by Matt Clarke
On June 30, 2022, the federal court for the District of Arizona found that the healthcare state prisoners get is frankly awful — unconstitutionally so. As is the amount of time many spend in isolation, where their psychiatric ailments are ignored, and they go hungry not only ...
by Jacob Barrett
On February 24, 2022, the federal court for the Northern District of California granted another 12-month extension to a 2015 settlement. That agreement was made between the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and a class of prisoners who were held in solitary confinement or denied ...
by Paul Wright
Welcome to the last issue of PLN for the year. This month’s cover story reports the landmark court ruling in Parsons v. Ryan — now known as Jensen v. Shinn — the class-action lawsuit over inadequate medical care and conditions of confinement in the Arizona Department of ...
by Mark Wilson
On June 3, 2022, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that private companies providing services in jails and prisons are liable under state disability rights laws — even though jails and prisons themselves are not liable.
In October 2015, Andrew Abraham was arrested and confined in Clackamas County ...
by David M. Reutter
Finding a Colorado state prisoner was in grave danger from gang members he’d testified against in a murder investigation, the federal court for the District of Colorado enjoined the state Department of Corrections (DOC) on May 12, 2022, to place him in protective custody (PC).
When ...
by Douglas Ankney
On August 30, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that Missouri’s parole review process does not violate the constitutional rights of prisoners who were sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) as juveniles. The decision came after a rehearing of the full Court ...
A growing carceral state has slowly replaced the coal industry in large swaths of Central Appalachia. But even here, a different future is possible.
by Judah Schept
Mitch Whitaker wants to be able to hunt with his birds. A certified “master falconer,” he hunts throughout the year with raptors on ...
by David M. Reutter
On January 25, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a prisoner who loses a federal lawsuit does not earn a “strike” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g) if the case was removed from state court by defendants. The reason: Because it ...
by Mark Wilson
Can a prisoner’s mail be rejected without any notice whatsoever? Not without violating his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. That was the decision of a federal court in Alaska on December 14, 2021.
At issue was a discrepancy in the mail policy of the state Department of ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 12, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said a lower court erred in declaring that a federal prisoner’s dismissed lawsuit counted as the first of three “strikes” allowed under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). Why? Because only the judge who counts the ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
The North Carolina General Assembly approved a $30 million budget to air condition all state prisons in late 2021, but none of it had been spent by May 2022. That left about 15,400 of some 37,000 prisoners held by the state Department of Public Safety (DPS) ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 4, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to Nevada prison officials who “never deviated from their ‘wait and see’ treatment plan” for a prisoner, leaving him to suffer “intractable pain” for years.
“Mere disagreement ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 5, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit certified a class of Illinois prisoners in a suit accusing officials in the state Department of Corrections (DOC) of conducting unconstitutionally demeaning and unsanitary shakedowns at four downstate prisons.
The raids all occurred ...
by Eike Blohm, MD
On October 20, 2022, a federalcourt in North Carolina approved a settlement obligating the City of Greensboro to pay $2.57 million for the wrongful death of a mentally ill man, after city cops detained and hogtied him in September 2018.
Most people were enjoying the late-summer ...
by Keith Sanders
On April 6, 2022, Pennsylvania’s Delaware County assumed control of its jail for the first time in 24 years, after terminating its contract with the Florida-based GEO Group. Prior to that, the 1,800-bed George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Thornton was the state’s last privately-operated county lockup. ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
On September 27, 2022, a New Jersey grand jury indicted 14 officials at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility (CF), the state’s only women’s prison. It was the latest fallout from a years-long sex abuse scandal that led Gov. Phil Murphy (D) to announce the prison will be ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 1, 2022, the Supreme Court of Ohio rejected the argument of state prison officials that copies of a prisoner’s “kites” — informal complaints, grievances and appeals — are exempt from disclosure under state public-records law. The Court not only ordered the documents produced but ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 25, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reinstated a claim against a guard at Colorado’s Mesa County Detention Facility (MCDF) in the death of a mentally disabled detainee. Reversing a district court’s grant of summary judgment to the guard, the ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
On September 24, 2022, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) signed a settlement agreement providing $3.5 million to the heirs of Shaylene Graves, a state prisoner found hanged in her cell at the California Institute for Women (CIW) in Chino in June 2016.
At ...
by Jacob Barrett
LGBTQ individuals continue to be criminalized for their sexuality, resulting in high rates of incarceration and higher chances of solitary confinement once behind bars. That’s the take-away from a report by The Sentencing Project issued on June 9, 2022.
Using data from the year before, it estimated ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
A former South Carolina Sheriff’s deputy was sentenced to 18 years in prison on May 19, 2022, for driving a jail transport van onto a flooded road, where it was swept away with a pair of detainees locked in the back and they drowned.
Former Horry ...
by David M. Reutter
A Georgia prisoner who got into a spat with a prison gang and was allegedly sold out to them by guards received a $54,000 judgment in a federal civil rights action on November 21, 2021.
Mixing it up at Ware State Prison with a prisoner in ...
by David M. Reutter
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were national shortages of personal protective equipment. Hand sanitizer was in great need. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) had a solution: Put prisoners to work making it.
Cuomo turned to the state’s prison industry, Corcraft ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On June 7, 2022, the federal court for the Eastern District of Kentucky dismissed the case of a former jail detainee after she reached a settlement with the lockup’s privately contracted healthcare provider. However, the amount and most of the terms of the settlement between Kimissa ...
by Matt Clarke
Between 2016 and 2019, fatal drug overdoses more than doubled for California state prisoners. The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) said that hospitalizations for drug overdoses rose almost as fast. Clearly, a new approach was needed to stem prisoner drug use.
