Eastern District of California Blog

EDCA Court Critical of California Prisons' Care of Mentally-Ill Inmates

In a sternly worded order, a federal judge has found California’s top prison officials intentionally filed misleading data to the court on how frequently mentally ill inmates receive psychiatric care, and she signaled that court oversight of mental health care inside prisons will continue until the state meets its constitutional obligations to prisoners.

The order by U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller in Sacramento federal court also validates claims by by Dr. Michael Golding, the state prison system’s chief psychiatrist, who compiled a secret whistleblower report last year accusing the state of providing false and misleading data to the court to cover up woefully inadequate psychiatric care.

Mueller found that the state was so determined to get out from under years of court-ordered supervision of mental health care services that it fudged data on how frequently more than 32,000 mentally ill inmates were being seen by psychiatrists and the amount of care that was being provided.

“In the final analysis, inexplicably, it is apparent defendants lost complete sight of the reasons remediation is required here,” the judge wrote in a 49-page order issued late Tuesday. “Defendants adopted a laser focus in an effort to obtain termination of court supervision, which led to a stark ‘ends justify the means’ approach.

Sac Bee, 12/18/19

California Prison Whistleblower Testifies in EDCA Court

The whistleblower who accused California prison leaders last year of providing false and misleading data to a federal court on how the state handles inmate psychiatric care made his first public appearance Tuesday, standing behind his claims and saying corrections officials concocted “utter statistical garbage” in some cases.

Dr. Michael Golding, the chief psychiatrist at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation headquarters, testified in Sacramento federal court Tuesday about what he said were repeated instances to gin up phony data the state needed to present to U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller to prove they were making progress on improving psychiatric care in the prisons.

Golding, who compiled and sent a scathing, 161-page report on psychiatric care in the prisons to the federally appointed receiver in October 2018, said there had never been anything secret about his views that corrections officials were trying to produce “extraordinarily misleading data” to come into compliance with court orders.

Sac Bee, 10/15/19

EDCA Court to CA Prison Officials: Do Not Shred Documents Used to Produce Secret Report

A federal judge in Sacramento ordered the state corrections department Friday not to destroy any documents used by the state’s chief prison psychologist to produce a secret report in which he alleged prison officials were misleading the court, and lawyers for inmates, over how much psychiatric treatment they are receiving.

U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller also ordered an Oct. 22 hearing to produce testimony from Dr. Michael Golding, who produced a 160-page report alleging wrongdoing by the state and then turned it over to the federally appointed receiver overseeing medical care in the state’s prisons.

Mueller’s order directs defendants in the case to “preserve all evidence relevant to Dr. Golding’s report and the issues raised by that report and prevent or cease any ongoing destruction of related documents or information.”

Sac Bee, 10/12/18

 

California Prisons Settle Mentally-Ill Inmate's Cell-Extraction Claim During Trial

With plaintiffs about to rest, the state prison system agreed before court began Tuesday to stop the trial and pay a mentally ill former inmate $950,000.

Jurors in the federal court trial in Sacramento said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation made the right call to settle the case with Jermaine Padilla, the ex-prisoner.

Padilla’s videotaped cell extraction where prison officers repeatedly pepper sprayed him and then strapped him naked onto a gurney for 72 hours pretty much settled the matter in the jurors’ minds.

Sac Bee, 4/25/17.

Mentally-Ill Inmate Seek Punitive Damages to Stop Cell Extractions

In a trial underway in front of U.S. District Court Judge Kimberly J. Mueller, plaintiffs want a jury to find nine corrections department employees liable for malice and oppression to rectify abuses they say their client suffered during a brutal 2012 cell extraction.

Along with general damages, the attorneys say a punitive award would send a message to the prison system and its staff on how to carry out the best practices – and avoid the worst – when inmates have full-blown psychotic breakdowns.

“Since at least 1995, CDCR officials, medical providers, and custody officers have been on notice that the Constitution requires prisons to provide incarcerated persons with necessary mental health care and to treat prisoners in a humane manner that does not punish them for mental illness,” plaintiffs lawyer Lori Rifkin wrote in her trial brief.

Rifkin said the videotaped 2012 cell extraction of her client, Jermaine Padilla, who was seen being pepper sprayed and dragged out screaming and strapped naked to a gurney for 72 hours, demonstrated that “almost two decades later, CDCR had still failed to correct these constitutional deprivations."  

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Padilla’s lawyers filed the case in 2014, nearly two decades after the late U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence K. Karlton in the long-running Coleman v. Brown class-action lawsuit found the state’s treatment of mentally ill prisoners in violation of Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

The Padilla lawsuit came a year after the class-action lawyers obtained videos of six cell extractions, including his, in which psychiatrically impaired prisoners were pepper sprayed in their cells. One of them at Mule Creek State Prison, Joseph Duran, later died, and his family and won a $750,000 settlement.

