Sidesinger wore a prescribed defibrillator vest that delivers an electrical shock when it detects a life-threatening heart rhythm. The vest has to be charged approximately once every 24 hours. But York County Prison’s (YCP) medical staff never charged his vest, according to a wrongful death suit filed by his sister, Vicki Sidesinger, against PrimeCare, the jail’s for-profit medical provider, several of its employees, York County, the warden, and others.

The defendants have denied all wrongdoing. The County, as well as one of the nurses named in the complaint, have asked the Court to dismiss the case, which remains pending. PrimeCare and York County did not respond to a request for comment.

Sidesinger’s death shines a light on a grim reality in jails across the United States. Unaware of court debts—or unable to pay them—thousands of people are incarcerated in dangerous jails where their health, safety, and lives are at risk.

In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a person can only be incarcerated for unpaid court costs if they have “willfully refused to pay.” But most states, including Pennsylvania, do not require a hearing to determine why payments were not made, according to the National Center for Access to Justice.

Courts can impose fees on people in the adult and juvenile legal systems for anything from appointed counsel to supervision and electronic monitoring to drug testing—and even their own incarceration (typically known as “pay-to-stay” fees).

On February 14, 2024, Sidesinger was hospitalized with heart failure. Doctors inserted two stents in his heart and released him the next day. Cellitti-Sidesinger picked him up from the hospital. The doctors were optimistic about his prognosis, she said.

Three days later, on February 18, the police arrested Sidesinger and booked him into York County Prison (YCP).

The complaint says that during his intake at the jail, a PrimeCare employee recorded that Sidesinger was wearing a “heart monitor” that would “need charged (sic) when running low.” The next day, Sidesinger submitted a medical request, stating that he was experiencing chest pain and a toothache, with pain that “radiates to his entire jaw,” according to the complaint.

An EKG showed Sidesinger was experiencing a type of irregular heartbeat called Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVCs), but the nurse practitioner concluded that the results were normal, according to the complaint. She gave him acetaminophen for his toothache and sent him back to his cell.

The complaint says that in the coroner’s subsequent report on the case, she wrote that PVCs “can be life-threatening, especially if the patient is having chest pains as this decedent was having at the time.”

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The next morning, at about 5:25 am, Sidesinger returned to the medical unit and told the nurse on duty that he was experiencing chest pain on his left side and a toothache, according to the complaint. Like the first nurse, she sent him back to his cell. (This same nurse has been named in several other lawsuits alleging medical neglect; she has told The Appeal she is no longer working at the jail.)

She wrote in her notes that Sidesinger had a “Cardiac Monitor” that needed to be charged, but one was not available. from home that needs to be charged,” she wrote in her notes, according to the complaint. “No charger available.”

Ten minutes later, he was found unconscious on the floor of his cell. He was taken to the hospital and declared dead.

The last nurse who saw him wrote in his chart, after his death, that he “returned to his location in stable condition.”

A family member, who worked at the hospital, called Vicki to tell her that Sidesinger had died. When they called the hospital for more information, the staff directed them to contact the jail. Up until that point, they had no idea he had been incarcerated.

“I just fell apart,” Vicki said. “I just couldn’t believe that it happened.”

Read the full story at theappeal.org.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged 15 Minnesota residents with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer after they participated in protests against ICE’s mass deportation campaign in the Twin Cities.

The indictment, which was unsealed last week, is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to criminalize its opponents.The case tests how far prosecutors can go to manufacture a criminal conspiracy based on group chats, social media posts, discussions of protest tactics, and anti-surveillance precautions.

In the indictment, the DOJ appears to argue that involvement in rapid-response networks is illegal because they “identify and harass” federal agents to prevent them from “performing their official duties.” Rapid-response networks alert community members to ICE’s presence so volunteers can monitor, protest, and film officers’ actions—all activities that are protected by the First Amendment, despite the administration’s assertions to the contrary.

The administration called the indictment a “crushing blow” to the “Antifa Terrorist Network.” Antifa is not a single membership organization with a centralized leadership structure, and legal experts have questioned the administration’s effort to treat it as a domestic terrorist organization.

While the indictment is among the most sweeping attacks on anti-ICE activists to date, the Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to criminalize First Amendment activities. Since Trump’s second term began, the DOJ has charged dozens of people in connection with alleged anti-ICE activity, including judges and staff at a medical clinic.

In Minnesota, some of the most serious allegations appear to involve Kyle Wagner, who is charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, and interstate threats.

“We’re not talking about peaceful protests anymore,” he allegedly said in a video posted on Instagram on Jan. 24, 2026. “Get your ******* guns and stop these f****** people.”

The DOJ had already charged Wagner in February with making federal threats and cyberstalking. In both the February press release and the most recent indictment, the DOJ quotes from the January 24th social media post.

Another defendant is accused of kicking an ICE vehicle and another with assaulting an officer with her car. Federal prosecutors have repeatedly accused protesters and others of using their vehicles to attack federal agents; in some instances, surveillance footage has disproven their claims.

