Charles M. Keenan v. Frank Hall, Director Oregon Department of Corrections

How later courts describe this case

• holding that the Eighth Amendment requires inmates to be housed in an environment that 27 is reasonably free from excess noise
• holding that the 10 Eighth Amendment requires inmates to be housed in an environment that is reasonably free from 11 excess noise
• stating that “verbal harassment generally does not violate the Eighth Amendment” and 19 “[s]ummary judgment dismissing [Plaintiff’s] verbal harassment claim was proper”
• holding “the Eighth 9 Amendment require[s] that [inmates] be housed in an environment . . . reasonably free of 10 excess noise”
• holding that mail from a court is not legal mail
• holding that dismissal of verbal 20 harassment claim was proper where plaintiff had not shown that the prison guards’ “disrespectful 21 and assaultive comments” were “unusually gross even for a prison setting and were calculated to 22 and did cause him psychological damage”
• holding verbal 18 harassment, standing alone, does not violate the Eighth Amendment
• declining to decide “whether mail clearly sent from a lawyer to an inmate but lacking the ‘Legal Mail’ designation may be opened outside the presence of the inmate”