Formal negotiations to settle a civil law suit officially broke down between lawyers for Massachusetts prison officials and the Disability Law Center.

Apparently, negotiations fell a part after stalled plans to build special treatment units for hundreds of seriously mentally ill inmates.

Maybe a death sentence isn't so bad for the more than six hundred California inmates facing capital punishment.

The state not only has the nation's largest death row population but a wait list with long delays. The appeals process can last decades.

The DNA evidence linking the infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez, known as the "Night Stalker," to the April 10, 1984 death of 9-year-old Mei Leung might finally solve one of many cold cases for the San Francisco Police Department.

It also brings San Francisco police officer Holly Pera's nightmares to an end. She's been haunted by them ever since she first worked the original case years ago.

In August, a federal appeals court ordered California to come up with a plan to reduce its prison population. California submitted a plan that came nowhere near the level of reduction ordered by the court. Now that court has ordered California to come up with a satisfactory plan, or the feds will come in and do it themselves.

As previously discussed, in August, a panel of federal judges ordered California to come up with a plan to reduce prison population to a mere 137% of the capacity for which its prisons are designed, within 2 years.

California prisons currently confine an estimated 150,000 inmates, which is 188% design capacity. With current facilities, this means a reduction of over 40,000 prisoners is required.

Why must California trim its prison ranks? Because the court found overcrowding to be the primary cause of prison medical and mental health care so bad that it was found to violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The court also found that overcrowding created criminogenic effects in California prisons (meaning the prisons actually produce more crime).

After California's legislature got involved, the plan submitted by the state to the feds fell far short of what had been ordered.

Yesterday, the court ordered California back to the drawing board. It did not begin contempt proceeding for defying its previous order, but the court gave the state 21 days to craft a plan that cuts prison population by over 40,000 in two years, or risk the feds doing it for California.