There are no victims named in the indictment. Federal agents, however, shot and killed two Minnesota residents, Renee Good and Alex Pretti; no charges have been brought against their killers.

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Local activists and unions lambasted the DOJ’s indictment against community members, several of whom are union members, according to a report in Workday Magazine.

“Trade unionists active in worker assemblies are among those who were arrested,” Kieran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250, told Workday Magazine. “They are outstanding union activists in their union and workplace, and I’m proud to know all of them.”

The indictment includes a Signal message allegedly written by Macalester College professor Erik Davis where he asked people with “connections to AFL-CIO leadership or decision-makers, [to] PLEASE ASK THEM TO FOCUS ON WHIPPLE AND NOT DOWNTOWN.”

Prosecutors say Davis moderated organizing meetings, and said he is an anarchist. They also allege that he attended an anti-ICE rally where other people wore “‘Antifa’ branded sweatshirts.”

Another defendant is accused of being part of a Signal group, writing a first-person account of an anti-ICE protest for an anarchist blog, and helping to maintain a database of license plate numbers belonging to vehicles used by ICE.

Read the full story at The Appeal.

This story is co-bylined with my brilliant colleague, Ethan Corey.

Read the full story at The Appeal or In These Times.

The Trump administration has doled out billions of taxpayer dollars to corporations tasked with carrying out its mass deportation agenda. Many of these same companies have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to sitting members of Congress, according to an investigation by The Appeal.

Using Federal Election Commission records, The Appeal has compiled information on every member of Congress who received campaign contributions from the top contractors for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) either through the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) or executives during the 2022, 2024 and 2026 election cycles.

Over that period, executives at ICE’s biggest contractors donated more than $1.7 million to 168 members of Congress.

Palantir CEO Alexander Karp outspent the other executives, donating a total of about $465,000, including nearly $200,000 to Democrats.

The Appeal is publishing its findings in a searchable database. Our analysis only includes contributions made to committees directly controlled by the candidates for the 2022, 2024, and 2026 election cycles. Detailed information on our methodology can be found here.

Read the full story at The Appeal or In These Times.

On April 21, 2024, Katie Kuhnhausen woke before dawn. She showered in the dark, dressed quickly, and jammed the day’s provisions into a backpack—snacks, a hairbrush, bottled water, lipstick. She planned to do her makeup in the car. The drive from her home in Vancouver to the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla took about four hours, and she was running behind.

“I was feeling really nervous,” says Katie. “I hadn’t heard from my husband in eight days at that point.”

Katie’s husband, Alex Kuhnhausen, had fallen ill some weeks earlier. There was no formal diagnosis, but he presented alarming symptoms. On April 7, he told prison medical staff he had been coughing and sneezing up blood for three days and sleeping for most of the day for the past week, according to Department of Correction records reviewed by The Nation.

Read the full story at The Nation.

Psychological experts have roundly condemned hypnosis as junk science. But that isn’t stopping Texas from trying to execute Charles Flores, who was sent to death row based on the testimony of one eyewitness who identified him after she was hypnotized.

At least 28 states, including Texas, have banned testimony influenced by hypnosis from being introduced in criminal trials. But Flores, who was convicted in 1999, hasn’t benefited from Texas’ state law, which took effect in 2023 and is not retroactive.

In February, Flores appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court is expected to decide in June if it will hear his case, according to his legal team.

“Sooner or later, the truth’s gonna come out,” Flores recently told Pablo Torre on his podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out. “And I’m going to have that opportunity to see life after this.”

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More than 25 years ago, Flores was convicted for the murder of Elizabeth Black. Flores has always maintained his innocence.

The prosecution’s case hinged on the eyewitness testimony of Black’s neighbor, Jill Barganier.

At about 6:45 in the morning on Jan. 29, 1998, Barganier saw two men park in Black’s driveway and exit a Volkswagen Beetle. She said it looked like they were heading to the front door. A couple hours later, Elizabeth’s husband returned home and found his wife and their dog had been fatally shot.

Barganier’s description of the men—two white males with long hair—bears no resemblance to Flores, a Hispanic man who, at the time, was heavyset and had short, shaved hair.

Prosecutors theorized that the perpetrators broke into the Black’s house to steal a large amount of cash hidden by their son, Gary, who was incarcerated at the time on drug-related offenses. On the day of the murder, police found close to $40,000 in the Black’s home.

The police almost immediately suspected that Richard Childs, who was known to use and sell drugs, was involved in the crime. However, they first spoke with Childs’s brother, Roy, who told them Richard had recently started selling drugs for a man named Charles Flores. Richard and Roy’s father had been a police officer in the Irving Police Department, one of the agencies involved in the case.

Barganier identified Childs, who is white and had long hair at the time, as the driver from two photo arrays.

During a police interview with Childs, part of which was recorded, the police can be heard telling Childs to implicate Flores while “they all joked around together and the officers described Flores in racist terms,” according to Flores’s petition.

