Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 1
Physical Evidence Need Not Be Preserved For Hearing
Eddie Griffin is a Pennsylvania state prisoner. During a cell search prison guards found about 15 gallons of fermented beverages in his cell. The guards ordered Griffin to flush the liquids down the toilet and Griffin complied. Griffin was infracted, found guilty ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 1
Hundreds of public officials have signed a statement urging political candidates to refrain from "appeals to base human instincts and demagoguery" when discussing crime this election year. Furthermore, the statement criticizes past approaches to crime control, which it says have relied too heavily on prison as a criminal penalty.
The ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 2
James Swofford is a pre-trial detainee in the Franklin County (IL) jail charged with aggravated sexual assault. Upon being booked into the jail Swofford was placed in a cell with ten other prisoners. During the night they beat, kicked and stomped Swofford, urinated on him and sodomized him with a ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 2
In a still developing area of the law, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that juvenile prisoners have a constitutional right of access to the courts. To make this right meaningful, the state must provide juveniles with access to attorneys. This opinion joins the First Circuit and a district ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 2
Jail Inmates Entitled To Safe Cells
Two prisoners at the Birmingham, Alabama, jail committed suicide and their estates filed suit claiming violations of the detainees' eighth and fourteenth amendment rights. Both men hanged themselves with bed sheets hung from an iron bar across their cell window. In a two year ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 3
Medical Treatment Cannot Be Delayed To Coerce Confession
Wesley Taylor is a Missouri state prisoner who suffered a ruptured appendix. Upon arriving at the prison hospital, vomiting blood and in extreme pain, the prison doctor asked him if he had swallowed any balloons of drugs. Taylor denied any such activity ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 3
Unlawful To Knock Down Handicapped Prisoner
Laneer Winder is a handicapped Illinois pretrial detainee in the Chicago jail. Due to a back injury Winder cannot walk more than short distances and needs leg braces to walk at all. While going from his cell to recreation he paused to rest. A ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 3
Drug testing of prison inmates has become a standard practice in federal and state institutions, with hundreds of thousands of urinalysis tests conducted over the course of a year; and a significant portion of the tests turn up positive, according to a major study by the federal Bureau of Justice ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 3
Prisoner Has No Right To Independent Drug Test
Rick Koenig is an Arizona prisoner who tested positive for marijuana use in an ADx urine test. He was infracted for drug use. Prior to his disciplinary hearing Koenig requested a gas liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer test (a method that is 100 percent ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 4
BOP Prisoners Don't Need To Exhaust Administrative Remedies
Donald Cooney is a federal prisoner who was infracted for insolence to a staff member, found guilty and removed from his job position as a sanction. Cooney began an administrative review of the decision but abandoned it by filing suit under Bivens ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 4
Keith Brown-El is a prisoner at the Missouri State Penitentiary (MSP). He was infracted for staying in bed during count and staying in the shower too long. He was found guilty at a disciplinary hearing and sentenced to segregation, transferred to another prison and placed in administrative segregation. The only ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 4
Hearing Officer Must Base Guilt Finding On Evidence
Frank Zavaro is a New York state prisoner who was infracted for participating in a riot and assault on guards. A riot had broken out in a mess hall with several guards being attacked. The guards infracted everyone in the mess hall ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 5
The Child Custody Advocacy Services (CHICAS) Project is a part of the Family Reunification component of the Pacific Oaks Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents. The project offers child custody and placement advocacy to jailed or imprisoned parents and their families.
Up to 38% of imprisoned parents have lost temporary ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 5
Government Entitled To Only One Qualified Immunity Appeal
In Mitchell v. Forsyth , 472 US 511, 105 S. Ct. 2806 (1982), the US Supreme Court clarified its prior rulings on qualified immunity. Government officials performing discretionary functions (such as prison officials, law enforcement personnel and most government officials) are entitled ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 6
Texas Death Row Prisoners On Hunger Strike
Since July 19, 1992, more that 50 condemned prisoners on Texas's death row commenced a chain hunger strike. They are fasting in pairs for three days at a time, consuming only liquids, when the strike is taken over by another pair. The prisoners ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 6
Johnnie Reynaga is a California state prisoner who filed a § 1983 suit against a public defender, district attorney, deputy district attorney and state trial judge seeking damages and injunctive relief on the ground they had denied him his right to a fair trial. The suit was referred to a ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 6
Richard Rayes is a Nebraska state prisoner. Rayes filed suit under § 1983 claiming prison guards had slammed a steel door on his hand breaking a finger, that medical staff refused to treat him, and guards confiscated his finger splints on three separate occasions which interfered with his medical treatment ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 6
With little fanfare by the mainstream media George Bush has signed S. 544, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 (Public Law 102-346) into law. The Act creates a new offense entitled "animal enterprise terrorism", defined as traveling in interstate or foreign commerce, of using the mail or any facility ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 7
FUSPPP (Free U.S. Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War) is sponsoring an art show of art by prisoners. They are seeking to gather art from around the country, in all different forms, including poetry and other writing, to draw attention to the stories of various prisoners, their political work and ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 7
California HIV+ Prisoners On Medical Strike
The rate of HIV (the virus believed to cause AIDS infection) in prisons is higher than in all other institutions in the U.S. National studies have shown that prisoners with AIDS live half as long as people with AIDS on the outside. Even in ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 7
While a growing number of countries are abolishing the death penalty as a form of justice for convicted criminals, the United States is executing convicts at a faster rate than ever before, the head of Amnesty International recently said.
America's insistence on upholding the death penalty contradicts its policy of ...
By Paul Wright
Robert Casey is the governor of Pennsylvania. He claims to be "pro-life" because he opposes a woman's right to choose abortion and has signed into law one of the more restrictive abortion laws in the U.S. (which was recently affirmed by the Supreme Court). Like most of ...
By Paul Wright
Welcome to our last issue of PLN for this year. This makes 32 consecutive issues of PLN published. This isn't bad in a business where many newsletters, not just prison ones either, count their number of issues in the single digits. Looking back over the past year ...
Crime And Punishment In America
By Paul Wright
The October 7, 1992, edition of the Seattle Times reported that in Carson, CA a homeless man had been acquitted by a jury of stealing aluminum cans from a recycling bin. The man was charged with misdemeanor theft and the trial lasted ...
Whatever happened to the practice of gradual reintegration of prisoners back into society? Corrections rhetoric for years has included the concept that gradual reintegration is conducive to better psychological adjustment to freedom, thereby reducing recidivism. Theoretically, inmates were to be carefully transferred from maximum security facilities to medium, then to ...
By Paul Wright
There are a number of excellent publications that deal with the American prison system. We exchange with most of them and try to inform our readers of these publications by periodically reviewing them. Because we have had a large increase in new readers, I am going to ...
Prison Slave Labor In The U.S.
By Joe Mowish
[The following is a letter to Business Week concerning an article they published on prison slave labor in China. ]
Ihave read your article of December 30, 1991 and I agree the use of slave labor anywhere is deplorable and the ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1992
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1992, page 13
J.D., Lompoc, CA
Received your August issue and as good as ever, but one story had me a little uncomfortable. The article about the Lompoc Prison Strike...the source Out of Time (3543 18th St. San Francisco, CA) [ PLN , vol. 3, #8 August]
The United States Penitentiary Lompoc and ...
