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Articles by Matthew Clarke

Texas Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Ex-Prisoner’s Religious Halfway House

by Matt Clarke

On June 19, 2009, the Texas Supreme Court held that a city zoning ordinance which effectively banned a religious halfway house in the City of Sinton violated the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act (TRFRA), § 110.003(a)-(b), Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code.

Pastor Richard Wayne Barr, a ...

Guantanamo’s Youngest Prisoner Can’t Be Tried, Won’t be Released

by Matt Clarke

By July 2002, Omar Khadr, a skinny l5-year-old boy born in Toronto, Canada, had become a radical Muslim militant. He received his first training in an Al-Qaeda camp at the tender age of twelve. To Khadr, a kid who loves Die Hard movies, Nintendo computer games and ...

Federal Jury Awards $5 Million for Wrongful Conviction Involving Houston Crime Lab

by Matt Clarke

A Texas federal jury awarded $5 million to a former prisoner who was wrongly convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault based in part on falsified evidence generated by the Houston Police Department’s Crime Lab. In rendering its verdict, the jurors found the City of Houston “had an ...

Iowa Supreme Court: Retroactive Good Conduct Time Denial is Unconstitutional, Depending on Date of Conviction

by Matt Clarke

On January 23, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court held that state law amendments enacted in 2001 and 2005, which required that certain prisoners must participate in rehabilitative programs to be awarded good conduct time credits, violated the ex post facto clauses of the U.S. and Iowa Constitutions ...

New York Politicians Want to Re-Evaluate Civil Confinement Release Law

by Matt Clarke

Two years ago New York enacted the Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act, which lets a jury release a civilly-committed sex offender from confinement if the state fails to provide sufficient evidence of a mental abnormality. Sex offenders who are released by a jury are placed under ...

Discovery Disputes in Suit Over Pennsylvania Jail MRSA Deaths

by Matt Clarke

A Pennsylvania federal court has ordered medical personnel to answer deposition questions in a case involving the deaths of two prisoners due to MRSA at the Allegheny County jail. The court also appointed a special master and ordered the parties to pay the master’s fees as a ...

Starting Out: The Complete Reentry Book, by William Foster and Carl Horn, 446 pp, $22.95

by Matt Clarke

Ideally, our schools and parents teach us all of the things we need to know to function as healthy and productive adults. Obviously, this is not always the case. Schools may focus more on academics than practical knowledge for living; or they may be distracted from their ...

Fifth Circuit Reinstates Texas Prisoner’s Failure-to-Protect Suit

by Matt Clarke

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed in part a district court’s dismissal of a prisoner’s failure-to-protect suit, though the case lost at trial after remand.

Ernesto R. Hinojosa, Sr., a Texas state prisoner, was housed in an open dormitory at the Wynne Unit when he was ...

Arizona Jail’s Medical Failures Due to Inadequate Record Keeping, Understaffing

by Matt Clarke

Medical care for approximately 10,000 prisoners in the Maricopa County jail system is an abject failure. That may explain why the Arizona county, which is the fourth largest in the nation, has had to pay over $13 million in jury awards, settlements and legal fees in lawsuits ...

GPS Used to Track Sex Offenders in Washington State

by Matt Clarke

Like firefighters and airline pilots, the ten Washington Department of Corrections community correction officers (CCOs) assigned to monitor high-risk sex offenders in King County via Global Positioning System (GPS) hope for a really boring day at work. Otherwise, if it isn’t boring, bad things are usually happening. ...