by Chuck Sharman

A jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana returned a verdict on April 2, 2025, awarding $27.75 million in damages to former state prisoner Nathaniel Lake, after finding that staff of private prison giant CoreCivic failed to protect him from a brutal assault by a fellow prisoner at Crossroads Correctional Center (CCC) in Shelby. CoreCivic moved for judgment as a matter of law (JNOV) or a new trial. But the district court denied that motion on August 6, 2025. See: Lake v. CoreCivic, Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 152374 (D. Mont.).

Lake was convicted of attempting to rape a volunteer at a Missoula homeless mission where he sought shelter, and he was sentenced in 2016 to a 40-­year term—with 20 years suspended—in the custody of the state Department of Corrections (DOC). He was released when the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2019, finding the trial court erred in applying the state’s Rape Shield Law to prohibit Lake from presenting evidence that it wasn’t his sperm but that of another unidentified man which was found in the alleged victim’s underwear. See: State v. Lake, 2019 …

by Chuck Sharman

Susie Annie Balfour, who spent 33 years incarcerated at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) before her 2021 release, died on August 5, 2025, the victim of metastatic breast cancer that she blamed on exposure to toxic chemicals in cleaning agents she was forced to use in her prison janitorial job. The 64-year-old left behind a lawsuit which is still pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. Fortunately, she was also able to leave a deposition testimony for trial, after fighting the state Department of Corrections (DOC) and other Defendants for the right to do so and winning on January 7, 2025.

Balfour had already been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, which was terminal, when she filed her suit in 2024. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, she accused DOC officials of exposing her without protective gear to cleaning chemicals that were known to cause cancer and then failing to diagnose and timely treat her when she became sick, thereby demonstrating deliberate indifference to her serious medical need in violation of her Eighth Amendment rights.

Named Defendants in her suit also included Jackson HMA, which ran the Merit …

by Chuck Sharman

On September 18, 2025, less than a month after losing a bid to dismiss a wrongful death suit filed by the survivors of a detainee murdered in the county lockup, San Diego County filed a crossclaim against its jail medical contractor, NaphCare, along with the firm’s subcontracted mental health care provider, Liberty Healthcare. The unusual move by the county against its jail medical contractors was the latest twist in the suit by the survivors of the dead man, Brandon Yates.

Yates, 24, was arrested in January 2024 on suspicion of burglary, after he was found sleeping in a stranger’s backyard shed. Though he was struggling with mental health and addiction issues, he was booked into the County’s Men’s Central Jail in downtown San Diego. Less than a day later, he was found naked and dead on his cell floor, his hands and feet “bound behind his back,” as the complaint later filed on his behalf recalled. His cellmate, Alvin Ruis, had tortured and sexually assaulted him, the complaint continued, before he “choked and smothered Brandon to death.”

Ruis, 36, was a “bypass inmate” supposedly not allowed contact with staff or other detainees because …

by Michael Thompson

Cordell Sanders spent eight years in segregation housing at the Pontiac Center in Indiana after committing multiple disciplinary offenses. While being held apart from others, he suffered from severe mental health issues, harmed himself, attempted multiple times to take his own life, and was found to suffer antisocial personality disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and depressive disorder. Psychologists and psychiatrists employed by Wexford Health created treatment plans as a result that included antidepressants, psychotropic, and mood stabilizing drugs. He has since then brought a lawsuit against the Illinois Department of Corrections health services provider Wexford Health Sources, Inc. for deliberate indifference to his mental health needs by failing to advocate for his removal from administrative segregation resulting in the exacerbation of his mental health issues.

The district court granted a Motion for Summary Judgement filed by the defendants. Sanders appealed and it was affirmed on August 28, 2025.

Circuit Judge Lee noted the tragedy of this case, pointing to Sanders’ severe mental health problems and that the segregation “did little to address them.” Nevertheless, he found that Sanders had been unable to overcome the very high bar of deliberate indifference. Lee cited …

by Chuck Sharman

Back in January 2020, Carlos Escobar Mejia, 57, was in a car in San Diego when he was pulled over by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents. Though he had lived and worked in the U.S. since 1980, he was not a citizen and had no work authorization. CBP arrested him for the immigration violations. At an April 2020 hearing before an immigration judge, Mejia was deemed a flight risk and turned over to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Its agents put him in the Otay Mesa detention center, a 1,400-bed lockup operated under contract by for-profit private prison giant CoreCivic.

By that time, the COVID-19 pandemic was underway, and several employees and migrant detainees at the lockup had already tested positive for the novel coronavirus that causes the disease. Prison officials dragged their feet in providing masks to detainees, forcing them to sign liability waivers to get one, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2020, p.32.] The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued on their behalf, and within weeks, Mejia was named on a list of medically vulnerable detainees that a federal judge …

by Chuck Sharman

Under an agreement filed with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on April 10, 2025, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters agreed to pay $150,000 to the Estate of Esther Truax, a mother of five who died by suicide while in custody of the City jail in December 2021.

