by Matt Clarke
A North Carolina prisoner who alleged his constitutional rights were violated during his arrest and pretrial detention eventually filed five federal lawsuits. Three were dismissed by the federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. One is still pending. Another was settled on August 12, 2021, for a payment of $5,000 to the prisoner, Cornelius Lamont Barnes, 42.
The complaints date back to September 5, 2018, when Barnes was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Virginia and returned to North Carolina to face rape charges. Kinston police took him to Lenoir County Jail (LCJ). While he was there, Kinston Detectives executed a search warrant at Barnes’ residence on October 30, 2018, seizing a cellphone they found. They sent it to the State Bureau of Investigation lab, where a digital copy was made of its contents – despite the absence of a search warrant for the phone.
A CD with the copied information was given to Assistant District Attorney Tonya Montanye, who advised Barnes that she intended to use it in his criminal prosecution. On January 27, 2020, Barnes filed suit pro se in the Court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging the search of the phone ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 7, 2023, a visibly annoyed U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver issued a highly-detailed permanent injunction (PI) specifying what must be done by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (DCRR) to meet minimum constitutional standards in providing prisoner healthcare and mental health care, as well as conditions in isolation.
As PLN previously reported, the Court found in June 2022 that healthcare and mental health care in the prison system was “plainly grossly inadequate,” and the conditions in its restrictive housing units were unconstitutional. [See: PLN, Dec. 2022, p.l.]
Before issuing the PI, Judge Silver noted that she was forced to throw out a six-year-old settlement because DCRR showed little interest in making the improvements it agreed to, despite $2.5 million in contempt-of-court fines.
“Given this history, the Court cannot impose an injunction that is even minutely ambiguous,” Silver wrote, “because Defendants have proven they will exploit any ambiguity to the maximum extent possible.”
The final PI includes “a specific number of key personnel that must be hired.” That number was determined by court-appointed experts Dr. Marc Stern, Dr. Bart Abplanalp and John McGrath. The court ordered DCRR to immediately hire the specified number of ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 8, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reinstated claims by Pennsylvania child support debtors jailed for civil contempt, who argued they were unfairly forced to perform unsafe and nearly uncompensated labor at a privately-operated, county-owned recycling center.
William Burrell, Jr. was jailed in Lackawanna County in 2014 for civil contempt after failing to make court-ordered child support payments. He qualified for the jail’s work-release program, which would allow him to pay off his child support debt and be released from jail rather than serving the entire length of his civil contempt sentence. However, the county had a policy requiring anyone seeking work-release to first work half of their sentence at the recycling center owned by the county’s Solid Waste Management Authority (SWMA).
SWMA is operated by a private company, the Lakawanna County Recycling Center, Inc. (LCRR). The firm paid laborers $5 per 8-hour work day – 63¢ per hour – for sorting trash in allegedly dangerous and disgusting conditions, including denying the workers portions of sack meals sent from the jail if they didn’t perform quickly enough.
Burrell filed a pro se federal civil rights lawsuit in September 2014, alleging the ...
by Matt Clarke
Corizon Heath, Inc. has engaged in legal maneuvers over the course of the past year that are intended to limit how much it must pay on over $38 million in debt to companies that supplied it with staffing, medical supplies and real estate, as well as plaintiffs and attorneys who won lawsuits against the firm and government entities it had agreed to indemnify for lawsuit losses.
Corizon began the first step of the legal maneuvers known as the “Texas 2-step” in April 2022 when it converted to a Texas corporation. At the time, Corizon’s headquarters was in Tennessee, and it was not conducting any business in Texas. The sole reason it became a Texas corporation was to perform a “divisional merger,” a process permitted under Texas law in which a corporation divides into multiple successor corporations with assets and liabilities assigned to the successors as it sees fit under Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code, §§ 10.00l(a), 10.003.
In this case, Corizon survived and retained all of its expired contracts and their corresponding liabilities plus $1 million in cash, the right to collect on its insurance policies, and the right to collect up to $4 million under a “funding ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 21, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reinstated a former federal prisoner’s lawsuit under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb et seq., alleging religiously motivated harassment by guards with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) caused him to cease daily Muslim prayer at his workplace in the prison commissary and then cost him his job.
In 2009, Charles Mack was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania. A devout Muslim as well as a paid worker in the prison’s commissary, he tried to observe the basic tenet of his faith that he pray daily at five specified times, as his work duties allowed. Mack typically went to the back corner of the commissary to pray for about five minutes.
Mack was easily identifiable as a devout Muslim because he wore religious headgear and was exempted from handling pork products in the commissary. Most of the guards assigned to the commissary had no problem with his prayers, he said. But two guards, Doug Roberts and Samuel Venslosky, allegedly targeted Mack for religious animus. Because of his religious beliefs, the two guards – who were assigned to ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 25, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report finding the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) was deliberately indifferent to the due-process rights of state prisoners who were held long past their release dates. DOJ also found that DPSC has been aware of this problem for more than a decade yet refused to take effective steps to ensure the timely release of its prisoners.
