LAKE CITY — Mark Joiner was roused from his cell earlier than usual on June 24, 2012. He was handed a bottle of Clorox and was told it was clean-up time. Joiner was used to cleaning up cells in Dade Correctional Institution’s psychiatric ward, and many of them were frequently brimming with feces and urine, […]
Under fire, Florida prisons changing policy on death investigations
The Department of Corrections is proposing that all unattended inmate deaths and incidents involving serious injury of inmates be chiefly handled by the state Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The proposal, which must be finalized with FDLE, is among several changes announced by prisons chief Michael Crews in the wake of a series of stories […]
Florida Lawyers Want More Spent on Legal Aid, but Differ on Who Should Pay
Hundreds of Florida attorneys, including a former state Supreme Court justice, are asking the state’s judiciary to raise the annual bar dues that lawyers pay to $365, a $100 hike opposed by state bar leaders. Two legal non-profits pushing for the hike say the extra dollars are needed to prop up a legal-aid financing system […]
Lawyers Are Seriously Asking To Be Charged Higher Dues
A coalition of Florida legal aid organizations and supporters filed a petition Monday with the Florida Supreme Court asking to raise the cap on Florida Bar dues by $100 to fund legal aid programs. The group called Access for Justice wants Bar dues raised from $265 to $365 annually for Florida’s nearly 100,000 lawyers. The […]
Prison death is one of several raising questions
Six years ago on June 25, Donna Fitzgerald, a 50-year-old corrections officer at Daytona Beach’s Tomoka Correctional Institution, was stabbed more than a dozen times with a piece of sheet metal. She was found dead, slumped over a pushcart, her blood spilled on the concrete floor of a prison paint room. A subsequent investigation by […]
2 years later, Florida keeps lid on prison death details
A killing, then threats and a coverup. That’s what three former inmates at Dade Correctional Institution independently claim happened on and after June 23, 2012, when Darren Rainey, a 50-year-old, mentally-ill prisoner, was allegedly locked in a shower by corrections officers as punishment. He was left there for as long as two hours, purportedly howling for mercy as scalding water blasted his body.
NACDL Releases Major Report on Collateral Consequences of Conviction
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has released a major new report — Collateral Damage: America’s Failure to Forgive or Forget in the War on Crime – A Roadmap to Restore Rights and Status After Arrest or Conviction. With more than 65 million people in America having some form of a criminal record, […]
Seven Republican Governors Won’t Comply With Anti-Rape Rules
WASHINGTON — Republican governors in seven states — Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, Texas and Utah — are either ignoring or refusing to comply with national standards meant to prevent sexual assault in prisons, according to new information from the Justice Department. The Justice Department gave the governors of all 50 states until May 15 […]
Davie woman with banished service dog gets $300,000 condo settlement
Calling the behavior of a Davie condominium association “absurd” and “unreasonable,” a federal judge has ordered a Davie condominium to allow a disabled resident to keep her service dog. The two-year dispute will carry a hefty price tag for the Sabal Palm Condominiums: $300,000. Deborah Fischer, a retired Bro-ward art teacher who was diagnosed with […]
FJI, on behalf of HOPE Fair Housing Center, Files Race Discrimination Housing Lawsuit
Lawyers from the Florida Justice Institute (FJI) have filed a federal lawsuit alleging housing discrimination on the basis of race against a Miami apartment complex. Housing Opportunities Project for Excellence (HOPE), a local fair housing center, sent testers to ask about the availability of apartments. The Black testers were told that no apartments were available, […]
Housing Discrimination Lawsuit Filed
It was like a sting operation: send both black and white people into an apartment building posing as renters; then see if they’re treated differently because of the color of their skin. It resulted in a discrimination lawsuit being filed in federal court. “Discrimination, completely,” said Zipporah Hayes, one of the housing testers who went […]
Using Jailed Migrants as a Pool of Cheap Labor
HOUSTON — The kitchen of the detention center here was bustling as a dozen immigrants boiled beans and grilled hot dogs, preparing lunch for about 900 other detainees. Elsewhere, guards stood sentry and managers took head counts, but the detainees were doing most of the work — mopping bathroom stalls, folding linens, stocking commissary shelves. […]
Fred Grimm: Brutality against mentally ill inmates has become the norm
Dying became Darren Rainey’s revenge. Dying in a scalding prison shower was the perfect act of defiance against his torturers and the institution that abided their cruelties. After all, he wasn’t supposed to die. He was only supposed to suffer the excruciating punishment that guards at Dade Correctional Institution enjoy inflicting on mentally disturbed inmates. […]
Housing group charges racial discrimination at Miami apartment complex
When Zipporah Hayes arrived at Elite River View Apartments to ask about a two-bedroom apartment for rent, the rental manager told her there were no units available, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the apartment complex owner. Two hours later, Alexandra Del Rosario visited the same complex and asked about an apartment. The rental […]
End Mass Incarceration Now
By The Editorial Board For more than a decade, researchers across multiple disciplines have been issuing reports on the widespread societal and economic damage caused by America’s now-40-year experiment in locking up vast numbers of its citizens. If there is any remaining disagreement about the destructiveness of this experiment, it mirrors the so-called debate over […]
Behind bars, a brutal and unexplained death
The purported details of Darren Rainey’s last hour are difficult to read. “I can’t take it no more, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again,’’ he screamed over and over, according to a grievance complaint from a fellow inmate, as Rainey was allegedly locked in a shower with the scalding water turned on full blast. […]
Lawyers for the poor seek hike in bar dues
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Joined by a former state Supreme Court justice, attorneys for the poor are trying to raise annual Florida Bar dues by up to $100 to address what they call a fiscal crisis. The attempt to hike the annual dues, which have not increased since 2001, from the current $265 has sparked an […]
ACLU, Flagler sheriff reach agreement on postcard-only policy at jail
PALM COAST — An old policy of restricting mail sent and received by Flagler County jail inmates officially ended Thursday with an agreement reached between the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office and the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. The ACLU, along with the Florida Justice Institute, filed a class-action lawsuit in early 2013 against Flagler […]