Source: https://casetext.com/case/hudson-v-millian
Timestamp: 2019-10-15 22:00:48
Document Index: 647879028

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1997', '§ 1915', '§ 636']

Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 | Casetext
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The Eighth Amendment does not require officers to use the minimum force necessary or even reasonably…
12,092 Citing cases
holding that Whitley standard, established in case involving use of force to quell a prison riot, applies to all claims of excessive force against prison officials
Summary of this case from Brooks v. Johnson
holding that use of excessive physical force against a prisoner may constitute cruel and unusual punishment where the inmate does not suffer serious injury
Argued November 13, 1991 Decided February 25, 1992
(a) Whenever prison officials stand accused of using excessive physical force constituting "the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" violative of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the core judicial inquiry is that set out in Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 320-321: whether force was applied in a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm. Extending Whitley's application of the "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" standard to all allegations of force, whether the prison disturbance is a riot or a lesser disruption, works no innovation. See, e.g., Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028, cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1033. Pp. 5-7.
(b) Since, under the Whitley approach, the extent of injury suffered by an inmate is one of the factors to be considered in determining whether the use of force is wanton and unnecessary, 475 U.S., at 321, the absence of serious injury is relevant to, but does not end, the Eighth Amendment inquiry. There is no merit to respondents' assertion that a significant injury requirement is mandated by what this Court termed, in Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 97, 103, the "objective component" of Eighth Amendment analysis: whether the alleged wrongdoing is objectively "harmful enough" to establish a constitutional violation, id., at 303. That component is contextual, and responsive to "contemporary standards of decency." Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 103. In the excessive force context, such standards always are violated when prison officials maliciously and sadistically use force to cause harm, see Whitley, 475 U.S., at 327, whether or not significant injury is evident. Moreover, although the Amendment does not reach de minimis uses of physical force, provided that such use is not of a sort repugnant to the conscience of mankind, ibid., the blows directed at Hudson are not de minimis, and the extent of his injuries thus provides no basis for dismissal of his § 1983 claim. Pp. 7-10.
(d) This Court takes no position on respondents' legal argument that their conduct was isolated, unauthorized, and against prison policy, and therefore beyond the scope of "punishment" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. That argument is inapposite on the record, since the Court of Appeals left intact the Magistrate's determination that the violence at issue was not an isolated assault, and ignores the Magistrate's finding that supervisor Mezo expressly condoned the use of force. Moreover, to the extent that respondents rely on the unauthorized nature of their acts, they make a claim not addressed by the Court of Appeals, not presented by the question on which this Court granted certiorari, and, accordingly, not before this Court. Pp. 11-12.
O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and WHITE, KENNEDY, and SOUTER, JJ., joined, and in which STEVENS, J., joined as to Parts I, II-A, II-B, and II-C. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 12. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 13. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SCALIA, J., joined, post, p. 17.
Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, Inc., by Daniel B. Hales, Emory A. Plitt, Jr., Wayne W. Schmidt, and James P. Manak; for the D.C. Prisoners' Legal Services Project, Inc., by Theodore A. Howard and Richard J. Arsenault; for Human Rights Watch by Cameron Clark; and for the Prisoners' Legal Service of New York by John A. Gresham and Stephen M. Latimer.
Hudson sued the three corrections officers in Federal District Court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments and seeking compensatory damages. The parties consented to disposition of the case before a Magistrate, who found that McMillian and Woods used force when there was no need to do so, and that Mezo expressly condoned their actions. App. 26. The Magistrate awarded Hudson damages of $800. Id., at 29.
What is necessary to establish an "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," we said, varies according to the nature of the alleged constitutional violation. 475 U.S., at 320. For example, the appropriate inquiry when an inmate alleges that prison officials failed to attend to serious medical needs is whether the officials exhibited "deliberate indifference." See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976). This standard is appropriate because the State's responsibility to provide inmates with medical care ordinarily does not conflict with competing administrative concerns. Whitley, supra, at 320.
