[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Utopian Visionaries Who Won’t Leave People Alone

No - no - no Ain'T going To get away with iT

Pete Buttplug's Butt Plugger Trying to Turn Kids into Faggots

Mark Levin: I'm sick and tired of these attacks

Questioning the Big Bang

James Webb Data Contradicts the Big Bang

Pssst! Don't tell the creationists, but scientists don't have a clue how life began

A fine romance: how humans and chimps just couldn't let go

Early humans had sex with chimps

O’Keefe dons bulletproof vest to extract undercover journalist from NGO camp.

Biblical Contradictions (Alleged)

Catholic Church Praising Lucifer

Raising the Knife

One Of The HARDEST Videos I Had To Make..

Houthi rebels' attack severely damages a Belize-flagged ship in key strait leading to the Red Sea (British Ship)

Chinese Illegal Alien. I'm here for the moneuy

Red Tides Plague Gulf Beaches

Tucker Carlson calls out Nikki Haley, Ben Shapiro, and every other person calling for war:

{Are there 7 Deadly Sins?} I’ve heard people refer to the “7 Deadly Sins,” but I haven’t been able to find that sort of list in Scripture.

Abomination of Desolation | THEORY, BIBLE STUDY

Bible Help

Libertysflame Database Updated

Crush EVERYONE with the Alien Gambit!

Vladimir Putin tells Tucker Carlson US should stop arming Ukraine to end war

Putin hints Moscow and Washington in back-channel talks in revealing Tucker Carlson interview

Trump accuses Fulton County DA Fani Willis of lying in court response to Roman's motion

Mandatory anti-white racism at Disney.

Iceland Volcano Erupts For Third Time In 2 Months, State Of Emergency Declared

Tucker Carlson Interview with Vladamir Putin

How will Ar Mageddon / WW III End?

What on EARTH is going on in Acts 16:11? New Discovery!

2023 Hottest in over 120 Million Years

2024 and beyond in prophecy

Questions

This Speech Just Broke the Internet

This AMAZING Math Formula Will Teach You About God!

The GOSPEL of the ALIENS | Fallen Angels | Giants | Anunnaki

The IMAGE of the BEAST Revealed (REV 13) - WARNING: Not for Everyone

WEF Calls for AI to Replace Voters: ‘Why Do We Need Elections?’

The OCCULT Burger king EXPOSED

PANERA BREAD Antichrist message EXPOSED

The OCCULT Cheesecake Factory EXPOSED

Satanist And Witches Encounter The Cross

History and Beliefs of the Waldensians

Rome’s Persecution of the Bible

Evolutionists, You’ve Been Caught Lying About Fossils

Raw Streets of NYC Migrant Crisis that they don't show on Tv

Meet DarkBERT - AI Model Trained On DARK WEB

[NEW!] Jaw-dropping 666 Discovery Utterly Proves the King James Bible is God's Preserved Word

ALERT!!! THE MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION WILL SOON BE POSTED HERE


Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

U.S. Constitution
See other U.S. Constitution Articles

Title: Prison Guards Who Locked Naked Inmate in Cell Filled With 'Massive Amounts' of Feces Got Qualified Immunity
Source: Reason
URL Source: https://reason.com/2020/06/25/quali ... aked-inmate-feces-5th-circuit/
Published: Jun 25, 2020
Author: Billy Binion
Post Date: 2020-06-25 18:01:21 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 753
Comments: 8

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the plaintiff's Eighth Amendment rights were violated.

dreamstime_xxl_100985551

(Dan Henson | Dreamstime.com)

A group of prison guards who forced an inmate to live in two cells infested with human feces and raw sewage for a total of 6 days are protected by qualified immunity and cannot be sued over the incident, a federal court ruled last year. 

Though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit acknowledged that the squalid conditions in which he was kept violated Trent Taylor's Eighth Amendment right to not suffer cruel and unusual punishment, the panel afforded the defendants protection from civil liability because no similar situation had been ruled unconstitutional under previous case law. 

