by Sam Rutherford

The New Mexico Corrections Department (NMCD) has long outsourced its constitutional obligation to provide prisoners adequate medical care to private, for-profit corporations with little incentive to do so. Before November 2019, a $41 million annual contract was held by Centurion Correctional Healthcare of New Mexico, LLC, which lost a battle to withhold documentation of legal settlements when PLN’s publisher prevailed in a suit for the records on September 16, 2024, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Dec. 2024, p.19.]

Quickly growing since its 2011 founding, Centurion and related companies contract with local, state and federal governments in 15 states at 325 lockups. When Centurion took over healthcare for NMCD in June 2016, predecessor Corizon Health had been sued by state prisoners more than 150 times during its nine-year tenure. Another 24 suits were filed during Centurion’s first year, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2018, p.60.]

As PLN also reported, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, filed a request pursuant to the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act in August 2020 that Centurion disclose all complaints and settlement agreements for cases in which the company paid ...

One of the biggest changes in the American Prison Industrial Complex in the past 40 years has been the privatization of assorted functions related to the capture and caging of people. This has ranged from building and running prisons to performing discrete functions like providing medical care or telecommunications services. The theory, or big lie, has always been that somehow these private, for-profit companies would be able to perform these carceral functions better and more cheaply than the government does. Given how poorly the government does, this is a low bar indeed.

Over 40 years later we have an ample track record to determine how these promises of better and cheaper have panned out. While the companies may provide some services cheaper than the government does, mainly by using a nonunion work force and then understaffing their facilities, they do not seem to do anything better than the government does. That they may do it cheaper has not translated into any savings for taxpayers, as that merely becomes profit for the shareholders and private equity funds that own these companies.

A trademark of the private prison industry is the secrecy in which it operates. Government-run prisons and jails are little ...

This month’s PLN cover story covers documents pried loose from Centurion Correctional Healthcare of N.M., LLC, which held the contract to provide medical care for the state Corrections Department (NMCD) in 2020, when a request was filed under the state Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), NM Stat § 14-2-1 (2023), by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News (CLN).

HRDC sent IPRA requests in August 2020 to both NMCD and Centurion for documents related to litigation over prisoner healthcare that cost $1,000 or more to resolve. NMCD in turn asked Centurion whether it wanted to respond or send the documents to the state it could forward them. Importantly, Centurion replied that it had received the IPRA request and would respond.

But Centurion ignored HRDC’s request; it later claimed that it’s not a “public body” under IPRA so not obligated to respond. Meanwhile, NMCD notified HRDC on August 19, 2020, that it had no records responsive to the request and that it had not gotten any from Centurion. With that, the state considered the request closed.

HRDC then filed suit in the state’s First Judicial District Court for Santa Fe County in ...

On April 16, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the conviction of a federal prisoner for assaulting two guards. The Court concluded that Gabriel Mirabal should have been permitted to present evidence that the government’s position during a co-defendant’s case was antithetical to that taken at his trial. The trial court excluded this evidence as hearsay, but the Court said that was error because the statements were made by a “party-opponent.”

Mirabal was a prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Victorville, California, on August 19, 2017, when he and fellow prisoner Erik Rojo passed through a metal detector on their return to their cell block after lunch. One of them wore a white shirt, the other a brown shirt, but only the latter triggered the device. Guards Brian Moreno and Anthony Guerrero stopped the brown-shirted prisoner and initiated a pat down search. An argument ensued.

Moreno claimed the brown-shirted prisoner punched him without provocation. Mirabal, who claimed he was that prisoner, said he swung in self-defense after Moreno raised his arm to strike him. Guerrero intervened in the melee, and the other prisoner in the white shirt joined the fray, punching Moreno in the ...

On April 22, 2024, California’s highest court ruled that detainees held in local jails have no right to receive minimum wage—or any wages—for their labor.

The case arose when pretrial detainees at the Santa Rita Jail filed a class-action suit against Alameda County in federal court for the Northern District of California in 2019. They prepared meals for Aramark Correctional Services LLC under its $19 million contract with the County, but cried foul when they received no pay. Defendants’ motion to dismiss was partially denied, so they filed an interlocutory appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The appellate court, in turn, submitted a certified question of state law to the California Supreme Court: Do pretrial detainees performing work in county jails “have a claim for minimum wages and overtime under Section 1194 of the California Labor Code in the absence of any local ordinance prescribing or prohibiting the payment of such wages?” See: Ruelas v. Cty. of Alameda, 51 F.4th 1187 (9th Cir. 2022).

To answer that, the Supreme Court considered “the interplay between the Penal Code, the Labor Code, and the constitutional provisions governing public-private contracts for inmate labor.” Per Penal Code§ 4019.3, a county ...

by David M. Reutter

On November 11, 2024, private prison and jail healthcare contractor Wellpath LLC filed for bankruptcy protection from debtors collectively owed $544 million, casting doubt on its ability to continue in business, much less pay settlements and verdicts owed in suits for poor medical care filed by prisoners, detainees or their estates.

One of the many cases still pending against the firm was filed by the family of a Virginia detainee who died of “salt wasting” after being denied medication necessary to control the disorder by officials at Henry County Adult Detention Center (HCADC), where Wellpath held the healthcare contract. Deborah Sue Damron, a firm nurse responsible for Brad Steven Hensley’s care, was not only named a defendant in the civil case but also criminally charged after his death with involuntary manslaughter.

Hensley, 42, was born with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, which caused him to suffer from “salt wasting” when his body failed to produce cortisol needed to regulate blood pressure and blood sugar, among other things. Hensley’s condition was treated with twice daily doses of prescribed Prednisone and Fludrocortisone, which was noted at booking into HCADC on August 22, 2022. It was further noted that Hensley had ...

In a report issued on May 22, 2024, the federal Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) slammed persistent staff shortages at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Sheridan, Oregon, saying they raise “serious safety and security issues” for both prisoners and staff. Ironically, the report was released just weeks after a former guard at the lockup was sentenced to federal prison for his role in a drug-smuggling and bribery conspiracy at the prison.

