Jackson v. Duckworth Book Reviews

Jackson v. Duckworth by United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Book Summary

POSNER, Circuit Judge. This is a prisoner's civil rights suit against officials of the Indiana prison system. The district
Judge granted summary judgment for the defendants. Only one of the many issues pressed by the prisoner on appeal merits Discussion
in a published opinion; the others are decided in an unpublished order issued today. The issue we discuss is whether the claim
of cruel and unusual punishment presents a genuine issue of material fact. Both parties treat this as a "subhuman conditions"
case, and focus on the objective inhumanity of the conditions. The prisoner's affidavit states that he was forced to live
with "filth, leaking and inadequate plumbing, roaches, rodents, the constant smell of human waste, poor lighting, inadequate
heating, unfit water to drink, dirty and unclean bedding, without toilet paper, rusted out toilets, broken windows, [and]
. . . drinking water containing small black worms which would eventually turn into small black flies." The defendants have
presented sworn denials of these conditions, but summary judgment is not a procedure for resolving a swearing contest. Chandler
v. Baird, 926 F.2d 1057 (11th Cir. 1991); Lewis v. Lane, 816 F.2d 1165, 1171 (7th Cir. 1987). The district Judge said that
"Mr. Jackson has failed to come forth with evidence to show a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the conditions
of confinement which he has endured violated the Eighth Amendment." But an affidavit is evidence for purposes of determining
whether a genuine issue of material fact exists. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c). And while the Judge seems to have been displeased
with what he called the "general" character of Jackson's allegations, in fact the affidavit sets forth the allegedly barbarous
conditions of his confinement in rather excruciating detail. But, we emphasize, there is more to a subhuman-conditions case than subhuman conditions. "Punishment," for purposes of determining
tort liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against the infliction
of cruel and unusual punishments, has both an objective and a subjective component. The objective component is the nature
of the acts or practices alleged to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Are they such acts or practices as would be deemed
cruel and unusual if prescribed in a state or federal statute as the lawful punishment for a particular offense? The answer
is "yes" if Jackson's affidavit is truthful, because in our contemporary society it would be considered barbarous to imprison
a criminal in conditions so strikingly reminiscent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Ramos v. Lamm, 639 F.2d 559, 567-72 (10th
Cir. 1980).

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