by David M. Reutter
On August 17, 2022, Lager George Reid, 26, was admitted to Folsom State Prison, after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of his cellmate at the jail in California’s San Bernardino County. Reid was being held at the county’s West Valley Detention Center (WVDC) ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 29, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a civil detainee in custody of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not a “prisoner” subject to the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. Since that law ...
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 ...