Nickolas Carlos Herrera, 34, was sentenced on March 18, 2024, to 15 months in prison and three years of supervised release for taking bribes to mule contraband to prisoner Donte Hunt, 40, from a non-incarcerated accomplice, 34-year-old Elizabeth McIntosh. The loot included marijuana, Suboxone, Yeezy sneakers and a cellphone. The former guard pleaded guilty in May 2022 to conspiracy, providing contraband in prison and accepting a bribe as a public official. McIntosh pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony in November 2023. The next month Hunt pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery. She was sentenced to a year of probation on February 13, 2024. He got a 15-month prison term on March 18, 2024, running consecutively to a 25-year term already received for a ...

After an investigation into rampant abuse by guards, Utah’s Daggett County Jail closed its doors in 2017. A group of four state prisoners held at the jail under contract with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) then filed suit the following year. The state Department of Corrections settled its share of the claims in November 2019 for $122,000, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Aug. 2020, p.60.] On April 23, 2024, a federal jury returned a verdict totaling $352,000 in favor of three of the four claims against the county.

The jail was shuttered after the investigation snared then-Sheriff Jerry Jorgensen and five of his deputies; they pleaded guilty to charges ranging from theft to aggravated assault and reckless endangerment while Jorgensen pled guilty to official misconduct. However, his plea was later withdrawn, and he retired.

But the investigation cost the county its contract with DOC, which withdrew all its prisoners, also taking away per-diem payments to house them that had provided almost 30% of Daggett County’s revenue. The jail had previously been in the news, too; after two convicted murderers escaped in 2007, it took over three hours for the only guard on duty to notice they were gone. Another ...

Just over a year after Minnesota restored voting rights to former felons, the state Board on Judicial Standards (BJS) reprimanded Mille Lacs County District Judge Matthew Quinn on June 27, 2024, for attempting to disenfranchise formerly incarcerated people.

Minnesota’s Restore the Vote Act re-enfranchised over 55,000 former prisoners on probation for felony convictions. Signed by Gov. Tim Walz (D), it took effect on June 1, 2023, as Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon registered newly eligible voters in St. Paul.

Yet in October 2023, Judge Quinn issued supplementary sentencing orders warning at least six defendants that they are not eligible to vote or register to vote. Making sure no one thought it a mistake, he also called the new law unconstitutional.

The orders were quickly challenged. Democratic Farm Labor officials condemned his attempt to undermine the Restore the Vote Act, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled in November 2023 that he overstepped his authority.

BJS’s subsequent investigation and reprimand condemned the judge, deeming his orders “unfair” for threatening newly refranchised voters with criminal charges if they attempted to exercise the right. The incident is not Judge Quinn’s first brush with ethical concerns. In 2021, he received a separate reprimand ...

"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” remarked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1913. Given the effort put into execution secrecy by Alabama’s Department of Corrections (DOC), its death chamber needs a good deal of exposure.

On September 26, 2024, the state carried out the killing of prisoner Alan Eugene Miller, 59, by nitrogen hypoxia—the agreed-upon method after botching his last execution attempt—with scant evidence that it was ready. Nitrogen hypoxia had been used only once before in Alabama, when it made for a brutal execution of prisoner Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, in January 2024, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Mar. 2023, p.50; and Mar. 2024, p.24.]

Witness Lauren Gill reported that “Miller visibly struggled for roughly two minutes, shaking and pulling at his restraints,” before he “then spent the next 5-6 minutes intermittently gasping for air.” DOC Commissioner John Q. Hamm replied with gaslighting that what Gill saw were only “involuntary body movements,” adding that “[e]verything went according to plan and according to our protocol.”

But that protocol also put a spotlight on guards who staff the execution team; beyond simply strapping a condemned prisoner to a gurney for lethal injection, they are tasked with ...

by Douglas Ankney

When Kentucky prisoner Keith Bramblett complained about not receiving “good time credit” against his sentence for the class he took while incarcerated, an official with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) replied: “Sue me.” So Bramblett did. A dozen years later, the class-action has cost the state about $30 million to defend what one judge called a “severely mismanaged” program, which left thousands of prisoners like Bramblett confined months or years beyond their release dates.

In its most recent ruling on March 29, 2024, the federal court for the Eastern District of Kentucky likened the case to “an imposing kudzu vine that swiftly grew in its number of claims and its number of parties.” The Seventh Amended Class Action Complaint filed by Bramblett and fellow Plaintiffs—Brandon Biggs, Osiris Caise, James Coitrone, Quincy Dunn, Barbara Gordon, Lorenzo Lee, Tony Lutes, Lance Meacham, Walter A. Noland, Cedrick Lee Pollard, Donald Roberts and David Voyles—challenged the Commonwealth of Kentucky, its Justice and Public Safety Cabinet and DOC, on behalf of a certified class of prisoners allegedly denied sentence credits under KRS 197.045 “through completion of educational or behavioral modification programs” over the previous five years.

Plaintiffs Biggs, Caise, Hopper, Meacham, ...

by David M. Reutter

Thousands of people die in local jails annually. The causes of death vary, leading researchers to seek identifiable trends. A report published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on December 19, 2023, found an underlying risk of mortality traced to “a heavy reliance on incarceration: the cycling of people into and out of jails where the impacts of addiction, mental illness, and health inequity can be exacerbated with dire consequences.” The nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) then issued an update on April 15, 2024, to an earlier analysis of local jail data, concluding that little has changed since that 2017 look at overuse of jails in the U.S.

Authored by Jessica L. Adler and Weiwei Chen, the NIH report used data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to assess mortality rates and conditions in about 450 local jails between 2008 and 2019. In the latter year alone, there were some 10.3 million admissions to jails which the study called “the front door of the criminal justice system.” Of the 734,500 people serving time in U.S. jails in 2019, two-thirds were pretrial detainees—a group which also comprised 76% of jail deaths.