That resulted in the ...
by Jayson Hawkins
To justify rules making life difficult for prisoners, officials often point to contraband — even when facts point in another direction. That was the case when the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) rolled out a new policy for prisoner packages in May 2022. ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On September 2, 2022, the former deputy warden of Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman was sentenced to 24 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for a brutal assault that left a state prisoner with permanent injuries.
Melvin Hilson, 50, was ordered by ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
On the last day of 2021, the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) revealed a stunning privacy breach: Over 500 detainees in city jails had their calls to their attorneys recorded. Worse, the recordings were then turned over to prosecutors.
The Constitution guarantees the privacy ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
In an interview published in The State in Columbia on April 26, 2022, a South Carolina physician spoke out for the first time about executing condemned state prisoners — and the toll it has taken on him.
“Death is death, no matter whether it’s by disease, ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
They knew it was coming: The Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) mandates a yearly inspection of all jail facilities in the state. The goal is to support local governments in maintaining “safe, secure and suitable local jail facilities.”
This is especially important, considering most jail detainees ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 12, 2022, as Texas state prisoner Gonzalo Lopez, 46, was being transported in a prison bus to a medical appointment, he used a “prison-made knife and key” to loosen his restraints. He then cut through the metal cage for high-risk prisoners in which he was ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
On May 19, 2022, the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced former Norfolk Sheriff Robert McCabe, to 12 years in federal prison for his role in a jail bribery scheme that went on for more than two decades. A jury convicted McCabe in ...
by Douglas Ankney
On March 23, 2022, Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed a new law to shield the identity of drug suppliers for state executions by lethal injection.
House Bill 658 was written by the state’s Attorney General and Department of Correction (DOC). It won complete approval in the ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 24, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a request for rehearing en banc of a case brought on behalf of a detainee at California’s Orange County Jail (OCJ) who died of an undiagnosed rupture in his aorta. See: Russell ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
Policymakers in Alabama are howling for an end to “good time” sentence credits after a recently released state prisoner killed a Sheriff’s deputy in June 2022. But how did Austin Patrick Hall, a 26-year-old felon with 46 arrests since age 17, leave prison after serving less ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In August 2022, private jail medical provider Advanced Correctional Healthcare (ACH) settled with the estate of a Missouri pretrial detainee who died of lung cancer after being refused medical attention for months. The agreement, which was for an undisclosed sum, came a few months after a jury ...
by Matt Clarke
On May 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of Nevada ordered the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to credit a parolee for time he spent in custody awaiting parole revocation that exceeded the 60-day window state law provides for proceedings to begin.
After he was paroled, state prisoner ...
by David M. Reutter
In May 2022, after a ruling in his favor by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a former California prisoner accepted a settlement over an alleged assault by guards at Mule Creek State Prison. Importantly, the Court’s ruling held that a grievance alleging ...
by Jacob Barrett
On September 12, 2022, the federal court for the Central District of California granted final approval to a class-action settlement resolving claims against California’s Orange County Jail (OCJ) over its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The legal saga began in California Superior Court for Orange County, where ...
by David M. Reutter
In October 2022, the federal court for the Southern District of Indiana confirmed payment to a state prisoner of $30,501 in damages, which was awarded for retaliation he suffered when seeking protection from other prisoners.
The prisoner, Jason Seth Perry, was held at Wabash Valley Correctional ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On May 25, 2022, a former federal prisoner agreed to accept $300,000 to settle claims he was subjected to unconstitutionally bad treatment for severe Type 1 diabetes while incarcerated by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
From 2004 to 2018, Seifullah Chapman was held in several BOP ...
by Jacob Barrett
On May 26, 2022, the Supreme Court of Arkansas held the state Department of Corrections (DOC) miscalculated parole-eligibility dates for a pair of state prisoners, causing a delay somewhere between 45 and 66 months.
Marcus Atkins and Calvin Perry were convicted for April 2007 crimes including kidnapping, ...
by David M. Reutter
On March 28, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit ruled that money may not be withdrawn from a federal prisoner’s trust account, even to satisfy court-ordered restitution, without first determining the source of the funds.
The Court’s decision concerned the strange case ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 23, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a prisoner whose complaint was dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies need not file a new suit after completing that task. Rather, a supplemental pleading is sufficient, the Court said, ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On September 12, 2022, the wife of an imprisoned street gang member pleaded guilty to posing as a paralegal for an allegedly corrupt lawyer in a scheme to smuggle methamphetamine into the California State Prison at Folsom.
Kristen Demar, 47, pleaded guilty to smuggling drugs to ...
by Kevin W. Bliss and Jayson Hawkins
On April 12, 2022, the federal court for the District of Columbia approved a settlement agreement to resolve a class-action lawsuit which challenged conditions of confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic at the DC Jail. Like an earlier preliminary injunction (PI) issued in the ...
Loaded on
Nov. 30, 2022
published in Prison Legal News
December, 2022, page 63
Alabama: A detainee assaulted aguard at the Calhoun County Jail on August 6, 2022, the Anniston Star reported. Sheriff Matthew Wade blamed an ongoing staffing shortage, which has typically left three guards on duty to supervise 300 detainees. One of them, Jacob Hammett, was out of his maximum-security cell ...