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Flores says he panicked when he learned the police were looking for Childs’s car, which Childs had abandoned outside Flores’s trailer.

“I’m having the realization that car is behind my house,” he recently told NBC News. “I’m getting set up.”

He burned the car and fled to Mexico. When he returned, he led police on a high-speed chase and crashed his car.

“It was just pure, raw fear,” Flores told NBC News of his decision to flee. “I had that thought, ‘They’re gonna kill me, they’re gonna kill me.’ And you know what? I was right.”

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On Feb. 4, the police conducted a hypnosis session with Barganier, which was recorded and has been posted on YouTube.

“When we get you into a deep state of hypnosis, we’re going to take you into a movie theater,” the officer told Barganier. “It’s going to be your own private theater. You’re going to be seeing a documentary, and you’re going to be seeing a film of the events that occurred on that day, on that morning.”

The officer asked Barganier questions that appeared designed to alter her recollection of the perpetrators’ appearance. He asked if the driver’s hair was “short,” “shaved,” or “neatly cut.” He asked whether the passenger’s hair was “neatly cut or [was] it trimmed?”

She continued to maintain that both men had long hair.

Towards the end of the session, the officer seemed to prime her to create new memories, telling her she “will be able to recall more things as time goes on.”

Immediately after the session, she used a computer to create a composite sketch of the passenger; the picture depicts a white man with long hair.

The composite sketch police generated based on Barganier’s description of the passenger.

She was then shown a photo array of Hispanic men with short hair, including Flores, whose hair was almost buzzed down to his scalp. She did not pick anyone out.

The photo array shown to Barganier. Flores is photo number 2.

About a year later, Flores was on trial for murder, accused of fatally shooting Black. Without an eyewitness identification or any physical evidence, the State’s case was weak.

But all that changed when Barganier arrived in court. She saw Flores, the only Hispanic person in the courtroom, sitting at the defense table. Local news outlets had published his picture numerous times over the previous year, the same picture she had viewed in the photo array. For the first time, she told prosecutors that he was the passenger in the car.

On the witness stand, Barganier said she was “[o]ver 100 percent” certain.

Barganier’s confidence is not surprising. Research has shown that hypnosis can lead witnesses to become more confident in their memory, even if it is false. Confidence can be persuasive to members of a jury, who can wrongly assume confidence correlates with accuracy.

The jury found Flores guilty and sentenced him to death.

Childs did not testify at Flores’s trial. After he was convicted, Childs submitted a confession to the court stating that he shot Black, contradicting the prosecutor’s assertion at Flores’s trial that Flores was the shooter.

Childs pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 35 years. In 2016, Childs was paroled after serving only a portion of his sentence. That same year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Flores a stay, just days before he was scheduled to be executed.

Read the full story at The Appeal.

Searching the keywords “glock” and “glocks” for fiscal years 2008, the earliest year available, to fiscal year 2026 generates 63 results. About 68 percent of the performance dates for the contracts begin in 2025 or 2026. Of the remaining 20, the Obama administration appears to have entered into 13 contracts and Trump’s first administration entered into seven.

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During Trump’s second term, ICE has purchased:

• Red Dot Optic Sights For Glock Weapons To Support ICE - Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs at Fort Benning, Georgia;

• Glock 19 Firearms And Ancillary Accessories To Support ICE - Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs;

• Concealable Holsters For Glock Duty Weapons To Support Armed Agents In The Field and ICE - Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs; and

• Glock Optic Mounting Plates For Duty Issued Weapons To Support ICE - Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs at Fort Benning, Georgia.

The Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs “provides specialized firearms and tactical training, as well as all equipment, support and guidance necessary to promote both officer and public safety while enabling effective execution of the ICE law enforcement mission,” according to ICE’s website.

The government is contracting with Atlantic Diving Supply; Glock, Inc.; Quantico Tactical Incorporated; and Lionheart Alliance, for all its Glock and Glock-adjacent needs.

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Before the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, Congress had given ICE $10 billion for fiscal year 2025. The legislation, signed into law last year, provides ICE with an additional $75 billion to spend over the next four years, including about $45 billion to build more immigration jails, which many have compared to concentration camps. The legislation also slashed funding for social safety net programs and gave massive tax breaks to billionaires.

“By redirecting billions of dollars in funding from essential programs like Medicaid and SNAP to ICE, the BUL [Big Ugly Bill] has turned governmental assistance into a source of funding for mass deportations,” Public Citizen’s Nishita Nekkanti wrote in April. “Millions of Americans now face lost healthcare, food deserts, and collapsing local services.”

I published an extended version of my substack post on GEO Group in The Appeal. An excerpt of the story is below and the full story can be read at theappeal.org.

On GEO Group’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, CEO George Zoley called litigation against immigration jails “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional.”

“There’s been litigation regarding overseeing medical services, food services, general cleanliness, etc,” he said. “It’s really unprecedented [and] I believe it’s fundamentally unconstitutional.”

