« Courts - "Desegregation Rulings Cause Confusion" | Main | Ind. Courts - More on: Evansville attorney cleared in meth case »
Monday, November 12, 2007
Ind. Courts - Jails not hotels, but "inmates who contract preventable infectious diseases could claim they were subjected to cruel or unusual punishment"
Joe Carlson reports today in the NWI Times:
Although the Constitution does not require prisons to have the comforts of a hotel, inmates who contract preventable infectious diseases could claim they were subjected to cruel or unusual punishment.That's the early lesson emerging from several judges' opinions in the 25 lawsuits that prisoners in Lake and Porter county jails have filed in U.S. District Court since Aug. 23.
All of the prisoner-rights lawsuits are handwritten, and complain of the same conditions, often in word-for-word identical language. The inmates say they are exposed to staph infections, forced to use dirty showers and clothes, and viewed by female corrections officers on security cameras.
And in the cases where judges have made rulings already, nearly all of the complaints have been dismissed.
"The Constitution doesn't mandate comfortable prisons or jails," wrote U.S. District Court Chief Judge Robert Miller Jr. on Nov. 2 in a complaint brought by Porter County inmate Corey Taylor.
Taylor complained that the jail's showers and lavatories were "filthy and nasty." The conditions contributed to what he called a widespread pattern of bacterial staph infections among inmates at the jail.
Miller ruled that Taylor's complaints did not meet the high bar for substandard care outlined in a 1981 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said inmates can sue only if they are denied "the minimal civilized measure of life's necessities."
Taylor, who faces eight counts of violent crime and drug distribution, was not actually harmed by the exposure to dirty conditions because he did not contract staph, Miller wrote.
Not so with Jackie Hernandez, who was the first of the 25 inmates to sue after he was incarcerated at Porter County Jail on a heroin distribution charge.
Hernandez did contract staph, after his cellmate had it, and neither man was properly treated, he said.
U.S. District Judge Theresa Springmann ruled Oct. 16 that Hernandez's case could go forward without immediate dismissal because contracting the disease could be considered cruel and unusual punishment, which is forbidden by the Eighth Amendment.
In all, only four of the 25 suing inmates claim to have gotten the disease -- two each in Porter and Lake county jails.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 12, 2007 09:08 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts