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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 22, 2005 Decided July 5, 2005

Reissued October 19, 2005

No. 03-7143

MINNIE SMITH,

APPELLEE

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

APPELLANT

GAIL L. TURNER, ADMINISTRATOR, YOUTH SERVICES

ADMINISTRATION, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

(USDC) for the District of Columbia

(No. 00cv00894)

Donna M. Murasky, Senior Assistant Attorney General,

argued the cause for appellant. With her on the briefs were

Robert J. Spagnoletti, Attorney General, and Edward E. Schwab,

Deputy Attorney General.

Leon Dayan argued the cause for appellee Minnie Smith.

With him on the brief were Robert M. Weinberg, W. Gary

Kohlman, and Laurence S. Gold. Abigail V. Carter entered an

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appearance.

Before: GINSBURG, Chief Judge, and EDWARDS and TATEL,

Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

Dissenting opinion filed by Chief Judge GINSBURG.

TATEL, Circuit Judge: Sometime after 11 p.m. on April 28,

1999, an unidentified assailant shot and killed seventeen-yearold Tron Lindsey and his roommate in the apartment where they

lived as part of a program for delinquent youths in the District

of Columbia’s legal custody. Alleging among other things that

the District, by virtue of its deliberate indifference in selecting

and monitoring the program provider, had violated Tron’s

substantive due process rights, Tron’s grandmother brought suit

as next of kin and on behalf of his estate. After a twelve-day

trial, the jury found the District liable and awarded damages of

$72,000. Because Tron’s grandmother “proffered ‘sufficient

evidence upon which a jury could properly base a verdict’ in her

favor,” Mackey v. United States, 8 F.3d 826, 829 (D.C. Cir.

1993) (quoting Richardson v. Richardson-Merrell, Inc., 857

F.2d 823, 828 (D.C. Cir. 1988)) (emphasis omitted), we affirm.

I.

The District of Columbia has several ways of dealing with

delinquent youths. It places many in the Oak Hill Youth

Center—a juvenile detention facility with a history of problems

so serious that even the District has called it a “troubled

program.” See District of Columbia v. Jerry M., 738 A.2d 1206,

1212 (D.C. 1999). It places others in programs geared to youths

who have committed less serious crimes or seem relatively

likely to stay out of trouble. Such programs include

“independent living” programs—the focus of this case—in

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which youths live on their own in program-provided apartments,

though subject to restrictions on their activities and supervision

by staff.

Rather than running its own independent living program,

the District contracts the work out to private companies.

Although a 1986 D.C. law required the Mayor to promulgate

rules for providers of residential facilities for District juveniles,

see D.C. Code § 7-2103; see generally id. §§ 7-2101 to 7-2108

(codifying the Youth Residential Facilities Licensure Act of

1986), the Mayor failed to develop any such rules for

independent living programs prior to the events leading to this

case. Absent such rules, no minimum standards were required

of District providers generally, and the city’s Youth Services

Administration (YSA) had, in the words of its Administrator

Gail Turner, “no specific standards” for selecting providers. Tr.

3/17/03 at 32.

Viewed in the light most favorable to Tron’s grandmother,

Minnie Smith, see, e.g., Ekedahl v. COREStaff, Inc., 183 F.3d

855, 858 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (per curiam) (holding that we view the

evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party), the

record reveals the following events: In early 1998, the company

the District had contracted with to operate an independent living

program for delinquent youths folded due to allegations of tax

fraud. A former employee of that company, James Jones,

formed a new company, Education Solutions Academy (ESA),

intending to seek the District’s business. Although Jones had

worked at a school run by the contractor before its collapse, no

record evidence suggests that he had any experience with

independent living programs. Jones hired a program director,

Eric Antonio, who did have experience with at-risk youths but,

like Jones, had never before worked at an independent living

program—as he acknowledged, he “did not know that much

about” such programs. Tr. 3/12/03 at 67.

As the site for their program, Jones and Antonio selected

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Queenstown Apartments in Mt. Ranier, Maryland. Located

fairly close to a Metro stop and grocery stores, this complex

struck them as a good place for the youths to live, and they

thought its easy access to D.C. would facilitate weekend home

visits. The complex had over 1000 units, arranged in a “gardenstyle” layout with every few units sharing the same main door

to the outside. Although the complex had several security

cameras, the main doors had none. Nor did these doors have

locks. Doors leading into individual units did have locks, as

well as peepholes, but record evidence suggests that poor

hallway lighting made the peepholes useless. At trial, an expert

testified that factors like “low lighting; no locks or very few

locks; no accountability; no guard services; no guard personnel

watching the area, all of which was the case at Queenstown”

tend to attract drug crimes. Tr. 3/18/03 at 103. Another expert

testified that Queenstown Apartments “ha[d] been an open air

drug market for at least 15 years” prior to 1998. Tr. 3/14/03 at

6.

During their site selection process, Antonio and Jones met

with a Queenstown Apartment manager but asked no questions

about safety or security, as Antonio conceded at trial. Nor did

they inform the manager that youths in their program would be

adjudicated delinquents. Despite Queenstown’s handful of

security measures—such as offering two reduced-rent units to

police officers—the manager testified that “we simply weren’t

equipped” to accommodate a program for juvenile delinquents.

Tr. 3/21/03 at 96. The manager even acknowledged that

Queenstown “would not have let the program on the grounds”

had it known that the program’s youths were juvenile

delinquents. Id. at 147.

With Queenstown Apartments in mind as a site, ESA sought

a contract from YSA. YSA’s point person for the approval

process was a social worker, Kenneth King. Because the

District had failed to develop criteria for evaluating contractors,

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see supra at 3, King had no standards against which to judge

ESA’s proposal. Along with other social workers, King met

with Jones and Antonio, but never asked whether either had

prior experience with independent living programs. Nor did he

inquire whether ESA had a Maryland license to operate an

independent living program involving minors. Had he done so,

he would have discovered that ESA lacked the necessary

license. Although King twice visited Queenstown Apartments,

he neither met with Queenstown officials nor made any inquiries

about safety or security.

Acting on King’s recommendation, YSA signed a contract

with ESA in November 1998. (Less than a year later, King quit

his YSA job to become ESA’s CEO at an annual salary of

$84,000.) During its first year of operation, ESA had up to

sixteen youths living at Queenstown Apartments at any given

time. For each youth it received $110 per day from the District.

Seventeen-year-old Tron Lindsey was one such youth. Due

to his parents’ drug problems, he had grown up with his

grandmother. Some time after moving out of her house, he was

arrested for hitting and kicking a man, charged with assault,

found guilty, and placed at the Oak Hill Youth Center. In

February 1999, a D.C. Superior Court probation officer

recommended that Tron be taken out of Oak Hill and placed in

an independent living program. The officer made this

recommendation on the basis of several factors, including

Tron’s “very limited court involvement,” his wish to complete

his education, and his own preference for an independent living

program as opposed to more time at Oak Hill. Tr. 3/20/03 at 69,

70. Accepting this recommendation, the court placed Tron with

ESA—a placement that only another court order could change.

Arriving at ESA’s Queenstown site in early March, Tron

was assigned to an apartment unit with another youth, Tyrone

Wallace. As part of the program, Tron attended life skills

workshops run by either Antonio or another ESA counselor.

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With Antonio’s help, Tron began spending several hours a day

at Covenant House, an educational program aimed at helping atrisk youth. Although Tron could only get on the waiting list for

some Covenant House classes, he convinced one of its

employees to set up an independent study for him and another

ESA youth. The employee explained that while she wouldn’t do

this for everyone, Tron impressed her. Tron “expressed a real,

particular desire that seemed very sincere . . . . He was a very

polite young man. He was cooperative. He was courteous, and

for myself I know that I will often time go the extra step for

someone who acts like this is what they want.” Tr. 3/12/03 at

128.

