Private executioners paid in cash. Middle-of-the-night killings. False or incomplete justifications. ProPublica obtained court records showing how the outgoing administration used its final days to execute the most federal prisoners since World War II.
by Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica, Dec. 23, 2020
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
In its hurry to use its final days in power to execute federal prisoners, the administration of President Donald Trump has trampled over an array of barriers, both legal and practical, according to court records that have not been previously reported.
Officials gave public explanations for their choice of which prisoners should die that misstated key facts from the cases. They moved ahead with executions in the middle of the night. They left one prisoner strapped to the gurney while lawyers worked to remove a court order. They executed a second prisoner while an appeal was still pending, leaving the court to then dismiss the appeal as “moot” because the man was already dead. They bought drugs from a secret pharmacy that failed a quality test. They hired private executioners and paid them in cash.
The unprecedented string of executions is ...
by Chad Marks
As detailed in this month’s cover story, former President Trump and Attorney General Barr were responsible for a spree of federal executions during their final months in office. But the ProPublica cover story was written in December of 2020, and the Trump administration executed three more prisoners ...
by Derek Gilna
It seems inconceivable that prison personnel selected to carry out the ultimate judicial sanction – execution — would willfully violate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and expose themselves, their families, prisoners and staff, clergy, and media witnesses to COVID-19. But that is exactly what happened, ...
by Paul Wright
Since our inception, the Human Rights Defense Center, the publisher of Prison Legal News, has opposed the death penalty. The saying that capital punishment means that those without the capital get the punishment well illustrates the inherent unfairness of how the death penalty is applied in ...
by Ed Lyon
On February 4, 2021, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) was fined $400,000 by a state agency for placing the staff of its San Quentin State Prison at unnecessary risk of infection, illness and death from COVID-19 with a much-criticized prisoner transfer the previous year. ...
by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
New variants of the coronavirus
February saw numerous reports about mutations and new variants of the pandemic coronavirus. A variant called B.1.1.7 was first identified in England (UK) last fall. B.1.1.7 spreads among people more easily (is more infectious) and may also cause serious illness ...
by Kevin Bliss
Within the first six days of office President Biden signed the ‘‘First Step’’ executive order preventing the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) from renewing any of its contracts with private companies to run its prisons. Activists say the order was nothing more than a token gesture and ...
by Casey Bastian
Very few criminal offenses in America allow for a sentence of death. Nevertheless, too many people are dying in jails and prisons while serving a sentence or simply waiting for the process to slowly grind its way to a resolution. Oftentimes people can’t make bail for even ...
by David M. Reutter
An Illinois federal district court awarded $300,000 to a prisoner who alleged a female food supervisor coerced him into sexual activity.
The court’s September 29, 2020, order was issued following a damages bench trial. The lawsuit was filed by Illinois prisoner Donald Quickle. He was represented ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 5, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal criminal convictions of two former New York prison guards for their assault of an unresisting prisoner and subsequent cover up.
When prisoners Kevin Moore and Tyron Hollmond arrived at New York’s Downstate Correctional Facility, ...
by Derek Gilna
Federal prisoners transferred tohome confinement to serve their sentences because of the COVID-19 emergency could return to lockup if a January 15, 2021, opinion issued by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel is followed.
According to the memo, if the U.S. attorney general ...
by David M. Reutter
Citing Mississippi’s refusal to invest in prison facilities and staff, private medical vendor Centurion pulled out of its contract with the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) to provide medical and mental health care to prisoners. The move was hailed as a “significant victory” by Team Roc. ...
Loaded on
March 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2021, page 22
MyMove.com (https://www.mymove.com/moving/guides/moving-after-incarceration/)
What does life after prison look like for these returning citizens? Specifically, will they have the safe, affordable housing they need to set them up for stable, productive reentry?
These questions are particularly pressing because around two-thirds of returning citizens are arrested within just three years ...
by Brian Dolinar, Truthout.org, January 30, 2021
Part of the Series: Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19
With COVID-19 raging throughout the United States, there is a growing sense of desperation among people in prison. Pablo Mendoza, who recently got out of prison, said that those inside “are ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 14, 2020, a federal judge approved a $3 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by the family of a Pennsylvania jail prisoner who died after being held in a restraint chair with his face covered by a “spit mask” because guards mistook a seizure for ...
by Matt Clarke
A 63-year-old grandmother filed a lawsuit on October 8, 2020 after she was arrested and jailed while having a mental health crisis. While jailed, she was forced into a restraint chair and then placed in a cell without access to water for days, forcing her to drink ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Two audits released July 20, 2020 revealed a series of shortcomings by a food service contractor tasked with providing meals to juvenile detainees and in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County.
