holding that a “breakdown in communication” between the District Attorney, the Court, and the Sheriff, which led the plaintiff to “languish[ ] in jail for almost nine months after all charges against him were dismissed,” was sufficient to sustain the plaintiffs Fourteenth Amendment due process claim under § 1983
How later courts described this case
- holding that a “breakdown in communication” between the District Attorney, the Court, and the Sheriff, which led the plaintiff to “languish[ ] in jail for almost nine months after all charges against him were dismissed,” was sufficient to sustain the plaintiffs Fourteenth Amendment due process claim under § 1983
- concluding that a jailer does not commit “an instant tort at the moment” the prisoner is entitled to release; instead, a jailer’s “duty to his prisoner is not breached until the expiration of a reasonable time for the proper ascertainment of the authority upon which his prisoner is detained.”
- explaining that a sheriff’s “duty to his prisoner is not breached until the expiration of a reasonable time for the proper ascertainment of the authority upon which his prisoner is 11 detained,” and holding that nine months was an unreasonable amount of time
- recognizing that unlike “errors in a [facially-valid] warrant,” which are subject to the control of the courts, sheriffs are responsible for holding a prisoner “in jail without a court order or written mittimus”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
On Petition for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc
PER CURIAM:
The Petition for Rehearing is denied and the Court having been polled at the request of one of the members of the *799 Court and a majority of the Circuit Judges who are in regular active service not having voted in favor of it, (Rule 35 Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure; Local Fifth Circuit Rule 12) the Petition for Rehearing En Banc is also denied.
COLEMAN and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges, dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.