ESA required all youths to obey a 7 p.m. curfew. After that

hour, they were neither to leave their apartments nor to let

anyone in except ESA staff. But at least in Tron’s case, this

requirement was virtually never observed. Record evidence

suggests that out of the fifty-one days Tron spent at ESA, he

missed his curfew fifty times. As Antonio put it, “[h]e usually

showed up anywhere after 7:00 to as late as 11:00. He would

usually be there the next morning.” Tr. 3/13/03 at 12.

According to Antonio, although ESA docked Tron’s allowance

(which ranged from $15 to $25 a week), it never otherwise

punished him. Antonio acknowledged, however, that Tron

might have gotten sent back to Oak Hill if he had continued to

violate the curfew.

Uncontrolled curfew violations were not ESA’s only

problem. During Tron’s brief time at Queenstown, ESA had to

release one counselor (a man with a criminal record) due to poor

performance and rumors that he was buying marijuana from

ESA youths. ESA also knew the man’s replacement had a

criminal record involving drugs (specifically, although ESA

sought no details, a conviction some years past for PCP

possession with the intent to distribute). Additionally, ESA

failed to monitor the crime rate at Queenstown Apartments. “It

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just didn’t occur to me at the time to do that,” Antonio

explained. Tr. 3/12/03 at 108. Had ESA kept tabs, it would

have learned that recent crimes committed on the premises

included an October 1998 robbery by a man with a gun, an

October 1998 robbery and assault by two masked men with

guns, a November 1998 robbery and assault, a November 1998

robbery and assault by two men with guns, a December 1998

burglary, a December 1998 assault, and a February 1999 robbery

by a man with a gun.

The District did little to monitor ESA’s problems. It neither

looked into whether ESA was tracking site safety nor held the

company to any staffing standards. As Turner acknowledged,

YSA had “no standards . . . as to qualifications that were

necessary for the counselors to work in the program.” Tr.

3/17/03 at 35. Although a YSA social worker was generally on

notice of Tron’s curfew violations, nothing in the record

suggests she saw this as a concern worth pursuing. 

Similarly—and even more significantly—the District took

no noteworthy steps in response to two violent assaults on ESA

youths. First, in early February 1999, an ESA youth was

murdered while visiting his family during a home visit made in

violation of ESA rules. The District official reviewing the

murder was “[u]nable to determine” whether D.C.’s related

statutes and policies were adequate, Pl.’s Ex. 32, and the

investigation went no further. Then, in early April 1999, an

ESA youth was mugged and robbed at his apartment by an

armed assailant after curfew. At the time, the youth was

violating curfew because he had another ESA youth (also

violating curfew) visiting in his apartment.

On the night of April 28, 1999, in violation of their curfew,

Tron or Tyrone (the record does not conclusively show which)

let a visitor into their apartment sometime after 11 p.m. Using

a silencer-equipped gun and firing single shots to the head, the

visitor killed both youths. The murders, which brought the

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death toll of ESA youths to three out of sixteen (a fourth would

be murdered by the end of the year), were never solved. At trial,

the homicide detective in charge of the case testified that the

murders resulted from a targeted killing. The detective testified

that he thought Tyrone was shot first and that when criminals

use silencers, typically “the first person [they] shoot is going to

be the subject that [they] are probably looking for.” Tr. 3/13/03

at 106; see also id. at 145-46. 

Succeeding Tron’s parents in interest, his grandmother

Minnie Smith sued various parties including the District, Gail

Turner, Queenstown Apartments, and ESA (renamed Re-Direct,

Inc., because its original name was improper under Maryland

law) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Smith

brought substantive due process claims against the District and

ESA pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and negligence claims against

all defendants. The district court rejected the District’s motion

for summary judgment on the substantive due process claim and

the case went to trial. See Smith v. District of Columbia, No. 00-

0894, slip op. at 7-14 (D.D.C. Nov. 18, 2002).

After the close of Smith’s case, which developed the facts

discussed above and included expert testimony, the District

moved for a directed verdict, which the court denied with

prejudice. Following presentation of defendants’ case, the jury

found that both the District and ESA had violated Tron’s

substantive due process rights. The jury also found the District

and ESA liable for negligence that proximately caused Tron’s

death, but determined that neither Queenstown Apartments nor

Turner had acted negligently. It awarded just over $72,000 in

damages. Only the District filed a post-verdict motion for

judgment as a matter of law, which the district court denied, see

Smith v. District of Columbia, No. 00-0894 (D.D.C. Sept. 11,

2003), and only the District now appeals. For the District to

prevail fully, it must do so on both the due process and

negligence counts; by contrast, if Smith prevails on the section

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1983 count, she will receive the full award.

II.

We begin with the applicable legal standard. Because a

stranger—not a government agent—murdered Tron, the District

can have committed a constitutional violation only if it had an

affirmative obligation to protect Tron from harm. As the

Supreme Court explained in DeShaney v. Winnebago County

Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 196 (1989), “the

Due Process Clauses generally confer no affirmative right to

governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to

secure life, liberty, or property interests.” Cf. Martinez v. State

of California, 444 U.S. 277, 283-85 (1980) (finding that state

parole board had no particular constitutional obligation to an

individual killed by a paroled prisoner). That said, the Court has

recognized that “in certain limited circumstances the

Constitution imposes upon the State affirmative duties of care

and protection with respect to particular individuals.”

DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 198. Such individuals include prisoners,

see Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976), and mental patients

involuntarily committed to state facilities, Youngberg v. Romeo,

457 U.S. 307 (1982). In such cases, governmental “deliberate

indifference” may shock the conscience sufficiently to violate

due process. See Fraternal Order of Police Dep’t of Corrs.

Labor Comm. v. Williams, 375 F.3d 1141, 1145-46 (D.C. Cir.

2004). DeShaney explained why:

[W]hen the State takes a person into its custody and

holds him there against his will, the Constitution

imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some

responsibility for his safety and general well-being. . . .

The rationale for this principle is simple enough: when

the State by the affirmative exercise of its power so

restrains an individual’s liberty that it renders him

unable to care for himself, and at the same time fails to

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provide for his basic human needs . . . it transgresses the

substantive limits on state action set by the . . . Due

Process Clause. 

489 U.S. at 199-200; see also County of Sacramento v. Lewis,

523 U.S. 833, 851 (1998). Conversely, deliberate indifference

will not violate due process where the state has no “heightened

responsibility toward the individual.” Butera v. District of

Columbia, 235 F.3d 637, 651 (D.C. Cir. 2001). DeShaney was

just such a case. There, the plaintiff argued the state had a

heightened responsibility to a child whom it had reason to

suspect was being abused by his father. Because the child

remained in his parent’s custody, however, the Court found that

no such responsibility existed and that the state therefore

committed no constitutional violation by failing to respond to

the abuse. See id. at 201-02. In a footnote, the Court added that

had “the State by the affirmative exercise of its power removed

[the child] from free society and placed him in a foster home

operated by its agents, we might have a situation sufficiently

analogous to incarceration or institutionalization to give rise to

an affirmative duty to protect.” Id. at 201 n.9. Observing that

several circuits had reached that very conclusion, the Court

“express[ed] no view on the validity of this analogy.” Id.

This case presents a scenario close to the one described in

the DeShaney footnote. Tron was an adjudicated delinquent

whom the District had, by affirmative exercise of its police

power, placed with its agent, ESA, through a court order

revocable only by another court order. According to Smith, the

District thus had sufficient custody over Tron to impose upon it

a constitutional duty not to act indifferently with respect to his

welfare. “[E]xercise of [the District’s] custodial power to

dictate the terms” of Tron’s “living arrangements” through a

court order deprived him of “liberty to choose his own living

arrangements.” Appellee’s Br. at 23. The District sees the case

very differently. Acknowledging that “to be sure, Tron was in

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the District’s legal custody,” Appellant’s Br. at 28, it argues that

nonetheless Tron “cannot meaningfully be said to have been in

the District’s custody when he was murdered,” id. at 27. We

agree with Smith.

For starters, the District’s legal custody over Tron is a good

indicator that it had a duty to look after him. Because the

District, rather than Tron’s family, had primary legal control

over him, the District had legal responsibility for his daily care.

