by Matt Clarke
On December 12, 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas district court’s sanctions of $1,000 each against lawyers representing GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison operator, after finding they had engaged in discovery abuse.
Lisa Velasquez Olivarez filed a civil rights action against ...
by Matt Clarke
When New Mexico state prisoner Rhiannon Montoya was 36, she was incarcerated at the Rio Arriba County Jail. There she met guard Orlando Ulibarri, whom she accused of sexually assaulting her. Montoya complained about Ulibarri, who was subsequently fired for bringing contraband into the jail and possessing ...
by Matt Clarke
The family of a prisoner who was maced by guards as he bled to death at an Oklahoma prison operated by CoreCivic--then known as Corrections Corporation of America--has filed a lawsuit alleging prison officials allowed corruption and gangs to flourish at the facility, resulting in conditions that ...
by Matt Clarke
A Houston television station reported that a prosecutor had a rape victim jailed for almost a month – just to ensure she would testify at trial. Devon Anderson, the district attorney for Harris County, Texas, stood by the prosecutor, who worked for her office. In the aftermath, ...
by Matt Clarke
On April 27, 2017, the County Board of Knox County, Illinois agreed to a $500,000 settlement in a federal lawsuit over the suicide of a pretrial detainee.
Joey Corbin, 26, had a history of mental illness and was taking psychotropic medication when he was booked into the ...
by Matt Clarke
In January 2017, Otero County, Colorado paid $150,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a jail prisoner who was sexually assaulted by a former guard.
Jennifer Hernandez, a mother of two, was booked into the Otero County Jail as a pretrial detainee.
“It’s a little backwater jail ...
by Matt Clarke
According to a December 15, 2016 news report, Debbie Moak, then-director of the Arizona Governor’s Office of Youth, Faith and Family, issued a letter of guidance recommending that criminal justice agencies not adopt policies supported by Start by Believing.
Start by Believing, a nonprofit victim-centered initiative, works ...
by Matt Clarke
In December 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released two reports on deaths in state and federal prisons and local jails, covering more than a decade of mortality data ending in 2014.
As of yearend 2014 there were an estimated 1,433,800 prisoners ...
by Matt Clarke
Santa Clara County, California has agreed to pay $3.6 million to the family of a mentally ill man who was beaten to death by guards in the county’s San Jose jail. The three guards who killed him, who had attacked another prisoner the day before, were charged ...
by Matt Clarke
On February 7, 2017, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court erred when it dismissed a prisoner’s civil rights lawsuit that was brought in forma pauperis without first evaluating his exculpatory explanation that prison staff had refused to give him a required trust ...
