When a prisoner dies in Washington state, the question of who is to blame often goes unaddressed. Meet the families, and their lawyers, who want answers.
by Ciara O’Rourke, Seattle Met
Stephanie Deal wanted her mom to bail her out. She wanted to go home. To see her daughter, Ella. ...
by Christopher Zoukis
When criminal defendants are found mentally incompetent to stand trial, a judge typically orders their transfer to a psychiatric hospital for treatment to restore competency. But many states struggle with a shortage of psychiatric beds, even as the number of mentally incompetent defendants has grown. So the ...
by Paul Wright
Deaths in jails are all too common in the United States, especially from medical neglect and untreated injuries. They are also usually ignored, as jails have even less oversight than state or federal prisons. Systemic patterns of jail deaths are nothing new, but the occasional media inquiry ...
by Steve Horn
Prison Legal News has compiled the results of its last reader survey and this summary will report on the more compelling findings, which we will use to inform editorial decisions in forthcoming issues of the magazine. We extend our gratitude to Heidi Sadri, a student worker employed ...
Distilleries? Homeless shelters? Museums? There are lots of creative ideas for repurposing old lockups. But finding one that’s good for the economy – and wins approval – isn’t easy.
by Daniel C. Vock, Governing.com
From the moment he saw Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, Pete Waddington wanted to turn the shuttered ...
by Monte McCoin
A $1 million lawsuit filed by the widow of a man who died at the city jail in Kingsport, Tennessee following a 2015 DUI arrest settled on February 28, 2017 for just $6,000.
Judy Honaker alleged that the City of Kingsport and two jailers, Monica Safis and ...
by Panagioti Tsolkas
When Wayland Coleman, a prisoner at MCI-Norfolk in Massachusetts, stepped out of the shower last year he noticed something strange. It was as if the towel he used to dry himself was, in his words, “used to wipe dirt off the floor.”
“I don’t know exactly what ...
by David M. Reutter
Three Kentucky River Regional Jail guards have been sentenced to federal prison terms for beating prisoners in two separate incidents – including one where a prisoner died.
In 2013, guards Damon Wayne Hickman and William C. Howell entered the cell of Larry Trent, 54, to remove ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Prisoners in most jurisdictions in the United States are required to work, often for little or no pay. Yet this is neither illegal nor unconstitutional. Pretrial detainees who have not been convicted of a crime cannot be forced to work. But the federal Fair Labor Standards Act ...
by Derek Gilna
Although video calls – the term PLN uses to describe video visits, which are far removed from actual visitation – are available at many county jails and some prisons, usually for a fee, more and more facilities are considering using them to replace in-person visits. But prisoners’ ...
by Steve Horn
On April 4, 2018, Prison Legal News settled a lawsuit over unconstitutional mail policies at a jail in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The complaint centered around the censorship of 147 pieces of mail sent to prisoners at the Knox County jail between November 2014 and when the suit was ...
Loaded on
June 5, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 22
On April 24, 2018, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), PLN’s parent non-profit organization, filed suit in federal court against Mecklenburg County Sheriff Irwin Carmichael and other employees of the sheriff’s office, alleging unlawful censorship of HRDC’s publications sent to prisoners at the Mecklenburg County Jail in North Carolina.
HRDC ...
by Monte McCoin
On April 30, 2018, Pennsylvania prisoner Jamal Washington filed a lawsuit to prevent a ban on leather Timberland boots at all state prisons. His suit seeks an injunction because, he contends, the boots are needed for warmth during the winter months.
“Most of the DOC’s facilities are ...
by David M. Reutter
After two North Carolina prisoners died in county jails, lawsuits filed by their families resulted in settlements. Under state law, the details of those agreements should have been public record; in fact, in the absence of accepted standards for jail health care or strong regulatory oversight, ...
by Matt Clarke
In August 2017, the MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) in St. Louis filed a federal civil rights suit against the Missouri Department of Corrections and its Division of Probation and Parole (Parole Board). At issue were alleged violations of the constitutional rights of parolees facing revocation hearings, which ...
by Dale Chappell
“Chicken-winging,” it’s called – when guards twist a prisoner’s arms behind his back and wrench them upward, inflicting extreme pain. Without the upward yank, the technique is an acceptable means of physical control and “you’ll get compliance a lot quicker,” according to former U.S. Treasury agent George ...
Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It, by Dr. Terry Allen Kupers (University of California Press, September 2017). 304 pages, $29.95 hardcover
Book review by Christopher Zoukis
There are nations around the world that routinely torture their own citizens. Government actors in those ...
by Christopher Zoukis
In July 2017, the family of a man who killed himself while in custody at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City agreed to settle their wrongful death suit for $380,000.
