by Christopher Zoukis
“Mother Nature is a serial killer. No one’s better. More creative. . . . She’s a bitch.”
– World War Z
Between January and August of 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services played a game, a simulation of sorts. The exercise was called Crimson Contagion, ...
by Ed Lyon
Daniel Hernandez was a Brooklyn rap artist who managed to achieve no small measure of fame. To his fans he was Tekashi 6ix9ine. He decided to live the gangsta life and rapped about his time as a member of New York City’s Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. He ...
by Paul Wright
Prison Legal News launched in May 1990, making this the thirtieth anniversary issue. I hand typed five pages, half the issue, in my maximum-security prison cell and Ed Mead, my co-editor, typed the other half in his cell. We sent it out to a volunteer to photocopy ...
by Jasmine Heiss and Jack Norton, reprinted from Truthout
Infrastructure development is a matter of life and death: This has always been true, and we are now in a clarifying moment.
In the midst of a mounting public health crisis in the United States, state, local and federal governments are ...
by Michael D. Cohen, M.D.
In the April issue of Prison Legal News, I discussed the nature of the disease called COVID-19 (COrona VIrus Disease-2019) and ways to protect yourself and your facility through personal cleanliness, social distancing and environmental cleanliness. This month I will continue those themes and also ...
by Dale Chappell
Now the whole country is incarcerated,” Theophalis “Binky Bilal” Wilson said after being released in January 2020, exonerated after 28 years wrongfully in prison, only to find himself locked in at home. “This is a microcosm of what a person experiences when he is incarcerated,” he said. ...
Patrick Jones first federal prisoner to die after judge rejects plea
by David M. Reutter
A non-violent federal drug offender who pleaded for early release in the months prior to the COVID-19 pandemic hitting America died of the disease. Patrick Jones, 49, was the first federal prisoner to die of ...
by Ken Silverstein
On April 15, President Donald Trump announced that the coronavirus pandemic had peaked in the United States. That same day, nearly 2,300 people in the country died from COVID-19, the disease cause by the virus, which was the highest tally in a single day. The following day ...
Loaded on
May 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2020, page 34
Prisoners jailed with a conviction at New York’s Rikers Island were offered $6 an hour to dig mass graves at Hart Island, where more than 1 million mostly indigent city residents are already buried. In a city with decreasing space to bury the dead, Hart Island in the northeast Bronx ...
by Dale Chappell
Court-appointed advocates filed a motion in federal court concerning the Arizona prison director’s response to the coronavirus, which federal Judge Roslyn Silver called “troubling,” writing that it “may reflect a failure to accept what could be a grave threat.”
She wasn’t the only one disturbed by Arizona ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
In June 2019, California’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) published its annual report, “Monitoring the Use of Force,” for incidents the previous year at all juvenile and adult facilities operated by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The OIG’s office reviewed 6,426 incidents where an ...
by Ed Lyon
In May 2019, a final settlement agreement was approved for 15 prisoners who were exposed to Hepatitis C when a Correctional Managed Health Care (CMHC) nurse at MacDougall-Walker State Prison in Suffield, Connecticut, used the same needle to inject insulin to multiple diabetic patients, refilling the syringe ...
by Ed Lyon
On June 20, 2019, a two-justice majority on a Nevada court of appeals panel reversed and remanded a district court’s dismissal of a state prisoner’s civil rights complaint over the removal of good time credits. The ruling is unpublished.
Darryl E. Gholson sued the Nevada Department of ...
by Christopher Zoukis
On April 4, 2020, a three-judge court in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California denied a motion seeking an order requiring the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to immediately release specific categories of inmates due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
On June 6, 2019 the Supreme Court of Arkansas denied a prisoner’s appeal of a circuit court’s refusal to issue a preliminary injunction regarding Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC) policies as applied to his free exercise claims as a follower of the Nation of Islam (NOI). ...
by Dale Chappell
In a rare move, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on January 3, 2020 granted default judgment in favor of a prisoner who sued Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, after prison staff and the Indiana Attorney General’s (AG) Office “blatantly” lied to the Court ...
