“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” — Ray Bradbury
by Christopher Zoukis
In its landmark ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) – which held political campaign spending is a form of protected speech – the ...
by Steve Horn
On September 14, 2018, Prison Legal News submitted a petition for writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving censorship by the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC), which has banned PLN statewide since 2009.
In October, eight friend of the court (amicus) briefs, ...
Loaded on
Dec. 5, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 15
Nurses at the Orange County jail in Orlando, Florida accused a pretrial detainee of “faking” the painful symptoms that led him to plead for medical care. In reality he had sepsis – blood poisoning caused by an untreated infection – that ended up killing him.
On August 6, 2015, Max ...
by Dale Chappell
On July 30, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied a motion for judgment on the pleadings filed by Prisoner Transportation Services, LLC (PTS) and its subsidiary, U.S. Corrections, LLC (USC), in a lawsuit over inhumane conditions during the transport of more ...
by Paul Wright
You are reading the last issue of Prison Legal News for 2018. This month’s cover story reports on the widespread practice of prison and jail officials censoring books, magazines and correspondence sent to prisoners. Increasingly, that includes restrictions or bans on books mailed from non-profit, volunteer-run Books ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Catherine Hoke used to work on Wall Street, employed by a private equity firm. She left the world of high finance to start the Prison Entrepreneurship Program for Texas prisoners in 2004. But after five years Hoke was forced out and banned from all Texas prisons, after ...
by Monte McCoin
Former prisoner Bobby Battle, an Oklahoma City native with a sixth-grade education who filed a lawsuit that ultimately led to historic reforms and the desegregation of Oklahoma prisons, died on December 25, 2017 at the age of 80.
“He must have just had native intelligence, one of ...
by Derek Gilna
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey has certified a class-action lawsuit against Global Tel*Link (GTL), one of the nation’s largest prison telecom companies. According to the court, the plaintiffs – including prisoners and their family members – alleged violations of the New Jersey ...
by Christopher Zoukis
In December 2017, a federal judge denied a motion by GEO Group, the private operator of the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington, to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the state’s Attorney General, Bob Ferguson. The suit alleges that GEO violated the state’s minimum wage law ...
by Grace Toohey, The Advocate
After more than 40 years as one of the most restrictive housing units within Louisiana’s Angola prison, corrections officials have closed Camp J – which at its peak confined more than 400 prisoners being disciplined in solitary cells for more than 23 hours a day. ...
Loaded on
Dec. 5, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 24
Within a year after a settlement was reached between the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) to address violence at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, three prisoners were killed and a guard was assaulted.
Following six homicides over a three-year period and ...
by Dale Chappell
Douglas Cole, the former superintendent of the Cedar Creek Corrections Center in Thurston County, was quietly moved to another Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC) position after a whistleblower exposed his alleged misuse of prison money.
An internal review found that about $145,000 of the prison’s purchases since ...
by Ed Lyon
Brandon Garwood was incarcerated at a jail in Cass County, Indiana in October 2015. He was being held on a charge of endangering another person while driving drunk.
On October 2, 2015, video cameras showed Garwood peacefully laying on his concrete slab bed when five jailers entered ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 19, 2017, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of a federal civil rights suit brought by a prisoner who alleged Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) officials ignored his warnings that rival gang members intended to kill him, and his requests not to ...
by Kevin Bliss
Employees at the Lackawanna County Prison (LCP) in Scranton, Pennsylvania have been under a year-long investigation into the sexual abuse of women prisoners at the facility. The culture of abuse, said to have continued for over a decade, is so pervasive that those accused include the highest-ranking ...
by Christopher Zoukis
On June 29, 2018, a federal jury awarded over $17 million to a Chicago man who spent 21 years in a maximum-security prison for a murder he did not commit.
Jacques Rivera, now 52, was convicted of the 1988 gangland killing of 16-year-old Felix Valentin. The only ...
by R. Bailey
An audit recommended replacing outdated data management software used by Louisiana’s prison system with a previously-rejected upgrade, if the new system could be salvaged. The upgrade would help implement the Justice Reinvestment Act (Act), which was designed to reduce Louisiana’s prison population by 10 percent and its ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 8, 2018, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) announced new measures to prevent another murder from occurring on its transport buses.
