A class-action suit charges that the sheriff and public defender’s office in Cook County, Ill. have failed to protect female public defenders and law clerks from detainees who expose themselves and harass the women in other ways. According to the suit’s allegations, the authorities tried bribing serial offenders with free pizza if they refrained from misbehaving but the policy “backfired, allegedly, because some detainees who learned of it would then start acting out just so they could get pizza when they stopped.” [Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar] “A spokeswoman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said the pizza rewards program described in the lawsuit never took place.” [ABC News]
Posts Tagged ‘prisoners’
Dark side of alternatives to incarceration: return of convict leasing
Rehab program sent men from drug courts in Oklahoma and elsewhere to chicken plant as unpaid labor [Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter, Center for Investigative Reporting] More: Digital History/University of Houston on history of convict leasing (“In 1883, about 10 percent of Alabama’s total revenue was derived from convict leasing.”); Ida B. Wells, “The Convict Lease System” (“The Convict Lease System and Lynch Law are twin infamies which flourish hand in hand in many of the United States”); Frederick Douglass speech on convict lease system; U.S. Department of Justice peonage files 1901-1945.
Former crime boss wants $10 million over prison ping-pong slip-fall
A former crime family boss convicted of racketeering but acquitted on murder charges is “suing the federal government for $10 million over injuries from a game of prison ping-pong. The table tennis tumble happened Aug. 29, 2013, while Gioeli was being held at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.” [NY Daily News]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Teacher killed in the crosswalk, with the light. NYPD: “The victim behaved recklessly by crossing the street.” [StreetsBlog]
- North Carolina not among the 13 states in which legal standards require prosecutors to turn over evidence of innocence that they learn of after a conviction [Radley Balko, AP]
- Fail to stop daughter’s 20 year old boyfriend from raiding beer in fridge, go to jail [Washington Post on Maryland lawmakers’ enactment of criminal penalties following car-crash injuries for parents who tolerated alcohol consumption]
- “First, only terrorists had to hand over their phones. Now it’s people involved in traffic accidents, too” [@reuvenim on the proposed New York law discussed here] “In a bid to get around the Fourth Amendment right to privacy, the textalyzer allegedly would… ” [ArsTechnica] But see Scott Greenfield (law “not a particularly effective one” in helping to fix blame, but “just not that big a deal.”)
- Inmates’ contact with family is revenue source for prison, sky-high phone rates just the start [Scott Greenfield]
- Federal oversight of local departments enables weak, reform-averse local pols: “Washington Can’t Fix Broken Policing” [Tim Lynch, Cato]
February 17 roundup
- Cross-examination of Mr. Hot Yoga left jury steamed, especially when it came to explaining the luxury cars [Lowering the Bar; more on Bikram Choudhury litigation]
- Forty-nine (!) Georgia corrections officers accused of taking bribes, drug trafficking [WXIA Atlanta; compare Baltimore jail guards scandal]
- More reactions to Justice Scalia’s death: Lee Liberman Otis, Joseph Bottum, Emily Zanotti, David Wagner/Ninomania. His legacy on the Fourth Amendment [Jonathan Blanks, Cato] On canines in the curtilage and the Bill of Rights more generally [Jacob Sullum] Labor and employment law bloggers on his passing [Jon Hyman] Immune to internationalist argle-bargle, Scalia was actually one of SCOTUS’s more cosmopolitan members [Julian Ku/Opinio Juris]
- Los Angeles joins San Francisco and Boston in banning chewing tobacco in Dodger Stadium and every other park and stadium in the city, because it can [Curbed LA]
- “They are both highly educated attorneys” which means they should have known better than to launch that lurid plot to plant drugs on the rival PTA mom [Washington Post]
- To get a cosmetology license in Ohio, you’ll need to undergo training in spotting signs of human trafficking [Elizabeth Nolan Brown/Reason; earlier on hair and beauty professionals as informants]
- “British teenager creates robot lawyer to help people with their legal queries” [Mashable]
U.S. Chamber’s “Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2015”
Here. Their winner is the monkey-selfie case, and it, like five of the others, has been covered here before: aunt sues nephew for careless hug, cop spills free coffee on lap and sues, thrown roll at Missouri restaurant, California woman allegedly used fake medical records and pictures “from the Internet” to bolster McDonald’s coffee-spill case, and Washington bank robber injured while fleeing scene.
