Latest Prisons News
Family gets $4 million settlement for 2021 jailhouse death of a Phoenix man
PHOENIX (AP) — Nearly four years after a man died while restrained in a Phoenix jail cell, his family will be awarded a $4 million settlement, county officials have decided. In their federal civil rights lawsuit, the family of 31-year-old Akeem Terrell alleged that police had used...
Pennsylvania man convicted of murder using controversial informants' testimony is denied new trial
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man who has served 43 years of a life sentence for murder based on the shifting stories of four jailhouse informants has lost another appeal for a new trial. A three-judge Superior Court panel last week turned down Steve Szarewicz's request....
Ursula Haverbeck, German far-right activist repeatedly convicted for Holocaust denial, dies at 96
BERLIN (AP) — Ursula Haverbeck, a prominent German far-right activist who accumulated a string of convictions for denying the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. Haverbeck died on Wednesday, her lawyer Wolfram Nahrath told German news agency dpa on Thursday. Haverbeck...
Nicaragua's Ortega proposes reform to make him and his wife 'copresidents'
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega on Wednesday proposed a constitutional reform that would officially make him and his wife, current Vice President Rosario Murillo, “copresidents” of the Central American nation. While the initiative has to pass through the...
Faulty fentanyl tests spurred NYC’s push to ban mail on Rikers Island
NEW YORK (AP) — In 2022, New York City’s jails commissioner, Louis Molina, issued a dire warning to local lawmakers: fentanyl was pouring into Rikers Island through the mail, he said, spurring an overdose crisis among the jail's detainees and putting guards at risk. As evidence...
Susan Smith is denied parole 30 years after drowning 2 sons by rolling car into South Carolina lake
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A parole board decided unanimously Wednesday that Susan Smith should remain in prison, despite her plea that God has forgiven her for infamously killing her two young sons 30 years ago by rolling her car into a South Carolina lake while they were strapped in their car seats....
Two corrections officers plead guilty in death of mentally ill man in Alabama jail
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Two corrections officers agreed to plead guilty to federal charges in the case of a mentally ill man who froze to death — marking a total of eight jail employees who have entered plea agreements related to the death. Federal court records filed on Monday...
Former West Virginia jail officers plead guilty to civil rights violation in fatal assault on inmate
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Two more former correctional officers in West Virginia have pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation in the death of a man who died less than a day after being booked into a jail. As part of plea agreements, Johnathan Walters entered a plea Monday...
Kansas agrees to increase hospital beds for mentally ill defendants
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas has promised to provide more hospital beds for mentally ill criminal defendants to settle a federal lawsuit filed over defendants waiting months for evaluations of whether they were fit for a trial. The agreement between state officials and...
Serbia's opposition is locked in a standoff with police as tensions rise over deadly roof collapse
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian opposition protesters blocked a court house Tuesday over a deadly roof collapse at a railway station in the country’s north earlier this month, setting off a standoff with riot police in a sign of persistent tensions over the crash. The roof...
