Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-14-03877/USCOURTS-ca3-14-03877-0/pdf.json

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

---

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

No. 14-3877

_____________

SHAUN AUSTIN,

Appellant

v.

COUNTY OF NORTHAMPTON; C.O. LEON HILL;

C.O. JAMIE BRANNON; L.T. JOSEPH KOSPIAH

_____________

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

(No. 5-11-cv-02847)

District Judge: Honorable Thomas N. O’Neill, Jr.

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)

November 9, 2015

____________

Before: CHAGARES, SHWARTZ, and RENDELL, Circuit Judges.

(Filed: November 18, 2015)

____________

OPINION*

____________

CHAGARES, Circuit Judge.

Inmate Shaun Austin filed a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Correctional 

Officers Leon Hill and Jamie Brannon for failing to protect him during his incarceration, 

 

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not 

constitute binding precedent.

Case: 14-3877 Document: 003112132821 Page: 1 Date Filed: 11/18/2015
2

in violation of his constitutional rights. A jury returned a verdict in favor of the officers. 

Austin challenges two of the District Court’s evidentiary rulings and seeks a new trial. 

We will affirm.

I.

We write solely for the parties’ benefit and recite only the facts essential to our 

disposition. As shown at trial, Austin entered prison in July 2008 on charges including 

child rape (while Austin was HIV positive), possession of child pornography, and 

recklessly endangering another person. Due to the nature of his crimes, he was placed in 

the prison’s protective custody unit — L-Tier.

In May 2009, Austin told Officer Brannon that another L-Tier inmate, Eugenio

Torres, had been involved in a fight. According to Austin, after Torres found out that 

Austin snitched on him, Austin informed Officers Brannon and Hill that Austin feared for 

his safety. The next day, Torres attacked Austin with a razor blade.

Austin then brought this suit against the officers. After a trial, the jury returned a 

verdict in favor of the officers on Austin’s claim for failure to protect.1 Austin timely 

appealed, challenging two of the District Court’s evidentiary rulings: (1) exclusion of an 

incident report regarding Torres’s prior behavior towards a snitch, and (2) admission of 

Austin’s sex crime charges. 

 

1 Claims against other defendants were disposed of prior to trial. 

Case: 14-3877 Document: 003112132821 Page: 2 Date Filed: 11/18/2015
3

II.2

We review the District Court’s evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United 

States v. Green, 617 F.3d 233, 239 (3d Cir. 2010). An abuse of discretion occurs only 

where the decision is “arbitrary, fanciful, or clearly unreasonable — in short, where no 

reasonable person would adopt the district court’s view.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). 

Austin’s claim against the officers is for failure to protect, which requires that he 

show “(1) he was incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm, 

(2) the official was deliberately indifferent to that substantial risk to his health and safety, 

and (3) the official’s deliberate indifference caused him harm.” Bistrian v. Levi, 696 

F.3d 352, 367 (3d Cir. 2012). A plaintiff can prove an official’s knowledge of a 

substantial risk to his safety “in the usual ways, including inference from circumstantial 

evidence.” Id. (quotation marks omitted).

A.

In the first ruling at issue, the District Court excluded an incident report, written 

by non-party Officer Robert Sikorsky, that described an attack Torres ordered on another 

inmate for snitching three months before Torres attacked Austin. The District Court held

prior to trial that although the report was not hearsay (it was offered to show the officers’

knowledge), it was not relevant unless Austin could show that the officers were aware of 

 

2 The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1367. We have appellate 

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

Case: 14-3877 Document: 003112132821 Page: 3 Date Filed: 11/18/2015
4

it.3 At trial, however, no direct evidence indicated as much. Neither Hill nor Brannon 

testified that they saw or heard about the report; in fact, Brannon denied knowledge of the 

report and of Torres’s involvement in the earlier attack. Nor was there testimony from its 

author, Sikorsky, that he either showed Hill or Brannon the report or told them about it. 

Based on the lack of evidence that Hill and Brannon knew about the report, the District 

Court determined it was irrelevant.

Nonetheless, Austin submits that the following circumstantial evidence indicates 

that the officers were aware of the report. There are three, eight-hour officer shifts on LTier, one officer per shift. Each officer informs the officer relieving him of “significant 

events that have been going on” (“shift briefing”). Appendix (“App.”) 459. Officer 

Brannon testified that information about an inmate ordering a hit on another inmate 

would be such a significant event to report to the relieving officer. During the time 

period of the incident report in question, Officer Hill “usually” worked the 2pm to 10pm 

shift, and Officer Sikorsky, the author of the report, worked the 6am to 2pm shift. App. 

392-93. Thus, Sikorsky briefed Hill “every day at shift change” about “significant events 

that had happened,” which Austin suggests would have included information about 

Torres’s prior hit on a snitch. App. 393-94. 

