19-3251-cv

Edwards v. Quiros, et al.

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Second Circuit ________

AUGUST TERM, 2020

ARGUED: NOVEMBER 17, 2020

DECIDED: JANUARY 27, 2021

No. 19-3251-cv

M.A. EDWARDS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

WARDEN QUIROS, in his individual and official capacity,

Defendant-Appellee,

COMMISSIONER ARNONE, COMPLEX WARDEN LAJOIE, DEPUTY 

WARDEN POWERS, in their individual and official capacities, SZABAN,

Defendants.

________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Connecticut.

________

Before: WALKER, KATZMANN, and WESLEY, Circuit Judges.

________
2 19-3251-cv 

Plaintiff M.A. Edwards, a Connecticut prisoner, brought this 

action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that state correctional officials 

violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and 

unusual punishment by denying him a meaningful opportunity to 

exercise for six months. Specifically, Edwards alleged the denial 

occurred when prison officials required him to wear full restraints 

when exercising in the prison yard. After a jury returned a verdict for 

Edwards, the district court (Underhill, J.) granted Defendant Warden 

Angel Quiros’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on the basis

that Quiros’s personal involvement was for too short a time to 

support an Eighth Amendment claim. We conclude that the evidence 

was sufficient to support the jury’s findings that (1) Edwards was 

subjected to an Eighth Amendment violation, and (2) Quiros was 

liable for it. We also conclude that Quiros is not protected by qualified 

immunity. Accordingly, we VACATE the district court’s entry of 

judgment as a matter of law and REMAND for further proceedings.

________

STEPHEN BERGSTEIN, Bergstein & Ullrich, LLP,

New Paltz, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

STEVEN M. BARRY, Assistant Attorney General, 

Connecticut Office of the Attorney General,

Hartford, CT, for Defendant-Appellee.

________
3 19-3251-cv 

JOHN M. WALKER, JR., Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff M.A. Edwards, a Connecticut prisoner, brought this 

action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that state correctional officials 

violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and 

unusual punishment by denying him a meaningful opportunity to 

exercise for six months. Specifically, Edwards alleged the denial 

occurred when prison officials required him to wear full restraints 

when exercising in the prison yard. After a jury returned a verdict for 

Edwards, the district court (Underhill, J.) granted Defendant Warden 

Angel Quiros’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on the basis 

that Quiros’s personal involvement was for too short a time to 

support an Eighth Amendment claim. We conclude that the evidence 

was sufficient to support the jury’s findings that (1) Edwards was 

subjected to an Eighth Amendment violation, and (2) Quiros was 

liable for it. We also conclude that Quiros is not protected by qualified 

immunity. Accordingly, we VACATE the district court’s entry of 

judgment as a matter of law and REMAND for further proceedings.

BACKGROUND

Facts

Plaintiff Edwards has been incarcerated in the Connecticut 

state prison system following his conviction for murder more than 20 
4 19-3251-cv 

years ago. The instant case arose from Edwards’s treatment as an 

inmate at Northern Correctional Institution (Northern) in Somers, 

Connecticut, a maximum-security facility where Defendant-Appellee 

Angel Quiros was the warden at all times relevant to this suit.

Edwards was transferred to Northern on September 21, 2010,

after assaulting a correctional officer at his prior, lower-security 

facility. Upon his arrival at Northern, Edwards was held in punitive 

segregation until mid-October, when he was transferred to 

administrative detention pending further review of his detention 

status. On November 3, Edwards was placed into administrative

segregation (AS) Phase I status. The imprisonment conditions during 

his time in punitive segregation, administrative detention, and AS 

Phase I were the most restrictive at Northern.

AS Phase I inmates are normally placed in the East or West 

wing of Unit One at Northern. Unit One is the most secure and 

restrictive of Northern’s three housing units, and its recreation yards 

contain individual secured enclosures within the larger secured 

recreation enclosure. The doors to these smaller enclosures are 

equipped with trap doors through which corrections officers can 

remove inmates’ restraints once the inmate is secured inside, allowing 

the inmate freedom of movement while exercising. The trap doors 
5 19-3251-cv 

make it possible for officers to remove the restraints while physically

separated from the inmate by the enclosure itself. 