That's par for the course with qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields public officials from accountability for violating your rights if the scenario in which those rights were violated has not been spelled out with granular detail in a pre-existing court precedent.

The Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) filed an amicus brief this month petitioning the Supreme Court to hear Taylor's case. 

"Under the Supreme Court's case law, qualified immunity shields government actors from civil liability 'so long as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known,'" says Brianne Gorod, Chief Counsel at CAC, "but the Supreme Court has made clear that 'officials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances.'"

This should be one of those times, says Gorod. Judges on the 5th Circuit disagreed, awarding qualified immunity to Robert Stevens, Robert Riojas, Ricardo Cortez, Stephen Hunter, Larry Davison, Shane Swaney, Creastor Henderson, and Joe Martinez, who were all prison officials at the John T. Montford Psychiatric Facility Unit in Lubbock, Texas, during the alleged incident.

On September 6, 2013, Taylor says that he was forced naked into a cell with "massive amounts" of feces across the floor, windows, walls, and ceiling. It gave off a "strong fecal odor." Taylor claims he could not drink water because feces were "packed inside" the faucet, and he did not eat over worries that the food might get contaminated. 

Taylor alleges that Cortez, Davison, and Hunter laughed at him when he expressed concerns and that one guard told him he was "going to have a long weekend." Taylor says that Swaney similarly shrugged off his complaints, telling him "Dude, this is Montford, there is shit in all these cells from years of psych patients." Taylor stayed in the cell until September 10th.

On September 11, Taylor was transferred to an empty seclusion cell with a clogged drain overflowing with raw sewage. Lacking a toilet, he was told to urinate on the floor. But because the drain was stopped up, and because he lacked a bed, he would have then been forced to sleep in his urine. Taylor refused and proceeded to urinate on himself involuntarily after 24 hours passed. He stayed in that cell until September 13, after which time the guards attempted to escort him back to the feces-inundated cell. He begged for a different placement, and the guards obliged. 

Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith writes in his opinion that Taylor's case meets the threshold for an Eighth Amendment violation. He cites two court precedents—McCord v. Maggio (1991) and Gates v. Cook (1994)—that affirm a prisoner is not to be subjected to egregiously unsanitary living conditions. Gates, the judge writes, further supports Taylor's claims that the guards acted with deliberate indifference, which Smith notes is "no small hurdle."

But in a poignant demonstration of how qualified immunity works in practice, Smith then transitions to explaining why the guards deserve protection from civil liability: "The law wasn't clearly established. Taylor stayed in his extremely dirty cells for only six days," Smith writes. "Though the law was clear that prisoners couldn't be housed in cells teeming with human waste for months on end, we hadn't previously held that a time period so short violated the Constitution. That dooms Taylor's claim."

Put more plainly, the guards cannot be held liable, but not because their alleged conduct didn't infringe on Taylor's right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. It did—current case law confirms as much. Taylor cannot sue the guards for violating his constitutional rights—which the Court agrees happened—because the length of time Taylor spent in those filthy conditions has not been carved out with razor-like precision in previous case law.

This isn't surprising. Qualified immunity has protected public officials from accountability in a slew of cases where their behavior was unquestionably wrong. As Smith mentions, the doctrine requires that rights violations be "clearly established," which, in turn, means that nefarious conduct often gets a pass simply because a court hasn't evaluated a case with identical circumstances. 

Consider the two cops who received qualified immunity after allegedly stealing $225,000. Or the cop who received qualified immunity after shooting a 10-year-old (or, alternatively, the one who shot a 15-year-old). Or the cops who received qualified immunity after assaulting and arresting a man for standing outside of his own house. Or the prison guard who received qualified immunity after hiding while an escaped inmate raped someone in the building. Or the cops who received qualified immunity after siccing a police canine on a person who'd surrendered

(2 images)

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.

#5. To: Deckard (#0)

Maybe Taylor is a piece of shit and fit right in.

Hank Rearden  posted on  2020-06-26   18:38:45 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 5.

        There are no replies to Comment # 5.


End Trace Mode for Comment # 5.

TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Please report web page problems, questions and comments to webmaster@libertysflame.com