Sac Bee, 4/24/17

California Changes Policy For Mentally Ill Prison Inmates

California prison officials said Friday they are changing state policy so mentally ill inmates who act out can get counseling instead of being automatically sent to isolation cells or kept in prison longer.

It is the latest in a series of policy shifts after a federal judge ruled a year ago that the state's treatment of mentally ill inmates violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment, in part because their illness isn't taken into account when they are disciplined.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton acted after the release of videos made by correctional officers that showed guards pumping pepper spray into the cells of mentally ill inmates, some of them screaming and delirious.

The tactics were used on inmates who refused to take medication, be handcuffed or leave their cells.

The new policy was filed Friday in federal court in Sacramento.

"This is a very significant reform of the disciplinary process for prisoners with mental illness," said Michael Bien, an attorney representing mentally ill inmates in the long-running lawsuit. "What's the point of punishing someone who's psychotic?"

The change is good for inmates and taxpayers, Bien said, because keeping inmates in disciplinary segregation is expensive and keeps them in prison longer by taking away early release credits at a time when the state is under a federal court order to reduce the inmate population.

UT SanDiego, 4/3/15

Major Progress Cited In Prison Inmate Care

. . . a remarkable series of court decisions and compromises between the Brown administration and lawyers for the inmates during the past year have led to what the two sides agree is the most progress in many years in cooperation to change inmate care inside the nation’s largest corrections system.

“From the beginning of 2014 to now, what we’re seeing is we went from total war with the (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) ... to where there’s been a lot of cooperation and progress,” said Michael Bien, the lead attorney for prisoners in a 25-year fight to change conditions and treatment for mentally ill inmates, who now number 30,000. 

In the past year, the state has cut its inmate population dramatically, and is ahead of schedule to meet the judges’ orders that it reduce the number of prisoners to 137.5 percent of design capacity in the state’s 34 adult prisons.

The judges required a population cut to 141.5 percent of design capacity by Feb. 28, 2015, and the latest figures show the state already has reached 140 percent, or 115,604 inmates. In all likelihood, it will meet the final target – about 113,720 inmates – well in advance of the Feb. 28, 2016, deadline.

Sacramento Bee, 12/20/14

Fed Panel Orders California To Begin Parole Hearings For 2nd-Strike Inmates

The LA Times reports on this order by the 3-judge federal panel (with EDCA judge Mueller) overseeing the California prisons overcrowding litigation that requires California officials to begin holding parole hearings for non-violent, 2nd-strike inmates who have served half their sentence by January. 

But the panel held off making further rulings on other steps it had ordered California to take to reduce overcrowding, such as increasing custody credits minimum-security inmates receive for good behavior and participating in rehabilitation programs.  Did the California Attorney General's office really argue that "if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool?" See LA Times 

New EDCA Judge On Coleman v Brown Prison Civil Rights Action

One of the state's landmark prison civil rights lawsuits has entered a new phase, with U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller taking over from retiring Senior Judge Lawrence K. Karlton, who has presided over the case for its entire history.

The federal class action, filed nearly 25 years ago in the Eastern District, has not only worked to reform the care of mentally ill inmates in California but also helped put into motion the state's radical effort to reduce its prison population. Coleman v. Brown, CV90-520 (E.D. Cal., filed April 23, 1990).

Mueller, who is hailed as a thoughtful and patient jurist, will lend some fresh air to the long-running case that must still oversee the implementation of state prison reforms agreed upon in recent years, legal observers said.

"Judge Karlton, I think, did a very good job, but he had all the twists and turns," said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School criminal law professor. "Maybe she can get it on the right path."

It's not necessarily a surprise that Mueller is succeeding Karlton on the heavyweight case, experts say.

She was already appointed in April to replace Karlton on a three-judge panel partly created by Colemanplaintiffs that oversees the state's prison overcrowding. The panel, which also includes Senior U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of the Northern District and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt, ruled in 2009 that the state needed to reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of capacity.

Part of it may simply be that Karlton and Mueller are neighbors in the courthouse, said Eastern District Chief Judge Morrison C. England Jr. It made transferring the massive amount of documents fromColeman an easier feat.

"She stepped up to the plate, and we're happy she did," England said.

SF Daily Journal, 9/15/14

California Prisons Agree To Dramatically Improve Conditions For Mentally Ill Inmates

Four months after a federal judge in Sacramento declared that conditions for mentally ill inmates in the state’s prisons were “horrific,” California corrections officials unveiled sweeping new policies that will house them in specially designed units, provide greater time out of their cells and offer vastly increased treatment for the ill prisoners.

The new policies, outlined in a filing Friday in federal court, dramatically alter the manner in which tens of thousands of state prison inmates are to be treated, and are designed to reduce the number of prisoner suicides and deaths.

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Karlton, who has overseen for nearly a quarter century the legal battle over how mentally ill inmates are treated, signed off on the revised policies Friday afternoon, marking what is likely to be the final order he will issue that dramatically reshapes California prison policy before his retirement Oct. 1.

Sacramento Bee, 8/29/14