Inmate wins deliberate indifference appeal after another inmate assaulted him

We all know that prisons are violent places. Did you know you can sue the correction officers if they allow prison fights to take place? These cases are hard to win, but this inmate has convinced the Court of Appeals that he has enough evidence for a trial.

The case is Morgan v. Dzurenda, issued on April 15. While incarcerated in Connecticut, plaintiff cooperated with correction officers about gang activity at the prison, developing a reputation as a snitch. The snitch reputation followed plaintiff as he as transferred to a new prison, and he filed an inmate request form for assistance after another inmate, Rodriguez, called him a smith and threatened to snap his neck. A prison captain minimized plaintiff's concerns and told him to "learn to fight like a man" and "stop being a snitch." Plaintiff continued to complain about Rodriguez's threats. You know what happens next, right? Plaintiff's enemy beat the hell out of him.

The Eighth Amendment governs cases like this. The plaintiff must show the jailers were deliberately indifferent to the threats. This extends to protecting prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners. The Supreme Court said that in Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994). Inmates have to jump through all sorts of hoops to meet this standard, including proving that the defendant was both aware of the potential harm to the plaintiff and that he was deliberately indifferent to to risk of serious harm. Deliberate indifference is one of the most difficult standards to meet in constitutional law. But plaintiff could win the case, the Court of Appeals (Pooler, Calabresi and Park) says, because plaintiff alleges that the jailers ignored his written and verbal pleas for help, that the jailers were dismissive toward those concerns, and that plaintiff was hurt by the very person he was complaining about. In reversing the grant of summary judgment for the defendants, the Court of Appeals concludes:

we find that Morgan raised a question of material fact as to whether “a substantial risk of inmate attacks was longstanding, pervasive, well-documented, or expressly noted by prison officials in the past,” such that a trier of fact could find that Chapdelaine and Godding “had actual knowledge of the risk” posed by Rodriguez. 

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