by David M. Reutter

Jails face a monumental task in the provision of medical care. Those who’ve just been arrested are often experiencing withdrawal from drugs or alcohol. Other pre-existing medical conditions are routine and routinely severe. Then there are the mentally ill, who land in jail because communities lack resources to treat their conditions—even though jails and guards also lack training and expertise to provide adequate care. Into the breach step privately contracted providers, promising to fill the need. But their results belie that promise, demonstrating only that profit comes before service.

How else to explain the marketing materials distributed to prospective customers by jail healthcare contractor Turn Key Health Clinics LLC? In those, the firm bragged that after taking over healthcare at Oklahoma’s Tulsa County Jail in 2016, emergency transfers to hospitals fell by an eyepopping 77% in just a few months. The number of days detainees spent hospitalized also cratered by 35%. Did they suddenly get healthier? Or were they simply denied care?

The answer seems obvious, yet jails continue to turn to private providers like Turn Key. For one, it comes with a staff of credentialed personnel already employed, so sheriffs don’t have to vet and ...

by Paul Wright
On August 20, 2024, the free speech rights of all Americans suffered a devastating loss. Bruce Johnson, 74, was a long-time partner at the Seattle law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine. He spent his entire, nearly half century career as a lawyer there. Over the course of his career Bruce became one of the preeminent specialists and defenders of the First Amendment and the free speech rights of publishers and media around the country. He was widely recognized as the nation’s most knowledgeable lawyer when it came to commercial speech and anti SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws. More on that later.
Bruce represented media clients across the country and they included the biggest print and broadcasting companies, including 60 Minutes, the Seattle Times, Boston Globe, New York Times and many, many others. Those were the big ones and with his passing the cases he litigated on behalf of those clients will likely be the ones that he is remembered by.
One of Bruce’s smaller pro bono media clients, for almost 30 years, was Prison Legal News which later became the Human Rights Defense Center. Prisoners and the publishers who seek to communicate with them and ...

by Paul Wright
America is going on its fourth decade of experimenting with private, for profit health services for prisoners. Regardless of the company and the location the outcomes are all the same: a lot of misery, pain and death imposed by a business model of ruthless capitalism where success is defined as getting as much money out of the government and then providing as little actual care as possible.
PLN has been reporting on the private prison medical industry since we started publishing in 1990 and the industry has slowly grown over the decades with the attendant tales of corruption, death and misery. With the exception of the Virginia Department of Corrections, no prison system has retaken its medical health care system once they privatize it. Instead, we see a revolving door of murderous, corporate health care providers driven by greed and avarice, replacing the prior corporate provider until they too are replaced. The staff often do not change, it is only their employer that changes.
It is hard to believe that Prison Legal News has been publishing for almost 35 years now. One of the bad things about being around as long as we have is that many ...

When Brittany Wright, 30, got out of a Washington prison in June 2023, she was confident that it would be easier than her last release 10 years earlier. Back then, she had found it almost impossible to find a job or a place to live. But when she stepped out of prison a decade later, Brittany had to wait just a single day before reporting to work at Kiewit, a Seattle construction and engineering firm. By January 2024, Wright was banking $31 an hour on a light rail expansion project for Sound Transit.
Credit for the difference goes to Trades Related Apprenticeship Coaching (TRAC), a 16-­week state program designed to reduce recidivism by ensuring prisoners getting out have a job. Research conducted by the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative has pegged the unemployment rate for the formerly incarcerated at a sky-­high 27%, and those lucky enough to find work earn about half the salary of their non-­incarcerated peers—even less if the releasee is a minority.
TRAC teaches entry-­level skills needed to become a trade union apprentice. The union then helps the former prisoner find work after completing roughly 6,000 hours of paid on-­the-­job training. The boost to earning potential is huge: ...

When Texas prisoner Larry Donnell Gibbs filed suit in federal court in 2021 against officials with the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), he paid the filing fee and did not ask to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP). As a pro se plaintiff, though, Gibbs had no outside counsel to ensure his complaint was served on some Defendants no longer employed at the Estelle Unit. So Gibbs eventually moved for IFP status, which would entitle him to have U.S. Marshals effect service under Fed.R.Civ.P. 4(c)(3). When that motion was denied by the federal court for the Eastern District of Texas, he appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. On February 6, 2024, that Court found the lower court’s decision “arbitrary or erroneous.”
Gibbs, 37, alleged that after being repeatedly stabbed by another prisoner in March 2020, two guards—identified as Jackson and Moton—left him to bleed for 45 minutes before rendering assistance. Further, after he filed grievances about this allegedly “negligent response” to his stabbing, three other guards—Jared Oneal, John L. Ruffin and Joe Thomas—twice used or authorized excessive force against him, he said. Those beatings caused “bleeding in his brain which led to a seizure” and ...

On February 13, 2024, a judge in Florida’s Duval County amended state prisoner Terrence Graham’s sentence, paving the way for the 37-­year-­old’s release later that same month. Sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) in 2006 for crimes committed when he was 16 and 17—one an armed burglary, the other a home invasion robbery—the Jacksonville native didn’t know then that his case would make legal history with a precedent-­setting decision from the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS).
His sentence was extremely harsh: His attorney asked for five years, while prosecutors wanted 30. The judge sided with them and handed down the maximum. Bryan S. Gowdy, Graham’s lawyer on appeal, was so shocked when he got the case—a juvenile given LWOP for a non-­homicide crime—that he took it all the way to SCOTUS, arguing that it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. He was supported by numerous amicus briefs saying that kids are different, and they can change. In its May 2010 decision in Graham v. Florida, the high Court agreed, ending LWOP for juveniles not convicted of homicide, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2010, p. 42.]
But the decision did not provide immediate ...

On August 7, 2024, the head of Missouri’s Department of Corrections (DOC) was held in contempt by a state court judge for refusing to release Howard Roberts, 82, after the prisoner’s conviction was overturned. State Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) had ordered Roberts kept behind bars at South Central Correctional Center in Licking. But in his contempt order, Senior Circuit Judge David C. Jones gave DOC Acting Director Trevor Foley until August 14, 2024, to release the prisoner or face fines of $1,000 per day.
Roberts was convicted of financial exploitation of an older or disabled person in 2016. Because the property at issue was worth $50,000 or more, he was found guilty of a felony and given a 20-­year sentence. During a hearing in November 2023, attorney Jonathan Sternberg argued that Roberts received ineffective assistance of counsel during his 2018 trial. In June 2024, Judge Jones agreed that Roberts’ trial attorney failed to have records and testimony introduced which could have convinced the jury that he was operating a legitimate business with the funds he had received, and that he was innocent. Despite this, Bailey instructed DOC to keep Roberts incarcerated. The dustup marked the third time this year ...

On March 28, 2024, Texas’ Second District Court of Appeals (COA2D) overturned Crystal Mason’s illegal voting conviction, ruling that the state failed to present any evidence of criminal intent by the Black grandmother from Fort Worth to vote illegally in the 2016 election.
Mason’s crime was casting a ballot while on a three-­year period of supervised release from federal prison. Having completed her five-­year prison term for tax evasion, she believed that she was eligible. Though her name was absent from voter rolls, she was allowed to cast a provisional ballot—one of 4,000 cast in Tarrant County that year—which was later discarded. She was then charged with voting illegally and convicted. COA2D affirmed that conviction, but the state Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) found the applicable statute had been misconstrued and remanded the case, leading to Judge Wade Birdwell’s decision to vacate Mason’s conviction. See: Mason v. State, 687 S.W.3d 772 (Tex. App. 2024).
Texas election policing efforts have been led by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has faced his own criminal charges for felony securities fraud, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2021, p.56.] Mason’s case focused media attention on Paxton’s “crackdown,” which voting rights advocates blamed for ...

On July 10, 2024, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) released the final environmental impact statement (EIS) for a proposed new lockup to be constructed in Kentucky, moving the project closer to construction than it has ever been in more than 20 years since it was first proposed.
A pet project of Rep. Hal Rogers (R) from Kentucky’s Fifth U.S. Congressional District, the prison was tabled in June 2019 after activist groups sued on behalf of 1,408 future prisoners who would allegedly be incarcerated atop “a toxic strip mine site”—until BOP revived the plan in December 2022, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2023, p.33.]
Shifting federal government priorities have also affected the project, making strange political bedfellows of former Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) and Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) after both called for defunding the project in budget proposals—which Rogers was able to thwart. Though the EIS showed that construction will disrupt streams, wetlands and wildlife habitat around the 500-­acre site near Roxanna, it nevertheless called the former coal-­mining site the least affected location in Letcher County.
Opponents say the most troubling consequence is storm water runoff that not only threatens to pollute drinking water but also ...

