by Matt Clarke
On March 2, 2020, the mother of a man murdered at the California State Penitentiary, Corcoran filed a lawsuit against California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials, whom she alleged were responsible for the murder of her son. Her son was decapitated on March 9, 2019 ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 10, 2020, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin held unconstitutional a statute permitting an involuntarily committed prisoner to be forcibly medicated without a court finding that the prisoner was dangerous.
C.S. suffers from schizophrenia. He was convicted of mayhem as a repeat offender and sentenced to ...
by Matt Clarke
Wilkinson County, Georgia, agreed on January 2, 2020 to pay $420,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the son and estate of a woman who died five years earlier of apparent prescription opioid withdrawal that went untreated in the county’s jail, after her pleas and those of ...
by Matt Clarke
The family of a Texas detainee who died of a suicidal overdose under jailers’ noses can continue its lawsuit against Young County, Texas. That decision was handed down on April 22, 2020, by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed in part a summary judgment ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 15, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the summary dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the estate of a man who committed suicide at the Harris County jail in Houston, Texas.
Danarian Hawkins was 27 in February 2014 when he ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 24, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the Rule 12(b)(6), F.R.Civ.P. dismissal of a prisoner’s civil rights lawsuit alleging a prison guard failed to protect him from being stabbed by another prisoner.
Texas prisoner Christopher Bryan Torres was a ...
by Matt Clarke
Violence perpetrated against prisoners by staff of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has risen dramatically over the past decade, according to the prison system’s own statistics. From 6,624 use-of-force incidents by staff against prisoners in 2009 — just over 40 per 1,000 prisoners – the ...
by Matt Clarke
In a resurgence of “tough-on-crime” sentencing reforms that swept the nation in the 1990s, many states enacted “three-strikes” laws mandating life sentences for those convicted of three felony offenses. Mississippi was among them (and harsher than most) with a mandatory sentence of life without parole (LWOP) for ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 24, 2020, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint in California federal court challenging the application to the federal government of a new state law — Assembly Bill 32 (A.B. 32) — which phases out all privately-operated prisons and jails inside state ...
by Matt Clarke
According to a secret report by the Investigation & Intelligence Division of the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC), guards beat and hog-tied a prisoner who was seeking medical attention for what turned out to be fatal injuries he received when he was beaten by another prisoner. The ...
