Media Coverage

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Inside One Lawyer’s Quest to End Solitary Confinement
October 23, 2020

In 2008, Matthew Coyte, an attorney with a tiny private practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was approached by a potential client. Stephen Slevin had spent nearly two years in solitary confinement in Doña Ana County Detention Center, where he developed fungal infections and bedsores, removed his own aching tooth, suffered deteriorating mental illness and descended into a delirium. Coyte took one look at the transformation between Slevin’s booking photo and release photo — during which time his hair and beard had grown long, matted, and unkempt — and took the case. 

“Those two pictures were so dramatically different,” recalls Coyte. “It demonstrated what horrors had been wreaked upon him.”...

'Forgotten' inmate gets $15.5 million settlement from N.M. county
March 8, 2013
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Stephen Slevin's 22 months in solitary confinement in a county jail left him traumatized and physically weak, but he'll soon be a multimillionaire for his suffering.
The New Mexico county that locked him up on a drunk driving charge, isolated him from other inmates and accused of essentially forgetting about him for nearly two years agreed this week to settle his lawsuit for $15.5 million.

Slevin, now 59, went to jail in August 2005 as "a well nourished, physically healthy adult," but emerged with a long beard, bed sores, bad teeth and weighing just 133 pounds in June 2007, according to the lawsuit...

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“He was treated like an animal for almost two years...Worse than an animal. You wouldn’t put an animal in a cell that size, and not let them out, and if you did, you’d be arrested.”
- Matthew Coyte in January 26, 2012 Albuquerque Journal article about Stephen Slevin

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Criminal defense lawyer asks public safety community to rethink who goes to jail during pandemic
​April 1, 2020


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— Lawyers are asking the public safety community to rethink the rules about who goes in and out of jail amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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“The things that we know for sure, infections will occur in jails and prison and it will spread rapidly,” said Matt Coyte, former president of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

Coyte said New Mexico’s jails and prisons are extremely vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks and that law enforcement and jail officials should reconsider who goes in to protect public health.

“You are going to have infection and it will spread rapidly. You are also going to have staff rates diminish because people on staff will get sick, they will be isolated, so the staffing will get reduced and then likely social disorder,” he said....

Two Years in Solitary Confinement Is Worth $15.5 Million, These Days
March 6, 2013

Steven Slevin was depressed when police arrested him on a DWI charge. Being thrown into a padded room, entirely alone, for 22 months without a trial did not help. Now, he's a multi-millionaire. Quite unfortunately, the 59-year-old might not be around to spend the money, since he has lung cancer and as already survived longer than doctor's predicted. Even more unfortunately, the final settlement is significantly less that the $22 million settlement awarded to Slevin in federal court last year. Doña Ana County, New Mexico, where Slevin was imprisoned, called the $22 million settlement excessive. And even though a federal judge upheld the original settlement amount, Slevin finally agreed to take a $15.5 million settlement and be done with the whole horrid affair...

4 Investigates: State prison system cuts funds to help newly released inmates
September 27, 2020

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- State legislators and community advocates are questioning funding cuts by the New Mexico Department of Corrections that reduce services for newly released inmates.  Lawmakers have long argued that investing in rehabilitative services for this population decreases the chances they re-offend and increases their ability to thrive after they’ve paid their debts to society.
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“This is a public safety issue,” said State Senator Bill O’Neill.  “This is common sense, if somebody doesn't re-offend it's a safer community.”

New Mexico Police K-9 attacks unarmed man during welfare check, officer under investigation
May 24, 2019
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CLOVIS, N.M. -- Three police officers and the department are facing a lawsuit after a man said the officers allowed a police dog to attack him in his living room for no reason in Clovis, New Mexico.

The man's attorney says this isn't the first time the officer with the dog has been accused of excessive force, KOAT reports.

The man who was attacked has mental health issues and his attorney says bringing the K-9 escalated the entire situation.

The officers entered the man's apartment, identified as Dan Lucero, after Lucero's mom called for a welfare check on her son on February 22, 2019...

Inmate suffers convulsions after being left in hot van, wins $2 million lawsuit
April 15, 2019

An inmate was locked inside a hot prisoner transport van with no windows for almost an hour. Now he's won a $2 million lawsuit for what he went through.
AdvertisementIn July 2013, Isaha Casias was one of 11 inmates locked inside a transport van outside a Santa Fe maximum-security prison.

