by Matthew Clarke
We all know celebrities accused ofcrimes, including actors, musicians, sports figures, business leaders, politicians and journalists. If they’re prosecuted at all, the punishment is rarely harsh. The rich and famous simply aren’t treated like everyone else.
However, the rise of the #metoo movement has undermined celebrity privilege ...
by Chuck Sharman
After Georgia prisoner Nathan Weekes and three others were indicted for murder in April 2022, a smuggling ring they operated at Smith State Prison was busted. That has now led to the arrest of the prison’s warden, Brian Dennis Adams, 48, on February 8, 2023.
The state ...
by Paul Wright
The most striking thing about the American criminal justice system is its class-based nature. With one system of non-policing, lackluster prosecutions, lenient sentences and minimal consequences for the wealthy and another system of militarized policing, scorched earth prosecutions, draconian sentences and punishment that never ends for the ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On April 24, 2023, the board of Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland County Prison unanimously recommended requiring extended shifts for five sergeants who supervise guards at the jail. That’s because after county lawmakers ended the hiring of part-time prison guards in 2021, mandated overtime for full-time guards cost more ...
Loaded on
July 15, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2023, page 13
On July 8, 2022, a Texas prisoner’s decade-long legal battle over grossly unsanitary conditions in his cell finally came to an end, when he stipulated to dismissal of his lawsuit against the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) after accepting a $50,000 settlement.
For six days in September 2013, guards ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
New Mexico’s Bernalillo County is terminating the contract with its jail’s private healthcare contractor effective July 25, 2023. County Manager Julie Morgas Baca sent word to YesCare – the corporate descendant of Corizon Health – on January 26, 2023, pulling the plug two years early on ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
When an apparently intoxicated prisoner allegedly assaulted a guard at Connecticut’s largest prison on June 13, 2023, the lockup was put on lockdown. It was at least the third time this year that a state Department of Correction (DOC) prison was shutdown.
The first incident also ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
“My name is Majid Khan, and I am a real person. I am a human being. I am a Muslim man, and I first want to thank God for freeing me.”
With that, the 43-year-old Pakistani was transferred to Belize from the U.S. Military Prison ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
Sexually abusive guards and their former warden are falling like dominoes as prisoners brave retaliation to report sexual abuse at the Federal Correction Institute (FCI) in Dublin, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) lockup in California now known as the “Rape Club.”
Six staffers have been ...
by Eike Blohm, MD
After a month of foot-dragging, the Tennessee Department of Corrections (DOC) complied with a court order on February 24, 2023, releasing surveillance video of a death-row prisoner who cut off his own penis and was then left strapped to a foam mattress in his cell.
Henry ...
by Chuck Sharman
Three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) unveiled a plan to pardon LGBTQ Californians prosecuted for their sexual orientation, the program has exactly one living beneficiary: Henry Pachnowski, 83, whose 1967 lewd conduct conviction was pardoned in 2022.
“While this initiative may appear to rectify historical wrongs, ...
by Harold Hempstead
Pickleball is one of America’s fastestgrowing sports. Played with a paddle and a large plastic ball on an outdoor court, the game offers the speed of ping pong with less risk of an ankle injury than tennis, while still a more competitive alternative to badminton for aging ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
A homeless man who lived behind a Kohl’s Department Store in Livermore, California, become the fifth detainee to die this year in Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail (SRJ). Eric Magana, 26, committed suicide by “consuming a profuse amount of water” in his cell on April 27, ...
Loaded on
July 15, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2023, page 23
On January 3, 2023, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed Senate Bill 288 (SB288), making sweeping reforms from heavier penalties for crimes plaguing the state to increased chance for early release, either through the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) or by petitioning the courts for sentence review.
The ...
by Kevin W. Bliss, Chuck Sharman and Benjamin Tschirhart
On May 31, 2023, Luis Molina, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction (DOC), announced his agency would no longer make public reports of in-custody deaths. Why? Molina blamed the federal monitor overseeing a long-running class-action lawsuit to improve ...
by Chuck Sharman
After a wild legal ride, Norberto Peets was exonerated of attempted murder on May 9, 2023, and he was released from a New York prison after 26 years.
