United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted December 7, 2020*

Decided December 8, 2020

Before

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

No. 19-3362

JERRY JELLIS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

LARRY HALE, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:15-cv-00630-GCS 

Gilbert C. Sison,

Magistrate Judge.

O R D E R

Jerry Jellis, formerly an inmate at Menard Correctional Center, lost at trial on his 

claim charging two prison officers with excessive force. On appeal he challenges several 

evidentiary rulings made before and during trial. Because the district court’s rulings 

reflect an appropriate exercise of discretion, we affirm.

* 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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. 19-3362 Page 2

This suit arose out of an incident that took place in Menard’s general-population 

yard in 2013. After a gunshot rang out, Jellis defied an order by the warden to drop to

the ground. He was handcuffed and then escorted to the segregation wing by two 

officers, Larry Hale and Donald Lindenburg. In Jellis’s telling, he was assaulted by the 

officers on the way to segregation and in a holding cell, but we credit the version of the 

facts that support the jury’s verdict. Gracia v. Sigmatron Int’l, Inc., 842 F.3d 1010, 1018

(7th Cir. 2016). The prison investigated Jellis’s assault claims but found them to be

unsubstantiated.

Jellis brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 asserting claims under the Eighth 

and Fourteenth Amendments. The case eventually proceeded to trial before a 

magistrate judge, see 28 U.S.C. § 636(c), on Jellis’s claim that Hale and Lindenburg used 

excessive force against him.

1

Along the way, the court denied two motions in limine—rulings that, Jellis 

believes, affected the trial’s outcome. First, the court denied his request that Hale and 

Lindenberg be barred from presenting what he regards as irrelevant evidence—

evidence that he was familiar with the grievance process (having filed grievances in the 

past) yet filed no grievance here with regard to the alleged assault. The court also 

denied Jellis’s request to require the two officers to testify consistently with his 

deposition testimony (included with their summary judgment motion) describing how 

he was kicked and hit.

The court also granted the defendants’ motions in limine to exclude evidence 

relating to video cameras or video surveillance of the alleged assault. Defendants 

acknowledged the existence of cameras in the relevant area but asserted that one 

camera was non-operational at the time and that footage from the other cameras had 

since been deleted. Relatedly, the court later denied Jellis’s request for an 

adverse-inference jury instruction based on spoliation of video evidence. As the court 

explained, there was “little-to-no non-speculative evidence that an incriminatory video 

ever existed,” let alone any evidence about what the video might have shown or that its 

destruction took place for any reason other than the prison’s policy for retaining videos.

1 Jellis also was allowed to proceed—and lost—at trial on his claim that a 

medical technician acted with deliberate indifference in delaying treatment. On appeal 

he raises no argument about this claim, so we say nothing further about it.
No. 19-3362 Page 3

At trial, the court permitted Jellis’s counsel to inquire about the absence of video 

evidence in the prison’s post-incident investigation. After the prison presented 

testimony from an official who confirmed that one camera was non-operational, Jellis 

asked to call Robert Woodall, a fellow prisoner, to testify about his role in installing 

other video cameras near the location of the incident. But the court denied the request, 

noting—based on its reading of Woodall’s declaration—that he could not “testify that 

[the camera] was working,” and in any event he was a prisoner who was not under 

subpoena.

The jury ultimately returned a verdict for the defendants.

On appeal, Jellis first argues that the district court abused its discretion in ruling 

against him on the motions in limine. But our review of these rulings is hindered by 

Jellis’s failure to order a transcript of the final pretrial conference, in which the district 

court stated its reasons on the record. We cannot review a decision without knowing 

the district court’s reasons. See FED. R. APP. P. 10(b)(2); Hicks v. Avery Drei, LLC, 654 F.3d 

739, 743–44 (7th Cir. 2011) (review not possible when appellant did not request 

transcription of oral arguments or bench ruling on motion in limine).

Jellis next argues that the district court abused its discretion when it denied his

motion for an adverse-inference instruction regarding the absence of video footage. An 

adverse-inference instruction is appropriate when a party had a duty to preserve 

evidence and the evidence is destroyed in bad faith. Bracey v. Grondin, 712 F.3d 1012, 

1018–19 (7th Cir. 2013). Jellis infers bad-faith destruction of evidence from the 

defendants’ responses to his discovery requests. First, in his view, the defendants 

waffled in their timeline of how long video footage is retained: In one response, the 

defendants stated that footage is destroyed after 90 days, but in another response they 

changed that figure to 30 days for one area. Second, Jellis, for the first time, questions 

the veracity of a statement in the prison’s investigation report that the pertinent video 

camera was “nonoperational”; he recalls an investigator telling him that he knew the 

identity of the officers “on camera.”

The court appropriately denied the motion on grounds that Jellis had not 

introduced competent evidence that any video footage had been destroyed in bad faith. 

A request for an adverse-inference instruction requires more than speculation that 

evidence was destroyed to hide it. Id. at 1019–20. Jellis points to nothing in the record to 

suggest the defendants intentionally destroyed any video evidence, or that its 

destruction occurred outside the regular course of the prison’s retention policy. With 
No. 19-3362 Page 4

regard to his argument that the defendants responded inconsistently about the length of 

time that the prison retained video footage (be it 30 or 90 days), the precise duration is 

immaterial here, given that any footage would have been destroyed by the time he filed

this lawsuit in 2015, nearly two years after the incident.2 As for Jellis’s other argument, 

concerning the veracity of the investigation report, he not only waived the argument by 

failing to raise it first in the district court, see Sauk Prairie Conservation All. v. 

United States Dep't of the Interior, 944 F.3d 664, 674 (7th Cir. 2019), cert. denied sub nom. 

Sauk Prairie Conservation All. v. United States Dep't of the Interior, 140 S. Ct. 2764 (2020), 

but the court also aptly rejected his evidence as speculative.

Jellis next argues that the district court abused its discretion when it denied his 

request to call Woodall as a witness at trial to testify that he installed the video cameras 

and knew that they were operational. But the court exercised appropriate discretion in 

denying the request because, as Jellis’s counsel conceded at the time, Woodall lacked 

personal knowledge of whether the video cameras were operational when the incident 

occurred. See FED. R. EVID. 401; Indianapolis Airport Auth. v. Travelers Prop. Cas. Co. of Am., 

849 F.3d 355, 371 (7th Cir. 2017).

Finally, Jellis challenges a protective order, entered on the eve of trial, concerning

photographs and the investigation report. He suggests that the order relieved the 

defendants from, for instance, having to lay a foundation for certain witnesses who they 

wanted to testify. But Jellis’s trial counsel waived this challenge by informing the court 

that she did not object to entry of the order. See Hamer v. Neighborhood Hous. Servs. of 

Chi., 897 F.3d 835, 840 (7th Cir. 2018). 

AFFIRMED

2 To the extent Jellis believes that the prison should have anticipated litigation 

involving footage from nearby operational camera sites, he has not explained how the 

prison should have been on notice before this lawsuit of any allegations of excessive 

force taking place in the surveillance area in question.