by Matt Clarke.
Condemned Texas prisoner Scott Louis Panetti, 65, was taken off the state’s death row on September 27, 2023, when the federal court for the Western District of Texas found him too insane to kill—or as the Court said, because he “lacks a rational understanding of the connection ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 3, 2023, the Wisconsin Department of Justice sent a check for $9,000 to a state prisoner in settlement of his claims that he suffered a heat-related illness, fell and injured himself after state Department of Corrections (DOC) guards ignored his pleas for help. In addition ...
by Matt Clarke
Since 2018, at least seven vulnerable detainees have died at the 366-bed Pottawatomie County Public Safety Center, 30 miles east of Oklahoma City. Yet despite state law requiring deaths be reported within five days to the Oklahoma Health Department’s jail division, the jail failed to report five ...
by Matt Clarke
On September 5, 2023, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina reinstated a parolee’s parental rights that had been stripped for lack of contact with his minor daughter, after finding it was conditions of his parole which had prevented him from contacting her.
Crystal was born to ...
by Matt Clarke
On October 11, 2023, the Supreme Court of Arizona reversed a grant of partial summary judgment to Corizon Health, the former private medical contractor for the state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (DCRR), in a suit filed over a state prisoner’s death from allegedly untreated diabetes. ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 1, 2023, a South Carolina court awarded the parent company of a local newspaper $37,500 in attorney fees and costs in a successful action to enforce the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), S.C. Code. § 30-4-30, against Charleston County Sheriff Kristin Graziano. The action successfully ...
by Matt Clarke
On November 22, 2023, the federal court for Southern District of New York granted a permanent injunction to a class of prisoners held by the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) who sued for relief from chronic pain they suffer. It replaced a preliminary injunction ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 3, 2023, the Supreme Court of New Jersey held that a state prisoner’s parole could not be conditioned on his enrollment in a residential treatment program (RTP) when he is eligible for automatic release under the Earn Your Way Out (EYWO) Act, N.J.S.A. 30:4-123.55b to ...
by Matthew Clarke
On August 24, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed an $800,000 jury award against a contract doctor at an Arkansas jail, in a suit brought on behalf of a detainee who died of sepsis after her appendix ruptured while incarcerated.
Linda S. ...
