Family of Lashawn Thompson call for criminal investigation after his death in custody in filthy jail cell
An Atlanta man died in a local jail after being eaten alive by bed bugs, alleges a lawyer representing the man’s family.
The family of Lashawn Thompson, 35, is calling for a criminal investigation into Thompson’s death and for the closure and replacement of a local jail after alleging that Thompson died in custody from bed bugs in a squalid jail cell.
Continue reading...Two inmates dug their way out of cell using toothbrush but were apprehended within hours at Ihop branch
Two prisoners in Virginia managed to escape their cell by digging a hole through a wall with the aid of a toothbrush but were apprehended within a few hours after being tempted to visit a pancake restaurant.
In a statement, the Newport News sheriff’s office said two inmates were found to be missing during a routine head count around 7pm on Monday at the Newport News Jail Annex.
Continue reading...Suit alleges that Broward county sheriff’s office used excessive force as Kevin Desir suffered mental health emergency in 2021
The family of a Florida man who died after being violently restrained by jailers is filing a civil rights suit against the officers who were involved in the incident and the jail’s healthcare provider.
According to a draft of the lawsuit shared exclusively with the Guardian, the family of 43-year-old Kevin Desir alleges that Broward county sheriff officials used excessive force against Desir while he was suffering from a severe mental health episode, violating his 14th amendment rights.
Continue reading...Prisoners who joined hunger strike to protest extreme conditions describe the damage isolation inflicts on mental health
Texas prisoners who joined a hunger strike in protest against the state’s widespread use of prolonged solitary confinement have described the damage to inmates’ mental and physical health inflicted by a system they equate with torture.
Guadalupe III Constante said that despite having a clean disciplinary record, he has been held in isolation every day since he was convicted of robbery 17 years ago. “I went on hunger strike to bring attention to this torture – I haven’t had contact with my wife, kids, brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents in 17 years.”
Continue reading...But critics decry death penalty ‘experimentation’ that state is developing after a series of botched lethal injections
Alabama is close to completing a protocol that will use nitrogen gas as a new form of execution in the state, officials have said, amid warnings from advocacy groups that it is an experimental move after botched lethal injections.
On Wednesday, Alabama commissioner John Hamm, who heads the state’s prison systems, told the Associated Press, “We’re close. We’re close,” in reference to the new execution method. Hamm added that the protocol should be completed by the end of this year.
Continue reading...Solitary confinement inmates protest against brutal form of incarceration but state says it’s only aware of six striking men
Prisoners in Texas who have been kept in solitary confinement in some cases for more than 20 years are sustaining a hunger strike in protest against their brutal form of incarceration in the face of threatened retaliation from state authorities.
Outside advocates working with the protesting inmates say that in their latest count 22 men continue to refuse food, with two of them having been on hunger strike since the start of the action on 10 January.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work in US prisons as part of their sentences, often without basic protections and for little to no pay
For more than two decades imprisoned in California, Samual Brown worked more than a dozen different jobs and was transferred between penitentiaries throughout the state – earning less than a dollar per hour. At the beginning of the pandemic, he worked as a healthcare facility worker tasked with disinfecting areas where inmates with Covid had been held. He wanted to quit his job – he had asthma and risked his life – but was told he “had no choice”. By the time Brown was released in December 2021, he had paid just $3,000 of the more than $37,000 in restitution he owed the state.
“That is tied directly into the same type of practices from slavery,” Brown, who is co-founder of the Anti-Violence Safety and Accountability Project, says. “That’s the same practice, the same energy, the same spirit that you see in this prison setting. A person can be on one plantation, and then they’ll be moved to another plantation, and you’ll never see the people who you were with ever again. They can separate you from your wife, separate you from your children, from your family. It’s the same way in the modern-day carceral setting.”
Continue reading...With less than a month remaining in office, Kate Brown, said she was using her clemency powers to change the term to life in prison
The governor of Oregon, Kate Brown announced Tuesday that she is commuting the sentences of all of the state’s 17 inmates awaiting execution, saying all of their death sentences will be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Brown, who has less than a month remaining in office, said she was using her executive clemency powers to commute the sentences and that her order will take effect on Wednesday.
Continue reading...In a deal, James Howard Jackson pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder after he was accidentally released from custody
The man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker and stole her French bulldogs in Los Angeles last year has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for the high profile robbery that saw the star offer a $500,000 reward for the return of her pets.
James Howard Jackson, one of three men and two accomplices who participated in the violent robbery of dog walker Ryan Fischer, pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder, the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office said on Monday.
Continue reading...Ray J Garcia is charged with abusing at least three female prisoners from 2019 to 2021 in prison areas out of view of cameras
First, the prison’s male warden would flatter the incarcerated women under his charge who attracted him, shower them with compliments and promise them early releases or transfers to lower-security facilities, according to authorities.
Eventually, he would allegedly take them to places in his lockup that he knew weren’t watched by surveillance cameras, force sex on them and take nude photos of them.
