William Pierce, a prisoner held by the District of Columbia’s Department of Corrections (DCDOC), has won a $70,000 jury verdict for repeated violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Pierce, who suffers from severe hearing loss, was denied hearing aids and sign-language interpreters while he was held at the ...

Connecticut state prisoner Tye Thomas won an important pretrial motion that found employees of the Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) were “grossly negligent” in failing to preserve key video surveillance footage of assaults he suffered on the recreation yard and in cells at the Northern Correctional Institution. On April 29, ...

In 2008, long before the issue became a focus of national attention, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana filed a federal civil rights suit against the Indiana Department of Correction (DOC), challenging inadequate treatment of mentally ill prisoners. After years of litigation, the ACLU won a significant settlement ...

Esteban Gonzalez, while incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan and the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, was confined to the Special Housing Unit (SHU) for stabbing another prisoner “with a knife-like object.” After being held in the SHU at both facilities for “an extended period of ...

Maurice Walker, 54, was arrested in the City of Calhoun, Georgia for public intoxication in September 2015, and told that if he posted a $160 bond he could go free until his first court date. Unfortunately Walker was indigent, living on a small fixed income and could not afford to ...

Ryan K. Mathison, incarcerated at FCI Pekin, a federal prison near Peoria, Illinois, suffered from high blood pressure. One morning he awoke at 3 a.m. with a sharp pain in his chest; he summoned a guard, who called a lieutenant, who in turn contacted the duty nurse. Although the lieutenant ...

Ronald J. Beal, a Wisconsin state prisoner, filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging violations of his civil rights by Department of Corrections (DOC) staff who had subjected him to verbal harassment. After his complaint was dismissed by a magistrate judge during the initial screening process, Beal appealed. ...

The Wayne Brown Correctional Facility in Nevada County, California changed its rules in 2013 to prohibit defense attorneys from having contact visits with their clients, allegedly due to security and cost concerns. Several prisoners filed suit, and a superior court ruled against the county and reinstated the contact visits. The ...

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held on June 6, 2016 that a federal prisoner, Walter J. Himmelreich, could file a § 1983 federal civil rights complaint after the dismissal of his Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) claim, under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b), 2674. An FTCA suit allows ...

Prison Legal News has learned through a public records request that 18 prisoners died at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman in just over a six-month period. The most recent reported death was that of Terry Echols, who passed away in May 2016 due to complications related to morbid obesity, ...