“I never ask for mercy and seek no one’s sympathy. I would never, as was once needlessly feared in this court, be a fugitive from justice in this country, only a seeker of it.” – Conrad Black
Conrad Black, born in Canada, is a member of the British House of ...
This month’s cover story continues our series of interviews with some of the more prominent survivors of the American criminal justice system (for our first interview with former prisoner and famous movie actor Danny Trejo, see the August 2011 issue of PLN).
Prior to his incarceration Conrad Black was, in ...
by Victoria Law and Tina Reynolds
“I never thought of advocating outside of prison. I just wanted to have some semblance of a normal life once I was released,” stated Tina Reynolds, a mother and formerly incarcerated woman. But then she gave birth to her son while in prison for ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 15
On November 7, 2011, the wife of a former Oklahoma warden was sentenced to one year in prison for helping a prisoner escape 17 years earlier.
Bobbi L. Parker, 49, was married to Randy Parker, assistant warden at the Oklahoma State Reformatory, a medium-security facility in Granite, when Randolph Franklin ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 16
As of July 1, 2011, the first day of Oregon’s most recent budget cycle, the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) had a population of just over 14,000 prisoners and a shiny new $1.36 billion budget for the 2011-2013 biennium.
Many factors contribute to such an enormous budget. One of the ...
by Kent Russell
This column provides “habeas hints” to prisoners who are considering or handling habeas corpus petitions as their own attorneys (“in pro per”). The focus of the column is on “AEDPA” (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act), the federal habeas corpus law which now governs habeas corpus practice ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 20
PHS Hit with $312,000 Verdict for Inadequate Care of Pennsylvania Prisoner
On February 17, 2012, a Pennsylvania state jury slapped Prison Health Services (PHS) with a $400,000 verdict for inadequate medical care of a prisoner at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Albion. The award was reduced to $312,000 because the jury ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 22
Less than a year after the filing of a federal civil rights class-action, a settlement was reached in the lawsuit, which challenged conditions of confinement at the Washington County Juvenile Center (WCJC) in Marietta, Ohio. In October 2011, the parties to the suit submitted a consent decree for approval by ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 22
In September 2011, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office (VCSO) agreed to settle a class-action civil rights lawsuit alleging that innocent people had been jailed when VCSO officials failed and/or refused to use readily available technological means (such as fingerprint identification) to verify that people being booked into the Ventura County ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 24
The Georgia Department of Corrections has paid $93,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by four state prisoners who were subjected to retaliatory beatings by guards at Hays State Prison.
At approximately 2:00 p.m. on August 12, 2010, the plaintiff prisoners – Miracle Nwakanma, Cornelius Spencer, Gregory Haines and Eric ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 24
The Iowa Supreme Court has held that prison officials do not violate the Fifth Amendment by depriving convicted sex offenders of earned-time sentence reductions when they refuse to participate in a sex offender treatment program (SOTP) that requires them to admit their guilt.
On March 21, 2006, Iowa resident Robert ...
According to the New York Times, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confines more than twice as many prisoners for “terrorism-related” offenses than the controversial and oft-maligned U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“As of October 1, 2011, the ... [BOP] reported that it was holding 362 people ...
Despite a lawsuit filed in the European Court of Human Rights by Saudi-born alleged terrorist Abu Zubaydah, Lithuanian prosecutors have declined to pursue charges related to two CIA-operated prisons located in that country. Human rights groups Amnesty International and Reprieve have claimed, according to the Associated Press, that Zubaydah was ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 29
Commissioners in Marion County, Oregon voted on October 19, 2011 to cut 128 jail beds, closing one pod and reducing the jail’s capacity to 400 prisoners. In reality, however, only 56 beds were cut because the county is reopening 72 work center beds that had been downsized previously due to ...
The Mentally Disordered Inmate and the Law, 2nd edition, by Fred Co-hen (Civil Research Institute, 2008). 1,114 pages, $237.50; and Practical Guide to Correctional Mental Health and the Law, by Fred Cohen (Civil Research Institute, 2011). 788 pages, $149.50
Book review by Julia Etter
The second edition of Fred Cohen’s ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 30
A District of Columbia (D.C.) federal jury has awarded $2.3 million to a former prisoner who spent ten years in prison after his parole was wrongfully revoked based on unreliable hearsay evidence.
Charles Singletary was convicted of robbery, armed robbery and assault in D.C. Superior Court. He was paroled in ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 32
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has committed approximately $114 million to build a new jail complex that will be overseen by the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Orleans Parish Prison and sheriff’s administration facilities suffered significant damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. [See: PLN, ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 32
A May 2010 revision to Georgia’s sex offender law, one of the toughest in the nation, has resulted in more than 440 people being removed from the state’s sex offender registry as of October 2011.
