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Electronic Control Weapons (2 cases)
Medical Care
Medical Care: Vision
Prison and Jail Conditions: Sleep
Prisoner Restraint
Prisoner Suicide (2 cases)
Religion
Segregation:
Administrative
Resources
Cross_References
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Sep. 30-Oct. 3, 2019– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Jail and Prisoner Legal Issues
Jan. 13-16, 2020 -
Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
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MONTHLY CASE DIGEST
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.
Electronic Control Weapons – Dart and Stun Mode
****Editor's Case Alert****
A detainee died in a city jail after
being shocked with a Taser in the dart mode in the chest when he resisted being
placed in a new cell. The
detainee was suffering from alcohol-withdrawal symptoms and exhibiting
delusional behavior. His
son filed a federal civil rights lawsuit asserting claims for excessive
force. A federal appeals court ruled that a deputy was not entitled to
qualified immunity, and that if the facts were as alleged by the plaintiff,
he “clearly crossed” the constitutional line, when,
having already shocked the detainee once for five seconds, dropping him to
the floor, rendering him motionless, and causing him to urinate on himself,
he shocked him again a full eight seconds later in the neck in stun mode.
While the officer attempted to justify the second shock by the detainee’s
failure to comply with an order to roll over and be handcuffed, the evidence
indicated that he was simply not responsive at that time because of the
effects of the first shock. “Really,” the court asked, “is there any
surer indication of a grown man's inability to control his bodily functions
than his wetting himself?”
Further, “in eight seconds, we believe, any reasonable officer would
have concluded that a detainee who lay inert on the floor, having soiled
himself, was no longer putting up a fight.” However, the court ruled that the
plaintiff’s allegations did not show a causal connection between either the
use of force against the detainee or any deliberate indifference to his
serious medical needs, on the one hand, and any policy or custom implemented
by the defendant sheriff or a defendant captain, on the other. The court
therefore granted summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity for the
sheriff and captain. Piazza
v. Jefferson County, #18-10487, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis13904 (7th Cir.).
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A correctional
officer shocked an inmate three times in the dart mode when the
inmate refused to hold still for an identification photograph, using aggressive
language and threatening to sue over anything he did not like. The
first shock caused the prisoner to fall to the ground and kick and
writhe for five seconds before lying still. He was then picked up and
shocked two more times. The entire incident was recorded on video.
The inmate sued, asserting a claim for excessive force. A federal
appeals court overturned a grant of summary judgment on the basis of
qualified immunity against the plaintiff and ruled that a reasonable
jury could find that the officer used multiple shocks not to induce
the plaintiff’s cooperation, but to punish him for his intransigence
through the wanton infliction of pain. The inmate’s allegations
constituted “clearly established” violations of his Eighth Amendment
rights. Brooks
v. Jacumin, #17-7261, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 14033 (4th Cir.).
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Medical
Care
An inmate serving a life sentence at an Iowa prison claimed that five
prison employees were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical
needs. He had suffered a serious hip injury during an assault from a
fellow prisoner. A federal appeals court upheld summary judgment in
favor of the defendants. There was no evidence in the record that the
treating doctor or any other medical provider or prison staff provided
substandard care during or after the hip surgery which was performed,
and no evidence that defendants ever acted in deliberate disregard of
the plaintiff’s serious medical needs. Cejvanovic
v. Ludwick, #18-1370, 2019
U.S. App. Lexis 13405, 2019 WL 1966787 (8th Cir.).
Medical:
Vision
When a prisoner’s incarceration began, he was already blind in his left
eye. He started to complain about pain and vision abnormalities in his
right eye. An optometrist referred him to a university eye clinic.
After a transfer to another prison. He made health services
requests, indicating that his right eye was deteriorating. He was then
transported to the university eye clinic, where he was diagnosed with a
retinal detachment that required emergency surgery. After the surgery,
he continued to experience vision problems and was diagnosed with a
macular tear that required surgery. That surgery resulted in him being
blind for several weeks. He allegedly was not assisted by prison staff
in using the restroom or showering and had to get his own meals. He
continued to experience serious problems with his right eye and filed
several complaints. He was then transferred again. His follow-up appointment
with the eye clinic was canceled and he was unable to see a doctor for
several weeks. The doctor removed loose stitches that had been causing
his pain.
