New Jersey correctional officers showed “deliberate indifference” when they confiscated the cane an incarcerated man used because of a painful spinal condition and repeatedly refused to return it to him, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Julio M. Fuentes, writing for a three-judge panel, said a lower court erroneously dismissed the lawsuit Tremayne Durham filed in March 2021 against more than a dozen named and unnamed employees at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.
Fuentes reinstated Durham’s lawsuit, determining Durham made worthy arguments under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
Rights Behind Bars, a Washington, D.C.-based group that helps incarcerated people with legal claims, represents Durham.
Samuel Weiss, the group’s founder and executive director, said Durham’s plight is “emblematic” of what people with disabilities face in prison.
“American incarceration really relies on standardization, the idea that people should be treated the same regardless of what their needs are. And disability law requires individualization, which is that when people have disabilities, they need to be accommodated in a holistic way that takes into account their needs,” Weiss said. “We’re excited by the Third Circuit taking seriously the applicable standards, publishing their opinion, and creating precedent on these issues, which are very common and recurrent, both in New Jersey prisons and throughout the country.”
Durham was diagnosed in January 2018 with lumbar stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal in the lower back, according to the ruling. He received epidural steroid injections to relieve his pain, and a doctor prescribed him a walking cane in November 2019.
In May 2020, he was placed in his prison’s quarantine unit and told he couldn’t take his cane, according to his lawsuit.
During the 10 days he spent in quarantine, he repeatedly requested the cane and a shower chair to relieve the worsening pain he endured without them, according to the ruling. But prison officials denied or ignored him, with one telling him he “complained too much” and another calling him a profanity and saying he “gets nothing,” according to court filings.
Without a cane, shower handrails, or shower chair, he fell in the shower and had to spend several days recovering in the prison’s medical clinic, according to the ruling.
Durham filed his original complaint without a lawyer, and a lower court judge dismissed it, saying he failed to show he has a disability and that prison officials discriminated against him because of it or were “subjectively aware of a substantial risk of harm.”
But Durham appealed, and Fuentes rejected the lower judge’s findings. Durham had a diagnosed, documented disability, and prison employees showed deliberate indifference to his medical needs, Fuentes wrote.
“It is not hard to imagine how dangerous a shower could be for someone suffering from back pain and an inability to walk or stand on their own,” he wrote.
Spokespeople from the state Department of Corrections and the Attorney General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Durham is serving a life sentence for the 2006 gun slaying of a man in Oregon.
A New York native, he pled guilty in a notorious pre-trial agreement that gave him the nickname “the Fried Chicken Killer” because he agreed to admit his guilt in exchange for fried chicken, pizza, lasagna, ice cream, and a transfer to a prison closer to home. At the time, Oregon didn’t have an interstate compact with New York but the judge agreed he could transfer to a neighboring state that did like New Jersey, according to The Oregonian.
Durham, 48, has been incarcerated in Trenton since December 2009, according to the New Jersey Department of Corrections.
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