Truax, 35, had been booked into the lockup several times previously, so jailers were “well aware” of her mental health issues and previous suicide attempts when they booked her into the jail after an arrest on drug charges on December 1, 2021, according to the complaint later filed on her behalf. Nevertheless, the complaint continued, a jail nurse cleared her for placement in the jail’s general population. There she tied a bedsheet around her neck three days later and plunged over the second-floor balcony railing.

That didn’t kill her though; fellow detainees managed to haul Truax back onto the balcony. She was then placed on suicide watch on the third floor, though another jail nurse thought her suicide attempt was faked to get medication. While in this stage of her confinement, jail records later showed, Truax didn’t receive all of the withdrawal …

by Chuck Sharman

Two legal challenges to forced labor for minimal or no pay, which were mounted by detainees held for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were gaining steam when Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) was re-elected on November 5, 2024. But as his administration ramped up arrests and detention of migrant asylum seekers, both lawsuits have nearly ground to a halt.

The day after the election, the parties to a suit granted class-action status against ICE detention contractor CoreCivic told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California that their settlement talks had failed. Within three days, in a second suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois—where the McHenry County Jail also contracted detention space to ICE, before the state banned the practice in 2022—Defendant jail officials bootstrapped their third-party suit against the federal government to argue that they were entitled to its “derivative” immunity from the forced labor claim.

Both suits alleged that migrant detainees were required to work—for $1 a day in California, for nothing in Illinois—in violation of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). As PLN reported, a claim under the TVPA was …

by Douglas Ankney

On December 24, 2025, the Nevada Court of Appeals reversed the state district court’s dismissal of pretrial detainee David North’s claim that CoreCivic, the private prison operator, violated his due process rights under the Nevada Constitution by failing to protect him from violence at the hands of other detainees at the Nevada Southern Detention Center (NSDC).

North initially filed his complaint in Nye County District Court of Nevada’s Fifth Judicial District. Among other claims, he alleged that he suffered injuries after being attacked by other detainees at the NSDC and “CoreCivic failed to prevent the attack and had policies that permitted the attack to occur.” North argued he was entitled to monetary damages pursuant to federal law, state torts law, and the Nevada Constitution.

CoreCivic removed the matter to federal court. The federal district court screened North’s complaint, dismissed his 42 U.S.C. section 1983 claims, and remanded the case back to state court for resolution of his state law claims. The state district court dismissed North’s failure-­to-­protect claim, finding that North had failed to state a claim; that the claim was barred by the statute of limitations; and the claim was barred by …

On June 24, 2025, Florida’s Seventh Judicial Circuit Court for Putnam County ruled that Centurion of Florida, LLC was acting as the functional equivalent of a state agency when it contracted with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to provide healthcare to prisoners; therefore, it was obligated under the state’s public records law to provide a copy of a settlement agreement reached with a dead prisoner’s estate to the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News.

HRDC filed its request in June 2022, two months after Centurion settled with the Estate of Curtis Dettmann. The 31-year-old prisoner died in January 2018, days after arriving at DOC’s Reception and Medical Center (RMC) in Lake Butler. Centurion staffers providing medical care at the prison allegedly ignored his infective colitis as he quickly vomited away nearly 30 pounds and died, according to the complaint later filed on his behalf under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See: McCrimmon v. Centurion of Fla., USDC (M.D. Fla.), Case No. 3:20-cv-00036.

Centurion refused HRDC’s request, arguing that it was a private entity not subject to the requirements of Florida’s Public Records Act (PRA), ch.119 § 01, …

On February 17, 2025, Paul Wright, Executive Director of the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), signed an agreement accepting a $480,000 payment to resolve claims for records made in a suit filed in state court against Centurion of New Mexico LLC, the contracted medical provider to the state Corrections Department (NMCD).

HRDC, the nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, won a massive trove of records from Centurion in a state court in 2024, after the medical contractor fought hard to keep them secret. As PLN reported, those documents revealed that Centurion had made almost $8.4 million in payouts to settle 47 suits filed over substandard medical care to NMCD prisoners—including 13 cases that resulted in prisoner deaths. All of that botched care was delivered during a relatively short period, too; Centurion won the contract at NMCD in June 2016 and held it just 40 months. 

HRDC then moved for sanctions, and the state court agreed that Centurion was liable under the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), NM Stat § 14-2-1 (2023), for wrongfully withholding the documents—doing so long enough to owe $148,000 plus legal fees and costs. [See: PLN, Dec. …