Opinion ID: 2815021
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Elements Instruction

Text: “We review jury instructions as a whole, ‘analyzing them deferentially to determine whether they accurately state the law and do not confuse the jury.’” Johnson v. Gen. Bd. of Pension & Health Benefits of United Methodist Church, 733 F.3d 722, 732–33 (7th Cir. 2013) (quoting Rapold v. Baxter Int’l Inc., 718 F.3d 602, 609 (7th Cir. 2013)), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 92 (2014). “[I]n order to obtain a new trial based on an incorrect jury instruction, [an appellant] must establish both that the instructions failed to properly state the law and that he was prejudiced by the error because the jury was likely to be misled or confused.” Rapold, 718 F.3d at 609. Wessel and Lay argue that they are entitled to a new trial because the district court erroneously instructed the jury on the elements necessary for Davis to prevail, and this error caused them prejudice. They contend that the court’s instructions allowed the jury to hold them liable without any finding of intent. Before the district court, they primarily ad- 8 No. 13-3416 vocated for the intent standard governing Eighth Amendment claims, and they proposed jury instructions stating that liability depended on the jury finding that Wessel and Lay acted “maliciously and sadistically” to harm Davis. Cf. Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 6–7 (1992) (“[W]henever prison officials stand accused of using excessive physical force in violation of the [Eighth Amendment’s] Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the core judicial inquiry is … whether force was applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.”). Davis objected to their proposed instructions on the basis that such intent was not required to prove his claims, and the district court agreed with Davis. Before turning to the district court’s elements instruction, we must identify the nature of Davis’s claims against Wessel and Lay, and the legal standard governing those claims. While the parties agree that Davis, as a civil detainee, pursued claims pursuant to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, they dispute the precise nature of the claims. Davis characterizes his claims against Wessel and Lay as being for “excessive use of restraints,” as recognized in Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 321 (1982) (discussing “the rights of the involuntarily committed to … freedom from unreasonable restraints”), and May v. Sheahan, 226 F.3d 876, 884 (7th Cir. 2000) (referring to a plaintiff’s “freedom from bodily restraint claim,” and stating that “[t]he Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the use of bodily restraints in a manner that serves to punish a pretrial detainee”). Wessel and Lay, meanwhile, argue steadfastly that Davis’s claims against them allege excessive force, and not unlawful conditions of confinement (or its subspecies, excessive use of restraints). They assert that, “[a]s masNo. 13-3416 9 ter of his complaint, Davis may have been able to frame his claims against Wessel and Lay as either involving his conditions of confinement or excessive force (or both),” but Davis chose excessive force, and he should now be bound by that choice. As relevant to the claims against Wessel and Lay, Davis’s pro se complaint simply recounted factual allegations and cited only § 1983 as legal authority. In opposition to defendants’ motions for summary judgment, Davis, still proceeding pro se, referred to his claims as challenging “unconstitutional conditions of confinement,” and argued that “the proper standards for evaluating [his] claims are articulated in Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 324 (1982)….” However, elsewhere in the summary-judgment opposition, Davis refers to claims for “excessive force,” and it is unclear whether he is referring to his claims against all defendants (including Wessel and Lay) or just the defendants who are not part of this appeal (the claims against the other defendants unquestionably allege excessive force). The district court’s orders denying Wessel and Lay’s two motions for summary judgment refer to Davis’s claim against Wessel and Lay as the “restroom claim” which challenges “conditions of confinement,” and the district court relied upon May in denying the motions. In the final pretrial order, jointly submitted by all defendants and Davis (now represented by law students), one of the contested issues of law is listed as “[w]hether Defendants Wessel and Lay used excessive force when they required Plaintiff to remain in ‘black box’ restraints while using the restroom on May 22, 2008.” However, any confusion occasioned by the reference to “excessive force” in the final pretrial order should have been 10 No. 13-3416 dispelled by the district court’s jury instructions, including the preliminary instructions. In those instructions, the judge consistently referred to Davis’s claims against Wessel and Lay as Davis’s “due process claims against Defendants Lay and Wessel.” In the final instructions, the judge first set forth the elements of Davis’s “claim of excessive force” against the defendants who are not part of this appeal, and then a separate instruction stated the