DeJesus v. Lewis, No. 18-11649 (11th Cir. 2021)
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DeJesus claims that in 2016, he was sexually assaulted by a prison official, Lewis. DeJesus had an attorney to represent him in court, but shortly before trial, the district court allowed counsel to withdraw. DeJesus was ill-prepared for trial because he had not been provided discovery materials. He was not given transcripts of the depositions taken in discovery until the morning of his trial and tried to read through them—for the first time—during the morning break. Ultimately DeJesus presented only his own testimony. The jury ruled in favor of the defendants.
The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. When a prisoner proves that a prison official, acting under color of law and without legitimate penological justification, engages in a sexual act with the prisoner, and that act was for the official’s own sexual gratification, or for the purpose of humiliating, degrading, or demeaning the prisoner, the prison official’s conduct amounts to a sexual assault in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Here, the jurors should have been instructed that the only fact they had to find was whether the sexual assault occurred. On the record, however, DeJesus has not established that any errors made during the trial were likely to have resulted in an incorrect verdict.
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