The prisoner never recovered his right eye vision and is now legally
blind. The trial court ruled that based on his adequate pleadings he
was competent to litigate his federal civil rights Eighth Amendment
case alone without appointed counsel during the advanced pre-trial
stages of the litigation. A federal appeals court reversed,
ruling that the trial court failed to give his motion for appointed
counsel “particularized consideration,” The trial court
failed to address the difficulty presented by the inmate’s claims,
which involved proving a culpable state of mind of several medical
professionals, security personnel, and prison policymakers. The appeals
court ordered the trial court to recruit counsel to assist the
prisoner in pursuing his claim for inadequate medical care. Pennewell
v. Parish, #18-3029, 2019
U.S. App. Lexis 13420 (7th Cir.).
Prison
and Jail Conditions: General – Sleep
****Editor's Case Alert****
A federal trial court has ruled that it can be cruel and unusual
punishment to fail to give detainees adequate time to sleep. The case
arose out of a California county jail that gave those incarcerated five
hours of lights out time starting at 11 p.m., and routinely used
loudspeakers to wake up inmates as early as 2:30 a.m. to take
medications before a 4 a.m. breakfast. The jail would also regularly
schedule overnight maintenance work that would be loud and disruptive
to the inmates’ sleep. The lawsuit was filed as a class action by
female pretrial detainees in the county jail. The trial judge issued a
preliminary injunction requiring the prison to change their practices,
and provide a full six hours of lights out time on weekdays, and seven
hours on weekends, coupled with a prohibition on the overnight
maintenance work in the absence of exigent circumstances, and
loudspeaker pill-calls during lights out time. Under the terms of the
injunction, breakfast is to be served no earlier than five a.m. on
weekdays and six a.m. on weekends. Pill calls will also be switched to
those times. Sleep, the judge noted, is a basic human need, and neither
convicted prisoners nor pretrial detainees can constitutionally be
routinely deprived of an adequate amount of sleep. Upshaw
v. Alameda County, # 3:18-cv-07814, 2019 U.S. Dist. Lexis
52130, 2019 WL 1386383 (N.D. Calif.).
Prisoner
Restraint
A federal appeals court rejected a death row inmate’s claim that the
trial court erred in requiring him to wear a stun belt under his
clothing during the resentencing trial without holding a new
evidentiary hearing to determine whether the restraint was necessary
where the stun belt was not visible to the jury or the public, and the
state court’s opinion was not contrary to and did not involve an
unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as
determined by the U.S. Supreme Court. Nance
v. Warden, Georgia Diagnostic Prison, #17-15361,2019 U.S. App. Lexis 12941 (11th Cir.).
Prisoner
Suicide
A detainee died by committing suicide in his jail cell. A lawsuit by
his estate and surviving family claimed that there were violations of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due
Process Clause in the time leading up to, and immediately following his
suicide. In this case, the detainee had a camera in his cell that was
supposed to be monitored by police department employees, but he had
obscured the camera’s lens and hanged himself without any employee
noticing on the camera monitors. A federal appeals court upheld the
grant of summary judgment to the defendant city and ruled that the
plaintiff failed to set forth evidence by which the various police
department employees’ actions might reasonably be attributed to the
city. Therefore, the city was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
The fact that officers were occupied, close to the time of the suicide
in installing some signs, one of which said essentially “welcome” to the
jail, and therefore may have neglected monitoring the detainee, was too
nebulous to amount to an official rule or restriction, and the signs
did not operate as a continuing burden on inmate life in the way that
dangerously high temperatures or overcrowded cells did. The
“episodic” acts or omissions of the arresting officer or the senior
officers who performed CPR could not be attributed to the city where
the estate and survivors did not attribute the actions of the officers
to any particular official policy or custom. Garza
v. City of Donna,
#18-40044, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 12596
(5th Cir.).
