The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held a prisoner’s previous lawsuit settlements did not preclude a complaint for the same type of injury occurring at a later time. It also held the district court had improperly concluded a claim against a medical director was brought in the director’s official capacity, making it a suit against the state.

Illinois prisoner Delbert Heard has suffered for over 20 years from inguinal hernias, i.e., hernias of the groin. [See: PLN, March 2003, p.24]. He was diagnosed with one in 1995 upon beginning his prison sentence. A second hernia on his other side was diagnosed in 2000, but Wexford Health Sources, the medical contractor for the Illinois DOC, “stalled until May 2007 after both hernias had become incarcerated” – which is when the intestines protrude through a weak spot in the abdominal wall and become trapped, “prompting emergency surgery.”

Heard sued prison officials, Wexford and a Wexford physician in 2006 and 2009. A jury entered a verdict against the doctor, resulting in Wexford settling both lawsuits in September 2012 for $273,250. See: Heard v. Illinois DOC, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:06-cv-00644 and Heard v. Wexford Health Sources, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Ill.), ...

The family of a prisoner who died from drug withdrawal symptoms at Michigan’s Macomb County Jail (MCJ) filed a lawsuit against the facility and its private medical contractor, Correct Care Solutions, in March 2015.

On June 11, 2014, David Stojcevski, 32, was ordered by a court to serve 30 days for failing to pay a $772 traffic ticket. Stojcevski, a drug addict, was taking methadone, Xanax and Klonopin to treat his addiction when he was booked into MCJ. He was denied access to those medications and went into withdrawal, which caused him to act irrationally.

His symptoms were improperly diagnosed and he was placed naked in an observation cell for prisoners with mental health problems. The cell was lit 24/7 and monitored by a video camera. Another prisoner was in the cell with Stojcevski, and they eventually began fighting.

After the other prisoner was removed, Stojcevski could be seen on video reenacting the fight, indicating he was hallucinating. Over the 17 days of his imprisonment at MCJ, Stojcevski lost 50 pounds and suffered convulsions.

During the last two days of his life he laid on the floor of his cell and shook in clear distress, yet no jail staff checked ...

Despite the fact that the Obama administration has deported more people than any other president in U.S. history, in 2015 the number of deportations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reached a low not seen in many years. Some believe the drop was the result of more targeted ICE priorities, while others contend the decrease in deportations had a more organic cause – namely, lower numbers of undocumented immigrants attempting to enter the United States.

ICE set a record high for deportations in fiscal year 2012, according to then-agency director John T. Morton, who said 409,849 undocumented immigrants had been removed that year. The number highlighted the emphasis that the federal government had placed on illegal immigration since the 9/11 attacks. Deportations dropped to 368,644 in 2013, then declined further to 315,943 the following year.

As reported by ICE, in fiscal year 2015 the agency deported 235,413 people – a marked decrease from prior years, but still much higher than during previous decades. By way of comparison, the number of deportations in the 1990s rarely topped 20,000 annually.

More people are detained each year by immigration officials than are incarcerated by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The combined budgets ...

Just two months ago, PLN reported on Corrections Corporation of America’s tacit admission of failure, evidenced by the firm rebranding itself as “CoreCivic.” PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann said of the name change, “If nothing else this rebranding effort indicates the company knows its CCA brand – which it developed over more than 30 years – had become a liability due to its connection with higher levels of violence, sexual abuse, corruption and questionable cost savings at CCA-run prisons and jails. The company may now be called CoreCivic but it will always be remembered as CCA and can’t escape its past.” [See: PLN, Nov. 2016, p.51].

In a new development reported on December 13, 2016, Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC), a national non-profit organization that works on issues related to U.S. immigration detention, announced that CoreCivic had violated its common-law trademark rights. In fact, CIVIC opposes the use of privately-operated detention facilities and had previously raised concerns about the sexual abuse of detainees at a CCA facility in San Diego. The organization has retained attorney Jonathan Kirsch and the law office of Kendall Brill & Kelly to address the trademark violation.

“It is shocking that CCA ...

When PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann received a letter from a prisoner at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility in Nashville, Tennessee, a jail operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA, which recently changed its name to CoreCivic), he knew something was wrong.

The letter described how prisoners were made to work in a building trades vocational program, creating items such as wooden sports team plaques and cornhole boards (a type of bean bag game). CCA employees would then sell the items online and at flea markets and pocket the proceeds – in violation of a state statute, TCA § 41-2-148, that makes it a crime for jailers to personally profit from prisoners’ labor.

TCA § 41-2-148(a) states: “No sheriff, jailer or other person responsible for the care and custody of inmates housed in a county or municipal jail or workhouse may employ, require or otherwise use any inmate housed in the jail or workhouse to perform labor that will or may result directly or indirectly in the sheriff’s, jailer’s or other person’s personal gain, profit or benefit or in gain, profit or benefit to a business partially or wholly owned by the sheriff, jailer or other person.”

In his April ...

To obtain needed surgery, a prisoner escaped from Tennessee’s Trousdale County Jail (TCJ).

