Opinion ID: 471621
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Deliberate Indifference Instruction

Text: 26 Maddox claims the district court misstated the law when it instructed the jury, 27 [w]ith respect to medical care, the concept of due process of law requires the officers to take reasonable steps to secure medical care which they recognize as necessary for the decedent. The constitutional rights of the decedent are violated if the officers are deliberately indifferent to the necessity of medical care for the decedent. However, any failure by the officers themselves to render cardial pulmonary resuscitation is not a violation of the decedent's constitutional rights. 28 Because Wilson was a pretrial detainee and not a convicted prisoner at the time of the claimed wrongful act, Maddox's section 1983 action arises under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment and not the eighth amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Jones v. Johnson, 781 F.2d 769, 771 (9th Cir.1986). While a convicted prisoner's eighth amendment rights are violated if prison personnel are deliberately indifferent to the prisoner's serious medical needs, Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106, 97 S.Ct. 285, 292, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976), Maddox claims the court erred in instructing the jury that the deliberate indifference standard applies when the decedent was a pretrial detainee. 29 Although Maddox's claim arises under the fourteenth amendment due process clause, pretrial detainees' due process rights are at least as great as the eighth amendment protections available to convicted prisoners. Revere v. Massachusetts General Hospital, 463 U.S. 239, 244, 103 S.Ct. 2979, 2983, 77 L.Ed.2d 605 (1983); Jones, 781 F.2d at 771. While the Court in Revere declined to define the standard of care for alleged deprivation of medical care in the due process context, it specifically found that [w]hatever the standard may be, [the City] fulfilled its constitutional obligation by seeing that [the injured plaintiff] was taken promptly to a hospital that provided the treatment necessary for his injury. Revere, 463 U.S. at 245, 103 S.Ct. at 2983. 30 In this case the district court instructed the jury that, constitutional rights of the decedent are violated if the officers are deliberately indifferent to the necessity of medical care for the decedent. The court further instructed the jury that the decedent's due process rights were violated if the defendant officers failed to take reasonable steps to secure medical care. 31 We need not decide the precise standard which applies in determining whether a city fulfills its due process obligations to pretrial detainees who require medical attention. Here, as in Revere, the jury could reasonably have concluded that the defendant police officers fulfilled their obligation under the due process clause when they promptly took the defendant to the hospital to obtain medical care. We therefore conclude that taken as a whole the district court's instructions concerning the deprivation of medical care were adequate.