The four others:
4. Pennsylvania Nursing Student Fails a Course Twice and Sues the School for Not Helping With Anxiety
5. Two New York Women File $40 Million Lawsuit Over ‘Like, Five or Six Scratches’ They Received From a Gas Explosion Blocks Away
6. Colorado Inmate is Suing the NFL for $88 Billion Over the 2015 Cowboys’ Playoff Loss
7. Florida Woman is Suing FedEx for Tripping Over a Package Left at Her Doorstep
Our coverage last year of their 2014 list is here.
December 2 roundup
- Nice work: how one lawyer cleans up filing piggyback class actions after the Federal Trade Commission and other enforcement agencies cite marketers for violations [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
- Cites inmate’s 18-year history of frivolous complaints: “Prisoner can’t sue USA Today for not printing gambling odds, Pennsylvania court says” [PennLive]
- Canada’s pioneering cap on regulation could be a model for U.S. [Laura Jones, Mercatus via Tyler Cowen]
- “He had a right to shoot at this drone, and I’m going to dismiss this charge” [Eugene Volokh on Kentucky case noted in July]
- Dear John: Los Angeles may use license-plate readers to go after drivers who enter “wrong” neighborhoods [Brian Doherty]
- Asylum law (which differs in numerous ways from refugee law, among them that it typically addresses claims of persons already here) hasn’t quite solved its own vetting problem [flashback from last year, more]
- Georgia lawyer “sanctioned for ‘deploying boilerplate claims’ and ‘utterly frivolous’ arguments” [ABA Journal]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Mark your calendar: December 1 Cato hosts a policing conference in Washington, D.C.;
- “Note: DOJ thinks flying from Chicago to Los Angeles is suspicious.” Well, no wonder they did a forfeiture then! [@bradheath]
- Mississippi voters on Tuesday returned longtime Attorney General Jim Hood to office by 56-44 margin [Radley Balko; Jackson Clarion-Ledger; earlier Balko on Hood’s spotted record as prosecutor]
- “No! Mine is more unconstitutional!” Police and council in Charlotte, N.C. mull “whether to create ‘public safety zones,’ city areas where people with past arrests would be prohibited from entering.”‘ [Charlotte Observer]
- Harvard lawprof Jeannie Suk on the St. Paul’s sexual assault case and the rapidly changing definition of rape [Jeannie Suk, New Yorker]
- Prison “pay to stay” charges can far exceed any reasonable ability to pay, and few outside the world of ex-offenders “even know it’s happening” [Scott Greenfield]
- “Was it a turf war gone mad? Or a botched police response?” [Nathaniel Penn, GQ, on the Waco biker gang shoot-out, earlier here, here, here]
Discrimination law roundup
- “Requiring Employees to Return 100% Healed Costs Trucking Firm $300K in EEOC Suit” [Thompson’s HR Compliance Expert]
- Update: Oregon appeals court upholds $400,000
finejudgment against Portland owner who asked transgender club to stop holding meetings at his nightclub [Oregonian, earlier] - Fire Department of New York commissioner: yes, we lowered fitness bar so more women could join the force [Matthew Hennessey/City Journal, my take in The Excuse Factory back when]
- From May: “Oversight of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Examining EEOC’s Enforcement and Litigation Programs” [Senate HELP committee via Workplace Prof]
- Lengthy HUD battle: 2nd Circuit notes “no finding, at any point, that Westchester actually engaged in housing discrimination” [WSJ editorial, earlier here and here]
- In 1992 Delaware settled an employment discrimination lawsuit by agreeing to assign prison guards “without regard to the gender of prisoners….A disaster ensued.” [Scott Greenfield on Cris Barrish, Wilmington News-Journal coverage]
- NYC council speaker pushing “very bad bill to extend special employment protections to caregivers” [N.Y. Daily News editorial]
“Think it’s hard to fire a bad teacher? Try a bad corrections officer”
“Since 2010, the state [of New York] has sought to fire 30 prison guards accused of abusing inmates through a convoluted arbitration process that is required under the union contract. Officials have prevailed only eight times, according to records of disciplinary cases released under state Freedom of Information Law requests.” [Tom Robbins, The Marshall Project; earlier on difficulty of investigating Attica abuse allegations, and related on correctional officers’ bill of rights laws]