United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

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No. 19-2048

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Hollis Devin Martz

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Michael Barnes, Deputy Sevier County Detention Center; Kris Hundley, Deputy

Sevier County Detention Center; Thomas Jackson, Deputy Sevier County

Detention Center

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendants

Troy Cravens, Deputy Sevier County Detention Center

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant

Matthew D. Webb, Deputy Sevier County Detention Center

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant

Chad Dowdle, Deputy Sevier County Detention Center; Robert Gentry,

Investigator Sevier County Detention; Wendell Randall, Deputy Sevier County

Detention Center; Christopher Wollcot, Deputy Sevier County Detention Center;

Sheriff Benny Simmons, Sevier County Sheriff’s Department

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendants - Appellants

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Appeal from United States District Court

for the Western District of Arkansas - Texarkana

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 Submitted: December 3, 2019

Filed: December 9, 2019

[Unpublished]

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Before GRUENDER, WOLLMAN, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. 

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PER CURIAM.

In this interlocutory appeal, Hollis Devin Martz, an inmate formerly detained

at the Sevier County Detention Center, brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action claiming,

asrelevant, that DeputyWendellRandall, DeputyChad Dowdle, Deputy Investigator

Robert Gentry, Deputy Troy Cravens, Jail Administrator Christopher Wolcott, and

Sheriff Benny Simmons used excessive force and were deliberately indifferent to his

medical needs relating to a pepper-spray incident. Defendants have appealed the

district court’s denial of their motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified

immunity. We reverse and remand. 

Martz alleged that on May 6, 2016, Randall, with Gentry and Dowdle present,

deployed pepper spray toward an inmate who was causing a disturbance in the same

cell where Martz was housed. The pepper spray missed the cell mate and hit Martz

in his face, eyes, ears, and mouth, causing him to vomit and experience shortness of

breath. Martz told Randall, Dowdle, Gentry, and Cravens that he had been hit, but

was left overnight without a shower and was denied a clothes change and medical

attention. Martz further alleged that Jail Administrator Wolcott became aware at

some unspecified point that Martz had been hit with mace and conspired to deny him

a clothes change, a shower, and medical attention, and that after being informed,

Sheriff Simmons neglected his duties to oversee inmates’ care by allowing the

underlying officers’ actions. The district court denied summary judgment, concluding

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that while defendants did not use excessive force in the deployment of the pepper

spray, they were not entitled to qualified immunity on the excessive-force and

deliberate-indifference claims based on the denial of clean up and medical care after

the pepper-spray incident. 

We review the denial of qualified immunity de novo. See Thompson v.

Monticello, 894 F.3d 993, 997-98 (8th Cir. 2018) (standard of review). Our review

of the record satisfies us that Martz did not meet his burden of establishing that the

law was clearly established such that a reasonable officer would have understood his

actions violated those rights. See Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011) (case

directly on point is not required, “but existing precedent must have placed the

statutory or constitutional question beyond debate”); Hanson as Tr. for Layton v.

Best, 915 F.3d 543, 548 (8th Cir. 2019) (burden is on plaintiff to identify authority);

De La Rosa v. White, 852 F.3d 740, 745 (8th Cir. 2017) (contours of clearly

established right must be sufficiently clear such that a reasonable official would have

understood his actions violate that right). 

Specifically, it was not clearly established that--absent a prior use of

unconstitutional excessive force--defendants could be held liable for excessive force

based on the failure to decontaminate or the denial of medical care alone. In those

cases in which we have held that the failure to allow decontamination or the denial

of medical care constituted excessive force, such failures occurred as part of a

continuing series of events, beginning with the use of unconstitutional excessive

force. See, e.g. Burns v. Eaton, 752 F.3d 1136, 1140 (8th Cir. 2014) (“the few cases

where we denied summary judgment in Eighth Amendment excessive force claims

based on pepper spraying have involved no warning this force would be used, no

apparent purpose other than inflicting pain, use of unnecessary ‘super-soaker’

quantities of the chemical, refusal to allow the victimto wash off the painful chemical

for days, and/or use of additional physical force.”); see also Allen v. Mills, No.

1:16-CV-00026-SNLJ, 2018 WL 6171436, at *7 (E.D. Mo. Nov. 26, 2018) (noting

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that Burns clarified that the failure to permit a prisoner to wash off pepper spray is a

delayed decontamination claim invoking deliberate indifference standards, not an

excessive force claim). In the absence of a finding of the use of excessive force, we

conclude that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on the delayed

contamination claim.

We further conclude that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity on

Martz’s claim that they were deliberately indifferent by denying him a

decontamination shower and medical care after the pepper-spray incident. See

Thompson, 894 F.3d at 997-98. Even assuming that Martz had a serious medical

need, the summary judgment record reveals that defendants provided him with

immediate access to a sink, towel, and soap in his cell for decontamination. Because

such facilities were available, it is not clear that defendants were deliberately

indifferent by failing to provide Martz with an immediate shower or other care. See

White v. Pauly, 137 S. Ct. 548, 552 (2017) (“[C]learly established law should not be

defined at high level of generality. As this Court explained decades ago, the clearly

established law must be particularized to the facts of the case. . . . The [lower court]

. . . la[id] out excessive-force principles only at a general level.”) (internal citations

omitted); Johnson v. Leonard, 929 F.3d 569, 576 (8th Cir. 2019) (deliberate

indifference is a fact-intensive inquiry and requires a level of culpability even more

than gross negligence and akin to criminalrecklessness); Davis v. Hall, 375 F.3d 703,

712 (8th Cir. 2004) (officials are not liable for bad guesses in gray areas, but for

transgressing bright lines);see also Ward v. Smith, 844 F.3d 717, 720 (8th Cir. 2016)

(no constitutional violation in excessive force case when, after inmate’s genitals were

intentionally pepper sprayed, he had access in his cell to running water but notsoap);

Burns, 752 F.3d at 1140-41 (no deliberate indifference when prison official was told

to shut off water and prisoner was unable to rinse pepper spray out of eyes for 10

minutes). 

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Accordingly, we reverse the denial of summary judgment based on qualified

immunity on the excessive force and deliberate indifference claims, and we remand

the case to the district court for entry of judgment in favor of defendants on those

claims.

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