By contrast, officials confronted with a prison disturbance must balance the threat unrest poses to inmates, prison workers, administrators, and visitors against the harm inmates may suffer if guards use force. Despite the weight of these competing concerns, corrections officials must make their decisions "in haste, under pressure, and frequently without the luxury of a second chance." 475 U.S., at 320. We accordingly concluded in Whitley that application of the deliberate indifference standard is inappropriate when authorities use force to put down a prison disturbance. Instead, "the question whether the measure taken inflicted unnecessary and wanton pain and suffering ultimately turns on `whether force was applied in a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline or maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.'" Id., at 320-321 (quoting Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028, 1033 (CA2), cert. denied sub nom. John v. Johnson, 414 U.S. 1033 (1973)).
Many of the concerns underlying our holding in Whitley arise whenever guards use force to keep order. Whether the prison disturbance is a riot or a lesser disruption, corrections officers must balance the need "to maintain or restore discipline" through force against the risk of injury to inmates. Both situations may require prison officials to act quickly and decisively. Likewise, both implicate the principle that "`[p]rison administrators . . . should be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that, in their judgment, are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security." 475 U.S., at 321-322 (quoting Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 547 (1979)). In recognition of these similarities, we hold that, whenever prison officials stand accused of using excessive physical force in violation of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the core judicial inquiry is that set out in Whitley: whether force was applied in a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.
Under the Whitley approach, the extent of injury suffered by an inmate is one factor that may suggest "whether the use of force could plausibly have been thought necessary" in a particular situation, "or instead evinced such wantonness with respect to the unjustified infliction of harm as is tantamount to a knowing willingness that it occur." Whitley, 475 U.S., at 321. In determining whether the use of force was wanton and unnecessary, it may also be proper to evaluate the need for application of force, the relationship between that need and the amount of force used, the threat "reasonably perceived by the responsible officials," and "any efforts made to temper the severity of a forceful response." Ibid. The absence of serious injury is therefore relevant to the Eighth Amendment inquiry, but does not end it.
The objective component of an Eighth Amendment claim is therefore contextual and responsive to "contemporary standards of decency." Estelle, supra, at 103. For instance, extreme deprivations are required to make out a conditions-of-confinement claim. Because routine discomfort is "part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society," Rhodes, supra, at 347, "only those deprivations denying "the minimal civilized measure of life's necessities" are sufficiently grave to form the basis of an Eighth Amendment violation." Wilson, supra, 298 (quoting Rhodes, supra, at 347) (internal citation omitted). A similar analysis applies to medical needs. Because society does not expect that prisoners will have unqualified access to health care, deliberate indifference to medical needs amounts to an Eighth Amendment violation only if those needs are "serious." See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. at 103-104.
That is not to say that every malevolent touch by a prison guard gives rise to a federal cause of action. See Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d, at 1033 ("Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge's chambers, violates a prisoner's constitutional rights"). The Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishments necessarily excludes from constitutional recognition de minimis uses of physical force, provided that the use of force is not of a sort "`repugnant to the conscience of mankind.'" Whitley, 475 U.S. at 327 (quoting Estelle, supra, at 106) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Wilson did touch on these matters in the course of summarizing our prior holdings, beginning with Estelle v. Gamble, supra. Estelle, we noted, first applied the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to deprivations that were not specifically part of the prisoner's sentence. Wilson, supra, at 297. As might be expected from this primacy, Estelle stated the principle underlying the cases discussed in Wilson: punishments "incompatible with the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" or "involv[ing] the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" are "repugnant to the Eighth Amendment." Estelle, supra, at 102-103 (internal quotations omitted). This is the same rule the dissent would reject. With respect to the objective component of an Eighth Amendment claim, however, Wilson suggested no departure from Estelle and its progeny.
Respondents argue that, aside from the significant injury test applied by the Fifth Circuit, their conduct cannot constitute an Eighth Amendment violation because it was "isolated and unauthorized." Brief for Respondents 28. The beating of Hudson, they contend, arose from "a personal dispute between correctional security officers and a prisoner," and was against prison policy. Ibid. Respondents invoke the reasoning of courts that have held the use of force by prison officers under such circumstances beyond the scope of "punishment" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. See Johnson v. Glick, supra, at 1032 ("[A]lthough a spontaneous attack by a guard is `cruel' and, we hope, `unusual,' it does not fit any ordinary concept of `punishment'"); George v. Evans, 633 F.2d 413, 416 (CA5 1980) ("[A] single, unauthorized assault by a guard does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment . . . "). But see Duckworth v. Franzen, 780 F.2d 645, 652 (CA7 1985) ("If a guard decided to supplement a prisoner's official punishment by beating him, this would be punishment . . ."), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 816 (1986).
In Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312 (1986), the Court held that injuries to prisoners do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment when they are inflicted during a prison disturbance "that indisputably poses significant risks to the safety of inmates and prison staff" unless force was applied "`maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.'" Id., at 320-321 (citation omitted). The Court's opinion explained that the justification for that particularly high standard of proof was required by the exigencies present during a serious prison disturbance. "When the `ever-present potential for violent confrontation and conflagration' ripens into actual unrest and conflict," id., at 321 (citation omitted), then prison officials must be permitted to "take into account the very real threats the unrest presents to inmates and prison officials alike." Id., at 320.
Absent such special circumstances, however, the less demanding standard of "`unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain'" should be applied. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976) (quoting Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 173 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, STEVENS, JJ.)); see Unwin v. Campbell, 863 F.2d 124, 135 (CA1 1988) (opinion of Campbell, C.J.) ("where institutional security is not at stake, the officials' license to use force is more limited; to succeed, a plaintiff need not prove malicious and sadistic intent"); see also Wyatt v. Delaney, 818 F.2d 21, 23 (CA8 1987). This approach is consistent with the Court's admonition in Whitley that the standard to be used is one that gives "due regard for differences in the kind of conduct against which an Eighth Amendment objection is lodged." 475 U.S., at 320. In this case, because there was no prison disturbance and "no need to use any force, since the plaintiff was already in restraints," App. 27, the prison guards' attack upon petitioner resulted in the infliction of unnecessary and wanton pain. Id., at 28.
The Court today appropriately puts to rest a seriously misguided view that pain inflicted by an excessive use of force is actionable under the Eighth Amendment only when coupled with "significant injury," e.g., injury that requires medical attention or leaves permanent marks. Indeed, were we to hold to the contrary, we might place various kinds of state-sponsored torture and abuse — of the kind ingeniously designed to cause pain but without a telltale "significant injury" — entirely beyond the pale of the Constitution. In other words, the constitutional prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishments" then might not constrain prison officials from lashing prisoners with leather straps, whipping them with rubber hoses, beating them with naked fists, shocking them with electric currents, asphyxiating them short of death, intentionally exposing them to undue heat or cold, or forcibly injecting them with psychosis-inducing drugs. These techniques, commonly thought to be practiced only outside this Nation's borders, are hardly unknown within this Nation's prisons. See, e.g., Campbell v. Grammer, 889 F.2d 797, 802 (CA8 1989) (use of highpowered fire hoses); Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F.2d 571, 574-575 (CA8 1968) (use of the "Tucker Telephone," a hand-cranked device that generated shocks to sensitive body parts, and flogging with leather strap). See also Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 682, n. 5 (1978).
Citing rising caseloads, respondents, represented by the Attorney General of Louisiana and joined by the States of Texas, Hawaii, Nevada, Wyoming, and Florida as amici curiae, suggest that a "significant injury" requirement is necessary to curb the number of court filings by prison inmates. We are informed that the "significant injury requirement has been very effective in the Fifth Circuit in helping to control its system-wide docket management problems." Brief for Texas, Hawaii, Nevada, Wyoming, and Florida as Amici Curiae 15.
Today's ruling, in any event, does not open the floodgates for filings by prison inmates. By statute, prisoners — alone among all other § 1983 claimants — are required to exhaust administrative remedies. See 94 Stat. 352, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a); Patsy v. Board of Regents of Florida, 457 U.S. 496, 507-512 (1982). Moreover, prison officials are entitled to a determination before trial whether they acted in an objectively reasonable manner, thereby entitling them to a qualified immunity defense. Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555, 561-562 (1978); see also Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 817-818 (1982) (unsubstantiated allegations of malice are insufficient to overcome pretrial qualified immunity). Additionally, a federal district court is authorized to dismiss a prisoner's complaint in forma pauperis "if satisfied that the action is frivolous or malicious." 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d). These measures should be adequate to control any docket-management problems that might result from meritless prisoner claims.