Cf. Reno v. Koray, 515 U.S. 50, 63 (1995) (noting the power the

government has over those in its legal custody). The District

downplays the significance of this point, but our case law

recognizes the relevance of formal indicia in assessing whether

custody attaches for DeShaney purposes. In Harris v. District

of Columbia, 932 F.2d 10, 14 (D.C. Cir. 1991), we held that

District police officers had no clearly established affirmative

duty to someone they were transporting to the hospital because

he “had not been formally committed, either by conviction,

involuntary commitment, or arrest, to the charge of the District”

prior to the drug overdose that triggered his need for help. In

contrast to the facts of Harris, at the time Tron was murdered,

he was “someone whom [the District] ha[d] already formally

committed to its custody,” id. at 15.

Just as important, the District’s control over Tron restrained

his liberty against his will. An adjudicated delinquent placed at

ESA by a restrictive court order, Tron had to participate in the

program. To be sure, Tron had more freedom than a

prisoner—subject to ESA rules, he could come and go, and take

ESA-approved weekend home visits. ESA’s failure to crack

down on Tron’s curfew violations also left him with a longer

leash than he was formally entitled to under the program’s rules.

But such flexibility hardly amounts to freedom from state

restraints. Tron had to live at Queenstown Apartments. He had

no choice. He risked punishment, including the possibility of

returning to Oak Hill, when he failed to obey ESA restrictions

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on how and where he spent his time. The District had

“restrain[ed his] freedom to act on his own behalf,’” DeShaney,

489 U.S. at 200, and held him subject to its control.

The District insists that Tron’s liberty was unconstricted

because at his court hearing he had expressed a preference for

ESA over Oak Hill. But Tron could choose only between a

greater restraint and a lesser one. As District counsel

acknowledged at oral argument, he could not walk free.

Whether he preferred ESA or Oak Hill, he would remain a

juvenile delinquent held “against his will,” id., like the prisoner

in Estelle, 429 U.S. 97, and the involuntarily confined mental

patient in Youngberg, 457 U.S. 307. In this respect, he differed

sharply from plaintiffs in Powell v. District of Columbia, 634

A.2d 403 (D.C. 1993), a case relied on by the District as

persuasive authority. There, the D.C. Court of Appeals found

that the District had no affirmative duty towards a homeless

family whom it had provided with shelter. The court relied on

the fact that no family member “was a ward or prisoner of the

District, nor was the family’s freedom of action curtailed.” Id.

at 410. Unlike these family members—who could go elsewhere

if they objected to the shelter the District provided them—Tron

was legally bound to participate in ESA and live at the site it

provided. He could not have gone elsewhere even if, for

example, he felt threatened by his roommate or his neighbors.

For DeShaney purposes, he was thus in the District’s custody,

and the “Constitution impose[d] upon [the District] a

corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety

and general well-being.” DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 200.

This conclusion finds support in decisions (like those cited

in DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201 n.9) holding that children in foster

care are in state custody for substantive due process purposes

and accordingly that in placing them in foster homes and

monitoring their progress, the state owes them a constitutional

duty of care. See Doe v. New York City Dep’t of Social Servs.,

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649 F.2d 134, 141-42 (2d Cir. 1981); Nicini v. Morra, 212 F.3d

798, 808 (3d Cir. 2000) (en banc); Meador v. Cabinet for

Human Res., 902 F.2d 474, 475-76 (6th Cir. 1990); Norfleet v.

Ark. Dep’t of Human Servs., 989 F.2d 289, 293 (8th Cir. 1993);

Yvonne L. v. N. M. Dep’t of Human Servs., 959 F.2d 883, 890-93

(10th Cir. 1992); Taylor v. Ledbetter, 818 F.2d 791, 796 (11th

Cir. 1987) (en banc); see also Hernandez v. Tex. Dep’t of

Protective and Regulatory Servs., 380 F.3d 872, 880 (5th Cir.

2004) (assuming such a duty); K.H. v. Morgan, 914 F.2d 846,

851-52 (7th Cir. 1990) (only reaching duty to place, not duty to

monitor). But see Milburn v. Anne Arundel County Dep’t of

Soc. Servs., 871 F.2d 474, 476 (4th Cir. 1989) (holding that a

state had no affirmative duty to a child placed voluntarily by his

parents into foster care since “he was in the custody of his foster

parents, who were not state actors” rather than in the state’s

custody). Like such children, Tron not only looked to the

government as primary guardian of his needs, but, absent

District approval, also lacked freedom to seek alternate

arrangements—precisely the two circumstances courts have

found create DeShaney custody in the foster care situation. As

the Eighth Circuit explained, the state’s duty arises because in

“foster care, a child loses his freedom and ability to make

decisions about his own welfare, and must rely on the state to

take care of his needs.” Norfleet, 989 F.2d at 293; see also, e.g.,

Taylor, 818 F.2d at 795 (explaining that the state has an

affirmative duty because foster children are “placed . . . in a

custodial environment . . . [and] unable to seek alternative living

arrangements”).

While many of these foster care cases involved younger

children, the principle remains the same: where the government

assumes full responsibility for a child by stripping control from

the family and placing the child in a government-controlled

setting, the government assumes a duty for the child’s welfare.

Indeed, the Third Circuit has specifically applied this principle

to older children. Nicini, 212 F.3d at 808 (finding that the state

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owed a duty of care to an adolescent in foster care because even

though “foster children, especially older ones, enjoy a greater

degree of freedom and are more likely to be able to take steps to

ensure their own safety,” the state has nonetheless “by

affirmative act, render[ed them] substantially ‘dependent upon

the state . . . to meet [their] basic needs’”) (quoting D.R. v.

Middle Bucks Area Vocational Tech. Sch., 972 F.2d 1364, 1372

(3d Cir. 1992) (en banc)) (ellipsis in original). Similarly, we see

no reason to treat Tron differently because he was a juvenile

delinquent rather than a foster child. If anything, the difference

cuts in Tron’s favor, since it caused the District to commit him

to a state actor (ESA) rather than a purely private party. Cf.

K.H., 914 F.2d at 851-52 (suggesting that a state may have a

duty to monitor only if it places a child with state actors);

Milburn, 871 F.2d at 476-77 (similar).

Unhappy with the foster-child analogy, the District urges us

to look instead to decisions holding that public schoolchildren,

despite compulsory education laws, are not in state custody for

DeShaney purposes. See, e.g., D.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Vo.

Tech. Sch., 972 F.2d 1364, 1373 (3d Cir. 1992) (en banc); Doe

v. Hillsborough Indep. Sch. Dist., 113 F.3d 1412, 1415 (5th Cir.

1997) (en banc). But see Hasenfus v. LaJeunesse, 175 F.3d 68,

72 (1st Cir. 1999) (suggesting, without deciding, that under

certain circumstances a public school has a constitutional duty

of care towards its students). Just as courts have found that

compulsory schooling laws create no affirmative state duty, the

District argues, so should we find that the District’s restrictive

placement of Tron at ESA gave rise to no affirmative duty on its

part.

At least on the surface, we see some tension between the

foster care and public school cases. Both involve state

constriction of a child’s liberty—the child must live with the

foster parents and the child must receive schooling—yet only

the former triggers DeShaney custody. Courts have typically

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distinguished these cases by treating the custody analysis as an

all-or-nothing inquiry: the government has either assumed

primary responsibility for controlling and caring for a child (and

thus, as in the foster care context, the child is always in

government custody) or it has assumed only limited

responsibilities for parts of the day (and thus, as in the school

cases, the child is never in government custody). For example,

the Third Circuit found no custody in the school context because

“parents remain the primary caretakers,” whereas in the foster

care context “the state assumes an important continuing . . .

responsibility for the child’s well-being” and “the child’s

placement renders him or her dependent upon the state, through

the foster family, to meet the child’s basic needs.” D.R., 972

F.2d at 1371, 1372. Similarly, the Fifth Circuit stressed that in

the school context the “custody is intermittent,” “the student

returns home each day,” and “[p]arents remain the primary

source for the basic needs of their children.” Doe, 113 F.3d at

1415; see also Sargi v. Kent City Bd. of Educ., 70 F.3d 907, 911

(6th Cir. 1995) (noting that “the parents, not the state, remain the

child’s primary caretakers”).

