Another one showed up last night. Around 10 — just before curfew — a car rolled in under the bridge and the newcomer got out with his wife. She hugged and kissed him goodbye, pulled the car out along the road, and disappeared into a sea of headlights. The new ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 9
The Executive Officer of California’s Board of Parole Hearings (Board), who was the passenger in a state car driven by another Board employee, resigned after police stopped the car and arrested the driver for DUI.
John Monday, 56, a 34-year veteran state employee, held the top position at the Board ...
The past several months have been even busier than usual for PLN. In addition to getting the magazine published each month we have seen an upsurge in censorship activities in prisons and jails around the country.
As noted in this issue of PLN, after 5 years of banning books ordered ...
Late last year, a prisoner at the CCA-operated Hardeman County Correctional Facility (HCCF) in Tennessee notified PLN that the prison’s warden, assistant warden and internal affairs officer had either resigned or been fired or transferred. The staff changes reportedly resulted from an excessive use of force incident and unrelated criminal ...
by Matt Clarke
As previously reported in PLN, a record number of Texas prison guards have been arrested in recent years [see: PLN, May 2007, p. 26]. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has now confirmed that over a recent 12-month period, a record number of prison staff have ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 13
Hawaii’s First Circuit Court has awarded a prisoner $153,652.73 in a negligence lawsuit. The prisoner’s claims arise from the failure to provide ladders on bunk beds and failure to enforce a non-smoking ban, causing the prisoner injury.
The action was brought by Rodney Herbert, a prisoner at Halawa Correctional Facility ...
Book Review by Gary Hunter
Books about business come and go. Someone is always ready to tell us how to manage our money. But few books break down complex concepts of business into terms we can all understand. Fewer still are specifically oriented to helping prisoners succeed. This is the ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 15
California’s newly adopted state prison policy permitting overnight conjugal visits for registered domestic partners who are in prison has been praised by homosexual advocacy groups but has drawn fire from religious conservatives.
Prison conjugal visiting began in 1918 in Mississippi as a privilege to motivate prisoners to work. Today, only ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 16
Another case of sexual abuse upon a minor by a custodial person has hit the taxpayer’s coffers. This time, a guard at Illinois’ St. Clair County juvenile custody center sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy, causing the County to settle the boy’s civil rights and negligent hiring claim of $900,000, on ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 12, 2007, New Jersey became the second state since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 to legislatively abolish the death penalty, replacing it with life without parole. That same day, New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine commuted the sentences of the eight prisoners ...
by David M. Reutter
“It is my opinion that the medical care provided at Ely State Prison amounts to the grossest possible medical malpractice, and the most shocking and callous disregard for human life and human suffering, that I have ever encountered in the medical profession in my thirty-five years ...
by David M. Reutter
An all white Florida jury acquitted eight former boot camp guards and a nurse of manslaughter in the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson.
PLN previously reported upon the beating and dragged death of Martin while the nurse stood idly by watching. See: PLN, July, 2007. ...
by John E. Dannenberg
A Washington state prisoner who lay for two days in the Stafford Creek Correctional Facility infirmary in agonizing pain, with a rash covering his torso and slowly drifting into septic shock, had been misdiagnosed by infirmary staff as having only an allergic reaction to Robitussin (an ...
by John E. Dannenberg
In the past three years more than 900 of the 5,300 prisoners at California’s Pleasant Valley State Prison (PVSP) in Fresno County, plus 80 staff members, have contracted coccidioidomycosis, a fungus commonly known as “valley fever.” Over a dozen prisoners and one guard have died from ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 22
On August 30, 2007, a court of claims in Syracuse, New York, awarded $112,000 to a prisoner who burned his legs while working in a prison kitchen.
While imprisoned at the Watertown Correctional Facility on July 16, 1995, Daniel Marria was standing on a table cleaning vent hoods when he ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 23
The Vermont Supreme Court has held that the Vermont Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act (The Act) applies to state prisons. That holding affirmed an order by the Washington Superior Court denying the Vermont Department of Corrections’ (VDOC) motion to quash the subpoena served by the Human Rights Commission (HRC), ...
Despite spending millions of dollars on new wells and water treatment systems, the Martin Correctional Institution (MCI) in Indiantown, Florida is still unable to provide uncontaminated water to its 1,400 prisoners. The problem has the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) considering closing the facility.
MCI has a long history of ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The County of San Bernardino, California has agreed to settle a federal class action lawsuit filed against its Sheriff’s Department in 2005 for $25.5 million – one of the largest such payouts on record.
On September 26, 2007 the County preliminarily agreed to pay for damages ...
by David M. Reutter
A report by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy concludes that sex offenders “who were referred for possible civil commitment have a much higher pattern of recidivism than the full population of sex offenders.” The report examined the recidivism of 135 sex offenders released between ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 27
A Jena, Louisiana private prison with a troubled past will experience rebirth as an immigrant detention center. The facility, built by the failed N-Group Securities company as part of a scam run by Patrick and Michael Graham, once held 280 juveniles. The Grahams were prosecuted – along with former Houston ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 27
On September 10, 2007, the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) fired Jeffery M. Rush, son of U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-IL).
Jeffrey Rush, 42, who was employed as an assistant supervisor at the Fox Valley Adult Transition Center in Aurora, Illinois, had been on paid leave from his $54,408-a-year ...