Jails are diverse ...

In 1995, when David Meehan was 14 years old, he was committed to New Hampshire’s Youth Development Center (YDC), later renamed Sununu Youth Services Center, a secure juvenile detention center in Manchester. There he was raped about a year later.

The assault took place in his room. The attacker was guard Frank Davis. Another staffer stood watch at the door. The teen contracted gonorrhea, which medical staff treated. But then in late 1997, counselors Jeffrey Buskey and Stephen Murphy forced Meehan to perform oral sex on them. Buskey later anally raped him, too; another time, he extorted oral sex at gunpoint.

The following year, after Meehan absconded and was caught and returned to YDC, “[o]n an almost daily basis, [he] was anally and/or orally raped by Buskey and/or Murphy, sometimes multiple times in one day,” recalled the complaint he later filed. “During those rapes, the perpetrator would often beat him.” Meehan and other juveniles had visible injuries, yet no staff members reported the abuse.

Multiple times while held at YDC, Meehan was placed “Out of Community”—a form of solitary confinement—sometimes in rooms without toilets; when staff did not make regular rounds to let him use the bathroom, he had to ...

In June 2024, after Oklahoma failed to meet a $3 million pay hike demanded by The GEO Group, Inc., the private prison operator gave notice to terminate its contract to run Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility (LCRF), the state’s last private prison—giving the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) just three months to find another home for 2,375 prisoners. Unsurprisingly, the state Board of Corrections (BOC), which provides oversight for DOC, then approved a one-year extension for GEO Group to continue running the prison.

Three prisoners died at LCRF in 2023: Matthew Treat, 36, suffered a fatal fentanyl overdose on March 21; Loren Dean Tucker was fatally stabbed by fellow prisoners on May 6, four days after turning 31; and Raymond Bailey, 45, was found dead in a trash can on October 26, gagged, hogtied and stabbed multiple times. After getting rid of 10 guards, GEO Group blamed them for a laundry list of contractual failures which contributed to the deaths: prisoners who were allowed to roam unsupervised and not locked in their cells; mandatory security checks that were skipped; and records that were falsified in all three deaths—a crime under state law, though none of the former employees was referred ...

Overlooking a troubling record of overseeing abusive conditions, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) promoted Andrew Ciolli in July 2024 to serve as director of the agency’s Management and Specialty Training Center (MSTC) in Aurora, Colorado. Ciolli is the former head of the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Thomson, Illinois, and the Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) in Florence, Colorado.

BOP shuttered the Special Management Unit at USP-Thomson after numerous uses of excessive restraint on prisoners, seven of whom died in less than four years after its 2019 opening—the highest of any BOP prison, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.16.] At FCC-Florence, , a BOP staffer reported in an April 2024 whistleblower letter that restraints were also used on FCC-Florence prisoners even when they “were behind a secure door” and “no immediate threat to staff existed,” beyond which “no actual disruptive behavior was observed from any inmate that would have placed a staff member in danger.”

Ciolli started as a BOP Recreational Specialist in 2003, rising eventually to warden at USP-Atwater in California in 2019. He then moved in February 2021 to USP-Thomson, helming the prison when three of those seven SMU deaths were recorded in the solitary confinement ...

When the inaugural San Quentin Film Festival wrapped up on October 13, 2024, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) completed a star-studded step in transforming its oldest state prison into the new San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, with Hollywood luminaries like Jerry Seinfeld on hand to award prisoner-made films.

Between February 26 and May 8, 2024, the remodel also forced relocation of 324 condemned prisoners—over half of the state’s Death Row. Another 104 condemned prisoners had already been relocated to await execution in other state lockups, which are notably not open for inspection by invited outsiders.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) insisted that the moves were necessary to comply with Proposition 66, a 2016 voter initiative passed both to speed up the execution process and put condemned prisoners to work to pay restitution to their victims. Newsom declared an execution moratorium in 2019, leaving the other half of the law to be implemented through transfers to prisons closer to work centers than San Quentin.

Meanwhile, the film festival is just one way that CDCR is trying to turn San Quentin into a Scandinavian-style prison focused on rehabilitation. A 156-page report released by Newsom’s San Quentin Transformation Advisory Council in January ...

Two federal indictments unsealed on August 21, 2024, charged 23 current and former Georgia prisoners and their accomplices in a conspiracy using drones to distribute methamphetamine, marijuana and cellphones at two lockups in the southeastern part of the state. Defendants were charged with conspiring to possess drugs with intent to distribute, utilizing unlawful communication facilities and using drones to breach prison security.

The charges resulted from Operation Night Drop, a multi-agency investigation including the state Department of Corrections (DOC) that targeted two conspiracies to smuggle contraband into Smith State Prison and Telfair State Prison beginning in 2019 until July 2024. Among items confiscated during the investigation were 10 drones and 21 firearms.

The indictments detail extensive communications to coordinate the delivery of contraband between Defendants, including text messages and Facebook Messenger exchanges from contraband cellphones The communications often included images of prisons, drugs, drones and other materials, revealing the level of sophistication of the smuggling operations.

The 15 defendants in the first indictment included alleged ringleader Alan “Strong” (or “Krook”) Hall, 44, who is currently incarcerated at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (DCP) along with fellow defendant Deivon “Hitman” Waller, 33. Waller was previously housed with Nathan Weekes, another state ...

In an essay published by Slate on October 20, 2024, Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) prisoner Jeremy Busby admitted that even after 20 years behind bars, what he found when released from a 23-month solitary confinement in 2022 left him “shocked.”

It wasn’t the “containment cage,” which he’d been inside before when heading to or from solitary; Busby described it as “a contraption smaller than a telephone booth made of steel and mesh wire” that had “no toilet or sink” and “no room to lie down.” What shocked him was finding two nearby cages holding fellow McConnell Unit prisoners under CDO—“constant and direct observation”—while they waited for clearance from the mental health department or transfer to a mental health facility, “a process that often took days.”

