Opinion ID: 6931624
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the individual defendants’ qualified immunity

Text: We now consider whether each of the individual defendants is protected by qualified immunity.
Chief Anderson had no direct contact with Mr. Belcher. Mrs. Belcher seeks to hold him hable for failing to provide a written pohcy or training to his officers in the proper handhng of mentally ih and suicidal inmates, and for failing to cover the bars of the jail cell doors. 6 “Supervisory officials are not liable under section 1983 on the basis of respondeat superior or vicarious liability.” Hardin v. Hayes, 957 F.2d 845, 849 (11th Cir.1992). They may, however, be hable under section 1983 “when there is a causal connection between actions of the supervising official and the alleged constitutional deprivation.” Brown v. Crawford, 906 F.2d 667, 671 (11th Cir.1990). At the time of Mr. Belcher’s death in August 1991, Chief Anderson had been the City’s police chief for two-and-one-half years. As such, he had a duty to train police officers and to establish policies governing their conduct. Pursuant to an unwritten policy, Foley police officers were required to check on jail inmates every hour, unless the inmate was “unstable.” Officers were to check “unstable” inmates more frequently. When an inmate needed medical treatment, an officer either took him to a hospital or called a local ambulance service to the jail to administer care. If an inmate had prescription medication, an officer or a dispatcher administered it. When an inmate was suicidal, officers were expected to place him alone in a cell, without other inmates. Further, officers had the discretion to put the inmate in a cell that had been stripped of furnishings to reduce the possibility of suicide. In July 1991, only a month before Mr. Belcher’s death, Chief Anderson had written and distributed a new set of police department policies, but those policies did not address any aspect of the jail, such as the handling of mentally ill or suicidal inmates. Even before Anderson became Chief of Police, he was aware that an inmate had committed suicide in the Foley jail in 1984. He had investigated that suicide while serving as Chief Deputy Sheriff of Baldwin County, Alabama. Chief Anderson’s awareness of the risk of jail suicides was further heightened eight months before Mr. Belcher’s suicide, when Walter Cygan, a representative of the Alabama Municipal Insurance Corporation, inspected the Foley jail as part of a loss control evaluation for the City. In January 1991, Cygan sent a letter to Fred Mott, the City Administrator, that stated: “[Y]ou [should] consider some type of protection over the jail bars, so that ... a smooth surface can be created; thus eliminating the potential exposure from tying some material on to these bars and committing suicide.” Chief Anderson received a copy of that letter and asked Mr. Mott for funds to cover the bars; he did not receive that funding until after Mr. Belcher’s suicide.
Mrs. Belcher contends that Chief Anderson acted with deliberate indifference to her son’s life by not providing a written policy for the handling of suicidal inmates. In Schmelz v. Monroe County, 954 F.2d 1540 (11th Cir.1992), a case decided after Mr. Belcher’s death, this Court held that a sheriff who had an unwritten policy that “made an effort to identify and protect potentially suicidal inmates from self-harm” was not guilty of deliberate indifference. Id. at 1544. Chief Anderson’s unwritten policy for the handling of “unstable” inmates met the Schmelz standard. Our decisions prior to Mr. Belcher’s death do not require any more, in the way of a policy, than does Schmelz. Therefore, it could not have been clearly established at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death that a police chiefs failure to have a written policy for the handling of suicidal inmates constituted deliberate indifference.
