by Paul Wright
Originally we were planning to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Prison Legal News (PLN) in the May 2020 issue. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting prisoners and the criminal justice system we decided to postpone it until later in the year given the urgency of reporting on …
by Paul Wright
Welcome to the 30th anniversary issue of Prison Legal News. As the cover story notes, this was slated to run in the May 2020 issue but that got pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially we had planned to skip it for this year …
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 …
by Dale Chappell
While the coronavirus runs rampant through the country’s prisons, medical treatment for even serious problems has taken a backseat, leaving prisoners to get creative and perform their own treatment. For one New Jersey prisoner, this meant cleaning his infected wound with bleach, his family says, making them …
by David M. Reutter
On April 23, 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgment to defendants in a civil rights action alleging they failed to protect a prisoner from an attack from another prisoner.
Before the court was the appeal of Nevada prisoner Robert …
by David M. Reutter
In March 2020, Florida-based GEO Group formally asked the government of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, to terminate a five-year, $264 million contract, which it signed in 2018 to manage the county’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility (GWH). The firm’s request to be relieved of its obligations by …
by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
It may be useful to know some more about the words epidemiologists use to describe disease statistics. Incidence refers to the number of new infections. Prevalence or “active cases” refers to the number currently infected. Infection Rate refers to the number of cases per unit …
by Matt Clarke
The once self-styled “Toughest Sheriff in America” has lost a bid to reclaim the office of Maricopa County sheriff. He was defeated in the Arizona Republican primary on August 4, 2020.
The controversial Joe Arpaio earlier lost his office in the 2016 election cycle. He then tried …
by David M. Reutter
Just because prisoners get sick with COVID-19 in a jail too crowded to practice safe social distancing does not make jail officials liable because so long as they say they are doing “their best,” they can’t be guilty of “deliberate indifference” to the problem.
That was …
by Kevin Bliss
Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) was forced to declare an overcrowding emergency on July 1, 2020. Capacity in the state’s 10 prisons was at 151%, exceeding the 2015 mandated 140% threshold.
In an effort to help reduce population, parole board chairwoman Roslyn Cotton said that the …
by Derek Gilna
In a clear victory for prisoners and their families, a federal judge recently ordered the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to make federal stimulus payments previously denied to people in prison and jail.
The same court has also laid out detailed guidelines for …
by David M. Reutter
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld on June 8, 2020, that a pretrial detainee’s First Amendment claim that officials violated his right to free speech by opening incoming and outgoing legal mail outside his presence. It affirmed judgment on claims alleging violation of the Fourth …
by Jayson Hawkins
A series of assaults by a group of prisoners on convicted sex offenders was carried out with the consent and assistance of 10 officers at an unnamed California correctional facility. After an investigation, the prison’s warden determined that the actions of six of the guards involved were …
by Ed Lyon
In 1855, young General Philip H. Sheridan was a second lieutenant at Fort Clark, located in present-day Kinney County, Texas. When someone asked him how he liked the state, he replied “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
There …
by Alex Sakariassen, Kaiser Health News, September 29, 2020
When Joshua Martz tested positive for COVID-19 this summer in a Montana jail, guards moved him and nine other inmates with the disease into a pod so cramped that some slept on mattresses on the floor.
Martz, 44, said he suffered …
by David M. Reutter
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s order denying a prisoner’s motion for recruitment of counsel.
This was the second appeal brought by Wisconsin prisoner Randy McCaa. His civil rights action alleged that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to his threats to commit …
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a report that found the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) violates prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights by frequently using excessive force. The report found overcrowding and understaffing are major contributors to the improper use of force.
The DOJ’s July 23, …
by David M. Reutter
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held on April 27, 2020 that a district court erred when ruling against a Pennsylvania prisoner’s civil rights complaint and allowed the case to proceed
Prisoner Casey Dooley, pro se, filed a civil rights action in state court that …
by Mark Wilson
"We said since day one, prisons, especially private prisons shielded from transparency and oversight, are a hot spot for COVID-19 transmission.”
That’s what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nevada said in a July 2020 statement criticizing the “outrageous and disturbing” infection of 69.7 percent of …
by David M. Reutter
A New Jersey prison guard was acquitted on charges of official misconduct and conspiracy to commit sexual assault. It is the second acquittal for guard Brian Y. Ambroise, who worked at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, New Jersey’s only women’s prison.