Aris Hiraldo, a 24-year-old father of three, committed suicide by hanging himself with the ...
by Christopher Zoukis
California county jails are facing lawsuits and court-imposed fines over their handling of detainees who have been determined incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness.
In Ventura County, the families of mentally ill detainees have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court over the denial of ...
Loaded on
June 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 34
According to the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC), state prisoner Edward Ray Gilley, Jr., 54, died on November 5, 2016 at the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, a facility owned and operated by CoreCivic – previously known as Corrections Corporation of America.
In response to a public records request filed by ...
Loaded on
June 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 35
A Tennessee grand jury returned an indictment on September 5, 2017 that charged a former deputy with the Cheatham County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) with using a stun gun to assault a pre-trial detainee at the county jail.
Jordan E. Norris, 19, was arrested in November 2016 on drug and weapons ...
by Gregory Dober
In 1918, countries worldwide were hit with one of the worst influenza outbreaks in modern time. Experts believe that the pandemic of the Spanish flu originated and spread through overcrowded WWI army camps, then was transported into surrounding civilian communities. That allowed the disease to rapidly spread ...
by Christopher Zoukis and Matt Clarke
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit in superior court against The GEO Group in September 2017, alleging the private prison contractor had violated the state’s minimum wage laws by paying immigrant detainees $1 per day to perform work at the company’s ...
Loaded on
June 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 40
On May 10, 2018, drumbeats echoed and faux “blood” flowed through the parking lot at the Nashville, Tennessee headquarters of CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), as activists staged dramatic street theater to represent the sorrow, suffering and deaths of prisoners at the hands of the for-profit prison operator.
“Over ...
by Christopher Zoukis
A class-action lawsuit brought by disabled prisoners held at the Shasta County Jail in California has settled, subject to judicial approval.
The case was originally filed by Everett Joseph Jewett, a disabled detainee. In his April 2, 2014 complaint, Jewett alleged the jail was housing prisoners with ...
by Matt Clarke
The State of Hawaii and a former prison guard have each agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a female prisoner who was sexually assaulted.
Stormy Rae Smith was serving a five-year sentence at the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Honolulu for car theft ...
Loaded on
June 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 42
On August 29, 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held “it may be reasonable for an incarcerated individual who is told she must resurface past sexual trauma to overcome them to rely on these assurances, and to view associated feelings of emotional distress as normal, contractive responses incidental to ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The election of pro-business and law-and-order candidate Donald Trump to the presidency has been a boon to companies that operate for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers. So perhaps now is a good time to ask a question that has seen surprisingly little attention: Who is in private ...
by Ed Lyon
The City of Adelanto in San Bernardino County, California owns a detention center – not a prison – according to Pablo Paez, a spokesman for the GEO Group, a private prison firm. “The ICE Processing Centers operated by our company are very different than local jails and ...
by Dale Chappell
When criminal defense attorney William Kroger visited his clients in California prisons, he noticed that just a few months behind bars seemed to whip many of them into shape. Because the state had removed all weightlifting equipment from its prisons over 20 years earlier, Kroger wondered: How ...
Loaded on
June 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 45
A $275,000 settlement was reached in a lawsuit over the March 5, 2015 suicide of a pretrial detainee at Ohio’s Fairfield County Jail. It was the second settlement related to a suicide at the facility since 2009.
Jesse Whitlatch, 32, was arrested on charges of breaking and entering and theft ...
by Derek Gilna
In September 2017, Derek Connor, incarcerated at the Placer County jail in Auburn, California, filed a federal lawsuit against the county and numerous deputies and jail employees over an unprovoked beating and other civil rights violations. The complaint, filed in the Eastern District of California, claimed that ...
by Christopher Zoukis
A January 2018 report from Pew Charitable Trusts indicated that the number of U.S. residents with a felony record rose sharply in every state between 1980 and 2010. The report analyzed data from a University of Georgia study published in September 2017, which showed that several states ...
by Dale Chappell
LaPorte County, Indiana has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by a former prisoner who claimed county jailers used excessive force against him.
The suit, filed by Marcin Kulbacki, alleged that guards at the LaPorte County jail tased him and otherwise used excessive force, causing head and ...
by Derek Gilna
The family of Kansas Department of Corrections (KDOC) prisoner Marques Davis filed suit in federal district court in October 2017, alleging that officials at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility and the prison’s for-profit medical care provider, Corizon Health, failed to treat his fatal brain infection.
Davis died on ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 12, 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal district court’s denial of a defendant’s motion to seal all documents related to the lower sentence he received because he informed on a drug cartel.
John Doe is the pseudonym of a defendant who ...
by Monte McCoin
The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) announced on March 17, 2018 that phone calls from state prisons would be less expensive for prisoners and their families, effective immediately.