The former Deputy Warden of Ohio’s Warren Correctional Institution was sentenced on March 20, 2024, to probation not exceeding five years, after pleading guilty to theft in office. Robert Welch, 57, admitted stealing over $19,000 in pay for overtime he never worked at the lockup.
Welch fraudulently punched in for more than 350 hours of overtime work with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DRC) over a 10-­month period beginning in April 2022. DRC investigators later learned from Sinclair Community College that the deputy warden spent some of those hours teaching classes as an adjunct instructor. The school didn’t say what he taught, but presumably it wasn’t a class in ethics.
He resigned from DRC in April 2023 after nearly 23 years, according to the agency’s communications head, JoEllen Smith. At the time Welch earned $53.01 an hour, she said. His October 2023 indictment listed three felony counts, but charges for grand theft and tampering with records were dropped as part of his plea deal.
According to that, Welch agreed to repay the money he defrauded the state. He made out well in the deal; the charge to which he pleaded guilty carried a maximum penalty of 36 months ...

It’s hard to tell who is slimier, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) guard who allegedly beat a prisoner into a coma or prison officials who then attempted to dismiss the prisoner’s legal claim because he was still comatose when the deadline to file a grievance passed. Given that, it’s no surprise defendants also let a settlement conference deadline pass that was set by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas for June 11, 2024.
The prisoner, Candelario Hernandez, was confined at the Stevenson Unit on November 4, 2019, when he sought medical attention for an arm injury. Guard Aaron Kloesel was on duty at the medical unit and refused Hernandez entry, closing the door on him. But Hernandez blocked the door open with his foot, insisting that he was entitled to be seen by medical staff. Kloesel allegedly became enraged, grabbed Hernandez and threw him to the ground, smashing his head on the concrete floor; he then knelt on the prisoner’s neck and handcuffed him, even as Hernandez went into a seizure from the traumatic injury.
Hernandez lost consciousness before being airlifted to a hospital. There he remained comatose for several weeks. When he finally ...

On April 2, 2024, the U.S. Dept. of Justice sued the Utah Department of Corrections (DOC) for allegedly violating the rights of a transgender prisoner under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 126 §12101 et seq. The filing came just weeks after the Disability Rights Section of DOJ’s Office of Civil Rights issued a letter to DOC Executive Director Brian Redd on March 12, 2024, conveying the findings of its investigation into ADA violations alleged by the unidentified prisoner, who claimed DOC subjected her to discrimination and denied her equal access to healthcare due to her gender dysphoria disability.
A serious medical condition, gender dysphoria can result in “serious adverse mental health outcomes” if left untreated—outcomes that include self-­mutilation and attempted suicide. Due to the lack of adequate medical care, the prisoner had attempted self-­surgery to remove her testicles in May 2023. DOJ alleged that she had repeatedly requested treatment for her medical condition but received no gender dysphoria care for over 15 months, contrary to DOC’s own policy. When she was finally provided hormone therapy, prison officials “failed to take basic, necessary steps to ensure that the treatment was provided safely and effectively,” DOJ found.
Unlike ...

by Douglas Ankney
In a maddeningly byzantine decision on February 21, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit dismissed a claim by Massachusetts prisoner Jwainus Perry that his due process rights were violated by state Department of Correction (DOC) officials, who held him in solitary confinement for almost two years in a Special Management Unit (SMU) at the notorious Souza-­Baronowski Correctional Center between 2010 and 2012 “without affording him either notice of the factual basis for that confinement or an opportunity for rebuttal.”
Perry filed his claim in April 2014, after which the federal court for the District of Massachusetts granted Defendants summary judgment. A panel of the First Circuit affirmed that decision in 2018, agreeing that they were entitled to qualified immunity (QI) because the law was not clearly established, at the time of the alleged violation, that prolonged SMU confinement was a deprivation of a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. Four years later, the full Court sitting en banc vacated that decision and granted Perry’s motion for rehearing—only to reach the same conclusion again another two years after that.
Attempting this time to provide a framework for determining when confinement in segregation ...

Quietly, the Second Senate of Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court made history on June 20, 2023, in a ruling that found laws capping compensation that prisoners receive for work in two German states violate the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, the country’s constitution. The Court held that the portions of the Bavarian Prison Act and the Prison Act of North-­Rhine Westphalia setting prisoner remuneration for work while incarcerated in those states are incompatible with the “social reintegration” of prisoners, which prison programs are required to seek under the Basic Law.
Two unnamed German prisoners confined in Bavaria and North-­Rhine Westphalia filed suit in their respective state courts challenging the amount they were compensated for their work while confined. One worked in the prison print shop and the other as a cable cutter. In both states, penal codes set prisoner compensation at just 9% of Germany’s “basic wage,” which is calculated from the average wage of all German citizens under the pension insurance scheme, similar to Social Security in the U.S. That amounts to a daily wage of about €12.00 ($13.10 USD), or €1.50 ($1.65 USD) hourly. Both prisoners’ cases were dismissed by the state courts as unfounded and ...

Georgia State University announced on March 21, 2024, that it was pulling the plug on its eight-­year-­old Prison Education Program (PEP), in which 60 prisoners at two state prisons and one federal lockup were working toward college associate degrees.
PEP alumni include nine men at Walker State Prison who earned associate degrees in May 2023, GSU’s first class to graduate behind bars. Three more incarcerated students graduated in December 2023 at Phillips State Prison. Another 19 prisoners at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta enrolled in PEP classes in September 2023.
The university claims to have a “teachout plan” to help all 60 remaining prisoner students finish their degrees, potentially involving a takeover of the program by the University of West Georgia. Details remain unclear, however.
Ironically, it was expansion of Pell Grant availability to all incarcerated students nationwide that GSU blamed for the shutdown. Offering federal financial aid for low-­income students, Pell Grants became available to prisoners in July 2023 after a ban lasting nearly 30 years, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2022, p.44.] GSU said that the “complex requirements” and “administrative demands” of obtaining Pell Grant approvals were too burdensome.
But Ruth Delaney, who provides technical assistance for ...

by Douglas Ankney
In an amended complaint filed in federal court for the Western District of Virginia on January 19, 2024, the former warden of Marion Correctional Treatment Center (MCTC) was added to the list of Defendants being sued by the surviving sister of an intellectually disabled prisoner fatally beaten by guards.
The filing by Kymberly Hobbs came three months after a grand jury refused to indict MCTC guards Joshua Caleb Jackson, William Zachary Montgomery, Samuel Dale Osbourne, Gregory Scott Plummer and Sgt. Anthony Raymond Kelly for killing her brother, Charles James Givens, 52, on February 5, 2022.
Givens was incarcerated for fatally shooting home health nurse Misty Leann Garrett, 22, in 2010. Due to his intellectual disability—he had the mental capacity of a child aged 7 or 8, the result of a childhood tumble down the stairs—he was housed at MCTC with other “prisoners with mental-­health issues and/or limited intellectual development,” the complaint continued. He also suffered from Crohn’s disease, one of the “complex medical reasons” that the complaint faults for Givens’ soiling himself.
But Defendant MCTC guards said that he “defecated on himself intentionally,” Hobbs’ complaint recalled; and because of Givens’ “inability to promptly decipher and follow [their] ...

On July 31, 2024, a former guard at Alabama’s Walker County Jail agreed to plead guilty to federal charges filed after a detainee was left naked on his cell floor for two weeks and froze to death in the winter of 2023—in a concrete bunker known as the “freezer” because guards manipulated fans to vent cold air from outside. A second guard then entered a plea agreement the following month in the death of the detainee, Tony Mitchell.
Mitchell, 33, died of hypothermia on January 26, 2023, after arriving at a hospital with a body temperature of just 72 degrees Fahrenheit. In the first plea agreement filed in federal court for the Northern District of Alabama, former guard Joshua Conner Jones confessed to one count of conspiracy to deprive Mitchell’s civil rights. Fellow guard Karen Kim Elsie Kelly agreed to plead guilty to the same charge on August 13, 2024.
When he was arrested on January 12, 2023, Mitchell—who had a history of drug addiction—had painted his face black. A cousin had reported that he was rambling about portals to heaven and hell in his home, and deputies performing a welfare check said that he fired a handgun at them ...

