by Matt Clarke
On January 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that an Arkansas prisoner had not failed to state an actionable claim against prison medical officials when he accused them of not maintaining his bilateral hearing aids. The decision reversed a ruling by ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 18, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reinstated a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a former Kentucky jail prisoner who had sex with a transport guard, finding a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether she consented to the ...
by Matt Clarke
In a decision handed down on December 6, 2021, a federal court in Illinois decided that the Constitution’s proscription against the federal government’s efforts to “commandeer” functions that rightfully belong to individual states outweighs the “supremacy clause” of Article VI, which makes federal law “the supreme law ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 8, 2022, PLN finally obtained documents revealing that private prison operator GEO Group, Inc., formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., paid $10 million to settle two lawsuits brought by the family of a prisoner who was murdered at a Texas jail the firm operated. The ...
by Matt Clarke
In its decision 28 years ago in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a prisoner’s claims affecting the duration of his confinement—including loss of “good time”—are barred when a favorable decision would “negate” a prison disciplinary decision.
Further explaining ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 17, 2021, the same day it explained that a Louisiana prisoner’s civil rights claims are not necessarily barred by related prison disciplinary convictions under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit applied that reasoning to ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 29, 2021, the federal court for the Southern District of New York approved the final settlement of a class-action civil rights lawsuit over suspicionless and invasive “strip/body cavity” searches of visitors at New York City Department of Correction (DOC) jails. [See: PLN, Aug. 2018, p.54.] ...
by Matt Clarke
After a shootout between rival gangs in downtown Sacramento left six dead and 12 injured—many of them bystanders—on April 3, 2022, one of three suspects apprehended was Smiley Martin. Martin, 27, had been released from custody by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) just two ...
by Matt Clarke
After they were slashed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, U.S. prison populations have leveled off and jail populations appear to be rising again, according to research published by the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) on March 14, 2022.
The report mirrors another published in December ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 1, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss the claim of a pre-operative transgender federal prisoner who accused Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials of deliberate indifference to her serious risk of sexual assault when she ...
