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Medical Care

     An Illinois prisoner who completed his rape sentence continued to be confined civilly as a sexually violent offender. He suffers from a number of medical conditions—carpal-tunnel syndrome, pain in his hips and back lingering from past injuries, flat feet, and ligament damage in one foot—that, he says, prevent him from climbing to the top bunk in his cell. During a previous incarceration, he had a low-bunk permit but a doctor at his present facility refused his request to authorize a similar permit, which he claimed forced him to sleep on the floor of his cell. He sued the doctor for deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs and the jury returned a verdict for the defendant. On appeal, the court rejected an argument that the trial judge should have declared a mistrial when the doctor violated a pretrial order by mentioning to the jury that the plaintiff had been incarcerated for 26 years, noting that the jury could already infer from the plaintiff's testimony and his medical issues going back at least 13 years that he had been in prison a long time. Collins v. Lochard, #14-1915, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 1184 (7th Cir.).

     Upholding a judgment for prison medical staff in a lawsuit the plaintiff brought concerning their cutting off of his methadone treatment while incarcerated, a federal appeals court held that it wss an error to instruct the jurors in a prison medical care case to defer to the adoption and implementation of security-based prison policies absent a plausible connection between the prison's narcotics policy and the challenged decision to cut off the treatment. The error was harmless, however, as the policy did not categorically prevent the plaintiff from receiving methadone. Chess v. Dovey, #12-16516, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 10753 (9th Cir.).

Prison Litigation Reform Act: Exhaustion of Remedies

     In a prisoner's lawsuit concerning alleged inadequate medical treatment, the trial court erroneously granted summary judgment to the defendants on the basis of the plaintiff's alleged failure to exhaust available administrative remedies when the defendants failed to establish that there was an available procedure that the plaintiff did not exhaust. Without knowing more about what the applicable grievance procedures were, it was impossible to determine whether the plaintiff exhausted them, so further proceedings were ordered. Cantwell v. Sterling, #14-51095, 788 F.3d 507 (5th Cir. 2015).

     In a prisoner's lawsuit claiming excessive use of force by prison guards, his fear caused by an alleged threat of retaliation by one guard might be sufficient to essentially render an inmate grievance procedure unavailable and to excuse his failure to exhaust it. In this case, his claim that he perceived the guard's statements that he was "lucky" because his injuries "could have been much worse" to be threats that he should not use the grievance system was sufficient to satisfy the subjective prong of a test excusing exhaustion, but he failed to show a sufficient objective basis for his belief that he would suffer retaliation for using the grievance system, so his failure to exhaust was not excused. McBride v. Lopez, #12-17682, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 11192 (11th Cir.).

Prisoner Assault: By Officer

****Editor's Case Alert****

    A DUI arrestee was transported to a crowded jail where he refused to enter a cell. An altercation ensued between him and a number of officers. The trial court erroneously rejected a federal civil rights lawsuit for excessive force on the basis that his resulting injuries were "de minimis," as they included a concussion, scalp laceration, and bruising. No prior case law found such injuries to be de minimis, and there was testimony that three officers each beat or kicked him after he was handcuffed and subdued on the cell floor. The appeals court also vacated the dismissal of one officer's assault and battery counterclaim. Davis v. White, #14-1722, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 13045 (8th Cir.).

Prisoner Death/Injury

     A prisoner serving a 120-day sentence for marijuana was moved to a padded cell in a manic state after he beat on the walls of his cell. That night, the staff merely viewed him through a monitor camera, despite a supposed obligation to conduct in-person checks for an affirmative response four times an hour. He fell and hit his head first against a wall and then on a door jamb. Staff members allegedly did not open the cell door despite him complaining that he had injured his head and required medical attention. In the morning, attempts to wake him were unavailing, and he died in a hospital three days later, as a result of a subdural hematoma caused by his falls. A sergeant and a lieutenant were denied qualified immunity on claims for deliberate indifference as a jury could infer that they were aware of a substantial risk of serious harm but failed to respond appropriately. A third defendant employee, a case manager, was entitled to qualified immunity as her actions constituted, at most, negligence, rather than deliberate indifference. Letterman v. Farnsworth, #14-1571, 789 F.3d 856 (8th Cir. 2015).