A lawsuit filed in Georgia’s Fulton County on May 1, 2024, blames poor conditions at the county jail for an assault by fellow detainees on Michael Horton, in which he was stabbed 13 times. As PLN reported, the jail recorded 10 detainee deaths in 2023, which Sheriff Pat Labatt blamed on “dangerous overcrowding” and “crumbling walls” in the lockup; at least one of those deaths was attributed to a bedbug infestation that forced Labatt to transfer some 600 detainees—but not before one of them, detainee LaShawn Thompson, 35, was “eaten alive.” His death cost the county a $4 million settlement in August 2023, the same month that former Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) called the jail “disgusting” during a brief visit to be booked on state charges related to his alleged interference in the 2020 election. [See: PLN, Feb. 2024, p.12.]
Horton was booked into the jail in March 2023 on charges of assault and possession of a weapon by a felon. Before he posted a $5,000 bond and was released two months later, he was the victim of the stabbing attack—one of 922 assaults recorded in the first 10 months of the year, including 337 fights and 293 stabbings, ...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) declared a state of emergency on July 28, 2024, issuing an executive order blocking a new law banning solitary confinement in city jails just one day before it was slated to take effect. The move is the latest in a see-­saw battle between Adams and City Council, which voted 39-­7 in December 2023 to pass Bill 549-­A. Adams vetoed the bill on January 19, 2024, but Council voted 42-­9 to override that veto on January 30, 2024, creating Local Law 42—which Adams’ order has now blocked.
Adams, a former captain with the city police department (NYPD), argued that the legislation was unnecessary because city jails—including the notorious Rikers Island complex—had discontinued use of solitary and replaced it with “punitive segregation.” However, a report by Columbia University’s Center for Justice found that detainees were still being held in the equivalent of solitary for lengthy periods of time.
The mayor also claimed the ban would “make staff in our jails and those in our custody less safe by impairing our ability to hold those who commit violent acts accountable.” Unsurprisingly, the bill was also opposed by the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA), the union representing ...

A suit filed by six Massachusetts prisoners on July 1, 2024, alleges that conditions in what the state Department of Corrections (DOC) calls a “Secure Adjustment Unit” (SAU) are no different from solitary confinement—something state legislators outlawed in 2018. DOC also pledged to end the practice back in June 2021, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2021, p.49.]
Prisoners Tykorie Evelyn, Jerome Meade, Emmitt Perry, Peter Bousleiman, Emmanuel Biaggi and Charles Miles filed the putative class-­action in Suffolk County Superior Court, accusing DOC Acting Commissioner Shawn Jenkins and other officials of violating the state’s 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Act.
That law limits reasons for placement in segregated housing and mandates placement reviews every 90 days. It also requires “the same access to visitation, telephone calls, canteen, property, programming, reading and writing materials, and good time credit as those in general population at the same facility consistent with the security of the unit,” the suit recalls.
Plaintiff Perry was held in a “Department Disciplinary Unit” (DDU) at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI) in Cedar Junction, the complaint notes, where he made similar allegations in an earlier suit that prompted DOC to abandon DDUs in June 2023. But other named plaintiffs remain ...

On August 2, 2024, after losing a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Jeffrey Simms-­Belaire, a former detainee at Oregon’s Washington County Jail (WCJ), private jail medical contractor NaphCare, Inc. secured an agreement with a settlement of $78,325.50 to drop his civil rights claims against a nurse practitioner (NP) employed by the firm. The move came just months after the company advised the federal court for the District of Oregon on March 28, 2024, that it had settled claims in another suit filed by Tammy Thomsen over the death of her husband at WCJ.
In both cases, no settlement details were docketed with the Court, but PLN has requested documentation, since NaphCare was acting as a public instrumentality. Meanwhile remaining claims are proceeding against the firm and the County that were filed by Simms-­Belaire, a paraplegic with no feeling in his legs and feet who is now an Oregon state prisoner.
After an October 2017 arrest in Kansas, Simms-­Belaire was extradited to Oregon and booked into WCJ to await trial. The detainee used a wheelchair and medical shoes issued at the Kansas jail to protect his feet from rubbing against it, since he suffers from a condition that ...

The administrative remedy process is a roadblock to challenging inhumane prison conditions. With the help of advocates, people in prison are fighting back.
As a way to challenge the inhumane conditions of their imprisonment, people behind bars have made remarkable use of the very legal system that criminalizes and incarcerates them. During the late twentieth century, that activism saw success in the court system in various ways, but these landmark cases and resulting litigation soon met with backlash from prison administrations and policymakers. Their response led to stringent restrictions that limited the ability of people in prison to access legal resources, work with lawyers, and file lawsuits.
One federal law passed in the mid-­1990s institutionalized the mother of all bureaucratic stopgaps: the administrative remedy process. Today, in just about all carceral settings, an incarcerated person must navigate the complex process of administrative remedy to address harassment, poor conditions, and other deprivations. This process involves submitting formal complaints and exhausting appeals before it is permissible to seek judicial intervention.
Since 2020 a new organization, The Remedy Project, has been working to transform the possibilities of the administrative remedy process by wielding it as a tool to challenge the power of the ...

Disturbing video from the body-­worn camera of a guard at the Ohio Reformatory for Women captured him on March 14, 2024, as he drove a Utility Terrain Vehicle (UTV) at high speed across the grounds of the Maryville lockup and plowed into a group of prisoners, striking one and knocking her to the ground.
“Oh my god!” a second guard in the UTV could be heard exclaiming.
The state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (DRC) confirmed that the unnamed prisoner was treated at the prison infirmary before transport to a local hospital, from which she returned later that same day. The guard, later identified as Lt. Thierno Bah, was seen stopping the vehicle and exiting, repeating to the prisoner as she lay on the ground, “Sorry.”
The incident is under internal investigation, DRC said. Investigators were also called from the Ohio Highway Patrol (OHP), but they recommended no charges because the prisoner did not appear to suffer “serious physical harm” as defined under state law. Moreover, OHP added, Bah could not be charged under state vehicle laws because the Ohio Supreme Court has said the sort of UTV he drove does not meet the statutory definition of a “motor vehicle.” ...

On February 13, 2024, the Third Judicial Circuit Court in and for Salt Lake County, Utah, ordered an examination to determine if death row prisoner Ralph Leroy Menzies, 65, is competent to be executed. Menzies’ attorneys argued that he suffers from dementia.
After Maurine Hunsaker’s body was found tied to a tree in Big Cottonwood Canyon in 1986, Menzies was convicted two years later of kidnapping her from a convenience store and murdering her. Fast-forward 36 years, and as his execution neared, Menzies’ attorneys filed a petition that included a written evaluation from Dr. Lynette M. Abrams-Silva, who opined “that Menzies suffers from vascular dementia and lacks the ability to form a rational understanding of the reasons why the State seeks to execute him,” as the Court recalled. Though prosecutors disagreed that Menzies is incompetent to be executed, they did not object to “further inquiry into Menzies’ mental health” in order to develop “a complete and accurate record, analysis, and determination” of his competency for execution.
Accordingly, the Court stayed proceedings leading to the execution, cancelled a hearing on the State’s application for an execution warrant that was scheduled for February 23, 2024, and also appointed two independent examiners to ...

The conviction on May 30, 2024, of former Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) on 34 felony charges in New York did not derail the current GOP nominee’s campaign to return to the White House. But it would prevent him from holding many other jobs. His criminal record will not seriously crimp the style of Trump because he is a billionaire. But for millions of other Americans, it does.
There are over 19 million people with felony convictions in the U.S., almost all facing barriers to employment. As a result, criminal records frequently trap former prisoners in a cycle of poverty that returns them to crime. Statistics from Prison Policy Initiative reveal that nearly 40% of those in state prisons were unemployed before their arrest. The pre-­incarceration jobless rate is even higher for Black prisoners (46%) and women prisoners (53%).
Once their sentences are served, over 600,000 prisoners are released each year, and almost all of them struggle to find employment, housing, healthcare and childcare. The jobless rate for those with criminal records is five times higher than the general population.
When they do find work, former prisoners are often relegated to low-­paying jobs with little job security—especially in those states ...

