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A civil liability law publication for officers, jails, detention
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ISSN 0739-0998 - Cite this issue as: 2018 JB September
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Digest
Topics
Death Penalty
Diet
Disability Discrimination: Prisoners ( 2 cases)
Medical Care
Prison and Jail Conditions: General
Prison Litigation Reform Act: Exhaustion of Remedies
Probation
Sex Offenders
Transsexual Prisoners
AELE Seminars:
Public Safety Discipline and Internal Investigations
Oct. 29-Nov. 1, 2018– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Jail and Prisoner Legal Issues
Jan. 14-17, 2019 -
Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
May 6-9, 2019– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Click here for further information about all AELE Seminars.
Some of the case digests do not have a link to the full opinion.
- Most Federal District Court opinions can be accessed via PACER. Registration required. Opinions are usually free; other documents are 10¢ per page.
- Access to cases linked to www.findlaw.com may require registration, which is free.
Death Penalty
A federal trial court properly denied a motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s claims filed by the Director of the Missouri Department of Corrections. The plaintiff, an investigative journalist who was critical of the state’s execution procedures, claimed that the Departments procedures for inviting citizens to witness executions violated his rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. After he wrote several articles criticizing the state’s execution practices, the Director allegedly never responded to his requests to witness any executions. The plaintiff had standing to pursue his claim as he suffered the injury of being excluded, along with all applicants sharing his particular viewpoint, from viewing Missouri’s executions. The 0laintiff could proceed with his lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this exclusion. McDaniel v. Precythe, #17-1055, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 20883 (8th Cir.).
Diet
A federal appeals court overturned summary judgment to a state Department of Correction in a lawsuit claiming that a policy of not accommodating the dietary restrictions imposed by a prisoner’s Nazarite Jewish religion violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). The Department had to make a substantial showing to justify burdening an individual plaintiff’s practice of a sincerely held religious belief. In this case, there were fact questions remaining as to whether the Department’s interest was compelling and its means were the least restrictive in light of suggested alternatives. Williams v. Annucci, #15-1018, 895 F.3d 180 (2nd Cir. 2018).
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Disability Discrimination: Prisoners
Wheelchair-using detainees in a county detention facility claimed that purposefully inaccessible ramps and bathroom facilities at six county courthouses violated the disability discrimination prohibitions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act. The trial court certified a class for injunctive relief and the named plaintiffs sought individual damages. The trial court, after an evidentiary hearing, entered a permanent injunction, finding ADA violations. Based largely on the same findings, the trial court granted the plaintiffs partial summary judgment on liability in their personal damage actions, and then submitted the question of individual damage awards to a jury.
A federal appeals court vacated in part. The trial court improperly relied on its own findings of fact when it granted partial summary judgment to the plaintiffs on their damage claims. When equitable (injunctive) and legal (damage) claims are joined in a single lawsuit, common questions of fact should be tried first by a jury unless there are extraordinary circumstances or an unequivocal waiver by all parties of their jury trial rights. The appeals court did, however, uphold the class certification for injunctive relief. Lacy v. Cook County, Illinois, #17-2141, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 21047 (7th Cir.).
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Medical Care
A federal appeals court held that the Prison Litigation Reform Act's (PLRA) “gatekeeper function” against frivolous suits does not require a prison inmate to make a showing of a physical injury caused by an unconstitutional act. Rather, on Eighth Amendment claims, in order to recover compensatory damages, the PLRA requires a showing of some harm caused by some unconstitutional conduct that amounted to deliberate indifference and an accompanying showing of physical injury. In this prisoner inadequate medical care case, the plaintiff appealed the trial court's judgment awarding him only nominal and no punitive damages. The trial court held that defendants violated the plaintiff's Eighth Amendment rights by their deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs while he was in their custody, but that the PLRA precluded plaintiff's recovery of compensatory damages because he failed to meet 42 U.S.C. 1997e(e)'s physical injury threshold.
The federal appeals court ruled that the plaintiff's severe pain resulted from an actual physical injury when an officer's takedown move broke his shoulder, and thus he met the PLRA's physical injury requirement under section 1997e(e). Therefore, the appeals court reversed and remanded with instructions for the trial court to calculate compensatory damages that result from the pain differential, if any, that plaintiff experienced from having to take non-prescription pain relievers instead of the ten prescribed hydrocodone tablets. The trial court did not, however, abuse its discretion by denying punitive damages. McAdoo v. Martin, #17-1952, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 21876 (8th Cir.).
Prison and Jail Conditions: General
****Editor's Case Alert****
When plaintiff detainees show that their conditions of confinement have been restricted solely because of overcrowding or understaffing at a facility, a deference instruction ordinarily should not be given. Similarly, if they prove that they have been subjected to search procedures that are an unnecessary, unjustified, or exaggerated response to concerns about jail safety, the court need not defer to jail officials. The plaintiff appealed the partial grant of summary judgment for defendants on her lawsuit alleging inadequate medical care, and the denial of her motion for a new trial. She challenged several conditions of her confinement and the procedures that the county used to classify her as mentally ill.
A federal appeals court held that the magistrate judge should not have given the deference instruction to the plaintiff's conditions of confinement claims, where the only justification that jail officials offered for curtailing her meals, showers, and recreation was a concern about overcrowding and understaffing in the facility. The appeals court also held that the magistrate judge erred in instructing the jury to give deference to the jail officials on her claim of excessive search, because substantial evidence supported her arguments that this search practice was an unnecessary, unjustified, and exaggerated response to jail officials’ need for prison security. Shorter v. Baca, #16-56051, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 19491 (9th Cir.).
