Arizona Jury Awards $3.4 Million against Owner of Sex Offender Websites

by Matt Clarke

In May 2014, a Maricopa County, Arizona jury awarded $3.4 million to people who were falsely profiled on private sex offender websites owned by businessman Charles “Chuck” Rodrick, 52, including SexOffenderrecord.com, Offendex.com and SORArchives.com. Rodrick was ...

Prisoner's Suit Dismissed After Court Finds "Three Strikes" Litigant Not in Imminent Danger

by Matt Clarke

In December 2009, Jeremy Pinson, a federal prisoner serving a 22-year sentence for threatening to kill the president, sued the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) alleging that the conditions of confinement at the Special Management Unit (SMU) at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega "are unconstitutionally violent and dangerous."

However, Pinson is a "three strikes" litigant, meaning that under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), he has filed at least three previous lawsuits which have been dismissed as frivolous. The PLRA requires that a prisoner who has accumulated three strikes cannot file anyfurtherlawsuits unless he either pays the full filing fee up front or shows that he is in "imminent danger of serious physical injury."

Pinson claimed that as a known homosexual and former gang member, his placement at Talladega’s SMU placed him in "a substantial risk of harm." Pinson sought to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) under 28 U.S.C. § 1915.

In January 2010, the District of Columbia district court entered an order transferring the case to the Northern District of Alabama where Pinson was incarcerated "because none of the alleged events took ...

At Least $78,000 in Sealed Settlement for Texas Jail Prisoner’s Suicide

by Matt Clarke

On March 11, 2013, a Texas federal court approved the settlement of a lawsuit over the suicide death of a Texas prisoner who hung himself using the phone cord in his isolation cell at the Harrison ...

Texas Supreme Court Holds No Compensation for Wrongly-Convicted Prisoner Imprisoned on Other Charges

by Matt Clarke

On August 23, 2013, the Supreme Court of Texas held that a former death row prisoner who had been wrongfully convicted of the capital crime, but confessed to other crimes before he was acquitted, was not eligible for compensation.

Michael N. Blair, a Texas state prisoner, was wrongfully convicted of the murder of a seven-year-old girl and sentenced to death. He freely admitted to having sexually abused other children, but staunchly maintained his innocence as to the murder. Nine years into his stint on death row, Blair wrote the district court and admitted having molested the children of a witness who testified against him in the murder trial. This led to his indictment and guilty plea for four incidents of indecency with a child for which he was given four life sentences—three consecutive and one concurrent.

In 2008, after he had been on death row for 14 years, DNA testing proved Blair was innocent of the murder. The state dismissed the charge and Blair applied to the state Comptroller for over $1 million in compensation under the Tim Cole Act, Texas Civil Practice and ...

Indictments and Guilty Pleas in Multi-Gang Prison Smuggling Conspiracy in Texas

by Matt Clarke

On February 26, 2013, a 23-page federal indictment was unsealed. It charged 32 people with involvement in a complex conspiracy to smuggle alcohol, tobacco, cell phones and drugs into a Texas prison. Leaders from two prison gangs allegedly cooperated in setting up and running the smuggling ring which also had a money laundering and racketeering-related financial component.

The indictment named 13 former Texas Department of Criminal Justice employees who were working at the McConnell Unit in Beeville. The charges included racketeering, bribery, accepting bribes for smuggling, possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, illegal financial activities and money laundering. The contraband smuggled into the prison included alcohol, tobacco, cell phones, marijuana, methamphetamine, ecstasy and cocaine.

The scheme involved leaders of two racial gangs with a strong prison presence cooperating, corrupt employees and facilitators, and financial agents outside the prison, some of whom were related to the three indicted state prisoners. According to the indictment, the employees accepted bribes to smuggle the contraband into the prison and sometimes recruited other employees for smuggling activities while the facilitators gave the employees the bribe money and contraband. ...

Mississippi Private Prisons Have High Prisoner Assault Rates

by Matt Clarke

A report on the number of prisoners assaulted in Mississippi prisons shows that the assault rates in private prisons average two to three times the rate of assaults in state-run prisons. One extreme example, the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility ...

Massachusetts Supreme Court Rules on Fallout Procedures Implemented After Crime Lab Scandal

by Matt Clarke

On July 22, 2013, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts issued an opinion in three cases dealing with the validity of some of the procedures adopted to handle the flood of post-conviction matters in criminal cases for which disgraced Hinton Crime Lab chemist Ann Dookhan was the primary or confirmatory chemist. The procedures required incarcerated defendants to first file a motion to stay execution of their sentences (motion to stay), and then file a subsequent motion for a new trial.

Dookhan was involved in at least 34,000 cases. To help handle the anticipated flood of post-conviction matters, the Chief Justice of the Superior Court appointed five retired Superior Court judges as Special Judicial Magistrates (Magistrates). The three cases resulted in the following three questions being raised on appeal and referred to the Supreme Court for deposition:

1) Does a Magistrate or superior court judge have the authority to allow a motion to stay while a motion for a new trial is pending?

2) Does a Magistrate have the authority to reconsider and allow a motion to stay when a judge has previously denied a similar motion ...

“Pocket Parks” Push Sex Offenders Out of Town

by Matt Clarke

The latest strategy of residents and politicians attempting to drive registered sex offenders (RSOs) out of residential neighborhoods is to create tiny “pocket parks” in residential neighborhoods. One place where this strategy is being employed is the Harbor Gateway section of Los Angeles, California.

California state law prohibits RSOs from residing within 2,000 feet of a school or public park. This restriction has already driven RSOs out of most of Los Angeles. One exception was Harbor Gateway. Because it was possible for RSOs to live there, parole officers placed many sex offender parolees in Harbor Gateway. This led to 30 paroled sex offenders being housed in the same Harbor Gateway apartment building.

Harbor Gateway parents who were picking up their children at the bus stop began seeing men with GPS ankle monitors on the streets. They told their kids to avoid these men and then they reacted by building a pocket park of less than 1,000 square feet at the corner of a busy intersection. Although it is unlikely that children will use the poorly situated park's jungle gym, it may nonetheless serve its purpose, to break up the ...

Supreme Court Upholds Virginia FOIA's Exclusion of Non-Virginians

by Matt Clarke

On April 29, 2014, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the provision of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) providing that "all public records shall be open to inspection and copying by any citizens of ...

Phoenix Jail Prisoners Victims in Fake Illness Scam

by Matt Clarke

Margarita Zaragoza was in the process of bonding out her former cellmate using her car as collateral when she found out the truth—she had been had. And Zaragoza was not alone. Other prisoners at the Phoenix jail had also been taken in by Kelly Wasko, a smooth-talking con artist.

The prisoners say Wasko, 41, befriended them all while telling them sad stories about how she had multiple sclerosis and was in jail for taking a $1,500 charity check from the Salvation Army. She made promises to pay them back for anything they gave her. Her apparent intent was to scam them out of items from the jail commissary, such as envelopes and food.

"I'm in shock. What do I believe? I'm still in shock," said Zaragoza. "She's a sweet person and I wouldn't look at her like she would do something like this."

After her release Zaragoza checked online and discovered that Wasko was actually in jail for allegedly faking cancer to solicit over $12,000 in donations from family and friends online.

"She never takes pills, never takes medicine. She's healthy," Zaragoza said. "I called the bondsman…I find out ...