by Matt Clarke
On September 28, 2023, the federal court for the Western District of Michigan awarded a state prisoner $16,975.00 in attorney fees and $4,459.91 in costs in a civil rights lawsuit over his sexual abuse by a state Department of Corrections (DOC) guard. The Court had previously awarded $50,000 in compensatory damages to Patrick Grover on June 30, 2023, including $30,000 to reimburse the costs of counseling sessions.
Grover was incarcerated at Oak Correctional Facility in September 2019 when guard Traci Lange (now Perez) began working in his housing unit. She soon approached him and “commented favorably on his physique,” according to the complaint he later filed. She added that “he needed a woman like her and that she could pull strings to get him home.” Grover recalled he was “uncomfortable” with her “interest and tried to distance himself from her.” But she began “blowing him kisses during rounds, and she wrote him letters in which she stated that ‘she wanted to have sex with him.’”
“On a number of occasions,” the complaint recalled, Perez asked him “to show her his private parts,” and she took him to closets and other places off-camera “to have sex with ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a group of North Carolina prisoners can be treated like adherents of a religion even if the group denies the “religion” label. The case is one of three in which the state ...
by Matthew T. Clarke
On August 22, 2023, the federal court for the Middle District of Alabama declined to dismiss all but a few claims against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) that were made by a prisoner who was abducted at knifepoint, repeatedly sexually assaulted and held ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 11, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined it was illegal to collect court filing fees from a prisoner denied indigent status to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) unless he decides to go forward and pay them on his own. Once ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 12, 2024, the federal court for the Western District of Texas refused a motion by Williamson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) officials, which argued for dismissal of claims by former detainee Rodney A. Hurdsman, 55, that jailers recorded his privileged calls with his attorney and shared ...
by Matthew T. Clarke
On December 14, 2023, the state of Virginia confirmed that it had agreed to pay $15,000 to settle a state prisoner’s lawsuit alleging retaliation and excessive use of force by officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) who deployed a K-9 dog that bit and ...
by Matt Clarke.
Condemned Texas prisoner Scott Louis Panetti, 65, was taken off the state’s death row on September 27, 2023, when the federal court for the Western District of Texas found him too insane to kill—or as the Court said, because he “lacks a rational understanding of the connection ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 3, 2023, the Wisconsin Department of Justice sent a check for $9,000 to a state prisoner in settlement of his claims that he suffered a heat-related illness, fell and injured himself after state Department of Corrections (DOC) guards ignored his pleas for help. In addition ...
by Matt Clarke
Since 2018, at least seven vulnerable detainees have died at the 366-bed Pottawatomie County Public Safety Center, 30 miles east of Oklahoma City. Yet despite state law requiring deaths be reported within five days to the Oklahoma Health Department’s jail division, the jail failed to report five ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 5, 2023, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina reinstated a parolee’s parental rights that had been stripped for lack of contact with his minor daughter, after finding it was conditions of his parole which had prevented him from contacting her.
Crystal was born to ...