by Emily Widra and Peter Wagner, originally published April 10, 2020 at the Prison Policy Initiative website
Since the Prison Policy Initiative’s first coronavirus briefing at the beginning of March, the organization has been tracking how federal, state, and local officials have responded to the threat of COVID-19 in the criminal justice ...
by Douglas Ankney
After he lost work and was unable to pay a fine, Robert Wayne Johnson was sentenced to the Keller Neshoba Regional Correctional Facility (KNRCF) in rural Kemper County, Mississippi, on November 16, 2017. The father of five had struggled with mental health problems, including two suicide attempts. ...
by David M. Reutter
On March 20, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the cancellation of lawyer-client visits at the Metropolitan Detention Center-Brooklyn (MDC). The court urged a quick resolution in the district court with a mediator to deal with access to ...
by David M. Reutter
The provision of medical care is an expensive proposition regardless of whether a citizen or prisoner is in need of care. Tight budgets have pushed many jails and prisons to turn to prison profiteers to provide medical and mental health care to detainees and prisoners. When ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Illinois Supreme Court on December 19, 2019 held that settlement agreements reached by private contractors, if directly related to the services they provide, are public record. It said the plain language of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), when viewed in light of legislative intent, showed ...
by Scott Grammer
In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that jail detainees who are under no voting disability — which essentially means that they have not yet been convicted of a felony and lost their right to vote — must be allowed the opportunity to vote pursuant to the ...
by Sharon Dolovich
Most of America’s 2.3 million prisoners cannot practice social distancing. They are packed into overcrowded facilities, living, sleeping and bathing within feet—sometimes inches—of each other. What’s more, they often lack sufficient basics, including soap, warm water and clean towels, let alone hand sanitizer. Unless radical action is ...
by Ed Lyon
The year 2019 was a busy one for a grand jury in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Indictments were handed down for seven guards, a former associate warden and a former director of the county’s jail, located in Cleveland. They are among 11 current and former jail staffers to ...
by Matt Clarke
The September 14, 2019, death of prisoner Albert Dorsey, 60, at the Hardeman County Correctional Facility (HCCF), a private prison operated by Tennessee-based CoreCivic, was initially called a suicide by the medical examiner. The prison’s report said he died alone in his cell that “no one else ...
by Matt Clarke
Despite a reduction in the Texas prisoner population, state prisons are spending record amounts on prisoner health care. The reason is not an improvement in the health care afforded prisoners. Pending lawsuits allege inadequate health care — especially for Texas prisoners infected with the Hepatitis C virus. ...
by Kevin Bliss
In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that federal Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents will begin collecting DNA samples for criminal investigation from immigrants designated for detention in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, including children and those legally seeking asylum.
During the ...
by Ed Lyon
Back in 2011, the United States Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) performed an anonymous survey at the Minnesota Department of Corrections’ (MDOC) Shakopee women’s prison.
The survey’s results showed that Shakopee was among the worst prisons in the nation for sexual misconduct. Faced with ...
by David M. Reutter
In recent years many states have made changes to their criminal codes in an effort to reduce their prison populations. Those amendments, however, are rarely retroactive and leave those already imprisoned to serve out lengthy sentences that are no longer imposed.
Alabama is one state that ...
by Kevin Bliss
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) placed a request for bids on its website in March 2020 for 45,000 N95 protective face masks for 26 of its enforcement and removal operation field offices. This came at a time that the nation’s frontline healthcare workers are experiencing a mass ...
by Kevin Bliss
Clarence Delaney, Jr. was granted $40 per day for 88 days of unlawful confinement by the State of New York, receiving a total payment of $3,250. He also was able to recover his 42 USC § 1983 filing fee, in a state Court of Claims ruling on ...
by Bill Barton
In October 2019, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a 2020 budget that allowed prisoners to seek college financial aid through a state program that had long been out-of-bounds to prisoners.
The Tuition Incentive Program (TIP) reimburses tuition expenses for Medicaid-eligible students at participating private and ...
by Matt Clarke
A man from New York City was held three years in a Rikers Island jail before a Brooklyn jury acquitted him October 1, 2019 of a knife-point armed robbery.