I do not read anything in the Court's opinion to limit injury cognizable under the Eighth Amendment to physical injury. It is not hard to imagine inflictions of psychological harm — without corresponding physical harm — that might prove to be cruel and unusual punishment. See, e.g., Wisniewski v. Kennard, 901 F.2d 1276, 1277 (CA5) (guard placing a revolver in inmate's mouth and threatening to blow prisoner's head off), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 926 (1990). The issue was not presented here, because Hudson did not allege that he feared that the beating incident would be repeated or that it had caused him anxiety and depression. See App. 29.
As the Court makes clear, the Eighth Amendment prohibits the unnecessary and wanton infliction of "pain," rather than "injury." Ante, at 5. "Pain" in its ordinary meaning surely includes a notion of psychological harm. I am unaware of any precedent of this Court to the effect that psychological pain is not cognizable for constitutional purposes. If anything, our precedent is to the contrary. See Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 734 (1972) (recognizing Article III standing for "aesthetic" injury); Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 494 (1954) (identifying schoolchildren's feelings of psychological inferiority from segregation in the public schools).
The magistrate who found the facts in this case emphasized that petitioner's injuries were "minor." App. 26, 28. The three judges of the Fifth Circuit who heard the case on appeal did not disturb that assessment, and it has not been challenged here. The sole issue in this case, as it comes to us, is a legal one: must a prisoner who claims to have been subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment" establish at a minimum that he has suffered a significant injury? The Court today not only responds in the negative, but broadly asserts that any "unnecessary and wanton" use of physical force against a prisoner automatically amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment," whenever more than de minimis force is involved. Even a de minimis use of force, the Court goes on to declare, inflicts cruel and unusual punishment where it is "repugnant to the conscience of mankind." Ante, at 10 (internal quotations omitted). The extent to which a prisoner is injured by the force — indeed, whether he is injured at all — is, in the Court's view, irrelevant.
Until recent years, the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause was not deemed to apply at all to deprivations that were not inflicted as part of the sentence for a crime. For generations, judges and commentators regarded the Eighth Amendment as applying only to torturous punishments meted out by statutes or sentencing judges, and not generally to any hardship that might befall a prisoner during incarceration. In Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910), the Court extensively chronicled the background of the amendment, discussing its English antecedents, its adoption by Congress, its construction by this Court, and the interpretation of analogous provisions by state courts. Nowhere does Weems even hint that the Clause might regulate not just criminal sentences, but the treatment of prisoners. Scholarly commentary also viewed the Clause as governing punishments that were part of the sentence. See T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations *329 ("It is certainly difficult to determine precisely what is meant by cruel and unusual punishments. Probably any punishment declared by statute for an offence which was punishable in the same way at the common law, could not be regarded as cruel or unusual in the constitutional sense. And probably any new statutory offence may be punished to the extent and in the mode permitted by the common law for offences of similar nature. But those degrading punishments which in any State had become obsolete before its existing constitution was adopted, we think may well be held forbidden by it as cruel and unusual") (emphasis added). See also 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 750-751 (1833).
Surely prison was not a more congenial place in the early years of the Republic than it is today; nor were our judges and commentators so naive as to be unaware of the often harsh conditions of prison life. Rather, they simply did not conceive of the Eighth Amendment as protecting inmates from harsh treatment. Thus, historically, the lower courts routinely rejected prisoner grievances by explaining that the courts had no role in regulating prison life. "[I]t is well settled that it is not the function of the courts to superintend the treatment and discipline of prisoners in penitentiaries, but only to deliver from imprisonment those who are illegally confined." Stroud v. Swope, 187 F.2d 850, 851-852 (CA9), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 829 (1951). See also Sutton v. Settle, 302 F.2d 286, 288 (CA8 1962) (per curiam), cert. denied, 372 U.S. 930 (1963); United States ex rel. Atterbury v. Ragen, 237 F.2d 953, 954-956 (CA7 1956), cert. denied, 353 U.S. 964 (1957); Banning v. Looney, 213 F.2d 771, 771 (CA10 1954) (per curiam); Sarshik v. Sanford, 142 F.2d 676 (CA5 1944). It was not until 1976 — 185 years after the Eighth Amendment was adopted — that this Court first applied it to a prisoner's complaint about a deprivation suffered in prison. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976).
