vague is unmeritorious. The facial constitutionality of § 242 was settled long ago, Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 103-04, 65 S.Ct. 1031, 1036-37, 89 L.Ed. 1495 (1945), as was the statute’s application to the right to be free from excessive force under color of law, see United States v. Stokes, 506 F.2d 771, 776 (5th Cir.1975) (construing § 242 to encompass a due process right to be free from unreasonable, unnecessary, or unprovoked force by state actors). In light of this precedent, Teel cannot demonstrate that he lacked fair notice that beating a restrained inmate to death would be unlawful under the Constitution and, hence, subject to criminal liability under § 242. See, e.g., United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 271-72, 117 S.Ct. 1219, 1228, 137 L.Ed.2d 432 (1997) (<HOLDING>). Additionally, contrary to Teel’s contentions,
recognizing that the party charged with the deprivation of a federal right must be a person who may fairly be said to be a state actor and rejecting the notion that a private partys mere invocation of state legal procedures satisfies the stateactor requirement internal quotation marks and citation omitted holding the deprivation of the inmates property interest in his mail is not a cognizable constitutional injury given the availability of adequate state postdeprivation remedies under new york law internal quotation marks omitted holding that liability under  1983 can be established by showing that the defendants either personally participated in a deprivation of the plaintiffs rights or caused such a deprivation to occur holding that for a state actor to violate the fourth amendment by initiating a malicious prosecution against someone the criminal charges at issue must have imposed some deprivation of liberty consistent with the concept of a seizure citation omitted holding criminal liability under  242 may be imposed for deprivation of a constitutional right if  in the light of preexisting law the unlawfulness under the constitution is apparent  internal citation omitted