"As time progressed, it just getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and everyone started to panic," Casias said.

The guards left the prisoners outside while they picked up records inside the facility. Casias grew frustrated, started sweating profusely, passed out and later started convulsing.
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"It feels degrading when we're all human," Casias said. "To be treated less than-- it hurt, but I do forgive them."...

Ex-inmate wins $2M lawsuit in New Mexico over hot prison van
April 5, 2019


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A former New Mexico inmate's attorney says he has won a $2 million verdict in a lawsuit accusing two officers of leaving him and others in a prisoner transport van to suffer on a hot summer day in 2013.
The decision comes more than three years after Isaha Casias sued the New Mexico Department of Corrections and the officers.
Attorney Matthew Coyte says the verdict was reached late Thursday in federal court in Roswell...

New Mexico county sees more lawsuits on inmate abuse claims
December 10, 2019

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico county involved in one of the largest prisoner civil rights settlements in U.S. history is facing more federal lawsuits over its treatment of inmates in its jail.
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Attorney Matt Coyte recently filed two lawsuits in U.S. District Court on behalf of inmates who allege mistreatment and abuse at the Doña Ana County Detention Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

According to a lawsuit filed Monday, Susan Hylton, now 42, was placed in solitary confinement after she requested to report sexual and physical abuse. Hylton made the request after correctional officers ordered her to strip during a search for drugs, the lawsuit said.

Family of Santa Rosa prisoner who hanged himself settles with psychiatrist
November 25, 2019

The family of a Los Lunas man held in solitary confinement for five months before he hanged himself in a privately run state prison near Santa Rosa in 2014 has settled with the last of three defendants and agreed to drop the civil lawsuit over his death.
Michael Mattis’ family will get $500,000 from Andrew Kowalkowski, the psychiatrist the plaintiffs claim failed to treat Mattis inside the prison, said Matt Coyte, the family’s lawyer.

The family settled with two other defendants in the case — prison operator GEO Group and onetime inmate medical care provider Corizon — earlier this year...

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“We need to take a whole new approach on how to run our jails, such that staff and inmates are not subjected to these repetitively traumatizing events."
- Matthew Coyte in December 28, 2017 Albuquerque Journal article about MDC settlements

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Lawyer Responds To Veto Of Solitary Confinement Limits 
April 11, 2017
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Advocates around the country have been working to limit the use of solitary confinement in jails and prisons. The New Mexico Legislature passed a bill this year that would prohibit putting people who are under 18 or pregnant or who have a serious mental illness into solitary. But last week, Gov. Susana Martinez vetoed it.

Lawyer Matthew Coyte has spent years suing on behalf of local inmates who endured inhumane solitary conditions that damaged their physical and mental health. KUNM spoke with him about the governor's veto. 

COYTE: It’s disappointing. We have had a lot of work on this issue over years. We reached bipartisan support. There were many Republicans as well as Democrats behind the bill at the end of the day. We had interest groups, such as the unions who represent the prison guards, who endorsed the bill.

Contract with state allows Corizon to keep its settlements secret
April 17, 2016

Massive settlements and jury awards in other states over the years provide a dismal view of the medical care provided to inmates by Corizon Health and other for-profit prison health care companies.

Last year, Corizon and Alameda County in California paid $8.3 million — the largest wrongful death civil rights settlement in that state’s history — to the family of a man who died in jail under the company’s care. In 2011, a Florida jury awarded an inmate $1.2 million after Corizon went weeks without treating a staph infection until the inmate was left partly paralyzed. The jury concluded the company, then operating as Prison Health Services, had a policy of refusing to send prisoners to hospitals to save money.
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But in New Mexico, Corizon has been allowed to operate almost entirely in the shadows, even as more than 200 inmates have filed lawsuits against the company since it took over medical services for most of the state’s prisons in 2007. That’s because not one of the lawsuits has gone to a jury, and Corizon has kept all records of settlements secret...

