On October 24, 2014, a Montana state jury found Missoula County liable in the wrongful death of a jail prisoner and assessed an award of $565,500 against the county. The county agreed not to appeal and to pay within two weeks. A private health care provider settled confidentially prior to ...
In December 2014, Sussex County, New Jersey settled a lawsuit brought by a former jail prisoner who alleged he was brutally beaten, sprayed with chemicals and strapped into a restraint chair for 19 hours after he tried to talk to a prisoner who was being strapped into a restraint chair. ...
On May 21, 2014, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and private plaintiffs announced a settlement agreement with Ohio requiring the Ohio Department of Youth Services (DYS) to dramatically reduce and eventually eliminate the use of seclusion. DYS policy 305.05.04 defines seclusion as the involuntary confinement of a youth ...
On August 21, 2014, Tarrant County, Texas settled for $350,000 a lawsuit brought under the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by the sister and administrator of the estate of deceased Tarrant County Jail prisoner Jonathan William Holden.
The lawsuit alleged that Holden, 30, was booked into ...
On October 2, 2014, an Arizona federal jury awarded a state prisoner $145,000 in a civil rights lawsuit over a guard’s excessive use of force.
Ron Zachary Pettit, 36, was a prisoner at the Arizona State Prison Complex - Eyman, Special Management Unit, when he was injured by guard Torrey ...
On January 12, 2015, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer announced the $17 million settlement of wrongful conviction claims brought by three half-brothers who were convicted of murder and spent a combined total of 60 years in prison.
The homicide detective in all three cases was Louis Scarcella, now ...
Former employees of Houston-based Turning Point, Inc., a private, for-profit company which contracted with Texas to provide substance abuse treatment in its state jail system, are revealing how supervisors pressured them to falsify Addiction Severity Index (ADI) scores to downplay mental illness issues and exaggerate alcohol and substance abuse.
Melissa ...
On August 7, 2014, federal district court judge Lawrence K. Karlton granted preliminary approval of a settlement in a class-action suit brought by California state prisoners who suffer from mental illnesses. The settlement ensures that such prisoners will not be excluded from prison programs and services or discriminated against on ...
A wrongful death suit filed by the parents of a 30-year-old Bexar County, Texas jail prisoner who died of a methadone overdose while in solitary confinement at the lock-up settled in February 2015 for $200,000, and a guard responsible for conducting cell checks at the time of the prisoner’s death ...
The Sexual Predator Treatment Program, operated by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, is at the heart of a debate over whether civil commitment programs are truly designed to rehabilitate offenders convicted of sex crimes, or are thinly-disguised prisons intended to keep sex offenders warehoused once they have ...
