United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 10-1714

DONNA COSCIA, ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF JASON COSCIA,

PLYMOUTH PROBATE COURT DOCKET #08P-0409AD1,

Plaintiff, Appellee,

v.

TOWN OF PEMBROKE, MASSACHUSETTS, ET AL.,

Defendants, Appellants.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Nancy Gertner, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Boudin, Circuit Judge,

Souter, Associate Justice,*

and Selya, Circuit Judge.

Joseph L. Tehan, Jr., with whom Katharine I. Doyle and

Kopelman and Paige, P.C., were on brief, for appellants.

Albert L. Farrah, with whom Karl F. Stammen, II, and Stammen

& Associates, were on brief, for appellee.

September 14, 2011

The Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the *

Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SOUTER, Associate Justice. In her capacity as

Administratrix of the estate of her son, Jason Coscia, the

plaintiff, Donna Coscia, has claimed violations of Fourteenth

Amendment due process in a suit for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

(2006) against a number of Pembroke, Massachusetts police officers,

their superiors, and the town, for failing to prevent Jason

Coscia’s death. The nub of her case is the charge that they failed

to provide medical services for the decedent who threatened suicide

in police custody, as an alleged consequence of which he killed

himself some fourteen hours after release. This appeal in advance

of trial is brought by the individual defendants, who moved for

judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure

12(c) on grounds including qualified immunity, see Ashcroft v.

Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1946 (2009), and the issue is the

sufficiency of the complaint to state a due process claim resting

on law established with sufficient clarity to apprise the

defendants of the duty they are said to have breached. We hold

that the complaint failed to allege a constitutional violation and

reverse the district court’s ruling sustaining the claim.

On this de novo review of a purely legal issue, see

Estate of Bennett v. Wainwright, 548 F.3d 155, 163 (1st Cir. 2008),

the governing allegations of the complaint can be stated shortly. 

After twenty-one-year-old Jason Coscia had a one-car accident, he

was arrested about eleven o’clock in the morning and brought to the

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Pembroke police station. On the way there he said he intended to

throw himself in front of a train, and he continued to utter

suicide threats at the station house accompanied by selfdestructive behavior, to the point of licking an electrical outlet. 

As a consequence, the police did not lock him in a cell, but placed

him in leg restraints and followed an evaluation protocol that

showed a high suicide risk. He was not examined by a doctor, but

was released on his own recognizance about six o’clock that

evening. Just before eight o’clock the next morning he committed 1

suicide by stepping in front of a train. The complaint claims that

“[t]he failure of the defendants to take appropriate action to have

Jason Coscia evaluated by medical professionals caused his death by

suicide.”2

A defense motion for judgment on grounds of qualified

immunity raises issues about the recognition of the constitutional

right said to have been violated, and the requisite clarity by

which it is established in the law. Failing either of them,

dismissal follows, Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009);

Although it is irrelevant to the decision of the case, it is 1

fair to note that the transcript of the hearing on the motion to

dismiss shows that the police released him in the company of a

friend. 

Given our conclusion that no claim is stated against the 2

individual officers involved, there is no need to summarize

allegations claiming that supervisory failures led to the

violations claimed, or that a municipal policy of constitutionally

inadequate treatment made the town liable as well.

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failing both, a court dismissing the action has discretion to

choose either issue as cause for the disposition, see id. at 236. 

The trial court held against the defendants on both points, of

course, but we decide the appeal on the ground that the complaint

fails to allege a due process violation. The question is thus 3

whether the allegations as considered most favorably to the

plaintiff “raise a right to relief above the speculative level on

the assumption that [those] allegations are true.” Bell Atlantic

Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007).

A state and its subdivisions are under a substantive

obligation imposed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment to refrain at least from treating a pretrial detainee

with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm

to health. City of Revere v. Mass. Gen. Hosp., 463 U.S. 239, 244

(1983); see Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 835 (1994) (standard

of deliberate indifference except as to excessive force claims). 

Proof of deliberate indifference requires a showing of greater

culpability than negligence but less than a purpose to do harm,

Farmer, 511 U.S. at 835, and it may consist of showing a conscious

failure to provide medical services where they would be reasonably

appropriate, Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976).

With these general legal premises to start with, the

Since the motion was filed under Federal Rule of Civil 3

Procedure 12(c), not 12(b)(6), all pleadings may be considered, but

here it suffices to analyze the complaint.

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argument that the complaint fails to state a claim for relief turns

on the allegation that Jason Coscia killed himself, not while in

custody, but some fourteen hours after his release. Like the 4

district judge, we have been apprised of no case recognizing due

process liability for suicide based on police conduct except for

death during custody, and the defendants have cited one case

comparable to this one that found no liability for the reason that

the suicide occurred after release. The district court nonetheless

decided that a liability claim had been pleaded adequately despite

the non-custodial death because a causal relationship (in fact and

law) had been plausibly stated between the failure to furnish

medical care during the temporary custody and the self-destructive

act the next morning:

[T]he plaintiff’s theory depends on whether

the officers violated Coscia’s rights by

failing to offer medical care during his

custody and whether these actions caused his

suicide. . . . [T]raditional causation

principles provide the appropriate limits on a

government official’s liability for harms that

occur after a detainee has left the official’s

custody.

