Delaware
Judge nixes $500K punitive award against ex-prison guard
DOVER, Del. (AP) — A federal judge has overturned a jury’s decision imposing $500,000 in punitive damages against a former a Delaware prison guard accused of sexually assaulting an inmate during a pat-down.
The jury found in December that former Department of Correction Sgt. William Kuschel violated the Eighth Amendment rights of inmate DeShawn Drumgo during the 2014 incident. Jurors also said, however, that Drumgo had failed to prove he had been injured.
The jury awarded Drumgo $1 in nominal damages but slapped Kuschel with $500,000 in punitive damages.
The judge on Wednesday denied Kuschel’s request for a new trial but also declared that the punitive damage award was excessive and violated Kuschel’s due process rights.
“A $500,000 award under the circumstances of this case shocks the conscience and grossly exceeds what was required to serve the needs of deterrence and punishment,” Chief District Judge Colm Connolly wrote. “Leaving in place such an exorbitant award will also dissuade correctional officers from conducting searches they would otherwise perform and lead to the introduction of weapons and contraband into Delaware’s prisons.”
Relying on comparisons to punitive awards in similar cases from other federal districts across the country, Connolly said a $5,000 penalty was adequate to punish Kuschel and deter others from engaging in similar conduct.
“A $5,000 punitive award is also in line with punitive awards imposed against correctional officers for more egregious sexual assaults against inmates,” Connolly added.
While escaping the huge damages award, Kuschel lost his bid for a new trial after arguing that another inmate should not have been allowed to testify that he had also been groped by Kuschel during three frisk searches several months before Drumgo was assaulted.
Drumgo said in a lawsuit that Kuschel patted and groped him inappropriately as other inmates and staff watched, then squeezed his genitals so hard that the skin ruptured while other guards laughed.
A federal appeals court panel ruled in 2020 that Connolly had wrongly granted summary judgment to Kuschel. Connolly’s ruling was based on Drumgo’s supposed failure to show sufficient facts to establish that Kuschel violated his constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Other Department of Correction workers testified that the search was proper and that they never heard Drumgo tell Kuschel to stop what he was doing, as other inmates had said.
DOC officials had won a previous summary judgment ruling after arguing that Drumgo had failed to exhaust available administrative remedies before filing his lawsuit. But after Drumgo successfully appealed that ruling, prison officials said a subsequent search found that Drumgo had in fact filed a grievance against Kuschel.
Drumgo was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2007 after being convicted of second-degree murder in the 2006 stabbing death of another man at a Wilmington apartment complex.
North Carolina
Transgender inmate’s suit may be likely to proceed
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge indicated Tuesday that the case of a transgender inmate suing North Carolina for gender affirming medical care may be likely to proceed.
Kanautica Zayre-Brown sued North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety in April, claiming the prison system has failed to regularly dispense Zayre-Brown’s prescribed hormones and has denied her request for surgical procedure to construct a vagina.
U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn said he may issue an order to reject the state’s motion to dismiss and said he intends to hear arguments in Zayre-Brown’s case, The Charlotte Observer reported. He did not rule on that motion.
Cogburn also didn’t rule on a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union for a preliminary injunction that would have allowed Zayre-Brown to have surgery and receive prescriptions. He is expected to issue his official decision on the motions later.
The ACLU argues Zayre-Brown, who is being held at Anson Correctional Institution, has been denied treatment and gone through the grievance process twice. Lawyers for the department argued she failed to exhaust every possible remedy before bringing the issue to court. Cogburn said the case is important to deciding whether people in custody have a right to gender affirming surgery and care.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determined last week that gender dysphoria is covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Zayre-Brown has been serving a sentence of up to nearly 10 years since 2017 after being convicted as a habitual offender on insurance fraud charges. In 2019, officials moved Zayre-Brown to the women’s prison after months of review and the threat of a lawsuit. The state had classified Zayre-Brown as a man and placed her in a men’s prison. At the time, she was believed to be the state’s only post-operative transgender prisoner.
Zayre-Brown is scheduled to be released from prison in November 2024.
Mississippi
Court: State can continue blocking felons from voting
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — People convicted of certain felonies in Mississippi still won’t be able to vote, as a lawsuit that sought to automatically reinstate their voting rights was struck down by a federal appeals court Wednesday.
