by Benjamin Tschirhart
In just over three years ending August 2022, at least 49 employees of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) were convicted of crimes, ranging from pilfering government property to sexually abusing prisoners. That total – an average of 16 guilty verdicts every year – represents an admittedly ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 7, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to officials at Utah’s Unitah County Jail in a lawsuit accusing them of deliberate indifference in a detainee’s death from complications related to alcohol withdrawal.
Coby Lee ...
by Paul Wright
In this month’s cover story, we report on misconduct and abuse in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Despite being the largest prison system in the United States, and one of the largest in the world, the BOP does not receive much in the way of scrutiny ...
by David M. Reutter
Some recreation was suspended at Nevada’s Southern Desert Correctional Center [SDCC] after 20 prisoners got into a brawl on October 10, 2022. The violence carried echoes of a riot involving at least 40 prisoners on December 8, 2021.
Eight of those 40 were indicted on a ...
by Victoria Law, Truthout
On November 18, 2020, 37-year-old Javon Kennerson was transferred to Louisiana’s Catahoula Correctional Center, a prison that until recently was run by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison corporation. Less than one month later, after a series of mental health crises, hospitalizations and prison officials’ apparent failure ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
In the state of Alabama, it is a felony to expose a child to an environment in which controlled substances are manufactured, ingested, or distributed. Called Chemical Endangerment, the crime can land a pregnant woman in jail after using drugs.
Ashley Banks, 23, was arrested on ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
The California Mandela Act –
Assembly Bill (A.B.) 2632 – passed with an overwhelming majority of votes from state legislators in August 2022, limiting the use of solitary confinement in prisons, jails and immigration detention centers in the state. But it was vetoed by Gov. Gavin ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On December 28, 2022, Acting Warden Mike Pallares referred a former Central California Women’s Facility guard to the Madera County District Attorney’s (DA’s) Office. A six-month investigation had uncovered accusations that Gregory Rodriguez sexually assaulted 22 prisoners at the state’s biggest lockup for women.
Just over ...
by David Reutter
On October 4, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit considered the question: When is cleanliness not next to godliness? In answer, the Court said that the Texas prison system’s rules for storage of a prisoner’s personal property may not be broken, even if ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 2, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed dismissal of an Indiana prisoner’s claim that he was wrongfully terminated from his job in the prison commissary when he missed work for a religious service he thought he had permission to ...
by Gregory J. Dober
In December 2022, the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) offered an apology for unethical research conducted on prisoners during the 1960s and 70s led by two of their researchers: Howard Maibach, MD, and William Epstein, MD. Both doctors were on the faculty of UCSF’s ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 22, 2022, the Supreme Court of Illinois agreed with a former state prisoner that when the state sets conditions for release that he can’t afford, it is obliged to help him meet them as long as it retains him under its custody. In the ...
by David M. Reutter
On April 19, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the dismissal of a prisoner’s civil rights complaint, reviving his claims that North Carolina prison officials ignored a flesh-eating infection that left him seriously injured. In the process, the Court also laid ...
by Kevin Bliss and David M. Reutter
On July 14, 2022, in a case on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit agreed that a “result opposite” was dictated to the opinion it had issued in a malicious prosecution case the year ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 9, 2022, the Board of Commissioners (BOC) of Minnesota’s Ramsey County approved a payment of $1.445 million to settle a lawsuit alleging Black guards at the county lockup were segregated from the area where Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was being held after his ...
by Harold Hempstead
On February 10, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the judgment of a district court that convicted the former Sheriff of Arkansas’ Franklin County and sentenced him to four years in federal prison for abusing jail detainees. That leaves Anthony “Tony” Boen, ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On January 3, 2023, when Debi Domenick was re-appointed to serve as Vice-Chairwoman for the Board of Commissioners of Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna County, she chided her colleagues to face their duties and not “worry about how it’s going to affect them politically.”
Which is ironic, since Domenick’s ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 18, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania imposed sanctions for discovery abuse upon defendant state prison guards and their counsel, in a lawsuit alleging the guards employed unwarranted and excessive force upon prisoner Corey Bracey.
Bracey’s suit claimed that ...
by Matt Clarke
On June 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that Louisiana prison officials were not entitled to qualified immunity (QI) for delays in calculating release dates that left some state prisoners incarcerated for months beyond their sentences.