Mrs. Belcher contends that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates constituted deliberate indifference to her son’s life. A supervisory official is not liable under section 1983 for an injury resulting from his failure to train subordinates unless his “failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the subordinates come into contact” and the failure has actually caused the injury of which the plaintiff complains. Popham v. City of Talladega, 908 F.2d 1561, 1564-65 (11th Cir.1990); Greason v. Kemp, 891 F.2d 829, 837 n. 15 (11th Cir.1990); cf. City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 388, 390, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 1204-05, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989) (addressing the analogous situation of municipal liability under section 1983). Only when the failure to. train amounts to “deliberate indifference” can it properly be characterized as the “policy” or “custom” that is necessary for section 1983 liability to attach. City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 389, 109 S.Ct. at 1205. Failure to train can amount to deliberate indifference when the need for more or different training is obvious, id. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1205, such as when there exists a history of abuse by subordinates that has put the supervisor on notice of the need for corrective measures, Greason, 891 F.2d at 837, and when the failure to train is likely to result in the violation of a constitutional right, City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1205. Mrs. Belcher contends that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates amounted to deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of suicidal inmates with whom the officers came into contact. She argues that the 1984 suicide and the recommendations of Cygan, the representative of the Alabama Municipal Insurance Corporation, put Chief Anderson on notice of the need to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates. In response to Chief Anderson’s qualified immunity defense, Mrs. Belcher contends that, at the time of her son’s death, Greason v. Kemp, 891 F.2d 829 (11th Cir.1990), clearly established that a reasonable supervisory official who knows of a previous suicide in his facility, but who fails to train his subordinates in the proper handling of suicidal inmates, acts with deliberate indifference. Mrs. Belcher’s contention requires too much of an inductive leap to defeat Chief Anderson’s qualified immunity. Although Greason denied qualified immunity to two supervisory officials who, among other things, failed to establish procedures to help subordinates in their facility to identify inmates having suicidal tendencies and to prevent suicides, that case did not clearly establish the law applicable to Chief Anderson’s conduct. To a large degree, Greason involved the practice of medicine. The two Greason supervisory defendants were the clinical director and the warden of a state mental health evaluation facility. 891 F.2d at 833. They supervised psychiatrists, support staff, and guards, who dealt routinely with inmates likely to inflict self-harm. Id. at 837, 839. The inmate who committed suicide in Greason did so after his medication was discontinued by a staff psychiatrist who visited the facility only once a week for six-and-one-half hours, during which time he saw twenty-five or thirty inmates for less than fifteen minutes each. Id. at 832. Only one year before the Greason inmate’s suicide, at the same facility, another inmate whose medication had been discontinued by the same psychiatrist had committed several acts of self-mutilation. Id. at 838, 840. The clinical director and the warden of the mental health facility who were defendants in Greason were in positions materially different from Chief Anderson’s. On a daily basis their principal responsibility was to coordinate the provision of medical and psychiatric services to prisoners who were patients in a mental health facility. By contrast, Chief Anderson’s principal responsibility was to supervise the enforcement of laws and to arrest suspected violators in his community. Additionally, the previous incident of self-harm at the facility in Greason is distinguishable from the previous Foley jail suicide. The Greason inmate committed suicide only one year after an incident of self-harm by another inmate at that facility who had been treated by the same psychiatrist and in the same manner as the Greason inmate. After that first incident of self-harm, nothing at the facility in Greason was changed to prevent the same thing from happening again. By contrast, the previous suicide in the Foley jail occurred seven years before Mr. Belch-er’s and that inmate had hung himself with a sheet tied through a cement block above the cell door. After that first Foley jail suicide, officials had filled holes in the cement blocks and had removed all of the furnishings, including sheets, from one cell; Mr. Belcher was placed in that cell as a precautionary measure. Mrs. Belcher cites no decisions other than Greason to clearly establish that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers amounted to deliberate indifference, and we find none that do. Therefore, we conclude that, at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death, the law was not clearly established that Chief Anderson’s failure to train his officers in the handling of suicidal inmates amounted to deliberate indifference to Mr. Belcher’s constitutional rights.
Mrs. Belcher also contends that, at the time of her son’s death, it was clearly established that a reasonable jail official, who knew that an inmate could hang himself by tying some material to the bars of a jail-cell door and yet who failed to prevent that possibility, was acting with deliberate indifference to an inmate’s taking of his life. She cites no decisions supporting her contention. Instead, she relies upon the National Commission on Correctional Health Care’s 1987 “Standards for Health Services in Jails” and the requirements of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Such non-legally enforceable standards are not the law and cannot clearly establish it. Our research reveals no decisions clearly establishing that a police chief who fails to cover the bars of the jail-cell doors is acting with deliberate indifference to inmates who seek to take their own lives. Therefore, we conclude that, at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death, this contention was not clearly established law.
Because at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death no decision had clearly established that Chief Anderson’s actions or inactions constituted deliberate indifference, he is entitled to qualified immunity.
