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Prison Legal News: May, 2020

Issue PDF
Volume 31, Number 5

In this issue:

  1. Coronavirus: A Nationwide Survey of the Push for Early Release as Pandemic Fears Grow (p 1)
  2. Early Prison Release for Gangsta Rapper Sped Up by Coronavirus (p 25)
  3. From the Editor (p 26)
  4. Prioritizing Jails Over Hospitals Has Made Rural US More Vulnerable to COVID-19 (p 26)
  5. May Update: Protect Yourself and Your Facility from COVID-19 (p 28)
  6. Recent Exonerees Give the Public Advice on Being Locked Down: You Have No Idea (p 30)
  7. Lawsuit: Release Prisoners in Virus Tinderbox to Home Confinement (p 31)
  8. Prison Postcards: Prisoners Write About Fears, Incompetence, at Their Facilities (p 32)
  9. Rikers Island Prisoners Helped with Preparations to Bury the Coronavirus Dead (p 34)
  10. Federal Judge “Troubled” by Arizona Prison Director’s Response to Coronavirus; State Rep Calls it “Reckless” (p 35)
  11. California Publishes Use of Force in Prisons Report (p 36)
  12. Connecticut Prisoners Win Lawsuit After Hepatitis Exposure (p 36)
  13. Nevada Prisoner Prevails in Good Time Deprivation Appeal (p 38)
  14. California Three-Judge Court Denies Emergency Motion to Reduce Prison Population During Pandemic (p 38)
  15. Arkansas Supreme Court Denies Prisoner Preliminary Injunction on Religious Issues (p 40)
  16. Federal Court Grants Default Summary Judgment in Favor of Indiana Prisoner as Sanction for State’s Lies (p 40)
  17. How Prepared Are State Prison Systems for a Viral Pandemic? (p 42)
  18. Suit: Mississippi Man Sentenced to Two Days Hangs Himself After Jail Kept Him 52 Days Longer (p 42)
  19. Emergency Cancellation of Attorney Visits Subject to Court Oversight (p 44)
  20. Undisclosed Settlement in Kentucky Case a Textbook Case of Negligent Privatized Prison Medical Care (p 44)
  21. Illinois Supreme Court: Settlements with Private Companies When Contracted for Government Service Are Public Record (p 45)
  22. Coalition Fights to Ensure Jailed Voters in Arizona Can Vote (p 46)
  23. Mass Incarceration, Meet COVID-19 Opportunity to release prisoners with little public safety risk is clear (p 46)
  24. Multiple Indictments, Prison Sentences, for Guards and Officials at Violence-Plagued Cleveland Jail (p 48)
  25. Another Prisoner Dies at Tennessee Prison Run By CoreCivic (p 49)
  26. Texas Prison Health Care Costs at Record High Despite Population Reduction (p 50)
  27. DOJ to Treat Immigrants Like Criminals by Collecting DNA Samples (p 50)
  28. Minnesota Prison Bans “No Touch” Rule (p 51)
  29. Alabama Grandma Sentenced to Life on Drug Charge Finally Paroled (p 52)
  30. ICE Diverts Needed Face Masks from Medical Professionals (p 52)
  31. Paroled New Yorker Wrongfully Confined; Awarded $3,250 (p 53)
  32. Michigan Permits Prisoners to Seek Financial Assistance for College (p 53)
  33. New Yorker Held Three Years at Rikers Island Before Acquittal (p 54)
  34. Arizona DOC Raids Prisoner-Generated Funds to Pay for Lock Repairs; Whistleblower Says Records Being Falsified (p 54)
  35. Kentucky Governor’s Executive Order Restores Voting Rights for Felons (p 55)
  36. Women Advocate for the Release of COVID-19 At-Risk Prisoners in Indiana (p 55)
  37. D.C. Juvenile Offender Finally Released After 26 Years Behind Bars (p 56)
  38. Arizona Court Denies Emergency COVID-19 Motion (p 56)
  39. Ohio Prisoner’s Facebook Live a Plea for Help During COVID-19 Pandemic (p 57)
  40. Santa Rita Jail Accused of Slave Labor in California Class Action (p 58)
  41. Open Prison: Lessons from the Past (p 58)
  42. $25 Million Jury Award to Baltimore City Prisoner For Guards Setting Up Retaliatory Gang Attack (p 59)
  43. Chatham County Jail Reverses On Book Ban But Limits Number of Publications (p 59)
  44. Third Circuit Reverses Dismissal of Pennsylvania Prisoners’ Dry Cell Suit (p 60)
  45. Leaving Prison for a Real Home in California (p 60)
  46. Health Care Services Killing Women at Virginia Prison (p 61)
  47. $120,000 Settlement for Minnesota Woman Forced to Remove Hijab for Booking (p 62)
  48. News in Brief (p 62)