After Jessie Crittindon, Leon Burse, ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In a decision handed down on June 22, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found no Fourth Amendment violation for a group of protestors arrested and held nearly three days without a bail hearing. The decision affirmed a lower court ruling that found ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In a maddening decision issued on March 23, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit performed legal gymnastics to deny a former Texas prisoner’s damages claim for unlawful imprisonment after Dallas County improperly relied on polygraph tests to keep him locked up 13 years ...
by David M. Reutter
Contraband statistics obtained from the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) during pandemic lockdowns debunk officials’ theory that visitors and mail are the main source of smuggling into state prisons. Instead the August 2022 report says the numbers point to one source: staff members and guards.
From ...
by Douglas Ankney
On August 5, 2022, Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois held the state Department of Corrections (DOC) in contempt, after repeated failures to draft a plan to complete agreed-upon remediation of a prison healthcare system that an appointed monitor told the ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 15, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a New York prisoner was excused from exhausting administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. Why? Because his transfer to mental health confinement ...
by Keith Sanders
On September 21, 2021, an agreement was fully executed by California’s Merced County agreeing to pay $175,000 to a state prisoner who was mauled by a county K-9 when recaptured after an escape.
While held at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, minimum-security prisoner Zechariah Lee walked ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
It took a civil complaint to make Sheriff Chad Bianco talk. The five jails he runs for California’s Riverside County had seen 13 deaths in the first eight months of 2022 — the highest number for any year on record. And until the press conference on September ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On June 22, 2022, an attorney for theVirginia Department of Corrections signed off on an agreement to pay $87,000 to settle a state prisoner’s claims that he was kicked in the testicles by a guard.
The incident occurred on July 15, 2016, when a guard identified as ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
On April 18, 2022, the U.S Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed dismissal of a suit filed by Kansas prisoner Kenneth D. Leek, holding that he met the standard for alleging an access-to-the-court claim in his complaint.
Leek, a prisoner in the state Department ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 16, 2022, in an important decision for Alabama prisoners on work-release programs, the state Supreme Court held that “willful escape” from such a program “is punishable under the escape statutes in the Alabama Criminal Code.” And it found that the Code implicitly repealed provisions ...
by Chuck Sharman
On April 25, 2022, a former guard employed by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping a prisoner. After completing his prison term, Carlos Richard Martinez, 52, must also remain on supervised ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On December 1, 2022, Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) arrested two ex-felons for orchestrating a beat-down in the county lockup. Sheriff Rick Staly called Margaret Watkins, 37, and her boyfriend, Raymond Dukes, 52, a pair of “dirtbags,” vowing he “won’t allow this kind of behavior ...
by Mark Wilson
On April 29, 2022, the California Court of Appeals held that incompetent to stand trial (IST) defendants who are confined in a state hospital receiving treatment to restore competency must be granted the same opportunity for presentence conduct credit as defendants who remain in the jail receiving ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 16, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that forcing a Muslim prisoner “to submit to cross-sex strip searches” by a transgender Wisconsin guard “substantially burdens his religious exercise.” The case was then remanded to the district court with instructions ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 4, 2022, nearly 40 years after the brutal 1983 murder of 19-year-old Barbara Grams in Tampa, the indictments of two men for the crime were announced by Hillsborough County District Attorney (DA) Andrew Warren. The news highlighted the grave injustice done to 56-year-old Robert ...
by Keith Sanders
Prison is big business in America. Not only do billion-dollar corporations compete to warehouse individuals, so do American cities. That’s why in 2021, the California city of Susanville sued the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to keep it from going through with plans to close ...
by Keith Sanders
Violence occurs inside America’s prisons every day. But those held or working inside Oklahoma’s Davis Correctional Facility (DCF) have endured an unprecedented amount of bloodletting at the lockup, which is operated by Tennessee-based private prison giant CoreCivic: Between New Years and mid-September 2022, at least 18 people ...
by Douglas Ankney
How blatant is a violation of rights when a prisoner who is both mentally ill and proceeding pro se wins his case? The answer for California prisoner Benjamin Justin Brownlee arrived in the form of two settlement checks from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
When Richard A. Carter, died in Pennsylvania’s Dauphin County Prison (DCP) on Christmas Eve 2022, officials released key details that showed they had not neglected him. A nurse visited the 63-year-old at 9:31 p.m. the night before he died, making sure he took his medication for ...
by Justin McFatridge
On September 22, 2022, a guard was fired by the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) after he twice failed to check on a state prisoner who then committed suicide. The firing came less than two months after the prisoner, Chad Isaak, 48, fatally hanged ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On December 19, 2022, a six-month investigation into contraband smuggling at the Dougherty County Jail (DCJ) in southwest Georgia resulted in charges against 11 suspects. In a stunning display of rampant corruption, the group included four DCJ guards, a former nurse at the lockup and a ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 28, 2022, the State of Alabama entered a settlement with condemned prisoner Alan Eugene Miller, agreeing to refrain from further attempts to execute him by means of lethal injection. It further agreed that any future effort to execute Miller will employ his chosen method: ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On May 17, 2022, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that sheriffs may continue the decades-old practice of collecting commissions from charges for phone calls made by those incarcerated in the state’s jails.
