In Texas, dying in jail is “par for the course.”
by Michael Barajas and Sophie Novack, Texas Observer
Armando Carrillo had been waiting outside the Nueces County Jail for hours when he heard sirens approaching in the middle of the night on March 5, 2018. He had visited the jail earlier ...
On May 10, 2022, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed a state parole board decision and granted release to Sundiata Acoli, whose involvement with a radical group that advocated overthrow of the U.S. government was repeatedly cited to keep him incarcerated for nearly a half century. In doing so, the ...
by Matt Clarke
In its decision 28 years ago in Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a prisoner’s claims affecting the duration of his confinement—including loss of “good time”—are barred when a favorable decision would “negate” a prison disciplinary decision.
Further explaining ...
by Paul Wright
For all the talk of criminal justice reform. the reality of daily life for millions of caged American prisoners is amply summed up this month’s cover story reprinted from the Texas Observer which reports on the death toll of jail prisoners in Texas. Of course, it is ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 17, 2021, the same day it explained that a Louisiana prisoner’s civil rights claims are not necessarily barred by related prison disciplinary convictions under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit applied that reasoning to ...
by Ed Lyon
Texas state prisoners have begun receiving free tablet computers from Securus Technologies. By February 18, 2022, the state’s privately contracted provider had distributed 3,500 “e-tablets” to prisoners in seven of its 61 state prisons—Diboll, Bell, Henley, Kegans, Kyle, Stevenson and Halbert units—according to a tweet from the ...
by Mark Wilson
On April 1, 2022, the federal court for the District of Oregon granted class-action certification to a suit brought by state prisoners accusing Gov. Kate Brown (D) and officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) of inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Court created two ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has decided that when a prisoner alleges sexual assault by a prison official, the only fact he needs to prove is whether the sexual assault occurred and not that it was also carried out with excessive force ...
by Mark Wilson
On July 6, 2021, a Washington state court disbursed $3.25 million paid by state officials to settle a lawsuit filed by the estate of a prisoner who died of a treatable condition that went ignored for months by medical staff at Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC), the state’s ...
by Brooke Kaufman
On April 14, 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a Settlement Agreement with the federal court for the District of South Carolina that brings to a close a suit against the state Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) over allegations of abuse and excessive use of solitary confinement ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
When Brandy Gillespie emailed the Clinical Services Bureau (CSB) at Utah State Prison, she was afraid for her husband, prisoner Jerry Gillespie, 48. It was November 2020 and state prisons were in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. The response she received was a mixture of bureaucratic ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 20, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed an order finding officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) are immune to civil rights claims for damages resulting from regulations they adopted while exercising authority delegated them by ...
by Jacob Barrett
After two staff members were brutally beaten to death by prisoners in March 2021, the Iowa Department of Corrections (DOC) hired prison consultant CGL Companies to review security at the Anamosa State Penitentiary. In return, DOC received a $500,000 bill and an audit report in December 2021 ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 29, 2021, the federal court for the Southern District of New York approved the final settlement of a class-action civil rights lawsuit over suspicionless and invasive “strip/body cavity” searches of visitors at New York City Department of Correction (DOC) jails. [See: PLN, Aug. 2018, p.54.] ...
by Keith Sanders
On January 26, 2022, the Maine Monitor published a list of nearly 1,000 privileged calls illegally recorded between detainees and their attorneys from June 2019 to May 2020 at four county jails in the state. Not included, however, was any data from York County, the state’s second-most ...
by Casey J. Bastian
Imagine having a chance to get out of prison early, doing the right thing with the opportunity and working towards your ultimate freedom, only to have it taken back. That was the situation faced by several thousand people released to home confinement by the federal Bureau ...
by Keith Sanders
On December 16, 2021, a federal jury awarded Delaware prisoner DeShawn Drumgo $500,001 in damages after concluding a prison guard had inappropriately fondled him. This was the same prisoner who lost at least four earlier cases over conditions of confinement and alleged use of excessive force by ...
by Mark Wilson
“Not all touching is lewd, even when committed with sexual intent,” the Kansas Court of Appeals declared on December 23, 2021, vacating a former prison dentist’s conviction for sexually abusing a female prisoner.
As previously reported by PLN, the former dentist, Dr. Tomas Co, worked for ...
by Cooper Quintin and Beryl Lipton
There are too many people in U.S. prisons. Their guards are overworked, underpaid, and prone to human errors, and they require work breaks and food, paychecks and sick days. Plus, they possess flaws that can lead to outbursts of violence, racism, and sexual harassment. ...
by Mark Wilson
On November 19, 2021, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $3 million to a murdered prisoner’s family for overriding recommendations to house his violent cellmate in a cell by himself. Together with another $3.25 million settlement in July 2021 [See: PLN, June 2022, ...
by David M. Reutter
In April 2021, Illinois’ DuPage County Jail (DCJ) and its Psychiatric Services Medical Director agreed to pay $275,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by detainee Dean Fuerstenberg, who attempted suicide at the jail in November 2013, sustaining permanent injuries.
In his amended civil rights complaint, Fuerstenberg ...
by Ed Lyon
Nearly four years after a group of Connecticut prisoners sued the state Department of Corrections (DOC) for denying treatment for their infection with the Hepatitis-C virus (HCV)—and a year after the parties reached a settlement that a federal judge then rejected—a superseding settlement agreement was reached on ...
by Ashleigh Dye
When prison telecom company Global Tel*Link (GTL) agreed to slash the price for calls that it charges detainees held by the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) in November 2021, it was only because advocates of the incarcerated convinced county officials to forfeit kickbacks the firm ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On October 28, 2021, the Supreme Court of Kentucky unanimously ruled that when criminal charges are dismissed, a detainee then released is not required to pay costs associated with incarceration under Kentucky law.
