On February 27, 1999, a Baldwin county superior court jury in Georgia awarded prisoner Stephanie Stitt $600,000 in damages in a medical neglect suit against Correctional Medical Systems (CMS). Stitt fell and injured her back while playing volleyball at the Baldwin State Prison. The Georgia Department of Corrections has contracted ...

DOJ Investigates CMS Health Care At Missouri Prison

by Michael Rigby


Allegations of improper medical treat-ment, lack of medical treatment, and several suspicious deaths at the Women's Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center, a state women's prison in Vandalia, Missouri, has prompted an investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Health care services at the prison are provided by Correctional Medical Services (CMS).


Death is no stranger at the Vandalia prison. On March 23, 2003, Crystal Smith was found unresponsive in her cell. She was later pronounced dead. Her sister, Angela Smith Hynes, voiced concerns that Smith may have been denied needed medications.


On July 2, 2003, Vandalia prisoner Al'Deana Simmons, 33, was pronounced dead after she was discovered unconscious. Prison officials told her mother, Virginia Terry, that she had choked on her breakfast; however, the death certificate listed the cause of death as a ruptured aneurysm. Terry said that her daughter had been complaining about poor health care at the prison in her letters and phone calls home. Simmons called home the day before she died. "She said her head was sizzling and that she was going blind," said Terry. "The prison doctor ...

Two separate state court class action lawsuits have challenged the excessive phone rates charged to people who accept collect calls from New Mexico state prisoners. The first lawsuit, Valdez v. Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, was filed on December 30, 1999, in Rio Arriba district court. The plaintiffs have family members imprisoned in private prisons or jails run by Wackenhut, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Cornell Corrections and Correctional Services Corporation (CSC). Private prisons hold about 30% of all state prisoners in New Mexico and numerous jail detainees. The defendants in the suit include the private prison companies and their employees. The phone service provider defendants are Evercom Systems, Inc. and PCS America, Inc.

The plaintiffs claim that the private prison companies have exclusive contracts whereby prisoners can only place collect calls using the services of the phone service provider defendants, who in turn pay hefty kickbacks to the prison companies in exchange for the contracts. This arrangement prevents the use of competitive services or lower rates by either the prisoner or the people who accept collect calls from them.

The plaintiffs claim that these exclusive contracts and the resulting kickbacks violate the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act, NMSA 1978, § 57-12-1, ...

Two suits were filed against Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) in less than a week. On April 15, 2003 the family of Iulai Amani sued CCA and the state of Hawaii for "wrongful conduct" resulting in Amani's death. The lawsuit came exactly two years from the date Amani died in the Florence Correctional Center (FCC) in Arizona.


A week earlier Victoriano Ortiz also sued CCA and the state of Hawaii for a severe beating he received at the hands of gang members in FCC. Both incidents occurred less than a week apart; both men were transfer prisoners from Hawaii, being housed in the private prison.


Amani, then 24, died of a heart attack induced by a drug overdose when packets of methamphetamine he had swallowed burst open in his stomach. Amani was a member of the United Samoan Organization (USO) which, at the time of his death, had complete control of the CCA prison.


USO took over the Florence prison on September 12, 2000 "during a riot for power," investigators said. Since that time, gang members openly and actively controlled "the trafficking, use, sale of illicit drugs, the making and use of swipe [a prison-made alcoholic beverage] ... and violent ...

The U.S. district court for the southern district of Ohio held that a genuine issue of material fact precluded summary judgement against an arrestee who was denied needed AIDS medication during his eight-day jail incarceration.

Devin Karl Murphy brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against defendants Deborah L. Bray, R.N.; Dr. Jean-Claude Loiseau, Correctional Medical Systems, Inc.; Hamilton County Sheriff Simon L. Leis, Jr., in his official capacity; and several other personnel at the Hamilton County Justice Center.

At the time of his arrest, Murphy was taking prophylactics for thrush, meningitis, herpes, medicine for depression, and a drug cocktail to inhibit the growth of the AIDS virus. Murphy did not receive his medications during his entire incarceration of eight days, even though he told jail personnel of his need for them when he was processed into the jail. And despite the delivery of the medications from Murphy's home two days later under Dr. Loiseau's orders and the complete medical profile provided by Murphy's home health care nurse, he was still denied the needed medications.

In response to Sheriff Leis's Motion for Summary Judgement, the court stated that under §1983, Murphy must prove (1) that the challenged conduct was committed ...

As the number of prisoners in private lock-ups continue to increase, lawsuits filed by them, not unexpectedly, are also on the rise. While that is no surprise to corrections professionals and litigators, what is new are some of the legal theories being pressed and the entities named as defendants. This ...