A federal appeals court upheld the grant of summary judgment to a state
correctional officer in a lawsuit claiming that he violated the Eighth
Amendment rights of a prisoner who committed suicide. The officer saw that the prisoner was hanging
from a noose around his neck with a bedsheet suspended from the ceiling
sprinkler head. He could not tell whether the prisoner was actually
hanging and in need of medical assistance or was staging suicide to
draw officers into the cell for an ambush. Within seconds, he
immediately summoned backup and did not enter the cell until seven
minutes later, when they found that the prisoner was dead. The court
ruled that the officer’s actions did not amount to deliberate
indifference where he faithfully adhered to the prison’s operating
procedure. Therefore, the court found that the officer did not
effectively disregard the known risk that the prisoner might commit
suicide. Entering alone would have jeopardized the officer’s personal
safety. Arenas
v. Calhoun, #18-50194,
2019 U.S. App. Lexis 12595 (5th Cir.).
Religion
A Texas prisoner claimed that repercussions he endured because of
his religiously motivated decision not to participate in an unpaid
prison work program violated his rights under the First, Thirteenth,
and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution as well as
the Texas Constitution and a Texas statute. A federal appeals court
ruled that it was no abuse of discretion to dismiss the plaintiff’s
First and Fourteenth Amendment claims as malicious and when it
dismissed his retaliation and Thirteenth Amendment claims for failure
to state a claim. Inmates sentenced to incarceration cannot state a
Thirteenth Amendment involuntary servitude claim if the prison system
requires them to work. Further, he could not assert a retaliation claim
based on the theory that he was illegally retaliated against for
asserting his constitutional right not to work when he had no such
right. The trial court also did not abuse its discretion in declining
to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff’s state-law
claims. Shakouri
v. Davis, #17-20738, 2019
U.S. App. Lexis 13200 (5th Cir.).
Segregation:
Administrative
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An inmate was moved to
administrative segregation after federal corrections officers found a
homemade shank on him. He remained in the Special Handling Unit (SHU)
pending investigation. Ten months later, he was indicted for
possession of a prohibited object in prison. He filed several motions
for extensions before moving to dismiss, citing his placement in
isolation as the start of the speedy trial clock. The trial court
denied the motion. He was found guilty and sentenced to 30 months
imprisonment consecutive to his underlying sentence. A federal
appeals court ruled that a prisoner’s placement in isolation while
under investigation for a new crime does not trigger his right to a
speedy trial under either the Sixth Amendment or the Speedy Trial
Act. U.S.
v. Bailey-Snyder, #18-1601, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 13406
(3d Cir.).
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the Contents
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Resources
Education: Evaluation
of North Carolina’s Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education
Program, by Lois M. Davis and Michelle Tolbert, Rand Corporation and
RTI International (2019).
Education: Federal Student Aid:
Actions Needed to Evaluate Pell Grant Pilot for Incarcerated Students,
General Accountability Office (GAO) Report to Congressional
Requesters (GAO-19-130, March 2019).
Prison Reform: The
Safe Alternatives to Segregation Initiative: Findings and Recommendations
for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, and
Progress Toward Implementation, by David Cloud, Jessi LaChance,
Lionel Smith, and Lauren Galarza, Vera Center on Sentencing and
Corrections (May 2019).
Sex Offenders: Recidivism
of Sex Offenders Released from State Prison: A 9-Year Follow-Up (2005-14),
by Mariel Alper and Matthew R. Durose, Bureau of Justice Statistics (May
30, 2019).
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
Sep. 30-Oct. 3, 2019– Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Jail and Prisoner Legal Issues
Jan. 13-16,
2020 - Orleans Hotel, Las Vegas
Click here for further information
about all AELE Seminars.
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Cross
References
Access to Courts/Legal Info – See
also, Medical Care: Vision
Prisoner Assault: By
Officers—See also, Electronic Control Weapons (both cases)
Work/Education Programs – See
also, Religion
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