| Prison Legal News, a monthly print publication that covers criminal justice issues, is a project of the Human Rights Defense Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. |
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Justice works in America for those who can buy it I spent 21 years behind bars for a crime I did not commit. In 1980, I was living in Crown Heights, N.Y., and was convicted in the shooting death of a 16-year-old in the nearby Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. I was 18, and was incarcerated despite persistent efforts by friend and fellow Trinidadian Carl King to secure my freedom. King is my hero. Most people in the system have no one like him fighting on their behalf. The law enforcement officials in charge of the investigation had reason to know, even as they charged me, that the criminal justice system wasn't working. It was a new era of mass incarceration, and the police and prosecutors were empowered, as they still are, to detain young men of color, and to find a reason to charge them and lock them up. A system built upon rounding up suspects and demanding confessions and plea deals, in which the state has great power and the accused have little, is a system that does grave harm. Read More |
A Federal Judge Put Hundreds of Immigrants Behind Bars While Her Husband Invested in Private Prisons It was almost lunchtime inside the country's largest kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008. The meatpackers, mostly migrants from Guatemala and Mexico, wore earplugs to block out the noise of the machinery and couldn't hear the two black helicopters hovering overhead or the hundreds of armed federal immigration agents closing in around them until the production line stopped. One worker tried to flee with his knives, stabbing himself in the leg when he was pushed to the ground. "They rounded us up toward the middle like a bunch of chickens," a 42-year-old Guatemalan worker later recalled. "Those who were hiding were beaten and shackled." Nearly 400 workers were arrested in the bust, which cost $5 million and was then the biggest workplace immigration raid in US history. They were driven to the National Cattle Congress, a fairground in Waterloo, where several federal judges would handle their cases over nine business days. Hearings were held in trailers and a dance hall. Cots were set up for the defendants in a nearby gymnasium. At the time, undocumented immigrants caught in raids like this were usually charged with civil violations and then deported. But most of these defendants, shackled and dragging chains behind them, were charged with criminal fraud for using falsified work documents or Social Security numbers. About 270 people were sentenced to five months in federal prison, in a process that one witness described as a "judicial assembly line." Overseeing the process was Judge Linda R. Reade, the chief judge of the Northern District of Iowa. She defended the decision to turn a fairground into a courthouse, saying the proceedings were fair and unhurried. The incident sparked allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and led to congressional hearings. Erik Camayd-Freixas, an interpreter who had worked at the Waterloo proceedings, testified that most of the Spanish-speaking defendants had been pressured to plead guilty. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the unconventional process seemed "like a cattle auction, not a criminal prosecution in the United States of America." Yet amid the national attention, one fact didn't make the news: Before and after the raid, Reade's husband owned stock in two private prison companies, and he bought additional prison stock five days before the raid, according to Reade's financial disclosure forms. Ethics experts say these investments were inappropriate and may have violated the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Read More |
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From the PLN in Print Archives Ninth Circuit Reverses Revocation of Supervised Release Over Blog Post The federal government's attempt to restrict a former prisoner's First Amendment right to free speech has been reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Darren Chaker was convicted of a white collar crime related to a bankruptcy filing and sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. As part of his three years of supervised release (i.e., federal probation), he was not allowed to "stalk and/or harass other individuals, to include, but not limited to, posting personal information of others or defaming a person's character on the internet." Chaker's probation officer alleged he had violated that condition by making a false statement about Leesa Fazal, an investigator with the Nevada Office of the Attorney General. According to Clay Calvert, director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida, Chaker wrote in an online blog post that Fazal had been "forced out" of the Las Vegas Police Department. Not pleased by that statement, Fazal complained to the FBI, the Nevada Attorney General and the Las Vegas Police Department, all of which declined to charge Chaker over his comments in the blog post. Fazal then turned to the U.S. Probation Office, which promptly violated Chaker's supervised release and returned him to custody. A revocation hearing ensued, with the government insisting that Chaker's blog post constituted harassment and defamation in violation of the terms of his supervised release. The violation was upheld by the district court. On appeal to the Ninth Circuit, a joint amicus brief - also known as a "friend of the court" brief - was submitted by the Cato Institute, the ACLU of San Diego, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the First Amendment Coalition and the Brechner First Amendment Project. The brief argued that because the target of Chaker's speech was a government official the law required proof of malicious intent, which was not offered at the revocation hearing. Read More |
