On September 5, 2005, a man who spent nine years in prison for a rape he didn?t commit settled with the Township of Clinton, Michigan, for an approximate total of $3,338,160.

Kenneth Wyniemko was convicted in 1994 of raping and robbing a Michigan woman and sentenced to 40 to 60 ...

By David Feige

Posted Monday, June 18, 2007, at 6:04 PM ET

Now that justice has prevailed in the Duke rape case, with the nice innocent boys exonerated and the prosecutor who hounded them disbarred, it is tempting to chalk the whole incident up to an unusual and terrible mistake--a zany allegation taken too seriously by a run-amok prosecutor. It would be pretty to think that Nifong's humbling suggests that our system of justice works well, harshly punishing the few rogue prosecutors who subvert the legal process. But this is simply not true.

Prosecutors almost never face public censure or disbarment for their actions. In fact, it took a perfect storm of powerful defendants, a rapt public, and demonstrable factual innocence to produce the outcome that ended Mr. Nifong's career. And because only a handful of prosecutors will ever face the sort of adversaries Nifong did or come close to the sort of scrutiny the former DA endured, the Duke fiasco will make little difference in how criminal law is practiced in courthouses around the country. Regardless of Nifong's sanction, the drama leaves prosecutorial misconduct commonplace, unseen, uncorrected, and unpunished.

As Angela Davis explains in her book Arbitrary Justice: The ...

The July 2007 issue of Prison Legal News reported Sarsfield v. City of Marlborough, $13,655,940 Award for False Massachusetts Rape Conviction and Gregory v. City of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky Settles with Wrongly Imprisoned Man for $3.9 Million. Barry Scheck was lead counsel for both plaintiffs, but while he is a co-director of the Innocence Project, he represented both of these clients in section 1983 suits in his capacity as co-founding partner of the civil rights law firm, Cochran Neufeld & Scheck.
The IP is a nonprofit and does not represent section 1983 plaintiffs in wrongful conviction lawsuits for damages. CNS does, taking on interested clients after they have been exonerated and released. Debra Cornwall, a lawyer at CNS, also represented both Eric Sarsfield and William Gregory along with Barry Scheck, and partner Nick Brustin also worked on the Gregory case.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court?s dismissal of a prisoner?s suit related to a delay in granting time served credits. The court concluded that plaintiff?s claims were not barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.

In 1997, Reginald Burke pleaded no contest to two Wisconsin criminal offenses and was sentenced to 5- and 2-years, respectively. The sentences were imposed consecutively to one another, and to a separate parole violation sanction. In May 1999, the court amended its order so the 1997 sentences would run concurrently.

Burke then filed various state court actions seeking credit for the 8 months he spent in jail between his July 12, 1996 arrest and March 20, 1997 sentencing. The state court rejected Burke?s various attempts to obtain time served credits.

Burke also sought the time served credits from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC). After nearly two years, DOC granted Burke 8 months and 8 days of jail credit. Burke then brought an action in federal court, claiming that ?he was detained ? longer than he should have been due to the ?deliberate indifference and delay? of DOC officials in granting him the jail credit.??

The district court granted Defendants? motion to dismiss, ...

A federal district court for the District of Columbia has, once again, certified a class action in a complaint that District of Columbia is over-detaining persons ordered released and strip searching them without individualized suspicion. The Court noted this is ?a case in which history insists on repeating itself.? PLN reported that history, which had identical allegations as in Bynum v. District of Columbia, 257 F.Supp.2d 1 (D.DC. 2002). See: PLN, October, 2006.

The Bynum litigation was resolved by a settlement agreement the Court approved in January 2006. In Bynum, the problem was that ?court releases? prisoners who were entitled to release after a court appearance were typically taken from court back to jail. There, they would await processing of their release, which involved acquiring the release order, verifying no warrants or detainers existed, and obtaining their personal property. That process resulted in a day, two, or a week or more of over-detention.

While they awaited for the ?out-processing? to be completed, the prisoners were taken back to general population. This required they be strip searched. The Bynum settlement required those ordered released to be held at a holding facility on the grounds of D.C. General Hospital.
Sometime in December ...

On February 15, 2006, a federal jury in California awarded $18 million to a man who was wrongly charged with sexual assault of a child and imprisoned for 10 months.

During his false imprisonment in the Los Angeles County Jail, Ramirez, 26, was spat on by deputies and urinated on ...

The court of appeals for the Ninth circuit held that a Washington state prisoner had a due process liberty interest in being released from prison on his good time release date. The plaintiff in this section 1983 case was held 20 days past his good time release date despite having disciplinary charges against him dismissed. The court held the plaintiff had an entitlement to his good time credits and the denial of such credits without a hearing violated due process. Plaintiff was seeking money damages and was serving an indeterminate sentence. See: Bergen v. Spaulding, 881 F.2d 719 (9th Cir. 1989).

The court of appeals for the Third circuit affirmed in part, reversed and remanded in part, a district court's ruling in favor of a Pennsylvania prisoner who was held nine months past his release date. The district court awarded $3,520 in damages. The court of appeals discusses the elements of deliberate indifference, and cruel and unusual punishment as it applies to unlawful imprisonment. The prison record clerk was held liable. The issue of the supervisory liability of some defendants was remanded for further consideration as the court held the record on appeal was inadequate. All other aspects were affirmed. See: Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d 1099 (3rd Cir. 1989).

The U.S. Supreme Court held that judicial immunity did not preclude issuance of injunctive relief against a Virginia state magistrate nor did it bar the award of attorney fees against her in a civil rights action. Respondents were arrested on non-jailable misdemeanor charges and ordered by magistrate to pay a ...

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held a parole board' s misinterpretation of a sentencing court's order and a slow investigation into the order's meaning did not exhibit deliberate indifference. The plaintiff, a former prisoner of the Philadelphia County Prison, was on parole when he was arrested for burglary and related charges. He was sentenced to time in to 23 months." The parole board considered this as not allowing parole, and they would not allow service of back time on the original sentence. The plaintiff argued the judge intended he serve no more time and be paroled immediately on the burglary sentence, so he was available to serve his back time. Parole board officials initiated an investigation that took over five months to confirm the plaintiff's position. Once immediately released from prison after the matter was clarified, the plaintiff sued alleging Eighth Amendment violations. The district court granted the defendants' summary judgment motion.

The Third Circuit, while not condoning the fact it took five months to investigate the plaintiff's claim and to ultimately release him, held the parole board officials were not deliberately indifferent to the prisoner's right to be released upon sentence termination. The court found the parole board ...