On June 26, 2024, a special grand jury in Louisiana’s East Baton Rouge Parish indicted four officers with the Baton Rouge Police Department (BRPD) for their violent strip search of a suspect in custody. The September 2020 incident was recorded when a body-­worn camera (BWC) activated without the knowledge of the four, Lt. Troy Lawrence, Sr. and Cpls. Douglas Chutz, Todd Thomas and Martele Jackson. A fifth cop, Cpl. Jesse Barcelona, was not indicted.
All five remain with BRPD, though all but Barcelona are on leave. An arrest warrant was issued for Jackson; Lawrence, Chutz and Thomas had been arrested in 2023. All four were members of BRPD’s now-­disbanded “street crimes unit” (SCU) when they responded with fellow cops and FBI agents to reports of a gun-­waving crowd gathered outside a Chippewa St. home in September 2020. The group was actually filming a music video with Kentrell Gaulden, a rapper who performs as NBA YoungBoy.
Nevertheless, officers took several performers to BRPD’s First Precinct for a strip-­search. They then put them in a vehicle for transport to East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, when one began acting suspiciously, they said. They returned him to the First Precinct for another strip-­search, this ...

A report by the District of Columbia Council for Court Excellence (CCE) released on March 14, 2024, revealed troubling details about solitary confinement in the D.C. Jail, including overly long stays in isolation and refusal by the city Department of Corrections (DOC) to share data.
CCE found that the average detainee stay in restrictive housing was 49 days, exceeding United Nations guidelines against prolonging solitary confinement over 15 days. The report also revealed a lack of transparency from DOC, which denied basic data requests about demographics and mental health of those isolated, as well as use of restraints on them. The jail estimated that 35% of detainees have serious mental illness, making them particularly vulnerable in solitary to self-­harm or sinking deeper into insanity. See: More Data is Needed on the Use of Solitary Confinement in D.C., D.C. CCE (Mar. 2024).
Addressing DOC’s request for $460 million to build a new jail, the D.C. council proposed building very limited facilities for solitary confinement so that guards would be forced to use other strategies to manage mentally ill detainees. Advocates also point out that most of those held at the jail are pre-­trial detainees, making solitary confinement for punishment an unconstitutional ...

After Texas prisoner Wendy Morales accused Lane Murray Unit guard Nathaniel Aviles of groping her during an August 2023 cross-­sex strip-­search—itself a policy violation—the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) ruled her complaint “unsubstantiated.” It was not the first complaint against Aviles, though; two years before, an unnamed prisoner accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex on him. But TDCJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) dropped its investigation in March 2022 when the prisoner declined to pursue her complaint.
Those two investigations of Aviles were among 600 based on prisoner allegations of sexual assault, abuse or harassment at Lane Murray Unit that were referred to OIG between 2018 and 2023. Marci Marie Simmons, a former prisoner held there during that period, said the guard “was, for lack of a better word, creepy.”
“If he was making his rounds and we were changing clothes or going to the ladies room, using the toilet that’s in our cell — most officers would glance in, make sure everything’s okay, and keep walking — [but] he’s going to stop,” she recalled.
Aviles’ lone disciplinary infraction was a warning for calling a prisoner “bitch” during a use of force. But that shows ...

On February 12, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri denied a motion to dismiss a prisoner’s pro se lawsuit by Defendant officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC), who argued that he failed to exhaust administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. The Court ruled that DOC officials failed to prove that Moreno Salinas’ delay in completing the grievance process at Southeast Correctional Center (SECC) was his fault and not their own.
While imprisoned at SECC on January 28, 2021, Salinas alleged in his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint, he was subjected to excessive force by guards Lt. Stephan V. Clark, Cole Hansens, Johnny Clubbs, Vanissa Lemons, Darrel Wilson, Tyler Womach and Jerry Walls, in violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. During the PLRA screening process, the Court found that Salinas stated a plausible excessive force claim against the seven guards, plus a plausible failure to intervene claim against another guard named Rangdale and DOC Case Manager Brandi Merideth. Though the Court did not mention her by name, claims against Darcie Bolin, another Defendant DOC case manager, also survived.
After Salinas filed an ...

“Prosecutors must keep their promises,” declared the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on March 8, 2024, “[a]nd if they do not, they must make things right quickly, clearly, and fully.” But that’s not what happened in the case of Pennsylvania prisoner Danny Cruz, the Court found.
As PLN reported, Cruz bribed a guard to smuggle cellphones into the Dauphin County Prison while held there awaiting trial for attempted murder between October 2015 and January 2016. That earned him an extra 51 months on his federal prison sentence, and guard Kyle Bower got four months—two months in prison and two more on home detention. [See: PLN, Apr. 2023, p.63]. However, the Court then vacated Cruz’s sentence after finding prosecutors breached his plea agreement.
For bribing a public official, Cruz was charged with conspiracy to violate the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 371. He pleaded guilty pursuant to an agreement in which the U.S. Attorney’s Office promised to recommend a total offense level of 14 under sentencing guidelines. But in Cruz’s presentence report, the Probation Office suggested a four-­level enhancement.
Cruz objected, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office supported the enhancement—though the prosecutor subsequently backtracked and took a neutral position. Nevertheless, ...

by David M. Reutter
On February 1, 2024, an agreement was filed in the federal court for the District of Colorado by the state Department of Corrections (DOC), promising to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging it failed to protect prisoner John Standley Snorsky from assault by gang members. The settlement followed a Court order that Snorsky be placed in protective custody (PC).
As PLN reported, Snorsky reported that he was in fear for his life due to custody issues with other prisoners when he was transferred to Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP) in October 2016. The reason, as he informed prison officials, was that he had agreed to provide witness testimony at the trial of another CSP prisoner, Chad Wesley Merrill, for the fatal 2015 stabbing of Joshua Edmonds at Limon Correctional Facility, where all three were then held.
Because of publicity in that case, Snorsky argued that he was a well-­known “snitch” and easily recognizable to violent prison gangs who targeted him. However, his request for PC placement was denied. Instead, he landed in the same unit with Merrill, who dutifully spread the word that Snorsky was a witness against him. Merrill recruited three more prisoners to ...

On March 31, 2024, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) let its contract expire with the American Correctional Association (ACA), which provided accreditations for all BOP prisons, training centers and its Central Office Headquarters.
BOP opted not to renew the $2.75 million annual contract after a scathing report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of its parent agency, the federal Department of Justice; in its November 2023 assessment, OIG slammed ACA for sham investigations that merely rubber-­stamped BOP’s own evaluations, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.18.]
Audits and oversight are crucial to identifying and rectifying facility needs. By not providing accurate evaluations and accreditation of the country’s 122 facilities, housing approximately 160,000 federal prisoners, ACA did nothing to help BOP grapple with desperately needed repairs that are estimated at an astonishing $2 billion.
One month before the contract expired, U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-­Mass.), Ed Markey (D-­Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-­Ore.) urged BOP to cut ties with ACA, citing concerns over its independence and impartiality. Nearly half of ACA revenues come from accreditation-­related fees, with another 25% provided by private prison companies.
BOP then announced it would explore alternative ways to improve correctional standards for the well-­being ...

On March 14, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a district court erred in dismissing a New York prisoner’s civil rights action for violating the “three strikes” provision of the Prison Litigation and Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. The Court’s opinion is enlightening in several aspects, including whether claims barred under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), count as “strikes.”
New York prisoner Maurice Cotton filed at least nineteen different lawsuits during his incarceration and leading up to the filing of the case under review. Cotton, a prisoner at Green Haven Correctional Facility, filed a lawsuit on December 6, 2018, that alleged he was wrongfully denied a transfer to Sing Sing Correctional Facility where he could earn a master’s degree at one of the college programs offered there. Cotton further alleged he was retaliated against for filing grievances related to the matter.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York reviewed Cotton’s motion to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP). Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), as amended by PLRA, IFP status is unavailable to any plaintiff with three previous federal actions that were dismissed as frivolous or malicious or for failure ...

