Click here for further information about all AELE Seminars.

---

 Search the Case Law 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.

Criminal Conduct

     A correctional officer applied a "sleeper hold" to a pre-trial detainee, restrained in handcuffs and shackles, who continued to resist. The officer allegedly rendered the detainee unconscious using the hold and failed to tell a nurse at the jail that he was "gurgling," and then lying silent and motionless, and needed medical attention. The officer was convicted of depriving the detainee of his rights and of obstructing a federal investigation into the detainee's subsequent death by falsifying documents. The evidence was sufficient to prove that the officer used force to put the detainee into a position requiring medical attention, and then acted with deliberate indifference towards his serious medical needs. United States v. Gray, #11-3143, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 18528, 2012 Fed App. 0297P (6th Cir.).

     Editor's note: In a footnote, the court defined a sleeper hold as occurring when a person "wraps his forearm around the victim's neck with the center of the victim's neck in the crook of the person's arm. When performed correctly, the hold should cause the victim to temporarily lose consciousness."

False Imprisonment

     Former prisoners of state and city prisons in New York claimed that their due process rights were violated because they were kept incarcerated past the end of their court ordered sentences. Because there was no clearly established law concerning the issue of whether such prolonged incarceration violated due process, the defendant city and state prison officials and employees were entitled to qualified immunity from personal liability. The court emphasized that its decision did not "trivialize" the prisoners' protected liberty interest in being released from custody promptly after their sentences were concluded. Sudler v. City of New York, #11–1198, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 16438 (2nd Cir.).

First Amendment

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

     A prisoner checked two books out of a prison library and also was permitted to purchase one book. Each of these books had the text of the "Ten-Point Program" of the Black Panther Party from the 1960s. After the prisoner copied the points of the program out on a sheet of paper, which was spotted by an officer, he was given 90 days in segregation for possession of gang literature, based especially on Point 9of the program calling for "freedom for all Black men" in prisons and jails. A federal appeals court rejected his First Amendment claim.

     While the prisoner argued that the "Ten-Point Program" could not be the basis for a security concern because it was already in books allowed in the prison library and allowed for prisoners to purchase, the court noted that prison librarians "cannot be required to read every word of every book to which inmates might have access to make sure the book contains no incendiary material." Even if a librarian had decided that a book containing the material did not, as a whole, constitute gang literature, that would not have barred a disciplinary proceeding against a prisoner who copied incendiary passages from it. The belief by prison officials that the prisoner could use the Ten-Point Program to enlist a prison gang was not so implausible that it could be dismissed as groundless. The program could be viewed by prison officials as an incitement to violence by black prisoners. The court did, however, order further proceedings on the prisoner's claim that his due process rights were violated by the fact that prison officials failed to notify prisoners that they were not to copy certain passages from books they checked out from the library or were allowed to buy. Toston v. Thurmer, #11-3914, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 15966 (7th Cir.).

Medical Care

     A prisoner claimed that a delay in providing him with surgery to correct his painful hernia until after it grew to "grapefruit" size constituted deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. A jury returned a verdict for the defendants. The trial court gave the jury erroneous instructions saying that they had to independently find that cruel and unusual punishment had occurred in addition to finding deliberate indifference to a serious medical need. The plaintiff only needed to show deliberate indifference to a serious medical need to prove the Eighth Amendment violation needed for liability. The jury instructions were also confusing in suggesting that damages were an element of liability. A new trial was required. Cotts v. Osafo, #10-3687, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 16936 (7th Cir.).

Medical Care: Dental

     A jury's award of $1,500 to a prisoner on his claim that a delay in his dental treatment constituted deliberate indifference to a serious medical condition was supported by substantial evidence. $1,000 of the award was for punitive damages. The law on delaying needed dental treatment was clearly established in 2003, so there was no right to qualified immunity. The prisoner, despite his success, appealed, among other things, the trial court's refusal to give him an appointed lawyer. While the case may have been somewhat complicated, his very success in being awarded damages showed that it was no abuse of discretion not to appoint a lawyer for him. An expert witness was not needed to explain to the jury the pain and suffering caused by the delay, and there were really no complex or scientific issues involved. Woods v. Carey, #09-15548, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 13797 (Unpub. 9th Cir.).

