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Pfizer Deals Blow to Lethal Injections

Jul 6, 2016 No Comments

By Christopher Zoukis Pfizer, Inc., the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, recently announced new restrictions on the distribution of drugs used to execute prisoners. The May 13, 2016 announcement detailed “distribution restrictions” that the company is placing on certain drugs used in lethal injection protocols, including pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, propofol, midazolam, hydromorphone, rocuronium bromide and

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Ohio Prison Guards Cited for Sexual Misconduct with Prisoners

Jul 6, 2016 No Comments

Several Ohio state prison guards have been disciplined following at least 19 allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate relationships with female prisoners between 2012 and 2013. Most of the allegations arose shortly after the Dayton Correctional Institution (DCI) switched from a male-only to an all-female prison in 2012, but ongoing problems were cited as of

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Supreme Court Accepts Two New Texas Death Penalty Challenges

Jun 23, 2016 No Comments

Although challenges to the death penalty have not fared all that well at the Supreme Court in recent years, its new term starting in October will contain at least two more cases brought by Death Row inmates. On June 6, the high court agreed to take up two separate appeals brought by inmates who received

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High Court Tells Alabama to Review Its Death Sentencing Law

Jun 1, 2016 No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 8-1 mid-January decision in Hurst v. Florida overturned the way Florida decides on imposing the death penalty, saying it was unconstitutional because juries weren’t allowed to make the ultimate decision. Now, the high court has recently told Alabama’s Court of Criminal Appeals to review whether that Florida case means Alabama must

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Excluding Black Jurors Voids Long-Ago Murder Conviction

May 26, 2016 No Comments

In a landmark 7-1 decision earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court voided a nearly 30-year-old murder conviction of a black inmate in Georgia due to prosecutors’ efforts to keep black jurors from hearing the case. Timothy Tyrone Foster, an 18-year-old youth with mental disabilities (which would eventually lead a state court to find his

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Redistricting Can Count Prisoners and Other Non-Voters, High Court Rules

Apr 14, 2016 No Comments

Rejecting a lawsuit filed by conservatives trying to rewrite the longstanding “one man, one vote” rule for drawing the lines for political districts, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is acceptable for states not to count just eligible voters, but to instead use the number of total residents. As a result, states can count

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Stop Sending Juvenile Offenders to Adult Prisons

Feb 17, 2016 No Comments

By Jean Trounstine and Christopher Zoukis A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision is a deceptively simple line that should affect, and in many cases, transform the way Americans think about juveniles who kill. At the heart of the 2012 groundbreaking case, Miller v. Alabama, said the Court, is the idea, proven by neuroscience and behavioral

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Undoing Veto, Maryland Legislators Ease Ex-Felons Voting Rights

Feb 17, 2016 No Comments

An estimated 44,000 ex-felons in Maryland will have an easier time regaining the right to vote after being released from prison following the end of a heated fight between the state’s governor and its legislature. Without a vote to spare, backers of bills (SB 340, HB 980) to allow ex-felons’ voting privileges to be restored

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Alabama resumes executions as appeals court fails to intervene

Jan 26, 2016 No Comments

A Montgomery, Ala.-based federal appeals court has refused to delay the execution of a state prisoner, even as his lawyers contended his conviction might be invalid in light of a recent Supreme Court decision and argued the execution ought to await the outcome of a lawsuit that could find executions in the state unconstitutionally cruel.

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Prison Legal News battles DOC censorship of important information on sexual violence in prisons

Dec 3, 2015 No Comments

Prison Legal News has launched an important lawsuit against Arizona’s Department of Corrections over the withholding of their publication from prisoners. The editions in question discuss documented cases of rape and sexual violence perpetrated by prison staff against inmates—one of which took place in an Arizona prison and was heard in federal court. Many inmates

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