Coronavirus: A Nationwide Survey of the Push for Early Release as Pandemic Fears Grow

by Christopher Zoukis

“Mother Nature is a serial killer. No one’s better. More creative. . . . She’s a bitch.”

– World War Z

Between January and August of 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services played a game, a simulation of sorts. The exercise was called Crimson Contagion, ...

Early Prison Release for Gangsta Rapper Sped Up by Coronavirus

Daniel Hernandez was a Brooklyn rap artist who managed to achieve no small measure of fame. To his fans he was Tekashi 6ix9ine. He decided to live the gangsta life and rapped about his time as a member of New York City’s Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. He ...

From the Editor

Prison Legal News launched in May 1990, making this the thirtieth anniversary issue. I hand typed five pages, half the issue, in my maximum-security prison cell and Ed Mead, my co-editor, typed the other half in his cell. We sent it out to a volunteer to photocopy ...

Prioritizing Jails Over Hospitals Has Made Rural US More Vulnerable to COVID-19

by Jasmine Heiss and Jack Norton, reprinted from Truthout

Infrastructure development is a matter of life and death: This has always been true, and we are now in a clarifying moment.

In the midst of a mounting public health crisis in the United States, state, local and federal governments are ...

May Update: Protect Yourself and Your Facility from COVID-19

In the April issue of Prison Legal News, I discussed the nature of the disease called COVID-19 (COrona VIrus Disease-2019) and ways to protect yourself and your facility through personal cleanliness, social distancing and environmental cleanliness. This month I will continue those themes and also ...

Recent Exonerees Give the Public Advice on Being Locked Down: You Have No Idea

by Dale Chappell

Now the whole country is incarcerated,” Theophalis “Binky Bilal” Wilson said after being released in January 2020, exonerated after 28 years wrongfully in prison, only to find himself locked in at home. “This is a microcosm of what a person experiences when he is incarcerated,” he said. ...

Lawsuit: Release Prisoners in Virus Tinderbox to Home Confinement

Patrick Jones first federal prisoner to die after judge rejects plea

by David M. Reutter

A non-violent federal drug offender who pleaded for early release in the months prior to the COVID-19 pandemic hitting America died of the disease. Patrick Jones, 49, was the first federal prisoner to die of ...

Prison Postcards: Prisoners Write About Fears, Incompetence, at Their Facilities

On April 15, President Donald Trump announced that the coronavirus pandemic had peaked in the United States. That same day, nearly 2,300 people in the country died from COVID-19, the disease cause by the virus, which was the highest tally in a single day. The following day ...

Rikers Island Prisoners Helped with Preparations to Bury the Coronavirus Dead

Prisoners jailed with a conviction at New York’s Rikers Island were offered $6 an hour to dig mass graves at Hart Island, where more than 1 million mostly indigent city residents are already buried. In a city with decreasing space to bury the dead, Hart Island in the northeast Bronx ...

Federal Judge “Troubled” by Arizona Prison Director’s Response to Coronavirus; State Rep Calls it “Reckless”

Court-appointed advocates filed a motion in federal court concerning the Arizona prison director’s response to the coronavirus, which federal Judge Roslyn Silver called “troubling,” writing that it “may reflect a failure to accept what could be a grave threat.”

