by Dave Maass & Kelly Davis
San Diego CityBeat
Bernard Joseph Victorianne was a 28-year-old black male with a ticking time bomb in his stomach.
Victorianne was arrested on September 12, 2012, less than two blocks from the San Diego Police Department’s Mid-City station on suspicion of driving under the ...
This month’s cover story on the San Diego County jail system illustrates that while prisons often get slightly more media attention, it is not because they are necessarily more poorly run. On any given day some 735,000 detainees are confined in local jails, and over 11 million people a year ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 21
The California Supreme Court has held that, depending on the specifics of the underlying offense, failure to register as a sex offender may subject a defendant with two qualifying prior serious and/or violent convictions to a sentence of 25 years to life under the state’s infamous “Three Strikes” law.
Convicted ...
by Matt Clarke
The deaths of five prisoners in 18 months might pass without notice in a large jail system, but that many deaths at the 270-bed Portage County jail, located about 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, Ohio, raised red flags.
An investigation by the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed that ...
When Amir Hall entered New York state prison for a parole violation in November 2009, he came with a long list of psychological problems. Hall arrived at the prison from a state psychiatric hospital after he had tried to suffocate himself. Hospital staff diagnosed Hall with serious depression.
In Mid-State ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 26
On March 4, 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division launched a formal inquiry into widespread sexual abuse of female prisoners by male guards at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama.
The investigation was opened following an assessment by the National Institute of Corrections, which ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 28
On August 16, 2013, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, sitting by designation, unsealed a number of court documents related to a contempt motion seeking sanctions against Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company, for violating a settlement agreement in a lawsuit that alleged high ...
Aaron Taylor, incarcerated at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Philadelphia, was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon under 18 U.S.C. § 113(a)(3) and assault resulting in serious bodily injury under § 113(a)(6), stemming from an attack on another prisoner. He attempted to assert the affirmative defense of “just ...
When Ronald D. Dougan pleaded guilty in January 2011 to robbing an Oklahoma City, Oklahoma post office of $220, he likely did not anticipate the unforeseen consequences that would result due to his previous 1978 conviction for sexual battery and 1994 conviction for aggravated battery (which was allegedly sexual in ...
by Matt Clarke
Against the backdrop of the recent hunger strike involving thousands of prisoners in California, the death last year of an Illinois jail prisoner who died after refusing to eat or drink is especially poignant.
Lyvita Gomes, 52, died in January 2012 following a 15-day hunger strike that ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 34
If a Texas state prisoner dies or is executed, relatives or friends can pick up the body. If they don’t, he or she is buried in the largest prison graveyard in the United States – the Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas. Such burials occur around 100 times each ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 34
Jonathan Lee Riches, 36, bills himself as the most litigious person alive. He’s claimed that the Guinness Book of World Records wanted to list him as having filed the most lawsuits; he sued Guinness in response, arguing that they had miscounted the number of his legal actions.
“Jonathan Lee Riches ...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held that “where the sentencing court has failed to consider whether the defendant has the financial resources to pay restitution immediately, ordering immediate payment impermissibly delegates to the BOP [Bureau of Prisons] the court’s obligation to set a payment schedule.” ...
On August 8, 2013, the Southern Center for Human Rights sent a letter to the governing authority for Grady County, Georgia, demanding the return of illegal “administrative costs” charged to criminal defendants convicted in the Grady County State Court.
In Georgia, “state courts” are courts of limited jurisdiction that handle, ...
Civilly-committed patients in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) and Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) officials, alleging that various conditions of their confinement were unconstitutional. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants which was ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 38
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals resurrected the majority of a prisoner’s lawsuit raising First Amendment retaliation claims after the case had been dismissed by the district court. The suit then settled following remand.
Raymond Watison, serving a sentence in the Nevada State Prison, sued prison officials under 42 U.S.C. ...
A former deputy director of operations for the Georgia Department of Corrections has been indicted on 35 counts of identity fraud, after admitting he used his state purchasing privileges to buy electronic items and make other unauthorized purchases for his personal use.
Benjamin Hopkins, 42, was indicted by a Fulton ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 40
The Kansas Supreme Court has held that prisoners facing civil commitment under the Kansas Sexually Violent Predators Act (KSVPA) have a due process right to effective assistance of counsel. The Court also held that ineffective assistance of counsel claims may be raised on appeal or in a state habeas corpus ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 40
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has awarded a six-year system-wide telephone contract to Global Tel*Link (GTL), which requires the company to install equipment capable of blocking signals from contraband cell phones at the state’s 33 adult correctional facilities. In exchange for installing the equipment, as well as ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 41
On July 19, 2012, the California Supreme Court held that a trial court’s discretionary power to dismiss a criminal action “in furtherance of justice” pursuant to Penal Code Section 1385 did not extend so far that it could disregard the facts that categorically disqualify a prisoner held in local custody ...
In a September 6, 2012 memorandum opinion, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia once again asserted an “obligation to assure that those seeking to challenge their Executive detention by petitioning for habeas relief have adequate, effective and meaningful access to the courts.” In doing so, the district ...
by David M. Reutter
Several Texas towns are bemoaning their bad business decision to enter into the for-profit incarceration industry as the bottom began dropping out of that market 5 or 6 years ago. Over a two-decade boom in prison building, rural communities in Texas and other states were able ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 46
The Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Ocilla, Georgia has been sold at auction after the facility’s owner, Municipal Corrections LLC, was forced into bankruptcy court by bondholders.
A 2007 agreement between Irwin County and Municipal Corrections demonstrates the risks that government agencies assume when they issue bonds to invest ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 47
On July 30, 2013, Prison Legal News filed a lawsuit in federal court against Virginia Beach Sheriff Kenneth Stolle and other sheriff’s office officials due to the censorship of books, magazines and correspondence mailed to prisoners at the Virginia Beach Correctional Center (VBCC).
The suit contends that Sheriff Stolle and ...
Prisoners might not be able to obtain aspirin for their headaches or insulin for their diabetes while incarcerated, but if researchers get their way, an MRI for brain imaging may be free of charge. That is no cause for celebration, though, because the MRI results could someday be introduced as ...
by David M. Reutter
Prisons and jails in Massachusetts have a problem: Almost every correctional facility in the state is operating above its capacity. Budget cuts have compounded the overcrowding problem because there is no money for new construction or expansion, and longer prison and jail terms due to tougher ...
by David M. Reutter
The fact that prisoners have a constitutional right to adequate medical care under the Eighth Amendment has long been established. Since the U.S. Supreme Court made that pronouncement in Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976), most lawsuits challenging deliberate indifference by guards and medical staff ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 54
The Oregon Department of Justice (DOJ) deliberately destroyed emails and withheld records related to a botched high-profile criminal investigation, a state court found. One of the targets of that investigation filed a lawsuit against the DOJ which recently settled for $1 million.
In August 2010, Oregon Attorney General John R. ...
by David M. Reutter
To settle a lawsuit filed by a juvenile prisoner, the Montana State Prison (MSP) has agreed to adopt or change policies that regulate the care and treatment provided to prisoners under the age of 18.
The plaintiff who filed the suit, Raistlen Katka, can only be ...
Loaded on
Oct. 15, 2013
published in Prison Legal News
October, 2013, page 56
Arkansas: The Phillips County jail closed on April 30, 2013 after it failed to pass a state inspection. Sheriff Neal Byrd would not go into detail as to why the 30-year-old facility failed the inspection, but said 60 prisoners had been transferred to other jails and 18 employees would lose ...