Continue reading...The filing urges UN special rapporteurs to declare life sentences, including without parole, a violation of incarcerated people’s rights
The moment Terrell Carter learned the death sentence he received decades ago would end, he was filled with extreme happiness and intense sorrow.
Carter had spent 30 years of his life in prison without parole for second-degree murder he committed in Pennsylvania, one of six states in the US where there is no possibility of parole when sentenced to life. In July, after Governor Tom Wolf commuted his sentence, Carter, now 53, regained his freedom after a nearly three-year process petitioning with the state board of pardons. Still, he said he felt “survivor’s guilt”.
Continue reading...Cameron Carter, 19, who had never travelled on a plane before, was left unable to contact his family throughout ordeal
An Australian teenager who travelled to the US for a job interview was strip-searched and held in a federal prison for 10 days, including eight confined to his cell, after he was deemed ineligible for a common holiday travel program.
The 19-year-old, who had never travelled on a plane before, was denied contact with his family in Australia throughout the ordeal. He was supposed to be sent back to Australia after two days, but was held for another eight so he could go before a judge, after an immigration officer said he had resisted returning to Australia.
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Continue reading...A Guardian investigation reveals the firm has been accused of ‘gross negligence’ that allegedly led to gang rape, murder and mistaken solitary confinement in its US facilities
The US private prisons operator likely to take over Australia’s offshore processing regime on Nauru has previously been accused of “gross negligence” and “egregious” security failures that allegedly led to the gang-rape of a woman in detention, the murder of two retirees by escaped prisoners, and the months-long solitary confinement of a US citizen wrongfully held in immigration detention.
The Department of Home Affairs is finalising negotiations with the US-based Management and Training Corporation, which the department has announced as its preferred tenderer to provide “facilities, garrison, transferee arrivals and reception services” for Australia’s offshore regime on Nauru from next month. No contracts have yet been signed.
Continue reading...Recent revelations have only fed speculation that some form of plot lay behind the gangster’s brutal demise in prison
US organized crime has long held a tight grip on America’s popular imagination, sustaining entire industries of books, television series and Hollywood movies, as well as countless breathless headlines in tabloid newspapers.
But few names have been as famous as the south Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, who for decades presented himself as a benevolent gangster who protected his community and was given Hollywood treatment by Johnny Depp in “Black Mass” and Jack Nicholson in “The Departed”.
Continue reading...Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan accepted $2.8m in illegal payments to send children to for-profit jails
Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200m to hundreds who fell victim to their crimes.
US district judge Christopher Conner awarded $106m in compensatory damages and $100m in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions”.
Continue reading...State set execution dates on Friday for six inmates and plans for executions to take place about once a month through 2024
Oklahoma is planning to execute a prisoner on death row nearly every month starting in August through 2024 in a move that is likely to cause outrage among opponents of the death penalty.
The Oklahoma court of criminal appeals set the execution dates on Friday for six inmates, who have all exhausted their appeals, and plans for executions to take place about once a month. The inmates’ capital punishments were on hold because of a lawsuit over botched lethal injections, which led to a more than five-year execution moratorium.
Continue reading...Salesh Prasad could be sent to Fiji, where he fears anti-LGBTQ+ violence, with California law enforcement aiding his detention
A 50-year-old California man who was born in Fiji but has lived in the US since he was six years old is facing deportation to a country where he has no family and is at risk of violence and abuse as a queer person.
Salesh “Sal” Prasad was detained by federal authorities after he was granted parole from state prison, where he had been incarcerated for years. His case has sparked outrage among human rights activists and local lawmakers who say it highlights the cruelty and expansive reach of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) under a Democratic president who has promised a more humane approach and in a state that claims to be a sanctuary for immigrants.
Continue reading...Gonzalo Lopez stabbed the driver and fled on Thursday as inmates were bussed through a rural area between Houston and Dallas
A convicted murderer serving a life prison sentence in Texas stabbed a transport bus driver and escaped Thursday, setting off a frantic manhunt that was ongoing more than a day later.
The getaway happened as officers bussed Gonzalo Lopez, 46, and other inmates through a rural area between Houston and Dallas about 1.20pm. Lopez somehow slipped out of his shackles, used an unspecified sharp object to stab the driver in the hand and lunged for the wounded officer’s service pistol, Robert Hurst of the Texas department of criminal justice told reporters.
Continue reading...Casey Cole White, 38, being held on capital murder charge, and Vicki White left detention center on Friday
The US Marshals Service said on Sunday it was offering up to $10,000 for information about an escaped inmate and a “missing and endangered” correctional officer who disappeared on Friday after the two left a jail in north Alabama.
Casey Cole White, 38, had been jailed on a capital murder charge in the Lauderdale county detention center in Florence, Alabama, about 75 miles west of Huntsville.
Continue reading...Vicki White disappeared while escorting an inmate being held on capital murder charges, and inmate Casey White also missing
A prison official from Alabama was missing after escorting an inmate to a courthouse for a hearing.
The Lauderdale county sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post on Saturday that Vicki White, an assistant director of corrections, disappeared while escorting an inmate being held on capital murder charges. The inmate was also missing.
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