She wasn’t the only one disturbed by Arizona ...

California Publishes Use of Force in Prisons Report

In June 2019, California’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) published its annual report, “Monitoring the Use of Force,” for incidents the previous year at all juvenile and adult facilities operated by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The OIG’s office reviewed 6,426 incidents where an ...

Connecticut Prisoners Win Lawsuit After Hepatitis Exposure

In May 2019, a final settlement agreement was approved for 15 prisoners who were exposed to Hepatitis C when a Correctional Managed Health Care (CMHC) nurse at MacDougall-Walker State Prison in Suffield, Connecticut, used the same needle to inject insulin to multiple diabetic patients, refilling the syringe ...

Nevada Prisoner Prevails in Good Time Deprivation Appeal

On June 20, 2019, a two-justice majority on a Nevada court of appeals panel reversed and remanded a district court’s dismissal of a state prisoner’s civil rights complaint over the removal of good time credits. The ruling is unpublished.

Darryl E. Gholson sued the Nevada Department of ...

California Three-Judge Court Denies Emergency Motion to Reduce Prison Population During Pandemic

On April 4, 2020, a three-judge court in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California denied a motion seeking an order requiring the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to immediately release specific categories of inmates due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ...

Arkansas Supreme Court Denies Prisoner Preliminary Injunction on Religious Issues

On June 6, 2019 the Supreme Court of Arkansas denied a prisoner’s appeal of a circuit court’s refusal to issue a preliminary injunction regarding Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC) policies as applied to his free exercise claims as a follower of the Nation of Islam (NOI). ...

Federal Court Grants Default Summary Judgment in Favor of Indiana Prisoner as Sanction for State’s Lies

by Dale Chappell

In a rare move, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on January 3, 2020 granted default judgment in favor of a prisoner who sued Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, after prison staff and the Indiana Attorney General’s (AG) Office “blatantly” lied to the Court ...

How Prepared Are State Prison Systems for a Viral Pandemic?

by Emily Widra and Peter Wagner, originally published April 10, 2020 at the Prison Policy Initiative website

Since the Prison Policy Initiative’s first coronavirus briefing at the beginning of March, the organization has been tracking how federal, state, and local officials have responded to the threat of COVID-19 in the criminal justice ...

Suit: Mississippi Man Sentenced to Two Days Hangs Himself After Jail Kept Him 52 Days Longer

After he lost work and was unable to pay a fine, Robert Wayne Johnson was sentenced to the Keller Neshoba Regional Correctional Facility (KNRCF) in rural Kemper County, Mississippi, on November 16, 2017. The father of five had struggled with mental health problems, including two suicide attempts. ...

Emergency Cancellation of Attorney Visits Subject to Court Oversight

On March 20, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the cancellation of lawyer-client visits at the Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn (MDC). The court urged a quick resolution in the district court with a mediator to deal with access to ...

Undisclosed Settlement in Kentucky Case a Textbook Case of Negligent Privatized Prison Medical Care

The provision of medical care is an expensive proposition regardless of whether a citizen or prisoner is in need of care. Tight budgets have pushed many jails and prisons to turn to prison profiteers to provide medical and mental health care to detainees and prisoners. When ...

Illinois Supreme Court: Settlements with Private Companies When Contracted for Government Service Are Public Record

The Illinois Supreme Court on December 19, 2019 held that settlement agreements reached by private contractors, if directly related to the services they provide, are public record. It said the plain language of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), when viewed in light of legislative intent, showed ...

Coalition Fights to Ensure Jailed Voters in Arizona Can Vote

by Scott Grammer

In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that jail detainees who are under no voting disability — which essentially means that they have not yet been convicted of a felony and lost their right to vote — must be allowed the opportunity to vote pursuant to the ...

