223297P.pdf   01/30/2024  Curtis Stewart  v.  Anne Precythe
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  22-3297
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - Cape Girardeau   
   [PUBLISHED] [Shepherd, Author, with Kelly and Stras, Circuit Judges] 
   Prisoner case - Prisoner civil rights. In this excessive-force and 
   conditions-of-confinement action, the Director of the Missouri Department 
   of Corrections was sued in her official and individual capacities on 
   claims she had authorized the policy and a practice of excessive force; 
   the complaint, construed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, does 
   not plausibly allege that the Director authorized a restraint policy 
   permitting jailers to use excessive force when it was unnecessary or 
   unprovoked; nor does it plausibly allege that she acquiesced in any such 
   practice or unprovoked or unwarranted excessive force because it fails to 
   allege a pattern of such conduct, instead relying on two instances where 
   Stewart was restrained; considering only the plausible allegations and 
   taking them as true - that the Director promulgated and acquiesced in a 
   policy of handcuffing prisoners confined in administrative segregation 
   units to a steel bench in a sitting hogtied position for hours - the 
   Director is entitled to qualified immunity under either an excessive-force 
   or conditions-of-confinement claim because plaintiff failed to allege that 
   the Director committed a constitutional violation; the only personal 
   involvement alleged was the authorization and promulgation of the policy, 
   and this did not constitute an Eighth Amendment violation; reversed and 
   remanded for further proceedings. Judge Kelly, dissenting.