In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 14-2489 

RONALD JEROME BEAL, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

BRIAN FOSTER and RUSSELL SCHNEIDER, 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 14 C 229 — Aaron E. Goodstein, Magistrate Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED SEPTEMBER 2, 2015 — DECIDED OCTOBER 2, 2015 

____________________ 

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and ROVNER, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff, an inmate of a Wisconsin state prison, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against 

the prison’s warden (Foster) and a prison guard (Schneider), 

alleging in his complaint that Schneider had inflicted cruel 

and unusual punishment on him. The district court dismissed the complaint at “screening,” 28 U.S.C. § 1915A—

which is to say before any response by the defendants. The 
2 No. 14-2489 

ground of the dismissal was failure to state a claim; the magistrate judge (presiding with the consent of the parties) stated that “standing alone, verbal harassment of an inmate 

does not constitute a constitutional violation.” 

Neither in the district court nor in this court has the 

plaintiff mentioned defendant Foster, the warden, so his 

dismissal from the suit was proper; not so the dismissal of 

Schneider. 

The proposition that verbal harassment cannot amount to 

cruel and unusual punishment is incorrect. Suppose a prisoner is having severe headaches and he complains about 

them to a prison doctor, who writes him a prescription for a 

powerful drug. A malicious guard learns of this and tells the 

prisoner the following lie: “the doctor didn’t tell you, but he 

told me: you have incurable brain cancer and will be dead in 

three months. Now let me tell you what he told me are the 

symptoms you will be experiencing as your cancer worsens.” Or the guard, again lying, tells another prisoner: “I am 

sorry to have to inform you that your wife and children have 

been killed in a car crash.” The harassment in both cases is 

purely verbal, yet as cruel (and, one hopes, as unusual) as in 

cases of physical brutalization of prisoners by guards. To attempt to draw a categorical distinction between verbal and 

physical harassment is arbitrary. In short, “the alleged pain 

[sufficient to constitute cruel punishment] may be physical 

or psychological.” Watison v. Carter, 668 F.3d 1108, 1112 (9th 

Cir. 2012) (emphasis added). 

So saying, we are mindful of cases, including our decision in DeWalt v. Carter, 224 F.3d 607, 612 (7th Cir. 2000), 

which say that “standing alone, simple verbal harassment 

does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.” But it is 
No. 14-2489 3 

unclear what “simple” is intended to connote. In our hypothetical examples, the verbal harassment is “simple” in the 

sense of being brief, lucid, and syntactically simple. But what 

is simple can also, as in our two examples, be devastating. In 

DeWalt the plaintiff had alleged that a prison officer had 

“made a series of sexually suggestive and racially derogatory comments to [the plaintiff] regarding certain female 

teachers at the prison schools.” Id. at 610. This verbal harassment was directed, to a significant degree, at the female 

teachers rather than at DeWalt, and second-hand harassment 

may be too “simple” to state a claim of cruel and unusual 

punishment, whereas the lies in our two hypothetical cases 

were aimed directly and hurtfully at the prisoner. But “simple” is the wrong word; what is meant is “fleeting,” too limited to have an impact. 

Simple or complex, most verbal harassment by jail or 

prison guards does not rise to the level of cruel and unusual 

punishment. See, e.g., Davis v. Goord, 320 F.3d 346, 353 (2d 

Cir. 2003); Keenan v. Hall, 83 F.3d 1083, 1092 (9th Cir. 1996); 

Purcell v. Coughlin, 790 F.2d 263, 265 (2d Cir. 1986). But some 

does; and so consider the allegations in this case that defendant Schneider “made verbal sexual comments directed 

towards inmate Brian Anthony, telling Ronald Beal to place 

his penis inside Brian Anthony,” and that “on several prior 

occasions” Schneider had urinated in view of the plaintiff 

(by leaving the bathroom door open) and of other inmates, 

looking at them “while smiling.” These are the only allegations of the complaint, but one can imagine how they might 

have been amplified had the magistrate judge not terminated the suit so abruptly. The plaintiff attempted in his appeal 

brief to amplify the first allegation, stating that what Schneider had said to another inmate—presumably Anthony—in 
4 No. 14-2489 

the presence of the plaintiff and other inmates was that if the 

plaintiff would “put his Weiner [penis]” in the other inmate’s mouth the inmate would smile. 

