A rare federal death penalty case in Georgia failed, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, and derailed the careers of two federal prosecutors, both of whom are no longer employed by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta and are under investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility. ...

Despite several recent high-profile cases where the U.S. Justice Department has urged the release of prisoners who all parties agreed were "legally innocent, dozens more remain behind bars.in North Carolina. The cases arise in instances where men were imprisoned for violation of the federal law preventing convicted felons from possessing ...

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the dismissal of the Adam Walsh case against Walter Wooden, finding that the application of that Act to the defendant did not violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the United States Constitution. The court also set aside the district ...

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) first instituted the prisoner grievance system (IR) in 1974, and since that time it appears to have become an important tool to defuse prisoner complaints about the BOP and its procedures. A new study by David M. Bierie, of the U.S. Marshals Service in ...

A modified email system has been established by Minnesota prison system to allow state prisoners to receive, but not send emails to approve outside parties. This week the state began allowing all in state prisons to receive printed emails sent to computers in prison mailrooms that print them out and ...

The 9th Circuit has ruled that the period of time spent in civil confinement under the Adam Walsh Act did not constitute "imprisonment" and that a defendant's period of supervised release continues to run during that time. Marc Christopher Turner, who initially had served a prison sentence for sexually explicit ...

Viterbo Liranzo was a U.S. citizen through section 321 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), which conferred derivative citizenship on children of U.S. citizens, even though neither parent nor the child requested it. Liranzo was unaware of his citizenship, having carried his "resident alien card" or "green card" most ...

Carlos Marino, incarcerated for a 1997 drug conspiracy conviction, in 2004 submitted a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seeking all information that had already made public in his criminal trials in 1997 and 1998. The DEA denied his initial request and his administrative appeal ...

The Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. Section 552(b)(6), also known as "FOIA," was enacted "to promote honest and open government," Grand Cent. P'ship, Inc. v. Cuomo, 166 F.3d 473, 478 (2d Cir. 1999), and "to ensure public access to information created by the government in order to hold ...

Mark Allen Youngs pleaded guilty to child pornography offenses, and as part of the sentencing process was advised by the district court his various rights under Rule 11, but did not advise him of possible ramifications of his guilty plea under 18 U.S.C. Section 4248(a)(2006), also known as the "Adam ...