At the time Edwards was placed in AS Phase I, however, Unit 

One was fully occupied. As a result, he was housed in “overflow” AS 

Phase I housing in Unit Three’s East wing but kept under restrictions 

commensurate with those in Unit One. Every AS Phase I inmate 

assigned to overflow housing in Unit Three was supposed to be 

rotated back to Unit One after only one or two weeks. This was in 

part because Unit Three’s recreation yard was not designed to 

accommodate AS Phase I inmates; it was equipped with neither 

individual recreation enclosures nor trap doors on the enclosure 

doors. Therefore, when AS Phase I overflow inmates such as

Edwards were taken to the recreation yard in Unit Three, corrections 

officers did not remove the set of full restraints even after securing the 

inmates in the enclosed yard. These inmates spent their recreation 

time with their hands cuffed behind their backs, leg irons on their 

ankles, and a chain tether securing those two sets of restraints to one 

another, which severely restricted the inmates’ freedom of 

movement. As an AS Phase I inmate in Unit Three, Edwards’s only 

unrestrained exercise opportunity was in his 7-by-12-foot cell;

although Edwards testified that he was able to perform push-ups and 

sit-ups while unrestrained in his cell, other forms of exercise were 
6 19-3251-cv 

impossible because furniture, including a bed, desk, chair, footlocker,

sink, and toilet, occupied much of the space. 

On March 3, 2011, Edwards submitted an inmate request form

to his unit manager at Northern, complaining about being forced to 

exercise in full restraints for his permitted one hour of yard exercise. 

The unit manager denied the request, explaining that Edwards was 

kept in full restraints both because of the severity of his latest assault 

on a correctional officer and because, due to the lack of trap doors,

there was no way for officers to safely remove the restraints from 

inmates in Unit Three’s exercise enclosure. On March 8, Edwards 

submitted the same complaint on an inmate request form to Warden 

Quiros. In response, Quiros told Edwards to take the complaint up 

with his unit manager, apparently unaware that Edwards had already 

done so. On March 10, Edwards filed a formal grievance with Quiros

on the same grounds. Quiros received the request on March 15 and 

ultimately denied it on April 11. In the interim, however, on March 

24, Quiros transferred Edwards to AS Phase II status, whereupon he 

was no longer required to exercise in full restraints. 

In the six months between Edwards’s arrival at Northern in

punitive segregation on September 21, 2010, and his eventual transfer

out of AS Phase I on March 24, 2011, Edwards was never permitted to 

exercise outside his cell except under full restraints.
7 19-3251-cv 

Procedural History

In 2011, Edwards commenced this civil rights action, pro se,

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against several supervisory officials at the 

Connecticut Department of Corrections and Northern. The 

defendants moved for summary judgment on the ground that they 

were entitled to qualified immunity, and, in 2014, the district court 

granted that motion. Qualified immunity shields government 

officials from liability for civil damages as long as the officials’ 

conduct “does not violate clearly established statutory or 

constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have 

known.”1 Because the district court found that prisoners do not have 

a clearly established right “to recreate free from restraints,” it granted 

qualified immunity to the defendants.2

In 2015, on a prior appeal, we vacated the district court’s grant 

of summary judgment based on qualified immunity. In doing so, we

determined that the proper delineation of the right at issue is a “right 

to some meaningful opportunity to exercise[,] subject to a safety 

exception and adequate consideration of alternatives.”3 Because this 

1 Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). 

2 Edwards v. Arnone, 613 F. App’x 44, 46 (2d Cir. 2015).

3 Id. 
8 19-3251-cv 

right to meaningful exercise was clearly established,4 and because 

there remained material factual disputes about the adequacy of the 

prison’s safety justification, we held that the district court’s qualified 

immunity finding was error.5 

On remand, following the appointment of pro bono counsel for 

Edwards, the case proceeded to trial in 2018 against Warden Quiros 

and Deputy Warden Lauren Powers.6 After Edwards presented his 

evidence, both officials moved for judgment as a matter of law under 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(a). After the close of all evidence, 

the jury returned a verdict in Edwards’s favor against Quiros but not 

against Powers. Quiros then renewed his motion for judgment as a 

matter of law under Rule 50(b). The district court granted Quiros’s 

motion on the ground that there was insufficient evidence of Quiros’s 

personal involvement in the decision to require Edwards to exercise 

in full restraints. It determined that the evidence supported Quiros’s 

involvement only for the roughly two-week period between March 8, 

2011, when Quiros received Edwards’s inmate request form, and 

March 24, 2011, when Quiros transferred Edwards to AS Phase II 

4 See Williams v. Greifinger, 97 F.3d 699, 704 & n.5 (2d Cir. 1996).

5 Edwards, 613 F. App’x at 47.

6 Edwards voluntarily dismissed his claims against Commissioner 

Arnone and District Commissioner Lajoie prior to the presentation of evidence.
9 19-3251-cv 

status. Because, in the district court’s view, Quiros’s involvement in

this deprivation of meaningful exercise was too brief to sustain a 

violation of the Eighth Amendment, the district court held the 

evidence insufficient to support the jury’s verdict and granted 

Quiros’s Rule 50(b) motion. The district court denied his alternative

motion for a new trial under Rule 59 as moot.

