by Matt Clarke
On February 24, 2020, the families of four Alabama state prisoners who committed suicide as they languished in isolation cells in the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against DOC officials, Wexford Health Sources and MHM Correctional Services, the DOC’s contract providers ...
by Matt Clarke
Former Louisiana State Penitentiary Warden Burl Cain’s 21-year tenure running the prison complex at Angola was both long and controversial. His critics accused him of religious bias, blatant racial prejudice and excessive use of solitary confinement. He is known for forcing his brand of Baptist faith on ...
by Matt Clarke
In February 2020, WDRB News revealed a previously undisclosed $400,000 settlement paid by the Kentucky Department of Corrections (DOC) to the family of a state prisoner who starved to death while in segregation at the Kentucky State Penitentiary (KSP).
James Kenneth Embry,57, died of starvation and dehydration ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 2, 2020, the mother of a man murdered at the California State Penitentiary, Corcoran filed a lawsuit against California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials, whom she alleged were responsible for the murder of her son. Her son was decapitated on March 9, 2019 ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 10, 2020, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin held unconstitutional a statute permitting an involuntarily committed prisoner to be forcibly medicated without a court finding that the prisoner was dangerous.
C.S. suffers from schizophrenia. He was convicted of mayhem as a repeat offender and sentenced to ...
by Matt Clarke
Wilkinson County, Georgia, agreed on January 2, 2020 to pay $420,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the son and estate of a woman who died five years earlier of apparent prescription opioid withdrawal that went untreated in the county’s jail, after her pleas and those of ...
by Matt Clarke
The family of a Texas detainee who died of a suicidal overdose under jailers’ noses can continue its lawsuit against Young County, Texas. That decision was handed down on April 22, 2020, by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed in part a summary judgment ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 15, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the summary dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the estate of a man who committed suicide at the Harris County jail in Houston, Texas.
Danarian Hawkins was 27 in February 2014 when he ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 24, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the Rule 12(b)(6), F.R.Civ.P. dismissal of a prisoner’s civil rights lawsuit alleging a prison guard failed to protect him from being stabbed by another prisoner.
Texas prisoner Christopher Bryan Torres was a ...
by Matt Clarke
Violence perpetrated against prisoners by staff of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has risen dramatically over the past decade, according to the prison system’s own statistics. From 6,624 use-of-force incidents by staff against prisoners in 2009 — just over 40 per 1,000 prisoners – the ...