Early on September 29, 1996, two New York City policemen patrolling in Fordham Heights heard gunfire. They traced the ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on January 11, 2023, affirmed a district court ruling that when an Illinois prisoner’s attorney submitted his grievances to the appropriate administrative office on time, his administrative remedies were exhausted, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform ...
by Matthew Clarke
On September 30, 2022, a lawsuit was dismissed against Pennsylvania’s Dauphin County, after a former pretrial detainee at the county lockup reached a $142,500 settlement on claims that a jail guard knocked her unconscious and smashed her jaw while she was handcuffed.
Barbara Barngetuny, then 26, was ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a letter sent to 35 deputies withtheLos Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) on May 12, 2023, county Inspector General Max Huntsman demanded they report for questioning about their involvement in deputy “gangs,” including showing their gang tattoos and giving up the names of other gang members. ...
by Matthew Clarke
On December 15, 2022, the U.S. Courtof Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that a district court erred when it dismissed an Illinois prisoner’s lawsuit for misjoinder of defendants and claims. Finding the claims and defendants were in fact properly joined, the Court reinstated the prisoner’s complaint. ...
by C.J. Ciaramella
A woman who died in federal prison suffered in pain for eight months while waiting for a routine CT scan, records released to Reason show.
Doris Nelson was one of three inmates identified by a 2020 Reason investigation who have died since 2018 from alleged medical neglect ...
by Keith Sanders
On March 31, 2023, most of South Dakota prisoner Travis McPeek’s federal civil rights claims were dismissed against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) – and he was barred from collecting damages on those that were not dismissed because he suffered no physical injury, as ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 3, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reinstated an Indiana prisoner’s civil rights complaint that had been dismissed because he failed to exhaust administrative remedies, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. The Court ...
by Keith Sanders
The opioid crisis has reached every segment of American society, from fentanyl-laced candy found in elementary schools to party-goers dying from innocent-looking pills that are really fatal fentanyl cocktails.
Opioid abuse killed over 80,000 people in 2021, pushing U.S. life expectancy to its lowest level in 25 ...
by Douglas Ankney
In an instructive case for prisoners making claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch.126 § 12101, et seq., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held on October 5, 2022, that a North Carolina prisoner failed to create a genuine issue ...
by Douglas Ankney
On February 1, 2023, the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate Division, affirmed the denial by the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) of challenges to rate caps and fee limitations brought by Securus Technologies LLC (Securus) and Network Communications International Corporation (NCIC) over their contracts in the ...
by Jacob Barret
On April 27, 2023, the Ways and Means Committee of New York’s Suffolk County legislature approved a $120,000 settlement with a former detainee assaulted by guards at the county lockup. In addition to the payout, the case is notable for the length of time it took for ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In 2013, Greg Kelley was a 17-year-old high school football star from Cedar Park, Texas. A good student, he already had a full scholarship to play football for the University of Texas in San Antonio. His coaches believed he might go on to the NFL. Instead, the ...
by Chuck Sharman
A study released on March 14, 2023, revealed that New York’s controversial new bail laws have not led to more rearrests of offenders, as some politicians claimed. In fact, according to the study’s authors at the John Jay College Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ), the opposite is ...
by Eike Blohm
After turning down offers to settle for far less, South Carolina’s Aiken County wound up on the losing side of a $150,000 verdict on November 4, 2022, after a state court jury found that a guard at the county lockup crushed a detainee’s scrotum during a rough ...
by Ed Lyon
With almost 122,000 prisoners, Texas has the largest state prison system in the U.S. According to a report on January 9, 2023, it appears to be the most fire prone system, as well.
Fire and safety spending by the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) rose from ...
