by Matt Clarke
In a timely report published on September 10, 2020, the Brennan Center for Justice examined the impact of video proceedings on fairness and access to justice in court. It recommended caution in the expansion or long-term adoption of video proceedings initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 24, 2020, a federal judge rejected reducing the sentence of a former Pennsylvania judge who became infamous for taking bribes to keep a private juvenile prison full of children. He became known as the “kids-for-cash” judge.
Former Luzerne County juvenile court president Judge Mark Ciavarella, ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 9, 2020, the Supreme Court of Arizona held that a lower court could not appoint a special master to review the recordings of jail phone calls between a prisoner and an attorney that were allegedly privileged.
Christopher Matthew Clements was an Arizona county jail prisoner ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of Ohio granted a state prisoner’s petition for a writ of mandamus and ordered the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) to recalculate his sentence.
DRC prisoner Charles Fraley pleaded guilty to multiple aggravated robberies. In Cause No. 11CR-403, ...
by Matt Clarke
During the summer of 2020, Indiana Women’s Prison in Indianapolis went weeks without reporting a single case of COVID-19. That changed in September, when the number of cases at the over 600-bed prison exploded.
Between late September and mid-October, prison officials reported 28 new cases and, by ...
by Matt Clarke
On July 10, 2020, the FourthCircuit Court of Appeals vacated a district court’s granting of summary judgment to Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) officials in a federal civil rights lawsuit over lack of due process in holding a prisoner in supermax solitary indefinitely.
Elbert Smith, a Rastafarian ...
by Matt Clarke
Once darlings of Wall Street, CoreCivic and GEO Group — the nation’s two biggest publicly traded private prison companies — have suffered a precipitous drop in stock prices, following a pressure campaign by foes of mass incarceration that has resulted in divestment of their stock by major ...
by Matt Clarke
In late 2020, the Board of Commissioners in Gallia County, Ohio, locked in $12.8 million in tax-exempt bonds to fund construction of a new jail. The move comes after two federal lawsuits were filed the previous summer over incidents at the current aging and overcrowded facility in ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 21, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the proper standard of review to be applied to facially discriminatory prison regulations challenged as violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause is intermediate scrutiny, the standard previously applied to similar claims ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 5, 2020, the Idaho Supreme Court held that state prisoners have no right to paid or unpaid employment despite a state law stating that the board of correction “shall provide for the care, maintenance and employment of all prisoners,” Idaho Code § 20-209.
Idaho state ...