This appeal followed.

DISCUSSION

The central issue on appeal is whether sufficient evidence

supported the jury’s determination that Quiros was personally 

involved in the decision to have Edwards exercise in full restraints for 

a long enough period to establish an Eighth Amendment violation. 

Separately, Quiros argues that the evidence did not support any 

violation of the Eighth Amendment, regardless of his personal 

involvement. Quiros also argues that he is entitled to qualified 

immunity. 

I. Sufficient Evidence Supported the Jury’s Verdict

We review de novo a district court’s decision to set aside a jury 

verdict and grant judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50.7 A jury 

7 Cross v. N.Y.C. Transit Auth., 417 F.3d 241, 248 (2d Cir. 2005).
10 19-3251-cv 

verdict should only be set aside “where there is such a complete 

absence of evidence supporting the verdict that the jury’s findings 

could only have been the result of sheer surmise and conjecture, or 

there is such an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of the 

movant that reasonable and fair minded men could not arrive at a 

verdict against him.”8 In deciding a motion for judgment as a matter 

of law, a district court “may consider all the record evidence, but in 

doing so it ‘must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the 

nonmoving party, and it may not make credibility determinations or 

weigh the evidence.’”9 

Turning to the substance of the legal claim at issue, the Eighth 

Amendment proscribes the infliction of “cruel and unusual 

punishments.”10 To prevail on an Eighth Amendment conditions-ofconfinement claim against prison officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a 

plaintiff must prove that “objectively, the deprivation the inmate 

suffered was sufficiently serious that he was denied the minimal 

civilized measure of life’s necessities,”11 such as being denied “a 

8 Id. (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted).

9 Id. at 247 (quoting Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133, 

150 (2000)). 

10 U.S. Const. amend. VIII. 

11 McCray v. Lee, 963 F.3d 110, 117 (2d Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks 

omitted); see also Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). 
11 19-3251-cv 

meaningful opportunity for physical exercise.”12 The plaintiff must 

also prove that “subjectively, the defendant official acted with a 

sufficiently culpable state of mind, such as deliberate indifference to 

inmate health or safety.”13 Deliberate indifference is more than 

negligence—it requires a showing that the prison official “kn[e]w of, 

and disregard[ed], an excessive risk to inmate health or safety” from 

the challenged condition of confinement.14

We first address the sufficiency of the evidence in support of

the subjective component of Edwards’s claim, which is Quiros’s 

personal awareness of, and deliberate indifference to, the risk to 

Edwards’s health. Here we conclude that there was sufficient 

evidence for the jury to find that Quiros had the requisite state of 

mind for the entire six-month period during which Edwards was 

required to exercise in restraints when outside of his cell, not just the 

two weeks that the district court found. The jury’s verdict was not 

based on “sheer surmise and conjecture,” but on abundant 

circumstantial evidence from which the jury reasonably inferred 

12 Id. at 120; see also Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 304 (1991) (recognizing 

that conditions of confinement may constitute an Eighth Amendment violation 

where they produce a “deprivation of a single, identifiable human need such as 

food, warmth, or exercise”).

13 McCray, 963 F.3d at 117 (internal quotation marks and alteration 

omitted); see also Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834.

14 Jabbar v. Fischer, 683 F.3d 54, 57 (2d Cir. 2012) (per curiam).
12 19-3251-cv 

Quiros’s actual knowledge of Edwards’s recreation status and the

concomitant risk to Edwards’s health from being required to exercise

in restraints. 

Quiros’s own testimony provided a sufficient basis for the 

jury’s conclusion that he knew Edwards was required to exercise in 

full restraints for the entire six months at issue. Quiros testified about 

his knowledge of the policy requiring any inmates in punitive 

segregation or administration detention (as Edwards was between 

September 21 and November 3, 2010) to exercise either in full 

restraints or individual enclosures. Quiros also testified that he had 

endorsed the prison’s policy requiring AS Phase I inmates in overflow 

Unit Three housing (as Edwards was between November 3, 2010 and

March 24, 2011) to similarly exercise in full restraints. His testimony

supported an inference that, if Quiros knew there were AS Phase I

prisoners in Unit Three, then he knew they were required to exercise

in restraints.