On April 11, 2024, the Washington Court of Appeals refused to reconsider an earlier finding that the state’s Indeterminate Sentence Review Board (ISRB) failed to meaningfully apply the statutory presumption that prisoners sentenced as adults for crimes committed as juveniles should be released at their first parole hearing.
In 1997, Donald Lambert pleaded guilty to aggravated first-­degree murder which was committed when he was 15 years old. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP). However, a later statutory amendment mandated that juvenile defendants sentenced to life as adults for first degree murder must receive an indeterminate term of 25 years to life. Lambert was resentenced in 2014, and his 25-­year minimum term expired in March 2023.
Lambert was entitled to a release hearing 180 days before the minimum term expired. In preparation for the hearing, he was evaluated by psychologist Dr. Lisa Robtoy. She chronicled Lambert’s tragic childhood: raised by a drug-­addicted mother, growing up in abject poverty, surrounded by crime. She also noted that Lambert joined the Sureño gang shortly after entering prison and was involved in numerous fights, including stabbing another prisoner in 2007.
But all that happened during his first 10 ...

by David M. Reutter
On February 6, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to pay $700,000 to settle a Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) complaint in the death of a prisoner held by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Coleman, Florida. Following that, Robert Conyers, Jr., father of Davon Gillians, dropped an appeal he had filed to dismissal of a separate federal civil rights suit filed against the prison’s warden and six guards, alleging that Gillians died due to use of excessive force.
Gillians, 22, had less than a year left on a 46-­month sentence—for a 2018 conviction in South Carolina for being a felon in possession of a gun—when two BOP guards named Ayers and Morey handcuffed the prisoner behind his back and removed him from his cell on May 16, 2021. Though Gillians offered no resistance, Ayers allegedly punched and choked him into brief unconsciousness. The guards then forcibly picked Gillians off the floor, moved him to a solitary confinement cell and strapped him into a restraint chair.
There he remained for “24-­28 hours,” according to the complaint his dad later filed, “without being provided food, water, or medication” for ...

As the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held an information-­gathering hearing on April 24, 2024, about a proposed rule regarding so-­called “junk fees,” prisoners are set to get left behind. The problem mushroomed once more governments moved to make prison and jail phone calls free, and sometimes other communication services, too. Connecticut’s Department of Corrections (DOC) was the first to do so in 2022; three other state prison systems soon followed, most recently in Minnesota. Several jails have implemented free phone-­call policies, too, with more considering the idea.
Historically, prison telecom companies reaped enormous profits by charging prisoners and their families exorbitant phone rates, up to $1.00 per minute. The industry generates annual revenue estimated at $1 billion. The two leading prison telecom firms, which together control around 90% of the captive carceral market, are ViaPath (formerly Global Tel*Link), owned by private equity firm American Securities, and Securus, a subsidiary of Aventiv Technologies, which is owned by Platinum Equity, another private equity company.
As PLN reported, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) imposed rate caps on prison and jail calls in May 2021, after more than a decade of advocacy by organizations such as the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of ...

by David M. Reutter
A report issued by the federal Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on February 15, 2024, identified “operational and managerial deficiencies” in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) which “created unsafe conditions” blamed for many of 344 prisoner deaths that BOP tallied from 2014 through 2021. Suicides accounted for just over half of those.
BOP came under scrutiny for the most high-­profile deaths: The 2018 murder of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Hazelton, West Virginia; the 2019 suicide of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan; and a string of homicides at USP Thomson in Illinois. Spurred by concerns from Congress and advocacy groups, OIG initiated its investigation.
What it found were 187 deaths by suicide, 89 homicides, 56 called accidental and the other 12 attributed to unknown factors. The majority of those who died were White (242), with 224 of all deaths occurring at medium or high security prisons. Of the homicides, 54 occurred in general population and 59 in high security level prisons. The suicide rate in general population (100) was higher than the rate in restrictive housing units (86), but ...

by David M. Reutter
On March 28, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California largely denied a motion to dismiss a civil rights action filed by the surviving mother of a murdered state prisoner whose corpse was photographed by a guard and posted online. The complaint accused Sgt. Joseph Burnes and other state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) guards of snapping pictures of Luis Romero’s remains and posting them on the internet.
Romero was brutally murdered at Corcoran State Prison on March 9, 2019, by cellmate Jaime Osuna. After killing him, Osuna used “what appeared to be a razor wrapped in string to remove Romero’s right ear,” according to the complaint filed by the dead man’s mother, Dora Solares. But that was only the beginning of the heinous mutilation of her son’s corpse. As the complaint continued, Osuna “forcibly detached his eyes, removed portions of his ribs and lungs, and decapitated him,” before he finally “used Romero’s blood to write ‘hahahahaha’ on the walls.” When guards found him, Osuna was “wearing a necklace made of Romero’s body parts.”
Immediately after the murder was discovered, Burnes and other guards allegedly took unauthorized pictures of the scene ...

The Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) took the extraordinary step of firing a prison warden on July 1, 2024. Warden Ralph Shropshire was walked off the job after just 16 months at Valdosta State Prison (VSP). During that time, five of his guards were among seven employed by DOC or a local county who were arrested in “Operation Skyhawk”—a spectacular FBI sting that shut down a multi-­state drug trafficking operation and netted 150 arrests, along with 87 drones, 273 illegal cellphones and $7 million in drugs.
Shropshire was let go for “unprofessional conduct,” DOC said. However, no charges were filed against the former warden, who was an 18-­year veteran employee. Also during his short tenure, five prisoners died by suicide or homicide at the lockup. Shropshire was brought on while VSP was still reeling from the sentencing of four guards for beating a handcuffed prisoner and then lying about it in an attempted coverup; each of them got four years in federal prison in September 2022, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2023, p.57.]
The VSP guards named after the recent bust included LaShonda Ty’Asia Mannings. She was booked into the Lowndes County Jail on February 7, 2024, for allegedly ...

Trial didn’t start as scheduled on July 26, 2024, for Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) prisoner Austin Burke, 25, who is accused of murdering fellow prisoner Ruben Melendez, 65, in August 2023. That’s because Burke was handed a new indictment on July 3, 2024, accusing him of assaulting two SOCF guards with a shank the previous May.
Burke was described as part of the Cincinnati White Boyz, a smaller rival group to the Aryan Brotherhood (AB) prison gang. Melendez was reportedly a member of the Mexican Mafia, with which AB is sometimes allied. The fight between the two prisoners, which surveillance video showed the older man may have sparked, left him with a fatal head injury. Burke then landed in “Extreme Restricted Housing,” where he will remain for over 10 years, according to a letter he sent to PLN.
In his letter, Burke also questioned why SOCF guards left the two to interact. Neither had previously been charged with fighting. Burke is serving a life term for the August 2017 robbery and murder of Brandon Sample, who at 22 was four years older than Burke at the time.
Melendez was also serving a life sentence for a murder committed when ...

by David M. Reutter
On February 28, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a 46-­month sentence handed to former Kay Correctional Detention Center (KCDC) guard Matthew Ware for depriving detainees of their civil rights when he subjected them to cruel brutality at the Oklahoma lockup.
As PLN reported, Ware, 55, was sentenced in February 2023 after a jury in federal court for the Western District of Oklahoma found him guilty in April 2022 on three counts of deprivation of rights under color of law, which had been handed down in his November 2021 indictment. [See: PLN, Feb. 2023, p.55.]
His conviction on the first two counts stemmed from an incident on May 18, 2017, when Ware, then a KCDC Lieutenant, ordered subordinate guards to move pretrial detainees D’Angelo Wilson and Marcus Miller to an area of the jail housing avowed white supremacist detainees. Both Wilson and Miller are Black, and Ware knew the move placed them in danger of assault. Worse, over those guards’ protests, he then ordered them to open the doors of all detainees in the cell block. White supremacist detainees rushed into Wilson and Miller’s cell and attacked them. Wilson required seven ...

by Douglas Ankney
On February 9, 2024, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals held that even though Henry Neal Ferguson III had been sentenced to life in state prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP), he was entitled to a sentence credit for the time he served in jail before sentencing.
The odd-­sounding result—even with credit, Ferguson’s sentence still has no end—sprang from a habeas corpus petition he filed against the state Department of Corrections (DOC) in St. Claire County Circuit Court in February 2023. That recalled the facts of his case, beginning with a May 1993 arrest for first degree assault that landed him in the Talladega County Jail (TCJ). He escaped the following month, and while on the run, a grand jury indicted him in February 1994 for attempted murder. Ferguson was captured and returned to TCJ in June 1994, and two months later he was convicted of attempted murder. The circuit court sentenced him to LWOP as a habitual felon in September 1994.
Ferguson argued in the habeas petition that he was due credit for the time spent in TCJ before sentencing—less those days he was on the run. The circuit court denied his petition, reasoning that ...

