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Diet
An
Illinois inmate claimed that prison officials violated his Eighth
Amendment rights by providing inadequate nutrition utilizing a “brunch”
program that only served two meals daily. He filed a number of
grievances asserting that the prison’s food was making him ill and
objecting to the inclusion of any protein, which he claimed caused him
diarrhea, constipation, excessive gas, and migraine headaches. He
further asserted that he sometimes received only 1600 calories per day,
or in any event less than 2800, and asked that he be served breakfast.
A federal appeals court upheld summary
judgment for the defendants, finding that the record established,
beyond dispute, that the brunch program was providing adequate
nutrition and had been designed by a licensed dietician, providing
between 2200 and 2400 calories daily, including at least six ounces of
protein. The plaintiff failed to demonstrate that any of the defendants
had knowledge that he allegedly received inadequate nutrition. The
court further noted that in instances where prisoners had special
dietary needs, therapeutic diets were allowed when prescribed by a
doctor. Williams
v. Shah,
#18-2439, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 17519, 2019 WL 2439738 (7th Cir.).
Foreign Prisoners and Immigrants
The
federal government appealed a trial court’s ruling that it was
unnecessary to detain the defendant, a criminal defendant alien, in
order to ensure that he was present at his criminal trial, and that his
release meant that ICE was barred from civilly detaining him for
purposes of removing him from the U.S. A federal appeals court upheld
the decision declining to detain the defendant pending trial,
determining that the trial judge did not “clearly err” in ruling that
he was not a flight risk. At the same time, however, the appeals court
overturned the portion of the ruling barring ICE from civilly detaining
the defendant pending immigration removal. There was no constitutional
conflict when the Department of Homeland Security’s detention of a
criminal defendant alien for the purpose of removal did not infringe on
the judiciary’s role in criminal proceedings. U.S.
v. Vasquez-Benitez, #18-3076, 919 F.3d 546, (D.C. Cir. 2019).
Medical Care
A woman who was ordered to be incarcerated for forty days in the county
jail was informed that she was not to receive her twice daily dose of
buprenorphine prescribed for an “opioid use disorder” while confined.
She sued, seeking injunctive relief compelling the jail to provide
her medication while she was incarcerated. The trial court granted a
preliminary injunction, finding a sufficient likelihood of success
combined with both a strong balance of harms and a public interest in
favor of the plaintiff. A federal appeals court agreed, ruling that the
trial court did not abuse its discretion in its preliminary assessment
of the issues. Smith
v. Aroostook County, #19-1340, 922 F.3d 41 (1st Cir. 2019).
In a case
where a man died in jail after having previously being bitten by a
police dog, his family was entitled to sue the jail staff for the
death, according to a federal trial court’s ruling. The decedent had
been hiding in a lake after
committing an armed robbery at a convenience store. Police sent in a
dog, and during the struggle, the man was bitten on his hands and legs.
He was first admitted to a public hospital, and later taken to the
county jail’s infirmary. During his time in jail, his health
deteriorated, and he died four days after his arrest. According to an
autopsy, the bite on one of his legs led to an E.coli infection, which
led to a fatal blood infection. Officially, he died of “septic shock
with HIV as a likely contributing factor.” His parents filed a lawsuit
against the jail’s medical director, four nurses, and the county alleging
that their son’s worsening medical condition was ignored as a result of
the “culture of neglect” at the facility. The plaintiffs later removed
three of the nurses and the county from the lawsuit. The trial judge
stated that the medical director examined the detainee, “an
HIV-positive patient with a severe dog-bite wound and deliberately
declined to play an active role in his subsequent treatment.” This, if
true, was the "very essence of deliberate indifference,"
which is why he allowed the case to proceed. An appeal is pending. Bryant
v. Orange County, Fla., #6:17-cv-142, 2019 U.S.
Dist. Lexis 69121, 2019 WL 1787490
(M.D. Fla.).
Medical Care: Mental Health
****Editor's Case Alert****
Former
civil immigration detainees who had been treated for serious mental
illnesses sued a county and other defendants,
claiming that the failure to engage in “discharge planning” or to
provide them with discharge plans upon release violated their
Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rights. They had been
released when it was determined that they were lawfully in the United
States. A federal appeals court vacated the dismissal of the lawsuit,
finding that it adequately stated a Fourteenth Amendment claim. The
plaintiffs plausibly alleged that
they had serious medical needs requiring discharge planning and that
the defendants’ failure to provide discharge planning constituted
deliberate indifference. One plaintiff, diagnosed in a New York
detention center as a paranoid schizophrenic, was released in
below-freezing temperature with no medication or treatment plan. A
second, diagnosed as a bipolar schizoaffective, was allegedly released
and pushed into the cold with nothing but the clothes on his back and
identification. They both wound up in emergency rooms shortly
thereafter. The court stated that the county knew or should have known
that “failing to provide the omitted medical treatment would pose a
substantial risk to the detainee's health.” Charles
v. Orange County, #17-3506, 925 F.3d 73 (2nd Cir. 2019).