As it turned out, each time a prisoner attempted self-harm, he was tossed in one of these cages. With no toilet, the wire mesh was clogged with feces, some leftover from previous prisoner occupants. For his feces, one enterprising prisoner saved the paper sack in which his meals arrived; Busby also saw a row of cereal cartons inside the cage where the man stored his urine.

“Housing prisoners in containment cages for days ...

by Derek Gronquist reviewed by Sam Rutherford

The Public Records Act Manual for the State of Washington (2nd Ed. 2020), by Derek Gronquist, is a must have compendium for anyone, from the novice record requestor to attorneys experienced in public records litigation, interested in pursuing public records requests from governmental agencies within the state of Washington. It is by far the most comprehensive and complete encyclopedia of Washington public records law currently available.

Gronquist is an experienced pro se litigator who has successfully pursued public records cases at all levels of the state court system. He has drawn on his substantial experience to provide a well thought out and detailed guide on public records law and litigation in Washington.

The Manual is 534 pages long, broken into nine chapters that cover every aspect of the Public Records Act (PRA), Chapter 42.56 RCW, including but not limited to its history and purpose, the types of records subject to disclosure, statutory and case law exemptions from disclosure, instructions on how to initiate a records request, state agencies’ affirmative duties under PRA, record retention policies and how and when PRA requires agencies to respond to records requests, plus how to enforce PRA by ...

by David M. Reutter

On November 4, 2024, former Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Larenzo Cheeks, 25, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for having sex with three prisoners at Lee Arrendale State Prison—injuring one so badly that she required surgery. Earlier, DOC also fired Deputy Warden Alonzo McMillian, 44, and guard Lt. Russell Clark, 62, when both were arrested in May 2024 and charged with having sex with prisoners.

Cheeks was fired, too, when a prisoner accused him of rape in December 2022, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2023, p.63.] He had been on the job just a few months when he told another prisoner, “You make me want to fuck you,” before pulling her into a hallway and ripping off her pants. He had a sexual relationship with a second prisoner during November 2022. He was finally fired after taking the third prisoner to a shower area, where he shoved her against a wall and penetrated her so violently that she required a partial hysterectomy.

That last victim, “Jane Doe,” filed suit in federal court for the Northern District of Georgia on February 22, 2024, accusing Cheeks of violating her civil rights when he “violently ...

As of September 30, 2024, the Illinois Department of Corrections (DOC) had transferred most of the 558 prisoners held at Stateville Correctional Center a month before. The move followed a preliminary injunction (PI) issued by the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois on August 9, 2024, in a long-running class-action over conditions at the 99-year-old lockup.

DOC prisoner Lester Dobbey filed the suit pro se in 2013, alleging infestations of birds, mice and cockroaches, plus failure to provide cleaning supplies at Stateville. Additional allegations included incessant lighting that disrupted prisoners’ sleep, inadequate ventilation and a contaminated water supply. The Court certified a class in the case in early 2014, and attorneys from Loevy & Loevy in Chicago were appointed class counsel in April 2014.

The parties engaged in settlement negotiations that stretched though the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Meanwhile, conditions at the prison continued to deteriorate, leaving prisoners dodging falling concrete and sweltering in the summer behind nailed-shut windows. The lousy conditions were blamed for the June 2024 death of Michael Broadway, 51; as PLN reported, the asthmatic prisoner succumbed on the top floor of the stifling prison without so much as a fan while temperatures outside soared ...

by Douglas Ankney

On July 17, 2024, the Washington State Patrol (WSP) was accused of negligently arresting and jailing a woman for suspected DUI when in fact she was suffering a life-threatening brain bleed. Beyond the outrageous underlying facts, the case is instructive for those making similar claims, since Nicole McClure’s original complaint filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was dismissed because of a pleading error.

Feeling ill on March 21, 2023, McClure, 40, left work early to drive back to her Olympia home. WSP Trooper Jonathan Barnes observed her vehicle traveling “at a noticeably slow rate of speed” and activated his lights and siren. But when McClure continued traveling, he deactivated his lights and siren and called for backup—just before McClure drove into a roundabout and collided with a concrete barrier in the center.

Dashcam footage from Barnes’ patrol care recorded him rushing to her vehicle, gun drawn, repeatedly screaming: “Get out of the car now!” McClure replied that she had left work early due to a severe headache. She felt dizzy, she added, and didn’t know what was going on. Barnes ordered McClure to drop her keys, but she didn’t. It was later revealed that McClure had a brain ...

On July 25, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed that the constitutional tort first recognized in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Narcotics Bur., 403 U.S. 388 (1971), extended to a federal prisoner’s civil rights action alleging that guards repeatedly entered the solitary confinement cell where he was shackled and beat him at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) Lee in Petersburg, Virginia.

In Bivens, the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) first recognized an implied cause of action for money damages against federal officials for violating a citizen’s constitutional rights. But to date, SCOTUS has recognized such actions in only three circumstances: (1) for Fourth Amendment violations committed by federal law enforcement officials; (2) for Fifth Amendment violations in the federal employment context; and (3) for Eighth Amendment violations by medical staff for deliberate indifference to a prisoner’s serious medical needs. The high Court has refused further extension of Bivens, warning lower federal courts that doing so is “a disfavored judicial activity.” See: Egbert v. Boule, 596 U.S. 482 (2022) [quoting Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. 120 (2017)].

Andrew Fields was confined by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at USP Lee in November ...

A July 2024 survey of 11,500 people held in 542 prisons and jails found that 44% supported the candidacy of former Pres. Donald J. Trump (R), who then went on to win a second nonconsecutive term in the White House. His opponent, Vice-Pres. Kamala Harris (D), came in second at 35%—though that represented a significant improvement over the 20% who indicated support for the now-withdrawn candidacy of Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D).