John Hagar, the Special Master assigned by the U.S. District Court (N.D. Cal.) to monitor the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) staff investigations and disciplinary process has opined, in an October 2007 Final Report to the court, that monitoring should be continued because CDCR could not be relied ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 28
Pierce County, Washington settled a class action suit challenging unconstitutional strip searches of specified pretrial detainees in its county jail for $200,000 in damages, $15,000 in administrative costs and $452,000 in attorney fees. In addition, the Superior Court of Pierce County held that Washington statutes RCW 10.79.120 and 10.79.130, as ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 30
On September 19, 2007, a court of claims in White Plains, New York, awarded $322,000 to a state prisoner who suffered a severe hand laceration while opening a window at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville.
In his lawsuit Jose Medina, who is serving 50 years to life for ...
According to a Dallas Morning News article published on November 10, 2007, Dallas County, Texas, leads the state in the number of probation deals it hands out to murder defendants. The highly critical five-part series implies that Dallas County prosecutors and judges simply overlook the seriousness of these crimes and ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 31
After a five-year court battle and public controversy, the Iowa Department of Corrections (IDOC) has decided to close a Bible-oriented re-entry program at the Newton Correctional Facility.
The program, operated by Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries, was part of the InnerChange Freedom Initiative. PLN has reported extensively on this challenge to ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 31
The Bureau of Prisons has agreed to pay Beatrice Codianni-Robles, a prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Connecticut, $80,000 to settle a federal tort claims suit. While walking outside her prison unit on July 29, 2002 Codianni-Rubles tripped and fell on a “dangerous and defective” depression in the ...
by Gregory Dober
What was worth approximately $554 million in 2007 and is valued at about $94 million today? The correct answer is the stock market value of a firm formerly known as Alaska Freightways Inc., a shell company that, as the result of a merger, is now doing business ...
Book review by Silja J.A. Talvi
It should no longer be a matter of any debate that the American trajectory toward mass incarceration is the result of an approach toward social control that relies, almost exclusively, on the callous warehousing of our most vulnerable citizens.
Our nation is hardly unique ...
by John E. Dannenberg
Three recent California court decisions interpreting California’s sentencing laws have spawned a need for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to recalculate the release dates of an estimated 33,000 current prisoners. It is unknown how many of the 33,000 will actually gain earlier release ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 35
On October 1, 2007, former U.S. Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, 40, was released from the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after having served three years of his eight year prison sentence for abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Frederick famously placed wires in a ...
On November 8, 2007, a federal jury awarded a California state prisoner $39,011 for injuries he suffered due to being placed in retaliatory extended lockdowns that prison officials initiated following assaults on staff by other prisoners. The lawsuit alleged cruel and unusual punishment resulting from excessive confinement with no outdoor ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 36
For the past five years Prison Legal News has been unable to sell or distribute books to prisoners in Massachusetts because PLN was not on the Dept. of Correction’s (DOC) approved vendor list. Massachusetts prisoners can only order books from a limited number of pre-approved sources.
DOC officials failed to ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 37
A Texas prisoner’s claim alleging that his civil rights were violated by the denial of hepatitis c treatment based on policy decisions rather than on medical factors was not frivolous, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held, in an unpublished decision.
Edward Trigo, a Texas state prisoner, sued the ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 38
On May 24, 2007, an Ohio prisoner who claimed he suffered permanent back injury after guards beat him at the Delaware County Jail accepted a $100,000 settlement to end his lawsuit against the county and others.
Plaintiff Steven Foster, 23, claimed that in September 2001, while he was writing a ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 38
Last September, a federal grand jury delivered an indictment against California prison guard Hector Flores on allegations that he helped cover-up an unjustified use of force on two prisoners at the California Institution for Men (CIM) at Chino. Flores’ indictment followed the February 2007 indictments of fellow CIM guard Robert ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 38
An innocent man sentenced in 1995 to 27 years for raping and kidnapping a 13-year-old girl was freed by the California Innocence Project after serving 3,280 days in prison. In his subsequent suit for wrongful incarceration, he received $1 million in a settlement with the city, county and state governments ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 39
The North Carolina Supreme Court has held that the state’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has a statutorily imposed duty that creates a special relationship to prisoners that makes it liable in a negligence lawsuit.
At the heart of the case is a fire at the Mitchell County ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 40
The Georgia Supreme Court has declared that a state law that prohibits registered sex offenders from residing or loitering at a location that is within 1,000 feet of any childcare facility, church, school or area where minors congregate (the “residency restriction”) is unconstitutional. The Court, however, found a statutory restriction ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 40
On May 10, 2007, Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons signed into law AB-106, a bill making it a felony for prisoners to possess a cell phone in prison or for a person to furnish a prisoner with a cell phone. Anyone charged with one of those offenses faces up to four ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 41
In September 2007, Governor Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill (SB) 718 into law, which amends penal code § 4025 to permit the use of Inmate Welfare Funds (IWF) collected in eight California counties to be used to assist prisoners in their reentry process once they are released from jail.
Set up ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 42
Australia: In 2007 a law was passed making it illegal for anyone to provide erectile dysfunction drugs to prisoners or for prisoners to sell their artwork. The law was enacted after media disclosed that Bevan Spencer von Einem, a prisoner serving a life sentence for the 1983 rape and murder ...
Loaded on
June 15, 2008
published in Prison Legal News
June, 2008, page 44
Shortly after his arrest and booking into Minnesota’s Mille Lacs County Jail, 18-year-old Brandon Brown began Complaining of excruciating head pain. The result of jail personnel’s failure to treat him caused his death and a settlement by the County to his family for $700,000.
About five hours before his arrest ...
