by Alan Prendergast, Westword
You see them on TV, usually around the time they are arrested. Men who have declared war on America, combatants in a conflict that never ends. They are captured on the street and at airports, in mid-stride and sometimes in mid-attack.
Some of them have long, ...
by Christopher Zoukis
On October 30, 2012, several guards at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City used batons to beat handcuffed prisoner Gabino Genao, 31, into unconsciousness. In the wake of that incident, guards Moises Simancas, April Jackson and Tyrone Wint resigned, pleaded guilty to criminal charges ...
by Paul Wright
Welcome to another issue of PLN! We have been reporting on the federal ADX supermax since it opened in 1994 as the U.S. government’s highest-security prison dedicated to destroying human beings through total isolation. Over the years we have covered the myriad abuses and corruption at ADX, ...
by Derek Gilna
Sebastian Richardson, a former prisoner held in the Special Management Unit (SMU) at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, has won an important legal victory against the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). In a July 15, 2016 ruling, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s ...
by David M. Reutter
In 1868, in response to the abolition of slavery following the Civil War (except for prisoners), Florida enshrined in its constitution the permanent disenfranchisement of people convicted of a felony. The deprivation of felons’ voting rights was combined with Black Codes that criminalized offenses state lawmakers ...
by Steve Horn
In the realm of prisons and jails, many companies have positioned themselves to profit from mass incarceration.
Few have done so in the area of prisoner communications with as much vigor as JPay, whose business model centers around charging prisoners fees to communicate with the outside world ...
by Monte McCoin
PLN’s regular readers will recall our previous coverage of the arrests and convictions of three Ku Klux Klan members who formerly worked as prison guards at Florida’s Reception and Medical Center, who conspired to place a “hit” on a recently-released African American prisoner. David Elliot Moran, Charles ...
by Derek Gilna
California state prisoner Roy Butler, serving an indeterminate prison term for second-degree murder, sought habeas corpus relief on December 12, 2012, contesting the California Parole Board’s process of calculating the length of his sentence. Butler and the state agreed to a settlement “requiring the [Parole] Board to ...
by Matt Clarke
In August 2017, Oklahoma state prisoners and the non-profit All In One Project filed a federal civil rights suit arguing political contributions made by private prison firms to state officials led to contracts with those companies that included a 98 percent occupancy rate at private prisons. The ...
by David Reutter
Cook County, Illinois has paid $4.75 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging it failed to provide doctor-ordered accommodations for a pretrial detainee who suffered seizures.
In October 2014, Michael Joseph Borys was booked into the Cook County Jail on a misdemeanor charge. He was seen by ...
by Steve Horn
On July 1, 2018, the film “American Jail” made its premiere screening before a cable television audience on CNN.
Given how seldom criminal justice-related issues – let alone the carceral system – are given serious discussion on the network, which bills itself as the “worldwide leader in ...
by Matt Clarke
Since February 2015, a settlement and stipulation in Parsons v. Ryan has required the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) to monitor and log indoor temperatures at state prisons. According to the Phoenix New Times, not only do the logs show excessive summer heat – as high as ...
by Matthew Clarke
On February 21, 2018, a federal district court issued an injunction prohibiting the Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) from reverting conditions of confinement on death row to those that existed when a lawsuit challenging those conditions was filed four years earlier. The DOC had improved conditions on ...
by Matthew Clarke
In January 2018, the City of Cleveland Heights, Ohio agreed to pay $200,000 to settle a lawsuit over the death of a prisoner two days after she arrived at the city’s jail.
Ralkina Jones, 37, was booked into the facility on charges of assaulting her ex-husband with ...
Loaded on
Sept. 3, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 24
On August 1, 2018, PLN’s parent organization, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the mother of a Florida state prisoner who died of starvation and inadequate medical and mental health care in December 2015.
Vincent Gaines was serving a ...
by Matt Clarke
In November 2017, Summit County, Colorado reached a $3.5 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by the family of a prisoner who died at the county’s jail.
Zachary Moffitt, 33, was being treated for acute alcohol poisoning in a hospital emergency room when he pulled out his ...
by Derek Gilna
In June 2012, following a dispute with officials at the Washington State Penitentiary (WSP), prisoner John Thomas Entler filed written complaints in which he said he would file lawsuits and seek criminal charges if his grievances were not addressed. He was then disciplined for those statements under ...
Loaded on
Sept. 3, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 26
As dawn broke on August 6, 2018, the light shone on a group of about two dozen protesters who had blockaded the main entrance to the Nashville, Tennessee headquarters of CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), the nation’s largest for-profit prison firm. Both entrances to the building’s parking garage were ...
by Ed Lyon
Aaron Carter is a Virginia state prisoner; he is also a member of the Nation of Islam. Due to his religion’s dietary restrictions, he was enrolled in the prison system’s Common Fare program (CFP), which serves both halal and kosher meals.
On October 1, 2015, the CFP ...
by Christopher Zoukis
Kevin Carwile, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney in charge of the agency’s death penalty prosecution unit, has been demoted over allegations that he fostered a “sexualized environment” in his workplace.