Quiros also testified that he monitored the AS Phase I inmates 

closely, that there were only three or four AS Phase I inmates housed 

in Unit Three during the time Edwards was there, and that he had 

access to surveillance footage of the unit recreation areas. Thus, his

testimony was sufficient to support the jury’s inference that he would 

have noticed any AS Phase I inmate who stayed in Unit Three for 
13 19-3251-cv 

longer than usual, at least because only the AS Phase I inmates would 

be in full restraints on the surveillance footage of the Unit Three 

exercise yard. Bolstering that inference, after counsel at trial

suggested to Quiros that he would not have had any way of knowing 

how long an AS Phase I inmate stayed in Unit Three, Quiros objected

to counsel’s characterization. He testified, “That is incorrect. I pay 

. . . attention to my job and my responsibility. I tour twice a week.”15

In sum, Quiros presented himself to the jury as a hands-on 

warden who kept close tabs on the inmates on restrictive status under 

his purview. The jury was entitled to credit Quiros’s testimony in 

those respects and infer that in fact he did know that Edwards was in 

Unit Three, exercising in full restraints, until his transfer to AS Phase 

II status. We therefore respectfully find that the district court erred 

by drawing inferences against the verdict and by discrediting

Quiros’s own testimony when it found that no evidence supported 

Quiros’s knowledge of Edwards’s recreation status prior to March 8, 

2011, the date he received Edwards’s inmate request form.

The jury was also entitled to conclude that Quiros was 

deliberately indifferent to the risk of harm to Edwards resulting from

his being required to exercise in full restraints for six months, all of 

15 J. App. at 183.
14 19-3251-cv 

which was spent in Unit Three East. Quiros testified that AS Phase I 

inmates should only be kept in Unit Three for “one or two weeks at 

the most,”16 and that “the overflow [placement] is a temporary basis, 

which means that the offender will be in and out for—on a rotating 

basis, anywhere from two—a week to two week[s]. Once [a Unit One]

bed became available, they would end up in 1 East and 1 West and 

recreate without restraints.”17 This testimony indicated that he

understood the importance of moving AS Phase I inmates to Unit One 

when a bed became available so that they could exercise unrestrained.

Quiros’s testimony about why he had rejected Edwards’s inmate 

request for the installation of trap doors in the Unit Three yard 

enclosure, which would have permitted inmates to exercise

unshackled, also supported such an inference. Quiros testified that 

he “came to the conclusion that we were not going to put [in] trap 

doors because it was just temporary housing,”18 reinforcing Quiros’s

understanding that requiring inmates to exercise in restraints was 

acceptable only on a temporary basis. 

Taken as a whole, Quiros’s testimony provided sufficient 

support for the jury’s finding that Quiros understood the problem 

16 Id. at 182. 

17 Id. at 165. 

18 Id. at 181.
15 19-3251-cv 

with prisoners exercising in full restraints for longer than the one-totwo-week duration of temporary housing. The inference that Quiros 

understood why that would be a problem—because deprivation of 

meaningful exercise poses a risk of serious health problems—was 

reasonable in light of his testimony and the fact that exercise is widely 

understood to be a basic human need. As we have previously 

recognized, and as is the case here, “[e]vidence that a risk was obvious 

or otherwise must have been known to a defendant may be sufficient 

for a fact finder to conclude that the defendant was actually aware of 

the risk.”19 To be held liable, Quiros need only appreciate that the 

deprivation of meaningful exercise posed an excessive risk to 

Edwards’s health. Quiros need not have known the specifics of that 

health risk with the level of detail a physician would understand.

Turning next to the objective component of Edwards’s 

conditions-of-confinement claim, sufficient evidence supported the 

jury’s verdict here as well. Quiros argues principally that both the 

availability of in-cell exercise and the prison’s safety justification for 

restrained exercise independently foreclose an Eighth Amendment 

claim.20 We disagree, and we find no independent basis for affirming 

19 Walker v. Schult, 717 F.3d 119, 125 (2d Cir. 2013) (internal quotation 

marks omitted).

20 Def.-Appellee Quiros’s Br. at 39–41.
16 19-3251-cv 

the entry of judgment as a matter of law in his favor based on the 

objective component.21

The availability of in-cell exercise does not establish as a matter 

of law that a prisoner had a meaningful opportunity to exercise. We 

have previously permitted Eighth Amendment opportunity-toexercise claims to proceed where those claims exclusively concerned

impediments to out-of-cell exercise, including when the alleged 

deprivation was shorter than the six months at issue here.22 In this 

case, a properly instructed jury found that the in-cell opportunity for 

exercise was not sufficient to provide Edwards with a meaningful 

opportunity to exercise. The jury came to its verdict after hearing 

Edwards’s testimony about the small size of his cell, the furniture and 

bathroom fixtures taking up space in the cell, and the limits to the

extent he could exercise there. The verdict was therefore not based 

on “sheer surmise and conjecture” and cannot be set aside on that

ground.

21 The district court’s entry of judgment as a matter of law reached only 

the subjective component of the Eighth Amendment claim. 

22 See McCray, 963 F.3d at 117–18 (vacating dismissal of opportunity-toexercise claim arising from a prison yard allegedly not being cleared of snow for 

four months); Williams, 97 F.3d at 701–02, 707–08 (reversing grant of qualified 

immunity for prison official where plaintiff was subject to policy preventing him 

from getting any out-of-cell exercise).
17 19-3251-cv 

Moreover, we find completely unavailing Quiros’s related 

contention that there can be no Eighth Amendment violation here 

because “the plaintiff was not deprived of the ability to attend 

outdoor recreation and to get fresh air and walk.”23 We have 

described the right at issue as that to “some opportunity to exercise,”24

and we cannot determine as a matter of law that the jury erred in 

finding that Edwards’s limited ability to shuffle around in full 

restraints while breathing fresh air constituted meaningful exercise.

Quiros also argues that the prison’s safety justification was 

adequate, and that there can thus be no Eighth Amendment violation. 

However, the jury was entitled to disagree. The safety justification 

was undermined by testimony from Edwards, credited by the jury, 

that corrections officers would not always employ the most restrictive 

shackling method of full restraints when they were moving him out 

of his cell and around the facility. That testimony called into question 

the prison’s safety justification for requiring Edwards to exercise in 

full restraints, notwithstanding his significant disciplinary record. 

Because corrections officers were not always so concerned about their 

safety as to employ the most restrictive shackling methods while 

transporting Edwards, a reasonable jury was entitled to doubt the 

23 Def.-Appellee Quiros’s Br. at 46.

24 Williams, 97 F.3d at 704.
18 19-3251-cv 

prison’s basis for leaving Edwards fully restrained in the yard 

enclosure. The jury did not act unreasonably by discrediting the 

prison’s safety justification. 

The jury similarly was entitled to reject the argument that 

defendants had adequately considered, but appropriately rejected,

alternatives to full-restraint exercise. Specifically, the jury was 

entitled to discredit testimony from a corrections officer about how 

he had heard from somebody in the maintenance department that

installing trap doors in the Unit Three yard enclosures could 

undermine the enclosures’ integrity. Further supporting the jury’s 

decision, Quiros himself testified that he had decided against 

installing the trap doors because AS Phase I prisoners were supposed 

to be housed in Unit Three only briefly, not because their installation 

would cause structural problems with the enclosures. Finally, there 

was conflicting testimony about whether Northern had the ability to 

move Edwards out of overflow housing in Unit Three and into Unit 

One housing, where he would have had the opportunity to exercise 

unrestrained in the individual enclosures. The jury was thus entitled 

to credit Edwards’s version of events, in which he requested a transfer 

to Unit One but was arbitrarily rebuffed.
19 19-3251-cv 

Regardless of whether we would have weighed the evidence as 

the jury did, we respectfully find that the district court erred in setting

aside the jury’s verdict on a Rule 50 motion.

II. Quiros Is Not Entitled to Qualified Immunity

Quiros once again claims he is entitled to qualified immunity, 

as he did in seeking summary judgment. But we rejected essentially 

the same argument at an earlier stage of this litigation,25 and we have 

no new reason to grant qualified immunity to Quiros now. The 

disputed issues of fact that remained after our prior decision have 

now been resolved against him by the jury. The jury reasonably 

determined, upon sufficient evidence, that Quiros knowingly 

violated Edwards’s clearly established right to meaningful exercise

under the circumstances and lacked a sufficient justification for doing 

so. We will not disturb the jury’s finding that Quiros was not entitled 

to qualified immunity.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we VACATE the district court’s 

entry of judgment as a matter of law in favor of Quiros and REMAND

for further proceedings.

25 Edwards, 613 F. App’x at 47.