Florida-based contractor Trinity Services Group was paid $3.5 million to provide three meals a day to prisoners at the ...
by David M. Reutter
Mass solitary confinement in the United States did not develop as a response to violent predators, “but rather as a means for officials to achieve control of political activists and ‘troublemakers’ amongst prisoners.” That conclusion is drawn in an essay by Jules Lobel, the Bessie McKee ...
by Matt Clarke
In a timely report published on September 10, 2020, the Brennan Center for Justice examined the impact of video proceedings on fairness and access to justice in court. It recommended caution in the expansion or long-term adoption of video proceedings initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 24, 2020, a federal judge rejected reducing the sentence of a former Pennsylvania judge who became infamous for taking bribes to keep a private juvenile prison full of children. He became known as the “kids-for-cash” judge.
Former Luzerne County juvenile court president Judge Mark Ciavarella, ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
An attorney with a small private practice in Albuquerque has blazed an unconventional path to reforming the use of solitary confinement in New Mexico. According to an October 2020 profile in Rolling Stone magazine, Matthew Coyte has successfully sued local jails over abuses of the practice, ...
by Douglas Ankney
On September 8, 2020, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilkin of the Northern District of California ordered additional remedial measures—including body-worn cameras for guards—as relief in a class-action suit claiming allegations of abuse of disabled prisoners by guards at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility (“RJD”) in San Diego. ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 9, 2020, the Supreme Court of Arizona held that a lower court could not appoint a special master to review the recordings of jail phone calls between a prisoner and an attorney that were allegedly privileged.
Christopher Matthew Clements was an Arizona county jail prisoner ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A Congressional caucus was announced on August 14, 2020 whose purpose is to shed light on management of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and to bring accountability to decisions made by its executives.
House Rep. Fred Keller (R-Pa.) announced the formation of the BOP Reform ...
by Jayson Hawkins
His Texas ID card identifies him as Jason Jackson, Offender #2208297. The black ink etched in his skin and white clothing he must wear mark him as little different from 140,000 others in the state’s prison system, yet the phrase “Living Legend” tattooed across his face is ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Ex-death-row prisoner Debra Milke’s civil suit against Arizona authorities claiming wrongful conviction was dismissed by a federal judge on October 29, 2020 because she repeatedly destroyed documents relevant to her case.
Judge Roslyn Silver harshly criticized Milke in her ruling, saying the destroyed records would have ...
by Douglas Ankney
Law professors Shirin Sinnar (Stanford Law School) and Beth A. Colgan (UCLA School of Law) explored the viability of victim compensation and restorative justice as alternatives to sentencing enhancements for hate crimes in New York University Law Review’s September 2020 issue.
During the decades dominated by ...
by Douglas Ankney
In late September 2020, private correctional healthcare contractor Wellpath paid $4.5 million to settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a mentally ill teen who died from dehydration while incarcerated in 2016 at the Benton County Jail in Kennewick, Washington.
The family’s attorney, Edwin ...
by Mark Wilson
Oregon prisoner Carl Spieler, 56, suffered for three months after he was admitted to the state penitentiary in Salem in May 2018, while prison medical staff, convinced he was malingering, dismissed his 62-pound weight loss, dangerously low blood pressure and other alarming symptoms of an untreated staph ...
by Kevin Bliss
Prosecutors dismissed felony aggravated assault charges against jail detainee Mike Neal and placed three guards under criminal investigation for battery and official misconduct after previously unreported video surfaced of the incident at the Miami-Dade County Jail, Metro West Detention Center, according to a July 29, 2020 story ...
by Kevin Bliss
Pay-to-stay fees are charged by over 30% of the county jails and detention centers in the state of Wisconsin. Critics contend that the system contributes to recidivism and that the penalties are so high that they violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
Wisconsin Watch, a watchdog ...
by Kevin Bliss
The number of people who died in federal Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) detention centers during its fiscal year that ended September 30, 2020 — 21 in all — was more than double the previous years’s total, according to a recent report by the Vera Institute of ...
by Casey J. Bastian
In 2004, former FBI agent Richard Beasley first met Jon D. Ponder when he was arresting Ponder for bank robbery. Beasley recalled that Ponder was “angry, scared, frustrated and anxious about his future.” Ponder found himself in a small jail cell in Las Vegas looking at ...
by Ed Lyon
Whether in a jail or a prison, the sight of a person drawing cards or decorating envelopes and even doing portraits is not uncommon. Art is a major part of prison life, a way of safely expressing one’s self, not to mention a way for indigent prisoners ...
by David M. Reutter
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that each interception of an attorney’s privileged telephone is a violation of the federal and Nevada Wiretap Acts. As such, the statute of limitations is triggered anew for each intercepted call.
