If you are a woman and you break the law in Nebraska, and if you are required to serve a prison sentence, you will be sent to the Nebraska Center for Women (NCW). NCW is located in York, a small town located about 100 miles from Omaha. It's the state's ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 2
Eric Schroeder is a Hawaii state prisoner. While at a minimum security prison he was assigned to a work crew under the supervision of a guard he had previously sued. Schroeder claims that the guard threatened him, used anti-semitic slurs and falsely infracted him in retaliation for the previous suits. ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 3
APennsylvania state prisoner brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint against a prison doctor and hospital administrator, alleging that the medical treatment provided to him violated the eighth amendment to the U.S. constitution. The defendant hospital workers moved to dismiss the complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), Fed.R.Civ.P. Even though the ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 3
Robert Hicks was a pretrial detainee in the Jefferson County jail in Kentucky. He attempted to escape by climbing out of a window, his rope broke and he was severely injured in the resulting fall. After a stay in the local hospital he was returned to the jail, bedridden and ...
by Ronald Ronniel Wren
There is no proper way to explain how vital "lead poisoning" is without causing alarm. I am writing this in the hopes that prisoner advocates will step forward and explore the lead poisoning problem in the institutions in which they are presently incarcerated. If there are ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 5
James Camarillo was an HIV positive California state prisoner. He has since been released on parole. While in custody of the California DOC he was transferred to a housing unit of HIV+ prisoners. Camarillo filed suit under § 1983 claiming that the transfer violated his right to equal protection, privacy, ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 6
The Washington State "Civil Commitment" law was upheld by the Washington Supreme Court In Re Young, Wash Sup. Ct, No. 578637-1, 8/9/93. In this case, the sexually violent predator provisions of the 1990 Community Protection Act, RCW 71.09, are challenged by two people who have been civilly committed under it. ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 6
Eduardo Benavides is a federal prisoner who sought to review his medical prison records. The BOP release 56 pages of his medical file to him but withheld 66 pages, including those containing the evaluations and opinions of Benavides treating physicians.
Benavides filed suit under the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 6
More than half the prison inmates nationwide who died from AIDS in 1991 were in New York and New Jersey, where widespread drug abuse has caused much of the disease's spread, a government study said.
Two thirds of the prisoner deaths in New York and New Jersey prisons that year ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 7
Apro se civil litigant was prosecuting a § 1983 civil rights complaint in forma pauperis . The plaintiff was a prisoner and suit was filed against two guards for use of excessive force. After a bench trial, the U.S. district court entered a judgment against the prisoner. He appealed to ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 7
On Sep. 2, 1993, a riot broke out at the overcrowded FCI in Sheridan, OR. According to a report in The Columbian , of Sep. 3, 1993, an office building at the four year old medium security prison was burned to the ground after 20 to 30 prisoners stormed out ...
By John Perotti
The pinnacle of the prisoners' rights movement had about reached its peak when I arrived at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in Lucasville, Ohio, in 1977. I had been transferred from the Ohio State Reformatory (OSR) in Mansfield, Ohio, to what was before the Ohio State ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 9
Former Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) guard Robbie Stringer, was sentenced to two years in prison and a $5,000.00 fine for smuggling seven bullets into the prison in a bag of corn chips. The sentence imposed by Judge Everett Burton was the maximum allowed by law. Stringer pleaded guilty on ...
By Paul Wright
For several hundred years the Irish people have battled the English occupation of their country. In more recent years the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) have continued this tradition of struggle by militarily engaging the British political-military establishment to force a ...
From the Editor
Welcome to another issue of PLN . The big news at this point is that Ed was recently paroled from the Washington DOC to a federal detainer and from there released by the feds. When we started PLN back in 1990 we agreed we would do it ...
By Adrian Lomax
Awhile back a friend wrote in her letter to me that, as she was writing, her son walked into the room and asked what she was doing. Upon hearing her answer, the son said, "Those guys in prison are a bunch of scumbags."
That's certainly not an ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 12
Christopher "Naeem" Trotter is incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Christopher is a young man, 30 years old from a working class Black family. Chris is serving a 142 year sentence as a result of his participation in the February 1, 1985 prison rebellion at the Indiana ...
By Elton R. Winchester #31778-138, Leavenworth
The Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) that went into effect in Novermber of 1987, abolished parole and the U.S. Parole Commission (USPC). Section 235(b)(3) of the SRA required the USPC to hear all of the old law prisoners and set them a parole date within ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 13
Normally PLN does not report on criminal cases but we thought this one might interest our readers. R.B. Springer was a Houston policeman. A Texas grand jury questioned him about numerous complaints of brutality and choking of prisoners and suspects. Springer denied any knowledge or actions of the sort. The ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 14
Stephen Buckley sought damages, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, from prosecutors for fabricating evidence during the preliminary investigation of a highly publicized rape and murder case in Illinois, and form making false statements as a press conference announcing the return of an indictment against him. He claimed that when three ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 14
Lloyd Smith is a Texas state prisoner. While working in the prison kitchen Smith witnessed a prison guard, Raymond Aldingers, order another prisoner to hold out his hand, which Aldingers then proceeded to cut open with a kitchen knife. Aldingers then turned to Smith and asked "You want some of ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 14
Paul Knox is an Illinois state prisoner. After prison officials discovered four knives in his cell, Knox was infracted, found guilty and placed in segregation. Pursuant to prison policy, every time Knox left the segregation unit, to receive visitors, go to the hospital or law library, he was required to ...
Policies, analytical charts and studies and any documentary evidence on family visiting programs (also known as trailer visits, extended family visiting, etc.) and their beneficial qualities are needed in an effort to implement such a program in Ohio. Any documentation, articles, etc., that may be helpful are also needed. Send ...
I am presently seeking information from Muslims (prisoners and civilians), who oppose taking the TB skin test on religious grounds because it violates their Islamic beliefs by having the serum injected into the skin. I am seeking affidavits, articles, legal articles (either American or Islamic law), literature and other references ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 15
On October 4, 1993, they locked down all the outside shops here at McNeil Island. There has been a three month investigation into the activities of the crew bosses who headed the motor pool, plumbing shop and auto body repair shop. Last thursday the cops filmed two of these individuals ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 16
In the October PLN we reported on the case of Powell v. DuCharme , 998 F.2d 710 (9th Cir. 1993) in which a panel of the ninth circuit court of appeals held that the ex post facto clause was not violated by the application of Washington state's new parole scheme ...
Loaded on
Dec. 15, 1993
published in Prison Legal News
December, 1993, page 16
Astate prison regulation that requires inspection of outgoing mail directed to members of the media and the clergy does not violate inmates' first amendment rights, a majority of the U.S. court of appeals for the eighth circuit recently held. The majority noted that the mail in question would only be ...
