PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Legal Newsline) - The Rhode Island Supreme Court struck down a statute that treated prisoners sentenced to life in jail as the equivalent of being dead, reviving negligence lawsuits by a murderer and a man convicted of multiple sexual assaults. The decision drew a dissent from one justice who said it will “open the floodgates to frivolous inmate claims.”
An archaic Rhode Island law that says prison inmates serving life sentences are considered civilly dead in terms of their civil rights is unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision released Wednesday. The 1909 law says inmat.
An archaic Rhode Island law that says prison inmates serving life sentences are considered civilly dead in terms of their civil rights is unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision released Wednesday.