His remarks were first reported in the author’s substack, The Carceral Report.

Private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic have been accused of detaining people in inhumane conditions where people are allegedly brutalized, subjected to sleep deprivation, and denied medical care.

So far this year, 18 people have died in ICE custody, which puts the agency on pace to surpass the near-record number of deaths recorded for 2025, when 31 people died. According to data collected by lawyer and journalist Andrew Free, half of those deaths occurred in either CoreCivic or GEO Group run detention facilities.

Trump’s mass deportation campaign has meant millions of dollars in new contracts for GEO Group and CoreCivic. Zoley and former CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger have each made political contributions totaling more than a million dollars, including donations to the Republican National Committee and to PACs affiliated with President Donald Trump, according to an investigation by The Appeal.

For the first quarter of 2026, GEO Group reported total revenues of $705.2 million, a 17 percent increase from the first quarter 2025. Despite the growing revenue, GEO Group is still carrying over a billion dollars in debt.

On Wednesday’s call, Zoley announced that the Trump administration was reconsidering its plan to convert warehouses into immigration jails, a proposal that has been met with widespread opposition and revulsion. On Wednesday’s call, Zoley said that “the warehouse project has been paused,” and that DHS is considering purchasing “turn-key” facilities that may be less “politically problematic.”

“I think they’re [DHS] starting to look at the price tags of each of the facilities and doing comparisons as to whether the existing turnkey facilities may be a better play, financially, operationally, so forth, than some of these other locations, which have been politically problematic,” he said. “All of the plans, I think, are being reviewed, assessed, and I’m sure they’ll come up with some reasonable conclusions.”

Zoley told participants that the federal government is considering buying “approximately 10 privately owned turn-key ICE [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] processing centers.”

“We have been in discussions with ICE regarding the potential sale of multiple facilities,” Zoley said on the call.

This announcement prompted a participant to ask during the question and answer session: “Why do they want to own the facilities rather than contract with third parties?”

Zoley replied that if the federal government owns the facilities, “there are more protections from unwarranted litigation that infringes upon the activities of the ICE processing centers.”

“As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities,” he continued.

If the federal government owns the buildings, it will “provide stronger credibility in the courts as to the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution,” and help establish that “states can only have very limited involvement in those policies and programs.” Under the Supremacy Clause, federal law takes precedence over state laws.

In March, The Lever reported that the federal government was considering buying detention facilities, but Zoley’s comments seem to be one of the first times that an industry executive has admitted that the motivation for the potential purchases is to circumvent state law.

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Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director at Detention Watch Network, told The Appeal in an email that Zoley’s comments reflect how “ICE is doing whatever it can to expand detention capacity without transparency, oversight or accountability.”

“ICE recognizes the changing tide of overwhelming public opposition to detention across the country, and therefore is trying to evade public scrutiny while continuing to carry out the administration’s mass detention and deportation agenda unchecked,” Ghandehari said.

Numerous states have laws on the books that protect incarcerated people’s rights. In April, Washington State asked a federal court to order GEO Group to allow health inspectors inside the Northwest ICE Processing Center, in accordance with state law that empowers investigators to conduct unannounced visits at private detention facilities.

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Washington previously sued GEO Group for allegedly violating the state minimum wage law by paying detainee workers $1 a day. A federal jury agreed and ordered GEO Group to pay $23.2 million. GEO Group has appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

More than a third of all ICE detainees are incarcerated in GEO Group facilities, although Zoley told call participants that the population had recently decreased. Nationally, as of April 4, there were about 60,000 people in ICE custody, the lowest number of people detained so far this year, according to the organization TRAC, which tracks immigration data.

About 21,000 people are detained in GEO Group’s ICE facilities, down from a high of 24,000 people earlier this year, Zoley said. He attributed the decline, in part, to the “recent transition in leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, and the 82-day partial government shutdown of DHS, resulting in lapse in annual appropriations for ICE.”

In addition to detention beds, ICE contracts with GEO Group for transportation and surveillance services, like electronic monitoring, under the company’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP.) The number of people on ISAP GPS monitors has more than doubled since the start of 2025, although the number of people on the program’s mobile app has declined, according to the company. There are currently more than 48,000 people on ISAP’s ankle monitors.

Read the full story at theappeal.org.

The remarks came during the question and answer section of the call. During his prepared remarks, Zoley had said that the federal government is considering buying “approximately 10 privately owned turn-key ICE processing centers.”

“I can respectfully acknowledge that we have been in discussions with ICE regarding the potential sale of multiple facilities,” he said.

This announcement prompted a participant to ask: “Why do they want to own the facilities rather than contract with third parties?”

Zoley replied that if the federal government owns the facilities, “there are more protections from unwarranted litigation that infringes upon the activities of the ICE processing centers.”

“There’s been litigation regarding overseeing medical services, food services, general cleanliness, etc,” he said. “It’s really unprecedented [and] I believe it’s fundamentally unconstitutional.”

