Cite as: 511 U. S. 825 (1994)
Blackmun, J., concurring
"foreclosed by [petitioner's] assignment to administrative detention status because of his high-risk HIV-positive condition, . . . as well as by the absence of any allegation . . . that administrative detention status poses any continuing threat of physical injury to him." Brief for Respondents 28-29. At oral argument, however, the Deputy Solicitor General informed us that petitioner was no longer in administrative detention, having been placed in the general prison population of a medium-security prison. Tr. of Oral Arg. 25-26. He suggested that affirmance was nevertheless proper because "there is no present threat" that petitioner will be placed in a setting where he would face a "continuing threat of physical injury," id., at 26, but this argument turns on facts about the likelihood of a transfer that the District Court is far better placed to evaluate than we are. We leave it to respondents to present this point on remand.
IV
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Justice Blackmun, concurring.
I agree with Justice Stevens that inhumane prison conditions violate the Eighth Amendment even if no prison official has an improper, subjective state of mind. This Court's holding in Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U. S. 294 (1991), to the effect that barbaric prison conditions may be beyond the reach of the Eighth Amendment if no prison official can be deemed individually culpable, in my view is insupportable in principle and is inconsistent with our precedents interpreting the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. Whether the Constitution has been violated "should turn on the character of the punishment rather than the motivation of the individual who inflicted it." Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97, 116
851
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