by Christopher Zoukis
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has taken the bold step of finding a new cause of action that would allow indigent criminal defendants to prospectively sue a county for failing to adequately fund and operate a public defender's office.
The right to the assistance of competent counsel in ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district court’s order allowing across-the-board redactions by the government in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association submitted a FOIA request to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a division of ...
by Christopher Zoukis
A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, released on September 7, 2016, revealed that the number of accused and convicted offenders required to wear some kind of electronic monitoring device has increased nearly 140 percent in the last decade.
Electronic monitoring devices generally consist of GPS and ...
by Christopher Zoukis
In August 2015, the Nebraska Supreme Court denied a reporter’s attempt to obtain “graphic” drawings made by infamous executed child-killer John Joubert. Despite the efforts of state prison officials, however, the drawings were eventually obtained and published.
The reporter, Mark Pettit, was an investigative journalist when Joubert ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled on October 12, 2016 that a two-month delay in ordering a biopsy of a prisoner’s potentially cancerous masses did not constitute deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs.
Calvin Whiting was incarcerated at the Shawnee Correctional Center in ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals released an important decision concerning the rights of pretrial detainees on November 7, 2016.
The case involved allegations of unconstitutional conduct by authorities at the New Hanover County Detention Facility in North Carolina. The plaintiff, Michael Anthony Dilworth, claimed that he ...
by Christopher Zoukis
In August 2015, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of prison officials accused of being deliberately indifferent to a prisoner’s serious medical needs, and remanded the case for a trial on the merits. The defendants prevailed at ...
by Christopher Zoukis
A fact sheet compiled by In the Public Interest (ITPI), a public policy research organization, indicates that Corrections Corporation of America – CCA, now known as CoreCivic – and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison firms in the nation, have spent a combined $2.2 billion ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Fourth Circuit has reversed a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials on a prisoner’s claim that his Eighth Amendment rights were violated.
Paul Scinto, Sr. was incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp in Butner, North Carolina between June ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Karen V. Murphy ordered the Nassau County Police Department (NCPD) to turn over its Police Department Manual to the plaintiff in a wrongful death suit on October 6, 2015.
The manual was requested through a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) petition filed ...
