IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

KATHLEEN JOINES, PLENARY :

GUARDIAN OF THE PERSON AND :

THE ESTATE OF SEAN JOINES :

 : CIVIL ACTION

v. :

 : NO. 04-3430-JF

TOWNSHIP OF RIDLEY, ET AL. :

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Fullam, Sr. J. April 4, 2006 

Kathleen Joines brought this action on behalf of her

son, Sean Joines, who suffered permanent brain damage when he

attempted suicide while detained at the Ridley Township Police

Headquarters. The complaint alleges that various police officers

and government entities violated Mr. Joines’s constitutional

rights by failing to prevent the suicide attempt. Before the

court is defendants’ motion for summary judgment, which will be

granted.

On May 7, 2002, a Ridley Township Police Officer,

Richard Herron, Jr., arrested Sean Joines for appearing in public

under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance to the

degree that he posed a danger to himself or others. Mr. Joines

was hostile and verbally combative, and when told to remove his

belt and shoelaces before being placed in a cell at the Ridley

Township Police Headquarters, he removed his pants as well. When

locked in Cell 3 at 9:49 P.M., Mr. Joines wore only boxer shorts

and athletic socks. Tragically, within eight minutes, Mr. Joines

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managed to make a noose out of his socks and hang himself from

bars at the back of his cell. 

An officer monitoring prisoners via closed circuit

television saw that Mr. Joines was not moving and called other

officers to check on the situation. These officers removed Mr.

Joines from the noose, administered CPR, and at 9:57 P.M.,

ordered an emergency medical team to take him to the hospital. 

Unfortunately, help arrived too late to prevent permanent brain

damage due to oxygen deprivation, and Sean Joines now requires

24-hour care. Based on the severity of his brain injury, he was

likely hanging for more than four minutes. 

Nearly four years before these events, on September 12,

1998, Officer Heron had taken Mr. Joines to Crozer-Chester

Hospital for medical treatment after finding him walking along

the railroad tracks, drunk and with wounds on his arms. At the

time, Mr. Joines told both Officer Herron and the doctors at

Crozer-Chester that he had received the wounds while defending

himself from an assault. Only after a follow-up investigation by

other Township police officers was it determined that the wounds

had in fact been self-inflicted. Officer Herron did not connect

the two incidents until after Mr. Joines was taken to the

hospital on May 7, 2002, when he checked the Township computer

records for any prior incident reports involving Mr. Joines. 

These facts, while undeniably tragic for Mr. Joines and his

family, cannot support a finding of liability. 

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 To prevail against Officer Herron, the only individual

defendant, plaintiff must establish that Mr. Joines had a

particular vulnerability to suicide. Woloszyn v. County of

Lawrence, 396 F.3d 314, 319 (3d Cir. 2005)(citations omitted). 

In addition, there must be evidence that Officer Herron knew or

should have known of that vulnerability, and that he acted with

reckless indifference to it. Id. Absent proof of all three

facts, Mr. Joines’s suicide would be an intervening cause,

breaking the chain of liability for his injuries. 

Liability in such circumstances can attach only when

there was “a strong likelihood, rather than a mere possibility,

that self-inflicted harm [would] occur.” Id. at 322(citations

omitted). Plaintiff points to a number of factors which

allegedly suggest that there was a strong likelihood that Mr.

Joines would attempt to harm himself: he was drunk, he may have

been under the influence of other drugs, he was only 25 years

old, he was hostile in the face of arrest, he posed a “danger to

himself and/or others” according to Officer Herron’s arrest

report, he acted erratically by ripping off his pants, and he had

harmed himself in 1998 by cutting his arms. Plaintiff’s expert

noted a heightened risk of suicide among people who are drunk,

young, or have engaged in prior incidents of self-harm, but the

expert did not conclude that the presence of these factors

suggests a “strong likelihood” of self-harm. Notably, Mr. Joines

did not exhibit any hints of suicidal ideation or engage in

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bizarre behavior, which the expert identified as other factors

giving rise to the “highest risk” of suicide. Compare Woloszyn,

396 F.3d at 322-23 (rejecting plaintiff’s contention that

remorsefulness and distant demeanor coupled with drug and alcohol

use and comments about having failed as a father suggested

particular vulnerability to suicide.). 

