Latest Case: Williams v. Banks (Civil Rights)

Rethinking Retroactivity in Light of the Supreme Court’s Jury Unanimity Requirement

MICHAEL C. DORF

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday in Ramos v. Louisiana, in which it held that the federal Constitution forbids states from convicting defendants except by a unanimous jury, Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the Court’s jurisprudence on retroactivity. Dorf highlights some costs and benefits of retroactivity and argues that the Court’s refusal to issue advisory opinions limits its ability to resolve retroactivity questions in a way that responds to all the relevant considerations.

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Williams v. Banks

Docket: 17-60716

Opinion Date: April 23, 2020

Judge: Priscilla R. Owen

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to prison officials in a 42 U.S.C. 1983 action brought by plaintiff, an inmate in custody at the MDOC, alleging that defendants violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by being deliberately indifferent to the risk that another inmate would harm plaintiff. The court held that plaintiff's claims against defendants in their official capacities are barred under sovereign immunity. The court also held that the magistrate judge correctly granted summary judgment on plaintiff's theory that defendants failed to protect him from the other inmate, where there is no evidence in the record to suggest that defendants knew the inmate was a member of a gang or otherwise posed a specific threat to plaintiff when they moved him into plaintiff's zone. Furthermore, the magistrate judge correctly granted summary judgment on plaintiff's theory that defendants violated plaintiff's constitutional rights because they placed the inmate into plaintiff's protective custody zone instead of following MDOC policy and placing the inmate in lockdown. In this case, defendants did not disregard an excessive risk to inmate health or safety.