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  • 2020-10-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Amy Coney Barrett Reverse a Decision to Make a Jail Guard Pay Damages for Raping a Female Inmate? (en)
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  • In June 2017, a federal jury awarded $6.7 million in damages to Shonda Martin, a woman who testified that she had been raped multiple times by guard Xavier Thicklen while she was being held in the Milwaukee County Jail in 2013: This case (Martin v. Milwaukee County) came to widespread public attention over three years later, in October 2020, after President Donald Trump nominated U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett had been involved in an appeal of the case two years earlier, during which, a popular meme held, she had reversed the lower court's decision to award money to the victim: As is often the case, the meme presented a simplified version of facts that could be considered misleading. Barrett was part of a three-judge Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel that heard an appeal from Milwaukee County. That panel did not overturn the damages award to Martin; rather, it ruled that because Thicklen's actions in sexually assaulting Martin were outside the scope of his employment, Thicklen alone — and not the county — was liable for paying those damages: Even though all of the judgments against Thicklen (who was not a party to the appeal) were allowed to stand, in a practical sense the ruling meant the victim would likely collect little in damages, since Thicklen was not required to be indemnified by the county and likely does not possess assets worth anything close to $6.7 million — a fact the panel recognized: Critics of Barrett's have noted that in a similar case heard by the Indiana Supreme Court in 2018 (Cox v. Evansville Police Department), involving sexual assaults committed by police officers, that court arrived at the opposite conclusion: Oddly, perhaps, in 2019 another three-judge Seventh Circuit panel (not including Barrett) similarly reversed a lower court's ruling to hold a Wisconsin county responsible for paying damages over the sexual assault of female inmates by a male jailer: In that case, however, the full court voted to rehear the issue, and in a non-unanimous decision — with Barrett joining the majority — the court vacated the three-judge panel's opinion and upheld the original jury verdict that held both the county and Christensen liable for the latter's abuse of female inmates: (en)
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