Sometime before 1987, an inmate in the Alabama prison system filed a pro se lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Alabama Department of Corrections in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. The plaintiff asked the court for injunctive relief and damages, alleging that his constitutional rights had been violated by the general conditions of his confinement.

For the previous decade, a class action lawsuit had been pending in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama challenging conditions of confinement at Alabama penal institutions. The plaintiff in this case, an Alabama inmate, was a member of the plaintiff class in the class action, Pugh v. Locke, PC-AL-0010. That case resulted in a consent decree in 1984 over which the Middle District of Alabama retained jurisdiction, and under which the defendants in this case alleged plaintiffs' claims fell. In 1987, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama (Judge William Brevard Hand) dismissed plaintiffs' petition without prejudice to allow him to present the claim to an oversight committee that oversaw implementation of the consent decree. The plaintiff appealed.

On October 19, 1988, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (Judges James C. Hill, Phyllis A. Kravitch, and James L. Edmondson) issued a per curiam opinion vacating the district court's decision and reinstating the plaintiff's petition. Spears v. Johnson, 859 F.3d 853 (11th Cir. 1988). The court then transferred the case to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, where the class action was pending.

On June 21, 1989, the Eleventh Circuit (Judges Hill, Kravitch, and Edmondson) issued another opinion, ruling that their earlier decision was based upon an incorrect premise, as the case in the Middle District Court (with which they ordered this case to be merged) had already closed. They then ordered that this case should be sent back down to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. Spears v. Johnson, 876 F.2d 1485 (11th Cir. 1989).

Kristen Sagar - 09/27/2006


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