An Arkansas Sheriff received kickbacks from a company hired to convert cash seized from county jail prisoners to prepaid debit cards “with numerous exorbitant fees,” a federal class-action lawsuit claims.
More than 2,200 people who were arrested or booked in the Benton County Jail claim their cash was seized and ...
by Chesa Boudin, Trevor Stutz and Aaron Littman
This article presents a summary of the study’s findings. The full study and data set will be published in a forthcoming volume of the Yale Law and Policy Review: Chesa Boudin, Trevor Stutz & Aaron Littman, “Prison Visitation Policies: A Fifty State ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 11
On May 29, 2012, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court reversed a prisoner’s conviction for trafficking in contraband. The Court found it was proper for the trial court to allow a guard to testify about details not contained in her written report of the incident, but held reversal was required due ...
A former Pennsylvania prison guard who was convicted on 27 counts of abusing prisoners will serve no prison time of his own, after a state court sentenced him to five years’ probation and six months on house arrest.
Harry Nicoletti, 61, was convicted of numerous counts of official oppression, simple ...
Book review by John E. Dannenberg
Dr. Elaine Leeder, Dean of the of the School of Social Sciences at Sonoma State University, offers a concise, compassionate view of the life and psyche of California prisoners serving term-life sentences. After a long career that has included volunteering to teach prisoners in ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 14
The Michigan Supreme Court has held that mandatory lifetime electronic monitoring is a direct consequence of a plea to first-degree criminal sexual conduct or second-degree criminal sexual conduct. As such, when a defendant enters a guilty or no contest plea, the trial court must inform the defendant that he or ...
This is the problem when police officers and police departments have a financial interest in doing their job. We got rid of bounty hunters because they were not a good thing. This is modern day bounty hunting. – Public Defender John Rekowski
Long before Americans charted their revolutionary course in ...
by David M. Reutter
Several of the defendants in a “widespread scheme and subversion of the Luzerne County juvenile justice system” in Pennsylvania have agreed to a $17.75 million settlement to resolve a class-action federal lawsuit. The scheme involved the building of two private juvenile detention centers and payments to ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 18
Everyone in Virginia's criminal justice system knew that Johnathan Christopher Montgomery was innocent of the crimes for which he’d been convicted.
His accuser had recanted her testimony and admitted she lied to police about being molested by Montgomery more than a dozen years earlier. And yet the state continued to ...
Newly freed prisoners traditionally walk away from the penitentiary with a bus ticket and a few dollars in their pockets. Starting in January 2014, many of the 650,000 prisoners released from prison each year will be eligible for something else: health care by way of Medicaid, thanks to the Affordable ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 22
ON April 11, 2013, the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) announced that Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest for-profit prison firm, had acknowledged that employees at the CCA-operated Idaho Correctional Center (ICC) falsified staffing records from at least May through November 2012. As a result, the state paid the ...
One of the big efforts by the 2013 Utah legislature was authorizing the Prison Relocation and Development Authority to start taking proposals to relocate the Utah State Prison in Draper and unlock the prime real estate underneath it for commercial development. While estimates put the long-term benefit in the billions, ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 25
The Iowa Supreme Court held on May 4, 2012 that earned-time credit for good behavior accelerates the completion of a ten-year special sentence but does not reduce a release revocation term. The Court further held that time served in jail pending a release revocation hearing (jail-time) must be applied to ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 26
On March 13, 2012, the California Court of Appeal upheld a decision by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to place Loren Herzog, a high-profile offender who had been paroled, in a remote county rather than the county where he last resided or some other, putatively more suitable ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 26
For evidence that the art of the slick-talking conman is very much alive, witness Guilford County, North Carolina.
The county’s new $100 million, 1,032-bed lockup in downtown Greensboro was built based on spurious claims that the jail population would increase significantly. Voters narrowly approved a bond referendum for the new ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 28
Recognizing that “anal fissures” are “no fun at all,” the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held on March 27, 2012 that Wisconsin jail officials were not entitled to summary judgment for imposing an exclusive diet of Nutriloaf on a prisoner.
Milwaukee County Jail (MCJ) policy mandates an exclusive diet of ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 30
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a jury’s verdict in favor of the estate of a pre-trial detainee who committed suicide at Nebraska’s Dodge County Jail. Circuit Judge Kermit E. Bye filed a dissenting opinion that criticized the majority for substituting its judgment in place of the jury’s. ...
Oklahoma City District Attorney David Prater announced on March 13, 2013 that all five members of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board (“Board”) had been charged with criminal violations of the state’s Open Meeting Act in connection with some 51 early release requests that the Board considered but did not ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 32
Previously, PLN reported that both Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the nation’s two largest private prison companies, were converting their corporate structure into real estate investment trusts (REITs), primarily to benefit from the tax advantages that REITs provide. [See: PLN, Jan. 2013, p.42].
Among other requirements, a ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 32
“Every day I'm getting emails from staff staff who are concerned about safety,” said Tracey A. Thompson, the Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 117, which represents about 3,600 Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC) guards. With approximately 16,000 prisoners, Washington state prisons are currently operating at 102 percent of capacity, with an ...
Whoever said that living in the past is a fruitless endeavor never tried to make money off background checks.
