Tidwell v. Hicks, No. 14-2365 (7th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseTidwell, an Illinois inmate, file suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, claiming that three prison guards violated his Eighth Amendment rights when they failed to protect him from attack by a fellow inmate and then subjected him to excessive force by restraining him during the attack. The district court granted judgment as a matter of law for two of the guards, and a jury returned a verdict in favor of the third. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting Tidwell’s claims concerning his attorney and his inability to obtain the testimony of inmates. The court stated that he offered no reason to think that new counsel or an investigator might have turned up evidence that would have affected the outcome of the case. The witnesses whom he hoped to find were former inmates who, he says, would have been able to corroborate parts of his testimony, but the testimony would at best have duplicated Tidwell’s own testimony. Tidwell does not assert that any of these potential witnesses saw the actual incident.
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