[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 21-12370

Non-Argument Calendar

____________________

DONALD E. TURNER, JR., 

as personal representative of the estate of

Logan M. Turner deceased,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

PHILLIPS, 

LT in his individual capacity as Bay County

Sheriff’s Correctional Officer, 

JOSEPH J. MASTRO, 

in his individual capacity as Bay County Sheriff’s

Correctional Officer, 

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2 Opinion of the Court 21-12370

Defendants-Appellants,

SEAN LEE BURKETT,

in his individual capacity as Bay County Sheriff’s

Correction Officer, et al.,

Defendants.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Florida

D.C. Docket No. 5:19-cv-00140-TKW-MJF

____________________

Before JILL PRYOR, BRANCH, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Logan Turner, when taken to jail, said, “I will kill myself if I 

have to be locked up.” And several weeks later he did—hanging 

himself with a bedsheet from his cell’s top bunk 

Only hours before, Turner had tied his pants to the top of a 

cell door, creating what one officer identified as “a noose.” That 

officer—and another who witnessed the same action—nonetheless 

stood by their decision to place him in a cell where he had access 

to another pair of pants, as well as the bedding he used to hang

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21-12370 Opinion of the Court 3

himself. The district court denied those two officers qualified 

immunity, explaining that they had done “essentially nothing to 

prevent” Turner’s suicide, even after witnessing a possible suicide 

attempt. After careful review, we affirm.

I. 

In April 2018, Turner was arrested for driving without a 

license, giving false identification, and possessing 

methamphetamine and related drug paraphernalia. He was then 

taken to the Bay County Jail. En route to the jail and upon arrival, 

Turner said that he would kill himself if he were incarcerated. Jail 

officials placed him in the suicide-precaution dorm. 

On May 1, 2018, Turner was released into the general prison 

population and spent a few weeks there without incident. But on 

May 18, 2018, around 2:00 p.m., Turner asked Officer Marcus 

Roberts for a chance to speak with the jail’s Chief about a medical 

issue. Roberts initially denied the request, but when Turner asked 

again an hour later, Roberts brought Turner to the jail’s medical 

staff. The medical staff then referred Turner to the mental-health

division. There, Turner first spoke with a nurse; he denied being 

suicidal, but was otherwise “crying so inconsolably” that the nurse 

could not understand him. So she referred Turner to the jail’s 

mental-health coordinator who, after briefly speaking with him, 

decided to send Turner back to the general population. 

He remained there for less than an hour. When Roberts 

brought the general-population inmates their dinner, he saw 

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Turner slumped over by the phones, unresponsive. Roberts 

roused him, restrained him, and placed him in a holding area so 

that Roberts could speak to his supervisor, Lieutenant Kenneth 

Phillips. Phillips told Roberts to bring Turner to the jail’s 

behavioral-observation unit. 

When Turner arrived, Roberts placed him in the unit’s 

shower room and left him there. Videotapes reflect that Turner 

then took off his shirt, sat hunched over on a bench, and buried his 

head in his hands. As he sat alone, he became more visibly 

distressed: he crouched on the floor, and then folded over and 

began moaning. Although Turner briefly sat up, he soon began 

rocking and again curled over. Eventually he stood up and, for

about ten minutes, kicked the door and screamed, among other

things, “Take me to the hospital now,” “You’re killing me,” and 

“You’re f***ing with my head.” 

No one answered. Turner, still screaming, then picked up a 

pair of pants on the floor and tied one of its legs to the top of the 

shower door. He appeared to begin tying a loop with another leg 

when an inmate supervising the unit, James Letson, noticed, 

walked over to him, and—as Letson tells it—talked him out of 

killing himself. 

Meanwhile, the officer monitoring the unit through a 

central control room, Joseph Mastro, was also alarmed. He told 

Phillips that Turner “may be making a noose,” and asked Phillips 

to check on him. Phillips reached the cell seconds after Letson—

and approached closely enough for Letson to assume that Phillips 

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had overheard his and Turner’s conversation. Letson then left for 

the control room, and told Mastro that he had just “diverted” a “big 

incident.” 

But as Mastro tells it, when Phillips returned to the same 

control room, he told a different story. Phillips seemed 

unconcerned, and suggested that Turner was “just trying to get 

attention.” So he told Mastro that Turner should remain in the 

behavioral unit. That decision meant that Turner would be placed 

in a cell subject to some observation through intermittent rounds 

of the unit and through video surveillance over a live feed from the 

cell into the control room. But his cell would be just one of over 

100 cells that the officer in the control room would monitor. And 

in that cell, Turner could keep the pants he was wearing, and 

would have access to a mattress, some tissue, a blanket, and two 

sheets. 