Prison Litigation Reform Act: Exhaustion of Remedies
An Arkansas inmate sued three prison officials for allegedly requiring him to work with deadly chlorine gas without proper training and safety gear. The trial court granted summary judgment to the officials based on the inmate’s failure to exhaust his administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). A federal appeals court, accepting the plaintiff's declaration as true, held that one defendant misled the plaintiff and thus the formal grievance procedure was unavailable to him. Therefore, the court reversed the trial court's judgment as to one defendant where the plaintiff did not file his formal grievance in time.
In regard to the other two defendants, the appeals court held that the informal complaint process was capable of use and could have provided some relief and thus the administrative exhaustion requirement applied regardless of whether the formal grievance procedure was later available to plaintiff. In the alternative, the plaintiff failed to exhaust his remedies against these two defendants. Accordingly, the court upheld the trial court's judgment as to these two defendants. Townsend v. Murphy, #17-2783, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 21628 (8th Cir.).
Probation
As the majority of states now have laws authorizing the prescribing of marijuana for medical use, such use by probationers and others is becoming a more frequent issue. A federal appeals court recently upheld a trial court’s modification of the terms of a man’s supervised release to include a standard condition explicitly prohibiting the use of medical marijuana. The appeals court held that the trial court correctly concluded that his use of marijuana, even for medical purposes, contravenes federal law. The court reasoned that, although some medical marijuana was legal in Minnesota as a matter of state law, the state's law conflicted with federal law. Therefore, the trial court had no discretion to allow him to use medical marijuana while on supervised release. The court also held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in modifying the terms of supervised release to provide clarifying language accurately stating federal law. United States v. Schostag, #17-2530, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 19169 (8th Cir.).
Sex Offenders
Two convicted child sex offenders were required, under Illinois law, to register as sex offenders and comply with restrictions prohibiting them from living within 500 feet of a school, playground, or child-care center. Several years after their conviction, Illinois added child and group day-care homes to the 500-foot buffer zone. When they updated their sex offender registrations, they were informed that they had 30 days to move because child day-care homes had opened up within 500 feet of their residences. They sued, claiming that this change in the law imposed retroactive punishment in violation of the Ex Post Facto Clause; that applying the amended statute to them constituted an unconstitutional taking of their property; and that the statute was enforced without a hearing for an individualized risk assessment and was not rationally related to a legitimate state interest, in violation of their due process rights.
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A federal appeals court upheld the rejection of these claims, finding that the amended statute was neither impermissibly retroactive nor punitive. The Takings Clause claim was unexhausted and the amendment was adopted before they acquired their homes, so it did not alter their property-rights expectations. The procedural due process claim failed because there was no right to a hearing to establish a fact irrelevant to the statute. The law “easily satisfies rational-basis review.” Vasquez v. Foxx, #17-1061, 895 F.3d 515 (7th Cir. 2018). |
Transsexual Prisoners
A Wisconsin prisoner stated that she was a transgender person who had identified as a woman her entire life. Prior to incarceration, in 2008, she received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. After being incarcerated, she requested hormone treatment, triggering a multistep process that the Department of Corrections outlined in its then-new policy on Health Care Treatment of Gender Identity Disorder. It took the department over a year to evaluate her candidacy for hormone therapy. The DOC then refused to provide her with the treatment its own expert recommended, on the ground that she was within a month of release from the prison.
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Although the DOC’s Mental Health Director encouraged her to find a community provider to prescribe her hormones, the terms of her parole actually prohibited her from taking hormones or dressing as a woman. A federal appeals court concluded that the trial court prematurely rejected some of her claims in a lawsuit challenging this course of events. Persons in criminal custody are entirely dependent on the state for their medical care, so prison officials have a constitutional duty to provide inmates with the care they require for serious medical needs. The appeals court stated that prison staff members cannot wait for an inmate’s sentence to expire before providing necessary treatments. Additionally, state officials may not block a parolee from independently obtaining health care. The condition must be serious enough to trigger constitutional protection; otherwise, the nature of the disorder is irrelevant, the court commented. Further proceedings on these claims were required. Mitchell v. Kallas, #16-3350, 895 F.3d 492 (7th Cir. 2018). |
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Federal Prison Policies: Naloxone Procedures and Protocol for Reversal of Opioid Overdose, Program Statement 002-2018, Federal Bureau of Prisons (July 2, 2018).
Federal Prison Policies: Provision of Feminine Hygiene Products, Program Statement 003-2018, Federal Bureau of Prisons (August 1, 2018).
Statistics: Sexual Victimization Reported by Adult Correctional Authorities, 2012-15, by Ramona R. Rantala, Bureau of Justice Statistics (July 25, 2018 NCJ 251146).
Reference:
• Abbreviations of Law Reports, laws and agencies used in our publications.
• AELE's list of recently-noted jail and prisoner law resources.
AELE Seminars
Public Safety Discipline and Internal Investigations
Oct. 29-Nov. 1, 2018– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Jail and Prisoner Legal Issues
Jan. 14-17, 2019 -
Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
May 6-9, 2019– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Click here for further information about all AELE Seminars.
•Return to the Contents menu.
Access the multi-year Jail and Prisoner Law Case Digest
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Report non-working links here.
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