Sawyer v. Sigler, 71-1047
| Decision Date | 29 June 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 71-1047,71-1048.,71-1047 |
| Parties | William SAWYER, Appellant, v. Maurice H. SIGLER, Warden of the Nebraska State Penitentiary et al., Appellees. Carl BECKER, Appellant, v. Maurice H. SIGLER, Warden of the Nebraska State Penitentiary et al., Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Donald E. Endacott, Lincoln, Neb., filed briefs for appellants.
Clarence A. H. Meyer, Atty. Gen., Lincoln, Neb., and C. C. Sheldon, Asst. Atty. Gen., filed brief for appellees.
Before MATTHES, Chief Judge, GIBSON, Circuit Judge, and HENLEY, District Judge.*
These two appeals from orders entered by the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska were submitted without argument and have been considered together. We affirm.
Appellants, William Sawyer and Carl Becker, are both inmates of the Nebraska State Penitentiary at Lincoln, Nebraska. In early 1970 they filed separate petitions in the District Court alleging that they, as inmates, were being deprived by State authority and under color of State law of rights protected by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Jurisdiction was invoked on the basis of 42 U.S.C.A., § 1983, read in connection with 28 U.S.C.A., § 1343(3).
Specifically, appellants complained that they were being denied needed medical attention and treatment. They also complained of a policy enunciated by appellee, Sigler, to the effect that inmates of the Penitentiary would not be awarded either statutory good time or meritorious good time with respect to periods of confinement during which they were not working even though their idleness was due to illness or physical debility or disability.
Appellants were allowed to prosecute their petitions for relief in forma pauperis, and counsel was appointed to represent them. Their petitions, along with a similar one filed by a third inmate, were consolidated for purposes of hearing. The District Court held a full evidentiary hearing, and in connection with its orders filed a memorandum opinion incorporating its findings of fact and conclusions of law. Sawyer v. Sigler, D.C.Neb., 320 F.Supp. 690 (1970).
In the case of Sawyer the District Court found that in general his claim of lack of proper medical attention had not been sustained. However, the Court found that requiring him to take needed medication in a particular form which nauseated him amounted to cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment as carried forward into the Fourteenth and ordered the Warden to permit Sawyer "to receive and consume in pill or capsule form, such medication as may be prescribed by any physician employed by the Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex, except where such physician in writing declares that the medication is reasonably effective to accomplish the desired medical purpose of that medication in crushed or liquid form."
The claim of appellant Becker that he had unconstitutionally been deprived of needed medical attention and services was rejected in its entirety.
On the question of the Warden's policy with respect to good time, the District Court held unconstitutional that part of the policy...
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