Conducted by The Marshall Project (TMP), the survey found that support for Harris among Black respondents increased from 26% to 51% after Biden withdrew; that also cut Black support for Trump from 40% to 28%. The ticket change drove up support for Harris among white respondents from 15% to 24%. But Trump retained a lock on this group, polling 60% of those responding. The comparisons were drawn between the recent survey and an earlier version that drew on a larger sample of 54,000 people in 785 prisons and jails in 45 states and D.C.

Trump is the first major-party candidate for President with a felony record; he was convicted by a New York jury in June 2024 of falsifying his business records to cover up hush money ...

by Alex Dietz, Civil Rights Attorney at PCVA

The state of healthcare in American prisons and jails has reached a critical point. As someone who regularly represents incarcerated individuals fighting for their basic right to medical care, I’ve witnessed firsthand how our system routinely fails those behind bars. What many don’t realize is that this crisis affects not just those who are convicted, but also pretrial detainees who are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

How Did We Get Here?

The story begins in the 1970s when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that depriving prisoners of medical care violates the Eighth Amendment. This landmark decision sparked the creation of prison healthcare systems nationwide. However, what started as a constitutional mandate has evolved into a profit-driven industry that often prioritizes cost-cutting over human lives.

Today, over 60% of jail medical services are provided by private companies who promise cost savings but deliver substandard care. These corporations, often owned by private equity firms, have found ways to cut costs that directly impact patient care: understaffing, hiring under qualified personnel, limiting outside hospital visits, and delaying necessary treatments.

The Real Cost of Delayed Care

“Healthcare delayed is healthcare denied.” This isn’t just a catchphrase—it’s ...

On April 25, 2024, New York’s highest court took up a challenge brought by sex offenders confined in residential treatment facilities beyond expiration of their prison sentences. The result: A puny demand that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) make “reasonable efforts” to secure work and education opportunities for them outside prison.

The Court of Appeals has previously upheld DOCCS when it confined convicted sex offenders in its Residential Treatment Facility (RTF), located inside Fishkill Correctional Facility, beyond the maximum expiration date of their sentences. Many are then held until expiration of their post-release supervision period because they are unable to locate housing compliant with the Sexual Assault Reform Act (SARA), which bars convicted sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school.

In 2016, a group of offenders confined at RTF sued DOCCS, alleging it failed to provide them with adequate employment and programming opportunities. The suit, which sought declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as class certification, was largely dismissed by a trial court, which also denied class certification. But it permitted Plaintiffs’ claims to proceed for declaratory relief from what, in practice, leaves them waiting in RTF for months or years until SARA-compliant ...

The top two officials at Kentucky’s Southeast State Correctional Complex (SSCC) who abruptly left their jobs earlier in 2024 were accused of bilking the state of pay for hundreds of hours they didn’t work, according to analysis of records obtained and published by the Lexington Herald Leader on September 11, 2024.

As PLN reported, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) offered no explanation for firing Warden Charles Craig Hughes, 53, on February 22, 2024, nor when Deputy Warden Danny Dean McGraw, 52, resigned the same day. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p.21.] But the records revealed that DOC investigators acting on a tip reviewed the pair’s usage of their state-issued vehicles in 2023 and early 2024, finding they fraudulently claimed unworked hours on their time sheets.

Between January 2, 2023, and February 12, 2024, Hughes claimed 369.5 hours that he was apparently not onsite to work. In the same way, McGraw claimed pay for 173.25 hours he didn’t work from April 19, 2023, through February 12, 2024. Investigators concluded that both officials “displayed a pattern of claiming overtime when not completing the required eight hours of work per day.” Hughes made $98,315 annually, and McGraw earned $76,094.

In addition to ...

In a disturbing trend, local jails are discontinuing in-person visits in conjunction with adopting fee-based video calling services. Based on 2015 data, the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative found that “74% of jails banned in-person visits when they implemented video visitation.”

The jails in Michigan’s St. Clair County and Genesee County ended all in-person visits in 2017 and 2014, respectively. They now contract with telecom companies—GTL/ViaPath in Genesee County and Securus Technologies in St. Clair County—to provide phone and video calling services.

On March 15, 2024, both jails were sued by family members of detainees, including children and parents who accused county officials of contracting with the telecom providers to generate profit from “commission” kickbacks. Due to the in-person visitation ban, fee-based phone calls, video calls and electronic messaging were “the sole way for the families of people detained in the jail to talk with their loved ones.”

Genesee County’s contract with GTL/ViaPath guarantees that the company will pay at least $240,000 in commissions and incentive payments annually, plus a 20% cut of revenue from video sessions. Phone calls are $.21/minute (the maximum allowed under federal rules), video calls cost $10 for 25 minutes and e-messages are $.25 each—plus various ancillary ...

A federal jury in Virginia returned a verdict on March 22, 2024, in favor of Antoinette Weathers, 63, in her civil rights challenge to conditions at Peninsula Regional Jail when detained there after a June 2022 conviction of misdemeanor assault.

Weathers was ordered to serve three weeks at the jail. While there, she was denied toilet paper despite repeated requests; other prisoners told her to use towels, “like we all do.” But the towels and washcloths that she received, according to the complaint she later filed, were “caked in fecal matter”—apparently from prior use by other detainees.

She filed suit in federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia over the unsanitary conditions of confinement, including the lack of toilet paper, noting that she developed a rash as a result. The conditions of her incarceration were “so unsanitary, unsafe, and mentally torturous” as to violate her Eighth Amendment right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, her complaint alleged.

Weathers further argued that Defendant jail officials had “intentionally created a dangerous and sadistic environment in order to maliciously cause fear and trauma.” The complaint detailed a plethora of other problems at the jail, including the presence of weapons and drugs, ...

On November 1, 2024, a Missouri jury returned a $37.9 million verdict against Travelers Indemnity Company in favor of an exonerated state prisoner after the insurance giant balked at covering an $11 million settlement of his wrongful incarceration suit.

