Court Revives Texas Prisoner’s Lawsuit Over Sleep Deprivation

A Texas prisoner will have another chance to show that allowing him only two and a half hours of uninterrupted sleep a night constitutes cruel and unusual punishment because a trial court applied the wrong standard in denying his claim, the Fifth Circuit ruled.

Michael Garrett, a prisoner in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Correctional Institutions Division, sued the TDCJ’s now-director, Bobby Lumpkin, alleging the prison’s schedule violates the Eighth Amendment.

The lower court found that the prisoners in the Estelle Unit, in Huntsville, TX, where he is housed, can get only three and a half hours of sleep, ...