Opinion ID: 773932
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Law on Deliberate Indifference in a Prison Conditions Case

Text: 22 The leading Supreme Court case setting forth the Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference analysis for a prison conditions case is Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 128 L. Ed. 2d 811, 114 S. Ct. 1970 (1994). In Farmer, the Supreme Court reversed a grant of summary judgment for various defendant prison officials on the plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claim, which was based on the deliberate indifference that the officials allegedly showed to his risk of being sexually assaulted in prison. In its analysis on what type of showing is needed to establish deliberate indifference by a defendant, Farmer rejected an objective test for deliberate indifference; instead it looked to what the prison official actually knew rather than what a reasonable official in his position should have known. More specifically, the Court held that a prison official cannot be found liable under the Eighth Amendment for denying an inmate humane conditions of confinement unless the official knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety. Id. at 837. 23 This requirement of actual knowledge means that the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference. Id. Farmer explained, however, that this subjective knowledge requirement does not mean that a prison official can avoid liability by remaining deliberately indifferent to an excessive or substantial risk of serious harm to prisoners: 24 We are no more persuaded by petitioner's argument that, without an objective test for deliberate indifference, prison officials will be free to ignore obvious dangers to inmates. Under the test we adopt today, an Eighth Amendment claimant need not show that a prison official acted or failed to act believing that harm actually would befall an inmate; it is enough that the official acted or failed to act despite his knowledge of a substantial risk of serious harm. 25 Id. at 842. 26 Moreover, a defendant's knowledge of a risk can be proved indirectly by circumstantial evidence. [A] factfinder may conclude that a prison official knew of a substantial risk from the very fact that the risk was obvious. Id. (citing Wayne R. LaFave & Austin W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law 3.7, p. 335 (1986) (If the risk is obvious, so that a reasonable man would realize it, we might well infer that [the defendant] did in fact realize it. . . .)). In fact, Farmer anticipated that a plaintiff could make out a deliberate indifference case by showing that prison officials simply were aware of a general risk to inmates in the plaintiff's situation: 27 If an Eighth Amendment plaintiff presents evidence showing that a substantial risk of inmate attacks was longstanding, pervasive, well-documented, or expressly noted by prison officials in the past, and the circumstances suggest that the defendant-official being sued had been exposed to information concerning the risk and thus must have known about it, then such evidence could be sufficient to permit a trier of fact to find that the defendant-official had actual knowledge of the risk. 28 Id. at 842-43 (quotation marks and citation omitted). Similarly, Farmer made clear that a prison official defendant cannot escape liability by showing that he did not know that this particular inmate was in danger of attack: it does not matter . . . whether a prisoner faces an excessive risk of attack for reasons personal to him or because all prisoners in his situation face such a risk. Id. at 843. 29 Farmer emphasized further that, while a prison official's knowledge of an excessive risk of serious harm may be inferred from the fact that the risk is obvious, this inference is not compelled, as the official always must have an opportunity to show that he was unaware of the risk. See id. at 844. Finally, the official who is actually aware of the risk to the prisoner can avert liability by showing that he responded reasonably to the risk, even if the ultimate harm was not avoided. See id. 30 The Court in Farmer also discussed the showing that a plaintiff needs to make to survive a summary judgment motion on a deliberate indifference claim. Although this discussion was in the context of a claim for an injunction, it may be applied to a claim for damages. The Court stated that to survive summary judgment, [the plaintiff] must come forward with evidence from which it can be inferred that the defendant-officials were at the time suit was filed, and are at the time of summary judgment, knowingly and unreasonably disregarding an objectively intolerable risk of harm. Id. at 846. We read this discussion in Farmer to mean that, to defeat the summary judgment motion, Beers-Capitol and Tate must present enough evidence to support the inference that the defendants knowingly and unreasonably disregarded an objectively intolerable risk of harm. 31 Our decision in Hamilton v. Leavy, 117 F.3d 742 (3d Cir. 1997), is instructive because it applies Farmer's deliberate indifference test to a situation somewhat similar to the case at bar. In Hamilton, a prisoner brought an Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference claim against certain prison officials, alleging that the officials were deliberately indifferent to the risk to his safety posed by other inmates when they transferred him to a certain Delaware state prison. Plaintiff Hamilton had been attacked and seriously injured by other inmates at this prison. The court granted summary judgment for Lewis, the prison official who was in charge of prisoner transfers, on the basis of Lewis's affidavit that she did not know of any risk posed to Hamilton by the transfer. The district court granted summary judgment to the other defendants, who were members of the prison system's Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT), because the court concluded that the MDT had acted reasonably and did everything they could after they learned of the risk to Hamilton (the MDT had recommended that Hamilton be placed in protective custody at the prison before he was attacked). Id. at 748. We reversed. 32 First, we noted that Hamilton had presented sufficient circumstantial evidence that Lewis was aware of the risk posed to Hamilton to survive summary judgment: Lewis had probably received the MDT recommendation (she did not deny this); Lewis knew that Hamilton was a prison informant and thus was more likely to be harmed by other inmates; and Lewis herself had approved protective custody for Hamilton on two prior occasions. See id. at 747. We held that this proffered evidence was similar to the type of circumstantial evidence anticipated as sufficient by Farmer, i.e., it was sufficient evidence upon which a factfinder could conclude that Lewis 'must have known' of the risk to Hamilton's safety. Id. at 748 (quoting Farmer, 511 U.S. at 842). Second, we reversed the grant of summary judgment for the MDT defendants because Hamilton demonstrated that there was a genuine issue of fact as to whether these defendants could have done something more than merely offer a recommendation; for example, they could have placed Hamilton in administrative segregation. We thus held that there remains a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether the MDT's response to the risk Hamilton faced was reasonable. Id. 33 From Farmer and Hamilton we extract the following precepts. To be liable on a deliberate indifference claim, a defendant prison official must both know[ ] of and disregard[ ] an excessive risk to inmate health or safety. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837. The knowledge element of deliberate indifference is subjective, not objective knowledge, meaning that the official must actually be aware of the existence of the excessive risk; it is not sufficient that the official should have been aware. See id. at 837-38. However, subjective knowledge on the part of the official can be proved by circumstantial evidence to the effect that the excessive risk was so obvious that the official must have known of the risk. See id. at 842. Finally, a defendant can rebut a prima facie demonstration of deliberate indifference either by establishing that he did not have the requisite level of knowledge or awareness of the risk, or that, although he did know of the risk, he took reasonable steps to prevent the harm from occurring. See id. at 844.
34 The plaintiffs' theory as to how the defendants' actions and inactions constitute deliberate indifference proceeds along two basic lines. First, the plaintiffs contend that some of the defendants knew of the abuse committed by Whetzel or were aware of the high risk of abuse, but declined to act or to seek more information about it. Second, the plaintiffs also claim that the supervisor defendants, while perhaps not aware of the particular risk that Whetzel posed to these specific plaintiffs, implemented policies that were so defective that they created an unreasonable and excessive risk of abuse to the female residents generally at YDC, and that the defendants were aware of this risk. 35 Both of these approaches depend upon the thesis that all of the defendants were trained experts in the area of juvenile detention, so that, given what they knew, they must have been aware of the excessive risks of harm to the plaintiffs that existed at YDC. In particular, the plaintiffs contend that those defendants who were responsible for implementing the policies at YDC had to know that the policies and procedures at YDC created substantial general risks of sexual abuse for the female residents there, as these defendants were trained how to minimize those risks. The plaintiffs assert further that those defendants who worked directly with the female residents had to know of the particular risk that Whetzel posed because they were trained to recognize cases of sexual abuse and they were aware of persistent allegations of his sexual relationships with the residents. 36 The deliberate indifference claims implicating supervisors for their deficient policies are more complicated than the other, more direct deliberate indifference claims, because the former add another level to the analysis. Both the plaintiffs and the defendants argue that we should analyze the supervisor-centered claims under the four-part test for supervisor liability developed in Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d 1099 (3d Cir. 1989). 7 Sample involved a claim that a supervisor was liable for a subordinate's Eighth Amendment violation because the supervisor implemented deficient policies and was deliberately indifferent to the risk these policies generated. Although the claim in Sample does not seem to be precisely the same as the plaintiffs' claim in the case at bar--Sample concerned whether a supervisor could be liable for a subordinate's Eighth Amendment tort while the plaintiffs here seem to claim that the supervisors committed their own Eighth Amendment violations by implementing defective policies--we do not think this difference material. 37 In Sample, the plaintiff (Sample) had his life sentence for murder vacated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and was granted bail pending the new trial. Although his family was ready to post bail, the senior records officer (Diecks) determined that Sample still had time to serve on another sentence. In fact, Diecks was mistaken, and by the time this mistake was rectified, Sample had served an additional nine months. Sample sued Diecks and William Robinson, the Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Corrections. Diecks was found liable for an Eighth Amendment violation for his deliberate indifference. The apposite precedent concerns the question whether Robinson was liable on the Eighth Amendment claim, as Diecks' supervisor, for failing to properly supervise and implement policies and practices that would have protected against the constitutional violation. 38 Presented with these facts, we developed a four-part test, based on the Supreme Court's reasoning in City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 103 L. Ed. 2d 412, 109 S. Ct. 1197 (1989), for supervisor liability on an Eighth Amendment claim for failure to properly supervise. Under this regime, to hold a supervisor liable because his policies or practices led to an Eighth Amendment violation, the plaintiff must identify a specific policy or practice that the supervisor failed to employ and show that: (1) the existing policy or practice created an unreasonable risk of the Eighth Amendment injury; (2) the supervisor was aware that the unreasonable risk was created; (3) the supervisor was indifferent to that risk; and (4) the injury resulted from the policy or practice. See Sample, 885 F.2d at 1118. 39 According to Sample, one way--perhaps the easiest way--a plaintiff can make out a supervisor liability claim is by showing that the supervisory official failed to respond appropriately in the face of an awareness of a pattern of such injuries. Id. But that is not the only way to make out such a claim, as there are situations in which the risk of constitutionally cognizable harm is so great and so obvious that the risk and the failure of supervisory officials to respond will alone support findings of the existence of an unreasonable risk, of knowledge of that unreasonable risk, and of indifference to it. Id. 8 40 In sum, to make out a claim of deliberate indifference based on direct liability (i.e., insofar as the defendants are alleged to have known of and ignored the particular risk that Whetzel posed), the plaintiffs must meet the test from Farmer v. Brennan: They must show that the defendants knew or were aware of and disregarded an excessive risk to the plaintiffs' health or safety, and they can show this by establishing that the risk was obvious. For the plaintiffs' claims seeking to hold supervisors liable for their deficient policies, Sample's four-part test provides the analytical structure for determining whether the policymakers exhibited deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs' risk of injury, it being simply the deliberate indifference test applied to the specific situation of a policymaker. 41