Mass Incarceration, Meet COVID-19 Opportunity to release prisoners with little public safety risk is clear

Most of America’s 2.3 million prisoners cannot practice social distancing. They are packed into overcrowded facilities, living, sleeping and bathing within feet—sometimes inches—of each other. What’s more, they often lack sufficient basics, including soap, warm water and clean towels, let alone hand sanitizer. Unless radical action is ...

Multiple Indictments, Prison Sentences, for Guards and Officials at Violence-Plagued Cleveland Jail

by Ed Lyon

The year 2019 was a busy one for a grand jury in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Indictments were handed down for seven guards, a former associate warden and a former director of the county’s jail, located in Cleveland. They are among 11 current and former jail staffers to ...

Another Prisoner Dies at Tennessee Prison Run By CoreCivic

The September 14, 2019, death of prisoner Albert Dorsey, 60, at the Hardeman County Correctional Facility (HCCF), a private prison operated by Tennessee-based CoreCivic, was initially called a suicide by the medical examiner. The prison’s report said he died alone in his cell that “no one else ...

Texas Prison Health Care Costs at Record High Despite Population Reduction

Despite a reduction in the Texas prisoner population, state prisons are spending record amounts on prisoner health care. The reason is not an improvement in the health care afforded prisoners. Pending lawsuits allege inadequate health care — especially for Texas prisoners infected with the Hepatitis C virus. ...

DOJ to Treat Immigrants Like Criminals by Collecting DNA Samples

In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that federal Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents will begin collecting DNA samples for criminal investigation from immigrants designated for detention in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, including children and those legally seeking asylum.

During the ...

Minnesota Prison Bans “No Touch” Rule

Back in 2011, the United States Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) performed an anonymous survey at the Minnesota Department of Corrections’ (MDOC) Shakopee women’s prison.

The survey’s results showed that Shakopee was among the worst prisons in the nation for sexual misconduct. Faced with ...

Alabama Grandma Sentenced to Life on Drug Charge Finally Paroled

In recent years many states have made changes to their criminal codes in an effort to reduce their prison populations. Those amendments, however, are rarely retroactive and leave those already imprisoned to serve out lengthy sentences that are no longer imposed.

Alabama is one state that ...

ICE Diverts Needed Face Masks from Medical Professionals

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) placed a request for bids on its website in March 2020 for 45,000 N95 protective face masks for 26 of its enforcement and removal operation field offices. This came at a time that the nation’s frontline healthcare workers are experiencing a mass ...

Paroled New Yorker Wrongfully Confined; Awarded $3,250

Clarence Delaney, Jr. was granted $40 per day for 88 days of unlawful confinement by the State of New York, receiving a total payment of $3,250. He also was able to recover his 42 USC § 1983 filing fee, in a state Court of Claims ruling on ...

Michigan Permits Prisoners to Seek Financial Assistance for College

In October 2019, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a 2020 budget that allowed prisoners to seek college financial aid through a state program that had long been out-of-bounds to prisoners.

The Tuition Incentive Program (TIP) reimburses tuition expenses for Medicaid-eligible students at participating private and ...

New Yorker Held Three Years at Rikers Island Before Acquittal

A man from New York City was held three years in a Rikers Island jail before a Brooklyn jury acquitted him October 1, 2019 of a knife-point armed robbery.

Mike Colon, 51, was just eight months out of prison when four police cars slid up beside him ...

Arizona DOC Raids Prisoner-Generated Funds to Pay for Lock Repairs; Whistleblower Says Records Being Falsified

After the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) received $17.7 million from the state legislature’s Joint Committee on Capital Review to repair defective cell locks at a maximum-security prison, a whistleblower revealed that paperwork showing the repairs had been made was falsified, The Arizona Republic reported in December ...

Kentucky Governor’s Executive Order Restores Voting Rights for Felons

by David M. Reutter

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear issued an executive order that restored the voting rights of over 140,000 convicted felons. The order was signed just days after Beshear was sworn in in December 2019, and it upheld a campaign promise.