We have never found a violation of the Eighth Amendment in the prison context when an inmate has failed to establish either of these elements. In Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337 (1981), for instance, we upheld a practice of placing two inmates in a single cell on the ground that the injury alleged was insufficiently serious. Only where prison conditions deny an inmate "the minimal civilized measure of life's necessities," id., at 347, we said, could they be considered "cruel and unusual punishment." Similarly, in Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312 (1986), we held that a guard did not violate the Eighth Amendment when he shot an inmate during a prison riot, because he had not acted with a sufficiently culpable state of mind. When an official uses force to quell a riot, we said, he does not violate the Eighth Amendment unless he acts "`maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.'" Id., at 320-321 (quoting Johnson v. Glick, 481 F.2d 1028, 1033 (CA2) (Friendly, J.), cert. denied sub nom. John v. Johnson, 414 U.S. 1033 (1973)).
When we cut the Eighth Amendment loose from its historical moorings and applied it to a broad range of prison deprivations, we found it appropriate to make explicit the limitations described in Estelle, Rhodes, Whitley, and Wilson. "If the pain inflicted is not formally meted out as punishment by the statute or the sentencing judge, some mental element must be attributed to the inflicting officer before it can qualify," Wilson, 501 U.S., at 300 (emphasis in original) — thus, the subjective component. Similarly, because deprivations of all sorts are the very essence of imprisonment, we made explicit the serious deprivation requirement to ensure that the Eighth Amendment did not transfer wholesale the regulation of prison life from executive officials to judges. That is why, in Wilson, we described the inquiry mandated by the objective component as: "[W]as the deprivation sufficiently serious?" Id., at 298 (emphasis added). That formulation plainly reveals our prior assumption that a serious deprivation is always required. Under that analysis, a court's task in any given case was to determine whether the challenged deprivation was "sufficiently" serious. It was not, as the Court's interpretation today would have it, to determine whether a "serious" deprivation is required at all.
Given Estelle, Rhodes, Whitley, and Wilson, one might have assumed that the Court would have little difficulty answering the question presented in this case by upholding the Fifth Circuit's "significant injury" requirement. Instead, the Court announces that "[t]he objective component of an Eighth Amendment claim is . . . contextual and responsive to contemporary standards of decency." Ante, at 8 (internal quotation omitted). In the context of claims alleging the excessive use of physical force, the Court then asserts, the serious deprivation requirement is satisfied by no serious deprivation at all. "When prison officials maliciously and sadistically use force to cause harm, contemporary standards of decency always are violated." Ante, at 9. Ascertaining prison officials' state of mind, in other words, is the only relevant inquiry in deciding whether such cases involve "cruel and unusual punishment." In my view, this approach is an unwarranted and unfortunate break with our Eighth Amendment prison jurisprudence.