The decision reversed lower state court rulings and found that under Kentucky Revised ...
by Ed Lyon
On October 26, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the decision of a federal district court in Illinois to dismiss a suit brought by an epileptic prisoner forced to sleep in an upper bunk from which he fell when having a seizure ...
by Ashleigh Dye
A woman who gave birth in a cell in 2017 at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, has been awarded $250,000 to settle a lawsuit she filed the following year against Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern and jail employees, including its privately contracted healthcare staffers. The ...
by Matt Clarke
After a shootout between rival gangs in downtown Sacramento left six dead and 12 injured—many of them bystanders—on April 3, 2022, one of three suspects apprehended was Smiley Martin. Martin, 27, had been released from custody by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) just two ...
by Matt Clarke
After they were slashed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, U.S. prison populations have leveled off and jail populations appear to be rising again, according to research published by the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) on March 14, 2022.
The report mirrors another published in December ...
by Mark Wilson
On October 29, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit handed a New Jersey prisoner a legal defeat. But in the process, it joined the Fifth, Tenth, and D.C. Circuits in holding that a dismissal for failure to meet the “favorable-termination” requirement laid out ...
by Jacob Barrett
On November 9, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that a six-year delay in replying to a Michigan prisoner’s request for religious services was not merely an administrative problem for the state Department of Corrections (DOC) but instead amounted to a substantive ...
by Kevin Bliss
On December 14, 2021, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) canceled its contract with the Keefe Group as provider of prison commissary items. The next day, the state’s chief procurement officer, Ellen Daley, released a 25-page ruling determining the firm’s bid was improper and erroneous.
DOC had ...
by David M. Reutter
Victor Hill, Sheriff of Georgia’s Clayton County, will face a jury trial on September 26, 2022, on seven federal charges of violating the civil rights of jail detainees held in a restraint chair as punishment.
In April 2021, Hill was indicted for the alleged abuse of ...
by Harold Hempstead
On November 23, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas awarded $7,000 in compensatory damages to a state prisoner who, while held in a Pine Bluff jail, was injured in a beating by fellow prisoners when a former guard failed to intervene.
The ...
by David M. Reutter
Holding that the pornography policy at South Dakota State Penitentiary (SDSP) was unconstitutional as applied to a prisoner, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit nonetheless decided it lacked jurisdiction to provide him meaningful relief while also reversing a district court’s finding that the ...
by Ashleigh Dye
On April 18, 2022, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) signed House Bill 863, legislation that will repeal the 32-year-old law creating the Mississippi Prison Industries Corporation (MPIC), a non-profit entity tasked with providing job training that ultimately reduces recidivism for prisoners. Barring further action by state legislators, ...
by David M. Reutter
Finding a material dispute of fact exists in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a ban in Iowa prisons on sexually explicit materials and materials featuring nudity, a federal district court in the state denied summary judgment to defendant state and prison officials on September 30, ...
by Ed Lyon
In the three years before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, fourteen Tennessee state prisoners died from overdoses, according to the state Department of Correction (DOC). Over the two years since then that number skyrocketed to at least 68, not including several pending autopsies.
The rise from ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 1, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss the claim of a pre-operative transgender federal prisoner who accused Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials of deliberate indifference to her serious risk of sexual assault when she ...
by Harold Hempstead
In November 2021, Ohio state prisoner Seth Fletcher received a $17,500,000 settlement to conclude the civil rights complaint filed on his behalf against guards at Chillicothe Correctional Institution (CCI), after the developmentally disabled 21-year-old was the victim of a brutal assault that left him physically disabled, too. ...
byMario Palomo
Prisoners at New Jersey’s Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center (ADTC)—all convicted sex offenders—do not have access to the same programs and benefits that other state prisoners do, according to a letter excerpted in a post on December 28, 2021, to the site of the National Association of Rational ...
by Brooke Kaufman
In a status report filed in federal district court in Oregon in February 2022, a federal public defender said conditions at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) at Sheridan remained just as dire as she had found during an inspection the previous September, leaving prisoners there to suffer ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 22, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit extended the life of civil rights claims brought under Tennessee law by a jail detainee whose federal claims were dismissed by the federal court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
In its ruling, the ...
by Jacob Barrett
In an agreement executed on February 7, 2022, Canyon County, Idaho, agreed to pay $45,000 to settle censorship claims made by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News (CLN). The County also agreed to a list of policy ...
by Casey J. Bastian
In a report released on October 24, 2021, the Illinois Office of the Executive Inspector General (OIG) found that state prisoners had been improperly used to wash cars, shine shoes, give haircuts and sell wood or plants for the benefit of a fund that finances parties, ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 13, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that by rehiring a jailer who previously abused detainees at the jail, a Texas sheriff was not entitled to qualified immunity in a new suit brought by another prisoner making abuse allegations against ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 12, 2021, a settlement was reached under which four officials at the Duval County Jail (DCJ) in Jacksonville agreed to pay $6,500 to a detainee who alleged they repeatedly opened his legal mail outside his presence. That followed a decision by the U.S. Court ...
Loaded on
June 1, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2022, page 62
Alabama: A former Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) guard was indicted on April 22, 2022, for assaulting three prisoners and then filing a false report to cover it up, the Associated Press reported. The guard, Lorenzo Mills, 55, was charged with beating three male prisoners with a wooden baton at Draper Correctional Facility in ...