The March 13, 2020, verdict by …
by Matt Clarke
On January 17, 2020, a Washington judge awarded over $110,000 in penalties and attorney fees to a former state prisoner whom another state judge had already freed, all because Snohomish County officials’ clumsy handling of public records requests had threatened his rights, as well as those of …
by Ed Lyon
The North Carolina Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice (DACJJ) has been in a severe crisis mode regarding prison guard understaffing. The August 2019 vacancy rate was 21 percent, causing prisons to be unable to safely.
DPS and DACJJ administrators decided …
by Matt Clarke
On April 15, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s granting of summary judgment to prison officials in a Connecticut prisoner’s lawsuit over their failure to protect him from retaliation by gang members after he assisted in an investigation.
Lloyd George Morgan, Jr., …
by David M. Reutter
Renegotiation of its jail telephone contract netted Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County an unbudgeted $225,000 windfall. Mark Pinsley, the county comptroller, urged county officials to put that “revenue back into efforts to aid those held in the county jail.”
Pinsley’s March 5, 2020, letter noted that research shows …
by David M. Reutter
On May 20, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, issued a precedent-setting ruling that clarified when a “misrepresentation” to a prisoner renders a grievance process “unavailable” as a matter of law under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). …
by Derek Gilna
The volatile 2020 presidential election campaign led private prison operators, dominated by CoreCivic and GEO Group, to open their wallets, with a vast percentage of their approximately $2 million in combined contributions going to the Republicans, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.
With a sitting …
by David M. Reutter
Florida’s legal battle to defend a 2019 law that requires felons to pay all “legal financial obligations” (LFOs) to be eligible to vote has cost taxpayers over $1.7 million, according to state records as of August 2020. [See PLN, July 2020, p.54.]
In November 2018, …
by Matt Clarke
On June 30, 2020, Flacks Group, a Miami-based global investment firm, announced that it had purchased Brentwood, Tennessee-based Corizon Health, one of the nation’s largest private providers·of health care services in prisons and jails. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Flacks Group specializes in “operational-turn-around of under-utilized …
by Douglas Ankney
On December 10, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee approved a class action settlement in which Madison County agreed to pay $1.25 million over claims alleging that Sheriff John Mehr violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).
Natasha Grayson, an employee of …
by Ed Lyon
For decades, New York City’s Rikes Island Jail Complex (RIJC) has been the largest urban lock-up in the United States. It has also been infamous as among the most violent jails regarding assaultive behavior by guards toward prisoners, even extending at times to citizens who visit prisoners. …
by David M. Reutter
Chicago’s Cook County Jail expanded its electronic monitoring program (EM) and moved detainees to home confinement in response to COVID-19. As officials ran out of ankle monitors, at least 10 detainees who were ordered released on EM were held in jail when it was one of …
by David M. Reutter
The University of Michigan (UM) is building a graduate campus on the grounds of the former site for a new Wayne County Jail (WCJ). The 190,000 square-foot research and graduate education building for UM students will focus on automotive mobility, artificial intelligence, sustainability, cybersecurity and financial …
by David M. Reutter
On June 18, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgment to prison officials in a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging the officials’ failure to clear snow and ice from outdoor exercise yards for an entire winter violated the prisoner’s …
by Kevin Bliss
California’s Office of Inspector General released a 47-page report in August 2020, which stated that vague testing guidelines, faulty thermometers and inadequate training contributed to the COVID-19 outbreak in the state’s prisons, killing 54 prisoners and nine guards while infecting 9,500 others.
“Nine is an extraordinary number …
by Derek Gilna
A wrongful death action filed by the decedent’s estate of a Rikers Island prisoner against the City of New York, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., Prison Health Services, and individual prison guard defendants, has settled for $5.5 million.
Eva Luckey, a prisoner at Rikers …
by Daniel A. Rosen
Migrants in ICE custody in New Mexico were attacked with pepper spray on May 14, 2020, to end a days-long hunger strike. The detainees, housed at Torrance County Detention Facility, privately run by CoreCivic, were protesting the food quality and lack of protection from COVID-19.
“Suddenly …
by Matt Clarke
On February 24, 2020, the families of four Alabama state prisoners who committed suicide as they languished in isolation cells in the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against DOC officials, Wexford Health Sources and MHM Correctional Services, the DOC’s contract providers …
by David M. Reutter
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Florida Department of Corrections’ (FDC) treatment satisfies constitutional requirements even though it does not require that Hepatitis C (HCV)-positive prisoners be treated with expensive antiviral drugs during early stages of the disease.