elements of Davis’s “due process claims against Defendants Lay and Wessel.” The verdict form consisted of three pages—two pages addressing Davis’s claims for excessive force against the other defendants, and a separate page addressing Davis’s “claim of unconstitutional restraints against Defendants George Lay and Seth Wessel.” We think it should have been adequately clear to Wessel and Lay at trial that they were defending against due process claims of “freedom from unreasonable restraints,” as recognized by Youngberg, 457 U.S. at 321. Now we turn to the appropriate legal standard governing Davis’s claims against Wessel and Lay. The standard finds its origin in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979), wherein the Supreme Court said that the proper question to guide determination of the legality of conditions of confinement in pretrial detention pursuant to the Due Process Clause is “whether those conditions amount to punishment of the detainee.” Id. at 535. (Although Bell involved a claim by a pretrial detainee rather than a civilly committed plaintiff such as Davis, the difference is immaterial for our purposes. See Youngberg, 457 U.S. at 321 (applying Bell to a claim by a civilly committed plaintiff); Allison v. Snyder, 332 F.3d 1076, 1079 (7th Cir. 2003) (same; plaintiffs detained pursuant to the SVP Act).) The Bell Court “explained that such ‘punishment’ can consist of actions taken with an ‘expressed intent to punNo. 13-3416 11 ish.’” Kingsley v. Hendrickson, --- S. Ct. ----, 2015 WL 2473447, at  (U.S. June 22, 2015) (quoting Bell, 441 U.S. at 538). “[T]he Bell Court went on to explain that, in the absence of an expressed intent to punish, a pretrial detainee can nevertheless prevail by showing that the actions are not ‘rationally related to a legitimate nonpunitive governmental purpose’ or that the actions ‘appear excessive in relation to that purpose.’” Id. (quoting Bell, 441 U.S. at 561). The “freedom from unreasonable restraints” cases, Youngberg and May, rely upon this standard. See Youngberg, 457 U.S. at 320; May, 226 F.3d at 884 (“The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the use of bodily restraints in a manner that serves to punish a pre-trial detainee. The use of bodily restraints constitutes punishment in the constitutional sense if their use is not rationally related to a legitimate nonpunitive government purpose or they appear excessive in relation to the purpose they allegedly serve.”) (citing, inter alia, Youngberg, 457 U.S. at 316; Bell, 441 U.S. at 535–37). We next turn to the elements instruction given by the district court, which states: “Plaintiff has the burden of proving that the Defendant under consideration subjected Plaintiff to bodily restraint which was [1] not rationally related to legitimate security purposes, or [2] was excessive in relation to those purposes, or [3] was done in a manner which amounted to harassment for the purpose of humiliating and inflicting psychological pain on Plaintiff for no legitimate reason.” (emphasis and numbers added). By using the disjunctive “or,” the instruction permitted the jury to hold Wessel and Lay liable on any one of three grounds. The first two grounds closely track the language in Bell applicable when liability attached in the “absence of an expressed intent to punish.” Kingsley, 2015 WL 2473447, at . The third ground 12 No. 13-3416 allows the jury to find liability if they were to find that Wessel or Lay had an “expressed intent to punish.” Bell, 441 U.S. at 538. It could be argued that the third ground requires something more than simply an “intent to punish,” but we need not concern ourselves with this point since any error in this regard would have favored Wessel and Lay—and, not surprisingly, Wessel and Lay mount no challenge to the third ground in their appellate briefing. Therefore, we will focus on the first two grounds of the elements instruction, which Wessel and Lay do challenge. The first two grounds, as we have said, represent avenues by which a plaintiff such as Davis may hold a defendant liable when the defendant has no expressed intent to punish. But this does not mean that Davis had no burden to prove any intent whatsoever. A plaintiff such as Davis must prove that the defendant “possess[ed] a purposeful, a knowing, or possibly a reckless state of mind” with respect to the defendant’s actions (or inaction) toward the plaintiff. Kingsley, 2015 WL 2473447, at . (There was great debate between the parties as to whether Kingsley—which originated from our circuit—controls in this case. Although Kingsley was an excessive force due process case, unlike Davis’s case, its discussion is instructive to our due process analysis.) Stated differently, “liability for negligently inflicted harm is categorically beneath the threshold of constitutional due process.” County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 849 (1998); see Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 331 (1986) (“Historically, this guarantee of due process has been applied to deliberate decisions of government officials to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property”). Consequently, the Supreme Court has “rejected claims that the Due Process Clause should be interpreted to impose federal duties that