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He continued:

“As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities. They are federal facilities to begin with in my opinion, it’s the federal government who’s paying for the operations of the facilities, but the ownership of the buildings will provide stronger credibility in the courts as to the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution that these are federal facilities and and they are carrying out the congressional priorities of the immigration programs and policies that Congress has passed and that states can only have very limited involvement in those policies and programs.”

Zoley said that “the warehouse project has been paused, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is evaluating how to proceed with this initiative to increase and consolidate the detention capacity.”

“I think they’re [DHS] starting to look at the price tags of each of the facilities and doing comparisons as to whether the existing turnkey facilities may be a better play, financially, operationally, so forth, than some of these other locations, which have been politically problematic,” he said. “All of the plans, I think, are being reviewed, assessed, and I’m sure they’ll come up with some reasonable conclusions.”

More than one-third of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees are imprisoned in GEO Group jails.

For the first quarter of 2026, GEO Group reported total revenues of $705.2 million, a 17 percent increase from the first quarter 2025. Despite the growing revenue, GEO Group is still carrying over a billion dollars in debt. An investigation by The Appeal revealed that, from 2021 through 2025, GEO Group executive chairman George Zoley made political contributions totaling more than a million dollars, including donations to the Republican National Committee and to PACs affiliated with President Donald Trump.

“In 2025, we were awarded new or expanded contracts that represent up to approximately $520 million in new incremental annual revenues, which represents the largest amount of new business we have won in the single year in our company’s history,” Zoley said on today’s call.

Duncan, who is Black, won nearly 70 percent of the vote, but just days before he was to take office, the Republican Governor Jeff Landry, who is white, signed legislation that eliminated the role.

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The Center for Constitutional Rights and others, including the ACLU of Louisiana, filed suit challenging the constitutionality of the law. Last night, a federal court granted their request for a temporary restraining order, which blocks the law from going into effect, although it expires after 14 days. Duncan’s attorneys argued that the new law targeted Duncan, who has been an outspoken critic of the criminal legal system.

SB 256, also known as Act 15, consolidated the functions of the civil and criminal court clerk positions in Orleans Parish into one office, to be held by the current civil clerk, thereby eliminating the position Duncan was elected to hold.

“High-powered officials in Louisiana state government are engaged in an unconstitutional campaign to prevent Plaintiff Calvin Duncan, Clerk-Elect of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court and an Orleans Parish voter, from taking the office to which he was duly elected by a landslide,” Duncan’s attorneys wrote in their petition for a Temporary Restraining Order.

The defendants appealed the decision to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which granted their request for a stay.

During the campaign, Duncan told voters that, if elected, he would work to preserve case records and evidence; make courts more efficient and accessible; and ensure fair and transparent elections.

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In 1982, at the age of 19, he was arrested for a murder he did not commit. After a one-day trial, he was convicted in an Orleans Parish courtroom and sentenced to life without parole. Last year, he published a book, co-written with Sophie Cull, chronicling his work as a jailhouse lawyer.

“It tells the story of how I went from facing the death penalty in Orleans Parish Prison to becoming a self-taught ‘counsel substitute’ at Angola, thanks to the mentors, books, and friendships that shaped me,” Duncan wrote on his substack. “It explores the cases I worked on, the obstacles I faced, and the fight for justice inside a system designed to keep poor people out of the courts.”

Attorneys with the New Jersey public defender’s office are seeking a new trial for Maria Montalvo, a former nurse who was convicted of burning her children to death more than two decades ago. Montalvo’s attorneys argue that advances in forensic science have undermined the expert testimony that prosecutors relied on to secure her conviction.

Prosecutors accused Montalvo of intentionally setting a fire that killed 16-month-old Zoraida and 28-month-old Rafael. To support their case, the State proffered expert testimony that espoused the prevailing views of the day, but that her attorneys say has since been discredited.

“All of the evidence relied on by the State’s experts to determine the origin of the fire has been debunked,” Montalvo’s attorneys wrote in their petition for a new trial filed last year. “There is nothing left of the State’s case but outdated beliefs and junk science.”

In February, a New Jersey judge denied Montalvo’s petition, ruling that changes in fire science over the past 30 years did not constitute new evidence in the case. Montalvo’s attorneys are appealing the decision, which they say highlights the difficulty people face when challenging convictions based on junk science.

“There is a general belief that wrongful convictions are the problems of other prosecutors, other judges, other jurisdictions,” Assistant Public Defenders Tamar Lerer and Josh Hood said in a statement to The Appeal. “That belief is wrong. Wrongful convictions happen here because junk science happens here. Until we confront that reality, we will never be free of the harmful human cost that comes with relying on it.”

Disability Rights Pennsylvania has filed suit against the state’s prison system, alleging that the agency provides dangerously inadequate medical care for people with Type 1 diabetes and punishes them for their disease.

“This action seeks to stop the cruel and unusual punishment of, and discrimination against, prisoners in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes,” the complaint says.

