by Matt Clarke
On December 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a group of North Carolina prisoners can be treated like adherents of a religion even if the group denies the “religion” label. The case is one of three in which the state ...
by Matthew T. Clarke
On August 22, 2023, the federal court for the Middle District of Alabama declined to dismiss all but a few claims against officials with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) that were made by a prisoner who was abducted at knifepoint, repeatedly sexually assaulted and held ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 11, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined it was illegal to collect court filing fees from a prisoner denied indigent status to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) unless he decides to go forward and pay them on his own. Once ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 12, 2024, the federal court for the Western District of Texas refused a motion by Williamson County Correctional Facility (WCCF) officials, which argued for dismissal of claims by former detainee Rodney A. Hurdsman, 55, that jailers recorded his privileged calls with his attorney and shared ...
by Matt Clarke.
Condemned Texas prisoner Scott Louis Panetti, 65, was taken off the state’s death row on September 27, 2023, when the federal court for the Western District of Texas found him too insane to kill—or as the Court said, because he “lacks a rational understanding of the connection ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 3, 2023, the Wisconsin Department of Justice sent a check for $9,000 to a state prisoner in settlement of his claims that he suffered a heat-related illness, fell and injured himself after state Department of Corrections (DOC) guards ignored his pleas for help. In addition ...
by Matt Clarke
Since 2018, at least seven vulnerable detainees have died at the 366-bed Pottawatomie County Public Safety Center, 30 miles east of Oklahoma City. Yet despite state law requiring deaths be reported within five days to the Oklahoma Health Department’s jail division, the jail failed to report five ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 5, 2023, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina reinstated a parolee’s parental rights that had been stripped for lack of contact with his minor daughter, after finding it was conditions of his parole which had prevented him from contacting her.
Crystal was born to ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 11, 2023, the Supreme Court of Arizona reversed a grant of partial summary judgment to Corizon Health, the former private medical contractor for the state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR), in a suit filed over a state prisoner’s death from allegedly untreated diabetes. ...
