of medical care. The Court’s rationale was that the jailers followed the …
by Matt Clarke
On December 17, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reinstated a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the guardian of a man who was severely injured when two prisoners with lengthy histories of assaulting other prisoners and jail staff severely …
by Matt Clarke
On November 20, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that an Alabama law making sheriffs responsible for jail prisoners’ health care did not excuse a county from liability for having a policy resulting in inadequate prisoner health care. The …
by Matt Clarke
On November 26, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the summary dismissal of a failure-to-train claim in a federal civil rights lawsuit over the suicide of an in-transit federal prisoner being held overnight in an Oklahoma jail.
In …
by Matt Clarke
The Rev. James Eliud Ngahu Mwangi, an Episcopal priest, was working as a prison guard in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) until federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) declared him a deportable alien and detained him as he returned home from work on …
by Matt Clarke
On December 19, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a wheelchair-bound Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner who was forcibly placed on a standard prison transport bus instead of a special …
by Matt Clarke
On October 17, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld a district court’s summary dismissal of a federal civil rights suit brought by six women who were allegedly sexually assaulted while incarcerated at an Alabama jail because the lawsuit failed …
by Matt Clarke
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) recently announced a pilot program to study the use of various types of cooling systems and new insulation at three prisons to determine the best methods for wider application within its 31-prison system. Currently, only around 8,000 …