Ryan Ferguson, now 40, was in high school in 2001 when he and classmate Charles Erickson were accused of drunkenly beating to death a newspaper sports editor, Kent Heithold, in the parking lot of the Columbia Daily Herald. Erickson made a confession he later claimed was coerced and spent 20 years in prison. That recanted confession also secured a sentence for Ferguson, who served 10 years in prison before his conviction was vacated and he was released in November 2013.

Ferguson then filed a federal civil rights suit against the city of Columbia, Boone County and several employees. They settled in 2017 for $10 million, plus $150,000 for legal expenses incurred during Ferguson’s trial on the bogus charges, as well as $854,000 in costs and fees for his counsel in the latter suit, Illinois-based attorney Kathleen T. Zellner. See: Ferguson v. Short, USDC (W.D. Mo.), Case No. 2:14-cv-04062.

Columbia paid $500,000 and its current insurer, Clarendon Insurance, ponied up another $2.25 ...

The State of Louisiana cannot manage to correctly calculate release dates for those it incarcerates, leaving prisoners held weeks and months beyond expiration of their sentences. These over-detention cases, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit calls them, have spawned numerous opinions revealing a deep divide in remedying this wrong.

State prisons are grossly overcrowded and understaffed, leaving half of the 26,000 prisoners held by the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) in local parish jails. But DPSC remains responsible for them and for calculating their release dates—something it frequently fails to do, thanks to an antiquated tracking process and lack of communication with parish sheriffs. As a result the federal Department of Justice found that more than a quarter of all prisoners released between January and April 2022 were over-detained an average of 29 days, with many held 90 days or more too long, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Aug. 2023, p.44.]

The Fifth Circuit’s Response

Unsurprisingly, DPSC has been swamped by a wave of federal § 1983 suits. The state Attorney General’s office has responded with an expensive defense that has so far largely failed at the Fifth Circuit, despite vigorous dissents from ...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held on July 30, 2024, that the First Amendment does not require the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide full, daily access to the Federal Register so that prisoners may comment on proposed rulemaking.

The Federal Register is the U.S. government’s daily publication of proposed rules, executive orders and other administrative documents. The Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 553, guarantees all citizens the right to submit timely public comments on proposed rules. But BOP law libraries do not contain the full, updated version of the Federal Register. Instead, agency policy requires the libraries to maintain only those “documents … pertaining to the Bureau and to the U.S. Parole Commission.” See: Bureau Program Statement 1315.07 (Nov. 5, 1999). This information, like most legal resources in BOP law libraries, is uploaded to an electronic bulletin board by staff and forwarded to computer terminals without internet access for prisoners to use.

In 2019, prisoner Robert Decker filed suit against several BOP officials, accusing them of violating APA by failing to upload the full Federal Register to the electronic bulletin board, which he alleged also violated his rights under the First, Fifth and ...

It took California state prisoner Rafael Salas almost two years before he was able to marry in May 2022, due to repeated delays by state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials at Kern Valley State Prison. He filed suit pro se in federal court for the Eastern District of California, raising claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq. On September 26, 2023, a magistrate recommended that Defendant CDCR officials be denied summary judgment on Salas’ civil rights claims, though granted on his RLUIPA claim.

Salas believed he was required to marry as part of his Messianic Jewish faith, and he began that process in early 2020, requesting to wed fiancée Heather Tower. It took four months and a grievance just to obtain marriage application forms, then another three months plus another grievance before a deputy warden ordered the application to be reviewed.

During that review, Counselor Y. Cortez placed the request on hold because Salas’ prison records (C-File) indicated that he was already married to someone else. Salas clarified that he had never been married and that Cortez was relying on incorrect ...

In an unpublished opinion issued on May 2, 2024, the Court of Appeals of Washington ruled that a prisoner found guilty of possessing a weapon was denied due process because the disciplinary finding was not supported even by “some evidence”—the low bar set in such situations. In this case a hearing officer added language to the disciplinary regulation in order to find the prisoner guilty of the infraction.

After a guard was stabbed at Washington State Penitentiary on April 30, 2021, an emergency response team (ERT) of state Department of Corrections (DOC) guards searched the Victor Unit in another part of the prison. In Jeffrey Driver’s cell, ERT guards Gary Bafaro and Stephen LaForce found a state-owned broom handle leaning against the wall. Driver was issued a disciplinary report accusing him of violating a rule prohibiting prisoners from “[p]ossessing, manufacturing, or introducing any firearm, weapon, sharpened instrument, knife, or poison, or any component thereof.” See: WAC 137-25-030(1) (Category A, 602).

At a disciplinary hearing on May 17, 2021, Driver did not deny possessing the broom handle but said he was using it as a makeshift bar bell—weighted with bags of water in a shirt through the sleeves of which he ...

On September 16, 2024, the federal court for the Eastern District of Louisiana dismissed a procedural due process claim against the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC) for repeatedly arresting a sex offender who failed to meet registration requirements after being declared “unrestorably incompetent.” However, the district court refused to dismiss a companion claim made by Kendra Greenwald that her substantive due process rights were violated, writing that “arresting someone for not doing something that they are incapable of doing shocks the conscience regardless of what process may be due prior to arrest.”

In July 2012, Greenwald, then 33, was convicted of carnal knowledge of a juvenile for engaging in sex at her New Orleans apartment with a 14-year-old. Although she argued that the teen forced her to have intercourse by threatening both her and her child, the jury found “overwhelming” evidence she invited him into her bedroom. She received two years on probation and was required to register as a sex offender.

Over the next 11 years, Greenwald was arrested at least seven times for failing to meet the requirements of Louisiana’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). She blamed a seizure disorder which “caused brain ...

by Matt Clarke

On April 17, 2024, Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County settled a lawsuit brought by a Pittsburgh journalist challenging policies and practices that prevented employees of the county’s Bureau of Corrections (BOC) from speaking about matters of public concern at the county jail without first receiving permission from the warden. Under the settlement, the county revised the policies, acknowledging that “its employees and contractors have constitutional rights to speak on matters of public concern when acting as private citizens.”

