Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03052/USCOURTS-ca7-15-03052-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 15-3052 

JAIRO E. RAMOS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

GARY HAMBLIN, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 1:13-cv-00044-WCG — William C. Griesbach, Chief Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 9, 2016 — DECIDED OCTOBER 24, 2016 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, MANION, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff, who is appealing the 

dismissal, resulting from the judge’s grant of the defendants’ 

motion for summary judgment, of the plaintiff’s suit under 

42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging punishment that violated the 

Eighth Amendment, was at the time relevant to this suit a 

prisoner at Stanley Correctional Institution, a Wisconsin medium-security prison, serving a long prison term for homicide. In the fourteenth year of his imprisonment (though onCase: 15-3052 Document: 40 Filed: 10/24/2016 Pages: 6
2 No. 15-3052 

ly his fifth year at Stanley), he was placed in a cell with a 

prisoner in his second year at Stanley named DaSilva, who 

one night twelve days later sexually assaulted the plaintiff in 

the cell. DaSilva was in prison for having sexually assaulted 

a woman. Both prisoners were classified as “medium security” inmates, meaning that they were believed to be less likely to engage in violent or otherwise disruptive behavior than 

maximum-security inmates, though DaSilva in his two years 

at Stanley had committed eight violations of the prison’s 

rules, including fighting, lying, theft, and use of intoxicants—but no sexual offenses. 

The plaintiff promptly reported DaSilva’s sexual assault 

of him to a correctional officer, who notified her superiors, 

who conducted a thorough investigation that resulted in a 

criminal charge being lodged against DaSilva, also a disciplinary charge against him for disobeying prison regulations 

regarding sexual assault, and finally an official notice that 

the plaintiff and DaSilva were not to share a cell. 

The complaint charges the defendants, who are supervisory personnel at Stanley, including its warden, with deliberate indifference to the danger of the plaintiff’s being sexually assaulted by DaSilva. All prisoners at Stanley have a 

cellmate, randomly assigned in the first instance, and the 

plaintiff claims that the defendants were aware of, but did 

nothing to eliminate, the danger of placing DaSilva in the 

same cell with him. Not only had DaSilva committed a previous sexual assault, albeit against a woman, but in addition 

the plaintiff claims to have been perceived as homosexual, 

which may have made him more likely to be assaulted, sexually or otherwise. More broadly the plaintiff attacks the 

practice of random assignment of cellmates. Presumably his 

Case: 15-3052 Document: 40 Filed: 10/24/2016 Pages: 6
No. 15-3052 3 

previous cellmate had been transferred to a different cell (or 

different prison, or had completed his prison term and been 

released), leaving a gap that the prison filled with a random 

assignment, namely of DaSilva. 

A 2003 federal statute, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, 

42 U.S.C. §§ 15601–15609, as the name implies, and corresponding rules of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, 

Executive Directives 16A and 72, make the prevention of 

prison rape a priority concern of prison administrators, just 

as the prevention of suicide by newly jailed persons is a priority concern of jail administrators. See, e.g., Belbachir v. 

County of McHenry, 726 F.3d 975, 980–82 (7th Cir. 2013). Thus 

each new inmate in a Wisconsin prison is given a “Sexual 

Abuse/Assault Prevention and Intervention” handbook, 

which among other things directs him to inform prison staff 

about any danger he perceives of being assaulted or otherwise abused. The handbook states: 

You should feel free to discuss your concerns about 

sexual misconduct with any staff member. Some 

staff, like psychologists, are specially trained to 

help you deal with problems in this area. If you are 

in an emergency situation, approach any staff 

member. ... Even if you have not been assaulted or 

abused, but are in fear for your safety, you should 

report your concern to staff. 

The plaintiff claims that he was perceived by inmates and 

staff alike as homosexual, and that this perception should 

have alerted the staff to the need to separate him from his 

new cellmate, a convicted rapist. The record indicates that 

Ramos may have been homosexual or bisexual but renounced that identity upon a religious conversion. Yet the 

principal evidence that he was perceived as being homosexCase: 15-3052 Document: 40 Filed: 10/24/2016 Pages: 6
4 No. 15-3052 

ual was that prison staff had asked him whether he was, but 

there is no indication that they told any other prisoner that 

he was homosexual. It made sense for the staff to question 

Ramos about his sexual orientation, given the vulnerability 

of homosexual prisoners to rape by other prisoners, whether 

homosexual prisoners or heterosexual ones seeking to substitute homosexual sex in a setting in which heterosexual sex 

is precluded—to engage, in other words, in what is called 

“opportunistic homosexuality.” See National Center for 

Transgender Equality et al., “Preventing the Sexual Abuse of 

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex People in 

Correctional Settings” 3–6 (May 10, 2010), 

www.prearesourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/library/8-pre

ventingthesexualabuseoflgbtipeopleincorrectionalsettings_0.

pdf (visited October 21, 2016). 