Georgia has 20,676 registered sex offenders. The new law, passed as HB 571, removes those ...
There are cuts to health care and there are health care cuts. At least one Arizona prisoner has personal knowledge of the unfortunate difference.
Prisoners and their advocates have accused the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) of being so obsessed with reducing costs that prison officials routinely deny medical care ...
by David M. Reutter
As America’s prison population has swelled over the past three decades to become the largest per capita in the world, the number of special interests that feed off the so-called prison industrial complex has grown. The expansion of companies that benefit from crime and incarceration is ...
The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the nation’s “leading organization promoting alternatives to current drug policy,” often has to wade through murky data to expose the ineffectiveness of the nation’s drug court system. But a recent federal study touting drug court successes only required the DPA to perform some simple math. ...
James Publishing, 2011). 800 pages (with CD), $70.00
Book review by John E. Dannenberg
Proving Damages to the Jury is a detailed “how-to” manual that takes the reader through the psychology, reasoning, preparation and execution of a civil damages trial. The object lesson is to learn how to select, prime ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 42
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a change in procedures for commutation of sentence does not constitute an ex post facto violation.
The appellate court ruled in a case involving Michigan prisoner Keith Lewis-El, who was serving a non-parolable life sentence for first-degree felony murder. Lewis-El appealed ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 42
Since 2006, family members and friends of Virginia prisoners have been able to use modern videoconferencing equipment to enjoy visits with loved ones held in state prisons hundreds of miles away.
The Video Visitation Program, operated by two Richmond-based nonprofit groups, Assisting Families of Inmates and the New Jubilee Educational ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 43
On April 5, 2011, a Texas state court issued a temporary injunction ordering the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to provide telecommunications to hearing impaired prisoners using the Texas Relay Service (TRS).
Leslie Arrington, Janet Lock, Kathy Williams and Laura Beeman are Texas state prisoners who, with the assistance ...
Prisoners indefinitely confined to administrative segregation are entitled to meaningful, periodic reviews of their segregation status, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held on June 20, 2011, while granting qualified immunity to the prison official defendants. The appellate court issued an amended opinion in April 2012; however, ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 44
A memo authored by Sara B. Thomas, chief of the Idaho State Appellate Defender’s appellate unit, has concluded that the state’s adult misdemeanor probation system is unconstitutional, calling it “null, void and unenforceable.”
According to the August 15, 2011 memo, the legislative delegation of authority to the counties to supervise ...
According to a September 2011 report by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), arrests of federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guards increased almost 90% over the previous ten years, while staffing in the BOP grew only 24% over the same period of time. From fiscal year ...
Criminal Procedure – Constitutional Limitations in a Nutshell,
7th Ed., by Jerold H. Israel and Wayne R. LaFave
(West Group, 2006). 539 pages, $38.00
Book review by John E. Dannenberg
Criminal Procedure – Constitutional Limitations in a Nut Shell is best understood by first understanding what it is not – ...
Tech giant Google congratulated itself in October 2011 for refusing two “takedown” requests from U.S. law enforcement agencies that claimed videos of police brutality posted on YouTube were defamatory. Google owns YouTube, the Internet’s most popular video-sharing site.
A “local law enforcement agency,” which Google did not identify, was one ...
(Thomson West, 2000). 751 pages, $29.00
by John E. Dannenberg
PLN readers will recognize this compact 751-page pocketbook as a “junior” version of the venerable 1,920-page Black’s Law Dictionary, which is also the work of seasoned legal lexicographer Bryan Garner. The Dictionary of Criminal Law Terms gains its compactness not ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 48
A Kansas lawyer who took an investigative reporter into the Topeka Correctional Facility (TCF), a women’s prison, has had the cloud of a pending ethics complaint lifted after two years. The complaint was filed with the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys (Board) by Charles Simmons, then-deputy secretary of the ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 49
On July 7, 2011, the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) agreed to a $375,000 settlement in a lawsuit that alleged a guard had raped a female detainee at the Echo Glen Children’s Center.
The detainee, Brittney Brown, was 19 at the time she was sexually assaulted ...
Loaded on
Sept. 15, 2012
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2012, page 50
Indiana: Lynsey Stangel, 26, formerly employed as a federal prison guard at Terre Haute, pleaded guilty on May 2, 2012 to having sex with a prisoner in a patrol car while on duty. “Unfortunately, there were firearms in the vehicle at the time the tryst occurred, including a 12-gauge shotgun, ...
