by David M. Reutter
On November 16, 2023, the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $5 million to the estate of Thomas Henry Giles, 31, a mentally ill prisoner who died after guards left him for hours locked inside a cell on fire at Augusta State Medical ...
by David M. Reutter
When confronted with prisoner complaints, officials often produce glowing inspection reports and blame prisoners for destroying prison infrastructure. All too often, though, inept supervision is to blame for failure to maintain facilities. As many prisoners will tell you, when an inspection is looming, the prisonis ...
by David M. Reutter
Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) leaders have come before the state legislature repeatedly to warn that it is a system operating in crisis. In a presentation on November 15, 2023, by global consulting firm KPMG, which was selected in 2022 by the state Department of ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 27, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin denied state prison officials’ motion for new trial. That left standing a jury verdict finding that prisoner Adam Young was denied procedural due process in a disciplinary action, awarding him $700,000. ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 14, 2023, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $500,000 to resolve a state prisoner’s allegation that his Eighth Amendment guarantee of freedom from cruel and unusual punishment was violated when he was restrained and isolated in a “dry cell” without running ...
by David M. Reutter
On October 19, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to officials at St. Louis’ “Workhouse” jail in a suit over a detainee’s fatal overdose, finding the lower court “tilted the scales too far in the plaintiff’s ...
by David M. Reutter
In September 2023, just two months into a program to rebate fines and fees for vacated drug convictions, Washington state courts had paid out more than $9.4 million. That’s nearly 20% of a $50 million fund created by state lawmakers after the state Supreme Court found ...
by David M. Reutter
On October 26, 2023, the Supreme Court of Wyoming held that the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act shielded the state from liability in a lawsuit alleging a nurse negligently injected three prisoners with a COVID-19 vaccine other than the one listed on the ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 11, 2023, the Supreme Court of the U.S. declined to issue a writ of certiorari to hear a Florida prisoner’s appeal to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, finding no constitutional violation by exposure to urine and feces ...