Parole

     New York state prisoners claimed that there was an unwritten policy of denying parole to all those convicted of violent felonies and that this violated their due process and equal protection rights. The court ruled that New York state law did not create any legitimate expectancy of parole, so the prisoners had no protected liberty interest in being granted parole. A policy of taking into account the severity of the crime committed when making parole decisions was neither arbitrary nor capricious. There was a "self-evident" rational basis for a distinction in parole determinations between violent and nonviolent offenders. Violent offenders may pose a greater danger to public safety. Graziano v. Pataki, #11–116, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 16147 (2nd Cir.).

Sex Offenders

     Prisoners convicted of sex crimes were kept incarcerated long after their sentences ended, remaining in state custody as sexually violent civil detainees. They claimed that their civil rights were violated because they were denied the ability to have face to face social opportunities with civil detainees in other pods of their facility and because they were not allowed to contact other civilly committed detainees using the facility's own internal mail system, instead being required to use the U.S. mail for that purpose. The limits on direct socialization were justified as a security measure. Due process did not require input from health professionals before restrictions were put on the in-person association opportunities of the detainees. There was no violation of First Amendment rights in requiring the plaintiffs to use the U.S. mail rather than the facility's internal mail system to communicate with other civil detainees. Lane v. Williams, #11-3373, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 17922 (7th Cir.).

Sexual Assault

     A prison guard allegedly spent five to seven seconds fondling a clothed pretrial detainee's genitals during a pat down search, as well as another two or three seconds doing so during a subsequent strip search, despite the detainee's verbal protests. Reversing summary judgment for the defendant guard in the detainee's lawsuit, a federal appeals court stated that "an unwanted touching of a person's private parts, intended to humiliate the victim or gratify the assailant's sexual desires, can violate a prisoner's constitutional rights whether or not the 'force' exerted by the assailant is significant." The trial court's mention of "de minimus injury" inappropriately invoked excessive force cases. Washington v. Hively, #12–1657, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 17426 (7th Cir.).

     A male prisoner's lawsuit claimed that a female prison guard violated his First, Fourth, and Eighth Amendment rights by perpetrating "romantic but not sexual" acts on him without consent, and that other prison officials failed to protect him against such conduct. He claimed that she touched him inappropriately, placing her hand on his groin and, in a subsequent incident, stroking his penis. A federal appeals court reversed summary judgment for the defendants, since the prisoner was entitled to a presumption that the conduct was not consensual and alleged that it constituted sexual abuse, serving no legitimate purpose. The defendants had not met a burden of showing that the conduct at issue was not coercive. Because of "the enormous power imbalance between prisoners and prison guards, labeling a prisoner's decision to engage in sexual conduct in prison as 'consent' is a dubious proposition." The appeals court upheld, however, the trial court's rejection of deliberate indifference and retaliation claims by the prisoner. Wood v. Beauclair, #10-35300, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 18575 (9th Cir.).

Transsexual Prisoners

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

     A federal trial judge ruled that a transsexual prisoner serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for murdering his wife (after she expressed anger that he was wearing her clothes) was entitled to sex reassignment surgery at government expense. His doctors had indicated that sex reassignment surgery to make him female would be the only form of treatment adequate to treat his severe gender disorder. While incarcerated, he has twice attempted to kill himself and once tried to castrate himself. The judge found that purported security concerns expressed by the defendant officials were "a pretext to mask the real reason for the decision to deny him sex reassignment surgery - a fear of controversy, criticism, ridicule, and scorn." Denial of such surgery would violate the Eighth Amendment, the judge stated in a lengthy opinion. It is believed to be the first court decision in the U.S. ordering such surgery for a prisoner. Kosilek v. Spencer, #00-12455, 2012 U.S. Dist. Lexis 124758 (D. Mass.).

     Editor's note: for more on this topic, see Transsexual Prisoners: Protection From Assault, 2009 (7) AELE Mo. L. J. 301 and Transsexual Prisoners: Medical Care Issues, 2009 (8) AELE Mo. L. J. 301.

•Return to the Contents menu.

     Immigration Detainees: "Improving the Carceral Conditions of Federal Immigrant Detainees," 125 Harvard Law Review 1476 (April 2012).

     Medical Care: "The Prison Health Care Dilemma," by Katti Gray, The Crime Report (August 2, 2012). A discussion of the possible impact of "Obamacare" on prison medical care.

     Voting: "State-Level Estimates of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 2010," by Christopher Uggen and Sarah Shannon, University of Minnesota, The Sentencing Project (July 2012).

Reference:

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

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