Attorneys who challenged the provision had argued the authors of the state’s 1890 constitution showed racist intent when they chose which felonies would cause people to lose the right to vote, picking crimes they thought were more likely to be committed by Black people.
The Mississippi Center for Justice brought the lawsuit, and attorney Rob McDuff said the center will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling handed down Wednesday by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Vangela M. Wade, the center’s president and CEO, said the ruling “doubles down” on years of Black disenfranchisement.
“Access to democracy should not hinge on outdated laws designed to prevent people from voting based on the color of their skin,” Wade said in a statement.
Section 241 of the Mississippi Constitution strips voting rights from people convicted of 10 felonies, including forgery, arson and bigamy. The state attorney general issued an opinion in 2009 that expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny, carjacking, felony-level shoplifting and felony-level bad check writing.
In the case decided Wednesday, the plaintiffs did not challenge the disenfranchisement of people convicted of murder or rape.
In 1950, attorneys representing the state said Mississippi dropped burglary from the list of disenfranchising crimes. Murder and rape were added to the list in 1968. The attorneys said in written arguments that those changes “cured any discriminatory taint on the original provision.”
A majority of the appeals court agreed with the state’s arguments.
“Plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of showing that the current version of Section 241 was motivated by discriminatory intent,” the majority wrote. “In addition, Mississippi has conclusively shown that any taint associated with Section 241 has been cured.”
In a dissent, Judge James Graves — who is Black and from Mississippi — wrote that the majority of the appeals court had upheld “a provision enacted in 1890 that was expressly aimed at preventing Black Mississippians from voting” and that the court had done so “by concluding that a virtually all-white electorate and legislature, otherwise engaged in massive and violent resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, ‘cleansed’ that provision in 1968” by adding crimes that were considered to be race-neutral.
“Handed an opportunity to right a 130-year-old wrong, the majority instead upholds it,” Graves wrote.
To regain voting rights in Mississippi now, a person convicted of a disenfranchising crime must receive a governor’s pardon or must win permission from two-thirds of the state House and Senate. Legislators in recent years have passed a small number of bills to restore voting rights.
Federal lawsuits were filed in Mississippi in 2017 and 2018 seeking automatic restoration of voting rights for people who had finished serving sentences for disenfranchising crimes. The case decided Wednesday is from the lawsuit filed in 2017.
A panel of 5th Circuit judges heard arguments in December 2019 from the other case, which makes different arguments. That panel has not issued a ruling.
New York
High court picks Cannataro as acting chief judge
NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s highest court has designated Associate Judge Anthony Cannataro to serve as acting chief judge after Janet DiFiore steps down next week.
Cannataro, the former administrative judge of New York City’s civil court, has been a member of the state’s Court of Appeals since June 2021.
He will remain in charge in an interim capacity until a new chief judge is nominated by Gov. Kathy Hochul and confirmed by the state senate.
The state’s Commission on Judicial Nomination, which screens candidates for Court of Appeals vacancies, said it is currently considering applications to replace DiFiore, who leaves on Aug. 31.
As acting chief judge, Cannataro, 57, will have a dual role: leading the seven-member high court and overseeing the operation of the entire state court system.
Cannataro, a son of Italian immigrants and graduate of Columbia University and New York Law School, was first elected to the bench in 2011, serving as a family court judge in Brooklyn and a civil court judge in the Bronx.
In 2016, he was appointed supervising judge Manhattan civil court. The following year, he was named administrative judge for the city’s civil court.
Cannataro, who lives with his husband in Westchester County, has served on several court and bar association committees, including as co-chair of the Richard C. Failla LGBT Commission, according to his court biography.
DiFiore, the state’s chief judge for six years, announced her resignation in a letter to colleagues last month, saying that she was to “move on to the next chapter of my professional life.” She did not elaborate on what she planned to do next.
DiFiore, 66, was district attorney in suburban Westchester County until then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo nominated her to the Court of Appeals in 2015. She is New York’s second female chief judge.
Cuomo nominated Cannataro to the Court of Appeals in May 2021, one of two judges he installed on the high court in his final months in office. The state Senate confirmed Cannataro’s appointment in June 2021.