The New York Times reported on the accusations against Carwile on March 31, 2018 in ...
by Ed Lyon
Erik Daniel Christianson spent time in the Martin County jail in Minnesota on four occasions between 2013 and 2014. Under state “pay for stay” laws, prisoners are required to pay $25 for each day spent in jail. Accordingly, Christianson accrued a total of $7,625 in jail debt. ...
Loaded on
Sept. 3, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 30
by Ed Lyon
On March 25, 2015, Gregory Smith, 39, was arrested in Hobart, Indiana for driving five miles an hour over the speed limit. He was transferred to the Crown Point police, then booked into the Lake County jail. He told several guards and medical staff that he suffered ...
by Matthew Clarke
After former Mexican Mafia general Raymond S. “Indio” Tellez agreed to testify against the gang, two gang members stabbed him multiple times in a secure area of a private prison operated by the GEO Group. He filed suit and, following a bench trial, received $25,000 in damages ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 16, 2017, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $1.7 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by the family of a man who committed suicide at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility (TTCF).
Eric Loberg, 48, displayed signs of acute psychosis when he was ...
by Matthew Clarke
From 2014 through July 2018, at least 52 lawsuits were filed in federal court against Correct Care Solutions (CCS) – a private medical contractor based in Nashville, Tennessee – alleging failure to provide adequate medical care to prisoners in Colorado jails. Six of the cases involved fatalities ...
by Matt Clarke
In Utah’s local jails, a record number of deaths in 2016 caused both civil liberties groups and state legislators to question the standards under which the facilities operate. But there are no jail standards under state law, and the standards adopted by counties are kept secret by ...
by Dale Chappell
Although prison phone service providers and law enforcement officials won their lawsuit to block the FCC’s $.11-per-minute cap on intrastate (in-state) prison phone calls [see: PLN, July 2017, p.52], states can still lower the rates – to even below $.11 per minute – and some have done ...
by David Reutter
Poor sanitation, asbestos contamination, leaky roofs, inadequate health care, the loss of a top doctor frustrated with it all – those are just some of the problems that have plagued Georgia’s Augusta State Medical Prison (ASMP). Plus incidents of brutality by guards.
“These prisoners are often selected ...
by Matthew Clarke
On November 15, 2017, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal of a Louisiana federal prisoner’s claims that prison officials conspired to retaliate against him for filing a grievance regarding power outages at his facility.
Derrick D.L. Brunson’s grievance expressed safety concerns related to several ...
by David Reutter
A North Carolina federal district court has voided a contract between death row exoneree Henry McCollum and his lawyer. The court’s unusual move was based on evidence that due to his low IQ, McCollum was vulnerable to manipulation.
As previously reported in PLN, McCollum and his brother, ...
by Matthew Clarke
In September 2017, Washoe County, Nevada settled a lawsuit brought by the parents of a man who died after a struggle with deputies at the county jail.
Reno police arrested Justin Thompson, 35, and took him to a hospital for treatment of injuries he received in a ...
by Matt Clarke
In 2015, Texas converted its outpatient program for civilly committed sex offenders into a “tiered” treatment program, in which participants start out in a “total confinement facility” at twice the cost of the original program. The state awarded Correct Care Solutions a $24 million contract to provide ...
by Matt Clarke
In November 2017, Ohio state officials agreed to pay $525,000 to settle a lawsuit over the repeated sexual assault of a female prisoner.
Chesterland, Ohio attorney David B. Malik represented Dorothea Reynolds, who was incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) in 2008 and 2009. He ...
Loaded on
Sept. 3, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 44
The City of Ferguson, Missouri has paid $55,000 to a pretrial detainee who had sex with a guard, who in exchange allowed her to escape.
On October 9, 2013, while driving through Ferguson, a woman identified as “J.W.” was pulled over for an expired license plate. During the stop, J.W. ...
by Derek Gilna
In December 2017, Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes saw their confessions in a 2000 murder trial that resulted in their convictions set aside by Cook County Circuit Court Judge James M. Obbish. But as soon as they were released from prison they were immediately taken into custody ...
by Matt Clarke
On January 14, 2018, about 400 to 500 civilly committed sex offender “patients” met in the common area of California’s Coalinga State Hospital to protest a stringent new rule that went into effect that day. The rule banned the possession of electronic devices with Internet access or ...
by Steve Horn
Louisiana-based Emerald Correctional Management, also known as Emerald Corrections, was once among the major movers and shakers in the private prison industry. Today it’s a figment of the past.
