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Political Science


            
             Describe the central issues in this Supreme Court case.
             Keith Hudson, an inmate in a Louisiana penitentiary, alleged that his Eighth Amendment rights had been violated when he was beaten by corrections officers Jack McMillian and Marvin Woods in 1983. Keith J. Hudson successfully sued correctional officers for a beating they inflicted at the state penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. What is remarkable about the case is not that the Court permitted Hudson to keep the $ 800 in damages awarded at his trial, but rather that a Fifth Circuit judges would have taken it away from him. Judges concluded that Hudson's injuries from the beating failed to satisfy the Circuit's "significant injury" ( permanent injury or one requiring hospitalization) test used to determine violations of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. .
             2. Describe the major arguments that your group considered during your class discussion of this case. Which, if any received support from your group?.
             Group considered the question of what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" in a prison setting. One of the arguments was is that this case might create an anxiety among prison guards who might fear that they can now be held liable for every use of force that results in any degree of injury. If "serious injury" is not the test, how is a prison guard to know whether or not a violation has in fact occurred?.
             3. Describe the decision of the majority in this case.
             Seven members of the Supreme Court rejected the opportunity to adopt the significant injury test as a control measure. Justice Blackmun found "audacious" the suggestion "that the interpretation of an explicit constitutional protection is to be guided by pure policy preferences for the paring down of prisoner petitions." Justice O'Connor, speaking for the Court, found that the Fifth Circuit's decision implicitly "ignored the 'concepts of dignity, civilized standards, humanity, and decency' that animate the Eighth Amendment.


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