The report noted that between January and April 2022, 1,108 (26.8%) of the 4,135 prisoners DPSC released were held past their release dates. The median over-detention was 29 days, but 31% were over-detained at least 60 days and 24% at least 90 days.
Although Louisiana does not compensate over-detained prisoners, it does have to pay to keep them incarcerated – at least $2.5 million a year, DOJ estimated. That is because DPSC uses 104 local parish jails to incarcerate about half of its 26,000 prisoners, as well as privately operated lockups where it contracts for bed space. All prisoners held at jails, however, remain in custody of DPSC, which is responsible for their timely release.
It is this extensive use of local jails, along with an ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 24, 2023, an Oklahoma federal jury awarded $14 million in compensatory damages and $68 million in punitive damages to the estate of a woman who died of a heart attack in the Tulsa County Jail, despite repeatedly requesting medical care to no avail.
Gwendolyn Young, 52, had serious medical and mental health conditions requiring prescribed medication plus regular monitoring and evaluation when she was booked into the jail on October 16, 2012. She suffered from diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia, and she had a prior history of cardiovascular disease and strokes. Correctional Healthcare Companies (CHC) - now Wellpath - was under contract to provide healthcare to the jail’s detainees.
According to the complaint later filed on her behalf, Young repeatedly told jailers and CHC staff that she was experiencing nausea and vomiting, along with pain in her abdomen and lower back. But her complaints were ignored. Two hours before she died in a segregation cell, Young told jail staff she was vomiting blood. A jailer looked at the vomit and told her there was “not enough blood” – in fact he said it looked like Kool-Aid. Mere minutes before she expired, Young told a nurse she ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 22, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) held that its decision in Lynch v. Arizona, 578 U.S. 613 (2016), was a “significant change” in the law as that term is used in Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.1(g). The decision cleared the way for a death row prisoner to pursue state habeas corpus relief. In issuing it, the high court also put down an apparent rebellion by the Arizona Supreme Court (ASC).
Almost three decades ago, the Court held that capital juries must be advised when a defendant is ineligible for parole, in Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 (1994). But the Arizona high court ignored that ruling. So in its 2016 decision in Lynch, the Court specifically said its earlier decision applied to Arizona’s capital sentencing scheme – overturning binding ASC precedent which consistently ignored what SCOTUS had ruled for almost 30 years. Incredibly, though, the Arizona high court remained stubbornly opposed.
John Montenegro Cruz was convicted of capital murder. The only aggravating factor found by the jury was that the victim was a police officer. The 1994 version of Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. Sec. 41-1604.09(I)(1) eliminated ...
by Matthew Clarke
We all know celebrities accused ofcrimes, including actors, musicians, sports figures, business leaders, politicians and journalists. If they’re prosecuted at all, the punishment is rarely harsh. The rich and famous simply aren’t treated like everyone else.
However, the rise of the #metoo movement has undermined celebrity privilege within the U.S. justice system somewhat. For crimes of sexual misconduct, the wealthy and famous increasingly are treated more like the rest of us – especially when the victims are underage.
Nevertheless, celebrities continue to enjoy deference in other criminal allegations, such as assault, money crimes or property crimes. Nor is the accusation of a sex crime sufficient to remove the privilege of celebrity in some cases.
What is Celebrity Privilege?
Privilege in the criminal justice system is often thought of in racial terms. Research has proven an inherent bias among police, prosecutors, judges, and juries, who give more credence to white defendants and treat them with greater deference and more leniency than people of color. To be fair, though, it’s difficult to tease out whether this bias is racial or wealth-based, since wealth distribution in the U.S. falls along racial lines.
But just as there is “white privilege” for ...
by Matthew Clarke
On September 30, 2022, a lawsuit was dismissed against Pennsylvania’s Dauphin County, after a former pretrial detainee at the county lockup reached a $142,500 settlement on claims that a jail guard knocked her unconscious and smashed her jaw while she was handcuffed.
Barbara Barngetuny, then 26, was detained at the Dauphin County Prison on November 10, 2017, when jail guard Joshua Marshall allegedly slammed her to the floor, breaking her jaw and two teeth and cutting her chin. When she then passed out – for 10 minutes – a second, unidentified guard pepper sprayed her twice as she lay unmoving on the floor, she said.
Afterward, Barngetuny said she was disciplined for being combative with placement in solitary confinement. There she was denied visits from her mother. She was also allegedly ridiculed by guards, who laughed at her when she cried. One said she cried worse than his two-year-old niece, Barngetuny recalled.
Her broken jaw required surgery, and her two broken teeth required repair. She also had to heal the cuts on her chin. In addition to those injuries, she claimed to suffer migraine headaches, PTSD, severe emotional distress and insomnia as a result of the assault. ...
