Read on Twitter
Interesting opinion today: a CT prisoner sued a prison guard & won $300k. The state stepped in to "pay" the damages award, but claimed most of the money to reimburse itself for the cost of his incarceration & public defender. 2nd Cir. says: can't do that. https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/a112d3bd-ac4e-44a7-b5bc-2d9126b8912f/1/doc/18-1263_opn.pdf#xml=https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/a112d3bd-ac4e-44a7-b5bc-2d9126b8912f/1/hilite/
Because of the 11th Amendment/sovereign immunity, the court couldn't order Connecticut to give the man his money. But Connecticut wasn't the defendant here—the corrections officer was. The court held §1983 preempted the state's attempt to satisfy the judgment against the CO.
Separately, the Connecticut laws that allow the state to sue people for the cost of their incarceration & the value of the public defenders they get because they're poor are pretty outrageous, but that wasn't the basis for the decision here.
The court did recognize a perverse effect of those laws: the state can extract $1m+ from people serving very long sentences, which means prison officials can abuse them with impunity. Any damages they win in lawsuits would be automatically reabsorbed by the state w/o preemption.
Although civil rights laws are written to make individual gov't actors liable, in practice gov'ts nearly always step in to defend & indemnify their employees, which lessens the deterrent effect. This decision, though narrow, chips away at that practice. cc @ConLawWarrior
These are good questions! Who in the Connecticut state government decided the state should step in to let this corrections officer off the hook after he was found to have maliciously exposed someone to a brutal assault? https://twitter.com/Adelevp77/status/1357483861396107264?s=20