Prisoner Assault: By Officers
A woman arrested for
drunk driving was taken first to one county’s police department and
then to a second county’s jail. The second facility was informed that
she was drunk, yelling, and spitting. A Cell Extraction Team met
her upon arrival. She claimed that they roughly removed her from the
vehicle and immediately applied a spit hood that nearly entirely
obscured her vision. The Team then allegedly handcuffed her in a
bent-over position, handled her forcefully, and threatened her with a
Taser. The all-male team took her to a room where she was made to lie
on her stomach and was strip-searched. Her pants were torn off her and
an officer allegedly placed his hands on her genitals while a second
allegedly groped her breasts. Following that, she asserted, she was
made to walk to a cell wearing only her bra and the hood. The hood, she
said, prevented her from attributing certain specific acts to specific
officers.
Her
lawsuit asserted claims against four officers for excessive force. The
officers’ motion for qualified immunity solely based on the argument
that the plaintiff could not show each officer’s personal involvement
in the alleged unconstitutional acts was denied. A federal appeals
court ruled that a reasonable jury could find, based on the evidence in
the record, that each defendant either committed or observed and failed
to stop the allegedly unconstitutional acts. Fazica
v. Jordan, #18-1457, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis
17307, 2019 Fed. App. 0125P, 2019 WL 2417358 (6th Cir.).
A federal appeals court overturned a trial court’s denial of prison
officials’ motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit claiming use of
excessive force against a prisoner. It found that the trial court
failed to follow the law as set forth in prior controlling caselaw. The record below contained two versions of the
relevant interaction between the prisoner and prison officials. Under Scott
v. Harris, #05-1631, 550 U.S. 372 (2007), when the
defendants asserted a qualified immunity defense, the trial court’s
obligation was to decide whether the prison officials’ evidence
blatantly contradicted the plaintiff's version of events. The trial
court, however, rejected the teaching of Scott and denied
the qualified immunity defense. The appeals court held that the trial
court’s denial of qualified immunity was based on its error of law and
remanded the case to another trial court judge for further proceedings
consistent with the law. Underwood
v. Barrett, #16-1725, 924 F.3d 19 (1st Cir. 2019).
A Florida inmate claimed that correctional officers physically
assaulted him and that one of them sprayed a chemical agent on him for
16 minutes after he was handcuffed and compliant. Plaintiff also
asserted that three supervisory officers watched the attack without
doing anything to intervene. A federal appeals court overturned a grant
of summary judgment in favor of the defendants on excessive force and
deliberate indifference claims. The trial court, the appeals court
stated, may have mistakenly relied on O'Bryant
v. Finch, #09-13493, 637 F.3d 1207 (11th Cir. 2011), to
exclude the plaintiff’s statements from consideration, or it may have
viewed the evidence submitted by the officers as establishing the kind
of record that no reasonable jury could disbelieve regardless of the
prisoner’s sworn statements to the contrary. In either event, the trial
court erred in not accepting the prisoner’s version of events as true
for the purposes of summary judgment. Sears
v. Roberts, #15-15080, 922 F.3d 1199 (11th Cir. 2019).
Prisoner Death/Injury
In a lawsuit by a Texas prisoner seeking damages for an injury he
allegedly suffered while incarcerated in a county jail, the Texas
Supreme Court ruled that Tex. Code Crim. Proc.
art. 42.20 and Tex. Gov't Code 497.096, two statutes that generally
protect governmental actors and entities from liability for their own
negligence in connection with certain inmate activities, applied to the
plaintiff’s claims. He stated that he was injured after a defective
chair collapsed during his treatment for diabetes. The court ruled that
the applicable statutes barred the county’s liability for the alleged
injury and that the plaintiff failed to create an issue of material
fact under the statutes' heightened liability standard. Tarrant
County, Texas v. Bonner, #18-0431, 2019 Tex. Lexis 492, 62
Tex. Sup. J. 1170, 2019 WL
2256509 (Tex.).
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Probation
The highest
court in Massachusetts ruled, in a criminal case, that the ordering
of GPS monitoring as a condition of the defendant’s probation was an
unconstitutional search under article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. The
defendant had been convicted of the possession and distribution of
child pornography. A state statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 265,
47, requires the imposition of GPS monitoring as a condition of
probation for persons convicted of most sex offenses. The defendant
argued that, as applied to him, the condition of mandatory GPS
monitoring constituted an unconstitutional unreasonable search. The
Supreme Judicial Court agreed, ruling that Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 265,
47 is over inclusive in that GPS monitoring will not necessarily
constitute a reasonable search for all individuals convicted of a
qualifying sex offense. It further held that to comport with article
14, prior to imposing GPS monitoring on a defendant, a judge must
conduct a balancing test weighing the state’s need to impose GPS
monitoring against the defendant’s privacy invasion arising by the
monitoring. In the immediate case, the state’s particularized reasons
for imposing GPS monitoring on the defendant did not outweigh the
privacy invasion that GPS monitoring entails. Commonwealth
v. Feliz, #SJC-12545, 481 Mass. 689, 2019
Mass. Lexis 174, 2019 WL 1339199.
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