MCHR Members in the News

Inmate wants out of Tamms; attorney says years of solitary confinement have harmed his mental health

August 28, 2011 - Belleville News Democrat

Tamms Correctional Center inmate Anthony Gay won't be eligible for parole until he is 120, unless his lawyer's interpretation of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling leads to an earlier chance at release.

Tugging at Threads to Unspool Stories of Torture

May 2, 2011 - The New York Times

AMMAN, Jordan — The first time the Iraqi Army arrested him, he said, soldiers burst into his shop in Baghdad, dragged him out in handcuffs and a blindfold, and took him to a filthy, overcrowded prison. Beatings, rape, hunger and disease were rampant, and he expected at any moment to be killed. He was held for four months, until December 2008. Continue reading...

City's Head Still in the Sand on Burge Torture Scandle

March 1, 2011 - Huffington Post Editorial
Locke Bowman, Director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University

Last month Jon Burge, the disgraced former Chicago Police Commander whose men tortured scores of African American suspects into confessing during a reign of terror that spanned nearly two decades (from the 1970s through the early 1990s), was finally sentenced to four and a half years in prison for denying under oath that he directed and participated in the torture.

Desperate Somalis are turning up in the Twin Cities seeking asylum after enduring a treacherous journey

January 5, 2011 - The Star Tribune

Fearing for his life and still mourning his murdered family, Liban Hussein fled Mogadishu in 2009 and eventually found refuge a world away in the Twin Cities.

But Hussein didn't follow the route of most Somali refugees, who live in overcrowded camps in Kenya or other neighboring countries and wait months, even years, for a travel visa.

ACLU fights law sentencing kids to life in prison

November 17, 2010 - Free Press

The ACLU sued the State of Michigan today on behalf of nine people who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole for crimes they committed as juveniles. 

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit, says Michigan’s sentencing laws constitute cruel and unusual punishment and violate the constitutional rights of the inmates. 

All nine were sentenced for first-degree murder or felony murder. 

Sick Detained Immigrant to Appeal to U.N. for Help

By NINA BERNSTEIN, New York Times
Published: June 24, 2010

The unusual petition is a last-ditch effort to win the release of the ailing man, Carlyle Leslie Owen Dale, a legal permanent resident who has been held for deportation for more than five years as his court appeals languished and his health sharply declined from diabetes, chronic asthma, liver disease, severe arthritis and high blood pressure.

ICE quietly relaxes ban on using stun guns on jailed detainees

by Sasha Aslanian, Minnesota Public Radio - June 2, 2010

Click here to view this article on the MPR website. 

St. Paul, Minn. — When a Sherburne County Sheriff's deputy used a stun gun on a detained immigrant in 2007, he did not break jail rules. But the deputy appeared to violate standards set by the federal immigration officials for the treatment of detainees.