Wardens of Pelican Bay, Corcoran State Prisons, Three Others Facing Ex-Inmate’s Civil Rights Class Action

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The warden of California’s Pelican Bay State Prison is among the defendants in a former inmate’s proposed class action lawsuit in which the individual alleges the conditions and policies at four state-run correctional facilities violate civil rights laws. The 29-page complaint names the below individuals as defendants:

In the six-count lawsuit, the plaintiff takes issue with the CDCR’s prison gang validation procedure. According to the complaint, there is no requirement in the CDCR’s gang validation process to show that a prisoner has broken a prison rule or the law or even acted on behalf of a gang before being placed in a segregated housing unit (SHU). Rather, the gang validation process, the plaintiff claims, is based solely on “specious allegations” from the CDCR that an individual may have been associated with a gang.

All told, the plaintiff, who received a nine-year sentence in 2009, charges that as a result of the defendants’ supposed conduct, he was “subjected to cruel and unusual punishment for the entire time he was incarcerated.”