The Supreme Court struggled Tuesday with the claims of a man of death row who says his rare medical condition will make lethal injection severely painful under Missouri’s execution method.
Read moreCalling it “an accident waiting to happen,” the man who built Tennessee’s electric chair told Courthouse News that modifications made to the machine may not do an effective job in Thursday night’s planned execution of a double murderer.
Read moreA mentally ill man imprisoned after stealing $1 and a hat claims in a civil rights lawsuit that Illinois prison officials tortured him by putting him in solitary confinement for two decades, where he self-mutilated himself, including slicing off his testicle and hanging it on his cell door.
Read moreAfter the Supreme Court shot down a challenge to the use of solitary confinement in prison, Justice Sonia Sotomayor voiced alarm Tuesday about depriving inmates of daylight for months and years.
Read moreDenial of methadone to prison inmates with opioid addictions constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the ACLU claimed in federal court Wednesday.
Read moreThe Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a 112-year sentence of a young man who shot 26 of his high school classmates after killing his parents in 1998.
Read morePutting prison officials on notice throughout the sunbaked South, a federal judge on Tuesday approved a class-action settlement requiring Texas to install air conditioning in a state prison near Houston.
Read moreAn Ohio mother claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that officials in the Akron school district allowed a man impersonating a police officer to handcuff and threaten to stun her child under the guise of a fake “scared straight” program purportedly aimed at deterring kids from committing crimes.
Read moreA federal class action filed Tuesday accuses Mississippi of enforcing an arcane lifetime voting ban that keeps citizens convicted of certain felonies from ever being able to vote.
Read moreRidden with rare tumors, a man described by a prosecutor as a “homicidal energizer bunny” won his second stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read moreOklahoma officials announced Wednesday the end of a three-year-old moratorium on executions as they plan on using a first-of-its-kind nitrogen gas inhalation method to get around difficulties in getting lethal injection drugs.
Read moreThe Sixth Circuit on Thursday rejected two death-row inmates’ efforts to block their executions, finding they did not prove Ohio’s lethal injection drugs cause serious pain and suffering.
Read more
Three juveniles claim in court that Iowa’s Boys State Training School violates the rights of offenders with mental health problems by providing grossly inadequate health care and subjecting them to physical restraints and solitary confinement.
Read moreA new report finds that most, if not all, of the 26 Ohio prisoners scheduled to be executed over the next three years have significant impairments that limit their legal culpability and may preclude them from execution under the Eighth Amendment.
Read moreA Houston ordinance that bars homeless people from sleeping in tents on public property may violate their rights against cruel and unusual punishment, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, blocking the law with a temporary restraining order.
Read moreTexas prison officials have been deliberately indifferent to the hazards of sweltering summer heat in a lockup near Houston, a federal judge ruled, ordering the state to reduce the temperature in inmate housing areas to 88 degrees Fahrenheit.
Read moreThe en banc Sixth Circuit ruled 8-6 Wednesday to overturn an injunction against Ohio’s lethal-injection protocol, clearing the way for the state to move forward with scheduled executions.
Read more