U.S. Appeals Court: SEPARATION.

• Position: Brief Article

Curry v. Crist 226 F.3d 974 (8th Cir. 2000). Heirs of an inmate who was murdered by fellow prisoners while the two were alone in an unsupervised area of a prison brought a civil rights action against the prison warden. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the warden and the appeals court affirmed. The appeals court held that the warden was not deliberately indifferent to the risks of allowing the inmate to work with the other prisoner in an unsupervised area of the prison. The court noted that the prisoner who made the fatal attack had been convicted of multiple murders and had made threats, 16 months earlier, to murder his fellow inmates. According to the court, there was no evidence that the...