On March 19, 2024, the Court of Appeals of Washington, Division II, held that a state prisoner’s tort claims are not barred in state court even if federal claims arising from the same facts are dismissed in federal court; so long as dismissal was merely procedural and not based on the merits, the Court said, the claims were not barred by res judicata—the doctrine preventing courts from relitigating claims that have already been decided.
State Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner Michael Denton filed suit pro se in federal court for the Western District of Washington in January 2018, accusing Washington State Penitentiary (WSP) officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 of violating his civil rights. By neglecting his medical and mental health treatment, he said that they left him at risk of self-­harm and then punished him for his mental illness and retaliated when he filed grievances.
The district court appointed pro bono counsel from attorney Darryl Parker of Civil Rights Justice Center, PLLC, in Seattle. It then dismissed all Denton’s claims as meritless except one—that DOC failed to protect him from self-­harm. But that claim was dismissed, too, when the district court found Denton failed to complete the WSP grievance process, ...

Montana Women’s Prison (MWP) Warden Jennie Hansen was fired on March 4, 2024, after an internal investigation determined she created a hostile workplace for prison employees. She had been on administrative leave since January 2024, while investigators with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) traced a series of “inappropriate” remarks and behavior with subordinates.
For some employees Hansen mimed the allegedly drunken behavior of another subordinate at an Oregon conference, accusing the unnamed employee of “walking around drunk among the homeless people” in Portland. Other comments betrayed a fascination with testicles: After asking whether a new lesbian employee might be male and being told no, she pretended to lift testicles in her own crotch and asked, “Are you sure?” The Warden told others during meetings that “the only person’s balls that matter are mine.” Employees reported steering clear of their boss and her volatile behavior so that their “head is not on the plate.” See: Admin. Investigation Report RE: Jennie Hansen, Mont. DOC (Jan. 19, 2024).
Hansen had been employed by DOC since 2009, serving from 2017 until her termination as top official at MWP, whose 242 beds were nearly filled with 240 prisoners at the time. Associate Warden Alex ...

by David M. Reutter
A suit filed by a Texas prisoner alleging that stifling heat in his cell threatens his life was allowed to proceed against Defendant officials with the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) on June 14, 2024, when the federal court for the Western District of Texas denied their motion to dismiss Bernie Tiede’s complaint.
Tiede, 65, suffers from diabetes and hypertension, serious medical conditions which, combined with the heat inside his Estelle Unit cell, caused him to suffer something like a ministroke, he claimed. Of Texas’ 100 state prisons, only about 30% are fully air conditioned. The remainder have partial or no air conditioning, leaving indoor temperatures to climb dangerously high—often exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, advocates say.
Those from four advocacy groups—Texas Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, Inc., Coalition for Texans with Disabilities, Inc., Texas Prisons Community Advocates, and Build Up, Inc.—joined Tiede in filing his amended complaint on May 7, 2024, seeking an injunction to force TDCJ Director Brian Collier to remedy the excessive heat conditions. The suit alleges that environmental conditions in Texas prisons without air conditioning violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
At issue for the Court in ...

On March 14, 2023, a dustup over a contentious clemency request for condemned Oklahoma prisoner Richard Glossip spilled into state court, where a judge refused to dismiss a suit filed by two state lawmakers to force release of public records from hardline conservative district attorney (D.A.) Jason Hicks.
At issue were communications between the District 6 chief prosecutor and the state Pardon and Parole Board (PPB) before Glossip’s April 2023 clemency hearing. As PLN reported, PPB deadlocked on the request despite an extraordinary plea from state Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R), leaving Glossip facing a date with death until the Supreme Court of the U.S. granted a stay while it hears the prisoner’s appeal. [See: PLN, Mar. 2023, p.61.]
The two lawmakers, Reps. Justin Humphrey (R-­Lane) and Kevin McDugle (R-­Broken Arrow), wanted to know what PBB heard from Hicks, who opposed Glossip’s clemency. But the D.A. made them go to court to find out, claiming his texts to PBB members were personal and not public business—even though he requested and received an expense reimbursement to cover the mileage he drove to attend the hearing. Hicks tried to repay it after the lawsuit was filed, but the District Court for Stephens ...

When he was freed on March 27, 2024, Maurice Jimmerson described how it felt to see his daughter, now 14, for the first time since she was three: “Blessed.”
Jimmerson spent over a decade in jail before he was convicted. He was one of five people arrested on suspicion of a drive-­by Albany shooting that killed Desmond Williams and William Davis, Jr., in 2013. Two co-­defendants, Desmond Warren and Harrell Lorenzo Hicks, were tried and acquitted in June 2017. A third, Condell Benyard, was also acquitted at a July 2023 trial, after a seven-­year wait. The fourth, Jawaski Kennedy, served time for related terrorism and assault convictions before he was paroled, only to be killed in another drive-­by shooting in 2021.
Dougherty County District Attorney Gregory Edwards offered a list of excuses for the delay in Jimmerson’s case, including a courthouse flood and the COVID-­19 pandemic. After his first public defender quit, it took eight months to find a replacement. Attorney Andrew Fleischman then took up the case pro bono, securing a June 2023 trial that resulted in a hung jury. The attorney then negotiated Jimmerson’s plea deal to assault and weapons charges, resulting in a 30-­year probated sentence.
With ...

After Corey Ulmer, 41, died at Chicago’s Cook County Jail on June 21, 2024, deputies of Sheriff Tom Dart informed the detainee’s survivors that “he went to the hospital, and unfortunately he didn’t make it,” recalled Robert Robinson, the dead man’s stepfather. Three days later a Sheriff’s Department spokesman reiterated that Ulmer died of a “medical emergency.”
But just two days after that, on June 26, 2024, an internal report by the sergeant in charge at the time documented a violent confrontation, during which Ulmer became “combative” and tried to “head butt” him; after that, guards beat Ulmer and body-­slammed him before a nurse injected him with sedatives. Ulmer, who was bipolar, was sedated with his hands cuffed in front of him, according to the report by Sgt. Enrique Reyes, before the nurse was “unable to get vitals” from the detainee. Yet the following day, on June 27, 2024, Sheriff’s Dart’s spokesman still insisted that “Mr. Ulmer died after suffering a medical emergency.”
Ulmer was incarcerated for violating the terms of his release on electronic monitoring to await trial for brandishing a pocketknife at a bus stop during a bipolar episode in January 2023. His attorney in that case, Jonathan ...

by Douglas Ankney
On November 29, 2023, the Big Sandy Regional Detention Center in Eastern Kentucky settled a complaint brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with an agreement to provide medication to prisoners suffering with opioid use disorder (OUD).
According to the agreement, DOJ received a complaint from a medical provider that the Jail refused to provide buprenorphine to a patient identified as “J.F.”—despite the detainee’s medical prescription for the drug. DOJ substantiated allegations that the Jail effectively banned medication for OUD, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 126 § 12101 et seq.
That law prohibits disability-­based discrimination by any “public entity”—including denial of “services provided in connection with drug rehabilitation.” OUD is considered a disability because those who suffer with it “have drug addiction—a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of their major life activities,” as defined in 28 C.F.R. § 35.108. Methadone, naltrexone and buprenorphine are medications approved to treat OUD by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Rather than litigate the matter, the Jail agreed not to “change or discontinue” any detainee’s use of a medication for OUD without “an individualized determination by a qualified medical ...

by David M. Reutter
On February 28, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a report finding that conditions at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF), South Mississippi Correctional Institution (SMCI) and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) violate prisoners’ Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The report required Mississippi officials to correct the unconstitutional conditions or face a federal lawsuit.
DOJ began an investigation in February 2020 at the three prisons, as well as Mississippi State Prison in Parchman. An April 2022 report declared that conditions found at the latter violated the Constitution, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Nov. 2022, p.34.] In its most recent report, DOJ said that “[m]any of the conditions we found at Parchman” exist at CMCF, SMCI and WCCF.
The state Department of Corrections (DOC) failed to protect prisoners from violence at all three prisons, the report declared. CMCF and SMCI are DOC’s largest prisons, holding up to 4,000 and 2,882 prisoners, respectively. WCCF, which is privately managed for DOC by Utah-­based Management and Training Corporation (MTC), holds another 949. Together, the three prisons house one-­third of DOC’s prisoner population.
According to DOJ, each prison is “riddled with violence.” But“[g]ross understaffing, poor supervision, and inadequate investigations” also ...

