Filings of Civil Rights Violations By Prisoners Rising
Richard Dean Hartley lost the tip of his right ring finger at West Tennessee State Penitentiary (WTSP) in Henning last August and wants to be compensated for the loss.
Hartley said the incident occurred at the prison during lockdown when a guard slammed Hartley's cell door on him.
"When I got to my cell door, I said, 'Hey, hey, hey!' to the officer and reached for the door because she, the officer, should see me and hear me," Hartley wrote in a letter to The Daily News. "But the officer slammed the door anyway ... and it slammed on my right ring finger hard enough to take the tip of it off clean behind the nail."
Hartley filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in November claiming his civil rights had been violated.
He also was among more than 120 prisoners who in the past year filed complaints of civil rights violations with the Memphis office of the U.S. District Court, Western District of Tennessee, according to The Daily News Online, www.memphisdailynews.com. The district court has offices in Memphis and Jackson.
Constitutional, unconstitutional
Marc Reisman, a partner at Memphis-based firm Rosenblum & Reisman PC, said civil rights violations cases must involve a violation of some constitutional right. His firm has handled a number of cases in which an inmate has not received adequate medical care.
"When a municipality takes an individual into its custody and holds him against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume responsibility for his safety and general well-being," Reisman said. "The rationale for this is when a municipality affirmatively exercises its power to restrain an individual's liberty, it renders him unable to care for himself and in doing so, if it fails to provide for the inmate's basic human needs, such as medical care and reasonable safety, it deprives the inmate of his due process or Eighth Amendment rights."
Reisman explained that his office has seen cases involving permanent disability and even death, allegedly as a result of constitutional deprivations. He added that the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution protects convicted inmates from cruel and unusual punishment, which has been interpreted as exercising deliberate indifference to an inmate's serious medical needs.
"When one has been arrested, but not convicted, the Eighth Amendment does not apply, but the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment protects pretrial detainees against deliberate indifference toward their serious medical needs," Reisman said.