On February 19, 1997, a unanimous United States Supreme Court held that the revocation of previously granted good time credits violates the ex post facto provision of the United States constitution. The Court held that subjective intent on the part of legislatures was immaterial for ex post facto purposes. In ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 3
In the September, 1995, issue of PLN we reported that a Marin county superior court judge had issued a preliminary injunction enjoining Title 15, section 3174(e)(1) of the California Code of Regulations (CCR). The regulation in question eliminated family visits for a wide category of prisoners, including those convicted of ...
The young Hispanic woman, juggling a squirming infant under each arm, began to cry as she read the notice posted on the wall of the visitor processing building at Lancaster prison. For months prisoner rights advocates had been warning visitors, trying to organize resistance, but few believed it would ever ...
Longtime PLN readers may recall that in early 1994 Ed Mead, PLN's former co-editor, and I filed suit against the Washington State Indeterminate Sentence Review Board (ISRB, aka the parole board). The suit challenged the "no association" parole condition they had placed on Ed that prohibited from having contact with ...
"Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law." Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
For many jailhouse lawyers, especially those new to the craft, there is a sort of "awe" that governs their study, contemplation and utility of the law. Like new converts to a religion they ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 7
New York City jails have an average daily population of 20,000. Cigarettes sell for $2.36 a pack, and city jails sell about 8,000 packs per day (not counting weekends) for a total of nearly $5 million in annual cigarette sales. A proposed ban on smoking in NY City jails was ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 8
A federal district court in Michigan held that provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) calling for the immediate termination of consent decrees where no findings of constitutional violations were made by the court, was unconstitutional on several grounds. The PLRA created 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b)(2) whereby a prison ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 8
The court of appeals for the fifth circuit held that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) applies retroactively to appeals pending on its date of enactment as well as cases dismissed prior to its enactment. The court also held that dismissals based on frivolousness which are reversed on appeal do ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 9
A federal district court in Michigan held that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) required that attorneys representing prisoners be paid a maximum of $112.50 an hour. Hadix v. Johnson is the long running Michigan class action suit. After prevailing in the district court in a challenge to a portion ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 10
The court of appeals for the second circuit held that a district court erred in dismissing a prisoner's failure to protect claim on the basis that the prisoner could not name his attackers beforehand. The court also held that district courts cannot resolve conflicting deposition testimony by granting summary judgment ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 10
A Philadelphia common pleas court panel fined the city $2.2 million for "degrading" conditions in the city's prisons.
The judgment, passed down by a three judge panel in early October, 1996, was accompanied by a contempt of court citation for the city. The fine and citation stem from an ongoing ...
On Friday, September 27, 1996, rioting broke out among more than 200 black and Latino prisoners in New Folsom's B Facility. The violence lasted some 31 minutes with fighting on the yard, in the medical clinic, and in prison industries. Guards fired over 30 rounds from assault rifles and gas ...
by Glenn Wright and Dan Pens
Louisville, Kentucky based private prison vendor U.S. Corrections Corporation (USCC) was sharply criticized by Florida's Auditor General in three separate reports issued by the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA). The reports were the result of state audits of Gadsden Correctional ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 12
An Arkansas state prisoner was awarded $120,000 after a jury heard her claim that she was impregnated by one guard and sexually harassed by another. The federal court jury found that Laura Berry's constitutional rights were violated by former guard Randall Reed and former Sgt. Jay Oswalt at the Tucker ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 13
In the October, 1995, issue of PLN we reported that a state trial court in Massachusetts, in an unpublished ruling, had dismissed criminal indictments against twelve prisoners because the indictments were brought after the prisoners had already been subjected to prison disciplinary hearings and punishment. The trial court held that ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 13
The court of appeals for the fifth circuit held that a jail staffing practice that allowed a lone male guard to oversee female detainees could be held to violate due process after a woman detainee was raped by a guard. The court held that financial considerations alone do not justify ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 14
Questions arise as to whether a contract for the Franklin County jail renovation was legal. The county commissioners awarded the unbid contract in May 1995 to Voinovich-Sgro Architects, Inc., a subsidiary of the Voinovich Group, owned by Paul Voinovich, the brother to Governor George Voinovich. John Hay, a man who ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 14
The court of appeals for the ninth circuit reversed a jury verdict which had found prison officials had violated a prisoner's eighth amendment rights during a rectal search but that they were entitled to qualified immunity for doing so. The court held these findings were inconsistent and reversed and remanded ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 15
The court of appeals for the tenth circuit held that beating a naked, handcuffed, non-resisting prisoner violates the eighth amendment; that placing a prisoner in a strip cell without blankets or heating violates the eighth amendment as well. The court also discussed when a district judge should be recused from ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 16
The court of appeals for the seventh circuit held a district court erred in dismissing a case without allowing the plaintiff to conduct discovery in order to oppose the defendants' motion for summary judgment. In doing so the court gives a detailed discussion of the relation between discovery, compelling discovery ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 16
In the February, 1995, issue of PLN we reported that Connecticut state prisoners had filed a class action suit in state court challenging prison regulations that required the recording of prisoner phone calls and that prisoners, outgoing mail could be read and censored by prison officials.