“My faith teaches me to treat others with ...

Women Advocate for the Release of COVID-19 At-Risk Prisoners in Indiana

A prisoner advocacy group in April began urging residents to call Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and the state Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Robert Carter to demand the release of nonviolent prisoners, the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions amid the COVID-19 health threat, one of ...

D.C. Juvenile Offender Finally Released After 26 Years Behind Bars

David Bailey was a reckless and violent 17-year-old when he shot and killed two people outside a Washington, D.C. night club. He was convicted of second-degree murder and received a sentence of 35 years to life.

According to The Appeal, “both of Bailey’s parents struggled with ...

Arizona Court Denies Emergency COVID-19 Motion

The Arizona federal district court overseeing the Stipulation in a class action that challenged the medical care within the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) denied an emergency motion to require ADOC to develop a comprehensive COVID-19 plan. The court also issued an order on performance measure ...

Ohio Prisoner’s Facebook Live a Plea for Help During COVID-19 Pandemic

"They’re literally leaving us in here to die,” said a prisoner live-streaming on Facebook in a plea for help April 3, 2020.

The now-viral online video captures the desperation of prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic. The 31-year-old, wearing a stocking cap and surgical mask, is shown inside the Federal Correction ...

Santa Rita Jail Accused of Slave Labor in California Class Action

Current and former prisoners at Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, California, filed a class action lawsuit on November 18, 2019 against the county, Sheriff Gregory Ahern, and Aramark Correctional Services for violating a California prison labor law, the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and the Thirteenth ...

Open Prison: Lessons from the Past

Open prison is unthinkable today in the United States, though in Scandinavia such institutions are heralded as models of civility and rehabilitation. The U.S. experimented with open prisons back in 1941, which proved there were better ways to rehabilitate and reduce recidivism. Unfortunately, those lessons were ...

$25 Million Jury Award to Baltimore City Prisoner For Guards Setting Up Retaliatory Gang Attack

A jury awarded a prisoner brutally beaten at the Baltimore City Detention Center $25 million, after guards allegedly worked in concert with a gang and arranged a beating as retaliation for complaints filed by a detainee awaiting trial.

The beating left Daquan Wallace in a coma for ...

Chatham County Jail Reverses On Book Ban But Limits Number of Publications

Following a letter from the ACLU of Georgia, the Chatham County sheriff rescinded a jail policy that banned detainees from receiving books and magazines from outside sources. The ACLU still took issue with a revised policy that limits the number of publications detainees can possess.

The ...

Third Circuit Reverses Dismissal of Pennsylvania Prisoners’ Dry Cell Suit

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgement alleging prison officials lacked a penological interest in extending a prisoner’s duration in a dry cell. On January 15, 2020, it affirmed the grant of judgment on the claim related to the conditions of ...

Leaving Prison for a Real Home in California

A pilot program started by a nonprofit in Alameda County, California seeks to meet an acute need for shelter faced by a group that doesn’t get much positive attention: recently released prisoners. Run by former prosecutor Alex Busansky, the nonprofit is called Impact Justice (IJ), and its ...

Health Care Services Killing Women at Virginia Prison

With four deaths in five months at Virginia’s Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW), a federal district court began moving its focus from care for individual prisoners to systematic change in July 2019.

The Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) was party to a 2016 settlement in ...

$120,000 Settlement for Minnesota Woman Forced to Remove Hijab for Booking

A $120,000 settlement was reached on November 5, 2019 in a lawsuit alleging officials at Minnesota’s Ramsey County Jail applied discriminatory treatment to a Muslim woman. The settlement with the county also provides for a change in policies related to Muslim women’s use of head coverings. ...

News in Brief

California: On March 28, 2020, death row prisoner Lonnie Franklin Jr., 67, aka “Grim Sleeper,” was found unresponsive in his San Quentin cell. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton told reporters, “There were no signs of trauma. They don’t know why he died.” The Marin County ...