Coscia v. Town of Pembroke, 715 F. Supp. 2d 212, 223, 226 (D. Mass.

2010).

Thus, we express no opinion on the sufficiency of the

4

complaint to charge that the conduct of the police during custody

was deliberately indifferent to the risk of harm or death during

that period; it is unnecessary to deal with this question.

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We assume that the District Court was correct that the

familiar principles of tort causation requiring connection in fact

would be satisfied by the complaint here. It is plausible for

pleading purposes that medical intervention during the seven-hour

custody (say, by administering psychotropic medication to relieve

suicidal anxiety, or by observation and care in a hospital) could

have deflected the decedent from the course leading to the suicidal

act fourteen hours after custody ended. Hence, we can accept the

allegations as claiming causation in fact of foreseeable harm. See

Rodriguez-Cirilo v. Garcia, 115 F.3d 50, 52 (1st Cir. 1997). But

although principles of liability under Section 1983 borrow from the

understanding of tort causation, Garcia, 115 F.3d at 52, we think

the rationale for official responsibility under the Due Process

Clause requires a limit on liability that stops short of the point

that may be reached by fact causation analysis, and this accounts

for our disagreement with the district court.

In setting out our reasons, it is well to keep in mind

that we are not dealing with an allegation of harm from a risk

created by the state itself or by its local officers. See DeShaney

v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489 U.S. 189, 201 (1989). 

We agree with the district judge that the pleadings raise no claim

that the treatment by the police gave rise to a suicidal inclination

on the decedent’s part when he would otherwise have had none, and

nothing in the complaint suggests even in a conclusory way that his

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self-destructive tendency was intensified by state action, or that

anything done or omitted by the police weakened any instinct for

self-preservation and made him more dangerous to himself. The

causation alleged is not that the absence of medical attention

during custody was in any way creative of suicidal vulnerability by

working a change in him for the worse, but consists rather of a

failure to prevent the consequence of his preexisting suicidal

disposition, a failure to intervene in a way that would change him,

or his circumstances, for the better in the period after his

release. We think this claim of causation leads to a liability

beyond what due process imposes, for although the existing law does

recognize a custodial duty to take some preventive action, its

rationale does not extend official protective responsibility as far

as the plaintiff would take it.

In DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social

Services, the Supreme Court pointed to the limit of the government’s

due process obligation to prevent harm to individuals, reiterating

the reasoning behind Estelle’s recognition of an obligation to

provide medical care to prisoners (hence, City of Revere’s due

process rule for detainees). The official responsibility rests on

the fact of custody, “because the prisoner is unable by reason of

the deprivation of his liberty [to] care for himself,” DeShaney, 489

U.S. at 198-99 (alteration in original)(internal quotation marks

omitted). “An inmate must rely on prison authorities to meet his

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medical needs; if the authorities fail to do so, those needs will

not be met.” Estelle, 429 U.S. at 103, quoted in DeShaney, 489 U.S.

at 200. The government’s obligation to prevent avoidable harm by

providing medical care during custody is, in other words, a

substitute for the responsibility that a reasonable person would

bear for himself, if he were not detained. But a substitute duty

that obligates the government while a person in custody “must rely”

on those who control him does not support liability for harm

occurring after release when the individual is no longer forced to

rely on authorities who limit action on his own behalf or

intervention by others on the outside that would avoid harm.5

And because it is substantive due process that must

account for any requirement that the government answer for harm that

is avoidable after the official restriction has ceased, see

DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 199-200, such liability could be recognized

only if it would be fundamentally or shockingly unreasonable for the

authorities to disclaim, and be left by state law without,

responsibility for whatever may befall an erstwhile detainee once

he again is free from restrictions on acting effectively for

himself, or from benefitting from help that others may provide. We

think that no such argument could seriously be made, and no such

Of course, ministrations during custody might change an 5

individual permanently for the better, so that when a detainee’s

release leaves him free from the government’s limits on his liberty

he will actually have no need for medical services. But, for the

reasons set out, that is incidental to due process.

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conclusion is entailed by existing law. With the restoration of the

detainee’s liberty, then, the legal chain of preventive (as distinct

from state-created) causation must be taken to have ended. We

accordingly hold that in the absence of a risk of harm created or

intensified by state action there is no due process liability for

harm suffered by a prior detainee after release from custody in

circumstances that do not effectively extend any state impediment

to exercising self-help or to receiving whatever aid by others may

normally be available.6

That rule requires the dismissal of this complaint. As

mentioned, there is no claim here of a state-created or augmented

risk, and fourteen hours at liberty is not reasonably compatible

with any claim that normal sources of support were effectively

blocked. So far as it appears from the complaint, when the police

released the decedent they “placed him in no worse position than

that in which he would have been had they not acted at all . . . .” 

DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 201. When he was arrested, he was thinking

about suicide, though not at that point actually attempting it, and

the pleadings are fairly read to allege the same at the time of

release. While we recognize the possibility that state tort law may

bind the police to a more demanding standard of conduct and a more

Given the requirement of effective opportunity to take action 6

or to be open to action by others, there is no reason to fear a

perverse incentive for the police to avoid liability by releasing

an individual attempting suicide.

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extended period of liability than the Due Process Clause’s

limitations on state authority (and the town’s regulations may do

the same), there are no state law claims before us.

Reversed.

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