As Director of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, Brittany Hailer “reported extensively on problems at the Allegheny County Jail [ACJ],” her suit noted. In 2023, with pro bono assistance from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and the Yale School of Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, Hailer filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming that the BOC policies violated the First Amendment. The lawsuit alleged that the policies “effectively silenced jail employees, hampering investigative reporting about issues at the Allegheny County Jail,” which had just recorded 13 deaths in two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2022, p.20.]

Once the suit was filed, “the ...

The Philadelphia Department of Prisons (PDP) announced the release of 100 pretrial detainees on November 5, 2024. The detainees, all held on bail they couldn’t pay, were released during a series of emergency bail hearings that began on October 1, 2024, according to the Defender Association of Philadelphia (DAP), which provides legal representation to indigent detainees held in city prisons and jails.

The releases represented only a little over 2% of PDP’s incarcerated population, currently estimated at 4,600—about 15% higher than the low point reached during the COVID-19 pandemic. Andrew Pappas, managing director of pretrial services for the city Public Defender’s Office, said that those released had been held on cash bail without other detainers; they faced charges ranging from aggravated assault to weapons violations and arson. As he explained, attorneys in his office asked judges to “[t]ake a second look at them and see if they really needed to be in custody in light of the fact that the prison [system] is a disaster right now.”

How much of a disaster was revealed in a class-action lawsuit settlement reached in April 2022. As PLN reported, that agreement obligated PDP immediately to reach full staffing—especially of guard positions necessary to ...

In a suit filed on September 30, 2024, attorney Daniel Horwitz accused four judges in the federal court for the Middle District of Tennessee of violating his First Amendment rights with a gag order that was issued in a case he was litigating against private prison giant CoreCivic. As PLN reported, the Court’s July 2022 order silenced Horwitz’s criticism of the company and even required him to delete related tweets from his social media account on Twitter, now known as X. [See: PLN, Feb. 2023, p.42.]

CoreCivic settled that case, along with four others Horwitz had pending against the firm, leading the judges in each to dismiss his appeal to the gag order as moot. That left only a lawsuit to continue his challenge to the Court’s local rule, under which the order was issued. “Mr. Horwitz needs to know the extent to which Rule 83.04 restricts his speech about his litigation in the Middle District because he continues to litigate in this Court, and he continues to do so against CoreCivic—a party that has already invoked Rule 83.04 to silence Mr. Horwitz’s speech and has demonstrated that it will do so again each time Mr. Horwitz asserts his right ...

Former Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) guards Lawrence Onyesonwu, 38, and Martins Tochukwu Chidiobi, 34, were sentenced on September 19 and 20, 2024, respectively, to three years in federal prison for stealing state prisoners’ identities to set up bank accounts, where they laundered funds from an online romance scam.

The pair worked at New Castle Correctional Facility (NCCF) from 2015 until their January 2019 arrest, using their access to prisoner personal information to steal the identities of five incarcerated men. The prisoners were not named. The guards used the stolen identities and their own photos to obtain fraudulent passports from Nigeria, Liberia and Ghana, presenting those when opening bank accounts in the stolen names. In turn those were used to collect $331,282 in deposits from at least 11 victims of an online romance scam.

The scheme unraveled when a Citizens State Bank official reported to New Castle Police in early 2019 that “there are large transactions taking place through PayPal” and suspected “that possible identity theft is taking place.” Cops caught up with Onyesonwu at a bank branch, but the guard insisted he was the person named on his bank account; however, that was actually a DOC prisoner serving time ...

On August 2, 2024, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked a plea agreement that military lawyers reached with three high-profile detainees accused in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. As a result, they will soon mark 22 years of confinement without criminal conviction—breaking a core promise of the U.S. Constitution.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi are detained at “Camp Justice,” which was set up in 2002 to hold suspected terrorists inside the U.S. Naval Station at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay. All three are charged with aiding and abetting 19 terrorists, who hijacked and crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing 2,977 people. They face the death penalty if convicted by the military tribunal.

Before arriving in Cuba, the three were held incommunicado after their 2003 capture in a secret CIA prison network, where they were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, kept nude and deprived of sleep, while his diet was manipulated and he was subjected to other violence. Hawsawi suffered rectal damage from his enhanced CIA interrogations. All three detainees were re-interrogated by the FBI using more traditional ...

On September 30, 2024, Utah-based Management & Training Corp. (MTC) ended its contract to operate the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility in Garza County, Texas. The lockup is owned by the county, which confirmed that most of some 170 employees were out of work.

MTC operated Dalby to hold federal detainees for U.S. Marshals until a ban issued in 2021 by the administration of Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D). Garza County officials quickly brought the lockup in line with Texas Jail Commission (TJC) standards as MTC inked contracts to hold overflow from jails in Harris County and Tarrant County.

But after a failed inspection, TJC issued Dalby a notice of non-compliance on December 18, 2023. The problems were corrected, Garza County Judge Lee Norman said. However, no one notified Tarrant County, whose blindsided Commissioners voted to end their contract on February 6, 2024. Harris County also pulled out its detainees and sent them to other lockups; one, Louisiana’s Natchitoches Parish Correctional Center, inked a new contract with private jail operator LaSalle Corrections for a five-year term beginning November 1, 2024—the same day that Harris County detainees were due to arrive. It was unclear where other overflow detainees went, but ...

On November 4, 2024, Commonwealth’s Attorney Amanda Mann in Virginia’s Dinwiddie County dropped charges against the last two of eight defendants charged in the death of Henrico County Jail detainee Irvo Otieno. That means no one will face trial for the 28-year-old’s fatal suffocation—while shackled—under a pile of 10 Henrico County Sheriff’s deputies and staffers at Central State Hospital (CSH) in Petersburg, the psychiatric lockup where the mentally ill detainee had been taken in March 2023.