“The reduced rate will make services even more accessible and affordable for inmates’ families and loved ones,” Commissioner Pelicia ...
by Ed Lyon
California is getting serious about reversing its long history of mass incarceration. From a 2008 state supreme court ruling that abolished parole denials based on the seriousness and nature of the offense to a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering California to reduce its prison population, the ...
by Christopher Zoukis
A federal lawsuit alleging various constitutional and state law violations related to the beating of a jail detainee in Euclid City, Ohio settled in October 2017 for $70,000.
On January 14, 2015, Lucille Dumas was arrested in connection with a traffic stop. As she was being booked ...
by Derek Gilna
The Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) and its contracted private medical care provider, Corizon Health, were held in contempt of consent orders entered in 1984 and 2014 in a class-action suit. The original November 1, 1984 order required prison officials to adopt a special dietary program for ...
by Ed Lyon
A tide of complaints has surfaced around Florida-based Trinity Services Group, one of the largest food service providers to correctional facilities in the nation. At issue is the provision of adequate, nutritious and healthy meals, since one study has found prisoners are six times more likely to ...
by Ed Lyon
On December 7, 2017, Ryan Partridge, a mentally ill prisoner, sued the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office and other county employees, claiming they failed to provide him with adequate mental health care and abused him. The 31-year-old, who suffers from psychosis, eventually gouged out his own eyes; in ...
Loaded on
June 8, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 54
In two recent settlements, corrections officials were forced to pay for their failure to honor the chosen gender identity of transgender prisoners and where they were housed. But in a third case, a court’s refusal to second-guess a housing decision by prison staff led to a transgender prisoner being assaulted ...
Loaded on
June 8, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 55
On January 17, 2018, a Texas state prisoner who was participating in the Administrative Segregation Transition Program (ASTP) at the Ramsey Unit murdered his cellmate. It was the first prisoner-on-prisoner homicide in Texas this year.
Alfred Brosig, 48, who was serving a capital life sentence for a 2002 murder, told ...
by Derek Gilna
On March 3, 2018, Alva Campbell, a 69-year-old death row prisoner convicted of two murders, died in prison. Ironically, he passed away just five months after his poor health forced the postponement of his execution.
In November 2017, prison officials were unable to find a vein to ...
by Ed Lyon
In December 2017, a Texas State Bar committee issued a scathing report concerning the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), which oversees the State Counsel for Offenders (SCO) – an agency that provides legal representation for prisoners in certain cases.
SCO attorneys represent prisoners accused of committing ...
by Ed Lyon
On May 1, 2010, Pedro Temich was arrested in Meriden, Connecticut. He was taken to jail, where video cameras recorded officer Evan Cossette pushing Temich, who was handcuffed and not resisting. Temich fell, hitting the back of his head on a concrete bench.
Cossette then entered the ...
by Christopher Zoukis
In Prison Legal News, much of our reporting addresses the abuses that the U.S. carceral system inflicts on prisoners. But prisoners (and their families) aren’t the only ones whose lives are impacted by mass incarceration. New research is exposing the harm that our nation’s prisons do to ...
by Ed Lyon
When Wilson County, Kansas Sheriff Pete Figgins instituted a postcard-only correspondence policy at the county jail, prisoners were only allowed to send and receive letters to and from attorneys. No notice was provided when mail was rejected under the new policy.
In April 2016, the ACLU Foundation ...
by Matt Clarke
The family of a prisoner who died at a Richland Heights, Missouri jail after untreated deep vein thrombosis caused a fatal pulmonary embolism has settled a lawsuit brought against the jail, two hospitals and hospital employees. The settlement was confidential but the city’s portion was released as ...
Loaded on
June 8, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 60
The suicides of three prisoners over a four-month period in mid-2017 brought new scrutiny to the Hawaii Department of Public Safety (DPS). Coming just two years after reaching a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the trio of suicides raises concerns that DPS officials are not following the ...
Loaded on
June 8, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 61
On February 2, 2017, Wisconsin officials agreed to pay $13,000 to settle two pro se federal lawsuits.
Samuel S. Upthegrove, a Wisconsin state prisoner with mental health issues, filed two suits related to conditions of his confinement. One of his complaints alleged that, while he was incarcerated at the Wisconsin ...
by Derek Gilna
In his State of the Union address in January 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he had signed an executive order to ensure the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, commonly known as Gitmo, would remain open – keeping a promise made during his election campaign to ...
Loaded on
June 5, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2018, page 63
Alabama: Former Draper Correctional Facility guard Johntarance Henriquis McCray was sentenced on July 27, 2017 to 54 months in federal prison for bringing crack cocaine, powder cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, Xanax and Suboxone into the facility. A search of his vehicle had also uncovered a duffle bag containing additional drugs, ...