Prisoner Restraint

****Editor's Case Alert****

    A sexually violent person civil detainee claimed that security guards accompanying him to a courthouse refused to remove his hand restraints while he attempted to use a restroom there, and laughed as he struggled to unzip his pants and urinate. He was secured with leg shackles, a wrist chain, handcuffs, and a black-box restraint that fit over the chain between handcuffs and a portion of the cuffs themselves, largely immobilizing the hands in front of the body approximately two inches apart. A jury awarded him $1,000 in compensatory damages. A federal appeals court found that the trial judge improperly failed to instruct the jury that the plaintiff had to prove that the guards had a purposeful, knowing, or possibly reckless state of mind with respect to their actions or inaction toward him. At the same time, the court noted that a security directive allowed the guards to call their supervisor for permission to remove the restraints, and a reasonable jury could find that they chose not to do so for the purpose of humiliating him. He had no means of escape from the windowless restroom other than by force through the two younger, bigger, and healthier guards, and he would still be wearing leg shackles if the hand restraints were removed. The guards were therefore not entitled to qualified immunity on a due process claim as it was clearly established that the unreasonable use of body restraints in a manner that served to punish a civilly committed person was unlawful. Further proceedings were ordered. Davis v. Wessel, #13-3416, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 11685 (7th Cir.).

Religion

    Alabama correctional officials were properly granted a judgment in their favor on Native American inmates' claims that the failure to allow their hair unshorn as required by their religion violated their rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq. The defendants presented ample evidence that their policy was necessary to accomplish a number of compelling goals, which included the prevention of concealment of contraband, facilitation of inmate identification, maintenance of good hygiene and health, and facilitation of prison discipline through uniformity. It was also proven that the hair-length policy was the least restrictive means of furthering these compelling governmental interests. Knight v. Thompson, #12-11926, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 13668 (11th Cir.)

Sexual Assault

     A prisoner claimed that an assistant caseworker at the facility where he was incarcerated violated his Eighth Amendment rights by failing to protect him from sexual assault by another prisoner. A federal appeals court rejected an interlocutory appeal from the trial court's denial of qualified immunity to the defendant based on the existence of factual disputes. As the defendant challenged the trial court's finding that there was sufficient evidence to warrant a trial, he was essentially asking the appeals court to engage in "the time-consuming task of reviewing a factual controversy about intent," which it would not do. Franklin v. Young, #14-2151, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 10739 (8th Cir.).

     Female inmates at an Oklahoma facility were given work assignments to perform landscaping work and grounds maintenance at the governor's mansion. They claimed that they were sexually assaulted and harassed by their off-site supervisor, the mansion's groundskeeper, and a cook at the mansion. Their lawsuit claimed that two guards at the prison were aware of this, but did nothing to prevent it. Upholding the denial of qualified immunity to the two guards, a federal appeals court dismissed one guard's appeal for want of jurisdiction as she only challenged the trial court's determination that the plaintiffs presented sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment. It rejected the second guard's argument that a prison guard who knows of, yet fails to reasonably respond to, a risk of harm created by another person can only be liable if the perpetrator is a subordinate. Castillo v. Day, #14-6050, 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 10509 (10th Cir.).

•Return to the Contents menu.

     Federal Prisoners: Quick Facts Federal Offenders in Prison, U.S. Sentencing Commission (January 2015).

     Prisoners and Poverty: Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the pre-incarceration incomes of the imprisoned, by Bernadette Rabuy and Daniel Kopf, Prison Policy Initiative (July 2015).

     Prisoner Searches: Program Statement 5521.06. Searches of Housing Units, Inmates, and Inmate Work Areas. Federal Bureau of Prisons (June 4, 2015).

     Race and Prisoners: The Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration, by Peter Wagner and Daniel Kopf, Prison Policy Initiative (July 2015).

     State Prisons: Montana Department of Corrections 2015 Biennial Report.

     Work Programs: Emancipate the FLSA: Transform the Harsh Economic Reality of Working Inmates, by Patrice A. Fulcher, Journal of Civil Rights & Economic Development, [Vol. 27:4 2015].

  Reference:

     • Abbreviations of Law Reports, laws and agencies used in our publications.

     • AELE's list of recently-noted jail and prisoner law resources.