The Court purports to derive the answer to this case from Whitley. The sum and substance of an Eighth Amendment violation, the Court asserts, is "`"he unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain."'" Ante, at 5 (quoting Whitley, 475 U.S., at 319). This formulation has the advantage, from the Court's perspective, of eliminating the objective component. As noted above, however, the only dispute in Whitley concerned the subjective component; the prisoner, who had been shot, had self-evidently been subjected to an objectively serious injury. Whitley did not say, as the Court does today, that the objective component is contextual, and that an Eighth Amendment claim may succeed where a prisoner is not seriously injured. Rather, Whitley stands for the proposition that, assuming the existence of an objectively serious deprivation, the culpability of an official's state of mind depends on the context in which he acts. Whitley teaches that, assuming the conduct is harmful enough to satisfy the objective component of an Eighth Amendment claim, see Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337 (1981), whether it can be characterized as "wanton" depends upon the constraints facing the official." Wilson, supra, at 303 (emphasis modified). Whether officials subject a prisoner to the "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" is simply one way to describe the state of mind inquiry that was at issue in Whitley itself. As Wilson made clear, that inquiry is necessary, but not sufficient when a prisoner seeks to show that he has been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
Perhaps to compensate for its elimination of the objective component in excessive force cases, the Court simultaneously makes it harder for prisoners to establish the subjective component. As we explained in Wilson, "deliberate indifference" is the baseline mental state required to establish an Eighth Amendment violation. 501 U.S., at 303. Departure from this baseline is justified where, as in Whitley, prison officials act in response to an emergency; in such situations, their conduct cannot be characterized as "wanton" unless it is taken "maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm." 475 U.S., at 320-321 (internal quotation omitted). The Court today extends the heightened mental state applied in Whitley to all excessive force cases, even where no competing institutional concerns are present. The Court simply asserts that "[m]any of the concerns underlying our holding in Whitley arise whenever guards use force to keep order." Ante, at 6 (emphasis added). I do not agree. Many excessive force cases do not arise from guards' attempts to "keep order." (In this very case, the basis for petitioner's Eighth Amendment claim is that the guards hit him when there was no need for them to use any force at all.) The use of excessive physical force is by no means invariably (in fact, perhaps not even predominantly) accompanied by a "malicious and sadistic" state of mind. I see no justification for applying the extraordinary Whitley standard to all excessive force cases without regard to the constraints facing prison officials. The Court's unwarranted extension of Whitley, I can only suppose, is driven by the implausibility of saying that minor injuries imposed upon prisoners with anything less than a "malicious and sadistic" state of mind can amount to "cruel and unusual punishment."
The Court's attempts to distinguish the cases expressly resting upon the objective component are equally unconvincing. As noted above, we have required an extreme deprivation in cases challenging conditions of confinement, Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337 (1981). Why should such an objectively serious deprivation be required there and not here? The Court's explanation is that "routine discomfort is `part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society.'" Ante, at 9 (quoting Rhodes, supra, at 347). But there is quite a gap between "routine discomfort" and the denial of "the minimal civilized measure of life's necessities" required to establish an Eighth Amendment violation. In the Court's view, then, our society's standards of decency are not violated by anything short of uncivilized conditions of confinement (no matter how malicious the mental state of the officials involved), but are automatically violated by any malicious use of force, regardless of whether it even causes an injury. This is puzzling. I see no reason why our society's standards of decency should be more readily offended when officials, with a culpable state of mind, subject a prisoner to a deprivation on one discrete occasion than when they subject him to continuous deprivations over time. If anything, I would think that a deprivation inflicted continuously over a long period would be of greater concern to society than a deprivation inflicted on one particular occasion.
Moreover, by distinguishing this case from "conditions" cases, the Court resurrects a distinction that we have repudiated as "not only unsupportable in principle but unworkable in practice." Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 299 (1991). When officials use force against a prisoner, whether once or every day, that is a "condition" of his confinement. It is unwise, in my view, to make the very existence of the serious deprivation requirement depend on whether a particular claim is characterized as one challenging a "condition" or one challenging a "specific act." Cf. McCarthy v. Bronson, 500 U.S. 136, 139, 143 (1991) ("[C]onditions of confinement" under 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) include not only challenges to ongoing prison conditions but also challenges to "isolated incidents" of excessive force, in part because "the distinction between cases challenging ongoing conditions and those challenging specific acts of alleged misconduct will often be difficult to identify").
The Court's attempted distinction of Estelle is also unpersuasive: "Because society does not expect that prisoners will have unqualified access to health care, deliberate indifference to medical needs amounts to an Eighth Amendment violation only if those needs are `serious.'" Ante, at 9. In my view, our society similarly has no expectation that prisoners will have "unqualified" freedom from force, since forcibly keeping prisoners in detention is what prisons are all about. Why should the seriousness of injury matter when doctors maliciously decide not to treat an inmate, but not when guards maliciously decide to strike him?
