Suit Filed Over Minnesota Jail’s Secret Recording of Privileged Phone Calls
by Matt Clarke
On October 15, 2008, a Minneapolis law firm filed a civil rights suit in federal district court alleging that attorney-client phone calls from the Becker County Jail in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota were secretly recorded and sent ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 20, 2008, Texas Governor Rick Perry placed all 112 prisons and 155,000 prisoners in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) on lockdown to search for cell phones after a state senator received calls from a death row prisoner.
Richard Lee Tabler, 29, who is ...
by Matt Clarke
The most recent developments in a thirty-year history of abuse and medical neglect of prisoners by Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) include three lawsuits in which the county paid almost $3 million in settlements. Those cases follow repeated reports and investigations that have found gross deficiencies ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 29, 2007, a federal court ruled that changes in Texas parole laws, practices and procedures violated the federal ex post facto clause when applied retroactively.
Barry Michael Wion, a Texas state prisoner, was convicted in 1985 of three sex offenses involving children and sentenced to ...
Jose Medellin Executed; Vienna Convention Controversy Lives On
by Matt Clarke
On August 5, 2008 at 9:48 p.m., the State of Texas began the lethal injection that ended the life of Jose E. Medellin. In doing so, it ignored orders from the International Court of Justice at The Hague, more ...
Department of Justice Report on Prison Rape Elimination Act
by Matt Clarke
In September 2007, the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released the annual report for calendar 2006 on DOJ’s implementation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), 42 U.S.C. § ...
On August 14, 2008, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice (TBCJ) awarded a phone service contract to two companies, Kansas-based Embarq Corp. and Dallas-based Securus Technologies, Inc. Prior to this historic event, the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) was the only state prison system in the nation that did ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 24, 2007, Cole County, Missouri Circuit Court Judge Patricia S. Joyce ruled that a Missouri statute requiring certain registered sex offenders to move if they lived within 1,000 feet of a school (§ 566.147, R.S.Mo.) was unconstitutional as applied to offenders who had established residences ...
Allegations of Contraband Smuggling, Sex and Corruption at Texas Prison
by Matt Clarke
The Inspector General’s office of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has been investigating numerous cases of corruption at the 1,555-bed Terrell Unit near Rosharon, Texas. The allegations include sex between prisoners and guards, as well ...
Cold Case Hits Use Vastly Exaggerated DNA “Match” Statistics; Upheld by California Supreme Court
by Matt Clarke
A recent California murder trial has highlighted serious problems in the probability statistics used to determine the odds of DNA matches in cases that involve DNA database searches. However, the California Supreme Court ...