But we need not explore the ins and outs of this issue. For

our purposes, it matters not at all whether DeShaney custody

requires that the government be the child’s primary caretaker,

that the government constrict the child’s liberty, or both. Nor

does it matter whether DeShaney custody is an all-or-nothing

affair or can instead, as the First Circuit has suggested, attach at

intermittent times based on particular circumstances, see

Hasenfus, 175 F.3d at 72. In Tron’s case, like the foster care

cases and unlike the public school cases, all these conditions

were met. The District served as Tron’s legal custodian and

primary caregiver. It placed him in a program that constrained

his liberty by limiting, among other things, where he lived and

what he could do. Indeed, Tron was murdered while subject to

these constraints—at Queenstown Apartments, at night, and

during curfew. For DeShaney purposes, then, Tron remained in

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16

District custody, and if the District was indeed deliberately

indifferent to his welfare in a way that shocked the conscience

and led to his murder, then the District committed a

constitutional violation—the issue to which we now turn.

III.

In determining whether the jury could reasonably have

found that the District violated Tron’s due process rights, we

view all disputed facts and draw all reasonable inferences in

favor of Minnie Smith, the prevailing party. Ekedahl, 183 F.3d

at 858. Pointing out that Smith prevailed against the District and

ESA but not Turner and Queenstown, the District throws a twist

into this standard of review, arguing that we must view all facts

related to Queenstown and Turner in the light most favorable to

those parties, while viewing all other facts in the light most

favorable to Smith. But the District cites no authority for this

novel proposition, nor have we found any. Had Smith appealed

the jury’s verdict in favor of Queenstown and Turner, we would

view them as prevailing parties for purposes of Smith’s appeal,

but we see no reason why the District should benefit from all

inferences to which Queenstown and Turner might have been

entitled. Perhaps the District meant to argue that the jury

verdicts were inconsistent. In civil cases where this argument is

properly raised, it does impose a special obligation on the court

to view the evidence in a manner that reconciles the verdicts if

possible, and to grant a new trial if not. Freeman v. Chicago

Park Dist., 189 F.3d 613, 615 (7th Cir. 1999). While we have

serious doubts about whether to apply this standard where, as

here, the issue is not properly raised, see Babcock v. Gen.

Motors Corp., 299 F.3d 60, 63-64 (1st Cir. 2002) (holding that

in order to preserve the issue a party must object to inconsistent

verdicts prior to judgment being entered), we need not resolve

that point since, as we explain below, see infra at 25-26, the

verdicts are consistent. 

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17

The inconsistent-verdicts issue aside, we may reverse the

district court’s denial of the District’s motion for judgment as a

matter of law only if no reasonable jury could have found in

Smith’s favor. Ekedahl, 183 F.3d at 858. “[I]ntru[sion] upon

the rightful province of the jury . . . is highly disfavored. We

have repeatedly emphasized that ‘[t]he jury’s verdict must stand

unless the evidence, together with all inferences that can

reasonably be drawn therefrom is so one-sided that reasonable

[people] could not disagree on the verdict.’” Boodoo v. Cary, 21

F.3d 1157, 1161 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (quoting McNeal v. Hi-Lo

Powered Scaffolding, Inc., 836 F.2d 637, 640-41 (D.C. Cir.

1988)) (third alteration in original). “[W]e cannot substitute our

judgment for that of the jury; therefore, we neither assess

witness credibility nor weigh the evidence.” Mackey, 8 F.3d at

829.

Moreover, because the District raised its sufficiency-of-theevidence arguments as to the due process claim only in its preverdict motion for judgment as a matter of law and not in its

post-verdict motion, the most it can win is a new trial.

Frederick v. District of Columbia, 254 F.3d 156, 160 (D.C. Cir.

2001); but see Unitherm Food Sys. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 125 S.

Ct. 1396 (Feb. 28, 2005) (No. 04-597) (granting certiorari to

resolve the scope of an appellate court’s review in such

situations), granting cert. to 375 F.3d 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2004).

Since, as we explain below, sufficient evidence supports the

jury’s verdict, we need not consider whether the District’s

failure to move for judgment as a matter of law at the close of its

own case (as opposed to at the close of Smith’s case) further

limits our review “to considering whether the verdict is so

unsupported by the evidence that allowing it to stand would

constitute a manifest miscarriage of justice,” Frederick, 254

F.3d at 162. 

The District presents two fact-based challenges to the jury’s

verdict. First, it argues that the jury could not have reasonably

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18

concluded that the District had a deliberately indifferent policy

or custom under Monell v. New York City Department of Social

Services, 436 U.S. 658, 691 (1978) (holding that municipal

liability for purposes of claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

must stem from an unconstitutional policy or custom rather than

simply from respondeat superior). Second, it claims that even

had such a policy or custom existed, the jury could not have

reasonably found it to be a “moving force” (i.e., cause) of Tron’s

death. We address each argument in turn.

Deliberate Indifference

While a government “policy or custom” is typically an

affirmative act, government failure to set standards or train

employees can sometimes amount to an unconstitutional policy

or custom. Considering a case where the plaintiff alleged that

failure to train police to handle detainees with medical problems

amounted to an unconstitutional municipal policy, the Supreme

Court explained:

It may seem contrary to common sense to assert that a

municipality will actually have a policy of not taking

reasonable steps to train its employees. But it may happen

that in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or

employees the need for more or different training is so

obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the

violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers of

the city can reasonably be said to have been deliberately

indifferent to the need. In that event, the failure to provide

proper training may fairly be said to represent a policy for

which the city is responsible.

City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 390 (1989) (footnote

omitted). Similarly, in this case Smith alleges that “the need for

more or different” standards YSA employees could use in

selecting and monitoring providers was “so obvious and the

inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional

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19

rights” that it amounted to a deliberately indifferent District

policy. The District disagrees, but in order to prevail it must

show that no reasonable jury could have reached that

conclusion. Reviewing the record ourselves, we think sufficient

evidence supports the jury’s conclusion that the District’s lack

of standards amounted to a policy of deliberate indifference that

shocks the conscience.

The record makes patently clear that the District had no

criteria for selecting or monitoring providers like ESA. Indeed,

the District does not claim otherwise. As the district court

found, this lack of criteria related directly to the Mayor’s

violation of the District’s Youth Residential Facilities Licensure

Act, which, for twelve years before Tron’s death, had required

the promulgation of standards for youth residential facilities.

See Tr. 3/25/03 at 200-02 (describing the Mayor’s failure to

promulgate standards and holding that the Act “very clear[ly]”

applied to independent living programs). While the District’s

failure to follow its own law, standing alone, is insufficient for

a constitutional tort, “it is far from irrelevant,” Doe, 649 F.2d at

145. “The more a statute or regulation clearly mandates a

specific course of conduct, the more it furnishes a plausible

basis for inferring deliberate indifference from a failure to act.”

Id. at 146. Given the Youth Residential Facilities Licensure

Act, the jury could have inferred that the District knew it needed

standards for programs that housed troubled youths.

Even more significantly, uncontested testimony by Paul

DeMuro, one of Smith’s witnesses and an expert in juvenile

justice and child welfare, established that the District’s failure

to have such criteria left it far below what national standards of

care require of states and municipalities operating independent

living facilities for juvenile delinquents. This held true with

respect to both provider selection and monitoring. 

As to provider selection, DeMuro called YSA’s lack of

criteria for selecting independent living providers “quite

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20

unusual.” Tr. 3/14/03 at 68. “[I]n most states,” he testified,

“when there is any kind of residential program or non-residential

program, the public agency will have a set of standards or

licensing regulations that they would go from to develop a

contract with any provider.” Id. He went on, “in terms of the

kind of national standards, one would expect there would be . .

