On December 23, 2015, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal of a Wisconsin probationer with gender dysphoria who was denied a preliminary injunction to allow her to move from a men’s homeless shelter to her mother’s house and to dress as a woman in public. In doing ...
On December 31, 2015, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that six wrongfully convicted former prisoners could sue Gage County, Nebraska for conspiring to manufacture false evidence; further, law enforcement officials involved in the investigation that led to the wrongful convictions were not entitled to qualified immunity. [See: PLN, ...
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law released a report in May 2015 titled, “Charging Inmates Perpetuates Mass Incarceration.”
Mass incarceration refers to the fact that the United States, which has around 5% of the world’s population, holds almost 25% of the world’s prisoners – ...
In November 2015, Riverside County, California agreed to settle a federal class-action civil rights suit brought by current and former county jail prisoners who alleged violations of their constitutional right to adequate medical and mental health care. [See: PLN, Feb. 2016, p.32].
The settlement included comprehensive reform of the ...
In an opinion handed down on December 31, 2015, the Supreme Court of Kansas modified the requirement that a criminal defendant be exonerated prior to suing the attorney who represented him (the “exoneration rule”). Under the modification, reversal of a conviction or other post-conviction relief may count as a form ...
In mid-2014, Sutter County, California settled lawsuits brought by the families of two county jail prisoners who died. The family of Rodney Bock received $800,000 while the family of Nathan Prasad received $825,000. The jail also initiated some health care reforms.
Bock, 56, suffered from mental illness and was having ...
On October 14, 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin held she would retain jurisdiction over a class-action civil rights lawsuit in order to determine the damages to be awarded former prisoners for the imposition or continuation of post-release supervision (PRS) by parole and prison officials after that practice was ...
Elberto Esquiel Bravo, 55, the former warden at the East Hidalgo County Detention Center, was arrested in January 2015 and charged with acting as an accessory after the fact in a conspiracy to bribe Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Jose Ismael “Melo” Ochoa to reduce the bond of a ...
Corizon Health and for-profit prison firm Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) have settled a lawsuit over the solitary confinement of a then-70-year-old prisoner following an alleged false positive drug test caused by Zantac, a heartburn medication.
Carol Lester, a former New Mexico state prisoner and a grandmother, filed a federal ...
On January 1, 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a Louisiana prisoner may sue prison officials for failing to credit him with good conduct time which would have shortened his sentence.
State prisoner Kenneth Owens was sentenced to thirty years at hard labor on January 4, 1989. ...
