Search Results for: solitary confinement

A Canadian Federal Court judge ruled Wednesday that the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is unconstitutional under Canadian law, as certain provisions of the Act violate the “right to life, liberty, and security of the person” guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The STCA governs Canada’s asylum relationship with the United States, and requires that [...]

The US Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion Monday finding that the petitioner was prejudiced at trial by constitutionally deficient counsel. The case, Andrus v. Texas, involved an attempted carjacking, which resulted in two deaths, and for which the petitioner, Terence Andrus, eventually received the death penalty. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that, [...]

COVID-19 patients are frequently constrained to solitary confinement in order to curb the continuing spread of the contamination. The race for medicine or a vaccine to treat COVID-19 is on. The pharmaceutical industries are being asked to donate the intellectual property (IP) of the relevant medicinal equipment or medicines by officials advocating for public health [...]

The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. –Bryan Stevenson “This book is important. But it is a candle in a hurricane.” This is a statement from one of the participants in the prison reading group I lead each month. In the [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia on Tuesday urged the sheriff’s office of Cobb County, Georgia to conduct a full investigation into the water contamination that allegedly left the jail’s inmates without water to drink or shower for multiple days. According to the ACLU’s letter, on Saturday, inmates reported that water smelled or [...]

Pennsylvania prisoners reached a settlement with the state Department of Corrections on Monday, ending solitary confinement and other isolationist policies for inmates sentenced to death. The settlement was a response to a January 2018 suit filed by five inmates and their attorneys. The attorneys worked with the American Civil Liberties Union and Abolitionist Law Center to [...]

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Florida Legal Services, and the Florida Justice Institute filed a suit in the United States District Court Northern District Of Florida in Tallahassee on Thursday calling for an end to solitary confinement as a punishment in Florida’s juvenile detention facilities. The lawsuit filed on behalf of several minor plaintiffs [...]

Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an independent investigation into the detention and death of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. After collapsing during his trial, the Egyptian President was pronounced dead on Monday. The cause of death was a heart attack, but family and [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider whether to hear the case of Charles Rhines, who claims that the South Dakota jury that sentenced him to death harbored anti-gay bias. Such bias has no place in our criminal justice system because “our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are.” The Supreme [...]

The ends should not justify the means when it comes to the protection of basic human rights in Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Severe challenges to the peace and stability of these regions along with overarching transnational terrorism threats have incentivized the erosion of human rights by the respective governments. These challenges are [...]