A well-tried case

The plaintiff in Cowart v. Erwin achieved the difficult result of winning a jury trial on an Eighth Amendment claim against a detention officer. The opinion details the proof that satisfied a sufficiency review — multiple favorable eyewitnesses (and multiple unfavorable ones as well) throughout the entire incident in question, along with helpful and contemporaneous photographs and medical records (among others). “Objective” video evidence was not dispositive when it “is not necessarily inconsistent with eye witness accounts of what transpired at the jail on the day in question.”  No. 15-10404 (Sept. 20, 2016).