Eastern District of California Blog

Panel Denies Request to Release California Inmates to Reduce Spread of COVID-19

The federal three-judge panel that previously set a population cap for the California prison system has rejected an effort by activists to require further inmate releases to slow the spread of the coronavirus behind bars.

In an order filed Saturday evening, the judges ruled that they did not have authority to consider the request because the panel had originally been convened to address a different issue: prisoners’ lack of access to adequate medical and mental health care. Advocates said they would pursue their motion in other courts.

“We take no satisfaction in turning away Plaintiffs’ motion without reaching the important question of whether Defendants have implemented constitutionally adequate measures to protect the inmates of California’s prisons from the serious threat posed by this unparalleled pandemic,” the judges wrote.

SF Chronicle, 4/5/20; see also Sac Bee, 4/5/20.

The 3-judge panel included EDCA district judge Kimberly J. Mueller.

LA Times: "Prison Lockdowns and Influenza Symptoms Spread, Along with Calls for Early Release"

Early release from prison is on the table as a state task force begins discussions on how to navigate California’s incarcerated population through the coming storm of the novel coronavirus.

U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller on Friday ordered the task force during a telephone status hearing. The hearing was for updates on prison mental health but instead dwelt almost entirely on COVID-19. The task force’s first meeting was Saturday, involving lawyers for the governor’s office, corrections department, Department of State Hospitals and those representing prisoners in long-running litigation over prison conditions.

At Mueller’s direction, said plaintiff’s attorney Michael Bien, “population is on the table.”

LA Times, 3/21/20

EDCA Court Orders Task Force to Deal with COVID-19 Crisis in California Prisons

This Sacramento Bee story today reports that an employee at CSP-Sacramento prison and another at San Quentin have tested positive for COVID-19.  And here's what the Bee says about the new COVID-19 CDCR task force:

At a court hearing Friday, convened by telephone because courthouses have been closed, U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller ordered the creation of a task force of inmate lawyers, CDCR officials and others to discuss how to address the rapidly evolving crisis.

The task force is to report back to the judge by next Friday.

Michael Bien, lead attorney for inmates requiring mental health care under the landmark Coleman case, said the issue is a “crisis.”

“The staff and the prisoners are all in a dangerous situation and CDCR needs to address the crisis,” Bien said. “I call it like a cruise ship without staterooms, and with a staff that goes on and off three times a day.

“This is a situation that needs to be addressed.”

The state already has made a number of policy changes in how inmates are being handled. Documents filed in federal court in Sacramento show all inmates received by the system are asked if they have a cough, a fever or difficulty breathing and have their temperature taken.

Any inmates who answer yes or have a temperature above 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit are isolated. All others who answer no to the questions are quarantined for 14 days.

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 Releases Secret Report Alleging Poor Medical Care for California Prison Inmates

A federal judge Wednesday released a scathing internal report about psychiatric care inside California’s prisons that accuses the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of providing care for inmates that is far below what has been mandated by decades of court fights.

“CDCR has a broken system of care because information is not accurately reported upon, and reliable commonsensical action has not been taken,” the 161-page report from Dr. Michael Golding, the chief psychiatrist for the prison system, reads. “I have documented that patients are not getting to appointments on schedule and in confidential spaces, that appropriate consultation is not occurring, and worse, appropriate medical decision making by psychiatric physicians has been overridden.

Sac Bee, 10/31/18

 

Cal Prison Whistleblower's Testimony May Be Postponed

California’s top prison psychiatrist may not have to testify Monday about allegations that he uncovered corrections officials providing misleading or inaccurate information to a federal judge, but he may be called later for a hearing on whether data provided by the state constitutes “fraud on the court.”

That was the latest twist Wednesday in an ongoing legal battle between lawyers for Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration and attorneys for prison inmates over whether corrections officials have been fudging data on how well they are providing psychiatric care to prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller held a telephone conference Wednesday morning to address efforts by state lawyers to stop Dr. Michael Golding from testifying at a hearing Monday, and she indicated she may be willing to postpone such an appearance.

Sac Bee, 10/17/18

 

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

 

Prison Psychiatry Chief Accuses California Of Misleading EDCA Court On Mental Health

The chief psychiatrist for California’s prison system is accusing state officials of providing inaccurate and misleading data to a federal court and to lawyers for prison inmates fighting to improve psychiatric care inside state prisons, according to court documents.

Dr. Michael Golding compiled a “lengthy, detailed report” that inmate attorneys say contains “serious allegations” that data reported to the court overseeing a long-running case involving medical and mental health care inside California prisons “is inaccurate and has been presented in a materially misleading way,” court documents say.

“Dr. Golding’s claims are very serious and, if true, have far reaching implications affecting almost every aspect of this case,” lawyers for the inmates said in documents filed in U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller’s court in Sacramento.

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The judge also said she wanted to hear from Golding in testimony later this month before deciding how to proceed further over his allegations.

“If anything, Dr. Golding’s report suggests to me my need to hear fro him to assess the contents of that report,” she said.

Lawyers for the 30,000 prison inmates covered under the pending case say they discovered the existence of the 160-page secret report when lawyers for Gov. Jerry Brown and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra called them last Thursday to reveal its existence.

Court papers say the call was made after Golding sent the report to the court-appointed receiver overseeing reforms inside California prisons.

Sac Bee, 10/10/18

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article219790940.html#storylink=cpy

Vacaville's Request To Throw Out EDCA Excessive Force Action Denied

Lawyers for the city of Vacaville and four of its police officers have lost their effort in federal court in Sacramento to throw out an excessive force civil rights lawsuit filed in February.

Judge Kimberly J. Mueller ruled Wednesday that Francisco R. Galvan’s lawsuit can go forward and that his lawyer can amend the lawsuit in the upcoming few weeks to address changes ordered by Mueller.

Galvan filed his lawsuit a few days after he was acquitted of a criminal charge of resisting arrest involving a tussle with Vacaville police on the night of Jan. 25, 2015.

Mueller threw out part of the lawsuit involving accusations involving Officer Marc Raymond, now retired. Officers Aaron Potter, Brian Halley and Chris Hill still face claims of using excessive force and false arrest.

Mueller ruled Vacaville Police Chief John Carli cannot be sued for any role he had heading up his department that could somehow relate to Galvan’s arrest.

Daily Republic, 9/7/18

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