Widespread Prisoner Labor Abuse Requires Reform by Gary Hunter Lonoke Mayor Thomas Privett and police Chief Jay Campbell were caught abusing the state's prisoner work program. Arkansas Department of Corrections requested, in early August 2005, that the program be suspended after learning that state prisoners had been used to repair …
News in Brief by California: On May 2, 2003, Gary Culverson, 25, and Van Kopp, 37, were arrested on charges that they assaulted Casey Humphrey, 18, a prisoner at the Monroe Detention Center in Yolo County. Culverson and Kopp were employed as guards at the jail's intake area but the …
Arkansas Prison Must Pay for Kosher Meals by Arkansas Prison Must Pay For Kosher Meals The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed an order of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas ordering the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC) to provide a Jewish prisoner with …
Prompt Mental Health Services Ordered for Arkansas Pretrial Detainees by John E Dannenberg by John E. Dannenberg A settlement was reached between the Arkansas Division of Mental Health Services and the class of all mentally ill pretrial detainees in Arkansas, to have either timely court-ordered mental health evaluations or be …
Eighth Circuit: BOP Prisoners Have No Liberty Interest in Visits by by Matthew T. Clarke The Eighth Circuit court of Appeals held that the suspension of a prisoner's visitation rights with his wife and two other women for eighteen months was not a significant and atypical hardship and therefore did …
U.S. Torture: A Sordid History Of Official And Systematic Abuse by G. Flint Taylor by G . Flint Taylor The brutal and sadistic torture by U.S. military prison guards, military intelligence officers, and CIA interrogators which is being revealed daily in the mainstream media has brought protestations from President Bush, …
Suits Against Individual State Employees Available Under ADA by Suits Against Individual State Employees Available under ADA The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed two separate district courts and ruled that under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), state employees can be sued in …
Summer Uprisings in Three Southern Jails by As temperatures rose last summer, so did tensions in some southern jails. Guards at the Craighead County jail in Jonesboro, Arkansas, used tear gas and stun guns to regain control of a cell block that housed 27 prisoners. Four prisoners received minor injuries …
No Fundamental Right to Fee Waiver for Civil Rights Action by No Fundamental Right to Fee Waiver for Civil Rights Actions The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has upheld the PLRA's three strikes rule, and overturned a case which found that rule unconstitutional. The opinion in this case …
No Jurisdiction for Appeal When Qualified Immunity Not Denied by by Matthew T. Clarke The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled that it has no jurisdiction to hear an interlocutory appeal of a partial denial of a motion for summary judgment when the district court did not …
Three Arkansas Guards Sentenced in Beating by On August 22, 1999 Arkansas prisoner Terry Botts received a beating at the Arkansas Regional Unit in Brickeys by three guards while his hands were handcuffed behind his back. The guards determined the severity of the injuries he sustained would not require hospitalization, …
Denial of Grievance Forms Is Denial of Remedy by The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that a prisoner's "Motion to Reinstate Cause" after dismissal of a 42 U.S.C. §1983 action alleged facts to raise an inference he had exhausted his "available" remedies. While an Arkansas Department of …
Suicides, Staff Negligence Plague Private Arkansas Juvenile Prison by Lonnie Burton In October 2001, a just-completed state investigation concluded that Houston-based Cornell Company, the private firm that runs Arkansas's Alexander Youth Services Center, was negligent for failing to monitor an at-risk youth who committed suicide. The suicide was the second …
Grievance Retaliation States Claim by The court of appeals for the Eighth circuit held that a district court erred when it dismissed an Arkansas prisoner's claim that he was subjected to false disciplinary charges in retaliation for filing grievances against a prison employee. The court upheld the dismissal of a …
No Immunity for Photo Limit by The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in a per curium opinion, held that Arkansas prison officials were not entitled to qualified immunity for promulgating a policy that allows prisoners to retain only five photographs in their cells. Len Davis, a federal prisoner …
$147,000 Paid for 3-1/2 Hour Overdetention and Strip Search of Mistaken Arrestee by John E Dannenberg The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a jury verdict of $100,000 against the Little Rock, Arkansas police when, after a judge ordered the release of a mistakenly arrested woman, they failed to promptly …
Escapes Are Violent Crimes Under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines by Escapes are Violent Crimes Under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that prison and jail escapes are considered "crimes of violence" for purposes of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (USSG). Larry Nation was convicted in federal …
Administrative Exhaustion Not Jurisdictional by John E Dannenberg The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 (PLRA), a federal court is not deprived of jurisdiction to hear a prisoner's civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 if he has not first …
Denial of Religious Diet Violates First Amendment by The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that prison officials' denial of a religious diet violated the First Amendment by substantially burdening a state prisoner's religious beliefs. Arkansas state prisoner Kelvin Love is a self-proclaimed adherent of the "Hebrew religion." …
Arkansas Guards Indicted for Shocking Prisoners by Arkansas Guards Indicted For Shocking Prisoners On February 7, 2001, criminal charges were filed in a federal District Court in Arkansas against 6 former guards who beat handcuffed prisoners and shocked them with a stungun and a cattle prod. On January 7, 1998, …
