Arkansas Supreme Court Addresses Question Certified by The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals
The question was: Whether the conscious indifference standard announced by this court in Shepard v. Washington County, 331 Ark. 480, 962 S.W.3d 779 (1998) affords greater protection to pre-trial detainees than the federal deliberate indifference standard. Grayson v. Ross, No. 06-946. That, it turns out, is the wrong question: Because we do not agree with the argument raised by Jerala Grayson that this court Certified question answered.
has adopted the conscious-indifference standard for pretrial detainees under the Arkansas
Civil Rights Act, it is not necessary for this court to answer the precise question posed to us
of whether conscious indifference affords more protection to the pretrial detainees than the
federal standard. Conscious indifference is not the appropriate standard to be applied in the
instant case for purposes of the Arkansas Civil Rights Act.