Billions of publicly-available records have resulted in a global army of unskilled, wanna-be detectives who make quick bucks by peddling information obtained from public databases related to arrests, criminal convictions and ...
In 2011, the State of Illinois signed a 10-year, $1.36 billion contract with Wexford Health Sources, a for-profit company, to provide medical services to Illinois prisoners. Since the contract went into effect there have been numerous complaints concerning the level of medical care that prisoners are receiving – or rather ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 38
Just ten days before his release, A 22-year-old autistic Oregon state prisoner died in a segregation cell after injecting himself with an “undetermined drug or toxin,” according to a federal lawsuit filed by his estate and his mother.
On July 21, 2006, Richard Gifford stole about $1,200 from a bank. ...
In 2011, Abdul-Hamead Awkal, II, 52, and Cornelius Causey, 35, both Muslim prisoners, filed separate lawsuits against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC), arguing that the ODRC’s refusal to provide halal meals infringed on their religious rights.
“The issue of eating halal meals is especially important to me ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 40
In July 2012, the City of New York paid $225,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged 17 causes of action arising “from a chain of disturbing events” that involved the treatment of a mentally ill prisoner at Rikers Island.
When Robert Fecu was booked into the Anna M. Kross Center ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 41
On February 29, 2012, former Contra Costa County prosecutor Paul Sequeira filed a lawsuit in superior court seeking damages from Senior Deputy District Attorney Harold W. Jewett, whom he accused of assault and battery. Two years earlier, the two men (both in their fifties) had argued; the argument escalated until ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 42
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has held “that when a prison official inhibits a prisoner from utilizing an administrative process through threats or intimidation, that process can no longer be said to be ‘available’” under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The appellate court set forth a two-prong test ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 42
Vacating an earlier ruling, on June 29, 2012 the California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, held that while a life-sentenced prisoner is entitled to credit for time served following the governor’s erroneous veto of a decision by the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH) to grant him parole, he is not ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 44
The Kentucky Supreme Court has held that the Department of Corrections (DOC) lacks authority to modify a prisoner’s presentencing custody credit calculation.
In 1993, Peter Bard was charged with murdering a deputy sheriff, but the charges were dismissed without prejudice when he was found incompetent to stand trial. He was ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 44
On June 6, 2012, the Oregon Court of Appeals agreed that a notice-of-rights form (NOR) used by the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision (Board) constitutes a rule. Since the NOR was not adopted in accordance with the rulemaking procedures of Oregon’s Administrative Procedures Act (APA), the court held ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 45
New York has become the first state in the nation to establish a so-called “all crimes DNA database.”
Like most states, New York already collects DNA samples from convicted felons. On March 19, 2012, however, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed into law a bill that permits the collection of DNA ...
A decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York severely restricted portions of New York’s Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act (SOMTA). A lawsuit filed by Mental Hygiene Legal Service (MHLS) had sought an injunction against enforcement of various provisions of the Act, which provides ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 48
The City and County of Denver has paid $695,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged systemic discrimination against deaf people detained or imprisoned at city and county jails and detention centers.
The lawsuit was filed by three former pre-trial detainees, the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (CCDC) and the Colorado Association for ...
The State Bar of California has recommended the disbarment of Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Michael Alexander, 64, who was deemed “not eligible to practice law” until the California Supreme Court makes a final decision in his case.
In an April 5, 2013 ruling, State Bar Court Judge Lucy ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 49
The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, has held that a determination as to whether a crime committed in another state triggers New York sex offender registration is reviewable in a proceeding to determine the offender’s risk level.
New York’s Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) requires registration ...
Prisoners who claim they were assaulted by guards in violation of the Eighth Amendment are not barred from challenging such abuse in court even if they were found guilty of disciplinary charges in connection with the incident, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has held. Moreover, it is erroneous for ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 50
In January 2012, an Orange County, California judge sentenced two of nine detainees implicated in the jailhouse killing of a suspected child molester to terms of 15 years to life in prison. Three other detainees also were sentenced to life, while the remaining defendants received sentences ranging from 6 to ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 52
In a 4-3 decision, the en banc Oregon Supreme Court held on June 7, 2012 that a defendant’s “surrender” must be voluntary in order to avoid dismissal of a pending appeal under the state’s fugitive dismissal rule.
Pursuant to Oregon Rule of Appellate Procedure (ORAP) 8.05(3), if a criminal defendant ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 52
An Oregon jail guard has been sentenced to three years in prison for having a 19-month sexual relationship with a female prisoner.
Mark W. Samuels, 54, was employed by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office as a guard at the Marion County Jail’s Work Center in Salem. He previously worked for ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 54
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld an Arkansas federal district court’s finding that state prison officials denied a prisoner meaningful reviews of his placement in administrative segregation, but ordered a recalculation of the lower court’s damage award.
The case involved Arkansas prisoner David Williams, who began serving a ...
The U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held its 22nd session in late April 2013. A significant item on the Commission’s agenda was the development of revised Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs). Originally adopted in 1955, SMRs are rules that regulate the bare minimum ...
Loaded on
May 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2013, page 56
Arizona: On December 28, 2012, Safford police officers found state prison guard David Hudson, in uniform, threatening to harm himself while holding a gun near the edge of a bridge. Hudson laid down the gun and surrendered to the officers, and was taken to a medical center for evaluation. “Hopefully, ...
