by David M. Reutter
When is hearsay evidence not hearsay? On August 31, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit provided its answer. Affirming the conviction of a federal prisoner in Hawaii for assaulting a fellow prisoner, the Court said that statements from the victim reported by ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 25, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a district court in Virginia abused its discretion by implicitly overruling a prisoner’s spoliation objections when several critical issues were left unresolved by the magistrate judge.
The Court’s opinion was issued ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 17, 2022, an Indiana prisoner learned a painful lesson from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. As PLN has repeatedly warned, courts are empowered by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, to dismiss any lawsuit filed by ...
by Anthony W. Accurso and David M. Reutter
After 16 detainee deaths in 2021[See: PLN, Feb. 2022, p.1], the carnage continued at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex in 2022, leaving 19 more people dead. Having recorded an average of just six deaths a year from 2017 through ...
by David M. Reutter
In a decision filed on November 28, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the grant of qualified immunity (QI) to Delaware prison officials in a lawsuit brought by a mentally ill prisoner held in solitary confinement for seven months, alleging they ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 5, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that giving a jury a standard instruction to defer to prison officials was error when the jury needed to decide whether prison officials failed to protect a prisoner from violence.
Before the ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 28, 2022, as Hurricane Ian bore down on Florida and neared Category 5 strength, the state Department of Corrections (DOC), which holds about 80,000 prisoners, began evacuating 2,300 of them from 23 prisons statewide. But some lockups in the storm’s path took little action: Rather ...
by David M. Reutter
Giving a break to the prisoner who filed a civil rights suit she dismissed on July 8, 2022, Judge Anne R. Traum of the federal court for the District of Nevada ordered return of the plaintiff’s $402 filing fee.
The prisoner, Rafael Bernardo Alvarez, filed a ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 21, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit modified a judgment against a prisoner in a civil rights lawsuit he filed and lost against a doctor at Indiana’s LaPorte County Jail (LPCJ). The Court capped the cost amount of a witness’ ...
by David M. Reutter
A Mississippi law that became effective on July 1, 2022, gives the state Department of Corrections (DOC) the discretion to choose the method of execution for a condemned prisoner. In addition, it added nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, and firing squad as execution options, while declaring intravenous injection ...
