## Facts

- Sylvester James Mahone, a Washington state prisoner, was confined in the Intensive Management Unit at Clallam Bay Correctional Center.
- After removing steel rebar from a cement partition and damaging his cell, prison officials altered his confinement conditions.
- Mahone was held for about ten days in a “strip cell” allegedly without clothing, toilet paper, or personal items, and with very limited access to running water.
- Mahone alleged the strip-cell conditions caused serious mental and emotional harm and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, bringing suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
- At the jury trial on the conditions-of-confinement claim, the defense presented testimony relaying a non-testifying therapist’s out-of-court conclusion that Mahone was lying or malingering about mental trauma.
- The district court admitted the therapist’s conclusion over objection, the jury returned a verdict for defendants, and the court denied a new-trial motion.

## Issues

1. Whether admitting testimony repeating a non-testifying therapist’s out-of-court conclusion that Mahone was lying about mental trauma constituted inadmissible, prejudicial hearsay requiring a new trial.
2. Whether defense counsel’s closing argument misstated the Eighth Amendment “deliberate indifference” standard and, if so, whether the court’s failure to correct it contributed to prejudicial error.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit reversed the judgment for defendants and remanded for a new trial.
- The court held the therapist’s out-of-court conclusion was hearsay, not shown to fit a hearsay exception, and was highly prejudicial because it went to a central disputed issue: whether Mahone suffered serious mental injury.
- The court also held defense counsel misstated the deliberate indifference standard in closing; although not necessarily dispositive alone, it compounded the prejudice from the hearsay.

## Legal Principles

- Hearsay offered for the truth of the matter asserted is inadmissible absent an applicable exception; erroneous admission warrants reversal when it likely affected the verdict on a central issue.
- An Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement claim requires (1) an objectively serious deprivation and (2) a subjective showing of deliberate indifference.
- Deliberate indifference is satisfied when officials know of and disregard an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; it does not require proof of intent to harm.

## Conclusion

Because the jury heard prejudicial hearsay attacking Mahone’s claimed mental injury and was exposed to an incorrect statement of the deliberate indifference standard, the Ninth Circuit concluded the trial was unfair, reversed the defense verdict, and ordered a new trial on the strip-cell conditions claim.


Mahone v. Lehman, 347 F.3d 1170 (9th Cir. 2003)