It is often said that you can tell a lot about a society by checking the condition of its prisons. Based on the way prisoners in Alabama are treated (or, more accurately stated, not treated), citizens of that state have a lot to be worried about. With only a few ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 5
On June 26, 2003, the parties in Baker v. Campbell agreed to the entry of a temporary preliminary injunction which, among other things, provides for "immediate" and "adequate" medical care for Alabama prisoners with serious illnesses.
The "Preliminary Injunction Settlement Agreement" stems from a class action suit filed by prisoners ...
by Nils Christie, Routledge Press (2000 Rev. Ed.) 244 pages, Paperback
Review by Peter Wagner
The heavily revised third edition (2000) of Crime Control As Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style is an essential guide to understanding the incarceration boom and considering how we can turn it around. The first book ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 8
by Matthew T. Clarke
The price of attending the March 1997 South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, came very high for Dallas record producer David Prater. Busted for a minor drug possession, in 1998 Prater was sentenced to 250 days in the Wackenhut-run Travis County Community Justice Center ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 10
A new study examining 25 years of economic data finds that despite the many claims and promises, building prisons in rural communities has had no positive effect on either employment or per capita income. The study by The Sentencing Project examined prison development trends in upstate New York State over ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 10
Hawaii prisoners housed out of state are virtually guaranteed to return to prison after release, according to a Jan. 21, 2003, story by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Currently, 90 percent of prisoners housed on the mainland return to prison, while those housed in state have a recidivism rate of between 47 ...
Subscribers should soon receive PLN's fall fundraiser letter along with our reader survey. Periodically we send readers a survey asking readers what they think of PLN's coverage and content and what they would like to see in future issues. We welcome suggestions and comments so that we can better serve ...
A renewed four-year no-bid prisoner phone contract was awarded in June, 2002 by the California Department of General Services to MCI WorldCom, a telephone conglomerate whose recent bankruptcy exposed the largest accounting fraud in US business history - $11 billion. The non-competitive award, giving MCI exclusive control of prisoner phone ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 13
On April 14, 2003, the family of a prisoner who committed suicide in 1996 while in a Connecticut prison settled with the state for $500,000.
William Dumais, 19, was imprisoned in the Corrigan Correctional Institution in Uncasville from December 1995 to February 1996 on a charge of fourth-degree larceny. On ...
Is it possible Timothy McVeigh was fully alert and utterly sentient when potassium chloride shot through his leg and stopped his heart? The tear witnesses saw well up in his left eye suggests that he might have been very conscious as lethal drugs burned his veins, took his breath, and ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 15
A jury has awarded the family of a prisoner who died while in the Kane County Illinois Jail $229,500. On May 16, 2002, after 92 hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict against Correctional Medical Services of Illinois, the jail's health care contractor. The total award was originally $450,000 ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 16
On April 5, 2003, 68 people were murdered inside the walls of the El Porvenir prison in Honduras. The story that initially came out of that country said that 59 of the dead were gang members who shot at other prisoners, then barricaded themselves inside the cellblocks. Original reports went ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 17
Even with U.S. laws prohibiting the importation of commodities produced with prison labor, prison officials in northern Mexico report that prisoners there are making furniture headed for Texas. Moreover, they're pursuing more contracts with American companies to produce a variety of goods, even offering to label the products in such ...
On June 16, 2003, the United States Supreme Court unanimously upheld visiting restrictions imposed by the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC). The decision reverses contrary rulings by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and a Michigan federal district court. Twenty-one states plus the federal government filed amicus curiae briefs ...
The unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court in Overton v. Bazzetta, upholding Michigan's punitive restrictions on prisoners' visiting rights, showed again how antagonistic the Rehnquist Court is toward prisoners' rights compared to the Burger Court. But the Court's two most conservative justices showed they would like the clock ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 19
In two, separate, unrelated cases, the Third and Seventh U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals have addressed the finality of dismissals without prejudice, the contents of grievances, and various procedural points under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) and prisoner suits brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Ali Ahmed, a former ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 20
On February 26, 2003, U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein upheld an injunction and contempt order issued against the superintendent and clinical director of the Special Commitment Center ("SCC") at McNeil Island, Washington. The SCC houses former prisoners civilly committed as "sexually violent predators." In 1994, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 21
Agreeing to pay $10,000 for ethics violations, the director of Florida's agency overseeing private prison contracts resigned in April, 2002. The Florida Ethics Commission has accepted the settlement. C. Mark Hodges was in charge of Florida's Correctional Privatization Commission (CPC), a state agency empowered to award contracts to private prison ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 22
Premises liabilities claims by injured Washington state prisoners and visitors were settled in eight unrelated claims totaling $35,058 over a two year period in 2001 and 2002.
