TDCJ Denied Summary Judgment In Suit by Prisoner Who Missed Grievance Deadline Because Guard’s Assault Left Him In a Coma by It’s hard to tell who is slimier, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) guard who allegedly beat a prisoner into a coma or prison officials who then attempted …
Multiple Abuse Allegations Against Texas Prison Guard Deemed “Unsubstantiated” by TDCJ by After Texas prisoner Wendy Morales accused Lane Murray Unit guard Nathaniel Aviles of groping her during an August 2023 cross-­sex strip-­search—itself a policy violation—the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) ruled her complaint “unsubstantiated.” It was not the …
Hometown Prison Examines Its Texas Neighbors by Incarcerated readers of PLN will not soon get a chance to see Hometown Prison, a new documentary film released on February 27, 2024, which explores the relationship between some 80,000 people who make their home in Huntsville, Texas and the seven prisons there …
Texas Prisoner’s Lawsuit Seeks Relief from Heat in Un-Air-Conditioned Prisons by David Reutter by David M. Reutter A suit filed by a Texas prisoner alleging that stifling heat in his cell threatens his life was allowed to proceed against Defendant officials with the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) on …
HRDC v. Grayson County, TX, Complaint, Censorship, 2024 Case 4:24-cv-00828 Document 1 Filed 09/12/24 Page 1 of 27 PageID #: 1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS SHERMAN DIVISION HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENSE CENTER, Plaintiff, v. COMPLAINT JURY DEMANDED GRAYSON COUNTY, TEXAS; and TOM WATT, …
HRDC v. Grayson County, TX, Complaint, Censorship, 2024 Case 4:24-cv-00828 Document 1 Filed 09/12/24 Page 1 of 27 PageID #: 1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS SHERMAN DIVISION HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENSE CENTER, Plaintiff, v. COMPLAINT JURY DEMANDED GRAYSON COUNTY, TEXAS; and TOM WATT, …
Texas Prosecutor Gets Fine, Probated Bar Suspension After Jailing Woman for Abortion by On January 25, 2024, the Texas Bar Association issued a probated suspension to Starr County District Attorney Gocha A. Ramirez, after finding he “sought to pursue criminal homicide charges against an individual for acts clearly not criminal” …
News in Brief by Alabama: On June 24, 2024, Walker County Sheriff Nick Smith told the Birmingham News that county jail guard Tony Dewayne Jackson, 29, had been arrested for smuggling “non-­drug” contraband into the lockup. Jackson was no longer working at the jail, but Smith didn’t say how or …
Pilot Jail Diversion Program Opens for Mentally Ill Arrestees in Austin by A pilot program to divert mentally ill suspects from Texas’ Travis County Jail (TCJ) in Austin opened in March 2024. Inspired by the success of similar efforts in Miami and Nashville, county Judge Andy Brown corralled a coalition …
Unintended Consequence of Texas Prisoner Tablets: Retaliation from Fellow Prisoners by As prisons and jails make services available to prisoners via electronic tablets, they report generally positive results, especially the easy access to information that the systems provide. But in an essay published by Prison Journalism Project on March 19, …
Fifth Circuit: Texas Prisoner’s Declaration Alone Sufficient to Send PLRA Exhaustion Dispute to Trial by On January 31, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a Texas prisoner’s uncorroborated declaration outlining steps he took to exhaust administrative remedies through the state Department of Criminal Justice …
$500,000 for Texas Teen Sodomized in Jail by According to final judgment entered in federal court for the Southern District of Texas on December 18, 2023, Brazos County paid $500,000 to a former detainee assaulted at the county jail in October 2022. The victim, identified as “A.R.,” was a minor …
Two Prisoners Removed from Texas Death Row Due to Intellectual Disability by David Reutter by David M. Reutter The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals resentenced death row prisoner Tomas Raul Gallo, 49, to life imprisonment on April 5, 2024, approving an agreement by prosecutors that Gallo’s intellectual disability (ID) …
His Appeal Lost for 28 Years, Texas Prisoner Finally Off Death Row by When sentenced to Texas’ death row in 1988 for a murder committed the year before, Syed Rabbani was a healthy 23-year-old. Now 57, he is psychotic and blind, left almost entirely unable to move or speak by …
Texas Bankruptcy Court Rejects Proposed Settlement of Prisoner Claims Against Corizon Health by On April 11, 2024, a Texas bankruptcy court rejected a proposed $54 million settlement that would have paid just a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars owed to prisoners who won judgments or secured settlement …
Harris County Shipping Detainees from Overcrowded Jail to Mississippi CoreCivic Prison by On December 1, 2023, Harris County, Texas, began sending up to 360 detainees from the county’s jails to a prison in Mississippi, under a contract with its private operator, CoreCivic. The County Commissioners Court approved the $11.3 million …
Texas Detainee Raped in Jail Sues Macy’s for False Facial-ID Match That Led to Arrest by A lawsuit filed on January 18, 2024, accuses retail giant Macy’s of employing faulty facial recognition technology that falsely identified a Texas man as an armed robbery suspect, landing him in a Houston jail …
BOP Rolls Out Veterans-Only Housing at Federal Prison in Texas by In an article published by the Vanguard at Berkeley on October 15, 2023, a new program was reported at the Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, Texas: A dorm exclusively for prisoners who are veterans of the U.S. military. Federal …
“Third Time Is Not the Charm” For Texas Jailers Barred by PLRA from Enforcing Prior Settlement Agreement Against Prisoner in New Suit by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke On January 12, 2024, the federal court for the Western District of Texas refused a motion by Williamson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) …
Three Texas Prison Guards Among 13 Charged in Sprawling Smuggling Scheme by On December 19, 2023, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas provided details about a sealed indictment filed in federal court there the previous month, naming three defendants accused of abusing their positions as prison guards …
