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5 Nev. L.J. F. 23 (2021)
Taylor v. Riojas: Anatomy of a Supreme Court Intervention That Should Not Have Been Necessary

handle is hein.journals/nvljform5 and id is 23 raw text is: TAYLOR V RIOJAS: ANATOMY OF A SUPREME COURT INTERVENTION THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN NECESSARY By Zamir Ben-Dan* INTRODUCTION In September 2013, an inmate in a Texas prison allegedly spent six days in two uninhabitable cells.1 One cell was covered in massive amounts of feces; the other cell was freezing cold and lacked a sink, a bunk, and a toilet, containing only a clogged floor drain for him to relieve himself.2 The very thought that a human being would be caged under such appalling conditions should shock the conscious of any person who hears about it; and few laypersons would doubt that confining a person under these circumstances is plainly illegal. Yet, it took seven years and an unlikely Supreme Court intervention for an official pronouncement that, if indeed the inmate was incarcerated under such conditions for almost a full week, those responsible for his confinement violated clearly established constitutional law.3 In between those seven years, two different federal courts-the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals-dismissed the inmate's Eighth Amendment claims and granted qualified immunity to the officials responsible for the inmate's confinement in the two disgusting cells.4 The flagrant violation of this inmate's Eighth Amendment rights is obvious and totally outrageous; but the biggest disgrace is that the Fifth Circuit needed the Supreme Court to tell them that. Both lower courts placed heavy emphasis on one line from a 1978 Supreme Court decision, and relied on prior fifth circuit caselaw that also depended on the same line from the same Supreme Court decision.5 This note will review these decisions, concluding that both opinions display a blatant disregard for both the humanity of the inmate and basic common sense. * Staff Attorney, Community Justice Unit of the Legal Aid Society; Adjunct Professor, CUNY School of Law; Adjunct Professor, Baruch College - Black and Latino Studies; B.B.A., Baruch College, J.D., CUNY Law. Acknowledgments to the staff of the Nevada Law Journal for editing and publishing this piece. 1 Taylor v. Stevens, 946 F.3d 211, 218 (5th Cir. 2019). 2 Id. at 218-19. 3 See Taylorv. Riojas, 141 S. Ct. 52, 53-54 (2020). 4 See Taylor, 946 F.3d at 216-17. 5 See id. at 220, 222; Taylor v. Stevens, No. 5:14-CV-149-C, 2017 WL 11507190, at *8 (N.D. Tex. Jan. 5, 2017). 23

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