Steve and Barbara O’Connor’s daughter, Ellen, is among the approximately 190 people with Type 1 diabetes incarcerated in Pennsylvania state prisons, according to the complaint. Prior to her incarceration, her condition was well-managed, they said. But since she’s been locked up, she’s been “near comatose” multiple times with extreme blood sugar lows.

(Ellen is not her real name. At the family’s request, The Appeal is using an alias to protect her privacy.)

Disability Rights Pennsylvania (DRP) says Ellen’s experience is emblematic of a system-wide crisis. People with Type 1 diabetes are “denied basic medical care,” putting them at “immediate risks of loss of consciousness, seizures, coma, and sudden death,” according to the group’s complaint. The group alleges that, as a result of DOC’s policies and practices, life-threatening low and high blood sugars are a pervasive problem among prisoners with Type 1 diabetes.

“I want these people to get life-sustaining care,” Barbara said. “They walk in as one, and they can walk out without limbs, heart disease, blind, a multitude of life-changing illnesses due to the lack of care.”

Ellen fears she won’t survive her incarceration.

“She keeps saying she’s afraid she’s going to die in there, she’s never going to get out,” Barbara said.

Officers tased one man when he experienced an episode of hypoglycemia and was unresponsive because he did not keep his arms and hands in front while they attempted to handcuff him, according to the complaint.

Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, can cause a person to become confused and disoriented. If left untreated, it can quickly lead to loss of consciousness, seizures, or death.

This same man was also hospitalized twice for diabetic ketoacidosis, which is caused by high blood sugar levels, over the course of one week.

Read more at The Appeal.

A federal lawsuit filed by West Virginia prisoners alleges that Aramark Corporation serves inedible, low-quality food in its prison cafeterias to drive customers to its food-for-purchase programs.

Last year, people incarcerated at West Virginia’s Mt. Olive Correctional Complex, along with loved ones of Mt. Olive prisoners, filed a class action lawsuit against Aramark and its subsidiaries, including the prison commissary company, Union Supply Group. Earlier this month, West Virginia prisoners asked the court to reject Aramark Corporation’s request to dismiss their lawsuit.

Aramark is the largest food provider in the United States to prisons and jails. Aramark also has contracts with a number of other institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and stadiums. In fiscal year 2025, the Fortune 500 company brought in $18.5 billion dollars in revenue.

“Aramark extracts a profit on both ends; it saves costs on its daily meals services business by providing less, reused, and poor-quality food, while earning more money from incarcerated consumers’ purchases from its food-for-purchase programs,” the complaint says.

Read more at The Appeal.

In December 2023, Willie Cunningham began to experience excruciating abdominal pain. Detained at Pennsylvania’s York County Prison after he was unable to pay bail, Cunningham went to the jail’s medical staff for assistance.

One nurse told Cunningham he had heartburn. Another said he had a stomach virus. Neither examined him, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the nonprofit legal clinic, Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, against York County, PrimeCare Medical, the jail’s for-profit healthcare provider at the time, and others.

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But Cunningham didn’t have heartburn or a stomach virus. He had appendicitis. By the time he was finally taken to the hospital, his appendix had burst, and he had developed sepsis.

PrimeCare did not respond to emails seeking comment. The York County Solicitor told The Appeal in an email that “neither the Commissioners nor anyone else from York County will comment on pending litigation.” York County and PrimeCare have denied all wrongdoing in their legal filings.

“I was just hurting so bad and I wanted help,” Cunningham told The Appeal. “Why are these people in positions to take care of us and they don’t care? You get paid to do a job, you incarcerate us, and then you just say, ‘Okay, he’s a criminal, he doesn’t matter, he can die.’”

Read more at The Appeal.

My colleague, Ethan Corey, and I compiled information on every sitting member of Congress who has received donations from two of the largest private prison companies that contract with ICE—CoreCivic and GEO Group—along with the smaller Management & Training Corporation (MTC).

We published the results of our investigation and a searchable database at In These Times and The Appeal—head over there to look up your congress members.

We’re planning to expand the database and would love to hear from you about what ICE profiteers we should include. Just reply to this email to share your thoughts!

On April 7, 2018, Everett Palmer, Jr. was picked up on an old DUI charge and booked into Pennsylvania’s York County Prison (YCP).

Over the next two days, Palmer’s mental health deteriorated, much of which was captured on surveillance video, according to a report by the York County Investigating Grand Jury. He was hallucinating and screaming. He repeatedly put his blanket in the toilet and wrapped himself in it.

In the early morning hours of April 9, Palmer began to slam his head and fists into the cell door, according to the Grand Jury’s report. A unit supervisor tased him twice and correctional officers stormed his cell. They tackled him and placed a spit hood over his head.

Five officers carried him out of the cell and strapped him into a restraint chair. He was breathing heavily and appeared to be gasping for breath, according to the report. While he was still in the restraint chair, the guards took him to the medical unit. An ambulance was called and he was declared dead at the hospital. Palmer, an Army veteran, was 41-years-old.