This chain of circumstantial inferences is tenuous at best. Austin presents no 

evidence confirming that Hall relieved Sikorsky on the day Sikorsky discovered this 

information about Torres. And, although it was Brannon’s practice to brief other officers 

 

3 Evidence is relevant if “it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it 

would be without the evidence” and “the fact is of consequence in determining the 

action.” Fed. R. Evid. 401. 

Case: 14-3877 Document: 003112132821 Page: 4 Date Filed: 11/18/2015
5

on information about an inmate ordering a hit, that testimony does not necessarily lead to 

the conclusion that Sikorsky did the same. Additionally, Austin fails to provide any

theory as to how Brannon learned about the report, given that he did not have the shift 

following Sikorsky’s. With no direct evidence that the officers were aware of the report,

and only speculation suggesting otherwise, we cannot conclude that the District Court’s 

determination that that the report was irrelevant was “arbitrary, fanciful, or clearly 

unreasonable.” Green, 617 F.3d at 239. Accordingly, the District Court did not abuse its 

discretion in excluding the incident report. 

B.

In the second ruling at issue, the District Court held that the officers could 

introduce evidence of Austin’s sex crime charges to support their theory that Austin’s 

criminal history and his tendency to talk about it motivated Torres to attack Austin (a risk

the officers could not have anticipated). 

But, argues Austin, the only suggestion that Torres’s attack was motivated by 

Austin’s criminal history was a statement Torres made to Lieutenant Richard Botteri —

which itself was wrongly admitted. The District Court allowed Lieutenant Botteri, who 

was present on L-Tier after the attack, to testify by deposition that Torres 

“spontaneously” told Botteri that Torres attacked Austin because of his sex crimes. App. 

311. The confession came while Torres was in handcuffs after the attack on Austin and 

while Botteri was getting Torres “changed over” (presumably to another location). Id. 

The District Court ruled that the statement was admissible “because it was at the time of 

the attack.” App. 288-89. Austin argues that Torres’s statement to Lieutenant Botteri 

Case: 14-3877 Document: 003112132821 Page: 5 Date Filed: 11/18/2015
6

does not fall within the “excited utterance” exception to the hearsay rule, see Fed. R. 

Evid. 803(2) (“statement relating to a startling event or condition, made while the 

declarant was under the stress of excitement that it caused”), because there is a lack of 

evidence that Torres made the statement while excited from his attack on Austin. Under 

Austin’s theory, Torres’s statement is inadmissible, which therefore makes the sex crime

charges irrelevant.4 

We hold that, even if the District Court did err in admitting the statement, that 

error was harmless. See McQueeney v. Wilmington Trust Co., 779 F.2d 916, 917 (3d 

Cir. 1985) (determining that an erroneous evidentiary ruling is harmless “if it is highly 

probable that the error[] did not affect the outcome of the case”). Other evidence made 

relevant the officers’ theory that Torres was motivated by Austin’s sex crime charges. 

For example, Officer Hill testified that inmates discussed Austin’s charges and HIVpositive status, especially because his case was high profile and in the newspaper. 

Inmates shared newspaper clippings about Austin’s charges. According to the testimony 

of Officer Hill and another inmate, Austin openly discussed his HIV-positive status and 

used it as a means to do what he wanted on L-Tier with impunity. That same inmate 

testified that this behavior “used to get under a lot of people’s skin.” App. 541. Thus,

 

4 Austin additionally makes the separate argument that Torres’s “precise motivations” for 

attacking him are altogether irrelevant. Austin Br. 27. That is incorrect. Torres’s 

motivations are relevant to the extent they indicate whether or not the officers should 

have anticipated the attack. The officers cannot be liable unless they were deliberately 

indifferent to a risk that materialized and caused Austin harm. If Torres attacked Austin 

not because he snitched but because of the sexual nature of his crimes, and the officers 

were unaware that Torres posed a risk to Austin on that basis, then no deliberate 

indifference their part could have caused Austin harm. 

Case: 14-3877 Document: 003112132821 Page: 6 Date Filed: 11/18/2015
7

regardless of whether Torres’s statement to Lieutenant Botteri was admitted, this other 

evidence made Austin’s sex crime charges relevant. See Gerhart v. Henry Disston & 

Sons, Inc., 290 F.2d 778, 786 (3d Cir. 1961) (“[T]he improper admission of incompetent 

evidence which is merely cumulative on matters which are clearly shown by other 

admissible evidence is harmless error.”).5 

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court. 

 

5 Austin’s challenge to the District Court’s Rule 403 analysis of the sex crime charges 

similarly lacks merit. The District Court articulated a “rational explanation” of how the 

probative value of this evidence was not substantially outweighed even by what the 

District Court acknowledged was a high risk of prejudice. United States v. Finley, 726 

F.3d 483, 491 (3d Cir. 2013) (quotation marks omitted). The District Court did not abuse 

its discretion. Id. 

Case: 14-3877 Document: 003112132821 Page: 7 Date Filed: 11/18/2015