Those measures included replacing a “significant number” of buses with new vehicles featuring factory-installed camera systems to monitor passengers and separate compartments ...
Loaded on
Dec. 5, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 30
In April 2017, former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez hanged himself in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts. His death focused the attention of state authorities, and the public, on the problem of prisoner suicides.
Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson expressed surprise and shock ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
In June 2018, a death penalty task force commissioned by Pennsylvania’s General Assembly in 2012 finally released its report. Finding that neither judicial economy nor fairness is served – because 97 percent of all capital cases are converted to lesser sentences after post-conviction judicial review – ...
by Monte McCoin
On April 10, 2018, a group of gunmen attacked the Santa Izabel Prison Complex near the northern Brazilian city of Belem. The state security service said 21 people were killed in the military-style assault on the facility. One guard was killed; government officials identified prisoners and outside ...
by Christopher Zoukis
In what could be the fastest injunction ever granted in a prison-related case, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Leighton issued a temporary retraining order in favor of Muslim prisoners mere hours after they filed a lawsuit alleging that Washington prison officials were refusing to honor fasting requirements ...
by Derek Gilna
On July 18, 2018 the New York City Council passed Introduction No. 741-A, which ended the practice of telecom companies profiting from providing phone services for prisoners at inflated rates. Instead, all domestic calls made from the city’s jail system, including the Rikers Island complex, will be ...
by Ed Lyon
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has employed a unique method to reduce the number of seriously mentally ill prisoners being housed in solitary confinement: Their mental health classification competency levels were administratively changed without an assessment or input from mental health professionals.
When Wisconsin DOC psychologist Bradley ...
by David M. Reutter
In March 2018, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) agreed not to set another execution date for death row prisoner Doyle Lee Hamm. The settlement resolved a lawsuit that followed a failed attempt to execute Hamm, 61, on February 22, 2018.
Hamm was sentenced to die ...
by Ed Lyon
Parole is generally defined as conditional release from prison before a sentence has expired. But in New Mexico, every month dozens of “release-eligible” offenders join a pool of paroled state prisoners who nevertheless remain incarcerated. Called “in-house parole,” the practice affects nearly 1,000 prisoners a year at ...
by Laura Whitehorn
This issue of Prison Legal News is dedicated to Mujahid Farid.
Farid, 69, who died of cancer on November 20, 2018 in the Bronx, New York, often said he was only one of many people who spend their years in prison learning. Farid obtained his GED while ...
by Christopher Zoukis
They say money can’t buy happiness, and more money just leads to more problems. But when it comes to the criminal justice system, wealth can get an accused murderer out on bail, a celebrity a great plea deal and a sex offender an upgraded jail stay.
The ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a mentally ill prisoner who spent 11 years in solitary confinement and had a history of attempted self-harm could plausibly allege that continued segregation would place him in imminent danger of serious physical injury. The ruling overturned a ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Several state prison systems are facing a dilemma: too many prisoners and not enough beds. An increasingly popular solution to this problem is to transfer prisoners to facilities in other states, sometimes thousands of miles away, where there is surplus bed space available. That extra space is ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
A July 2018 report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) found the number of alleged incidents of sexual victimization among state and federal prisoners increased 180 percent from 2011 to 2015. However, the number of substantiated claims grew just 63 percent during that same ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania state prisoner Gregory L. Ricks against Paul Keil and D. Shover, guards at SCI Graterford, after his case was dismissed by a district court for failure to state a claim.
Ricks was on his way ...
by Dale Chappell
As his resignation was about to take effect late on June 1, 2018, scandal-plagued Missouri Governor Eric Greitens pardoned five convicted felons, commuted the sentences of four others and signed 77 new bills into law – including one that makes it illegal to post the same type ...
Loaded on
Dec. 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 46
A three-party land swap has apparently cleared a logjam that has left the Wayne County jail in Detroit unfinished since 2013. The county commission voted in June 2018 to ratify a deal made by County Executive Warren Evans with the City of Detroit and a company owned by billionaire developer ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
Most Americans were taught that slavery was banned in 1865 with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But prisoner rights advocates note that the amendment’s exception clause actually allowed slavery to persist – in prisons.