The remarks attributed by the plaintiff to Schneider, including the “smile” references and the display of Schneider’s 

own penis in his repeated public urinations (“recurrences of 

abuse, while not a prerequisite for liability, bear on the question of severity,” Crawford v. Cuomo, 796 F.3d 252, 257 (2d 

Cir. 2015)) could have been understood by the inmates as 

implying that the plaintiff is homosexual. The fact that 

Schneider is a Sergeant may have amplified the impact of his 

remarks. 

In his appellate filings the plaintiff further claims that 

other inmates would harass him by calling him names such 

as “punk, fag, sissy, and queer,” all of course derisive terms 

for homosexuals and possibly inspired or encouraged by 

Schneider’s comments—and we note in this connection that 

the complaint charges the two defendants (realistically, 

though, just Schneider, not the warden) with sexual harassment. Conceivably the plaintiff feared that Sergeant Schneider’s comments labeled him a homosexual and by doing so 

increased the likelihood of sexual assaults on him by other 

inmates. 

The plaintiff claims to have experienced severe psychological harm as a result of the incidents described in his 

complaint—psychological harm that induced him to seek 

“psych service” help repeatedly from the prison’s Clinical 

Services division. He has filed records of these visits and also proof that he filed a grievance with the prison concerning 

Schneider’s comments and that on May 24, 2013, the prison 

upheld the grievance. Though it has been more than two 
No. 14-2489 5 

years since that ruling, the plaintiff states without contradiction that he’s been unable to learn what findings emerged 

from the grievance proceeding and whether any punishment 

was imposed on Schneider for his misconduct. Those findings might either strengthen or weaken his case. The magistrate judge should have ordered the defendants to produce 

them. 

And he erred in saying that “the plaintiff alleges only 

verbal harassment.” Urinating isn’t verbal. We can imagine, 

as suggested in the preceding paragraph, that the plaintiff 

was seriously upset by Schneider’s nonverbal as well as verbal behavior, which may have made him a pariah to his fellow inmates and inflicted significant psychological harm on 

him. 

A certain latitude should be allowed in the interpretation 

of complaints filed by pro se prisoner litigants, such as the 

plaintiff in this case, whose legal knowledge and expressive 

skills are palpably deficient. This is a case in which before 

dismissing the complaint the district court should have considered seeking clarification and amplification. In Williams v. 

Wahner, 731 F.3d 731, 734 (7th Cir. 2013), we pointed out that 

“many prisoners can explain themselves orally but not in 

writing. They may be illiterate in English, or they may simply be such poor writers that they can’t convey their thoughts 

other than orally. So we can understand a judge’s wanting to 

clarify an unclear pro se complaint by interviewing the 

plaintiff,” provided, as we explain in Henderson v. Wilcoxen

(7th Cir. 2015) (issued today) that a transcript or recording of 

the interview (which will usually be conducted telephonically) is made. Where appropriate, hearings can be a useful 

means of “trying to determine what the plaintiff is alleging.” 
6 No. 14-2489 

Williams v. Wahner, supra, 731 F.3d at 734. But as Henderson

and Williams both emphasize, and we take this opportunity 

to re-emphasize, the interview must be limited to elucidating 

the plaintiff’s claim, and not allowed to become a determination of its merits. The judge who after the hearing decides 

there is nothing to the prisoner’s case, and therefore dismisses it on a section 12(b)(6) motion or at screening under 28 

U.S.C. § 1915A, converts the interview to an ex parte adjudication of the merits, and that is improper, as stressed in the 

two cases just cited. But at the same time, expecting a pro se 

prisoner to be able to explain his case without some prodding, some guidance, by the presiding judicial officer will 

often be unrealistic. A judge who does not recruit a lawyer 

for the pro se in such a case should at least consider making 

a modest effort to assist the pro se in articulating his claims. 

We don’t hold that the magistrate judge in this case had 

to help the plaintiff. The errors that require a remand for further proceedings—that made the dismissal of the complaint 

premature—is the magistrate judge’s mistaken belief that the 

only harassment alleged was verbal, and his further, unexplained belief that the verbal harassment was nonactionable 

because it was “simple,” which without explanation is inscrutable. 

REVERSED AND REMANDED