Turner was soon moved into one of those cells, and around 

6:00 p.m., both Mastro and Phillips left. They were replaced by 

Officers Freddie Furman and Tyshawn Potter. Shortly after the 

night shift began, another supervising inmate told Furman that 

Turner had said he “was going to harm himself.” Within the hour, 

Furman reported Turner’s statement to Mastro over the phone. 

Mastro told Furman not to worry: Phillips had “dealt with the 

situation,” and Turner should “stay where he was at.” 

Furman nonetheless told Potter to monitor Turner more 

frequently over the live video. But that was not enough. Shortly 

before 9:00 p.m., while Furman was rounding the unit, he looked 

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into Turner’s cell and saw him hanging from a bedsheet tied to the 

top bunk’s metal frame. A nurse accompanying Furman managed 

to restore Turner’s pulse—but she was too late to save him. Two 

days later, he was pronounced dead. 

Turner’s brother sued Phillips and Mastro (among others), 

bringing a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for an alleged deprivation 

of Turner’s due-process rights and a state wrongful-death claim. 

Phillips and Mastro moved for summary judgment. They argued 

that they had not violated any of Turner’s constitutional rights and 

that, in any event, they were entitled to qualified and state-law 

immunity. The district court disagreed and denied their motion. 

This appeal followed.

II. 

We review de novo a district court’s denial of immunity. 

Tillis ex rel. Wuenschel v. Brown, 12 F.4th 1291, 1296 (11th Cir. 

2021). Where, as here, that denial occurred on a summaryjudgment motion, we view the evidence “in the light most 

favorable to the nonmoving party,” and affirm “unless there is no 

genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled 

to judgment as a matter of law.” Id.; Patel v. City of Madison, 959 

F.3d 1330, 1336 (11th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

A genuine dispute of material fact exists if “a reasonable jury could 

return a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Anderson v. Liberty 

Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). 

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III. 

A. 

The officers primarily challenge the district court’s denial of 

qualified immunity, which protects a government official sued for 

damages resulting from an alleged constitutional violation. See 

Hardigree v. Lofton, 992 F.3d 1216, 1223 (11th Cir. 2021). Once an 

officer asserts qualified immunity, a plaintiff usually can overcome 

that assertion only by showing that (1) “the defendant violated a 

constitutional right,” and (2) “the violated right was ‘clearly 

established.’” Corbitt v. Vickers, 929 F.3d 1304, 1311 (11th Cir. 

2019). 

The relevant right here is the Fourteenth Amendment’s 

prohibition on depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, 

without due process of law.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. This 

Court has interpreted that provision to confer upon pretrial 

detainees “a right to be protected from self-inflicted injuries,

including suicide.” Cook ex rel. Est. of Tessier v. Sheriff of Monroe 

Cnty., 402 F.3d 1092, 1115 (11th Cir. 2005). An officer violates that 

right when he exhibits “deliberate indifference” to a detainee’s 

suicide—that is, when he knows there is a “strong likelihood” that 

a detainee will harm himself yet disregards that risk through 

conduct that is “more than mere negligence.” Gish v. Thomas, 516 

F.3d 952, 955 (11th Cir. 2008). 

The officers first suggest that, when they interacted with 

Turner, a strong likelihood that he would kill himself indisputably 

did not exist. But surely a reasonable jury could disagree—and 

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could conclude, contrary to the officers’ assertion, that they were 

aware of that risk. Mastro heard Turner screaming that the jail was 

“killing” him and, only minutes later, watched him tie what even 

Mastro identified as a “noose.” Mastro was concerned enough to 

direct Phillips to speak with Turner. As Phillips approached

Turner, he came close enough to the shower that a jury could 

conclude that he heard Letson’s conversation with Turner—a 

conversation in which Letson says he persuaded Turner not to kill 

himself. Letson then left and told Mastro that he had just 

“diverted” a “big incident.” 

Those circumstances, construed in Turner’s favor, support 

a conclusion that the officers knew that Turner had attempted 

suicide when he tied his pants to the shower door. And when 

prison officials “directly responsible for inmate care” know that “an

inmate has attempted, or even threatened, suicide, their failure to 

take steps to prevent that inmate from committing suicide can 

amount to deliberate indifference.” Greason v. Kemp, 891 F.2d 

829, 835–36 (11th Cir. 1990). Here, the officers had a clear step to 

protect a suicidal detainee: they could place him in the suicideprecaution dorm, where he could have been monitored more 

thoroughly and isolated from dangerous objects. Indeed, the 

officers seemingly concede that, if they were aware of any suicide 

risk, moving Turner would have been the proper course of action. 