At issue is the cost of communication for an extremely vulnerable population, which ...
by Eike Blohm, MD
A change in Medicare rules ends a years-long policy of forcing elderly prisoners to pay for benefits they are literally not free to use or else face life-long penalties.
Americans 65 years and older are covered by Medicare, the government-run health insurance. Medicare consists of several ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On January 14, 2023, a fire broke out just before 11:00 a.m. in a cell block at Indiana State Prison (ISP), killing prisoner Michael W. Smith, 48. He was the second prisoner to burn to death at the lockup in five years; Joshua Devine, 30, also ...
by Keith Sanders
On February 4, 2023, a crowd of 50 people gathered outside the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington. They were there to support a hunger strike staged by some 100 detainees held inside by private prison giant GEO Group under contract for federal Immigration and Customs ...
by David M. Reutter
The Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed on March 25, 2022, to pay $350,000 to resolve a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of murdered prisoner Anthony Vidal.
The lawsuit was filed after Vidal was killed by his cellmate, Torrin Blue, on March 11, 2016, ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 11, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of an Alabama prisoner’s civil rights action that alleged overlong delays in treatment for hernias and post-surgery complications. The case provides a lesson in the proper preparation of affidavits to support ...
by Keith Sanders
On July 9, 2022, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) rescinded a new policy that barred parole officers from getting arrest warrants for people who walk away from one of the state’s halfway houses. The move was a bow to law enforcement officials like Jefferson County Sheriff ...
by Eike Blohm, MD
On September 30, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho awarded $2,631,593 in attorneys fees and expenses to a former state prisoner, who successfully sued for gender confirming surgery to address a severe case of gender dysphoria that included several attempts at self-castration. ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
When parents are incarcerated, their children are often placed in foster care. A little-noticed federal law from the “tough on crime” Reagan era requires states to bill those parents for a portion of their kids’ foster care. But since federal subsidizing of foster care applies only ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
At its meeting on January 24, 2023, the Board of County Commissioners of Florida’s Citrus County voted to deduct $116,250 off its December 2022 bill from private prison operator CoreCivic to run the county jail. The fine represents a daily fee of $3,750, assessed for failing ...
by Casey J. Bastian
When attempting to keep a detainee from hurting himself, are jailers entitled to injure him with impunity? On September 26, 2022, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit answered “yes,” affirming dismissal of a civil rights lawsuit filed by a Connecticut detainee on ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 17, 2022, Lager George Reid, 26, was admitted to Folsom State Prison, after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of his cellmate at the jail in California’s San Bernardino County. Reid was being held at the county’s West Valley Detention Center (WVDC) ...
by David M. Reutter
After a federal jury awarded $135,000 to an Alabama man deprived of medical care for a heart condition while detained at the Autauga County Jail (ACJ), the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama awarded another $163,268.25 in fees and expenses to his attorney ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On October 3, 2022, the same day her jury trial was scheduled to begin for sexually abusing a prisoner, a former assistant warden with the Nebraska Department of Corrections (DOC) reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. Admitting to a charge of “unlawful visitation or communication with an ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 29, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that a civil detainee in custody of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not a “prisoner” subject to the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. Since that law ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On September 29, 2022, former PLN Editor Alex Friedmann, 53, settled with the Tennessee Department of Corrections (DOC) in a federal action alleging his civil rights were violated when he was held 580 days in pretrial detention in an ‘Iron Man’ cell that he called “utterly barren ...
by Anthony W Accurso
On August 30, 2022, the federal court for the Northern District of Georgia granted final approval to a class-action settlement in a suit accusing prison telecom giant Global Tel*Link (GTL) of unjust enrichment by seizing funds from prisoner phone accounts after as little as 90 days ...
Loaded on
March 1, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
March, 2023, page 63
News in Brief
Alabama: On January 9, 2023, the Montgomery Police Department (MPD) arrested a guard at the city jail for an alleged off-duty assault, the Birmingham News reported. It’s unclear who filed the misdemeanor complaint against Reba Foulks, 36; MPD didn’t begin its investigation until receiving notice of ...
