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 10 years of extended supervision. Then the state filed a petition to have him involuntarily committed and medicated.
Almost a decade later, the state filed to extend C.S.’s involuntary commitment and medication. A jury found that he was mentally ill, a proper subject for treatment, in need of treatment, a state prisoner on whom less restrictive forms of appropriate treatment had been unsuccessfully attempted, and fully informed of his treatment needs and rights.
This met the requirements of Wis. Stat. § 51.20(l)(ar), permitting commitment without a determination of dangerousness, which the court did. The court also found that C.S. was incompetent to refuse medication pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 51.61(1) and ordered involuntary medication. C.S. appealed, arguing that the involuntary medication statute was facially unconstitutional.
The court of appeals affirmed. With the assistance of assistant state public defender Kaitlin A. Lamb, C.S. successfully petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court for review. ...
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 her cellmates for medical help were repeatedly ignored.
In January 2015, Amanda Helms allegedly tried to purchase hydrocodone from Cynthia Mixon, using money provided by her uncle, Herman Bill Hendricks, 57. He was arrested, along with his 32-year-old niece. Police searched Mixon’s home, finding firearms and an abundance of trash, but they did not find her. Three days later, the 51-year-old turned herself in to the Wilkinson County jail to face drug charges.
Mixon had valid prescriptions for Oxycodone, Prozac, Wellbutrin, Losartan, and Tegretol. She had been taking the Oxycodone for back pain and fibromyalgia.
Helms began suffering from opioid withdrawal soon after she arrived at the jail three days before Mixon. Jailers ignored her pleas for medical treatment and told her she needed to “dry out.”
“At no point during those nightmarish two and a half days was Ms. Mixon ever taken to see a doctor or a nurse ...
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 in favor of the county granted by a district court in the case.
Diana Simpson had previously attempted suicide when she told her husband she would try again by overdosing on pills. She even laid out her plan to get cash from an ATM and check into a motel where he could not find her. A few weeks later, when he noticed a withdrawal from their bank account, he became worried. But he was unable to contact her. When she missed work the next evening, he notified law enforcement.
Police in a nearby city found Simpson asleep in her car the next day, surrounded by empty beer containers and empty blister packs of medication. They asked her how much she had taken. She said, “all of it.”
After denying it to police, Simpson admitted to a medic she was trying to kill herself. She was arrested for public intoxication and ...
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 died by hanging himself with a bedsheet in his holding cell at the jail. He had been arrested in June 2012 after allegedly threatening a man with a knife in a parking lot.
His mother, Jacqueline Smith, said she was unable to pay his $30,000 bail, so he remained in custody over a year and a half awaiting trial. He made an unsuccessful suicide attempt in April 2013, after which he spent time in the jail’s Mental Health Unit (MHU). But he was then released back into the general population at the jail.
All told, Hawkins attempted suicide at least five times at the jail—usually by hanging but once by an overdose of 100 prescribed pills he amassed by hiding them under his tongue when he was supposed to take them.
Two and a half weeks before he died, he was found attempting to hang himself using a sheet tied ...
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 ...
by Matt Clarke
In a resurgence of “tough-on-crime” sentencing reforms that swept the nation in the 1990s, many states enacted “three-strikes” laws mandating life sentences for those convicted of three felony offenses. Mississippi was among them (and harsher than most) with a mandatory sentence of life without parole (LWOP) for ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 24, 2020, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint in California federal court challenging the application to the federal government of a new state law — Assembly Bill 32 (A.B. 32) — which phases out all privately-operated prisons and jails inside state ...
by Matt Clarke
According to a secret report by the Investigation & Intelligence Division of the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC), guards beat and hog-tied a prisoner who was seeking medical attention for what turned out to be fatal injuries he received when he was beaten by another prisoner. The ...
by Matt Clarke
A man who taught female Kansas state prisoners how to make dentures was convicted on March 6, 2020 of molesting a prisoner, sentenced to 32 months in prison and required to register as a sex offender for 25 years.
Thomas Co, 73, was the supervisor of the ...