are analogous to No. 13-3416 13 those traditionally imposed by state tort law.” Collins v. City of Harker Heights, Tex., 503 U.S. 115, 128 (1992). Instead, the Court has repeatedly “spoken of the cognizable level of executive abuse of power as that which shocks the conscience.” Lewis, 523 U.S. at 846 (collecting cases). Similarly, we have stated that, “[i]f the act involves the gratuitous infliction of pain or suffering it is deemed to be punishment, and as long as the act was intended it is a violation of the prisoner’s constitutional right even if the act was not intended as punishment.” Hart v. Sheahan, 396 F.3d 887, 892 (7th Cir. 2005) (emphasis added); see Slade v. Bd. of Sch. Dirs. of City of Milwaukee, 702 F.3d 1027, 1033 (7th Cir. 2012) (“Shouldn’t it be enough to say that it violates the due process clause for a government employee acting within the scope of his employment to commit a reckless act that by gratuitously endangering a person results in an injury to that person?”). For instance, “if an officer’s Taser goes off by accident or if an officer unintentionally trips and falls on a detainee, causing him harm, the pretrial detainee cannot prevail on an excessive force claim.” Kingsley, 2015 WL 2473447, at . In Davis’s case, if the jury believed that the guards simply did not consider the issue of whether to remove Davis’s hand restraints before he used the restroom, then the guards cannot be liable under the Due Process Clause. For example, the jury may have disbelieved Davis’s uncorroborated testimony that he requested that the restraints be removed while he was in the courtroom and just prior to using the restroom. Or the jury may have believed the guards’ testimony indicating that they would never laugh at a detainee using the restroom and they thought a detainee such as Davis could successfully navigate the restroom process with the restraints attached. In either case, the jury may have nonetheless 14 No. 13-3416 awarded compensatory damages based upon the district court’s instruction because they thought making a relatively old, frail, and diminutive detainee such as Davis use the restroom in hand restraints “was excessive in relation to [legitimate security] purposes.” Indeed, this scenario would explain the jury’s decision to award a relatively small amount of compensatory damages while declining to award any punitive damages; the latter decision indicates that the jury did not find that either guard’s conduct was, in the words of the punitive damages instruction, “malicious or in reckless disregard of Plaintiff’s rights.” In short, the jury may well have found Wessel and Lay liable for being negligent or making an accidental mistake, and that is constitutionally insufficient. See, e.g., Lewis, 523 U.S. at 849. We find that the district court’s elements instruction failed to properly state the law. No other instruction clarified the issue or otherwise rectified the error. And as we have discussed, Wessel and Lay were prejudiced because the jury was likely to have been misled or confused. A new trial is required. See Cotts v. Osafo, 692 F.3d 564, 570 (7th Cir. 2012) (holding that erroneous and confusing instruction which went to the elements of plaintiff’s claim prejudiced defendant and necessitated a new trial). In an effort to salvage the verdict, Davis argues that Wessel and Lay have failed to preserve any argument regarding any intent standard other than the Eighth Amendment’s “malicious and sadistic” standard. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 51 provides that any party wishing to contest a jury instruction must distinctly state “the matter objected to and the grounds for the objection.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 51(c)(1). “The objection must be specific enough that the nature of the error No. 13-3416 15 is brought into focus. … There are no formal requirements, but pragmatically speaking the district court must be made aware of the error prior to instructing the jury, so that the judge can fix the problem before the case goes to the jury.” Schobert v. Ill. Dep’t of Transp., 304 F.3d 725, 729–30 (7th Cir. 2002) (citation omitted). “Consistency is required as well; to preserve the objection, the party must state the same grounds when objecting to the jury instruction as it does in its motion for a new trial or on appeal.” Id. at 730. Throughout the case (including on appeal), Wessel and Lay argued that the Eighth Amendment’s “malicious and sadistic” intent standard should apply. However, they also argued to the district court during the instructions conference, “in any event, both the Seventh Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court ha[ve] consistently required mens rea of some sort.” In their motion for new trial, they said the district court’s instructions “allowed the jury to return a verdict for Plaintiff without a finding of mens rea.” In both instances, they called the district court’s attention to the Supreme Court’s decision in Lewis. It is clear that Wessel and Lay consistently advocated for some level of intent to be shown, which is the same argument raised on appeal. We find that Wessel and Lay adequately preserved their objections regarding the lack of any intent requirement in the district court’s jury instructions.