A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled that police departments violate the Constitution if they detain inmates at the request of immigration agents, marking the latest legal setback for the Trump administration’s plans to identify and deport immigrants in the country illegally. In his order issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. found that […]

BY SAM MORGEN smorgen@bakersfield.com Kern County has agreed to pay the estate of a man who died by suicide in Lerdo Jail $2 million as part of a lawsuit settlement. The plaintiffs in the case, which had lasted for more than a year and a half, alleged that law enforcement staff ignored signs of mental […]

By Melissa Etehad After nearly three decades of legal battles, Frank O’Connell finally got the news he says will help him move on with his life. He had spent 27 years behind bars for a murder he insists he did not commit. He had missed precious moments he could never relive, particularly the growth of […]

By Paloma Esquivel Aug 15, 2018 In 2013, Veronica Pratt, a transgender woman, was arrested and booked into the Alternative Lifestyle Tank at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. There, along with other gay, bisexual and transgender inmates, Pratt was kept in her cell for about 23 hours a day. She was not […]

A federal judge in Los Angeles reaffirmed a class-action ruling that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department unlawfully detained thousands of suspected immigrants on the basis of unconstitutional requests from ICE known as immigration detainers, civil rights attorneys announced Thursday. The ruling Wednesday confirms that plaintiffs in the action are entitled to monetary damages to […]

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — It’s disturbing video the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department does not want the public to see – inmates howling in pain, some dragged away bloody and unconscious during a mass cell extraction at Men’s Central Jail in August of 2008. Eyewitness News fought to get dozens of videos unsealed by the […]

The daughters of a mentally ill man who jumped to his death in a Los Angeles jail in 2014 will receive $1.7 million under the terms of a settlement approved by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday. Eric Loberg, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and appointed a legal conservator after being found […]

Federal magistrates seen as a strategic trial choice By America Hernandez Civil rights attorneys fed up with ever-shortening trial time limits in the Central District said they are increasingly considering stipulating to magistrates, who are able to give cases the time they deserve before jurors. Crushing caseloads and the need to prioritize criminal suits may […]

By Jeremiah Dobruck, PressTelegram Tuesday, October 11, 2016 EDITOR’S NOTE: Video contains violence and graphic language. A federal jury Friday awarded more than $1.6 million to two men who claimed Long Beach police beat them with batons and stomped on one of their hands without provocation, leaving them with broken bones and permanently disabling one […]

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to pay $10.1 million to a man who spent 20 years behind bars before having his murder conviction overturned in 2011. Francisco Carrillo Jr. was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1992 in the fatal drive-by shooting of Donald Sarpy in Lynwood. Carrillo, who was 16 at the time […]