. written criteria about [s]ite selection, written criteria, a

stipulation about selection and training of staff, written criteria

about the process of selecting kids and getting them prepared for

independent living which is a very tricky deal when you are

thinking about a 17 or 18 year old living semi-independently .

. . [and a] written description of a quality assurance of the

reporting system.” Id. at 73-74. The need for such criteria, he

explained, was particularly important in light of the

“problematic” potential of having “a number of teens together,

particularly juvenile justice youngsters.” Id. at 79.

DeMuro also testified that ESA failed to meet national

standards in a number of respects which the District, having no

criteria, failed to discover during the selection process. Not only

was ESA a “relatively new organization,” but it lacked

“anybody who had experience in independent living programs.”

Id. at 77. It even lacked the license it needed to operate, which

the District “[a]bsolutely” should have determined, id. ESA

employed counselors with drug records, who “should [have

been] excluded” under national standards. Id. at 81.

Additionally, DeMuro testified, national standards required the

District to have criteria for researching and evaluating site

safety. Absent such criteria, the District’s review fell short.

While “one can argue [about whether the site] was a high crime

area or not,” DeMuro testified, the District should have at least

looked into this issue. Id. at 82-83. Instead, a District employee

just “drove around the area a few times” and failed to do “a

thorough enough check on what this location meant in terms of

crime factors for kids.” Id. at 83.

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21

As to monitoring, DeMuro testified that the District

similarly fell well short of national standards of care by failing

to have an appropriate policy (or, indeed, any policy at all).

“National standards . . . would say that there should be a

monitoring system in place and that there should be quality

assurance and a process whereby the jurisdiction that is

monitoring the youngsters’ behavior know[s] the program as it

develops.” Id. at 82. According to DeMuro, the District failed

in virtually all aspects of its monitoring responsibilities.

Lacking criteria, he explained, the “District failed to do a

thorough job, do due diligence in terms of monitoring this

particular program.” Id. YSA had a “real problem” in how it

dealt with incidents like Tron’s repeated curfew violations,

where ESA’s failure to respond “sets up terrible expectations

and consequences between the youngster and the program.” Id.

at 84. YSA had a “responsibility,” id. at 90, which it failed to

discharge, to make sure that ESA was keeping track of crimes

in the complex, including the many that occurred prior to Tron’s

death, see supra at 7. YSA fell “woefully short” of national

standards in how it dealt with the armed robbery of an ESA

youth at his apartment: it failed to address either the fact that

this incident involved two curfew violations or the reality of the

violence that placed “at least two of the youngsters . . . in

danger.” Tr. 3/14/03 at 85-86. The District should have

conducted a program review “from soup to nuts,” and it should

have done the same thing—“pretty quickly”—after the early

February death of another ESA youth. Id. at 86. Instead, the

District responded to that death, like the armed robbery, in a

“tremendously inappropriate” manner. Id.

In sum, DeMuro testified that absent written criteria, the

District’s attempt to select and monitor its provider of

independent living programs was analogous to “building a house

without an architect.” Id. at 68.

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22

From such evidence, the jury could have reasonably

concluded that “the need for more or different” standards for

selecting and monitoring independent living programs for

juvenile delinquents was “so obvious and the inadequacy so

likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights” that it

constituted a deliberately indifferent city policy or custom. See

City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 390. In particular, the jury could

have reasonably inferred from DeMuro’s uncontested testimony

that the lack of standards created grave risks to youths in District

custody. Without standards—required both nationally and by

the District’s own law—YSA employees had no guidance for

selecting and monitoring providers. Without standards,

delinquent youths, a “tricky,” “problematic,” and at-risk

population, could be sent to totally inappropriate programs run

by unqualified counselors and located in unsafe areas. Without

standards, these youths could then be left in such programs

despite ensuing violence. Indeed, all these risks were realized

when YSA chose ESA as a provider and subsequently failed to

react to the murder of one youth and the armed robbery of

another. In Youngberg’s words, the jury reasonably could have

thought that the District’s failure to have standards caused it to

fall below the “minimally adequate or reasonable [protection

required] to ensure safety,” 457 U.S. at 319, for youths like Tron

within its custody. 

This conclusion finds support in cases holding that juries

may infer deliberate indifference from the District’s failure to

have adequate safeguards for dealing with situations fraught

with risk. In Parker v. District of Columbia, 850 F.2d 708 (D.C.

Cir. 1988), a case brought by a man shot by District officers

attempting to arrest him in Maryland, we held that the jury could

infer deliberate indifference from the police department’s failure

to train officers adequately in disarmament and in

extrajurisdictional arrest procedures. Expert testimony

established that police training inadequately addressed problems

unique to extrajurisdictional arrests and that, as an expert

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23

“described[] and eventually demonstrated on [plaintiff’s]

counsel,” well-trained police could have subdued the suspect

without shooting him. Id. at 713-14; see also Young v. City of

Providence ex rel. Napolitano, 404 F.3d 4 (1st Cir. 2005). Just

as in Parker, the jury here could have reasonably inferred from

DeMuro’s testimony that the District’s lack of criteria fell well

below acceptable norms. Indeed, this case is even stronger:

whereas in Parker the police department offered at least some

training related to disarmament and extrajurisdictional arrest,

here YSA, in the words of its Administrator, had “no specific

standards” at all for selecting and monitoring independent living

programs, see Tr. 3/17/03 at 32.

 In another case, Morgan v. District of Columbia, 824 F.2d

1049 (D.C. Cir. 1987), we concluded that the jury could have

found deliberate indifference where the District’s policy of

overcrowding jails led it to put a prisoner with “violent

tendencies” in a space with other prisoners, one of whom he

then assaulted. See id. at 1058-59. We held that since the

District had reason to be concerned about violence related to

overcrowding, the jury could have reasonably inferred “that the

District knew or should have known that its persistent method

of operating the Jail increased the risk of violent harm to

inmates.” Id. at 1060-61. Like the jury in Morgan, the jury here

could have reasonably inferred that the District acted

indifferently not merely because its lack of criteria led it to send

the youths to a program located at a dangerous site and run by

inept counselors who failed to hold Tron and other youths

accountable for violating program rules, but also because it

failed to react—at all—to the murder of one ESA youth and the

mugging of another, even though both incidents related directly

to the program’s deficiencies. 

While we are persuaded that a jury could find deliberate

indifference that shocks the conscience based on the facts of this

case, the dissent, engaging in something akin to de novo review,

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24

takes a different view. First, the dissent treats the District’s lack

of standards as “barely relevant” to whether it was deliberately

indifferent to Tron’s welfare because “it does not follow that ad

hoc decisions are necessarily reckless.” Dissenting op. at 6. But

DeMuro’s testimony, entirely ignored by the dissent, offers a

clear basis for inferring that the District’s lack of standards was

reckless precisely because it was likely to lead to shoddy

provider selection and monitoring. Of course, lack of standards

might not always lead to bad provider-selection decisions—just

as lack of training might not mean that officers always fail to

disarm suspects—but that is a matter of causation. Second, the

dissent considers the District’s selection of ESA “largely

irrelevant” because, in the dissent’s view, “it is entirely possible

that ESA, although inexperienced, ran the program adequately.”

Id. at 6. We agree that this is possible, but the record contains

evidence from which a reasonable jury could reach a different

conclusion, such as DeMuro’s expert testimony that ESA had a

“real problem” in dealing with repeated curfew violations, see

Tr. 3/14/03 at 84. Third, the dissent concludes that “it is silly”

to suggest that the District’s approval of Queenstown

Apartments as the program site could have been deliberately

indifferent. Dissenting op. at 7. Were this approval deliberately

indifferent, the dissent asserts, it would mean that all parents

who had “chosen” to live at Queenstown were themselves

deliberately indifferent to their children’s welfare. Id. The

dissent’s logic not only depends on, among other things, the

unsupported assumption that such parents have the choice (in

the sense of having viable options) to select safe locales, but also

implies that no area—no matter how high the crime rate—is

inappropriate for the District to send children to, provided that

at least some families live there. The dissent further suggests

that Queenstown Apartments was relatively safe and—in a

footnote—claims its residents faced less risk of serious crime

than “the average resident” of the District. Id. at 8 & n.*. Here,

the dissent both ignores record evidence and invokes statistics

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25

neither presented to the jury nor subjected to cross-examination.