Mike Colon, 51, was just eight months out of prison when four police cars slid up beside him ...
by Matt Clarke
After the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) received $17.7 million from the state legislature’s Joint Committee on Capital Review to repair defective cell locks at a maximum-security prison, a whistleblower revealed that paperwork showing the repairs had been made was falsified, The Arizona Republic reported in December ...
by David M. Reutter
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear issued an executive order that restored the voting rights of over 140,000 convicted felons. The order was signed just days after Beshear was sworn in in December 2019, and it upheld a campaign promise.
“My faith teaches me to treat others with ...
by Kevin Bliss
A prisoner advocacy group in April began urging residents to call Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and the state Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Robert Carter to demand the release of nonviolent prisoners, the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions amid the COVID-19 health threat, one of ...
by Bill Barton
David Bailey was a reckless and violent 17-year-old when he shot and killed two people outside a Washington, D.C. night club. He was convicted of second-degree murder and received a sentence of 35 years to life.
According to The Appeal, “both of Bailey’s parents struggled with ...
by David M. Reutter
The Arizona federal district court overseeing the Stipulation in a class action that challenged the medical care within the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) denied an emergency motion to require ADOC to develop a comprehensive COVID-19 plan. The court also issued an order on performance measure ...
Loaded on
May 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2020, page 57
"They’re literally leaving us in here to die,” said a prisoner live-streaming on Facebook in a plea for help April 3, 2020.
The now-viral online video captures the desperation of prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic. The 31-year-old, wearing a stocking cap and surgical mask, is shown inside the Federal Correction ...
by Kevin Bliss
Current and former prisoners at Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, California, filed a class action lawsuit on November 18, 2019 against the county, Sheriff Gregory Ahern, and Aramark Correctional Services for violating a California prison labor law, the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and the Thirteenth ...
by Michael Fortino, Ph.D.
Open prison is unthinkable today in the United States, though in Scandinavia such institutions are heralded as models of civility and rehabilitation. The U.S. experimented with open prisons back in 1941, which proved there were better ways to rehabilitate and reduce recidivism. Unfortunately, those lessons were ...
by Dale Chappell
A jury awarded a prisoner brutally beaten at the Baltimore City Detention Center $25 million, after guards allegedly worked in concert with a gang and arranged a beating as retaliation for complaints filed by a detainee awaiting trial.
The beating left Daquan Wallace in a coma for ...
by David M. Reutter
Following a letter from the ACLU of Georgia, the Chatham County sheriff rescinded a jail policy that banned detainees from receiving books and magazines from outside sources. The ACLU still took issue with a revised policy that limits the number of publications detainees can possess.
The ...
by David M. Reutter
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the grant of summary judgement alleging prison officials lacked a penological interest in extending a prisoner’s duration in a dry cell. On January 15, 2020, it affirmed the grant of judgment on the claim related to the conditions of ...
by Ed Lyon
A pilot program started by a nonprofit in Alameda County, California seeks to meet an acute need for shelter faced by a group that doesn’t get much positive attention: recently released prisoners. Run by former prosecutor Alex Busansky, the nonprofit is called Impact Justice (IJ), and its ...
by David M. Reutter
With four deaths in five months at Virginia’s Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women (FCCW), a federal district court began moving its focus from care for individual prisoners to systematic change in July 2019.
The Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) was party to a 2016 settlement in ...
by David M. Reutter
A $120,000 settlement was reached on November 5, 2019 in a lawsuit alleging officials at Minnesota’s Ramsey County Jail applied discriminatory treatment to a Muslim woman. The settlement with the county also provides for a change in policies related to Muslim women’s use of head coverings. ...
Loaded on
May 1, 2020
published in Prison Legal News
May, 2020, page 62
California: On March 28, 2020, death row prisoner Lonnie Franklin Jr., 67, aka “Grim Sleeper,” was found unresponsive in his San Quentin cell. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton told reporters, “There were no signs of trauma. They don’t know why he died.” The Marin County ...