Florida to resume executions with first use of triple-drug injection Florida's death penalty hiatus is slated to end Thursday, when the state plans to execute the first Death Row prisoner in more than 19 months. But the execution of Mark James Asay - a white supremacist accused of targeting black victims - won't just be the first lethal injection since early 2016 in a state that was killing Death Row prisoners at a record-breaking pace until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling put Florida's death penalty on hold. It will also be the first execution anywhere in the country using an untested triple-drug lethal injection procedure. Asay has spent nearly three decades on Death Row after being convicted in the 1987 shooting deaths of two men in downtown Jacksonville. Gov. Rick Scott initially signed a death warrant for Asay in January 2016. Read More |
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'Why are we arresting a 12-year old?' Father questions if race prompted son's arrest in Evanston An Evanston 12-year-old was arrested, put in a police wagon and taken to the police station after officers saw him riding on the back of a bicycle that went through a red light, the boy's father said. "I realize and recognize we need police. But why are we arresting a 12-year old?" said Robert Bady, whose son, Iain, 12, was arrested in downtown Evanston after riding on the back pegs of his friend's BMX bike July 14. Bady spoke at the Evanston City Council meeting Aug. 14, telling aldermen he was upset his son, who is African-American, faced such serious consequences over something so minor. "What did he do that was so egregious?" asked Bady. Read More |
Texas: Couple to receive $3 million in 'satanic day care' case Dan and Fran Keller, who spent more than 21 years in prison after they were accused of sexually abusing children during satanic rituals at their South Austin day care, will receive $3.4 million from a state fund for those wrongly convicted of crimes. Shortly after receiving the news Tuesday, an ecstatic Fran Keller said they will no longer have to live on the brink of destitution, unable to find jobs at their ages and with their convictions, even if overturned by the state's highest criminal court. "This means we don't have to worry about pinching pennies on Social Security, and late bills. That means we will actually be free. We can start living - and no more nightmares," said Fran Keller, 67. Their to-do list includes a house, vehicle, health insurance and better hearing aids for Dan Keller, 75. The Kellers' lawyer, Keith Hampton, said the couple will collect two checks totaling $3.44 million Wednesday at the state comptroller's office, which administers the compensation fund. Read More |
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Governors Pay Prisoners Face-to-Face Visits In 2015, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit a prison. Since then, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a former district attorney, has walked the halls of his state's prisons 21 times. "We've got to turn [prisons] from these very dark places that we try to push out of our thought process and have them foremost in our thought process," Malloy said at a conference last week. He was talking about "Face to Face," a new initiative that encourages elected state officials to meet the people affected by their criminal justice policies. Malloy and seven other governors have so far opted to sit down for conversations with inmates, corrections officers and crime victims as part of Face to Face. The initiative was launched this year by the Council of State Governments Justice Center and co-sponsored by the Association of State Correctional Administrators, the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Reentry Resource Center and JustLeadershipUSA -- an organization that trains ex-offenders to become advocates for change. "This is a bit of a departure for us," says Suzanne Brown-McBride, acting executive director of the Justice Center. Read More |
California: Video shows inmate's head being shoved into wall. Now Sacramento County is paying nearly $50,000 Two years after a Rancho Cordova man suffered a head laceration that required 10 stitches while being booked into the Sacramento County jail, a lawsuit over the incident has been settled in exchange for a $49,500 payout by the county. The lawsuit filed by attorney Stewart Katz on behalf of Michael McCormack, 37, was dismissed in federal court in Sacramento on Monday after a settlement agreement was reached earlier, court documents say. McCormack was arrested July 6, 2015, on domestic violence charges after a fight with his girlfriend, documents say. The case was later dismissed. While he was being booked into the jail that night, McCormack claims that Deputy Sean Woodward "slammed (his) head into the wall while other deputies and supervising officers stood by and failed to prevent this unlawful use of force." |
Indiana: Hospital to sheriff: Pay inmate's $1.8 million medical bill IU Health has sent a letter to Delaware County Sheriff Ray Dudley, demanding that he pay $1.8 million in medical care costs for a former jail inmate's six-month stay in Ball Memorial Hospital. Dudley told The Star Press that the man was no longer an inmate two days after he went to the hospital, when a judge ordered him released, and the county has no responsibility to pay. The sheriff also questioned the amount of medication billed as given to the inmate during his first two days in the hospital. The "Demand for Payment" letter sent by an IU Health attorney to Dudley on Aug. 17 also suggests that Dudley violated the state law that makes sheriffs responsible for the medical care of their inmates. Dudley indicated Wednesday that he'll dispute the letter from Jenna Rager, from the Office of Legal Escalation at Indiana University Health. The sheriff noted that his entire annual budget for medical care for jail inmates is just over $500,000, or less than a third of the amount IU Health seeks. "The hospital doesn't have the right to say we have to provide medical care after an inmate has been released," Dudley said. "If so, anybody we would take to the hospital, we would still be responsible for their care even after they're no longer in our custody." Read More |
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