Loaded on
July 15, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2023, page 47
On March 13, 2023, the federal court for the Western District of Tennessee awarded $3,176.67 in costs to a state prisoner in his suit against the warden and three guards at West Tennessee State Penitentiary (WTSP). After a jury earlier found in his favor on his retaliation claim, the Court ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in a mixed ruling issued on January 11, 2023, found a prisoner’s allegations satisfied the physical injury requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. The Court found that because the injuries required ...
by Chuck Sharman
On March 16, 2023, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to begin rule-making to implement the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022. Named after a determined woman who tirelessly campaigned to lower her bill to call her imprisoned grandson – which sometimes exceeded $1 ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
In November 2022, about 20 prisoners at California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino staged a dance show.
You read that right.
Smashing what New York Times reporter Brian Selbert called “prison culture codes of masculine behavior,” the men said no one was more surprised than ...
by Keith Sanders
On February 6, 2023, Judge Paul Wallace in Delaware Superior Court upheld a jury’s $15,001 award for damages against George Pyle, a guard with the state Department of Corrections (DOC), in a suit filed by Richard M. Chamberlain, a prisoner serving time at Howard R. Young Correctional ...
Loaded on
July 15, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2023, page 53
A new report published in January 2023 by Madalyn Wasilczur, a professor leading the University of South Carolina (USC) School of Law Incarceration Transparency project, reveals a troubling number of deaths in jails and prisons in the Palmetto State between 2015 and 2021. During that time, 777 deaths occurred in ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 3, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment to Virginia prison officials, in a civil rights complaint by a state prisoner alleging a guard falsely accused him of sexual harassment and supervisors refused ...
by David M. Reutter
On January 30, 2023, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rebuffed Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) officials who wanted to execute a condemned prisoner by lethal injection. Instead, the Court found that Michael Wade Nance offered a plausible ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
When incarceration begins for a prisoner, a separate punishment also begins for his or her children. On February 27, 2023, Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) published its findings in How 12 States Are Addressing Family Separation by Incarceration – and Why They Can and Should Do More. ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
In its Annual Report on December 15, 2022, the Iowa Ombudsman Office (IOO) called out the state Department of Corrections (DOC) for unfairly addressing abuse of K2 by prisoners and also failing to protect those in protective custody (PC). But Ombudsman Bernardo Granwehr said policy changes ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
A raft of Presidential pardons for federal marijuana-possession convictions ballooned the total number of clemencies extended to current and former prisoners by Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D). But even without those pardons, Biden had by April 2023 far out-paced his predecessor, Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) ...
by Jayson Hawkins
After a long run of bad news,formerDelaware prison health care contractor Connections Community Support Programs (CCSP) caught a break when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit involving a prisoner’s withdrawal death after a CCSP nurse lied about providing methadone. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third ...
by David M. Reutter
On March 28, 2023, the CaliforniaThird District Court of Appeals ordered a lower court to recalculate a prisoner’s custody credits for time spent in a facility to bring the defendant back to competency. The Court’s ruling follows one almost a year earlier by the state Court ...
by Jordan Arizmendi
Life in prison is difficult for anyone, but especially for deaf people. Without a video phone or teletypewriter (TTY), a deaf person cannot communicate with loved ones by phone. Under a new rule that takes effect in 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will require prison phone ...
by David Reutter
On January 31, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia approved a $1.325 million settlement in a suit brought by the estate of Darryl Terrell Becton against the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office and its private healthcare contractor at the Arlington County Detention Facility ...
by Jordan Arizmendi and Chuck Sharman
Attendance at parole hearings by all five members of the Nebraska Parole Board has improved, after a 43-month stretch from 2018 to 2021 when all five showed up for just 37% of parole hearings. [See: PLN, Nov. 2022, p.53.]
When media reports in ...
by Ed Lyon
In February 2023, officials in El Salvador began admitting detainees to a new prison that is the largest in the world.
The prison, which has its own utilities, is isolated on 56 acres in the middle of a 410-acre plot of thick forest. The cells are spread ...
Loaded on
July 15, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
July, 2023, page 63
Alabama: A guard with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was indicted on April 27, 2023, on charges he sexually abused two prisoners at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Aliceville, according to a report by the Birmingham News. Robert D. Smith allegedly had sexual intercourse with prisoners “T.M.” ...
