President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. (access full article)
As president, Biden has the unfettered authority to issue commutations. President Biden is a practicing Catholic. The church opposes capital punishment.
Under settlements approved last Tuesday, the federal government must pay an average of 1.1 million to each of 103 women who sued the Bureau of Prison over their treatment at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California. BOP announced earlier this month that it was permanently closing FCI Dublin, known as the “rape club” because of rampant staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct.
The beleaguered federal Bureau of Prisons said Monday it will close a women’s prison in California known as the “rape club” despite attempts to reform the troubled facility after an Associated Press investigation exposed rampant staff-on-inmate sexual abuse (access previous coverage).
Missouri carried out the first execution of an openly transgender woman in the history of the United States on Tuesday (access full article).
McLaughlin’s execution – the first in the US this year – is unusual: Executions of women in the United States are already rare. Prior to McLaughlin’s execution, just 17 had been put to death since 1976.
Connecticut prisoner has an "intolerable" scalp condition consisting of painful scabs and oozing sores. Prison officials allegedly deny treatment for years. District court: there are no binding cases holding that a scalp condition is a serious medical need requiring treatment. Second Circuit: Qualified immunity is specific, but it's not that specific. The guy said his head felt like it was on fire. Reversed and remanded.
The case is Collymore v. Myers, Collymore v. Comm’r of D.O.C., No. 21-02292 (2d Cir. July 14, 2023).
As record-breaking heat broils Dallas-Fort Worth, people incarcerated in federal prisons in North Texas face potentially deadly conditions due to inadequate air conditioning, according to an advocate and family members (article available here).
Detainee at Polk County, Fla. jail sues officials for, among other things, scanning his legal mail into a computer system. Eleventh Circuit: The First Amendment requires opening legal mail in the detainee's presence and checking only for contraband. That doesn't include scanning it and saving it on a computer that jail officials can access. The jail's mail-scanning policy "sufficiently chills, inhibits, or interferes with" an inmate's ability to speak openly with his attorney and infringes his right to free speech. Case undismissed!
Delaware physician is convicted on 13 counts of unlawfully dispensing opioids. At sentencing, the gov't puts forward a medical expert who reviewed files for 24 of the 1,142 patients to whom the good doctor had prescribed controlled substances in the last two years, concluding that prescriptions for 18 of the patients were illegal. Extrapolating from the sample, prosecutors argued he should be sentenced based on a drug weight of 106,000 kilos. The doctor argues for 7,500 kilos and the court settles on 30,000 kilos, sentencing the doctor to 20 years in prison. Yikes!
Records obtained from the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) show at least 4,950 people died in its custody over roughly the past decade (article available here).
Although there are more than 120 federal prisons nationwide, a quarter of those deaths occurred in a single place: the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina.
Muslim man in Ohio prison alleges that prison officials failed to accommodate his observance of Ramadan while making comparable accommodations for Christians and Jews, and that officials retaliated against him when he exercised his First Amendment rights to complain about them by threatening to move him to a higher security prison, kicking him out of a cultural awareness group, and associating false positive drug tests with inmates in his cell block at random.