by Mark Wilson
Locked in solitary confinement for decades, mentally ill Illinois prisoner Anthony Gay engaged in severe and shocking self-mutilation. Stabbing a razor blade into his eye. Eating his own flesh. Cutting out one of his testicles and hanging it on a cell door. He also packed a fan ...
By Paul Wright
This month’s cover story continues our ongoing coverage of solitary confinement. Since our inception in 1990 PLN has reported on the use and growth of solitary confinement as a means of torture against prisoners. As the physical torture of prisoners was slowly enjoined by the courts in ...
by Eike Blohm, MD
Defendants nationwide who require competency restoration are suffering irreparable harm awaiting psychiatric beds in solitary confinement.
Here’s what happens: An individual with major mental illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, comes to the attention of law enforcement due to the delusions or mania that are ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
California’s Monterey County Sheriff’s Department (MCSD) was under the spotlight in October 2022, when two “Jane Doe” lawsuits were filed accusing now-retired Undersheriff John Mineau of sexually harassing a pair of co-workers. But the agency has been embroiled in ethical issues at least since ex-Sheriff Steve ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On October 4, 2022, Judge Roy B. Dalton, Jr. of the federal court for the Middle District of Florida excoriated officials with the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and its Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution, holding them in contempt for showing deliberate indifference to prisoner Frederick Mervin ...
by Jayson Hawkins
Haiti’s recent history reads like an endless tragedy of natural disasters and political upheavals. In between devastating hurricanes and earthquakes, a presidential assassination and gang wars paint a picture of a failed state. Violence regularly halts traffic in or out of the nation’s capital. Many residents rely ...
by David M. Reutter
California’s Superior Court for Sacramento County issued a Writ of Mandate on September 30, 2022, ordering the state Department of Correction and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to “immediately cease” transferring prisoners under a controversial new housing policy.
This case was brought by state prisoner Israel Villarreal. His petition ...
by Keith Sanders
On November 14, 2022, a Hawaiian court ordered the state Department of Public Safety (DPS), the agency that runs state prisons and jails, to reveal the names of those who have died while incarcerated by the state.
The decision by Judge John M. Tonaki of the state’s ...
by Harold Hempstead
On April 8, 2022, a former supervising guard at a private prison operated for the Tennessee Department of Corrections pleaded guilty to two counts of civil rights violations for assaulting a compliant prisoner. When sentenced in May 2023, the former security threat group coordinator for CoreCivic’s Trousdale ...
by Chuck Sharman
On August 12, 2022, the federal courtfor the Central District of California approved a settlement for the minor children of a jail detainee who committed suicide less than nine hours after he was arrested for auto burglary – despite the refusal of the car’s owner to press ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 10, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed a district court’s grant of summary judgment to employees of the Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) in a case accusing them of failing to protect a prisoner who suffered a fatal overdose ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
An October 2022 report by the Office of Correction and Law Enforcement (OCLE) in California’s Santa Clara County faults the county Sheriff’s Department (SCSD) for prematurely closing an investigation into the death of a mentally ill detainee during a transfer between county jails in August 2018. After ...
by Keith Sanders
America’s carceral system strips millions of people of many privileges as citizens. Even when released, some of those privileges are not regained. Take voting, for instance. Felons – with rare exceptions in a couple of states – lose their privilege to participate in the political process that ...
by Jacob Barrett
On August 25, 2022, the New Mexico Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of a challenge to the state’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Mexico prisons. Though not entirely agreeing with the lower court’s reasoning, the Court affirmed the result because none of the named prisoner plaintiffs ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
At the request of former Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D), the director of the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC), Charles Daniels, submitted his resignation on September 30, 2022. The move came three days after a head count at Southern Desert Correctional Center (SDCC) revealed that a ...
by Keith Sanders
On February 2, 2023, the federal court for the Central District of Illinois denied a motion to overturn a $400,000 jury verdict for a state prisoner, who suffered serious complications arising from untreated diabetic ulcers. Before month’s end, the Court augmented that with nearly $250,000 in attorneys’ ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On June 7, 2022, the federal court for the District of Arizona granted dismissal to claims made by the mother of an 18-year-old prisoner left permanently disabled in a brutal beating at Maricopa County’s Fourth Avenue Jail. Selene Ortiz stipulated to dismissal after accepting an offer ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On October 11, 2022, the U.S.Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of California prisoner’s suit alleging he was assaulted because a guard labeled him a “snitch.” The ruling represents a reversal of the Court’s previous judgment in the case, which found that damages ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
On December 8, 2022, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) released a summary of the Public Scoping Meeting held in Whitesburg, Kentucky, regarding its proposed bid to build a $500 million federal prison on top of a former coal mining site in Letcher County.