The Connecticut supreme court ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 16
One of every eight adult and juveniles in Wisconsin's prisons or reform schools are receiving psychotropic drugs for a mental disorder. According to Sharon Zunker, director of Wisconsin's Department of Corrections Bureau of Health Services, the cost of psychotropic drug treatment has grown from about $58,000 in 1987 to $110,000 ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 17
Virginia is one of 13 states that permanently revoke the voting rights of felons. As a consequence, nearly a quarter of a million Virginians, most of them black men, cannot vote.
A Virginia newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, examined state police records to compile a report citing 241,420 convicted felons banned ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 17
The Traditional Native American Tobacco Seed Bank and Education Program (TNAT) at the University of New Mexico has three objectives: 1.) Collecting, preserving, growing and distributing the seeds of the many traditional Native American types of tobacco; 2.) Educating Native Americans about the dangers of tobacco misuse; 3.) Providing traditional ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 17
In the July 1995 issue of PLN we reported "51 Months for Sex With Prisoners," about Gulf County (FL) sheriff Al Harrison, then 52, who was convicted of seven misdemeanor counts of violating the civil rights of five female prisoners over a period of several years. The jury found that ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 17
The Federal Judicial Center, a branch of the federal judiciary, has published a 172 page book, "Resource Guide for Managing Prisoner Civil Rights Litigation." The book is written for judges and court personnel who receive, process and rule on prison suits. The book pays special attention to the Prison Litigation ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 18
Iberia Parish, Louisiana, reached an agreement December 2, 1996, with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to settle a lawsuit alleging prisoner abuse in the parish jail. The suit was filed by the DOJ in June, 1996, against then-sheriff Errol Romero and then jail warden Danny David.
The DOJ alleged ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 18
In 1995 Congress cut funding for some twenty-odd regional death penalty resource centers, pro bono legal aid clinics which specialized in death penalty appeals. The Texas legislature halved the $4 million in state funds budgeted to pay for counsel in state capital appeals cases to go along with a state ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 18
In February, 1997, by a vote of 280 to 119, representatives of the American Bar Association's House of Delegates endorsed a report calling for a nationwide suspension of executions until the judicial process is overhauled.
The report was offered jointly by the A.B.A.'s individual rights and litigation committees and was ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 19
The November 26, 1996, edition of the Peninsula Daily News reported that Lisa Wikstrom, a guard at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington had filed a $1 million damage claim against the state, claiming she had been sexually harassed. Wikstrom's claim stated that Steve Sowers, associate superintendent at CBCC, ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 19
The court of appeals for the ninth circuit held that an Alaska state prisoner's claim that he was denied photocopies was not barred by res judicata where a similar claim was litigated in a class action suit but the issue was not raised. Timothy Hiser, an Alaska state prisoner, filed ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 20
CA: In December, 1996, prison psychiatric counselor Massoud Shadzad was arrested while fondling a female prisoner at the Elmwood Correctional Center for Women in Milpitas and charged with sexual battery. The investigation began when Shadzad promised a female prisoner cigarettes in exchange for her panties and she reported the offer. ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 21
The court of appeals for the third circuit set forth the conditions under which double celling will violate the eighth amendment. The court also held that segregation prisoners are entitled to legal assistance to present their claims to the courts. Several New Jersey state prisoners held in Protective Custody (PC) ...
Loaded on
April 15, 1997
published in Prison Legal News
April, 1997, page 22
The court of appeals for the seventh circuit gave its first ruling on the application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to prison cases in that circuit and in doing so defined what constitutes a "substantial burden" on religious practcies. The court consolidated two appeals by Muslim prisoners in ...
