U.S. Supreme Court Holds California Policy Of Double-Celling By Race During Prison Intake Must Pass Strict Scrutiny," Not Rational Relationship" Test
by Marvin Mentor
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the strict scrutiny test, not the more deferential legitimate penological interest test, applied when determining the constitutionality of the California ...
Ninth Circuit: "Chilling Effect" Not Required
To Establish First Amendment Violation
by Marvin Mentor
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dealt with the following conundrum: does a prisoner who exhaustively fights purported violations of his First Amendment rights, by dint of his sheer effort to do so, thereby unwittingly ...
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that a state prisoner stated a valid claim under the First Amendment when he claimed that in retaliation for his having filed several grievances, prison officials revisited previously rejected gang affiliation insinuations and now branded him a gang member.
California prisoner Vincent ...
$600,000 Settlement In California Prisoner Shooting Death
by Marvin Mentor
California Department of Corrections (CDC) officials settled a wrongful death complaint for $600,000 brought by the survivors of Octavio Orozco, a prisoner at Pleasant Valley State Prison (PVSP) in Coalinga, who was killed by a single shot to the head ...
Interracial prison riots occurred on October 27 and December 3, 2003 in two southern California privately-contracted minimum security prisons. Because California private prison contractors have no weapons not even pepper spray the riots continued for up to 90 minutes until armed peace officers could arrive to restore order. In one ...
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Ap-peals permitted a prisoner's damage suit for retaliation by guards whom he had grieved to proceed based on First Amendment grounds.
Samuel Austin, incarcerated at California State Prison, Solano, was in the psychiatric housing unit when guard James Williams allegedly psychologically assaulted him. When ...
A renewed four-year no-bid prisoner phone contract was awarded in June, 2002 by the California Department of General Services to MCI WorldCom, a telephone conglomerate whose recent bankruptcy exposed the largest accounting fraud in US business history - $11 billion. The non-competitive award, giving MCI exclusive control of prisoner phone ...
On March 21, 2002, a San Francisco, California husband and wife attorney team, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, who for years had defended prison guards at maximum security Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP), were themselves convicted of manslaughter when their two 120 lb. Presa Canario dogs attacked and chewed to ...
The California Supreme Court ruled that the governor has almost unlimited power to reverse a decision of the parole board (Board of Prison Terms ("BPT")) and that his decision may be reviewed by a court only to see if "a modicum" of evidence supported it. The court further ruled that ...
California Three-Year Lockdown of "Southern Hispanics" Held Unconstitutional
by Marvin Mentor
A Del Monte County, California superior court ruled on December 10, 2002 that a three year lockdown of "Southern Hispanics" at maximum security Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) was unconstitutional because it discriminated on the basis of ethnicity. The ...