The meeting, ...
by Ben Tschirhart
On August 16, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the verdict of a federal jury, stripping $20,000 in damages awarded to a former federal prisoner in New York for mental and emotional injury suffered during confinement. In its decision, the Court made ...
by Eike Blohm, MD
On January 26, 2023, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) granted California approval of a plan to extend Medi-Cal, the state’s equivalent to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income individuals. As of that date, prisoners scheduled for release will be able to ...
by David M. Reutter
In an opinion issued on November 22, 2022, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that urine is not a “noxious or filthy substance.” Therefore, the Court affirmed dismissal of vandalism charges against a detainee for urinating on a jail’s floor.
Angel O. Perez Narvaez was ...
by Kevin W. Bliss
The Iowa Ombudsman Office (IOO) released its Annual Report on December 15, 2022, calling out the state Department of Corrections (DOC) for unfairly addressing several difficulties it faces, including the abuse of K2 by prisoners.
Like many states, Iowa has struggled with the synthetic drug, which ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
A report released by the Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) on October 1, 2022, largely rejected recommendations made by a work group to reduce costs for prisoners in state lockups and their families.
Tasked by the state General Assembly, the work group focused on three major ...
by Jacob Barrett
In 2018, the State of Washington reached a settlement to reform its forensic health system. [See: PLN, Aug. 2017, p.22; May 2019, p.54.] As part of the settlement, the State agreed to follow the district court’s order “to achieve legislative changes to reduce the number of ...
by David M. Reutter
In a precedential ruling displaying galling cowardice, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ordered summary judgment on November 9, 2022, against a group of sex offenders whose class-action suit claimed their civil rights were violated when the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) denied ...
by Casey J. Bastian
On July 1, 2022, Indiana House Enrolled Act No. 1004 took effect, amending sections of the state code governing parole, supervised release, and placement in community corrections programs in ways that primarily affect sexual offenders – sending those who would previously have spent a short sentence ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 7, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that a Virginia prisoner successfully pleaded that a policy of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) substantially burdened his religious beliefs. That sent the case back to the district court to determine ...
by David M. Reutter
On May 3, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for defendant jailers in a lawsuit seeking damages for a Utah detainee’s suicide. Not only bad for the survivors of the unfortunate man, the case also offers a lesson in ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
A warden at a Texas detention center and his twin brother have been charged with shooting two migrants, one fatally, in the town of Sierra Blanca along the Mexican border on September 27, 2022. Michael Sheppard had been helming the West Texas Detention Facility (WTDF), which ...
by David M. Reutter
Technology giveth and technology taketh away – even in prison. That was the conclusion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on October 26, 2022, when it reversed dismissal of an Ohio prisoner’s civil rights action, finding a viable dispute regarding exhaustion of ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On September 29, 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed S.B. 1008 into law, barring government agencies in the state from collecting any part of the revenue from providing calls in prisons and jails. It also makes calls completely free at state prisons and juvenile detention facilities. ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
In July 2019, Jonathan Lee Smith was a prisoner at the U.S. Penitentiary near Kentucky’s Big Sandy River, when he got in a fight with another prisoner and guards responded. That led to allegations that two of them used excessive force against the prisoner: Lt. Terry Melvin ...
by Keith Sanders
With the highest incarceration rate in the world – over six out of every 1,000 people – America has long known there is one thing that consistently reduces recidivism: education.
A recent meta-analysis conducted by Middle Tennessee State University Professors Steven Sprick Schuster and Ben Stickle reviewed ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 16, 2022, the federal court for the Northern District of California entered final approval of a settlement agreement in a class-action suit alleging Santa Clara County continued to hold detainees in jail after the county District Attorney (DA) declined to prosecute them. The agreement ...
by David M. Reutter
The Supreme Court of Montana, in an opinion issued on October 18, 2022, held that the District Court for the state’s Seventh Judicial Circuit issued an illegal sentence when it failed to award credit for time served on two concurrent sentences. In its ruling, the Court ...