Pro per Walla Walla State Penitentiary prisoner Marcus Ogans filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint in state superior court under RCW 4.96.020 ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 23
by Matthew T. Clarke
In February, 2003, The Nebraska Department of Corrections (DOC) has contracted with AT&T to set up what may be the most progressive prisoner phone service in the United States. The five-year contract makes AT&T the sole provider of local and long distance services, associated equipment, maintenance ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 24
On March 16, 2002, the Washing-ton Department of Corrections (WA DOC) settled an Eighth Amendment complaint for failure-to-protect at the Washington State Reformatory (WSR) where a high security prisoner was attacked and seriously injured by another prisoner known to want to kill him.
Ryan Bartlett, a maximum security prisoner at ...
by Matthew T. Clarke
In February, 2003, The Nebraska Department of Corrections (DOC) has contracted with AT&T to set up what may be the most progressive prisoner phone service in the United States. The five-year contract makes AT&T the sole provider of local and long distance services, associated equipment, maintenance ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 25
Negotiating their way out of 21 felony bribery charges, a former Kansas sheriff and a lawyer-cum-executive for a private prison contractor each pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of conflict of interest on December 18, 2002, getting only one year in county jail and a $750,000 restitution order.
Reno County ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 25
On February 27, 2002, the Washington DOC settled a prisoner claim of retaliation for his having filed a grievance and a lawsuit, for $2,500.
Airway Heights Correctional Center prisoner Douglas Gallagher was employed in the food factory production facility on a day when three door handles were broken off and ...
by John E. Dannenberg
Under California Code of Civil Procedure §526a, a private citizen taxpayer may bring an action to compel an officer or agent of a municipality to restrain him from wasteful or injurious expenditure of government funds. In a novel application of this law, the state was compelled ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 26
Past issues of PLN have reported on the checkered pasts of many prison health care employees. Before being employed by prisons and jails many medical staff have been disciplined, had their licenses revoked and suffered other forms of license limitations designed to protect the public from sex predators and assorted ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 27
U.S. Supreme Court: Reviving Expired Statute of Limitations Violates Ex Post Facto Clause
Reversing the California Court of Appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California's recent law reviving criminal liability for previously time-barred prosecutions violated the Constitutional proscription against ex post facto laws.
Catering to public outrage against child ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 28
A California man, who is believed to be the first prisoner in the nation to receive a heart transplant while incarcerated, died last December from complications relating to the operation. The man, whose name has never been released, was serving a 14-year sentence for robbing a Los Angeles convenience store, ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 29
The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated and remanded part of an Alabama Federal District Court's dismissal of a federal prisoner's suit against tobacco companies. The Court held that prisoner suits unrelated to prison conditions that are brought in state court do not have to satisfy the "physical ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, finding a restrictive state prison regulation unconstitutional, ruled that public witnesses enjoy a First Amendment right to view California executions uninterrupted from the moment the condemned prisoner enters the death chamber.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), joined by ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 30
On January 9, 2003, Mitchell County (NC) Superior Court Judge Marlene Hyatt approved a settlement in which the families of the eight fatalities and the nine survivors of the May 3, 2002, Mitchell County Jail fire will split $1.94 million. $60,000 had already been paid as funeral expenses for the ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 31
The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed in part and reversed in part a Pennsylvania Federal District Court's grant of summary judgment to state defendants in a prison employee's claim involving the Rehabilitation Act (RA) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
George Koslow, a water treatment plant supervisor ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 31
The Iowa Supreme Court held in a workers compensation case that the statute of limitations in a hepatitis C exposure case begins to run on the date of diagnosis, rather than the date of exposure.
On October 2, 1990, Diane Perkins was employed by an Iowa retirement facility. On that ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The California Supreme Court overturned a three-strikes conviction and remanded the case for a new trial because of the potential for psychological prejudice from a remote-controlled electronic stun belt on a defendant's demeanor during testimony, where it was an abuse of discretion to use the belt ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 32
by Matthew T. Clarke
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the PLRA does not apply to challenges to conditions of confinement by persons detained under the Florida sexually violent predator program.
Bryant S. Troville, a Florida civil detainee committed pursuant to the Jimmy Ryce Act, Fla. Stat. ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 33
Alabama: In April, 2003, St. Clair Correctional Facility guard Cedric Bothwell, 39, was fired after being indicted in federal court on extortion charges. Bothwell is accused of selling crack cocaine to a prisoner in exchange for $4,000 and when the prisoner couldn't pay an additional $3,500 for another 2 ounces ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 35
A Texas state court of appeals has held that the pendency of a federal civil rights lawsuit on the same matter does not toll the statute requiring Texas state prisoners to file lawsuits in state court within 31 days after completion of the grievance procedure. § 14.005, Texas Civil Practices ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2003
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2003, page 36
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed an Indiana Federal District Court's dismissal of a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) prisoner's complaint that he was unconstitutionally denied media interviews.
David Paul Hammer is a BOP prisoner in the Federal Death Row Unit, United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana. Prior to ...
