by Chuck Sharman

On August 5, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed that damages claims may proceed to trial against Rhode Island Department of Corrections (DOC) officials who kept state prisoner Jerry Cintron in solitary confinement for 450 days, as punishment for possessing a single fentanyl pill—that’s right, just one—during which he shed 70 pounds while decompensating for his rapidly and steeply declining mental state.

Cintron began a 10-­year sentence in 2016 for possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. He requested enrollment in the DOC’s medication assisted therapy (MAT) program for his opioid use disorder (OUD). As PLN reported, MAT has proven to be remarkably effective in combating OUD. [See: PLN, Dec. 2022, p.42.] But DOC refused to enroll him. Cintron remained drug-­free until July 2019, and he took what he thought was a Percocet tablet, which was actually laced with fentanyl.

He collapsed and was rushed to a hospital, where staff revived him with doses of Narcan. While there, he was interviewed by DOC investigator Paul Bibeault, who had served as a guard on a cell block from which he forced out Cintron. With that history of tension, their interview didn’t go well; Cintron refused to divulge the source of the pill.

After he returned to the prison, Bibeault cited him for being under the influence and a week later cited him again for possession. Cintron was sanctioned with 25 days and 30 days in solitary confinement, respectively. While in solitary, Bibeault continued to press him for the name of the pill supplier, threatening more time in solitary. Meanwhile, Cintron was reclassified and transferred to a high-­security unit. Bibeault then made good on his threat and charged Cintron with trafficking. He was found guilty and sanctioned with another year in solitary, plus another 30 days for misusing the phone to obtain the pill. Thus “over the course of about one month,” as the appellate Court later recalled, the DOC “cumulatively sanctioned Cintron with 450 days in solitary [confinement]” for the pill.

Cintron’s appeals to the sanction were denied, and he suffered from the lost time out of his cell, the canceled visits and calls with loved ones and cessation of his participation in a “Daddy Daycare” program with his children. As he “deteriorated physically and mentally while in solitary,” the Court noted, Cintron “lost seventy pounds, exhibited self-­injurious behavior (including punching his cell walls and pulling out his hair), and suffered intrusive thoughts and severe anxiety.” With the lights on all the time and regular noise interruptions, he went on medication for sleeplessness and depression—only to be sanctioned with still more time in solitary when he predictably abused the medication.

Cintron filed suit in September 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to accuse Bibeault and other DOC officials of deliberate indifference to the serious risk of harm to which the prolonged isolation exposed him. Defendants moved for dismissal, claiming qualified immunity (QI). When the district court denied their motion, they filed an interlocutory appeal with the First Circuit.

Case Moves to First Circuit

The appellate Court began by confirming that Cintron may seek damages from claims against Defendants in their individual capacities only, not their official capacities, citing Will v. Mich. Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989). Next, the Court rejected Defendants’ claim that Cintron had not requested declaratory relief, noting that the complaint explicitly included such a request. The Court then deferred to the district court on remand to determine whether any change in Cintron’s incarceration status—he was scheduled for a 2025 release—may have mooted any of his claims.

As the Court allowed, Cintron did not challenge the constitutionality of solitary confinement, only that Defendants kept him there long after he made them aware that it was causing him serious harm. Precedent from the Supreme Court of the U.S. long ago made clear, the Court said, that depriving a prisoner of “direct intercourse with or sight of any human being, … employment[,] or instruction” might reduce him, “after even a short confinement, into a semi-­fatuous condition, from which it [i]s next to impossible to … arouse [him],” and may result in his “violent[] insan[ity]” or “suicide,” quoting In re Medley, 134 U.S. 160 (1890).

Because the complaint plausibly alleged that the DOC denied him “the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities” and confined him “under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm,” Cintron had made an objective case for a constitutional violation. As to the subjective case, prison officials didn’t deny that they knew they were harming him but argued that they had no other way to protect his fellow prisoners from him. The Court found that argument was specious. “[W]hile officials can justify removing a prisoner from the general population to improve the safety of other inmates, they cannot¸—in the face of that prisoner’s deterioration—perpetuate the kind of social, … sensory, and sleep deprivation that Cintron alleges,” the Court declared.

Having established that Cintron suffered violation of a constitutional right, the Court moved on to the next part of the QI analysis to determine whether the right was clearly established at the time. “We reach this holding most easily as to Cintron’s allegations of prolonged sleep deprivation,” the Court said, citing sister circuits’ opinions and the SCOTUS opinion in Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143 (1944), calling it “the most effective torture.”

Thus the district court’s decision was affirmed, but only as to Defendants in their individual capacities who had knowledge of the injury that Cintron suffered and the power to end it. Claims against them in their official capacities were remanded for a mootness determination. All other Eighth Amendment claims not dismissed by the district court were reversed. Before the Court, Cintron was represented by attorneys with the Rhode Island Center for Justice in Providence and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in Washington, D.C. See: Cintron v. Bibeault, 148 F.4th 37 (1st Cir. 2025).

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