by Jacob Barrett
On September 26, 2022, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc vacated a district court’s order denying a preliminary injunction to the federal government and private prison giant GEO Group, Inc. that would prevent California from enforcing a ban on all ...
by Matt Clarke
A 72-page report by the Brennan Center for Justice published on July 6, 2022, shows how civil asset forfeiture, fines, fees and privatized community supervision shift the costs of the criminal justice system to the accused, removing financial disincentives for prosecutors to seek alternatives to incarceration. Simultaneously, ...
by Eike Blohm, MD
A frail, elderly, wheelchair-bound prisoner had to assist the execution team killing him in Arizona on June 8, 2022. It was the state’s second execution since breaking an eight-year hiatus to kill Clarence Dixon the month before. [See: PLN, Feb. 2023, p.40.]
The most recently ...
By Christie Thompson and Joseph Shapiro
This article was originally published by the Marshall Project in cooperation with NPR on May 31, 2022. It is reprinted here with permission.
Fatal beatings. A “torture room.” Pairs of men held around the clock in tiny cells, tempers rising. “They’re literally afraid for ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On April 5, 2022, a former jail guard in Buffalo pleaded guilty to a first-degree felony count of promoting prison contraband. Jason Stachowski, 48, had already resigned from the Erie County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) on February 17, 2022, after investigators acting on an anonymous tip discovered that ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
On October 3, 2022, the State Appeals Board of Iowa heeded the advice of the state Attorney General’s office and unanimously rejected the claims of a group of state prisoners overdosed with COVID-19 vaccine.
When prisoners at Iowa State Penitentiary (ISP) were given vaccinations for COVID-19 in ...
by Keith Sanders
A little-known provision attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2020 prohibits federal contractors from asking about a job applicant’s criminal history. Signed into law in December 2020 by former Pres. Donald J. Trump (R), the provision is intended to prevent prematurely excluding people who ...
by Jayson Hawkins
On September 28, 2022, four former guards at Georgia’s Valdosta State Prison were sentenced for beating a handcuffed prisoner and then attempting to conceal what happened. Sgt. Patrick Sharpe, 30, received four years for orchestrating the assault by ordering two subordinates, Jamal Scott, 35, and Brian Ford, ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
Human resources manager Jeanette Carmack called them “really, really good guys”: nine prisoners from the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) who filled positions in the Public Works and Parks, Recreation and Golf departments at the city of Delta. That was until the Take TWO (Transitional Work Opportunity) ...
by David M. Reutter
On October 25, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the dismissal of a civil rights complaint filed by a former Wisconsin prisoner, who alleged that in 2018 he defecated on himself after being unable to access the handicapped toilet at Racine ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on November 14, 2022, reversed the decertification of a class in a lawsuit alleging that Division 10 of the Cook County Jail does not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. ch.126 § 12101 et ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
The drugs are coming in the mail. Or so they say. There’s no question that the drugs are coming into Missouri state prisons; an average of 34 prisoner overdoses a month is a trend that officials can’t afford to ignore. Their answer? Restrict the freedoms and infringe ...
by David M. Reutter
On March 14, 2023, a federal judge in Georgia sentenced former Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill to an 18-month federal prison term for violating the civil rights of pretrial detainees in the county jail.
A jury in the federal court for the Northern District of Georgia ...
by Keith Sanders
In the November 2022 elections, voters elected a new sheriff in Bristol County, Massachusetts: Democrat Paul Heroux defeated his Republican opponent, Sheriff Tom Hodgson. The local race garnered national headlines, not just because Heroux, a former Attleboro mayor and state representative, ousted a 25-year incumbent. Heroux was ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 8, 2022, the federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri approved a settlement under which St. Louis County agreed to pay $1.2 million to resolve claims that a state prisoner detained in the county jail died due to denied medical care.
From his ...
by Keith Sanders
The November 2022 elections did more than send new faces to Congress and statehouses around the country. They also saw historic ballot measures passed to change the constitutions in four states. Voters in Alabama, Tennessee, Oregon, and Vermont approved measures to amend or rewrite their constitutions to ...
Loaded on
April 1, 2023
published in Prison Legal News
April, 2023, page 63
Alabama: WBAM in Birmingham reported that a guard at the Blount County Jail was taken into custody and fired on January 31, 2023. Joseph Snow, 43, was charged with second-degree assault for injuring a detainee during an incident captured on surveillance video. Sheriff Mike Moon called the footage “sickening,” ...
