Herron v. Meyer, No. 15-1659 (7th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseFormer gang member Herron is serving long sentences. Before his transfer to Terre Haute, he was attacked by inmates and left permanently disabled and confined to a wheelchair. At Terre Haute, Herron was assigned to a wheel-chair-accessible cell. Terre Haute inmates told Herron that he had been targeted because he was believed to be a pedophile. Herron learned that his prison records contained references to the Adam Walsh Act, 42 U.S.C. 16901–91, although his convictions are for other crimes. He filed a grievance; the Bureau of Prisons corrected his record. Hearing other inmates were planning to attack him, he asked to be placed in segregation. The prison complied and assigned him a wheelchair-accessible cell. Within a month, his cellmate attacked him over his “Walsh Act stuff.” Herron rejected another assigned cellmate, whom he viewed as threatening, and filed grievances. Guards took Herron to a non-accessible cell and refused to help him to the toilet. He was found lying near the toilet. He was treated for head lacerations, a shoulder contusion, and a sprained spine. The Seventh Circuit vacated dismissal of his First Amendment retaliation claim and the district court's grant of qualified immunity on the Eighth Amendment theory, which accepted a claim that the guard was implementing a policy of moving every inmate who objects to a new cellmate, to prevent inmates from reserving one-person cells.
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