Texas Court of Appeals Reverses Dismissal of Prisoner’s Retaliation Suit; Second Dismissal Affirmed After Remand by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke A Texas Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of a prisoner’s lawsuit alleging that he suffered retaliation for litigation activities. However, after the case was again dismissed following remand, …
Davis v. McDuffie, TX, Verdict, Failure to Protect, 2010 Case 9:07-cv-00019-RC-ZJH Document 192 Filed 04/14/10 Page 1 of 2 PageID #: 1055 FI LEp IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS GfR IL / ~ 20L9 LUFKIN DIVISION DAVID J. MALAND, CLERK PM DARYLL.DAVIS, U.S. …
A Tight Leash: Judges Micromanage Federal Offenders After Release by Brandon Sample The number of people serving terms of supervised release after leaving federal prison is creeping ever closer to 100,000. As judges and probation officers attempt to manage their growing caseloads, more and more judges are imposing supervised release …
Texas Counties Give Up on Probationer Restitution Centers by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke In the 1980s, faced with overcrowded prisons and probationers who often failed to pay their court-ordered fees and fines, some Texas counties came up with what sounded like a good idea: the Probationer Restitution Center (PRC). …
Call Your Attorney from Jail, Go to Prison by John Dannenberg by John E. Dannenberg Jail prisoners in California, Florida, Michigan and Texas have unknowingly had their phone calls to defense attorneys secretly recorded and handed over to prosecutors. The recordings surfaced before trial, when prosecutors were required to divulge …
Texas to Eliminate Centralized Release of Prisoners by By September 1, 2010, a long-standing Texas prison tradition will come to an end--the centralized release of prisoners. The vast majority of Texas prisoners released each year--more than 42,000 in 2008--are processed out through a red-brick walled prison built in 1842 designated …
Texas Youth Commission Causes Consternation, Conflict in State Legislature by Gary Hunter Last year, honoring the request of state Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, the Office of the Independent Ombudsman (OIO) of the Texas Youth Commission investigated the reason for the “alarming trend regarding adult certifications” of youthful offenders in Texas. …
GEO Group Prison Squalor Drives Idaho Prisoner to Suicide: $100,000 Settlement by On September 13, 2009, the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) reached a settlement with the parents of an Idaho state prisoner who was driven to suicide by squalid conditions at a GEO Group-run private prison in Texas, where …
Texas Prison Guard Gets 24 Months in Federal Prison by In August 2009, a former Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) guard was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison in connection with a vicious assault on a handcuffed prisoner. Eugene Morris, Jr., a TDCJ sergeant at the Ferguson Unit, …
Texas Religious Group Policies May Violate First Amendment and RLUIPA; TDCJ Changes Policy by The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) policies that had the effect of prohibiting a prisoner from meeting with other members of his religion and possessing religious items may …
Swine Flu Widespread in Prisons and Jails, but Deaths are Few by David Reutter by David M. Reutter For hundreds of years the cramped, overcrowded and often filthy confines of dungeons, prisons, jails and other places of imprisonment have served as incubators for infectious diseases, which have killed more prisoners …
Ineffective Attempts to Protect Texas Prisoner Were Sufficient by The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s denial of summary judgment to prison officials who had failed to safeguard a Texas state prisoner, saying their ineffective attempts to protect him were sufficient. Gregory Moore was incarcerated at the …
Federal Judge Holds Texas Parole Board Coleman Hearings Unconstitutional by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke On August 6, 2009, a federal judge ruled that hearings held by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (BPP) to determine whether onerous sex offender conditions should be imposed on parolees not convicted of …
Denial of Medical Care Causes Two Riots at GEO Group Texas Prison by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke On December 12, 2008, a riot erupted at the GEO Group-run Reeves County Detention Center (RCDC) in Pecos, Texas, which houses federal immigration detainees. The uprising was triggered by the death of …
Ineligible Texas Prisoners Receive Federal Stimulus Checks by Jimmy Franks Between May and June of last year, hundreds of federal economic stimulus checks began to arrive at various Texas prisons, addressed to prisoners who were thought to be eligible to receive them. Those payments were part of 1,700 stimulus checks …
Exposure to Freezing Cold More than De Minimis in Texas Retaliation Case by The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court had erred when it dismissed a prisoner’s retaliation-based civil rights suit as de minimis when the prisoner’s alleged injury was exposure to freezing cold for four-and-a-half …
Unprovoked Texas Cattle Prod Shocking More Than De Minimis Injury, Case Settles for $20,000 by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke On September 5, 2007, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a guard who used a cattle prod to shock a prisoner without any provocation caused more than a …
U.S. DOJ Calls Houston Jail Unconstitutional, Prisoner Death Rate Alarming by Gary Hunter As a follow-up to PLN’s October 2009 cover story, this article examines in greater detail findings by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) related to conditions at the Harris County jail in Houston, Texas. From 2001 through …
Federal Jury Awards $5 Million for Wrongful Conviction Involving Houston Crime Lab by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke A Texas federal jury awarded $5 million to a former prisoner who was wrongly convicted of kidnapping and sexual assault based in part on falsified evidence generated by the Houston Police Department’s …
PLN Sues Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice Over Censorship; Court Upholds Rights of Book Distributors by Alex Friedmann On November 4, 2009, Prison Legal News filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas against Brad Livingston, Executive Director of the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), …