In the wake of his death, local and national reporters wrote about the harrowing last days of Palmer’s life. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania opened an investigation into his case, but no charges were filed by local or federal prosecutors.

In the years since his death, York County has ramped up its use of restraint chairs. In 2018, the restraint chair was used a total of 148 times. Six years later, in 2024, the restraint chair was used 191 times—an increase of almost 30 percent—even though the population of the jail was about half of what it had been in 2018, according to The Appeal’s analysis of county data from 2018 to 2024. (The data for 2025 has not yet been published.)

An analysis of county data showed:

• From 2018 through 2024, York County used restraint chairs a total of 1,295 times—more than any other county in the state.

• York County’s use of restraint chairs peaked in 2023. That year they were used 224 times, making up almost 20 percent of all uses statewide.

• In each year from 2021–2024, York County used restraint chairs more times than any other county in the state.

• For each year studied, approximately twenty jails, or about 30 percent of the state’s jails, reported zero uses of restraint chairs.

• In the last decade, at least two people died after they were placed in restraint chairs -- both were in the midst of a crisis.

  Read the full story at The Appeal.

The decision in State v. Nieves could help unravel wrongful convictions in New Jersey and throughout the country.

“By upholding the exclusion of this testimony, the Court reinforces a core principle of our justice system: criminal convictions must rest on reliable, well-supported scientific evidence,” the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, which represented Darryl Nieves, said in a statement. “The Constitution demands more than speculation dressed in scientific language.”

Read the full story at The Appeal.

The Trump administration has repeatedly used popular songs, and movie and television clips, in its propaganda videos, with impunity.

Olivia Rodrigo has been one of the few artists to speak out. After her song, “all-american bitch” was used in a video posted by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the singer posted a comment saying, “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”

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Many have called on Taylor Swift — whose music has been used by the Trump administration in multiple videos — to do the same. She hasn’t. Most recently, her song, “The Fate of Ophelia” was used in a video posted by Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection (CBP.) In August, the White House and Border Patrol posted a propaganda video using Swift’s “…Ready For It?”

“That Swift and her team haven’t issued a statement distancing her from a president mired in scandal and an administration criticised for censorship, violent immigration raids and far-right policies, is curious,” Alim Kheraj wrote for The Guardian. “Once politically shy, she appeared to fully embrace and advocate for progressive values in 2018, so much so that her decision to speak out about politics became the narrative tent pole of her documentary Miss Americana.”

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While much attention has focused on Swift, her response, or lack thereof, appears to be the norm.

Here’s just a small sample of propaganda videos posted over the last few months by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the White House, and Border Patrol:

• Border Patrol posted a video using Nirvana’s “Something In The Way.”

• Border Patrol and CBP posted a video using Billie Eilish’s “BIRDS OF A FEATHER.”

• Border Patrol posted a video using the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.”

• DHS and Border Patrol posted a video using the Black Eyes Peas’ “Pump It.”

• DHS and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) posted a video featuring Rihanna’s “S&M,” and Get the Bag’s “K41.” Their songs are played over clips of anti-ICE protesters, and federal agents disappearing people who appear to be Latino. The victims’ hands are cuffed or ziptied behind their backs and some are not fully dressed.

  The captions says: “Dear Antifa: We’re taking our country back. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”

• Border Patrol posted a video using The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize.”

• Border Patrol, CBP, and DHS posted a video using Dragula’s “Goodnight Irene.”

• Border Patrol posted a video using the theme music from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

• DHS, CBP, and Border Patrol posted a video using Petey Pablo’s “Raise Up.”

• CBP and DHS posted a video using Limp Bizkit’s Break Stuff.

• The White House posted an image of Spongebob Squarepants holding a scroll that says, “Give free healthcare to illegals.” The Instagram caption states: “Democrats’ to-do list this week.”

• San Diego Border Patrol posted a video featuring a doctored clip from the animated television show, “Family Guy.”

• DHS posted a video featuring the Pokémon theme song, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” over clips from the cartoon and videos of federal officers abducting people. “Department of Homeland Security” is written in the Pokémon font when the video opens. The video ends with mock Pokemon cards featuring the photos of those they arrested.

• The White House posted a propaganda video featuring a montage of clips from popular television shows and movies, including “The Princess Bride,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Family Guy,” “My Cousin Vinny,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Spongebob Squarepants,” and “The Office.”

The White House posted two clips from the sketch comedy show, “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson.” One video spliced clips of President Trump making anti-immigrant and anti-trans statements with clips from the show, featuring Tim Robinson. The caption states: “IT’S NOT COMPLICATED. No free health care for illegal aliens. Put America First. Don’t be dumb. Fund the government. ” The second features a doctored version of the show’s parody of “The Bachelorette.” The caption says: “Democrats are only here to give free healthcare to criminal illegal aliens.”