As PLN reported, the state and Henrico County agreed in September 2023 to pay $8.5 million to settle claims arising from Otieno’s death and alleged earlier mistreatment at the jail, where surveillance video reportedly captured him naked and shackled in his cell when guards beat him and pepper-sprayed him in the face. Mann’s predecessor, Ann Cabell Baskervill, filed second-degree murder charges in March 2023 against seven deputies of Henrico County Sheriff Alisa A. Gregory and three CSH staffers, though Baskervill dropped two of the medical staffers from the case in June 2023 before resigning to study in Paris. [See: PLN, Apr. 2024, p.41.]

After Mann took over, she dismissed charges against five of the deputies, reducing those against two more deputies and the ...

The ongoing war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas militia that has governed the Gaza Strip for 23 years escalated dramatically after Hamas launched a large-scale surprise attack on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 Israelis. Over 250 more were taken hostage. The Israel Defense Force (IDF) mounted a major counteroffensive arresting thousands of Palestinians, including both suspected Hamas fighters and civilians, and placing them in detention camps.

There detainees have reported abuse, including sexual abuse. A report released by the United Nations human rights office on July 30, 2024, said that prisoners were often stripped, blindfolded and shackled in “cage-like” holding areas; some were even required to wear diapers for long periods. All were typically detained without explanation and denied access to attorneys.

The report also cited incidents of physical abuse, including “waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, amongst other acts, in flagrant violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” U.N. High Commissioner Volker Türk said.

While the report noted that 53 prisoners had died in custody, the causes of death were not disclosed. A previous U.N. report issued in April 2024 said that Palestinian detainees had been deprived of food, water and toilets, ...

The U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Eastern District of Kentucky announced on November 12, 2024, that a federal grand jury had returned an indictment against a federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard for violating a prisoner’s rights under the color of law, as well as witness tampering and falsifying records to impede an investigation into the incident.

Lt. Zachary Toney, 33, was accused of repeatedly kicking and striking a prisoner who was already on the ground and handcuffed behind his back in March 2022 at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP)-McCreary in Pine Knot. In addition to injuring the prisoner, identified as “R.F.,” Toney also allegedly attempted to cover up the crime with a phony account of the incident in his official documentation—conveniently omitting that he kicked and struck the prisoner and also lying that no injuries resulted. Toney was further accused of instructing three fellow guards to write false reports neglecting to mention the force they observed him use against the victim. If convicted, Toney faces up to 10 years in federal prison for the deprivation of rights charge and up to 20 years for each of the other two charges. See: United States v. Toney, USDC (E.D. Ky.), ...

On November 12, 2024, federal prosecutors dropped their criminal case against Sheriff Chuck Jenkins of Maryland’s Frederick County, for allegedly obtaining weapons fraudulently from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Meanwhile, on the other side of the Washington, D.C. exurbs in Virginia’s Culpepper County, former Sheriff Scott Jenkins—who is no relation—missed the start of his trial on the same day on bribery and corruption charges.

As PLN reported, Chuck Jenkins, 67, was accused of fraudulently ordering machine guns from ATF for demonstration and evaluation—when in fact they were later rented out for profit by local gun shop owner Robert Justin Krop, 37, who was also charged with conspiracy and providing false statements to acquire the guns. [See: PLN, Sep. 2023, p.53.] A jury found Krop not guilty of those charges on October 24, 2024; three weeks later, the government dropped its case against the Sheriff, who called it an “assassination attempt” similar to that carried out during the recent campaign of Pres.-elect Donald J. Trump (R). “It was a near miss,” Jenkins said. “I was injured and I was bloodied, but I didn’t give up the fight.”

As PLN also reported, Scott Jenkins, 52, was charged ...

When the Avid Bookshop mailed several book orders to prisoners at the Gwinnett County Jail outside Atlanta in May 2023, the Athens retailer likely didn’t expect to become embroiled in a lawsuit almost a year later. Then the orders were rejected because the jail has a policy of refusing magazines and books not “mailed directly from the publisher or authorized retailer.”

However, “authorized retailer” was not defined nor was there any indication how businesses could obtain that status. According to a deputy at the jail, books were accepted only from Barnes & Noble and Amazon, but not from Amazon independent sellers. The rationale, apparently, was that someone could enter any other store open to the public, place contraband inside books for sale there and then have it mailed to prisoners by the retailer.

Avid sued Gwinnett County Sheriff Keybo Taylor and jail Cmdr. Benjamin Haynes in federal court for the Northern District of Georgia on March 15, 2024. The complaint alleged violations of the bookstore’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and sought declaratory relief, plus nominal and compensatory damages.

Avid said it could mail new books to prisoners “from its warehouse without any member of the public having had access ...

Alabama: Wiregrass Daily News reported that Mobile Metro Jail guard Timothy Lee Scarbrough, 39, was arrested on September 9, 2024, and charged with first-degree sodomy for the alleged sexual assaulting of a detainee who was still under the effects of anesthesia after eye surgery. Scarbrough had been employed for less than a year and had no prior disciplinary record when the detainee woke to find the guard molesting him. Evidence from a sexual assault kit and witness statements led to Scarbrough’s arrest and termination. Sheriff Paul Burch said that two guards normally accompany a detainee to a hospital, but budget constraints only allowed him to send only one. Nevertheless, his investigators determined the detainee’s claims were credible. Scarbrough now faces 10 years to life in prison if convicted.

Alabama: An unnamed state Department of Corrections (DOC) guard was arrested on October 9, 2024, on charges of smuggling methamphetamine into Holman Correctional Facility (CF) in Atmore. Alabama Public Radio reported that the 48-year-old allegedly smuggled the drugs to an prisoner, also unidentified, at the maximum-security lockup, which hold’s most of those condemned prisoners waiting on the state’s death row.

Arizona: State prisoner Jacob Purdue confessed to assaulting two guards at the ...