Even assuming plaintiff could show that Mr. Joines

posed a substantial suicide risk, there is no evidence that

Officer Herron knew of the risk, and I am not prepared to find

that he should have known of it. The 1998 incident is not

sufficient to have put Officer Herron on notice that Mr. Joines

had harmed himself in the past. It took place nearly four years

earlier, making it unreasonable to expect Officer Herron to

recall it when he arrested Mr. Joines in 2002, and the scarring

it left was neither prominent nor clearly indicative of selfharm. Compare Freedman v. City of Allentown, 853 F.2d 1111, 1116

(3d Cir. 1988) (holding that the failure to recognize prominent

scarring on the wrists and neck as indicative of self-harm

amounted to mere negligence on the part of arresting officers.). 

Without factoring in Mr. Joines’s history of self-harm, no lay

person would have easily recognized Mr. Joines as posing an

obvious risk of suicide. See Woloszyn, 396 F.3d at 320. 

For plaintiff to prevail on her failure to train claims

against the Township, Officer Herron, and Police Captain Richard

Herron, she must “(1) identify specific training not provided

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that could reasonably be expected to prevent the suicide that

occurred, and (2) . . . demonstrate that the risk reduction

associated with the proposed training is so great and so obvious

that the failure of those responsible for the content of the

training program to provide it can reasonably be attributed to a

deliberate indifference to whether the detainees succeed in

taking their lives.” Colburn v. Upper Darby, 496 F.2d 1017, 1030

(3d Cir. 1991). Plaintiff’s expert details additional intake

procedures that the Township should have adopted, but while these

measures might help to prevent some suicides, the record does not

support the contention that they would have caused Mr. Joines to

be identified as a suicide risk. In concluding that proper

training would have allowed Officer Herron to detect this risk,

plaintiff’s expert seeks to hold defendants to a higher standard

than that imposed by the law of this circuit. See Woloszyn, 396

F.3d at 325. Criticism of the Township’s system for monitoring

prisoners is similarly off-point, because nothing short of roundthe-clock monitoring of intoxicated detainees, which is not

required, Colburn, 496 F.2d at 1029, might have allowed officers

to interrupt Mr. Joines’s suicide attempt in time to prevent his

injuries. 

There was little or no warning that Mr. Joines would

attempt to harm himself while detained on May 7, 2002. There was

nothing that should have made Officer Herron aware of any

particular vulnerability, and reasonable additional training and

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intake procedures would not have prevented his suicide attempt. 

None of the defendants, therefore, can be held liable for failing

to prevent Mr. Joines’s injuries. 

An Order follows.

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

KATHLEEN JOINES, PLENARY :

GUARDIAN OF THE PERSON AND :

THE ESTATE OF SEAN JOINES :

 : CIVIL ACTION

v. :

 : NO. 04-3430-JF

TOWNSHIP OF RIDLEY, ET AL. :

ORDER

AND NOW, this 4th day of April, 2006, upon

consideration of defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment and all

responses thereto and after oral argument on February 6, 2006, 

IT IS ORDERED that defendants’ motion for Summary

Judgment is GRANTED. Judgment is granted IN FAVOR OF defendants:

Township of Ridley; Ridley Township Police Department; Captain

Richard C. Herron; Commissioner Jack Whalen, Chairman of the

Public Safety Committee; Public Safety Committee; Officer Richard

Herron, Jr.; Police Officer Stephen Nelling (listed incorrectly

in the case caption as Steve Drelling); and Police Officer Harvey

Pike, and AGAINST Kathleen Joines, Plenary Guardian of the Person

and the Estate of Sean Joines. Claims against John Does 1

through 6, Ridley Township Police Department, are DISMISSED. 

The Clerk is directed to mark this case CLOSED. 

BY THE COURT: 

 /s/ John P. Fullam 

John P. Fullam, Sr. J.

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