In November 2015, Riverside County, California agreed to settle a federal class-action civil rights suit brought by current and former county jail prisoners who alleged violations of their constitutional right to adequate medical and mental health care. [See: PLN, Feb. 2016, p.32].
The settlement included comprehensive reform of the ...
In an opinion handed down on December 31, 2015, the Supreme Court of Kansas modified the requirement that a criminal defendant be exonerated prior to suing the attorney who represented him (the “exoneration rule”). Under the modification, reversal of a conviction or other post-conviction relief may count as a form ...
In mid-2014, Sutter County, California settled lawsuits brought by the families of two county jail prisoners who died. The family of Rodney Bock received $800,000 while the family of Nathan Prasad received $825,000. The jail also initiated some health care reforms.
Bock, 56, suffered from mental illness and was having ...
On October 14, 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin held she would retain jurisdiction over a class-action civil rights lawsuit in order to determine the damages to be awarded former prisoners for the imposition or continuation of post-release supervision (PRS) by parole and prison officials after that practice was ...
Elberto Esquiel Bravo, 55, the former warden at the East Hidalgo County Detention Center, was arrested in January 2015 and charged with acting as an accessory after the fact in a conspiracy to bribe Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Jose Ismael “Melo” Ochoa to reduce the bond of a ...
Corizon Health and for-profit prison firm Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) have settled a lawsuit over the solitary confinement of a then-70-year-old prisoner following an alleged false positive drug test caused by Zantac, a heartburn medication.
Carol Lester, a former New Mexico state prisoner and a grandmother, filed a federal ...
On January 1, 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a Louisiana prisoner may sue prison officials for failing to credit him with good conduct time which would have shortened his sentence.
State prisoner Kenneth Owens was sentenced to thirty years at hard labor on January 4, 1989. ...
On February 20, 2015, an uprising occurred at the Willacy County Correctional Center (WCCC), a private prison located in Raymondville, Texas that was operated by Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC). The facility primarily housed criminal immigrant prisoners for the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The riot lasted two days, ...
A new educational product offered by a private company is being provided to prisoners in an increasing number of the nation’s jails – computer tablets supplied by Chicago-based Edovo (a name derived from “Education Over Obstacles”).
Edovo tablets include interactive educational and therapeutic programming, from GED preparation and math courses ...
“I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world. The United States does not torture” – George W. Bush
On December 9, 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a heavily-redacted, 525-page executive summary of its 6,700-page report on the CIA’s use of torture on terrorism suspects during ...