The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery and involuntary ...
by Christopher Zoukis
In an unpublished June 7, 2018 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit partially reversed a district court’s ruling that Cowlitz County, Washington was entitled to summary judgment in a case that alleged county jail officials violated the civil rights of three detainees who ...
by Derek Gilna
The Brookings Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research group, has published a study that demonstrates, through empirical data, what many have long suspected: That extreme poverty leads to increased crime rates. The same study, “Work and Opportunity Before and After Incarceration,” published on March 14, 2018, also confirms ...
by Monte McCoin
In November 2017, a U.S. District Court judge set a February 2019 trial date in a civil suit to resolve allegations that CoreCivic – formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America – failed to prevent the sexual assault of a teenage boy with developmental disabilities while he ...
by Kevin Bliss
The family of former Missouri prisoner George Allen received a $14 million settlement in a wrongful conviction suit filed against the state, the City of St. Louis and others responsible for his illegal imprisonment.
Mary Bell was raped and murdered in her LaSalle apartment in 1982. Police ...
by Ed Lyon
Correct Care Solutions (CCS) is one of the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare providers for prisoners, with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion. The Nashville, Tennessee-based firm supplies medical and mental health services to more than 100 state and federal prisons and 330 jails in 38 states, plus immigration ...
Loaded on
Dec. 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 54
A Michigan federal jury found a guard at the Gus Harrison Correctional Facility (GHCF) had assaulted a prisoner and tried to cover it up, and awarded $16,500 in damages.
Ali Muthana was being served a meal in his confinement cell at GHCF, which houses mentally ill prisoners, on March 5, ...
by Christopher Zoukis
The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) houses over 181,400 prisoners in more than 120 facilities nationwide. As a rule, federal prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. With the Trump administration demanding a 12 to 14 percent workforce reduction – which equates to 5,000 to 6,000 BOP job positions, ...
Loaded on
Dec. 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 55
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that garnishment actions are “suits” for Eleventh Amendment purposes. That holding compelled the appellate court to find a prisoner could not pursue a garnishment motion in federal court to redirect funds to satisfy a $200,000 judgment against a Georgia state prison guard.
David ...
by Derek Gilna
More than a half-million Americans are homeless on any given day, and for the five million ex-prisoners in the U.S., the rate of homelessness is almost 10 times higher than among the general population. According to a report issued by the Prison Policy Initiative in August 2018, ...
Loaded on
Dec. 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 56
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court abused its discretion when it denied a Wisconsin prisoner’s repeated motions to recruit counsel.
Before the appellate court was a case involving prisoner Randy McCaa, whose 2016 civil rights complaint alleged that prison officials at the Green Bay Correctional ...
by Derek Gilna
A New York state prisoner’s civil rights case proceeded to trial in federal district court after the judge denied the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s motion for summary judgment in part on March 15, 2018, while dismissing some of the plaintiff’s claims.
Michael ...
by David M. Reutter
In a show of continued support for privately-operated prisons, the Florida legislature considered giving the state’s for-profit prison contractors a $4 million raise.
The GEO Group, MTC and CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, have had contracts to operate prisons in Florida since the 1990s. While ...
by R. Bailey
In March 2018, a federal grand jury returned an 11-count indictment against Mississippi County, Missouri Sheriff Cory Hutcheson. Hutcheson, 34, already faced robbery charges as well as a wrongful death suit filed by the mother of a prisoner who died at the county lockup.
At the request ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Over four decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976) that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment guarantees prisoners the right to be free from “deliberate indifference” to their “serious medical needs” – a right that extends ...
Loaded on
Dec. 7, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 62
The Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee agreed to pay $550,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging a guard at the Davidson County Male Correctional Development Center (CDC) used excessive force on a pretrial detainee, leaving him a quadriplegic.
Edgar Mhoon was arrested in April 2015 following a search ...
Loaded on
Dec. 5, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2018, page 62
Arizona: On March 16, 2018, the Arizona Department of Corrections issued a report that concluded private prison operator CoreCivic (formerly CCA) had properly responded to a February 25, 2018 riot at the Red Rock Correctional Center. The two-hour “major disturbance,” which left 13 prisoners and two staff members with injuries ...