The District never offered evidence as to D.C. crime rates. But

Smith did offer expert testimony to the effect that Queenstown’s

reported crimes for 1998 “represent[ed] a high . . . amount of

criminal activity in the community,” see Tr. 3/14/03 at 49, and

that Queenstown was “an area of high drug trafficking” and a

“high crime area” in 1998 and 1999, see Tr. 3/13/03 at 183, see

also id. at 194; Tr. 3/18/03 at 100-01. The dissent may disagree

with these characterizations, but our role is limited to

determining whether “sufficient evidence in the record []

support[s] the jury’s verdict,” Williams v. First Gov’t Mortgage

and Investors Corp., 225 F.3d 738, 742 (D.C. Cir. 2000).

Finally, returning as promised to the question of verdict

consistency, we see no inconsistency between the jury’s verdict

against the District and its verdicts in favor of Queenstown and

Turner. We take the Queenstown verdict first. According to the

District, because the jury found in favor of Queenstown

Apartments, we must conclude that the site was safe and

therefore that the District’s lack of standards for site selection

could not have amounted to deliberate indifference. Both the

premise and the deduction are flawed. The jury could have

reasonably found for Queenstown not because it thought the site

safe, but because Queenstown Apartments had a significantly

lower duty to the youths (landlord rather than guardian), lacked

notice that these youths might prove particularly troublesome,

and had undertaken at least some efforts to deal with rising

crime rates. Moreover, even if Queenstown Apartments had

marginally adequate safety systems, the District deserves no

credit because, as King himself testified, the District never even

investigated site safety.

As to Turner, not only was she the ninth YSA Administrator

in sixteen years, but at the time of Tron’s murder she had

worked there for less than a year. Crediting her testimony that

it typically “takes about twelve months to learn what the job is

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26

and what the requirements are” for such positions, Tr. 3/17/03

at 26, the jury could have found that she did not act negligently

when she failed to grasp YSA’s need for standards for

residential youth programs. This is particularly plausible given

Turner’s testimony that dealing with other juvenile facilities

occupied most of her time. She had to address YSA’s recent

closure of two facilities pursuant to court order, its payment of

$3 million in fines relating to overcrowded facilities, and

“conditions of confinement [that] were said to have been

deplorable.” Id. at 65. Turner thought it a “success story” that

YSA was not in receivership. Id. at 66.

Moving Force

A deliberately indifferent policy or custom is “deemed to be

the moving force of a constitutional injury if the ‘conduct is a

substantial factor in bringing about the harm.’” Parker, 850

F.2d at 714 (quoting Morgan, 824 F.2d at 1062-63). The policy

or custom must be “closely related to the ultimate injury,” and

the court should inquire whether “the injury [would] have been

avoided” in its absence. City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 391. We

have equated moving force with proximate cause. Morgan, 824

F.3d at 1058; see also Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, 471 U.S. 808,

833 n.9 (1985) (Brennan, J., concurring). Proximate cause

“includes the notion of cause in fact,” W. Page Keeton et al.,

Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 30, at 165 (5th ed.

1984), and requires an element of foreseeability, see id. § 42, at

273-74. 

Although “‘the proximate cause of an injury is ordinarily a

question for the jury,’” Hicks v. United States, 511 F.2d 407,

420 (D.C. Cir. 1975) (citation omitted); see also, e.g., Rieser v.

District of Columbia, 563 F.2d 462, 480 (D.C. Cir. 1977), the

District asserts that the jury here could not have reasonably

concluded that its lack of standards was a moving force behind

Tron’s death. As to cause-in-fact—the requirement that Tron’s

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27

death “would not have occurred but for [the District’s] conduct,”

see Keeton et al., supra, § 41, at 266—the District claims that “it

cannot fairly be said that . . . there was an affirmative link

between” Tron’s death and the District policy or custom.

Appellant’s Br. at 33. Unwilling to rest entirely on this claim,

the District continues: “[a]t worst, YSA’s selection of ESA to

run an independent living program at Queenstown was a ‘but

for’ cause of his death.” Id. at 33. In the District’s view, it

could not have foreseen Tron’s death: “it was too remote a

consequence of the District’s inaction; there is no suggestion

that Tron’s assailant was an agent of the District; and the

District was unaware that Tron (or his roommate) had been

targeted for murder.” Id. at 33-34.

Again viewing the record in the light most favorable to

Smith, we conclude that the jury could have reasonably found

both cause-in-fact and foreseeability. Cause-in-fact is

straightforward. The jury could have reasonably inferred from

DeMuro’s testimony that if the District had adopted proper

standards, either it would never have selected ESA as a provider

(particularly given the inexperience of ESA employees) or it

would have required ESA to take additional steps to ensure

Tron’s and the other youths’ safety, such as tightening curfew

enforcement and arranging for more security for their

apartments—particularly in the wake of the after-curfew armed

robbery of one youth earlier that spring. From this inference,

the jury could further have concluded that had the District taken

these proper precautions, Tron would have lived. Indeed,

DeMuro saw a “direct causal link” between the District’s failure

to follow national standards of care and Tron’s death. Tr.

3/14/03 at 90-91. 

As for foreseeability, the “defendant may be held liable for

harm that is foreseeably attributable to his conduct as well as for

unforeseeable harm attributable to his conduct, unless it appears

that the chain of events is highly extraordinary in retrospect.”

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28

Parker, 850 F.2d at 714 (internal quotation marks and citation

omitted). Here, the jury could have easily found that the

District’s lack of criteria for site safety, provider experience, and

program monitoring led foreseeably to unsafe providers, which

in turn led foreseeably to youths becoming victims of crime.

Indeed, an expert testified that in light of the Queenstown crime

rate alone, the murders of Tron and Tyrone were “very

predictable, very foreseeable.” Tr. 3/18/2003 at 98. The causal

connection resembles that in Morgan, 824 F.2d at 1063, where

we held that the jury had a reasonable basis for concluding that

the District’s deliberate indifference to overcrowded prison

conditions led foreseeably to increased fighting among inmates

which in turn led foreseeably to increased injuries. See also

Parker, 850 F.2d at 714 (holding that failure to train officers to

disarm suspects rendered foreseeable the injuries to a suspect

shot by an officer who did not attempt to disarm him). Indeed,

the earlier crimes against ESA youths made the risks to Tron

and the others all the more foreseeable.

The District suggests that even if danger to the youths’

safety was a foreseeable consequence of its deliberate

indifference in selecting providers, it nonetheless had no way to

have foreseen that a program youth would be targeted for

murder. In a similar vein, the dissent concludes that because we

do not know who killed Tron, his murder was not foreseeable.

See dissenting op. at 9. We disagree with both points.

Adjudicated delinquents, ESA youths had criminal records and

likely connections to dangerous characters. Given their

backgrounds, it is unsurprising that lack of

supervision—especially combined with a questionable site

location—would not only increase the likelihood they would

become victims of random violence, but also make them more

likely to engage in behavior that put them at risk of targeted

violence. As Turner herself put it, “many of these [delinquent]

young people put themselves in harm’s way and don’t act

appropriately many times . . . . [B]ecause of their life

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29

experiences and how they live, and what they are sometimes

attracted to, they are at higher risk of having things done to

them.” Tr. 03/17/03 at 86. We may not know who killed Tron

or why, but a reasonable jury could have found such targeted

killings foreseeable in light of the District’s failings and at any

rate “not highly extraordinary in retrospect,” Parker, 850 F.2d

at 714; see also Morgan, 824 F.2d at 1063.

IV.