Mrs. Belcher contends that Corporal McKinley, Officer Roberson, and Officer Rie-beling acted with deliberate indifference to Mr. Belcher’s serious medical and psychiatric needs by failing to take Mr. Belcher to a hospital, failing to obtain his medication, and failing to determine the name of, and to contact, his psychiatrist. Mrs. Belcher further contends that Corporal McKinley acted with deliberate indifference to Mr. Belcher’s life by failing to transfer him to the Baldwin County jail and by failing to assign an officer to guard him continuously. Officers Roberson and Riebeling, she contends, acted with deliberate indifference to Mr. Belcher’s life by leaving him unguarded, particularly while they met in the courtroom with Investigator Crook. To overcome the officers’ qualified immunity defenses, Mrs. Belcher maintains that, at the time of her son’s death, the law was clearly established that reasonable officers, in circumstances materially similar to these officers, would have known that their conduct amounted to deliberate indifference. Mrs. Belcher first asserts that Waldrop v. Evans, 871 F.2d 1030 (11th Cir.1989), clearly established that officers in circumstances materially similar to the defendants’, who fail to notify competent authorities of an inmate’s request for medication and psychiatric help, are guilty of deliberate indifference to the inmate’s psychiatric needs. Officer Roberson is the only officer who did not notify a superior officer about Mr. Belcher’s request for medication and request to see his psychiatrist. 7 Therefore, we can assume either that Mrs. Belcher’s argument based on Waldrop is directed at Officer Roberson only, or that by the term “competent authorities,” Mrs. Belcher means mental health professionals and she is contending that all of the defendants should have notified a mental health professional of Mr. Belcher’s medical and psychiatric needs. As the district court recognized, Waldrop could not have clearly established the law governing the conduct of police officers in positions materially similar to Officer Roberson’s or any of the other defendant police officers in this case, because Waldrop addressed the liability of a physician at a state mental health evaluation facility who failed to notify the facility’s staff psychiatrist that an inmate under that psychiatrist’s care had committed an act of self-mutilation when his medication was discontinued. 871 F.2d at 1036. 8 The defendants in this case are not physicians and are not responsible for meeting the medical and psychiatric needs of inmates in a mental health evaluation facility. They are police officers whose primary responsibility is to enforce laws and to arrest persons suspected of violating laws in their community. Because the circumstances in Waldrop are not materially similar to the circumstances in this case, Waldrop did not clearly establish the law applicable to this case. Mrs. Belcher next cites Popham v. City of Talladega, 908 F.2d 1561 (11th Cir.1990), and Edwards v. Gilbert, 867 F.2d 1271 (11th Cir.1989), contending that those cases clearly established that a jail official, who knows that an inmate has attempted suicide and leaves the inmate unguarded in a cell with barred doors and the means to hang himself, is guilty of deliberate indifference to the inmate’s taking of his own life. 9 Neither case clearly established that proposition. Popham held that the actions of the defendants in that ease did not constitute deliberate indifference, 908 F.2d at 1565; consequently, it could not have clearly established that the actions of the defendants in this case did constitute deliberate indifference. Law is clearly established by holdings, not by inferences from language in opinions. But even if every sentence in the Popham decision established law, that decision contains more language unfavorable than favorable to Mrs. Belcher. For example, Popham states: Plaintiff complains of the fact that there were no guards on duty for the last shift and the failure of the camera to cover the small area of the cell in which the decedent committed suicide, but cites no cases for the proposition that deliberate indifference is demonstrated if prisoners are not seen by jailers at all times. 908 F.2d at 1565. Popham therefore rejected any argument that failing to guard an inmate continuously constitutes deliberate indifference. Nor did the Edwards decision clearly establish that the actions of the defendants in this case constitute deliberate indifference. In Edwards, a jail suicide ease, this Court reversed the denial of summary judgment to jail officials on qualified immunity grounds. 