by Lonnie Burton
On December 15, 2016, a 5-4 ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court revived a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuit brought by a death row prisoner who claimed he will suffer cruel and unusual punishment if the state is allowed to execute him in the manner it intends. Specifically, ...
by Lonnie Burton
On January 21, 2008, prison guard Mark Marchand intervened to protect a fellow employee in an altercation with a prisoner. As a result, Marchand suffered an unspecified knee injury and began to receive workers' compensation benefits when he was forced to miss work. Marchand also received what ...
by Lonnie Burton
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, that life sentences without parole for non-homicide juveniles constituted cruel and unusual punishment. On October 19, 2016, the Louisiana Supreme Court found that, under Graham, a then-juvenile's 99-year sentence for armed robbery, which ...
by Lonnie Burton
On June 3, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed a D.C. District Court ruling which had granted summary judgment to the government and dismissed a claim filed by former prison guards who had sought the right to carry concealed weapons across ...
by Lonnie Burton
On May 25, 1016, Division Two of the Washington State Court of Appeals found that the City of Lakewood, Washington, and the Lakewood Police Department (LPD) illegally withheld documents in a Public Records Act (PRA) request and sent the case back to the trial court to determine ...
by Lonnie Burton
On October 20, 2016, the Supreme Court of Kentucky upheld the conviction of a former Michigan man for failing to register as a sex offender in Kentucky. The high court held that a juvenile adjudication for a sex offense in Michigan was equivalent to a conviction in ...
by Lonnie Burton
In an April 5, 2016 ruling, the Seventh Circuit reversed an Indiana federal district court’s order dismissing a lawsuit filed by a state prisoner who claimed prison officials failed to protect him from assaults by other prisoners. The appellate court held the lower court had improperly found ...
by Lonnie Burton
On April 25, 2016, the Fourth Circuit overturned a district court’s order dismissing a lawsuit filed by a South Carolina prisoner who alleged that the food served at a state prison was so inadequate and lacking in nutrition as to violate his Eighth Amendment rights. The appellate ...
by Lonnie Burton
In what has been described as a "remarkable reversal of mass incarceration,” a newly-published report by Justice Strategies credited the New York Police Department (NYPD) for a massive decline in drug arrests that contributed to a sharp reduction in the state’s prison population. The study, co-published with ...
by Lonnie Burton
On October 4, 2015, Illinois State prison guards identified only as officers Boland, Bufford and Deal beat prisoner Terrance Jenkins to death at the Pontiac Correctional Center while he was restrained, and suffocated him by shoving a piece of paper down his throat.
Those are the allegations ...
