A federal judge in Kansas dismissed [opinion, PDF] a lawsuit on Tuesday by a convicted killer who accused a county jail and its administrators of violating his religious rights. Inmate Eddie Gordon Sr. stated in 2014 in his handwritten lawsuit that he wasn’t fed for 28 hours during Ramadan. Gordon also stated [AP report] that on numerous occasions he was served cold and unacceptable meals close to prayer time, preventing him from eating before his fasting. Gordon was sentenced in October 2011 to 23 years in prison for intentional second-degree murder related to a November 2010 shooting in Topeka. During the time of this complaint, Gordon was being temporarily held in the Shawnee County Jail. Judge David Waxse dismissed Gordon’s case after Gordon missed the court-imposed deadline to submit evidence that the alleged misconduct harmed him physically or intentionally interfered with his decision. Gordon had been given 30 days in March of last year in order to explain in writing why his lawsuit shouldn’t be dismissed. He ultimately did not file an amended lawsuit until this April, almost a year after the deadline. In his ruling, Chief Judge J. Thomas Marten ruled last month that even if the court excused Gordon missing the deadline, his amendments “do not cure the deficiencies the court previously discussed,” thereby making the amendment “futile.”

The treatment of prisoners and prison reform [JURIST podcast] has been a matter of ongoing concern in the US. In June a lawsuit accused [JURIST report] a Louisiana judge of running a debtors’ prison. In March the Department of Justice urged [JURIST report] state court systems to stop using procedural routines and hefty fines to profit off poor defendants. In February the Supreme Court of California ruled [JURIST report] that Governor Jerry Brown can put his plan to ease prison overcrowding on the ballot this November. In January the US Supreme Court ruled that a landmark decision banning mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles should apply retroactively [JURIST report]. In August the Department of Justice reached a settlement [JURIST report] with Los Angeles prisons on mentally ill inmate care. In May of last year Human Rights Watch release [JURIST report] a report stating that mentally disabled prisoners experience “unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force” at the hands of prison staff across the US. A federal court in February 2015 approved [JURIST report] a settlement agreement between the Arizona Department of Corrections and the American Civil Liberties Union in a class action lawsuit over the health care system within Arizona prisons. Also last February rights group Equal Justice Under Law filed suit [JURIST report] against the cities of Ferguson and Jennings, Missouri, for their practice of jailing citizens who fail to pay debts owed to the city for minor offenses and traffic tickets.