There is nothing to indicate that when asked by staff 

whether he was homosexual the plaintiff said he was, or expressed any concern about being vulnerable to sexual assault; and in these circumstances the staff would have been 

opening themselves to suit had they declared him a homosexual and taken action as a result, though had they believed 

him to be perceived by other prisoners to be homosexual it 

might have been wise to take steps to protect him from the 

likes of a DaSilva. See Jody Marksamer & Harper Jean Tobin, 

National Center for Transgender Equality, “Standing with 

LGBT Prisoners,” www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/

docs/resources/JailPrisons_Resource_FINAL.pdf (also visited October 21, 2016). But so far as appears, the staff was unaware that the plaintiff was perceived by other prisoners to 

be homosexual; nor is there any evidence of such a perception, apart from the plaintiff’s unsupported claim. 

Case: 15-3052 Document: 40 Filed: 10/24/2016 Pages: 6
No. 15-3052 5 

It’s not clear how vulnerable the plaintiff was to a sexual 

assault. It’s true that he isn’t tall—he’s 5’6” (DaSilva is 5’10”); 

but neither is he a mouse, for he had been, after all, convicted of reckless homicide. And there is no indication that he 

had any anxieties about DaSilva before the rape. Nor had 

DaSilva committed any sexual offenses in prison, and as far 

as appears he had told no one—including the plaintiff—that 

he had raped anyone, let alone that he wanted and was 

planning to rape an inmate. 

In these circumstances we can’t see how the defendants, 

who as supervisory employees of the prison would have 

limited interactions with inmates, can be thought to have 

been deliberately indifferent to the possibility that the plaintiff would be raped—that is, would know there was a nontrivial danger of that happening, could prevent it without 

danger or other undue cost to themselves, but instead decided to do nothing. 

Had the plaintiff any fear of DaSilva, it behooved him to 

ask the prison staff to transfer him to another cell. If he either is a homosexual or, as he contends, felt vulnerable because he was believed by prison staff and prisoners to be 

one, it behooved him to complain to prison staff, consistently 

with the advice in the prison handbook. He didn’t do that. 

He argues that random assignment of cellmates is deliberate 

indifference per se to prisoners’ safety. But the only alternative he suggests (for he does not argue that all prison inmates should be in solitary confinement or even that he 

should have been) is that sex offenders never be placed in 

cells with any inmate who for whatever reason is at a 

heightened risk of being sexually assaulted. Given the number of characteristics that could trigger such a heightened 

Case: 15-3052 Document: 40 Filed: 10/24/2016 Pages: 6
6 No. 15-3052 

risk, sex offenders would probably have to be either placed 

in solitary confinement or given cellmates who were also sex 

offenders. The feasibility of such a solution can be questioned; but more important is the fact that the plaintiff presents no evidence that it would promote prison safety more 

than the handbook, which emphasizes a prisoner’s right to 

complain about danger posed to him by a cellmate. Apropos 

is our comment in Billman v. Indiana Dept. of Corrections, 56 

F.3d 785, 788 (7th Cir. 1995), that if prison staff “place a prisoner in a cell that has a cobra, but they do not know that 

there is a cobra there (or even that there is a high probability 

that there is a cobra there), they are not guilty of deliberate 

indifference even if they should have known about the risk, 

that is, even if they were negligent—even grossly negligent 

or even reckless in the tort sense—in failing to know.” We 

can’t even say that administrators of the Stanley Correctional 

Institution were negligent or reckless in erecting this policy. 

The line officers who assigned Ramos and DaSilva to the 

same cell may have been negligent or reckless, but he hasn’t 

sued them—just the administrators. 

 In short, the plaintiff has no case, and so his suit was 

rightly dismissed by the district court. 

AFFIRMED

Case: 15-3052 Document: 40 Filed: 10/24/2016 Pages: 6