Although prisoners face dangerously harsh conditions while working the “farm line” at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola — including laboring outdoors in extreme heat — a federal judge presiding over a long-running suit filed by prisoners forced to work in the fields around Angola has ruled he could not force the state to fix the problem.
In a 60-page opinion released Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson in Baton Rouge said his decision would have been different just a few months ago, but a recent appeals court decision in a separate civil rights case against Angola stayed his hand. In March, the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled with the state in the other suit — Parker v. Hooper — in which prisoners accused Angola officials of providing unconstitutionally poor medical care. In his Tuesday opinion, Jackson wrote that the 5th Circuit judges’ decision in that case weakened the standard for proving cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Now, if the state can demonstrate that it took any action toward remedying a potential Eighth Amendment violation — no matter how ineffective — it is cleared of liability.
