NEW ORLEANS (LN) — A Fifth Circuit panel ruled 2-1 Thursday that two Angola prison officers were entitled to qualified immunity against an inmate's excessive-force claims, holding that the alleged conduct — however troubling — was not clearly established as unconstitutional under existing circuit precedent.
Alvin Williams, a prisoner at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, filed a pro se Section 1983 suit alleging that Captain David Voorhies led him into a wall while he was restrained and blinded by pepper spray, then pressed his hand against the wall causing what Williams described as "excruciating pain" and an alleged stress fracture. Lieutenant Omar Walker, who deployed the chemical agent, faced a related failure-to-intervene claim.
The magistrate judge had recommended denying summary judgment on both claims, relying primarily on Cowart v. Erwin, a 2016 Fifth Circuit decision holding that officers may not use gratuitous force against a prisoner who has already been subdued or incapacitated. The district court adopted that recommendation.
The majority concluded that Cowart did not control. In that case, a swarm of officers took a kneeling prisoner to the ground and beat him — kicking, punching, and stomping him until he temporarily lost consciousness — and a medical evaluation documented tenderness and swelling in his right hand, contusions of the face, scalp, and neck, a neck sprain, and a ruptured eardrum. What Williams alleged, the majority wrote, was "worlds apart" — a wall collision and a few seconds of hand pressure resulting in what the magistrate judge himself called "minimal injury," with no fracture ever confirmed in follow-up medical evaluations.
The panel worked through each of the seven cases Williams cited and concluded they were all factually distinguishable, each involving what the majority described as "brutal, gratuitous prisoner beatings resulting in serious injuries." Because none squarely governed the specific facts alleged, the majority held that Voorhies was entitled to qualified immunity — and that Walker's failure-to-intervene claim fell with it.
Circuit Judge Dana Douglas dissented on the excessive-force claims, arguing the majority misread Cowart by requiring a savage beating as a threshold. Williams was denied mental-health assistance three times, sprayed after he had already placed his hands through the bars to be cuffed, and then subjected to additional force while restrained and blinded, Douglas wrote. "To say that Williams's claim cannot proceed past the summary judgment stage because he was not 'savagely beaten,' like the plaintiff in Cowart, misunderstands our court's precedent," she wrote, pointing to the Supreme Court's instruction in Hudson v. McMillan that the absence of serious injury is relevant to the Eighth Amendment inquiry but does not end it.
The panel reversed the district court's denial of summary judgment and rendered judgment dismissing all claims against both officers.
The opinion was not designated for publication under Fifth Circuit Rule 47.5, limiting its formal precedential weight even as the split over how to read Cowart signals an unresolved tension in the circuit's excessive-force doctrine.