United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted May 9, 2019*

Decided May 13, 2019 

Before 

JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge 

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 17-3649 

JAMES SOTO, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

ANTHONY BUCKLEY, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Central District of Illinois. 

No. 14-CV-1132 

Michael M. Mihm, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

 James Soto, an Illinois inmate, asked a guard to assign him to a new cell because 

he believed that his cellmate was going to harm him. The guard gave Soto’s written 

request to Lieutenant Anthony Buckley, who oversaw cell assignments. The prison’s 

 

*

 Defendants Kevwe Akpore, Sherry Benton, Tiffanie Clark, Steven Gans, 

Salvador Godinez, Joseph Yurkovich, and John Does were not served with process in 

the district court and are not participating in this appeal. We have agreed to decide this 

case without oral argument because the briefs and record adequately present the facts 

and legal arguments, and oral argument would not significantly aid the court. FED. R.

APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 17-3649 Page 2 

Internal Affairs office, which investigates alleged cellmate conflicts, did not validate 

Soto’s fear, so Buckley did not reassign Soto. Days later, the cellmate injured Soto. Soto 

sued Buckley for violating the Eighth Amendment, accusing him of deliberate 

indifference to Soto’s safety. A jury found Buckley not liable. Soto moved for a 

favorable verdict as a matter of law or alternatively for a new trial, and the district court 

denied the motion. Because the evidence did not necessitate a verdict for Soto, and the 

court reasonably concluded that the jury’s verdict was not against the weight of the 

evidence, we affirm the judgment. 

 Soto, who is Muslim, was paired at Hill Correctional Center with a cellmate who 

professed to dislike Muslims. When Soto prayed, his cellmate would smack his lips, 

smirk, and disparage Islam. Soto found this conduct threatening, and he asked Brent 

Mason, a guard, to help him transfer to a new cell. (Mason recalled that Soto 

complained that he and his cellmate “weren’t getting along.”) Soto also gave Mason a 

“kite”—a written request for a new housing assignment. 

 Mason passed Soto’s request on to Lieutenant Buckley. According to Mason, he 

emailed Buckley twice, met with him in person, and hand-delivered Soto’s kite. Buckley 

recalled only receiving the kite. Before trial, Buckley swore in an affidavit that he had 

referred Soto’s past kites to the prison’s Internal Affairs office; Internal Affairs would 

investigate and tell him if it found a credible threat of conflict. Buckley did not state 

whether he had referred the latest kite as well. At trial, however, he testified that he had 

sent this kite to Internal Affairs and that it never responded that a threat was real. On 

cross-examination, Buckley conceded that he did not mention in his affidavit that he 

had referred the kite to Internal Affairs. He also acknowledged that he and other staff 

were unable to find Mason’s emails or Soto’s kite. 

After a trial at which a jury heard about these events, Soto filed several post-trial 

motions. He first moved for judgment as a matter of law, see FED. R. CIV. P. 50(a), and 

the district court denied the motion. The jury then deliberated. While deliberating, it 

asked to see “the depositions given by Buckley and Mason,” and the court denied the 

request. After the jury rendered its verdict, Soto again moved for a judgment as a 

matter of law or for a new trial. See FED RS. CIV. P. 50(b), 59. The district court denied 

that motion, too. Though the court observed that “the evidence in this case [is] very 

close,” it concluded that judgment as a matter of law was not warranted. It reasoned 

that the jury could have found that Buckley was unaware of a serious risk of harm to 

Soto or, to the extent that he was aware, Buckley reasonably responded to the risk. The 

court also ruled that those findings were not against the weight of the evidence. 
No. 17-3649 Page 3 

 On appeal, Soto primarily challenges the order denying his motion for judgment 

as a matter of law or for a new trial. We review rulings on motions for judgment as a 

matter of law de novo by assessing if a rational jury could have reached the verdict. 

See Roe v. Elyea, 631 F.3d 843, 856 (7th Cir. 2011). We review rulings on motions for a 

new trial for an abuse of discretion by asking if the district court reasonably decided 

that the verdict is consistent with the weight of the evidence and the trial was fair to the 

losing party. See Sanchez v. City of Chicago, 880 F.3d 349, 355 (7th Cir. 2018). 

 The district court properly denied Soto’s motion. To prevail on his Eighth 

Amendment claim, Soto needed to persuade the jury that Buckley knew about and yet 

disregarded a serious risk of harm to Soto’s safety. See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 

837 (1994); Gevas v. McLaughlin, 798 F.3d 475, 480 (7th Cir. 2015). As we are about to 

explain, the evidence did not require that finding (so Soto was not entitled to judgment 

as a matter of law), and the district court reasonably ruled that the jury permissibly 

found that the evidence overall favored Buckley (so a new trial is not required.) 

 The jury rationally could have reached its verdict for Buckley in at least two 

ways. First, it could have found that Buckley had no reason to believe that Soto was in 

serious danger. Mason—who contacted Buckley about the conflict— testified that Soto 

said only that he and his cellmate “weren’t getting along.” And the jury could have 

found that Soto’s description of the conflict—his cellmate smacked his lips, smirked, 

and denigrated Soto’s faith—did not alert Buckley to serious peril. Second, even if the 

jury believed that Buckley was alerted to a serious risk, it sensibly could have 

concluded that Buckley reacted reasonably to it. Prison officials do not violate the 

Eighth Amendment if they reasonably respond to an alleged risk of harm, even if they 

ultimately do not avert an injury. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 844–45; Giles v. Tobeck, 895 F.3d 

510, 514 (7th Cir. 2018). Buckley testified, and the jury could have found, that he asked 

Internal Affairs to investigate Soto’s kite and that he reasonably did not move Soto 

because Internal Affairs never responded that Soto faced a real threat. Soto insists that 

Buckley’s earlier affidavit, in which Buckley never mentioned contacting Internal 

Affairs, discredits his trial testimony. But the jury was free to credit Buckley’s 

statements at trial, and we will not upset its credibility determination. See Martinez v. 

City of Chicago, 900 F.3d 838, 844 (7th Cir. 2018). 

Soto raises three more arguments, but none has merit. First, he contends that the 

district court should have instructed the jury to draw inferences against Buckley 

because the kite and emails are missing. Soto never requested such an instruction, so we 

review its absence for plain error. See FED. R. CIV. P. 51(d)(2). We see no error at all 
No. 17-3649 Page 4 

because no evidence suggests that Buckley (or anyone) destroyed the documents in bad 

faith. So the instruction was not warranted. See Elizarri v. Sheriff of Cook Cty., 901 F.3d 

787, 791–92 (7th Cir. 2018). Moreover, the court permitted Soto to question Buckley 

about the missing documents, from which the jury could have drawn its own 

inferences. See id. Second, Soto asserts that the district court erred when it did not honor 

the jury’s request to review Buckley’s and Mason’s “depositions” (by which the jury 

likely meant their affidavits, because they were never deposed). Their affidavits, 

however, were not admitted into evidence—Soto never asked that they be admitted— 

so the court acted within its discretion when declining to provide them to the jury. 

See Lindsey v. Macias, 907 F.3d 517, 522 (7th Cir. 2018). Finally, Soto contends that his 

counsel was ineffective, but “ineffective assistance is not a ground for reversal in a civil 

matter.” Pendell v. City of Peoria, 799 F.3d 916, 918 (7th Cir. 2015). 

 Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment.