by Matt Clarke and Alex Friedmann
In 2006, Prison Legal News published a cover story, Guards Rape of Prisoners Rampant, No Solution in Sight, that presented a compilation of news reports concerning the rape and sexual abuse of prisoners by prison and jail staff, police officers and other law enforcement ...
Recycling was a foreign concept to Randy Cantebury, a training officer at the medium-security Marion Correctional Institute (MCI) in Marion, Ohio.
In early 2011, MCI prisoners told Cantebury, who runs the facility’s gardening and aquatic programs, that they wanted to start a recycling program. But he had no idea where ...
This month’s cover story on the prevalence of prisoner rape and sexual abuse by prison and jail staff is the third major article of its type PLN has run since 2006. This is in addition to the dozens of articles we publish each year on other news reports and lawsuits ...
by Matt Clarke
Delaware County, Indiana prosecutor Mark R. McKinney was suspended from practicing law for 120 days beginning on July 28, 2011. He was disciplined for engaging in professional misconduct by handling criminal prosecutions and civil forfeiture cases involving the same defendants while working as a deputy prosecutor from ...
On March 8, 2012, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC – the parent organization of Prison Legal News), in conjunction with three other organizations, sent a letter to Derrick Schofield, Commissioner of the Tennessee Dept. of Corrections (TDOC), regarding policy changes that Schofield had implemented.
Within months after being appointed ...
by Mike Brodheim
On March 17, 2011, in an unpublished per curiam decision, the Fourth Circuit remanded a prisoner’s equal protection claim that alleged black prisoners were routinely ordered to perform more degrading tasks than their white counterparts, and that such job assignment decisions were made on the basis of ...
by Matt Clarke
Texas has a generous compensation package for prisoners who are exonerated, which includes $80,000 per year of wrongful incarceration, an annuity with annual payments in the same amount, free college tuition and free medical care. [See: PLN, July 2009, p.12].
However, some state officials are stingy with ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 22
On March 8, 2012, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Mendez entered a preliminary injunction against the County of Sacramento, California in a lawsuit that alleges unconstitutional censorship of publications sent to prisoners at the county’s jail.
Prison Legal News filed the lawsuit in federal court in April 2011. According ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 24
On average, Texas spends less on prisoner health care than other states – about half the amount that California spends. However, medical care for California prisoners was found to be unconstitutionally inadequate, leading a federal court to order reductions in the state’s prison population to the point that sufficient care ...
by Mike Brodheim
On June 21, 2011, a divided D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of a district court that dismissed claims for damages and declaratory relief brought by nine foreign nationals against Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of the Department of Defense under former President George W. Bush, and ...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit dismissed an appeal challenging the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) implementation of the Ensign Amendment, a law that prohibits the expenditure of federal funds “to distribute or make available to a prisoner any commercially published information or material that is sexually explicit ...
No one can claim that the ACLU of Arizona lacks ambition.
After poring over a decade’s worth of investigations, lawsuits and public records, the ACLU of Arizona is attempting to persuade law enforcement officials in the Grand Canyon State to address their use of Tasers, as detailed in a June ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 27
An alleged abuse of authority, in the form of favoritism, has led to the resignation of the second-highest ranked jail official with the New York City Department of Corrections (NYCDOC), Chief Larry Davis, Sr. An investigation into Davis resulted from questions raised by the New York Daily News regarding his ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 28
The Ninth Circuit has held that prison officials may forcibly extract a blood sample from a California prisoner for purposes of compliance with California’s DNA and Forensic Identification and Data Bank Act of 1998 (codified in sections 295-300.3 of the California Penal Code).
George Hamilton, a California state prisoner serving ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 28
Responding to a legislative request, California’s Bureau of State Audits reviewed the process used by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to refer sex offenders to the Department of Mental Health (DMH) and, in turn, the process used by DMH to determine whether those offenders qualify for civil ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 29
Unable to take decisive action due to state civil service protections, California’s prison system is saddled with the expense of paying the salaries of dozens of physicians who have been deemed unfit to treat patients. Such doctors typically receive base salaries of more than $200,000; unwilling to accept the risk ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 30
The bidding process used to select the telephone contractor for Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) was rigged by an official previously accused of improperly influencing a prior phone contract at the jail. That was the basis of a lawsuit filed by a local taxpayer, Matthew E. D’Eramo, in an effort ...
For ex-prisoners hoping for a fresh start upon their release, the slope is becoming increasingly slippery.
A bill signed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn on July 21, 2011 has established the state’s first registry for convicted murderers. Also known as “Andrea’s Law,” the legislation requires offenders convicted of the first-degree ...
In Oregon, a rehabilitation finding under ORS 163.105(3) eliminates the 30-year mandatory minimum sentence for state prisoners convicted of aggravated murder and requires the Board of Parole (Board) to immediately set a parole release date, according to two unanimous en banc decisions by Oregon’s Supreme Court.
In 1977 the Oregon ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 34
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that an order withdrawing approval of a class action settlement does not qualify as a “final order” subject to appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. The appellate ruling declared that such an order “simply presses the reset button, vacates any prior final ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 34
On Sept. 17, 2010, a federal district court in Washington State granted a preliminary injunction to a state prisoner, requiring prison officials to provide necessary medical treatment.
The preliminary injunction was issued in a civil rights action brought by Jean Rhea, incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW). ...
by Matt Clarke
On March 9, 2011, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation banning the death penalty for state crimes in Illinois. He also commuted the sentences of the state’s 15 death row prisoners to life without the possibility of parole. All but one of those prisoners have since been ...
by David M. Reutter
In June 2011, the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) issued a report to the Mississippi legislature concerning the state’s prison canteen contract, the operation and oversight of that contract, and the disposition of its profits. The report provided 15 recommendations to ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 38
PLN’s February 2012 cover story described how the Florida legislature tried to privatize almost thirty state prisons, work camps and work release centers in 2011 by slipping proviso language into the state’s budget appropriations bill. That wholesale attempt at prison privatization was widely perceived as benefiting Boca Raton, Florida-based GEO ...
In a lawsuit brought by the Yale Law Clinic on behalf of Hispanics swept up in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in New Haven in June 2007, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut held that ICE officials are not immune from liability for federal civil ...
On February 29, 2012, former Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison guard Henry Benson III, 31, was convicted by a state court jury of “recklessly” burning a child he was babysitting.
Benson, formerly employed at the Connally Unit in Kenedy, was looking after 3-year-old Emilio Taylor in October 2009 when ...
In a detailed ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rejected an attempt by a Muslim prisoner to obtain additional attorney fees for alleged violations of an agreed injunctive order, and remanded for further proceedings. Following remand, the district court awarded over $74,000 in fees and costs. ...
In a lengthy decision, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that approximately 100 employees of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) could recover damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act for violations of the Privacy Act at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Lexington, Kentucky. The defendants in ...
On February 1, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a district court’s denial of qualified immunity to a guard accused of failing to protect a vulnerable prisoner from sexual assault, but reversed as to the denial of qualified immunity to three other guards.
Russell Bishop, ...
by Mike Brodheim
Ed Munis and Michael “Doc” Piper, two Vietnam vets incarcerated at the Correctional Training Facility (CTF) in Soledad, California, have quietly been working over the past six years to ensure that other imprisoned veterans, now numbering roughly 200,000 in the United States, receive the disability benefits to ...
Book review by Mel Motel
The Trials of Eroy Brown: The Murder Case that Shook the Texas Prison System opens with a Tony Judt quote about how truthfully embracing history is an uncomfortable process. Michael Berryhill’s engaging account of one man’s journey through the then-named Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 47
Lockups in suburban Cincinnati just aren’t as profitable as they once were. So sheriff’s offices in southwestern Ohio’s Hamilton and Butler counties are charging prisoners for the time they’re forced to spend in jail.
More than 10 years ago, a federal judge ruled that the “reception fees” jail prisoners were ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 48
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has held that in denying parole to convicted sex offender Louis Mickens-Thomas for his refusal to participate in a sex offender program that required he admit his guilt, the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole retrospectively subjected him to a statutory requirement that did ...
by Matt Clarke
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that Oklahoma City can not be held liable for the actions of disgraced forensic chemist Joyce A. Gilchrist, who was employed in the city’s police crime lab for over two decades, and that a man who served 17 years ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 49
In June 2010, Cion Adonis Peralta signed a Full Release of All Claims in a federal lawsuit he filed in 2005, alleging that officials at CSP-Lancaster had violated his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. In exchange for agreeing to voluntarily dismiss his complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of ...
Loaded on
April 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2012, page 50
California: Former San Quentin prison guard Robert Alioto, 48, pleaded guilty on December 5, 2011 to smuggling drugs into the facility. Alioto was a warehouse supervisor at the prison when he was found with six cell phones and marijuana during a search of his vehicle as he arrived for work. ...
