The Virginia Supreme Court has reversed a jury’s finding that a convicted sex offender was not a sexually violent predator who must be civilly committed. On Aug. 12, 2014, the Commonwealth of Virginia moved to involuntarily commit Brady Arnold Proffitt, Jr. as a sexually violent predator. In order to commit Proffitt pursuant to the Sexually
The Florida Supreme Court has issued an unusual opinion in which it simultaneously sanctioned a prisoner for too many filings and pointed out that the prisoner may be serving an illegal sentence. The prisoner, Otis D. Blaxton, filed 21 petitions with the Florida Supreme Court between 2008 and 2016. The petitions ran the gamut from
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has allowed Sierra Club to intervene in a reverse Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records request lawsuit. The dispute stemmed from FOIA requests made to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in which Sierra Club requested documents relating to power plants operated by Entergy Gulf States
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has upheld a district court’s ruling that certain information relating to terrorist organizations is not disclosable under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center (“The Center”) submitted to the Department of Homeland Security a FOIA request for information related to
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has vacated and remanded the sentence of a convicted child pornographer. Jason Daniel Scott pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography and was sentenced to 108 months of imprisonment and lifetime supervised release. As part of his supervision, Scott was not allowed to
In a scathing opinion, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, awarded a wrongfully detained American citizen $82,500 in damages for false arrest and false imprisonment at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Davino Watson was born in Kingston, Jamaica November 17,
As has been done annually since 1998, in October, the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general released a list of what he sees as the leading management and performance challenges confronting the agency in the year ahead. One of the eight areas identified by Inspector General Michael Horowitz was summarized as “Managing an Overcrowded Federal
The Death Penalty Information Center has released a report highlighting significant changes in the number of executions in the United States in 2016. According to the report, there were 20 executions in the U.S. during calendar year 2016 – the lowest number in 25 years. Additionally, juries imposed fewer death sentences than in any year
The small city of Petoskey, Michigan, isn’t far from the Chippewa Correctional Facility, but during the summer of 2016, the city and the prison got a lot closer. It started when an inmate from Chippewa wrote a letter to SCORE’s Tip of the Mitt chapter in Petoskey. SCORE is a nonprofit association that provides education, counseling, and
The New York City Department of Correction and city officials are rethinking their policy of releasing prisoners without jackets during frigid winter months. The New York Daily News reported in December 2016 that the city was routinely freeing prisoners from jail and court without proper winter clothing. Beleaguered public defenders and legal aid attorneys went so far