In sum, we conclude that sufficient evidence supports the

jury’s verdict as to Smith’s substantive due process claim. This

is not a case where “the evidence, together with all inferences

that can reasonably be drawn therefrom is so one-sided that

reasonable [people] could not disagree on the verdict.” Boodoo,

21 F.3d at 1161 (quoting McNeal, 836 F.2d at 640-41). Because

Smith received no separate damages from her common law

negligence claim, we have no need to consider the District’s

challenges to its liability on that count. We affirm the district

court’s denial of the District’s motion for judgment as a matter

of law.

So ordered.

USCA Case #03-7143 Document #903631 Filed: 07/05/2005 Page 29 of 40
GINSBURG, Chief Judge, dissenting: The Court today holds

the District of Columbia violated the substantive component of

the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the

Constitution of the United States based upon a murder that, as

far as the evidence shows and common sense dictates, the

District could neither have foreseen nor, by taking reasonable

precautions, prevented. I therefore join neither the opinion nor

the judgment of the Court. 

I. Background 

The evidence, viewed most favorably to the appellee, tells

a story that is not especially complex. Tron Lindsey ran away

from home at the age of 15 and thereafter lived on his own for

about two years, during which time he kept out of trouble with

the law. In 1998, Lindsey, then 17, was arrested for assault,

adjudged a delinquent, and placed in the District’s Oak Hill

Youth Center.

The following year his case was assigned to Joyce Bradford,

a Superior Court probation officer, who found Lindsey “wanted

to complete his education” and was “pursuing his GED at Oak

Hill”; had “very limited court involvement”; and “very much

wanted to be independent, because he had lived in the

community for approximately two years on his own.” Bradford

concluded it was not feasible to place Lindsey with either his

mother or his grandmother, Minnie Smith. Accordingly, she

recommended, and the court agreed, that Lindsey be placed in

a supervised independent living program, which would enable

him both to complete his education and to get a job.

Lindsey was enrolled in the program run by Educational

Solutions Academy (ESA) at the Queenstown Apartments in

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2

Prince George’s County, Maryland, in March 1999, three

months before his 18th birthday. Lindsey’s participation in the

program appeared to pay immediate dividends: He entered a

program at Covenant House for at-risk youth; met with an onsite social worker; scheduled an independent study program; and

filled out job applications. To be sure, Lindsey’s performance

was not unblemished: He often left his study program early and

regularly failed to return to his apartment before his curfew of

7:00 p.m. Those infractions, however, went neither unnoticed

nor unaddressed by ESA and nothing in the record suggests

Lindsey transgressed in any way that might have endangered his

life. To the contrary, the record shows Lindsey, nearly an adult,

was succeeding admirably in an independent living environment

when he was murdered. 

Unfortunately we know little about Lindsey’s murder.

Lindsey and his roommate were found dead in their apartment

on April 29, 1999, each with a single gunshot to the head fired

from a gun with a crude silencer attached. The assailant, whose

identity remains unknown, was admitted to the apartment

without the use of force. Significantly, the police concluded the

murder was targeted but they could not confidently determine

whether the target was Lindsey or his roommate, and the

evidence in this case sheds no light upon that question.

Lindsey’s grandmother, Minnie Smith, acting on behalf of

his estate, sued ESA, the Queenstown Apartments, the District

of Columbia and the District employee who ran the Youth

Services Administration, which oversaw the independent living

program, seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for a

violation of substantive due process and for negligence under

the common law of the District. The jury, finding the District

and ESA had both violated the due process clause and been

negligent, awarded Smith $72,000 in damage. The Queenstown

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Apartments and the District employee were held not liable. 

II. Analysis 

On appeal the District argues Smith failed to prove both her

constitutional and her common law claims. Because, as the

Court notes, Court Op. at 8-9, each claim would individually

support the entire award of damages, I consider them both.

A. The Due Process Claim

In order to prove her claim under the due process clause,

Smith must establish (1) the District owed Lindsey a duty of

care; (2) the District breached that duty by an act exhibiting

deliberate indifference to Lindsey’s well-being “so egregious, so

outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary

conscience,” County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 847

n.8 (1998); and (3) a District policy or custom was the “moving

force behind the alleged constitutional violation,” which requires

showing either that Lindsey’s murder was foreseeable or that it

was not “highly extraordinary in retrospect,” Parker v. Dist. of

Columbia, 850 F.2d 708, 714 (D.C. Cir. 1988).

1. The District’s Duty 

In ordinary circumstances “the Constitution does not

guarantee due care on the part of state officials; liability for

negligently inflicted harm is categorically beneath the threshold

of constitutional due process.” Lewis, 523 U.S. at 849. “[W]hen

the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there

against his will,” however, the substantive component of the due

process clause “imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume

some responsibility for his safety and general well-being.”

DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dep’t of Social Servs., 489 U.S.

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4

189, 199-200 (1989). More specifically, “when the State ... so

restrains an individual’s liberty that it renders him unable to care

for himself, and at the same time fails to provide for his basic

human needs ... it transgresses the substantive limits on state

action” set by the Constitution. Id. at 200. 

I agree with the Court that, because he was required to live

at the Queenstown Apartments, Lindsey was to that extent in the

“custody” of the District, and the District therefore owed him a

“corresponding duty.” Because there are degrees of restraint

within the concept of custody, the duty imposed by the

Constitution is also one of degree: If the restraint of a person’s

liberty is tight, then the duty of the state to provide for his wellbeing is correspondingly elevated, cf. Taylor By and Through

Walker v. Ledbetter, 818 F.2d 791, 797 (11th Cir. 1987) (en

banc) (“foster children [are] under the umbrella of protection

afforded by the fourteenth amendment” because they are

“isolated” and “helpless”; without “investigation, supervision,

and constant contact ... a child placed in a foster home is at the

mercy of the foster parents”), whereas if the restraint is loose,

then the duty is correspondingly lower, cf. D.R. v. Middlebucks

Area Vocational Technical Sch., 972 F.2d 1364, 1373 (3d Cir.

1992) (en banc) (“compulsory attendance laws [do] not liken

school children to prisoners and the involuntarily committed,

both of whom are unable to provide for their own basic human

needs”). 

With this proportionality in mind, I agree with the District’s

observation that ESA, when it constrained Lindsey to live in the

Queenstown Apartments, hardly “render[ed] him unable to care

for himself.” Lindsey sought out the program precisely in order

to enjoy the freedom it offered -- to go to school, to get a job,

and to live independently -- and Ms. Bradford recommended he

be placed in the program because he was not in need of a more

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*

 The Supreme Court has held that “in a due process

challenge to executive action, the threshold question is whether the

behavior of the governmental officer ... may fairly be said to shock the

contemporary conscience.” Lewis, 523 U.S. at 847 n.8. “Whether the

point of the conscience shocking is reached when injuries are

produced with culpability ... following from something more than

negligence but less than intentional conduct ... is a matter for closer

calls.” Id. at 849. Because not every instance of deliberate

indifference may fairly be “condemned as conscience shocking,” id.

restrictive regimen. It is also worth recalling that when Lindsey

began the program he was well-nigh an adult and had already

lived on his own for two years; while living at the Queenstown

Apartments, from which he would be able to come and go for

school and work, Lindsey was not a helpless ward of the

District. To be sure, Lindsey was not free to quit the program,

as the Court repeatedly points out, Court Op. at 5, 11, and 15,

but that establishes only that he was in custody -- not that he was

so restrained that the District had a duty to guard him against

any and all harms, including his improbable targeted murder.

See DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201 (“While the State may have been

aware of the dangers [the youth] faced in the free world, it

played no part in their creation, nor did it do anything to render

him more vulnerable to them”); Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R.

Co., 162 N.E. 99, 100 (N.Y. 1928) (“The risk reasonably to be

perceived defines the duty to be obeyed”). 

2. Deliberate Indifference 

Nor did Smith prove the District exhibited such “deliberate

indifference” to Lindsey’s welfare as to “shock the

contemporary conscience.” Fraternal Order of Police Dep’t of

Corrs. Labor Comm. v. Williams, 375 F.3d 1141, 1145 (D.C.

Cir. 2004).*

 Smith argues the District showed such indifference

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6

at 850, the question here is whether the District exhibited deliberate

indifference to Lindsey’s well-being and if so, whether that

indifference is shocking to the “contemporary conscience.” 

because it “fail[e]d to develop and issue any standards ... to

govern the [ESA program].” That, however, is barely relevant

to whether the District breached its duty to Lindsey. A standard

may facilitate consistent decisionmaking, but it does not follow

that ad hoc decisions are necessarily reckless. The truly relevant

inquiry is whether the District made any ad hoc decision that

exhibited deliberate indifference to Lindsey’s well-being.

Smith’s allegations regarding the District’s selection of ESA

as a provider are also largely irrelevant. There is record

evidence ESA was not experienced in operating an independent

living program but Smith must still show ESA took or failed to

take some action that exhibited deliberate indifference to the

enrollees’ safety, as it is entirely possible ESA, although

inexperienced, ran the program adequately. Smith’s contention

that ESA failed to enforce Lindsey’s curfew does not suffice

because the record establishes ESA docked Lindsey’s allowance

in an attempt to deter curfew infractions. 

The only relevant decisions identified by the Court are the

District’s approval of ESA’s selection of the Queenstown

Apartments to house program enrollees and its failure to monitor

crime at the Queenstown Apartments. As for the site selection

process, the Queenstown Apartment complex was chosen

because it was a “blue collar community” in a “pretty decent

neighborhood” that was “family-oriented,” and near the

amenities necessary for independent living. Indeed, an ESA

director had lived within walking distance of the Queenstown

Apartments for five years. Smith’s key witness testified only

that the site selection process should have been more

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*

 For perspective, note that if we make the conservative

assumption that only 2,000 people inhabited the 1,067 units at the

apartment complex, then Smith’s data show the probability of a

“thorough.” But surely deliberate indifference, like ambition,

must be made of sterner stuff.

In any event, it is silly to suggest the District showed

deliberate indifference to Lindsey’s safety by approving

Lindsey’s placement at the Queenstown Apartments, which has

1,067 units, presumably rented to householders who -- apart

from the ESA participants in eight or nine apartments -- had

chosen to live there. Does Smith, or for that matter the Court,

truly mean to suggest that any parent who housed his or her

family in that complex exhibited deliberate indifference to their

well-being? That seems the unavoidable implication of the

plaintiff’s argument. 

Smith also says the complex was “inundated” with violent

crime around the time of Lindsey’s murder, which the District

would have known had it monitored the ESA program more

closely. As a foundation for this assertion Smith points to all of

seven robberies and assaults committed at the complex during

the seven months October 1998 through April 1999, including

one robbery of an ESA participant. The record makes clear,

however, ESA did not turn a blind eye to the crime against the

ESA participant; rather, it assisted him in reporting the crime to

the police despite some evidence suggesting it was staged. The

remaining six crimes, spanning a period of seven months, could

hardly have put either ESA or the District upon notice of any

heightened need to guard Lindsey against violent crime. After

all, the jury found the Queenstown Apartments was not liable

for Lindsey’s murder, presumably because Queenstown

residents enjoyed a reasonable level of security.*

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Queenstown resident being the victim of a violent crime over a oneyear period was .6%, or one in 166. Meanwhile, the average resident

of the District faced almost three times that risk (1.6%), or one in 62.

According to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, in 1999

residents of the District were the victims of 8,449 violent crimes --

homicides, forcible rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults, see

Citywide Crime Statistics, Annual Totals, 1993-2004 available at

http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1239,q, 547256,mpdcNav_GID,

1556.asp, at a time when, according to the D.C. Office of Planning,

the District had a population of 519,000. Population and Rates of

Selected Components of Change, April 1990-July 1999 available at

http://www.dclibrary.org/sdc/pop-comp-change-rate.html.

Accordingly, a District resident faced a 1.6% probability (8,449 ÷

519,000 = 0.016) of being the victim of a violent crime that year. 

In the final analysis, regardless whether the selection of a

site could have been more “thorough” or the District could have

monitored crime at the complex more closely, it is obvious the

District’s actions did not amount to an “executive abuse of

power ... which shocks the conscience.” Williams, 375 F.3d at

1145.

3. Moving Force

Even if the District had breached its duty to care for

Lindsey, Smith’s claim would still fail because any such breach

was not the “moving force” behind Lindsey’s murder. As the

Court notes, Court Op. at 26, we have equated that requirement

with proximate causation, which means “the particular [wrong]

was ‘foreseeable’, that is, likely enough to follow from the

defendant’s [breach] to justify holding him responsible.” Doe

v. Dominion Bank of Wash., N.A., 963 F.2d 1552, 1563 (D.C.

Cir. 1992) (Williams, J., concurring). Whether a particular harm

is foreseeable ordinarily turns upon the level of generality at

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9

which the harm is defined, but Smith cannot sustain her burden

of proof even at a high level of generality because there is no

evidence in the record regarding the cause of Lindsey’s murder:

We do not know who killed him or why. It is therefore fanciful

to maintain his murder was a foreseeable result of the District’s

failure to enact standards for independent living programs, or to

monitor crime levels at the Queenstown Apartment complex

more closely, or of ESA’s failure more strictly to enforce

Lindsey’s 7:00 p.m. curfew. Indeed, the little we do know about

Lindsey’s murder suggests that no reasonable program standards

and not even perfect curfew observance would have made his

untimely death any less likely. Nor does it seem Lindsey’s

death by an assassin whom he or his roommate admitted into

their apartment at 11:00 p.m. could have been prevented by any

reasonable security measure. 

Taking a wider view, we see also that Lindsey had no

significant criminal history, had no known involvement with any

dangerous activity, and seemed to be benefitting from the ESA

program. Not even with 20-20 hindsight can one connect any

nonfeasance on the part of the District to Lindsey’s becoming

the victim of a targeted murder -- and of course, the District is

to be held to a standard of reasonable foresight, not of hindsight.

Cf. Martinez v. California, 444 U.S. 277, 285 (1980) (state did

not violate due process clause when parole board released

prisoner who five months later committed murder because that

was “too remote a consequence of the parole officers’ action”).

B. The Negligence Claim

Smith’s claim under D.C. law fails for one of the same

reasons her claim under the Constitution fails. “The elements of

a common law action for negligence are (1) a duty of care owed

by the defendant to the plaintiff, (2) a breach of that duty by the

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10

defendant, and (3) damage to the plaintiff, proximately caused

by the breach of duty.” Powell By and Through Ricks v. Dist. of

Columbia, 634 A.2d 403, 406 (D.C. 1993). With regard to the

duty the District owed Lindsey, it is settled D.C. law that “a

defendant may be liable for harm caused by the criminal act of

another only if the crime was particularly foreseeable.”

Workman v. United Methodist Comm. on Relief, 320 F.3d 259,

262 (D.C. 2003) (emphasis added). This is a “heightened”

standard of foreseeability, which ordinarily may not be satisfied

with “generic information such as crime rates.” Id. Moreover,

because of the “sliding scale” reflected in D.C. case law, the

District owed Lindsey only a basic duty of care -- for the same

reason it owed him only a basic duty of care under the

Constitution -- Smith must adduce “specific evidence of

foreseeability.” Id. at 264. 

As we have seen, Smith has not satisfied the ordinary

requirement of foreseeability necessary to establish proximate

causation, let alone the heightened standard of foreseeability a

plaintiff must meet under D.C. law in order to hold one party

responsible in damages for the criminal act of another. The

District was not on notice that Lindsey was generally in danger,

and Smith points to no specific evidence that he was in peril of

being the victim of a targeted murder. Accordingly, Smith’s

negligence claim against the District should fail. 

III. Conclusion

Even under the deferential standard we accord a jury

verdict, it should be apparent that Smith has proven neither her

constitutional claim for due process nor her common law claim

for negligence. That her grandson was murdered is a tragedy.

Why it happened is a mystery. But this much is certain: The

District was not deliberately indifferent to Lindsey’s well-being,

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nor could it have foreseen he would be executed by an assassin.

I therefore respectfully dissent. 

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