A convicted killer who claims his constitutional rights were violated when he was assigned to the top bunk in his jail cell can keep suing prison officials.

A Commonwealth Court panel revived David V. Jordan's lawsuit against officials at the state prison at Forest in an order Senior Judge Dan Pellegrini issued Wednesday.

A Forest County judge had dismissed the case.

Jordan claimed he needed the bottom bunk because of injuries from a gunshot wound. His doctor had informed prison officials that he required that sleeping arrangement.

Prison officials assigned him to the top bunk anyway, aggravating his painful injury, Jordan claimed. That, he contended, violated his constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Prison officials claimed they weren't deliberately indifferent to Jordan's pain. They insisted his assignment to a top bunk - which lasted 41 days - was merely an "oversight," Pellegrini noted.

The state judge concluded that Jordan had made sufficient preliminary pleadings of a constitutional violation to merit sending the case back to county court for further action.

Jordan, now 36 and an inmate in the state prison at Fayette, is serving a life sentence for the 2004 murder of Heather Nunn, a Lancaster City mother of two who was executed in her home while her young children were upstairs. He received a consecutive 20- to 40-year sentence for fatally stabbing a city man, Lemar Lewis, in the back in 2009.