Part 2: case summaries by major topic section.

• Position: Case overview

Part 2: Case Summaries by Major Topic Section 1. ACCESS TO COURT U.S. District Court Bacon v. Taylor, 414 F.Supp.2d RETALIATION FOR LEGAL ACTION 475 (D.Del. 2006). A state LEGAL MATERIALS prisoner brought a [section] 1983 action against three correctional officers, alleging denial of his First Amendment right of access to courts, retaliation for exercising his First Amendment free speech rights, and cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court granted summary judgment for the defendants in part, and denied it in part. The court held that the prisoner's allegations that a correctional officer, on one occasion, smoked a cigarette on the tier by another inmate's cell and blew smoke into that inmate's cell, and that on several occasions the correctional officer smoked in the isolated control pod, did not sufficiently allege that the prisoner was exposed to unreasonably high levels of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) to the degree necessary to state claim a under [section] 1983 for violation of the Eighth Amendment. The court found that the prisoner's allegation that a correctional officer opened and read the draft of his lawsuit against her and then refused to return it to him did not sufficiently allege an actual injury as required to state a claim under [section] 1983 for violation of First Amendment constitutional right of access to the courts. The prisoner alleged only that as a result of not receiving his original draft back he had forgotten the exact dates he saw the officer smoking in the prison, but the prisoner did not allege that his inability to remember specific dates had unduly prejudiced his case against the officer. The court held that summary judgment was precluded by a genuine issue of material fact as to whether prison authorities could have reasonably interpreted the prisoner's draft of a [section] 1983 lawsuit against a correctional officer as a threat to the security and safety of the prison, or that a reasonable person would have known that the document was the draft of a legal complaint against the officer, justifying his placement in administrative segregation rather than constituting retaliation for the prisoner having exercised his First Amendment free speech rights by drafting the lawsuit against the officer. (Howard R. Young Correctional Institution, Delaware) U.S. District Court Barbour v. Haley, 410 APPOINTED ATTORNEY F.Supp.2d 1120 (M.D.Ala. 2006). A class of death row inmates brought a [section] 1983 action alleging that the state's denial of legal assistance prior to their filing of postconviction challenges deprived them of their right of access to courts. The district court held that Alabama's failure to provide counsel to indigent death row inmates for investigation and preparation of postconviction challenges to their convictions did not violate their federal constitutional right of meaningful access to courts. According to the court, indigent death row inmates had no Sixth Amendment right to appointment of counsel prior to their filing of postconviction petitions. The court held that death row inmates could not challenge Alabama's postconviction relief procedures as being so onerous that they constituted denial of their right of access to courts, without identifying some existing claim that had been lost, or whose presentation had been hindered, as the result of the challenged procedures. (Alabama Department of Corrections) U.S. District Court Campos v. Correction PLRA- Prisoner Litigation Reform Act Officer Smith, 418 EXAUSTION F.Supp.2d 277 (W.D.N.Y. 2006). A state inmate filed a [section] 1983 action alleging that correctional officers violated his constitutional rights by failing to protect him from an assault by a fellow inmate, and used excessive force against him. The district court granted the officers' motion for summary judgment. The court held that dismissal was an appropriate sanction for the inmate's submission of a falsified document, and that the inmate failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. The inmate had submitted a document to support his claim that he had exhausted his administrative appeals and the court found it was falsified. The inmate contended that his failure to file a timely appeal of the denial of his grievance was due to prison officials' interception of his outgoing mail. The court found that the inmate's contention was supported only by an obviously sham, backdated letter, and was otherwise purely conclusory. According to the court, "The conclusion is inescapable, then, that plaintiff has knowingly submitted a falsified exhibit in an attempt to rebut defendants' contention that he never appealed the '03 grievance." (Attica Correctional Facility, New York) U.S. Appeals Court Dole v. Chandler. 438 EXHAUSTION F.3d 804 (7th Cir. 2006). PLRA- Prisoner Litigation Reform Act A prisoner brought a [section] 1983 action against correction officers, alleging he was beaten in retaliation for punching an assistant warden. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on the ground that the prisoner failed to exhaust administrative remedies and the prisoner appealed. The appeals court reversed and remanded, finding that the prisoner exhausted his administrative remedies, even though his grievance was lost and was not received by a board. The court noted that the exhaustion of administrative remedies is necessary under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) even if the prisoner is requesting relief that the relevant administrative review board has no power to grant, such as monetary damages, or if the prisoner believes that exhaustion is futile. But the court found that prison officials may not take unfair advantage of the exhaustion requirement and that an administrative remedy becomes unavailable if prison employees do not respond to a properly filed grievance or otherwise use affirmative misconduct to prevent a prisoner from exhausting. (Menard Correctional Center, Illinois) U.S. District Court Flanvak v. Hopta, 410 EXHAUSTION F.Supp.2d 394 (M.D.Penn. PLRA- Prisoner Litigation Reform Act 2006). A state prison inmate filed a [section] 1983 Eighth Amendment action against the supervisor of the unit overseeing prison jobs and against the prison's health care administrator, alleging that he had been subjected to unsafe conditions while working as a welder. The inmate also alleged that me administrator had been deliberately indifferent to his medical needs arising from those conditions. The defendants moved for summary judgment and the district court granted the motion. The court held that the inmate's failure to exhaust the prison's three-step grievance procedure precluded his [section] 1983 action, regardless of the reasons given, including futility, for failure to exhaust. The court noted that there is no futility exception to the Prison Litigation Reform Act's (PLRA) administrative exhaustion requirement. (State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy, Pennsylvania) U.S. District Court Glisson v. Sangamon ACCESS TO COUNSEL County Sheriffs Department 408 F.Supp.2d 609 (C.D.III. 2006V A detainee brought a civil rights action against county defendants and a police officer, alleging various violations of his constitutional rights in connection with his arrest and detention. The defendants moved to dismiss. The district court dismissed in part and declined to dismiss in part. The court held that the detainee sufficiently stated claims under the Eighth Amendment and Due Process Clause of me Fourteenth Amendment against a jail and a correctional officer with respect to both his first and second detentions. The court found that the detainee, who was awaiting a probation revocation hearing, sufficiently stated a claim under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by alleging that the county jail maintained policies and customs that tolerated cruel and unusual punishment of convicted prisoners and pretrial detainees, and that the correctional officer strapped him to a wheelchair for several hours, forcing him to urinate on himself and to sit in his urine for several hours, while he was in a manic state. The inmate alleged that the jail and correctional officer knew of his mental condition because it was documented and that the officer's and jail's acts were intentional with malice and reckless disregard for his federally protected rights. The court held that the detainee sufficiently stated denial of access to courts claims against a county jail and correctional officers by alleging that the jail maintained a policy and practice of arbitrarily denying inmates' confidential consultations with their attorneys and that the officers directly participated in the arbitrary and capricious denial of his access to counsel. The court found that the detainee stated an equal protection claim against a county jail and officer by alleging that me jail maintained a policy and practice that discriminated against him because of his mental illness, and that an officer discriminated against him in terms of the type of confinement on the basis of his mental illness. (Sangamon County Jail, Village of Grandview Police, Illinois) U.S. Appeals Court Lindell v. Houser, 442 F.3d APPOINTED ATTORNEY 1033 (7th Cir. 2006). A white-supremacist inmate brought an action alleging that prison official violated the Eighth Amendment by housing him with a black inmate. The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the official and the inmate appealed. The court of appeals held that the official did not violate the inmate's Eighth Amendment rights by placing him in a cell with a black inmate, even though the official knew of the black inmate's involvement with a gang and the white inmate's expression of fear. The court found that the official did not have reason to believe that the white inmate was at a serious risk since eighteen months had passed without incident after the cellmates' initial fight and nothing...