by Matt Clarke
On August 31, 2022, the U.S. Court ofAppeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a district court’s grant of qualified immunity (QI) to a Texas prison guard who used his baton to beat and break the arm of a prisoner protruding from the bottom of a dogpile of ...
by Matt Clarke
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) of the University of Chicago Law School released a comprehensive report on June 15, 2022, detailing the way American prisoners are coerced into providing labor for little or no compensation. The practice is a ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 16, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that grievance procedure rules which the Mississippi Department of Corrections (DOC) published online – but which were not given to prisoners – cannot trigger a failure to exhaust administrative remedies that would justify ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 11, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reinstated a Texas prisoner’s suit against officials with the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) who had banned him and other members of the Nation of Gods and Earths (NOGE) from holding religious gatherings. ...
by Matt Clarke
A 72-page report by the Brennan Center for Justice published on July 6, 2022, shows how civil asset forfeiture, fines, fees and privatized community supervision shift the costs of the criminal justice system to the accused, removing financial disincentives for prosecutors to seek alternatives to incarceration. Simultaneously, ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that Louisiana prison officials were not entitled to qualified immunity (QI) for delays in calculating release dates that left some state prisoners incarcerated for months beyond their sentences.
After Jessie Crittindon, Leon Burse, ...
by Matt Clarke
What happens if you develop a hernia while jailed? One Missouri prisoner found the answer when he was forced to wait 16 months for surgical relief. Then, on June 30, 2022, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said that’s okay – primarily because he ...
by Matt Clarke
In an important decision for prisoners and jail detainees in Virginia, the state Supreme Court held on July 7, 2022, that a jail physician was entitled to a derivation of the state’s sovereign immunity. As a result, the Court affirmed dismissal of a lawsuit brought against the ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 24, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a district court’s denial of qualified immunity (QI) to the current and former sheriffs of Clay County, Mississippi, in a suit seeking to hold them liable for detaining a mentally ill man in ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 10, 2022, the federal court for the Southern District of New York denied a habeas corpus petition filed by the former head of the union representing guards at the New York City Department of Correction. However, the Court suggested procedures by which Norman Seabrook, the ...