Former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard Quandelle Joseph, 34, was sentenced on July 30, 2024, to 30 months in federal prison for a brazen smuggling scheme at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. Former fellow guard Jeremy Monk, 36, was earlier sentenced for his role in the scheme on December 6, 2023, to a year of probation.
As PLN reported, Monk resigned in April 2022, three days after taking a $10,000 bribe to smuggle marijuana into the lockup and leaving it in a staff bathroom for unnamed detainees to retrieve; he later pleaded guilty in March 2023. [See: PLN, May 2023, p.63.] Joseph also resigned and eventually pleaded guilty in January 2024 to sneaking drugs, cigarettes and cellphones on multiple occasions to at least three detainees, beginning shortly after he was hired in May 2020. They then distributed the contraband inside the jail. Joseph also confessed to warning one detainee about an upcoming cell search in January 2021 in a text that read: “Tighten up search comin (sic) clean phones out call logs n text n try to stash it.”
As PLN also reported, Joseph initially charged $8,000 for his smuggling services but eventually raised his fee ...

Under California Penal Code § 3051, prisoners who were 18 to 25 years old when they committed certain crimes are eligible for parole after serving 15, 20 or 25 years, even if sentenced to life without parole (LWOP)—unless they were over 18 at the time of their offense. On March 4, 2024, the state Supreme Court rejected a challenge to that exclusion filed by state prisoner Tony Hardin.
In 1989, when he was 25, Hardin killed neighbor Norma Barber while robbing her home and car. That earned him a 1990 conviction for first-­degree murder with a “special circumstance” because it happened during a robbery, and he was sentenced to LWOP. When § 3501.1 was adopted in 2023, he remained ineligible for parole because of the age exclusion. Hardin, by then 59, filed an appeal, claiming violation of his right to equal protection under the law as provided by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The state Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, ruled in his favor in October 2022, finding him eligible for an evidentiary hearing because “disparate treatment of offenders like Hardin cannot stand.” The appellate court found young adults serving LWOP are similarly situated to other youthful offenders, including those serving parole-­eligible life ...

by David M. Reutter
When Sheriff Scott Childers lost his reelection bid in Missouri’s Ray County on August 6, 2024, he had already been out of office for five months. That’s because the county court issued a Preliminary Order in Quo Warranto removing him from office on March 6, 2024. The unusual order came in response to a petition filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R).
The removal petition alleged that Childers administered a work program at the county jail using detainees to labor on his own properties and those belonging to friends—including contributors to his political campaigns for Sheriff. It was further alleged that he left these detainees unsupervised and even allowed some conjugal visits, as well as car trips to shop at local stores, after which drugs, alcohol and cellphones flowed in and out of the jail.
The petition recalled that Childers was warned by judicial and elected officials that his program was illegal. But the warnings had no impact as Childers allegedly continued to release detainees for personally enriching work and even boasted about the program on social media.
In granting the petition, the Court “immediately enjoined” Childers from “engaging in any activity, or exercising any ...

When he was picked to chair the Tennessee Republican Party’s annual Statemen’s Dinner on June 15, 2024—billed as “the largest political event of the year” in the Republican-­dominated state—Damon Hininger, CEO of private prison operator CoreCivic, brought his firm into the spotlight at the GOP fundraising gala, tickets for which were priced at $300 each.
But the company is already among the state’s top political spenders, lavishing $3.6 million since 2019 on lobbying and political donations to state lawmakers—mostly Republicans, who enjoy trifecta control of the state House, Senate and governor’s office. They hold power over lucrative government contracts that are key to CoreCivic’s business—operating prisons, jails and other detention facilities that brought in revenues of $1.9 billion in 2023. A hefty chunk of that gets invested back into the political process in order to secure more contracts and revenues.
Critics call this cycle anything but virtuous because it drives mass incarceration. Though CoreCivic counters that it merely provides prison cells the state would otherwise have to build, Hininger let the truth slip in an earnings call with investors on May 9, 2024, when he said that “adjustments to sentencing reform” by state lawmakers are expected to drive “pretty significant ...

by Douglas Ankney
When a jail is found to violate a detainee’s Sixth Amendment expectation that communications with his attorney are privileged, courts often shrug it off as harmless; after all, the detainee won’t raise the objection unless what was discussed could undermine his defense, and in that case courts are loathe to let the guilty go free.
But a nation of laws must abide by all of them, no matter the result. So it was a welcome surprise when the Supreme Court of Nevada on March 7, 2024, refused to take the easy way out and agree with a lower court that a detainee who violated jail phone policy to make a legal call had waived attorney-­client privilege for it.
The Court’s ruling came in an appeal by former Clark County Detention Center detainee Jamal Jacqkey Gibbs. In April 2021, he was 29 and at the Las Vegas apartment of his girlfriend when her daughter returned from a visit with the child’s father, Jaylon Tiffith, 29. The mother then got in a fight with Tiffith’s new girlfriend, who was also not named. Both Tiffith and Gibbs—recently released from state prison after completing a 10-­year term for a 2008 gang ...

Incarcerated readers of PLN will not soon get a chance to see Hometown Prison, a new documentary film released on February 27, 2024, which explores the relationship between some 80,000 people who make their home in Huntsville, Texas and the seven prisons there operated by the state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). So here’s what it shows.
Although thousands of prisoners fill the lockups—there is room for 13,697 between the Byrd, Ellis, Estelle, Goree, Holliday and Wynne Units, as well as the 175-­year-­old State Penitentiary—students at nearby Sam Houston State University admitted to filmmaker Richard Linklater that it’s just something “everyone’s aware of” but “no one wants to talk about it.” Linklater, who spent his youth in Huntsville before finding Hollywood fame with films like Dazed and Confused and Boyhood, also talked to Dale Enderlin, a former teammate on the college baseball team, who recalled a 39-­month prison stay when he routinely met men of color who had let themselves be coerced into false confessions.
Others interviewed included the manager at the bus station, who realized that he’d sold hundreds of thousands of one-­way tickets out of town to men released onto Huntsville’s streets from the prisons, usually with enough ...

by Douglas Ankney
On June 28, 2024, former District of Columbia (D.C.) Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Marcus Bias, 28, was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison and 24 months of supervised release for assaulting a handcuffed prisoner. The sentence follows his guilty plea in March 2024 to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law.
Surveillance video captured the entire incident, which unfolded at the D.C. Jail on June 12, 2019. It began when a prisoner identified as “J.W.” refused a guard’s order to return to his cell from the dining hall and began using a phone there instead. Bias, who was then 23 and had been on the job 18 months, arrived with other members of an Emergency Response Team, pepper-­spraying and handcuffing the prisoner. That’s when Bias “intentionally and without provocation” pushed him head-­first into a metal doorframe, “causing serious injuries” that required hospital treatment, court documents recalled.
DOC fired Bias after reviewing the video. But he wasn’t charged and arrested until November 2022. Pastor Cheryl Mitchell Gaines wrote the federal court for the District of Columbia that her parishioner “was the youngest one there … and now he’s the fall guy.”
But D.C.’s ...

by David M. Reutter
On March 26, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed a district court’s award of more than $578,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs made as part of a $60,000 offer of judgment to settle an excessive force claim by Kansas prisoner Samuel Lee Dartez, II. The appeal required the Court to decide how an offer of judgment affects statutory provisions allowing and limiting a fee award.
Dartez sued 15 Kansas Highway Patrol (KHP) officers in November 2015, alleging they used excessive force after his arrest one year earlier. To settle, KHP made a $60,000 offer of judgment to Dartez “plus reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs allowed by law, if any.” Because Dartez was incarcerated by the time he sued, his complaint was subject to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e—a statute that limits recovery of legal fees and costs. But the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas assumed the offer of judgment trumped the statutes, and it awarded Dartez $576,242.28 in attorneys’ fees and costs. Defendants appealed.
The Tenth Circuit began by first rejecting Defendants’ “perfunctory” argument that Dartez was not entitled to an award of attorneys’ fees ...