On Sept. 17, 1999, Colorado Dept. of Corrections officials confirmed that they are investigating allegations of brutality, sexual misconduct and drug trafficking involving guards at the CCA-operated Kit Carson Corr. Facility in Burlington, which houses around 650 state prisoners. The investigation began in July but was not disclosed until it was almost complete.

Ron Alford, warden at the CCA prison, was suspended; kitchen manager Rocky Stewart was fired for undisclosed reasons: and CCA guard Shanna Turpin, 29, was charged with introducing contraband into the facility. According to a court affidavit, Turpin was also accused of engaging in a sexual affair with prisoner Moses Martinez.

"I don't know that I would characterize [the alleged misconduct] as isolated," stated Colorado DOC spokeswoman Liz McDonough, "but I don't know that I wouldn't characterize it as isolated. We're talking about multiple allegations involving multiple people." McDonough said "a number" of the 200-person staff at the private prison had quit or been fired. CCA spokesperson Susan Hart declined to comment.

Up to fifteen female employees, including guards and nurses, are suspected of having affairs with prisoners since the Kit Carson facility opened in November 1998. Former guard Shanna Turpin said some employees sought relationships with ...

In October, 1999, a federal jury returned acquittals and a minor conviction against private prison guards charged with beating and abusing Missouri prisoners. As previously reported in PLN, some 100 Missouri prisoners were sent to the Brazoria county jail in Texas to relieve overcrowding in the Missouri prison system. The jail was operated by the Bobby Ross Group, a private prison company.

In 1997 a video surfaced, which was shown on national television, in which jail guards were shown beating and abusing prisoners. The incident led to several civil rights suits seeking money damages as well as a federal criminal prosecution.

In 1999 the U.S. government charged Brazoria jail guards Robert Percival, David Cisneros and Wilton Wallace with federal civil rights charges stemming from the videotaped beating of prisoner Toby Hawthorne.

Percival was acquitted of all charges, despite being on video kicking Hawthorne in the groin. The jury deadlocked in Cisnero's case and convicted Wallace on misdemeanor charges for kicking Hawthorne in the head. Wallace has previous federal civil rights convictions stemming from abusing prisoners at the Brazoria county jail.

Brazoria county district attorney Jeri Yenne was critical of the federal prosecution. Yenne accused the FBI of covering up its ...

A federal court in Missouri has held that Missouri prisoners whose incarceration was contracted to Brazoria County, Texas, could sue Brazoria County in Missouri.

This is a lawsuit filed in Missouri federal district court by Missouri state prisoners who were abused while incarcerated in Brazoria County pursuant to its contract with Missouri. Both the beatings and the legal proceedings in Texas were previously reported in PLN. [See: "No Qualified Immunity for Texas Sheriff and CCRI Guards Who Abused Missouri Prisoners," PLN, August, 1999.]

The prisoners invoked jurisdiction under the Missouri long-arm statute, Mo.Rev.Stat. §506.500, to claim that they were third-party beneficiaries of the contract and Brazoria County had breached the contract. The prisoners also asserted an Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Brazoria County filed a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The court held that, pursuant to State ex rel. Deere & Company v. Pinnell, 454 S.W.2d 899, 892 (Mo. bane 1970) and State ex rel. Newport v. Wiesman, 627 S.W.2d 874 (Mo. banc 1982), the long-arm statute extended jurisdiction of the Missouri courts to nonresident defendants to the extent allowable under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"To ...

The court of appeals for the Seventh circuit held that habeas corpus was not the proper means to challenge a state statute allowing states to confine their prisoners in private prisons in other states. The court also held that a lawsuit challenging prisoners' confinement in private prisons in other states is frivolous.

Several Wisconsin state prisoners filed habeas corpus petitions in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Wis.Stat.Ann. § 301.21(2m). This law authorizes Wisconsin prison officials to contract the captivity of Wisconsin prisoners to private prisons in other states. As previously reported in PLN, Wisconsin has over 4,000 of its prisoners being held in private prisons operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in Tennessee and Oklahoma. [PLN, Mar. 1999] The petitioners claimed that § 301.21(2m) violates the Thirteenth amendment to the US constitution. The district court dismissed the habeas petition. The appeals court affirmed.

As a preliminary matter, the court of appeals held that 42 U.S.C. § 1983, not habeas corpus, is the proper means by which to challenge a state statute. Simply put, habeas can be used only if a prisoner is seeking to "'get out' of custody in a meaningful sense." Habeas cannot, as a general rule, ...