Sierra County, former inmate settle case for $750K 
December 23rd, 2015

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sierra County has settled for $750,000 a federal civil rights lawsuit filed on behalf of a former inmate who was held in solitary confinement without his medications for over two weeks in 2012, and left the detention facility with post-traumatic stress disorder added to his list of disorders.
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Albuquerque attorney Matthew Coyte, who has litigated multiple cases involving solitary confinement, filed the dismissal notice Tuesday on behalf of Michael Faziani against the Sierra County Commission and six employees at the now-closed county detention facility...

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Detention lawsuit costs county $2.9 million
March 6, 2015

ALAMOGORDO — Longtime Alamogordo resident John Gonzales said that he could tell something wasn’t right when he would visit his son Jerome at the Otero County Detention Center in 2012, always in a visitation room with a pane of glass separating them.

His son, who had been jailed on a misdemeanor DWI and for traffic tickets, had sores on his arms and face, made strange comments and had grown out his beard and hair to such a length that “he looked like a caveman.” Family members, he said, took him to the hospital as soon as they secured his release on bond.
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But John Gonzales said it was only after watching television news reports on the settlement of his son’s lawsuit against Otero County that he learned the full extent of his son’s alleged living conditions at the jail, including two months of solitary confinement in which he was often naked and defecated on himself...

Valencia County pays $1.6 million in jail case
February 7, 2014
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LOS LUNAS – A federal lawsuit against the Valencia County Detention Center by a mentally ill inmate who was held in solitary confinement for long periods and who claimed she was denied feminine hygiene products and not allowed to shower has been settled for $1.6 million...
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Solitary in New Mexico: Part 2
May 5, 2014
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Jan Green isn’t sure of cell 135C’s exact dimensions at the Valencia County Detention Center. It was small.

“It was a shower stall, but I couldn’t use the shower,” she said. “It had the steel toilet and sink combination. It had a cement L-shaped bench and two drains. It had a steel door with a window that looked out into the walkway. “

She saw those objects every day all day during her months-long stints in solitary.
She slept on a mat on the floor. She remembers that it was cold in there, the lights were kept on around the clock, and she couldn’t get the water running properly. The out-of-use showerhead dripped. All the time...
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The Shocking Story Of A Bipolar Woman Stuck For Years In Jail Without Ever Being Convicted Of A Crime
February 17, 2014
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A 51-year-old mentally ill grandmother recently secured a $1.6 million settlement from a New Mexico county that she says jailed her for more than two years, much of which she spent in an isolation cell without a bed.

That grandmother, Jan Green, has bipolar disorder and was charged with two minor incidents of domestic violence — both of which were ultimately dropped, her lawyer says.

While the broad strokes of Green's case sound awful, the details she and her lawyer allege are by turns stomach-turning and heartbreaking.

Green was allegedly kept in a roughly 7-by-8-foot solitary confinement cell for at least eight months, sleeping on a mat on the floor and bleeding on herself because she had been denied sanitary napkins.
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Woman, 73, sues over month in solitary confinement
December 3, 2013

​ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A 73-year-old grandmother with bipolar disorder has filed a federal lawsuit alleging she was kept in solitary confinement for more than a month at the state women’s prison after a popular antacid led to a false positive on a drug test.

Carol Lester, the former executive director of the Ruidoso Board of Realtors, says she was in solitary lockup for longer than prison policy allowed and wasn’t given her medications for mental and physical illnesses, including a heart ailment.

Guard Captain Accused of Inmate Rape
May 16, 2012

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A civil rights lawsuit filed Tuesday makes several explosive allegations, including that a high-ranking guard at the state prison in Los Lunas raped a male inmate several times in 2011 – including while the inmate was handcuffed – and that the prison’s warden helped to thwart an undercover FBI investigation into the alleged rapes.
Attorney Matthew Coyte filed the lawsuit in state District Court in Valencia County on behalf of former inmate Kenneth Morgan. It alleges excessive force, along with violations of due www.abqjournal.com/106838/guard-captain-accused-of-inmate-rape.htmlprocess and equal protection, and that Morgan’s treatment rose to the level of cruel and unusual punishment. The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and attorneys’ fees and costs.
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Coyte Law, P.C.

3800 Osuna Rd. NE Suite 2
Albuquerque, NM 87109
Phone: (505) 244-3030
Fax: (505) 672-7088