867 F.2d at 1277. Our holding that the Edwards defendants’ actions did not constitute deliberate indifference under clearly established law, does not establish, clearly or otherwise, that the actions of the defendants in this case do constitute deliberate indifference. Finally, Mrs. Belcher relies on two cases from other circuits that this Court cited with approval in our Edwards opinion: Cobrales v. County of Los Angeles, 864 F.2d 1454 (9th Cir.1988), and Partridge v. Two Unknown Police Officers, 791 F.2d 1182 (5th Cir.1986). She argues that those cases clearly established that the defendants’ conduct in this case constituted deliberate indifference. Although, for reasons we explain, we find these out-of-circuit cases distinguishable, by distinguishing them, “we do not mean to imply that the law [of this Circuit] can be clearly established for qualified immunity purposes by non-binding precedent.” Kelly v. Curtis, 21 F.3d 1544, 1550 n. 6 (11th Cir.1994); see also Hansen v. Soldenwagner, 19 F.3d 573, 578 n. 6 (11th Cir.1994) (“[T]he case law of one other circuit cannot settle the law in this circuit to the point of being ‘clearly established.’ ”). In Cóbrales, the Ninth Circuit held that a county jail supervisor, sued under section 1983, could not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to support a jury finding that he had been deliberately indifferent to the medical and psychiatric needs of an inmate who committed suicide in his facility, because the jail official had not moved for a directed verdict at the close of all of the evidence. 864 F.2d at 1459. Accordingly, the Ninth Circuit limited its appellate review to a search for plain error in the jury’s finding. Id. The jury based its finding of deliberate indifference on the fact that jail officials had ordered the inmate into solitary confinement for ten days, even though they knew that, while in solitary confinement only months before, the inmate had attempted suicide to get himself returned to the general prison population. Id. at 1456-57. Thereafter, the inmate hung himself. Id. at 1457. The Cab-rales court found this evidence sufficient, under the plain error doctrine, to support the jury’s finding of deliberate indifference. Id. at 1459. The Cabrales court did not indicate what steps jail officials had taken to prevent the Cabrales inmate’s suicide, raising the possible inference that no preventive measures were taken. Here, the defendants took several steps to prevent suicide. After Mr. Belcher’s first attempt at suicide, the officers moved him from a furnished cell to an unfurnished cell and took away his shirt to prevent future suicide attempts. Officer Roberson checked on Mr. Belcher every five minutes, and Corporal McKinley took steps to obtain a warrant to have Mr. Belcher transferred to a facility better equipped to handle a suicidal inmate. Because of the lack of details concerning jail officials’ efforts to prevent the Cabrales inmate’s suicide and the limited nature of the Ninth Circuit’s review in Cab-rales, that decision could not have clearly established the law governing the defendants’ conduct in this case, even if it had been a decision of this Circuit. Partridge offers no better support for Mrs. Belcher’s case. In Partridge, a district court had dismissed a section 1983 action against jail officials who allegedly were deliberately indifferent to the psychiatric needs of a pretrial detainee who committed suicide three hours after being placed in a cell. 791 F.2d at 1183-84. The defendants in Partridge allegedly knew that the detainee was mentally ill and allegedly had access to clinical records revealing that the inmate was suicidal. Id. at 1184. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit reviewed the district court’s order terminating the case both as a dismissal and as a summary judgment. Reviewing the district court’s order as a dismissal, the Partridge court held that it was due to be reversed because the allegations, including the allegation that the police took no steps to protect the inmate from self-harm, were sufficient to establish deliberate indifference. Id. at 1185, 1187. Reviewing the district court’s order as a summary judgment, the Partridge court concluded that it was due to be reversed, stating that, because there was no evidence that the defendants took any steps to protect the detainee from self-harm, there existed genuine issues of material fact as to deliberate indifference. Id. at 1189. Specifically, the Partridge court was concerned with whether the officers had taken steps to check the inmate’s clinical records and whether they had cheeked on the inmate during the three hours between placing him in the cell and finding him dead. Id. In this case, by contrast, the defendants took steps to prevent Mr. Belcher from killing himself. Not only was he placed in a stripped-down cell, but an officer checked on him every five minutes. Because of the lack of evidence of preventive measures in Partridge, even if the decision had been one of this circuit, it could not have clearly established that the preventive measures taken by the defendants in this case constituted deliberate indifference. After reviewing the case law at the time of Mr. Belcher’s death, we conclude that it did not clearly establish that measures materially similar to those taken by Corporal McKinley, Officer Roberson, and Officer Riebeling, to prevent Mr. Belcher from committing suicide, were so inadequate as to constitute deliberate indifference. Therefore, these defendants are entitled to qualified immunity from suit in their individual capacities.