The Court attempts to justify its departure from precedent by saying that, if a showing of serious injury were required, "the Eighth Amendment would permit any physical punishment, no matter how diabolic or inhuman, inflicting less than some arbitrary quantity of injury." Ante, at 9. That statement, in my view, reveals a central flaw in the Court's reasoning. "[D]iabolic or inhuman" punishments, by definition, inflict serious injury. That is not to say that the injury must be, or always will be, physical. "Many things — beating with a rubber truncheon, water torture, electric shock, incessant noise, reruns of `Space 1999' — may cause agony as they occur, yet leave no enduring injury. The state is not free to inflict such pains without cause just so long as it is careful to leave no marks." Williams v. Boles, 841 F.2d 181, 183 (CA7 1988). Surely a prisoner who alleges that prison officials tortured him with a device like the notorious "Tucker Telephone" described by JUSTICE BLACKMUN, ante, at 14, has alleged a serious injury. But petitioner has not alleged a deprivation of this type; the injuries he has alleged are entirely physical, and were found below to be "minor."
If the Court is to be taken at its word that "the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" upon a prisoner per se amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment," the implications of today's opinion are sweeping. For this formulation replaces the objective component described in our prior cases with a "necessity" component. Many prison deprivations, however, are not "necessary," at least under any meaningful definition of that word. Thus, under today's analysis, Rhodes was wrongly decided. Surely the "double-celling" of inmates was not "necessary" to fulfill the State's penal mission; in fact, the prison in that case had been designed for individual cells, but was simply overcrowded. 452 U.S., at 343. We rejected the prisoners' claim in Rhodes not because we determined that double-celling was "necessary," but because the deprivations alleged were not sufficiently serious to state a claim of cruel and unusual punishment. After today, the "necessity" of a deprivation is apparently the only relevant inquiry beyond the wantonness of official conduct. This approach, in my view, extends the Eighth Amendment beyond all reasonable limits.
Petitioner apparently could have, but did not, seek redress for his injuries under state law. Respondents concede that, if available state remedies were not constitutionally adequate, petitioner would have a claim under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Cf. Davidson v. Cannon, 474 U.S. 344, 348 (1986); Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 532-534 (1984); Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 541. I agree with respondents that this is the appropriate, and appropriately limited, federal constitutional inquiry in this case.
"Louisiana state courts are open to prisoners for the purpose of suing prison personnel who have caused them unjustified wrongs. For example, see Parker v. State, 282 So.2d 483, 486-87 (La. 1973), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1093 (1973); Anderson v. Phelps, 451 So.2d 1284, 1285 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1984); McGee v. State, 417 So.2d 416, 418 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir.), writ denied, 420 So.2d 871 [981] (La. 1982); Neathery v. State, 395 So.2d 407, 410 (La.Ct.App. 3d Cir. 1981); Shields v. State Through Dep't of Corrections, 380 So.2d 123 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1979), writ denied, 382 So.2d 164 [(La. 1980)]; Craft v. State, 308 So.2d 290, 295 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir.), writ denied, 319 So.2d 441 (La. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1075 (1975); Lewis v. Listi, 377 So.2d 551, 553 (La.Ct.App. 3d Cir. 1979); Bastida v. State, 269 So.2d 544, 545 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1972); Adams v. State, 247 So.2d 149, 151 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1971); St. Julian v. State, 98 So.2d 284 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1957); Nedd v. State, 281 So.2d 131, 132 (La. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 957 (1974); Mack v. State, 529 So.2d 446, 448 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1988), writ denied, 533 So.2d 359 (La. 1988); Walden v. State, 430 So.2d 1224 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1983), writ denied, 435 So.2d 430 (La. 1983); White v. Phelps, 387 So.2d 1188 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1980); Hampton v. State, 361 So.2d 257, 258 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1978); Davis v. State, 356 So.2d 452, 454 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1977); Betsch v. State, 353 So.2d [358], 359 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1977), writ refused, 354 So.2d 1389 [1380] (La. 1978); Williams v. State, 351 So.2d 1273 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1977); Jones v. State, 346 So.2d 807, 808 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir.), writ refused, 350 So.2d 671 (La. 1977); Walker v. State, 346 So.2d 794, 796 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir.), writ denied, 349 So.2d 879 (La. 1977); Raney v. State, 322 So.2d 890 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1975); and Bay v. Maggio, 417 So.2d 1386 (La.Ct.App. 1st Cir. 1982). Brief for Respondents 42-43, n. 38.