The court’s August 31, 2020, …
by Chad Marks
Jeffrey Bardo was a state of Connecticut prisoner at the Willard Cybulski Correctional Institution in Enfield when he submitted a medical request to have an odd spot on his face checked out.
Two days after Bardo submitted that request, on December 18, 2012, Dr. Michael Clements examined …
by David M. Reutter
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgment to Ohio prison officials in a civil rights action alleging a prisoner’s rights were violated because he was denied a religious diet and fasting. The grant of judgment on his claims related to the …
by David M. Reutter
On June 17, 2020, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the sealing of a North Carolina federal district court’s order. That order denied a Defendant’s motion for resentencing because that order referred to “Defendant’s substantial assistance,” and there exists a compelling interest under the First …
by Ed Lyon
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has been challenged regarding care for its mentally ill prisoners for decades. Rather than improve under a class action lawsuit dating back to 1990 (now Plata v. Newsom) and seeking constitutionally acceptable mental health care for prisoners, conditions …
by Jayson Hawkins
An internal investigation conducted by the inspector general’s office of the Department of the Interior found a surprising lack of procedures or policies governing the use of federal prisoners by the National Park Service (NPS).
According to the report: At one unnamed national park—the prisoners, whose criminal …
by Ed Lyon
The dubious history of agreement, contract and treaty breaking by the United States and its state governments was briefly addressed in the February 2019 issue of Criminal Legal News [p. 33].
The federal government has been in continuous violation of one of its treaties with Native Americans …
by David M. Reutter
Corizon Health, Inc. agreed to pay $70,000 to settle a civil rights action alleging it failed to properly treat an Arizona prisoner’s wrist injury.
Eric Kevin Pesqueira incurred a wrist injury on October 17, 2013. He alleged it “was not promptly treated with medical devices or …
by David M. Reutter
On June 26, 2020, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case in which “a prisoner states an Eighth Amendment claim by alleging that, without provocation, a prison official threatened the prisoner’s life on multiple occasions and took concrete steps, such as aggressively brandishing …
by David M. Reutter
"The Federal Reporter is replete with examples of prisoners losing cases because they missed litigation deadlines and courts extended little forgiveness,” the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote on June 25, 2020, in vacating a federal district court’s grant of summary judgment of prison officials. Error …
by Derek Gilna
The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), parent company of Prison Legal News, (PLN) and Criminal Legal News (CLN), on September 1, 2020, filed a federal civil rights case alleging violations of its federal civil rights statutes.
HRDC alleged in its complaint that …
by Kevin Bliss
A captain with the St. Louis County Justice Services Center in Clayton, Missouri was under investigation for allegedly abusing prisoners with histories of mental health problems. The captain had been accused of assaulting a prisoner with a mental health issue on June 1, 2020 and then confining …
by Kevin Bliss
Jamel Floyd, a 35-year-old Black male held at the federal Bureau of Prison’s (BOP) Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, died after being pepper sprayed by guards June 3, 2020.
Floyd was serving a 12- to 15-year sentence for a Long Island home invasion committed in 2007. …
by Ed Lyon
To be penitent is generally defined to be sorry for the wrongs, sins, misdeeds or offenses a person has committed. The word penitent is actually the root of the word penitentiary, which is another word for prison — places of confinement where prisoners are involuntarily housed after …
by David M. Reutter
The death penalty is advocated both for punishing the most atrocious cases of murder and for its alleged deterrent effect. Yet on March 5, 2020, Alabama executed a 44-year-old man, not for committing murder but instead because he did not “try to stop the gunman from” …
by Matt Clarke
Former Louisiana State Penitentiary Warden Burl Cain’s 21-year tenure running the prison complex at Angola was both long and controversial. His critics accused him of religious bias, blatant racial prejudice and excessive use of solitary confinement. He is known for forcing his brand of Baptist faith on …
by Ed Lyon
At least two Massachusetts sheriffs offer rehabilitative programs to prisoners in their jails. Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi’s jail holds anger management, domestic violence classes and employment seminars while providing bus service to and from the jail for visitors. Worcester County Sheriff Lewis Evangelidis’ jail holds mental …
Loaded on
Nov. 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
November, 2020, page 62
Alabama: The Birmingham News reported that an Alabama prison guard had been arrested for drug trafficking after a search of his vehicle when he arrived for work at the St. Clair County prison turned up 138 grams of methamphetamine and 16 grams of heroin. Ivan Caldwell, 26, was then booked …