Emerald was notorious for atrocious conditions in its detention facilities, as documented in a recent investigative piece co-published ...
by David M. Reutter
In December 2017, a Louisiana federal district court declared that the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court (OPCDC) had violated the constitutional rights of defendants by jailing them for failure to pay fines and fees without first determining their ability to pay. The federal court further found ...
by Matthew Clarke
On November 11, 2017, notice of a $200,000 settlement was filed in a federal lawsuit over the death of a diabetic Texarkana jail prisoner who died after a nurse ignored her repeated requests for a blood sugar test. Soon thereafter the mother of the prisoner filed a ...
by Ed Lyon
On November 7, 2015, Michael Marshall, who was mentally ill, was arrested for trespassing and disturbing the peace at a motel in Denver, Colorado. Upon being booked into jail with a $100 bond, he was video recorded pacing in a walkway after refusing to remain seated. He ...
by David Reutter
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held on January 22, 2018 that civil rights actions brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are considered personal injury claims. With that principle established, the Court found that such a claim can survive a plaintiff’s death and allow for party substitution ...
by David Reutter
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals held that privacy interests in not disclosing a 20-year-old proposed termination letter for a previous Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) outweighed the pubic interest under exemption 5 U.S.C. § 552(6)(6).
Howard Bloomgarden, represented by attorney Torrence E.S. Lewis, filed a Freedom ...
Loaded on
Sept. 3, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 52
Four employees at North Carolina’s Pasquotank Correctional Institution were killed during an ill-conceived escape attempt last year. The four prisoners involved in the incident, who were caught before they left the prison grounds, have been charged with first-degree murder.
The deadly October 12, 2017 escape plan originated in the prison’s ...
by Edward B. Lyon, Jr.
Charles E. Sisney, serving a life sentence since 1997, has been active in the courts on prison-related issues for years. His latest target is the 2014 version of the South Dakota Department of Corrections’ (SDDOC) pornography policy, which prohibits state prisoners from purchasing, possessing or ...
by David Reutter
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a $25,000 verdict in a civil rights action alleging the sheriff in Tulsa County, Oklahoma was deliberately indifferent to conditions that resulted in a 17-year-old prisoner being repeatedly sexually assaulted by a guard.
The lawsuit concerned events that occurred between ...
by David Reutter
In February 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s administrative exhaustion requirement justifies the tolling of the statute of limitations, but not the creation of a new accrual time.
Arizona prisoner Angel Soto filed suit over an April 2010 incident ...
by Jeremy Pinson
Following a trial in April 2017 in a Los Angeles, California federal courtroom, a jury awarded $675,000 to prisoner James M. Jerra in a case that included excessive force and retaliation Bivens claims.
Jerra, who was housed at the Federal Correctional Complex in Lompoc, alleged that after ...
Loaded on
Sept. 4, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 56
A recent study by the Urban Institute estimated that “wrongful convictions in cases with a sexual assault component occurred at a rate of 11.6 percent.”
While the research was based on 714 murder and felony sexual assault cases across 56 Virginia circuit courts, it concluded that the wrongful conviction rate ...
by Matthew Clarke
A lawsuit filed in federal district court alleges guards at the jail in Milam County, Texas beat a compliant prisoner without any reason, causing him to become paralyzed, then “released” him while he was in the hospital so the jail wouldn’t have to pay his medical bills. ...
by David Reutter
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that an Indiana federal district court erred in dismissing a prisoner’s civil rights action for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The Court held the record indicated the prisoner was prevented from filing a grievance due to mixed or improper instructions ...
by R. Bailey
New Mexico’s Otero County Board of County Commissioners agreed to pay a former Otero County Detention Center (OCDC) pretrial detainee $2 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit that alleged punishment without due process.
The suit claimed that OCDC had a policy or practice of placing mentally ...
by Derek Gilna
After serving a 16-year sentence for forcible sodomy and forcible oral copulation, California state prisoner Sherman D. Manning was released on parole in February 2016 under the custody of the state’s Division of Adult Parole Operations. Following months of harassment and retaliation by that agency, Manning, with ...
by Steve Horn
A new study published by the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) – the first of its kind – reports that unemployment in the U.S. has hit former prisoners the hardest.
Titled “Out of Prison & Out of Work,” the report, released in July 2018, crunched survey ...
Loaded on
Sept. 4, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 60
On March 15, 2018, Lambda Legal, an organization that advocates for LGBT rights, announced the settlement of a lawsuit brought by a male-to-female transgender Texas prisoner who was beaten and raped while serving 14 years in all-male facilities.
After Passion Star, 34, told Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) staff ...
by Dale Chappell
A sua sponte dismissal for lack of jurisdiction by a state Superior Court was improper, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court held on April 19, 2018, when the record was “otherwise devoid” of any indication the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction in the case.
Steve Anctil, a state prisoner, ...
by Derek Gilna
Julie Bilotta obtained a settlement from the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre in the Canadian province of Ontario after staff took nine hours to call emergency personnel when she went into early labor. Her son, Gionni, suffered a traumatic birth in September 2012, and succumbed to chronic breathing problems ...
Loaded on
Sept. 2, 2018
published in Prison Legal News
September, 2018, page 62
Arizona: The Pima County Board of Supervisors passed a historic resolution on December 19, 2017 to prohibit the county from entering into contracts with private prison companies like CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) and GEO Group. “Big for-profit corporations operate on the cheap by cutting [salaries of] correctional officers ...