Prior to being booked into TCJ to serve a probation violation sentence, Don R. White, Jr. 31, was scheduled for hernia surgery.

“When I walked in, I had my papers showing I had to have surgery, and nobody ever helped me”, he said.

White submitted three or four medical requests and was in such apparent destress that guards also submitted a couple.  Yet he was not seen by a doctor.  “I lost 10 or 11 pounds in a week, just puking”, he said.

With no help coming from TCJ’s medical contractor, Quality Correctional Healthcare, Whit took matters into his own hands by escaping during a recreational period.

“I should never have done it, but I got two kids, and I wasn’t going to lie back there and die”, he said.

After freeing himself from custody, White walked to a friend’s house and was taken to a hospital and admitted for surgery.  “They asked me why did I wait so long to come because they knew I was in a lot of pain, but I couldn’t tell them the real reason”, said White.

A local news channel, who ...

Dozens of men have died in disturbing circumstances in privatized, immigrant-only prisons.
The Bureau of Prisons itself says there’s a problem. And yet the privatization scheme continues.

by Seth Freed Wessler, The Nation

Where Claudio Fagardo-Saucedo grew up, on the colonial streets of the Mexican city of Durango, migrating to the United States was almost a rite of passage. It was following the stream of departures from Durango in the 1980s that the lanky young man left his family and traveled north. His mother, Julieta Saucedo Salazar, heard that he’d found jobs working as a laborer in Los Angeles. But they soon lost touch. “We did not know much about him, really,” his younger sister told me.

Fagardo-Saucedo worked, his jobs sometimes taking him out of California, and occasionally he got into trouble – once for “possession for sale” of cocaine, another time for stealing jewelry. Every seven or eight years, his mother recalled, he’d return to her house – but never by choice. “They caught him all the time for being illegal,” Julieta said. She always hoped her wandering son might stay, get to know the family again, but he never did. “He would be here a month, and ...

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an insurance company is not required to defend or indemnify a private prison contractor in the death of a pretrial detainee at a Texas jail.

Mario Garcia was confined at the Brooks County Detention Center, operated by LCS Corrections Services, Inc. (LCS). He was taking high doses of benzodiazepine prescribed by his personal physician when he was booked into the jail, and it was alleged he died because LCS staff refused to provide him with additional doses of that medication.

Garcia’s estate filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint alleging constitutional violations and state law medical malpractice claims. The federal district court allowed only the medical malpractice claims to go to trial, which resulted in a $2.25 million verdict. [See: PLN, April 2014, p.16]. Following that verdict, the district court allowed the § 1983 claim to proceed, which alleged “LCS’s policy of refusing to administer certain medications to inmates constituted deliberate indifference to Garcia’s serious medical needs.”

LCS then initiated a separate action in another district court seeking a declaration that Lexington Insurance Company was required to defend and indemnify LCS in the underlying § 1983 lawsuit. At issue were two insurance ...

Elberto Esquiel Bravo, 55, the former warden at the East Hidalgo County Detention Center, was arrested in January 2015 and charged with acting as an accessory after the fact in a conspiracy to bribe Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Jose Ismael “Melo” Ochoa to reduce the bond of a Mexican drug trafficker.

The detention center, operated by LCS Corrections Services at the time, holds prisoners for the U.S. Marshals as well as overflow prisoners from the Hidalgo County Jail. The facility has been the subject of past complaints over inadequate health care, lack of water and lack of recreation.

In February 2010, agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration asked the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a traffic stop on Luis Martinez-Gallegos pursuant to an investigation into a major cocaine smuggling operation. Almost 90 kilos of cocaine were discovered in his car, and Ochoa set his bond at $2.45 million.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Bravo, three people who later cooperated with federal authorities conspired with others, including Bravo, to bribe Ochoa to reduce the bond so Martinez-Gallegos, who was in the U.S. illegally, could post bail and be deported to Mexico. They paid $100,000 in ...

Christopher Wallace, 30, was arrested on February 12, 2015 on charges of robbing two banks. According to his attorney, Wallace committed the crimes in a desperate attempt to secure funds to pay for feeding tubes he required because his esophagus had been severed from his stomach in a shooting incident three years earlier. Hospital records indicated that Wallace, who is 6’4”, weighed only 77 pounds at the time of his arrest.

A lawsuit filed in federal court on October 13, 2016 alleges a hospital released Wallace to the Allegheny County Jail with instructions for medical staff to administer five tube feedings each day. The complaint contends that Corizon Health and its employee, Dr. Abimbola Talabi, failed to feed Wallace properly, providing him with less than half of the required feedings and, on some days, not feeding him at all. The lawsuit further claims that the “deliberate indifference” of medical and jail staff resulted in Wallace suffering malnourishment and related health problems, including a heart attack.

A 2014 audit of the Allegheny County Jail following the deaths of seven prisoners found that Corizon had failed to maintain mandatory staffing levels, did not maintain accurate medical records and failed to provide appropriate ...