by Matt Clarke
In December 2018, Minnesota agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of a prisoner who committed suicide while guards ignored orders to keep him under constant observation, then forged documents to cover up their lapses.
William Roy St. John, 47, had ...
by Scott Grammer
In a case that involved circumstances she called “heartbreaking and shocking,” U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Beach Smith approved a $3 million settlement in a wrongful death suit filed by the family of Jamycheal M. Mitchell, a 24-year-old man who, according to the complaint, suffered from ...
by Ed Lyon
In mid-August 2015, diabetic Nebraska prisoner Aron Lee Boyd-Nicholson was washing clothes in his cell when he began experiencing classic heart attack symptoms – including chest pain, dizziness and weakness – before he collapsed. Nurse Carolyn Moore tested his blood-sugar levels, then instructed him to return ...
by Ed Lyon
After a troubled and tormented life, capped by a year of being assaulted and bullied in a Durham, North Carolina adult jail, 17-year-old Uniece Fennell hanged herself in her cell.
Uniece was raised in California. Her father, an abusive drug addict, had recently been released from ...
by Ed Lyon
Denver, Colorado resident Mickey Howard, often homeless and unemployed, was arrested on June 9, 2018 and charged with public intoxication and domestic violence. He had $64 when he was booked into jail.
The next morning at his arraignment, a judge set Howard’s bond at $10 – ...
by Chad Marks
On February 15, 2019, a federal jury ruled that Mark Pajas, Sr. should not have died at a jail in Monterey County, California, prompting an award of $1.6 million to his family in a wrongful death suit.
Pajas, 56, was riding a bicycle the wrong way ...
by Douglas Ankney
In May 2018, commissioners in Cook County, Illinois agreed to establish a $5,263,000 fund to settle four lawsuits, including one certified as a class-action, alleging a complete denial of dental treatment for prisoners at the Cook County Jail (CCJ). The claims arose because, in a 2007 “cost-cutting ...
by Douglas Ankney
Ocean County, New Jersey has agreed to pay $1.975 million to settle a class-action lawsuit, where the class was defined as “All persons who were admitted into the Ocean County Correctional Facility during the period between November 28, 2005 through December 28, 2007, after being arrested only ...
by Ed Lyon
In March 2014, Mollianne Fischer’s term of probation for misusing a credit card was revoked and she began serving a two-year sentence at Arrendale State Prison. She appeared to be in good health at first, though later began vomiting and had trouble breathing and remaining continent. She ...
by Ed Lyon
Vannara Nhar, 22, was sentenced to a term in federal prison for selling firearms to an undercover cop. He entered the Bureau of Prisons in October 2011 with near-perfect vision and was assigned to FCC Butner in North Carolina. When he left in 2013, his eyesight ...