Supreme Court · 2013 · Assault by federal correctional officers
Millbrook v. United States, 569 U.S. 50
A man in federal prison alleged he was assaulted by correctional officers. The government argued the Federal Tort Claims Act's law enforcement proviso reached only conduct during searches, seizures of evidence, and arrests — which would have excluded what happened to him inside the prison.
A unanimous Supreme Court rejected that reading. The Court held the proviso is not confined to searches, seizures, and arrests, and found no support in the statute's text for limiting it that way.
Why it matters: Assault and battery by BOP staff can be brought as an FTCA claim. Families told the intentional-tort exception bars such claims are being given a version of the law the Supreme Court rejected in 2013.
Supreme Court · 1980 · Death in federal custody
Carlson v. Green, 446 U.S. 14
Joseph Jones, Jr. died in a federal prison in Indiana. His mother, as representative of his estate, sued federal prison officials over the medical care he received. The Supreme Court allowed the constitutional claim to proceed and held that a uniform federal rule governs whether such a claim survives the person's death — rejecting the argument that state survivorship law could extinguish it.
The Court reasoned that applying restrictive state law would make it more advantageous for a wrongdoer to kill than to injure.
Why it matters, with a caution: Carlson has never been overruled, but later decisions have narrowed this route sharply, and courts now read it as confined to something very close to its own facts. For nearly all federal custody cases today, the Federal Tort Claims Act is the operative path. See our explainer on why the rules are different in federal prison.
D. Massachusetts · 2007 · FTCA · Decades of wrongful federal imprisonment
$101.75 million
Judgment against the United States — Limone v. United States, 497 F. Supp. 2d 143
Four men were convicted of a murder they did not commit, after federal agents withheld what they knew. Two of them died in prison. The survivors and the estates sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The court entered judgment for the plaintiffs in the total amount of $101,750,000 — $29 million to Joseph Salvati, $28 million to the estate of Louis Greco, $26 million to Peter Limone, and $13 million to the estate of Henry Tameleo, plus awards to spouses for loss of consortium. The court observed that in recent years both juries and courts have found wrongfully imprisoned plaintiffs entitled to compensation of at least $1 million per year of imprisonment.
Why it matters: The United States can be made to pay, and the sums are not token. The FTCA is the operative route for most claims against federal actors, and this is the high-water mark for what it can produce. Start a case review →
W.D. Oklahoma · 2008 · FTCA · Death in federal custody
$1.1 million
Total award to the family — Estate of Trentadue v. United States, 560 F. Supp. 2d 1124
Kenneth Trentadue died in federal custody at the transfer center in Oklahoma City. His family was not told, before they saw his body, about the extent of the injuries on it or that an autopsy had been performed.
The court ruled for the family on their Federal Tort Claims Act claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress and awarded $1.1 million in total: $250,000 to his wife, $200,000 each to his mother, two brothers and sister, and $50,000 to his father's estate. On remand the court reexamined each award individually against the evidence.
Why it matters: The family's own suffering is compensable in its own right. How the Bureau of Prisons treats relatives after a death in custody — what it discloses and when — can itself be the basis for a claim. Start a case review →
U.S. Supreme Court · 1994 · BOP · Failure to protect
A federal prisoner beaten and raped won the right to take her case to trial
Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825
Dee Farmer, a transgender woman in federal custody, was placed in the general population of a high-security penitentiary and was beaten and raped. The lower courts threw out her case before trial. The Supreme Court vacated that judgment and sent it back.
The Court set the deliberate-indifference standard still used today: a prison official is liable under the Eighth Amendment when the official knows of and disregards an excessive risk to an incarcerated person’s health or safety. Officials cannot escape liability by refusing to confirm what they already strongly suspect — and they cannot escape it merely because the risk was to a whole class of prisoners rather than to one person by name.
Why it matters: This is the standard every failure-to-protect and medical case in federal custody is measured against. If staff knew about a danger — a documented threat, a known predator, a pattern of assaults on a unit — and did nothing, that is the claim. Start a case review →
