The ruling in Jeremiah Thomas and Michael McKinney v. Bryant & McNeil is in Adobe .pdf format.
"11th Circuit: Chemical Agents May Not Be Used to Subdue Prisoners," is the title of the Law.com/Daily Business Review report. It's written by John Pacenti. Here's an extended excerpt:
The inmates were derided as "frequent fliers" by the guards at Florida State Prison, a caustic reference to mentally ill inmates who were gassed for their disruptive behavior, only to be shipped for treatment to a nearby prison. These prisoners would return after they were stabilized, only to have the cycle repeat itself.
The cycle may be over after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Jacksonville, Fla., judge's ruling that the use of pepper spray and other chemical agents by guards against mentally ill inmates is unconstitutional.
Now the chance of getting treatment for these individuals in the prison setting -- as opposed to abuse -- may increase, said Randall Berg, president of the Florida Justice Institute and the attorney for two inmates who took the issue to trial.
The ruling gives the state Corrections Department no room for cover in future lawsuits on behalf of gassed inmates. The department can no longer use qualified immunity as a defense for their discretionary actions in prison operations, Berg said.
"What it really does is establish a constitutional benchmark that in any future gassing of inmates, correction officers and Department of Corrections can't raise qualified immunity," Berg said.
The appellate panel castigated the department for questioning the fact pattern in the treatment of plaintiffs Michael McKinney and Jeremiah Thomas. They were gassed often by guards who were not trained to tell the difference between recalcitrant inmates and mental breakdowns, the appellate court noted.
The gas often failed to control an inmate's unwanted behavior, such as banging on doors or throwing feces, but exacerbated it. The chemicals were administered from a fire extinguisher-like device through a small flap into a 7-by-9-foot cell, sometimes burning the inmate.
McKinney is a schizophrenic who has been in the prison system since he was a teenager. Serving time for attempted murder, he hallucinates regularly and is extremely violent. The gassing had no effect on his behavior except to cause excruciating pain, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Corrigan found after a five-day bench trial in 2008.
It was the first time a judge had found the use of chemical restraints against mentally ill prisoners was unconstitutional.
The 11th Circuit panel consisting of Judges Susan Black, Frank Hull and R. Lanier Anderson, a senior judge, agreed in an Aug. 20 decision, affirming Corrigan's ruling.
"It is only a prison official's subjective deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of serious harm caused by such conditions that gives rise to an Eighth Amendment violation," Anderson wrote for the unanimous panel.
The 79-page opinion criticized the state for arguing chemical agents can never constitute "unnecessary or brutal treatment in violation of the Eighth Amendment" because the alternative is brutal physical restraint.
Related posts are in the incarceration and mental illness indexes.
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