The court’s October 27, 2020, opinion was issued ...
by Mark Wilson
"Michael Barton died a brutal death because he was ignored and then written off as faking symptoms and refusing medication,” said attorney Bryan Dawson, upon securing a $3 million settlement in August 2020 — the largest in Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) history — for the late ...
by David M. Reutter
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a Michigan federal district court to determine if a prisoner showed excusable neglect in filing an appellate notice outside time limitations. The prisoner alleged he couldn’t get needed copies made because his prison was on lockdown.
The court’s October ...
by Douglas Ankney
Beginning in July 2021, California will stop accepting nearly all youth offenders at three facilities operated by the Division of Juvenile Justice (“DJJ”). This resulted from an August 2020 deal between Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature whereby the majority of offenders age 25 and younger ...
by Keith Sanders
Once behind bars, American prisoners often feel forgotten, thanks to an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude that turns the country’s prisons and jails into human warehouses. Disregarding its impact on communities is dangerous — especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Assessing the relationship ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of Ohio granted a state prisoner’s petition for a writ of mandamus and ordered the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) to recalculate his sentence.
DRC prisoner Charles Fraley pleaded guilty to multiple aggravated robberies. In Cause No. 11CR-403, ...
by Daniel A. Rosen
Nevada state officials suspended a Department of Corrections policy that used a victims’ bill of rights to take up to 80 percent of funds sent to prisoners by family members, but in January 2021 restarted it but cut the maximum to 50 percent.
Marsy’s Law was ...
by Kevin Bliss
Sheriff Scott Jones of Sacramento, California has been exposed for failing to report deaths at two Sacramento County jails. California Department of Justice records show that at least nine people died in the county jail in 2019 — the same as had died in the previous three ...
by Mark Wilson
"If the judge didn’t sentence you to death, the prison doesn’t have a right to provide such poor health care that you die,” Dr. Marc Stern, a health-care expert who has worked for the Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC), told Crosscut, an online publication, in an ...
by David M. Reutter
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that prisoners who had deductions taken from their inmate account under Act 84 are entitled to a post-deprivation process.
The court’s October 1, 2020, opinion was issued in an appeal brought by prisoner Aquil Johnson, who sought a refund of monies ...
by Ed Lyon
Having for many years been the largest prison system in the U.S. — now second only to Texas — the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) saw its prisoner count drop below 100,000 for the first time in over three decades in September 2020. Unfortunately, this ...
by Keith Sanders
Mississippi joined 28 other states by removing a tobacco ban at the state’s prisons. As of February 1, 2021, both prisoners and staff are allowed to smoke outdoors in designated areas determined by each facility’s warden.
Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) enacted a smoking and tobacco product ...
by David M. Reutter
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that a prisoner exhausted administrative remedies when he followed the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) Inmate Grievance Procedure, but the Central Office Review Committee (CORC) failed to respond within the 30 days it is ...
by Kevin Bliss
"In the last 10 years, Minnesota counties have paid out more than $10 million in settlements and legal fees following lawsuits accusing jails of providing inadequate to non-existent health care to inmates,” KARE 11 reported in a major investigative report on October 29, 2020.
One of the ...
by Ed Lyon
About 500 Arizona prison staff were arrested between 2015 and 2019, averaging around 100 per year. Drunken driving charges supposedly top the list of charges, which include sexual assault and human trafficking, according to Department of Corrections records reported by KJZZ on October 26, 2020.
Nearly 20 ...
by Dale Chappell
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri entered an order on November 12, 2020, finding that Missouri’s parole system was unconstitutional, handing down a laundry list of corrections needed.
The problem was Missouri’s handling of parole revocation proceedings, which the Court said violated parolees’ ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women (Mahan) in Clinton, New Jersey is again headlining the news with 32 guards now under investigation for assault and sexual abuse. The Department of Justice had completed an investigation there last April 2020, finding the prison violated the prisoners’ rights ...
by Ed Lyon
"We are the ones who are supposed to be protecting society from the criminals, not be the criminals,” the commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) said at a September 18, 2020 press conference. “So we will not tolerate bad behavior of any kind. Inmates, correctional ...
Loaded on
March 1, 2021
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2021, page 62
Arizona: In January 2021, two women who worked at an Arizona state prison operated by Florida-based GEO Group pleaded guilty to having sex with inmates there. Melony Petrovffsky, 50, ran the commissary for the private contractor at a prison in Golden Valley, where she was allegedly caught on video surveillance ...
