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Shepherd v. Dallas County

Dallas County contends that the district court erred in failing to require the jury to find that any unlawful conditions of confinement were adopted or maintained by the County with an intent to punish. Here, serious injury and death were the inevitable results of the jail's gross inattention to the needs of inmates with chronic illness. In the absence of any legitimate penological or administrative goal, this amounts to punishment. A showing of express intent to punish is not required. 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 08-10918, 12-18-2009

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Before JONES, Chief Judge, and GARZA and STEWART, Circuit Judges.

Stanley Shepherd, a pretrial detainee, suffered a stroke and permanent disability due to the failure of the Dallas County Jail to administer the pills he had to take to ameliorate his chronic hypertension. That failure, Shepherd showed below, was not an unintended error but the predictable result of a de facto policy that denied inmates adequate care for chronic conditions. At summary judgment, the district court ruled that Shepherd’s § 1983 claim was best characterized as a challenge to his conditions of confinement, and the jury subsequently awarded him $890,336 in damages. Dallas County appeals, contending, inter alia, that the district court erred in so characterizing Shepherd’s claim and in instructing the jury. Because this is the rare case in which a plaintiff demonstrated deficiencies in the conditions of confinement that amounted to punishment before he was judged guilty and thus violated due process of law, Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 1872 (1979), the district court’s judgment is AFFIRMED.

I. BACKGROUND

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