Prisoners in custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) who were serving a sentence with an enhancement for a prior prison term became entitled to resentencing when Pen. Code§ 1172.75 took effect in 2022, invalidating the enhancement. The new law required CDCR to notify the sentencing court and provide information to assist with a resentencing hearing. But on March 1, 2024, the state Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, reigned in prosecutors’ request for one state prisoner’s records, calling foul on their failure to show “plausible justification” for each request.
Kevin Lunsted was serving a 17-­year sentence, including a one-­year enhancement for a prior prison term. After§ 1172.75 invalidated that enhancement, he became eligible for resentencing. To prepare for the resentencing hearing, the state issued CDCR a subpoena duces tecum (for production of records) for Lunsted’s prison case file, known as a “c-­file.” He filed a motion to quash; while acknowledging the state had an interest in parts of his c-­file, he contended the subpoena was overbroad because it included confidential medical and mental health records.
The state countered that the c-­file reflected Lunsted’s conduct in prison, which was “one of the most important factors a court must consider ...

by David M. Reutter
On March 21, 2024, the Nevada Board of Examiners (BOE)—a three-­member panel composed of Gov. Joe Lombardo (R), Attorney General Aaron Ford (D) and Secretary of State Francisco “Cisco” Aguilar (D)—approved a $3.4 million settlement to resolve a state prisoner’s civil rights action accusing state Department of Corrections (DOC) officials of violating the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment with denial and delay of medical care.
After arriving at Southern Desert Correctional Center (SDCC) in late 2002, 60-­year-­old Lewis Stewart began to feel “discomfort in his lower abdominal and back area,” according to the complaint he later filed. Repeatedly filing medical care requests, he was finally seen by prison healthcare providers, including Dr. Romeo Aranas and Dr. Francisco Sanchez.
As PLN reported, Stewart complained of problems urinating, indicating possible prostate problems; he “had to sit on the toilet to urinate,” he said, and his “short and irregular urine flows were very painful.” Aranas and Sanchez took his vitals and prodded the affected areas. But they examined him no further, administering only generic pain medication. For over a decade, that was all the treatment Stewart got—even as he passed 70 and began experiencing inflammation in ...

A fight at Nevada’s Ely State Prison on July 31, 2024, left nine prisoners injured and three others dead—including Aryan Warriors (AW) gang leader Zackaria Luz, 43. No staffers were reported injured by the state Department of Corrections (DOC), which identified the other two killed as Connor Brown, 22, and Anthony Williams, 41.
Brown was serving a sentence up to 20 years handed down in 2021 for robbery. Williams, who was serving a 2019 life-­without-­parole sentence for murder with an “habitual criminal” enhancement, was an AW member, too, one of 22 sentenced in a massive racketeering case that also earned Luz up to 18 years in 2023.
At that time, Luz was already incarcerated on a drug-­related conviction. Before that, he had earlier pleaded no contest to charges of participating in a December 2021 riot at Southern Desert Correctional Center. As PLN reported, that disturbance led to the resignations of Warden William Hutchings and former DOC Director Charles Daniels, plus charges against guard Quentin Murphy, 41, for allegedly knocking Luz into a wall; fellow guards Paul Bowerman, Timothy Smith and Brayan Lopez were also charged with using excessive force. [See: PLN, March 2023, p.12.]   

Sources: KLAS, Reno Gazette Journal

by Matt Clarke
On March 20, 2024, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed SB 334, a bill passed by state lawmakers to prevent prosecutors and courts from requiring criminal defendants to waive their Fourth Amendment rights as a condition of a plea agreement or court order—waivers that can survive completion of their criminal sentences for decades.
Under the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 10 of the Virginia Constitution, citizens have a right not to be subjected to unreasonable search and seizure. But for many state prisoners, even after release, “You can be walking down the street, and a uniformed law enforcement officer can stop you, recognize you, and know you have a waiver, and then proceed to just search you without any cause,” according to Rob Poggenklass, Executive Director of the advocacy group Justice Forward Virginia.
That leaves criminal defendants facing an “impossible choice,” according to Lauren Whitley, Chief Public Defender for Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, King George and Stafford Counties, where the waivers are standard conditions of most plea agreements—which most criminal cases are resolved with, like 95% of those in the U.S.
“It encourages bad policing,” she said. “Fourth Amendment waivers give [police] free reign to do whatever they ...

On March 19, 2024, the Supreme Court of Montana held that time served in tribal jails prior to sentencing must be credited to that sentence. The case involved Malinda Crazymule. After pleading guilty to felony theft and criminal trespassing in 2016 in Sixteenth Judicial District Court, Rosebud County, she received a suspended sentence and was released on probation. Then on March 3, 2021, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) tribal officers searched her home and found methamphetamine, which she admitted using. Her two grandchildren, who were also present, tested positive for methamphetamine exposure. They were removed from Crazymule’s custody, and BIA officers charged her with endangering the welfare of children and drug abuse.
Crazymule was convicted of these offenses and confined to a tribal jail. On March 18, 2021, while serving that new sentence, the State petitioned to have her suspended sentence for felony theft revoked based on the tribal court convictions. The district court issued a warrant for Crazymule’s arrest that same day. The warrant listed Crazymule’s location as the tribal jail, but she was not transported to the Rosebud County Jail and served with a copy of the revocation petition and warrant until September 3, 2021. She ultimately pleaded ...

by David M. Reutter
A $2,000 award of statutory damages by the Supreme Court of Ohio on March 31, 2024, brought the total recovered by Trumball Correctional Institution (TCI) prisoner Kimani Ware for denied public records to at least $9,025. As PLN reported, Ware’s previous trip to the Court was unsuccessful, but in prior mandamus actions for denied public records—all proceeding pro se—the prisoner collected over $7,025. [See: PLN, July 18, 2024, online].
In this case, the Court found two violations of the state Public Records Act (PRA), R.C. 149.43. It declined to find any violation in four other requests that were denied. Ware submitted all six requests to TCI officials between May 29, 2021, and June 23, 2022, seeking records relating to (a) the number of prisoners infected by COVID-19 and (b) visitor policy during the pandemic, as well as (c) a legal mail log, (d) Ware’s master and disciplinary files, (e) an informational handbook on religions and (f) a list of canteen items that increased in price.
When he didn’t get any of the records, Ware filed a mandamus petition. Prison officials moved to dismiss it, arguing that he failed to notify them that the requests were being made ...

Alabama: Mobile Metro Jail guard Robert Aaron Small was fired and arrested for assault on June 27, 2024, one day after he allegedly used excessive force against an unnamed detainee. WKRG in Mobile said that the guard had worked at the lockup since 2019. Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch did not provide details of what happened but promised zero tolerance for “conduct unbecoming of our Corrections Officers towards any inmate.”
Alabama: Three state Department of Corrections (DOC) guards were arrested in July 2024, beginning with St. Clair Correctional Facility guard Jasmine Miller, 34, who charged on July 1, 2024, with using her office for personal gain, the Birmingham News reported. Miller resigned from St. Clair Correctional Facility and was booked into St. Clair County Jail, from which she was released on a $1,500 bond. Two days later, on July 3, 2024, Fountain Correctional Facility guard Shaquasia Craig, 33, was arrested and fired after she was caught with 50 Black and Mild cigars and two bottles of Gatorade laced with alcohol, WEAR in Pensacola said. She was being held at Escambia County Jail on charges of promoting prison contraband. Then on July 31, 2024, Limestone Correctional Facility guard Monica Blakeney, 35, ...

by David Reutter
As resources are stretched by millions of people released annually from U.S. prisons and jails, advocates struggle to obtain accurate information about the scope of the need. The nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) responded with a report on February 29, 2024, finding that a significant percentage of those released are women.
PPI used data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to create estimates of releases by sex. BJS’s most recent Annual Survey of Jails from 2022 does not break down releases by state; that is done by the less frequent Census of Jails, the most recent from 2019
But data on releases by sex or gender identity is important because “the mass incarceration of women has been overlooked” despite growing twice as fast as men’s incarceration, PPI said. Since over half of incarcerated women are mothers, and women are more likely their children’s primary caregivers, “entire families are harmed when a woman is put in prison or jail.”
Using BJS data, PPI was able to create “rough estimates” of prison releases by sex in 2022: About 51,228 from women’s state prisons, plus another 3,951 from federal prisons for women. On top of that, PPI estimated ...