But the officers chose not to take that action, keeping Turner in the 

behavioral unit with items he could use to harm himself. See Snow 

ex rel. Snow v. City of Citronelle, 420 F.3d 1262, 1270 (11th Cir. 

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2005). And Mastro stood by that decision even after he was told 

that Turner had said that he planned to kill himself. 

In sum, the officers here wholly failed to address what could 

be construed as a suicide attempt, and even advised another officer 

to similarly refrain from acting on a possible suicide threat. A

genuine issue thus exists as to whether they were deliberately 

indifferent to a known suicide risk—and so as to whether they 

violated Turner’s due-process rights. See id.

But a constitutional deprivation is not enough to sustain a 

42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim against an individual officer. The right 

infringed must be “clearly established,” such that all but the 

“plainly incompetent” officer would know that his actions violated 

the law. Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1148, 1152 (2018). 

A right may be clearly established through “a materially 

similar case decided at the time of the relevant conduct by the 

Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit, or the relevant state 

supreme court.” Patel v. Lanier County Georgia, 969 F.3d 1173, 

1186 (11th Cir. 2020). And here, as in this Court’s case Snow ex rel. 

Snow v. City of Citronelle, the officers essentially “did nothing” to 

prevent a suicide that, arguably, was likely to occur. 420 F.3d at

1270. Both the officer in Snow and the officers here simply left 

suicidal detainees in a cell with items that they could—and did—

use to harm themselves. Id. 

The officers contend that Snow is too different from this 

case to clearly establish Turner’s rights, because the inmate in 

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Snow, unlike Turner, was not monitored through regular rounds 

of the unit and a live video feed. But a precedent “need not be 

directly on point” to clearly establish a right; it simply “must have 

placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” 

J W ex rel. Williams v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ., 904 F.3d 1248, 

1259 (11th Cir. 2018). Snow did not focus on the jail’s precise 

features; rather, it emphasized that an officer’s “complete failure to 

take any action” in the face of a known suicide risk violates a 

detainee’s due-process rights. Snow, 420 F.3d at 1270. And the 

officers effectively took no action here. A jury could reasonably 

conclude that the officers were aware that Turner had a high risk 

of suicide and nonetheless kept him in a dorm where he would 

have dangerous items at his fingertips, despite the availability of a 

dorm specially designed to protect suicidal inmates. The officers 

here thus were not entitled to qualified immunity. 

B. 

Phillips and Mastro raise one more challenge to the § 1983 

claim, arguing that, because other officers monitored Turner in the 

few hours between the end of their shift and his suicide, no 

reasonable jury would conclude that they caused the harm that 

Turner suffered. Yet their decision to keep Turner in the 

behavioral unit gave him access to the sheet he used to hang 

himself just hours later. In addition, after the shift ended, Mastro 

told the new officer on duty that Turner should remain in the

unit—even though Mastro had been told that Turner said that he 

planned to kill himself. That is evidence enough to create a 

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substantial issue of causation. The district court therefore properly 

denied summary judgment on the § 1983 claim.

C. 

The officers also argue that Florida law gives them 

immunity from the wrongful-death claim. Florida protects its 

officers from suit unless they “acted in bad faith or with malicious 

purpose or in a manner exhibiting wanton and willful disregard of 

human rights, safety, or property.” Fla. Stat. § 768.28(9)(a). This 

statute’s language might differ from the relevant federal standards, 

but it offers no further protection. The federal standard for 

deliberate indifference amounts to recklessness, and so does the 

standard of “wanton and willful” conduct under Florida law. See 

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 839–40 (1994); Williams v. City 

of Minneola, 619 So. 2d 983, 986 (Fla. Ct. App. 1993). Because there 

remains a genuine issue as to whether the officers were deliberately 

indifferent, then, there is also a genuine issue as to whether their 

actions were “wanton and willful.” Thus, their argument for statelaw immunity fails. 

* * *

The stage of litigation is crucial here. Our role is limited: 

we cannot weigh the evidence; rather, we can only conclude 

whether it is so one-sided that the result of any trial is inevitable. 

That is not the case here. A jury might conclude that the officers 

made an honest—though fatal—mistake, or, alternatively, that 

they knew Turner was suicidal yet did nothing to prevent him from 

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killing himself. Which conclusion the evidence better supports is 

thus a question for a jury, not this Court. For now, we can only 

say that, under our precedent and a view of the evidence in 

Turner’s favor, the officers are not entitled to judgment in their 

favor as a matter of law. We therefore AFFIRM the district court’s 

denial of summary judgment. 

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