Opinion ID: 415359
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Profusion of Testimonial Evidence

Text: 88 The crucial factor, for the purpose of assessing the appellees' Eighth Amendment claim, is the seriousness of the risk of assault and sexual abuse to which they were exposed. Given the absence of reliable statistical indices of that risk, the trier of fact would have had to rely upon descriptions of the level of danger by inmates and prison officials. The record is replete with such testimony. Witness after witness described stabbings, beatings and fights. App. 264-65, 277, 294-97, 312, 315, 349, 359, 362. Several testified that they had observed homosexual rapes. App. 283, 286-87, 291-93, 338, 373. The more detailed accounts included descriptions of: a stabbing in the shower area, App. 274-75, 284-85, an attempted stabbing with a butcher knife, App. 251-52, beatings in the shower area, App. 280, cell burnings, App. 322-323, 363, an inmate bleeding profusely from his stomach, App. 252, 271, an inmate thought to be a snitch, picking himself up off the floor, bleeding from the mouth and nose, App. 266-69, a stabbed inmate bleeding from the chest, App. 339, and the death of an inmate resulting from seven or eight stab wounds near his heart, App. 348. To suggest that no reasonable man, presented with this evidence, could conclude that prisoners at Maximum were exposed to a pervasive risk of harm reflects both contempt for the judgment of the trier of fact 32 and callousness toward the appellees' plight.