Washington Prisoner Awarded $125 for Failure to Timely Respond to Public
Records Request


A Thurston County, Superior Court in Washington State awarded
Airway Heights Correction Center prisoner Derek E. Grunquist $125 for a
114 business day delay in responding to his public records request. On
June 22, 1998, the Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC) received a
public records request from Grunquist requesting that he be provided the
number of prisoners within the WDOC who had their sentences adjusted
pursuant to the decision of In re: Mahrle, 88 Wash.App. 410, 945 P.2d 1142
(1997). Grunquist did not receive a response until October 27, 1998. On
October 29 he sent a letter clarifying his request because WDOC responded
he should direct his request elsewhere. After his suit was filed, WSOC
responded to Grunquist's request by stating six prisoners had been
affected by Mahrle as of April 1998.

Both parties moved for summary judgment in Grunquist's public
records suit. The Judge, Richard J. Strophy, granted judgment for WDOC on
the records claim, finding the information" Grunquist sought, without
more specifity, does not constitute an adequate request under the Public
Disclosure Act. The Court, however, ruled in favor of Grunquist on the
failure to ...

A Florida federal jury awarded a former employee of Brinks, Inc.
$8,261,050 for malicious prosecution by Brinks' failure to provide
complete information and withholding important evidence from the police
regarding a theft. In 1996, while plaintiff was an employee of Brinks,
$350,000 in cash was discovered missing from Brinks' Palm Beach facility.
Using surveillance video of the plaintiff and co-workers in the hours just
prior to the cash being reported missing, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's
Department arrested the plaintiff for the theft.

The plaintiff was jailed for six months before he was tried and
acquitted of the charges in June of 1997. The plaintiff then sued Brinks,
alleging it caused a malicious prosecution by only showing police select
portions of two of 23 available camera angles. He claimed there were
other camera angles that would have exonerated him.

A former Brinks manager testified that Brinks' security director did not
want the loss documented in Miami, where the shipment originated, because
he was already facing unacceptable losses in that city. Only information
directing the police investigation to Palm Beach was provided to police.
The security director showed police an overhead view of Brinks' check-in
counter with the plaintiff handing bags ...

The plaintiff in this case alleged that Wackenhut Corrections
Corporation falsely imprisoned him due to mistaken identity, and failed to
immediately release him when it was informed of the mistake by a parole
officer.

Plaintiff was stopped for a traffic violation in the car of Adrese
Bassett, who had an ...

Michael A. Vallone was arrested on three misdemeanor charges and
detained at Georgia's Douglas County Jail for 7.5 months. He alleged he
was not allowed access to an attorney or bail bondsman, and was virtually
lost within the jail system. He was only released after a citizens group
monitoring jail ...

The plaintiff in this case was charged with rape and indecent
assault against a woman who was present at an orgy. Plaintiff said the
matter was a consensual encounter.

Plaintiff was held in Pennsylvania's Holmesburg Prison in lieu of 10% of a
$50,000 bond, as he could not raise the ...

California Prisoner's Imprisonment Past Release Date Violates Due Process

The Ninth Circuit held that a § 1983 suit filed by a former prisoner was
the appropriate venue for Eighth Amendment and due process claims. Frank
Haygood brought a civil rights action after he had successfully obtained
his freedom from the California DOC via habeas corpus. Prison officials had
miscalculated Haygood's sentences when his convictions for escape and
robbery attached to his original sentence. He should have been released in
1970 but was not released until 1975.

Haygood brought claims against 16 prison officials including records
personnel Harold Cranke and Benjamin Seymour. Eleven defendants were
dismissed in district court on pretrial motions. Three received favorable
verdicts from the district court. Only Cranke and Seymour survived as
defendants.

A jury awarded Haygood $2,090 in damages and $45,383 in attorney fees
against Cranke and Seymour. The district court judge held that the record
keepers exhibited an "intent to punish" when they "refused to investigate a
computational error" even after Haygood had "presented credible evidence"
that he was being held past his release date. Cranke and Seymour appealed.
The Ninth Circuit held that the record keepers exhibited deliberate
indifference when investigating Haygood's original contention ...

A Louisiana Federal District Court has denied qualified immunity to
officials of the Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC), whose actions
in calculating a prisoner's release date kept the prisoner past the date he
should have been released. All parties were denied summary judgment.

Ricky Nelson was a DOC parolee until he was arrested and convicted of four
counts of simple battery. After eleven months in jail, Nelson pleaded
guilty to the battery charges, was sentenced to four concurrent 30-day
terms, and given credit for time served. He was mistakenly released despite
a "parole hold," and upon re-arrest, his parole was violated.

Under Louisiana law, LSA-R.S. 15:574.9(E), "[a] parolee shall not receive
credit for such time served prior to the revocation hearing where ... the
revocation is based on the subsequent commission of a crime, in which case
the parolee will receive credit for time served for the subsequent
conviction...." Because his time in jail for battery far exceeded the
actual battery sentence, Nelson asked for credit for ten of the eleven
months he spent in jail on the battery arrest.

Nelson first contacted Henry Goines, DOC's Record System Analyst
Administrator at DOC Central Headquarters. Goines, a non-lawyer, issued a
summary ...

In this somewhat confusing opinion, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
held that county prosecutors, defendants in a civil, rights lawsuit brought
by two men who were falsely arrested, were not entitled to absolute
immunity on numerous claims, including a claim that they illegally punished
the two men during a post-arrest detention.

Plaintiffs, Earl Gobel and Michael DeFranco, were mistakenly identified and
falsely arrested on charges of issuing bad checks. The charges were later
dropped. Plaintiffs subsequently brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against
Maricopa County (Arizona), two county prosecutors, and an investigator.
Plaintiffs alleged that the prosecutors allowed their arrests to be filmed
by reporters, "falsely accused [them] of criminal conduct at these media
events," and detained them for hours in "a metal police wagon in 108 degree
heat without food, water," adequate ventilation, or bathroom facilities.
The detentions were apparently "connected to the publicizing of their arrests."

The U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona dismissed, and
plaintiffs appealed.

The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded, holding:
1) Prosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity when acting within the
scope of their authority and in a quasi-judicial capacity. "Quasi-judicial
activities are those which are 'intimately associated, with ...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that issues
of fact precluded summary judgment of an arrestee's civil rights action
stemming from his warrantless arrest and his imprisonment for failure to
pay fines and court costs, and that remand was necessary to determine if
the county court had sovereign immunity.

Plaintiff Lloyd Alkire was arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI) and
held in the Homes County (Ohio) Jail for nearly 72 hours without a probable
cause hearing. He later pleaded no contest to the DWI charges and received
15 days in jail and ordered to pay fines and court costs totaling $620.
Alkire was later arrested on three separate occasions for failure to pay,
and on two of those occasions he was sentenced to 30 days in jail. No
inquiry was ever made into Alkire's ability to pay.

Alkire ultimately brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against defendants
Holmes County, Judge Jane Irving, Holmes County Court, and the sheriff
alleging that "his constitutional rights were violated by his warrantless
detention and civil debt-related incarceration." Alkire and defendants
moved for summary judgment. The United States District Court for the
Northern District of Ohio granted defendants' summary ...

On December 31, 2003, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of
California awarded $850,000 to a man who was falsely arrested and
imprisoned for seven weeks due to misidentification by the federal Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA).

In 1999, the DEA was investigating a drug cartel in Southern California. ...