by Mark Wilson
"What's happening at the Oregon Department of Corrections is unconstitutional and its inhumane treatment of people and it has to stop," said Mat dos Santos, legal director for the Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "Unless they make significant changes in the way staff approach transgender prisoners, people are going to keep getting hurt and people are going to die. It's that serious."
Michelle Wright, 25, has identified publicly as a woman since 16 years old. That was not a problem until 2013, when Wright was sentenced to the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) for five years.
On October 17, 2016, the ACLU filed federal suit on behalf of Wright, alleging that ODOC officials are deliberately indifferent to her serious medical needs and safety.
In 2013, an ODOC intake officer noted that Wright had seen counselors about her gender, but had not been formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria. An ODOC psychologist made that diagnosis in November 2014, according to dos Santos.
Wright requested hormone treatment, but prison officials refused. Her requests for counseling and feminizing products, such as hair removal cream, were also denied.
One month later, Wright attempted suicide and was found unresponsive ...
by Mark Wilson
Prisons and jails across the country went tobacco-free years ago, to avoid second-hand smoke lawsuits and rising medical care costs. Now, impoverished jails are selling prisoners e- cigarettes, in hopes of profiting off their addiction.
“Hope I can make $45,000 a year and that profit will be ...
by Mark Wilson
After serving more than ten years on death row, a 60-year old Oregon prisoner had his death sentence vacated and was ruled ineligible for the death penalty, due to an "intellectual disability."
In November, 1991, Gerald Glenn Phillips, 32, and Belinda Fay Flannigan, 30, were shot to ...
by Mark Wilson
The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's refusal to appoint counsel on a request for DNA testing, twice. The court instructed that a guilty plea does not foreclose eligibility to file such a request.
Under Oregon law a person who was convicted of aggravated murder, murder, or a sex offense may petition the court that entered the judgment for appointment of counsel at state expense, to assist the person in determining whether to request DNA testing under ORS 138.690 to 138.698. The petition must be accompanied by: (1) an affidavit of indigency; and (2) an affidavit averring that (a) he meets the criteria of ORS 138.690(1), (b) he is innocent of the offenses he was convicted of, (c) the identity of the perpetrator of the crime was at issue during the original prosecution, and (d) he lacks sufficient funds or assets to hire an attorney to represent him in determining whether to file a motion under ORS 138.690. The court "shall grant" a petition for appointment of counsel if those documents are filed and it appears that the person is financially unable to retain counsel. ORS 138.694(2).
Paul Earl Netzler pleaded guilty to two counts ...
by Mark Wilson
The California Court of Appeals held that the victim notification requirements of "Marsy's Law" do not extend to the Governor's sentence commutation authority.
Near midnight on October 3, 2008, Esteban Nunez, Rafael Garcia, Ryan Jett, and Leshanor Thomas were refused admittance to a San Diego State University fraternity party. They were angry and decided to fight someone, to show how they "did it in Sac Town."
Nunez and his friends started an unprovoked fight with unarmed victims. Jett stabbed Luis Santos in the heart and he died at the scene. Nunez stabbed two other men, but both lived. A fourth victim suffered a fractured orbital wall.
Nunez and his friends fled to Sacramento, threw their knives in a river, and burned their clothes. When they were arrested Nunez, the son of former Speaker of the California State assembly Fabian Nunez, was charged with the Santos murder and with assaulting both of the men he personally stabbed.
Nunez ultimately pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. On June 28, 2010, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
On his final day in office, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger "announced in an ...
by Mark Wilson
Between 2009 and 2014, forty-one states and the District of Columbia enacted 155 laws - 93 in 2013 and 2014, alone - to ease the impact of some “collateral consequences of criminal convictions,” according to a recent report of the Vera Institute of Justice, Center on Sentencing and Corrections. Yet, those reforms do not go far enough to have any meaningful impact, the report found.
During the “tough-on-crime” era of the last 40 years, federal, state and local policymakers sought to extend the punitive reach of the criminal justice system beyond formal criminal sanctions. This resulted in “the expansion, both in number and scope, of a vast network of post-punishment penalties and restrictions (or ‘collateral consequences’) aimed at excluding individuals with criminal histories from many aspects of mainstream life,” the report found. Those collateral consequences were designed to “continue to stigmatize and marginalize individuals - with a criminal record well beyond their sentences. What has resulted is a system to delineate a person’s status as either a law-abiding member of the community at large or as one of those who must forever sit outside it.”
Today, approximately 45,000 laws and rules impose post-sentence civil penalties, disqualifications and ...
Two Oregon jail employees who pleaded guilty to 40 criminal charges were sentenced to 36- and 50-month prison terms for having sex with the same prisoner 19 times.
Jill Curry, 38, a civilian jail services technician at the Washington County Jail since 2004, and the wife of a sheriff’s deputy, ...
The Oregon Court of Appeals held on June 17, 2015 that a true life sentence for “an incorrigible masturbator” was an unconstitutionally disproportionate punishment – a decision subsequently upheld by the state Supreme Court.
Under ORS 137.719(1), certain recidivist sex offenders may be sentenced to a presumptive life sentence without ...
Deaths in Canadian federal prisons associated with the prolonged placement of prisoners in solitary confinement, as well as challenges to the use of segregation in provincial jails, have resulted in some limited reforms.
Ashley Smith was sentenced to Canada’s youth justice system when she was 12 years old; she was ...
The Ohio Court of Appeals has affirmed the dismissal of a prisoner’s habeas corpus petition seeking immediate release from a private prison.
Ohio state prisoner Maurice Freeman was confined at the Lake Erie Correctional Institution, a private prison owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America. [See: PLN, Nov. ...
