by David M. Reutter
On December 19, 2023, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled for a prisoner who claimed that the state Department of Corrections (DOC) violated his civil rights by upping the rate at which it docked his prison pay “without pre-deprivation notice and an opportunity to be ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 13, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York gave final approval to a settlement paying $8.9 million from the state to the family of Terry L. Cooper, Jr. a prisoner who died after a violent clash with state ...
by David M. Reutter
There’s something rotten with bail decisions in Prince George’s County, but as of March 29, 2024, the federal court for the District of Maryland isn’t going to do anything about it. That was the date it granted Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings and ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 26, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit largely reversed a lower court and restored qualified immunity (QI) to guards at Minnesota’s Washington County Jail (WCJ) in a prisoner’s claim that they either used excessive force against him or failed ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 1, 2023, following an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that reversed a grant of summary judgment to a guard at Colorado’s Mesa County Detention Facility (MCDF), a $2 million settlement was reached in a suit filed by ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 29, 2023, Maryland’s Baltimore Board of Estimates approved a $48 million settlement for former state prisoners Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, Jr. and Ransom Watkins, all 56, who were released from prison on November 25, 2019, after serving 36 years for a murder they ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed dismissal of an Equal Protection Clause claim by Ohio prisoner Lyle Heyward that officials frustrated his attempts to celebrate Ramadan. However, dismissal was affirmed for companion claims that they also violated ...
by David M. Reutter
West Virginia Division of Corrections (WVDC) officials agreed to pay $4 million on November 8, 2023, to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging unconstitutional conditions at the Southern Regional Jail (SRJ) in Raleigh County. The settlement provided for a cash payment to current and former detainee ...
by David M. Reutter
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals resentenced death row prisoner Tomas Raul Gallo, 49, to life imprisonment on April 5, 2024, approving an agreement by prosecutors that Gallo’s intellectual disability (ID) prohibits his execution. The agreement further acknowledges that Gallo’s death sentence violated his due ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 6, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana issued a Remedial Order (RO) to correct unconstitutional healthcare at Louisiana State Prison in Angola. In a companion opinion, the Court found the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) did not provide Angola prisoners “care at all, but abhorrent and unusual punishment that violates the United States Constitution.”
But rather than use the state’s resources to address the deficiencies, DPSC is spending even more in attorney’s fees on a trip to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which agreed to hear the case and stayed the RO on March 6, 2024. See: Parker v. Hooper, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 5445 (5th Cir.).
The state’s decision is sadly predictable. Over 26 years have passed since the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found in 1989 that DPSC failed to provide adequate medical and psychiatric care to Angola prisoners. A 1992 class-action lawsuit that DOJ joined attempted to address provision of healthcare. But a 2009 report ordered from consulting prison healthcare giant Wexford Health Sources still “found multiple medical care deficiencies.” The district court said “the human cost” of ...
