Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Hudson Vs. McMillian. 1. Describe the central issues in this Supreme Court case. Keith Hudson, an inmate in a Louisiana penitentiary, alleged that his Eighth Amendment rights had been violated when he was beaten by corrections officers Jack McMillian and Marvin Woods in 1983. Keith J. Hudson successfully sued correctional officers for a beating they inflicted at the state penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. What is remarkable about the case is not that the Court permitted Hudson to keep the $ 800 in damages awarded at his trial, but rather that a Fifth Circuit judges would have taken it away from him. Judges concluded that Hudson's injuries from the beating failed to satisfy the Circuit's "significant injury" ( permanent injury or one requiring hospitalization) test used to determine violations of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unu