A Texas appeals court granted a new trial Wednesday for a death-row inmate because his attorneys disregarded his claims of innocence and, convinced he was delusional, told a jury he had killed his wife and mother-in-law.
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 moreOn the last day of his misdemeanor sentence at the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center in downtown Denver, 26-year-old Brian M. registered to vote.
Read moreDenial of methadone to prison inmates with opioid addictions constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the ACLU claimed in federal court Wednesday.
Read moreA Minnesota man filed a federal class action claiming he was forced to attend a religious lecture while he was an inmate in the Dakota County jail and faced punishment if he tried to “escape.”
Read moreTo ensure Texas can keep executing prisoners, it does not have to reveal the supplier of its lethal injection drug to a group of Arkansas death-row inmates, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Read moreA group of gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals who were systematically discriminated against and mistreated while incarcerated at a Southern California jail reached a deal Wednesday that will compel jail officials to enforce a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination.
Read moreTwo years into its legal fight over Georgia prison inmates who suffer for years in solitary confinement, the Southern Center for Human Rights laid out an expert’s findings about the practice in a letter to the state.
Read moreSeveral members of the news media, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, argued before the Sixth Circuit on Thursday in hopes of reviving their constitutional claims against the Ohio Department of Correction, which blocked interviews with inmates involved in the 1993 Lucasville prison riot for over 20 years.
Read moreA Texas school district has stumbled on the state’s post-Civil War history of leasing black prisoners to plantation owners, as its construction project turned up what archaeologists believe are the bones of prisoners-for-hire in an unmarked cemetery.
Read moreA black death-row inmate set to die Tuesday night claims that racism led the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to vote against sparing his life, and now a federal judge is considering whether to postpone the execution.
Read moreConnecticut was hit with a federal complaint Thursday over its policy of counting prisoners as constituents in the lightly populated, rural areas where they are incarcerated.
Read moreA federal judge refused to dismiss lawsuits from female public defenders and correctional officers who claim Cook County, Illinois, inmates have been exposing themselves and masturbating in front of them, a problem they say was exacerbated by a program rewarding detainees with pizza for not engaging in such behavior.
Read moreA federal judge on Monday awarded $1 million in attorney fees in a class action settlement that ended solitary confinement for California inmates suspected of gang affiliations, $2.8 million less than the inmates requested.
Read moreOhio’s parole board decided Friday not to grant clemency to a death-row inmate after considering the testimony of a juror who said he voted to put the man to death based on misleading information about his fraught childhood and drug addiction.
Read moreThe U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to resolve a split amount the circuit courts on the question of when an inmate has a right to file an appeal of his conviction despite the fact his plea agreement specifically waives that right.
Read moreSonoma County, California, will pay $1.7 million to settle inmate torture torture claims.
Read moreA divided Texas appeals court reaffirmed Wednesday its denial of an inmate’s petition to get off death row, finding he is not too intellectually disabled to be executed as suggested by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read moreThe Supreme Court ruled Monday that a defendant who takes a plea deal can get a lighter sentence if guidelines are changed later, but those who were sentenced based on mandatory minimums and their assistance to the government are not eligible for sentencing reductions if the guidelines are lowered.
Read moreTwo liberal justices dissented Monday from the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a case involving mitigating evidence that a Texas death-row inmate has fetal alcohol syndrome, saying jurors did not have a complete picture of his character.
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