Artists are typically much more territorial about their intellectual property, as Kheraj noted in his piece for The Guardian on Swift:

The silence is surprising from an artist known to be litigious over unsanctioned use of her music or likeness: she has previously sued a theme park for playing her music without a licence, come for Etsy sellers for using lyrics from her songs in unofficial merch, taken on YouTube creators over copyright infringement and demanded retroactive songwriting credits from newer artists (including Rodrigo).

Popular culture is essential to the Trump administration’s propaganda machine — and the artists who unintentionally power it must demand their work is not used to advance fascism. They can use their celebrity, their wealth, and copyright law to starve the administration of one of its many insidious tools.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

The suit was filed against York County, the facility’s then-medical provider, PrimeCare Medical, Inc., and three nurses who allegedly failed to treat Cunningham.

In October, York County ended its contract with PrimeCare and entered into a contract with MEDIKO, which hired many of PrimeCare’s employees, according to the suit. PrimeCare has been sued numerous times for allegedly providing dangerously inadequate medical care to incarcerated patients.

The complaint alleges that over the course of six days in December of 2023, Willie Cunningham’s health rapidly deteriorated, but medical staff dismissed his symptoms, failed to examine him, and falsified his medical records. When he was finally taken to the hospital, almost a week after his symptoms first appeared, his appendix had burst and he had gone into sepsis.

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“I almost died,” Cunningham said in a statement. “I felt like the medical staff at York County Prison didn’t care whether I died or not. I filed this lawsuit because I want to try to get better medical care for people in jail. Nobody should have to fear dying in jail for a treatable medical problem.”

On December 16, 2023 Cunningham began feeling ill. Over the next two days his symptoms, including abdominal pain, worsened. On the morning of December 18, Cunningham was working at his assigned job when an officer told him he “looked awful” and directed him to take the day off.

That evening, he vomited three times. At about 11 p.m. an officer took Cunningham to the medical department. His abdominal pain was so severe that he could not stand up straight when he walked.

When they arrived at the infirmary, the assistant director of nursing told Cunningham he had heartburn and gave him Pepto-Bismol and antacid tablets.

The suit says she falsely recorded in his medical record that he had eaten dinner. She also recorded that she had palpated his abdomen and taken Cunningham’s temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respirations — none of which she did.

That night, his condition worsened, according to the complaint. He was so desperate to relieve the abdominal pain that he tried to make himself vomit.

By the morning of December 19, his sheets, shirt, and shorts were “soaked in sweat,” according to the complaint. At 6 a.m., an officer brought Cunningham back to the medical department. Once again, he could not walk upright because of the severe abdominal pain.

He saw a different nurse, but this visit was as useless as the first — she didn’t conduct a physical exam or take his vitals, although she falsely reported in his medical records that she had, according to the suit.

She allegedly told him he had a stomach virus and gave him anti-nausea medicine.

For the rest of the day, Cunningham stayed in bed. Other incarcerated people attempted to care for him. The suit says they brought him soup, fresh sheets, and encouraged him to drink water, but the excruciating pain prevented him from eating, sleeping, or drinking.

The next morning, December 20, an officer brought Cunningham back to the medical department. He saw the same nurse as the day before. She did not examine him and sent him back to his dorm.

An officer brought him back the following day. This time, Cunningham saw a different nurse, but the treatment, or lack thereof, was the same — she did not conduct an exam or take his vitals. This nurse didn’t even bother to record the visit in Cunningham’s medical record, according to the suit.

On December 22, an officer brought him back to the medical department. Finally, the two nurses on duty — who he had not seen during his prior visits — sent him to the hospital. The suit alleges that those nurses falsely recorded in his medical records that they had taken his vitals, and one of them falsely recorded that she had conducted a physical exam.

At the hospital, he was diagnosed with a ruptured appendix with abscesses, gangrene, peritonitis — a potentially deadly type of infection if left untreated — and sepsis with acute kidney failure. He was hospitalized for a month and then faced a long recovery at home, according to the complaint.

On January 21, 2024, he was discharged and went home to his mother’s house, as he had been granted bail in the interim. Unable to afford the visiting nurse service his medical team had recommended, his elderly mother had to care for him.

“This case is about more than just the errors of three nurses,” said Evangeline Wright, Staff Attorney with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, in a statement. “It exposes a systemic failure by York County and PrimeCare to provide adequate, humane medical care, prioritizing cost and convenience over the lives of the people in their custody.”

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash.

More than twenty years ago, Roberson was sentenced to death for the murder of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki. If he is executed he will be the first person in the history of the United States to be put to death based on the dubious shaken baby syndrome (SBS) hypothesis, which one judge likened to “junk science.”

As the case against Roberson has unraveled, he’s gained legions of supporters. The most surprising, however, may be Brian Wharton, the lead detective on Roberson’s case.

“Now when I sit down with him, I hear him, I can see him,” Wharton told me. “He was a suspect. That’s the way I saw him, that’s the way I understood him, and that’s the way I listened to him.”

Read the full story at The Nation.

Photo credit: Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Innocence Project.